newteacher

Race to the Top (well....we hope that's where we end up)

Worth a watch....a lot here on charter schools, education as civil right, and urban schools as dropout factories. 

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FIve Myths about US Education

This is a little old but the general caution to be careful about international comparisons in education still holds true.  This notion that we're "behind" other countries is being used to attack schools of education and move to de-regulated, privatized model.  Unfortunately, this rhetoric still works out there in the public (across the political spectrum).  We need to read better, think harder, and ask questions to those with hidden (or not so hidden) agendas.

Five Myths About U.S. Kids Outclassed by the Rest of the World

By Paul Farhi,  Sunday, January 21, 2007
The usual hand-wringing accompanied the Department of Education's release late last year of new statistics on how U.S. students performed on international tests. How will the United States compete in the global economy, went the lament, when our students lag behind the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong in math and science? American fourth-graders ranked 12th in the world on one international math test, and eighth-graders were 14th. Is this further evidence of the failure of the nation's schools?

Not exactly. In fact, a closer look at how our kids perform against the international "competition" suggests that this story line may contain more than a few myths:

1. U.S. students rate poorly compared with those in the rest of the world.

This is true only if you cherry-pick the results. University of Pennsylvania researchers Erling E. Boe and Sujie Shin looked at six major international tests in reading, math, science and civics conducted from 1991 through 2001. Their conclusion: Americans are above average when compared with 22 other industrialized nations. In civics, no nation scored significantly higher than the United States; in reading, only 13 percent did. Even in math and science -- the two subjects considered "vital" to future technological competitiveness -- the United States fell in roughly the middle of the pack. No gold star, but hardly a crisis, either.

More interesting, when compared with students in the world's most industrialized countries, U.S. students were on par with the others in every subject (and outperformed everyone in civics). And every Western country, not just the United States, lagged behind Japan in math and science, suggesting that the "achievement gap" in these subjects is an East-West phenomenon rather than an American one.

2. U.S. students are falling behind.

Actually, American students are mostly improving, or at worst holding their own. As the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) shows, America's eighth-graders improved their math and science scores in 1995, 1999 and 2003. Only students in Hong Kong, Latvia and Lithuania -- three relatively tiny and homogenous entities -- improved more than the United States did. Indeed, no nation included in the major international rankings educates as many poor students or as ethnically diverse a population as does the United States. Yet even as the percentage of historically low-achieving students has increased, our test scores have risen. Unfortunately, news accounts focus on the relative position of American students (are we No. 1 or No. 12?) rather than on their absolute performance (did they improve, regardless of what others did?).

3. U.S. students won't be well prepared for the modern workforce.

This myth has been bandied around since at least the turn of the century -- the 19th century -- by business leaders who blame schools for inadequately preparing workers. It's part of the never-ending notion that U.S. schools are in crisis.

Education researcher Gerald W. Bracey cites a March 1957 cover story in Life magazine -- at the height of post-Sputnik paranoia over Soviet scientific prowess -- that contrasts the stern, rigorous education of a Moscow teenager (complicated physics and chemistry courses) with the carefree lifestyle of a Chicago youth (rehearsals for his high school musical). The cover headline: "Crisis in Education." In the 1980s, when Japan seemed to be an unstoppable economic juggernaut, the seminal policy manifesto "A Nation at Risk," written by a blue-ribbon panel at the behest of the Department of Education, warned that deficiencies in high school graduates "come at a time when the demand for highly skilled workers in new fields is accelerating rapidly."

Despite these doomsday cases, the United States survived and, by many measures, bested the competition. Today, with the Soviet Union a memory and Japan facing its own economic and demographic problems, the anxieties have shifted to China and other Asian rivals.

4. Bad schooling has undermined America's competitiveness.

This canard -- perhaps the biggest of them all -- was given a boost by the recent World Economic Forum survey of international economies. Typically this annual survey ranks the U.S. economy as the most competitive in the world, but last year it put the United States in sixth place. However, the drop had nothing to do with test scores or school performance. Rather, the forum cited U.S. trade and budget deficits, a low savings rate, tax cuts and the federal government's increased spending on defense and homeland security.

Another recent survey, by the Council on Competitiveness, a Washington-based business advisory group, found that over the past two decades the U.S. economy grew faster than that of any other advanced nation, and generated a third of the world's economic growth. Yet this performance followed a period in which the authors of "A Nation at Risk" were warning that a "rising tide of [educational] mediocrity . . . threatens our very future as a nation." That was in 1983. Those high-school mediocrities are now turning 40, and presumably have been playing a part in helping the U.S. economy grow "faster than any other advanced economy" over the past two decades.

A dynamic economy is much more than the sum of its test scores. It's part of a culture that rewards innovation and risk-taking, and values unconventional problem-solving. Much of this is nurtured in our schools, even if it can't be quantified on a test.

Recently, Newsweek International's Fareed Zakaria noted Singapore's success on international math and science exams, but asked Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam why Singapore produced so few top-ranked scientists, entrepreneurs, inventors, business executives and academics. "We both have meritocracies," he replied. America's "is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. There are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well -- like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. These are the areas where Singapore must learn from America."

Our current (and past) economic success suggests something that educational alarmists and their sky-is-falling friends in the news media seem reluctant to admit: American schools may have a lot to fix, but they may be doing a few things right, too.

5. How we stack up on international tests matters, if only for national pride.

Yes, we're a nation of strivers and self-improvers; the American drive to be the biggest and the best in everything seems part of our national character. But if being No. 1 in education is our goal, shouldn't we also want to be No. 1 in all the things closely linked to academic achievement, such as quality of childhood health care and reduction of childhood poverty? National pride can be a destructive concept, especially when it views learning as a zero-sum game ("their" gains are "our" losses, and vice versa). Continuous improvement should be our goal, regardless of whether we're No.1 in the test-score Olympics.

Paul Farhi is a Washington Post staff writer.

Taking Educators to School

is it me, or is this guy making a lot of sense?  someone recently suggested we adopt a Doc-for-America plan to help with the need for more general practicioners....seems to be the same idea as a lot of this so-called "reform"  Thoughts, gentle readers?

Taking educators to school by Dan Carpenter

I can't remember the last time a politician told Indiana's medical school or law schools they had too much say in how doctors and lawyers were educated.  Or that we needed to make it easier for laypersons to become doctors, lawyers, even chiefs of surgery and judges.

The idea is that unsatisfactory student achievement is the fault of a closed teaching society that is loath to change with the times and dedicated to the welfare of salaried adults rather than the needs of children.

Refutation of these presumptions is ample. Innovation and self-criticism are staples of teacher education and are reflected in state accountability law that predates Bennett. Dedicated teachers, even those protected by unions from arbitrary firing, are not the exception. If one accepts these truths, then one faces a political problem in seeking to paint schools as the culprit in children's failure, and punitive school "reform" as the simple solution. If education colleges know what they're doing, and teachers are earning their pay, then low scores and high dropout rates indicate societal dysfunction too deep-seated to repair in the place where children spend seven hours a day for half the year. 

While they pay token homage to the challenges society lays at the schoolhouse door, "reformist" politicians and their media choir keep returning to the "failed schools" mantra and the scared straight strategy. Read their lips and their articles closely, and you'll find precious little in terms of substantial suggestions, even less recognition of changes already made and virtually no concession that education costs don't stand still.

The reason medical and law schools do not endure this kibitzing is that teachers in America are not regarded as professionals. Bennett's proposals to fast-track lay people with "content knowledge" into teaching, and to dilute formal requirements for administrators, may make perfect sense to him as applied science -- schooling for the real world. Nor is the "establishment" entirely hostile, in concept.

Try to imagine, though, such a sweeping and unilateral "improvement plan" being presented to another professional community by a representative of the general public. He'd be coolly thanked for his interest by practitioners and their mentors who, unlike teachers, are not doing work every guy with half an education thinks he can do.

A teacher friend reminded me, during a recent discussion of the reform brouhaha, that there are some lazy and lousy teachers out there. Yes, I replied, and some bad doctors and lawyers too. I don't feel qualified to fix any of them; and if I could, I wouldn't guarantee us a smart, healthy, law-abiding Indiana in the bargain.

Read & Comment: LINK

Obama & Education (continued)

A lot of folks are calling Obama/Duncan education policy essentially Bush's 3rd term--David Brooks seems pleased but certainly in a lot of places (like Indiana BTW), Republican leaders are employing these policies to take down Schools of Education, completely unbridle charter schools, and lower standards for teacher education.  I think we need to talk about this.....comments?

Opinion: Obama seems to be delivering on education reform 

By David Brooks Special to the Mercury News Posted: 10/24/2009 08:00:00 PM PDT 

A few weeks ago, "Saturday Night Live" teased President Barack Obama for delivering great speeches but not actually bringing change. There's at least one area where that jibe is unfair: Education. When Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan came to office, they created a $4.3 billion Race to the Top fund. The idea was to use money to leverage change. The administration would put a pile of federal money on the table and award it to a few states that most aggressively embraced reform. Their ideas were good, and their speeches were beautiful. But the challenge was going to be standing up to the teachers' unions and the other groups that have undermined nearly every other reform effort. The real questions were these: Would the administration water down their reform criteria in the face of political pressure? Would the Race to the Top money end up getting doled out like any other federal spending program, and thus end up subsidizing the status quo? Would the administration hold the line and demand real reform in exchange for the money?

Read More: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6683631.html

The NAACP on "Real Education"

A letter to the Indy Star from the NAACP on the Governor's (and one assumes, Superintendent Bennett's) real thoughts on education reform--it's worth printing here in its entirety.  Check it out, post a comment, and pass along.  Troubling politics are putting our children at risk.

Gov. Mitch Daniels is saying we should go back to separating children based on a decision that not all children are meant to become doctors, lawyers, teachers or engineers. He is following the advice of Charles Murray, who wrote the "The Bell Curve" and has now written "Real Education."

We would think that the highest representative of this state would only endorse a book that would allow every citizen of the state to feel as if his or her child, nephew or niece would be encouraged to pursue the highest education possible.

For more than 50 years, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has fought for the rights of all children to receive the best education, without separate acts based upon one's perception of who can or can't succeed. Murray is advocating for a nation that resembles our past, in which we relegated certain children to labor and others to the highest professions.

Who were these children in the former category? None other than children of color. So our governor is saying, by recommending Murray's recent book to his Education Roundtable, that he would like to see us return to those days of separate goals for different segments of the population. In other words, poor and minority children can continue to stay back.

Carole Craig

Education co-chairperson

Greater Indianapolis NAACP

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009910160324

Obama and No Child Left Behind

Well, Friends.....Obama was clear in the election that the place where he broke with the Democrats was on education policy; It looks like those chickens have come home to roost. One doesn't have to look too far to see how folks are clamoring to take advantage of the moment and also to be able to say "We're doing what Obama wants!"  The problem lies in folks not knowing anything about education making education policy (and i'm including Obama here)--what you get are this common-sense solutions to very complex problems and....you just might make it worse.

p.s. note Ravitch's concern here too....very interesting.

Dangling Money, Obama Pushes an Education Shift

By SAM DILLON

Published: August 16,

“I am a public school teacher who vehemently wanted to vote for a president who would save us from No Child Left Behind [but]...the potential is there for the test frenzy to get worse than it is under No Child Left Behind.”

Holding out billions of dollars as a potential windfall, the Obama administration is persuading state after state to rewrite education laws to open the door to more charter schools and expand the use of student test scores for judging teachers.

That aggressive use of economic stimulus money by Education Secretary Arne Duncan is provoking heated debates over the uses of standardized testing and the proper federal role in education, issues that flared frequently during President George W. Bush’s enforcement of his signature education law, called No Child Left Behind.

 

READ MORE at NYTIMES.COM

Dismantling Public Education by My Man Mitch [cont.]

The revolution has indeed come, friends (and it's not the good kind).  The Daniels plan to continue the attack on public education gets even more serious as teacher licensure is "redefined."  Citing no research or credible evidence (or even support from superintendents) for such moves, the straw man argument that Schools of Education are the problem continues.  "Mumbo Jumbo" (see below) I can only assume means teaching kids with special needs, understanding the science of learning & effective teaching, or bringing to light what we know about teaching kids who traditionally don't do well [sarcasm intentional].  Anyone who's thought beyond surface politics knows that content knowledge alone doesn't make a good teacher

This is not only offensive but disingenous and so ideological that its hard to even understand how it could be offered in public.  Shameful.

 

Brian Howey: Daniels’ Education ‘Revolution’ Next Week /Posted On July 24, 2009

By BRIAN A. HOWEY

INDIANAPOLIS - Next week, the education “revolution” begins in Indiana.

  Read the whole article at Howey Politics

Some Excerpts: Asked about how the Ball State University teachers college will have to adapt, Daniels explained, “When the Professional Licensing Board begins starting next week to redefine what is required to get a teaching license in Indiana, the schools of education are going to have to make some major changes of their own. They are not going to need as many people teaching what to me is mumbo jumbo. We’re going to expect students who want to teach spending much more of their time studying the subject they are going to be teaching in the schools.”

Does Daniels have in mind a mix of what charter and traditional public schools should be? The governor explained, “No. I don’t pretend to know. What I know is that alternative approaches are extremely popular with parents and families. I do know that the general record of these schools is superior to the old model.”  FALSE BTW: see both the Spellings Report and the newest study from Stanford posted earlier.

Charter Schools, Obama, & New Research

An interesting and balanced review of some new research on charter schools and student achievement--this is worth your time!  This issue has gotten so heated ideologically that very few folks use data or research to back either their support or opposition (i.e. 37% of charter schools underperform traditional public schools).  Truth of course is that some charters are great, some are criminally negligent but that is not to say that there aren't big effects to the rush to add more charters (which seems to be the Obama/Duncan position).
Another piece of this as well is how urban kids are served by charters....the answer is in here but, the news doesn't appear to be good. Let us know what you think!

On 2 Million Minutes

Friends,

   A few folks have asked for thoughts on the documentary 2 Million Minutes on global education and American competitiveness.  It does have an Indiana connection as parts were filmed in Carmel but I think it has some major flaws (i.e. assumptions, biases, representation) but I'll reserve too much comment for now so that folks can post their own reactions.  Certainly, this has caused a lot of buzz around education reform circles so  I hope that folks will comment with their two cents.  Here's a link with a bit more than the trailer: Eschoolnews

Two Million Minutes Trailer

"Regardless of nationality, as soon as a student completes the eighth grade -- they have just Two Million Minutes to prepare for college and ultimately a career. This important documentary examines how students in India and China are being better prepared than American students to compete in a flattening world. For more information, go to www.2mminutes.com."

Obama & Education

From a friend of mine's blog....it's not good I'm afraid.  When Obama said that Education was his example of where he differed with the Democratic Party I got worried; when he picked Arne Duncan, I got very worried; when he starts sounding like "Bush Light" (see below), I'm terrified.

Obama & Education

An Obama activist friend of mine reacted to the speech outlining an education agenda given by the President to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce  by calling it ‘Bush lite’. Despite important attention to ‘crumbling’ schools, funds to prevent teacher layoffs due to state budgetary crises, mild criticism of the ‘testing regime’, and some awareness of the relationship between other socio-economic issues and education; it’s hard to argue with that dispassionate characterization. Obama’s evocation of “high standards” coupled with “high expectations”, his call for a “new culture of accountability”, not only broke no new ground, but seemed to echo Bush platitudes, even as he called for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to “live up to its name.”  READ MORE