As mentioned in a previous post, I m currently reading Ted Dintersmith and Tony Wagner’s book “Most Likely to Succeed.” I’ll be posting meaningful quotes from the book. Dintersmith and Wagner emphasize that our education system focuses too much on trying to increase our international standardized test placement. But, and I agree, standardized testing, which really tests students ability to memorize words and other material they’ll never use again, is not what we should be worried about.
Diane Ravitch: “Superintendent Steven Cohen addresses parents on Long Island and explains what a great education is. It is the kind of education available to the children of Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama, Merryl Tisch (the chancellor of the New York State Regents), and other leaders of the “reform” movement. Cohen reads what children do at the University of Chicago Lab School, at the Dalton School in New York, and other excellent private schools, and contrasts them with the punitive mandates imposed on public schools. He denounces the Common Core standards and high-stakes testing. In the elite private schools, children have the opportunity to study subjects in depth, to explore ideas, and to have full programs in the arts and other non-tested subjects. The “reformers” know what is best for their children, but they treat the public’s children as “losers.” They don’t want the public’s children to have what they demand for their own children. In short, he lacerates the “reformers.”
Dr. Cohen is one of a group of superintendents in Long Island who are traveling to school districts to explain why Long Island parents should reject the current “reforms” of high-stakes testing and Common Core standards. The others are David Gamberg of Southold-Greenport, Joe Rella of Comsewogue, and Michael Hynes of Patchogue-Medford. They have inspired parents and educators across the Island.
He faults Bill Gates for foisting the Common Core standards on the nation with Arne Duncan’s help, without ever having testing the standards anywhere to see what effects they have. “Just trust me,” the salesmen of Common Core say. Would you buy a used car without evidence that it actually runs?
He explains how the Common Core was intended to drive the curriculum and testing, for the benefit of vendors and profit-seekers. The claim that it is “just standards, not curriculum,” is nonsense.
He describes the excellent results of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, which does not use high-stakes testing, and wonders why the state refuses to allow other high schools to join it. It works, but admission is closed. Why?
This is an excellent presentation and well worth your time to watch it. Be sure to hear him reading from the MIT catalogue about what MIT considers “college-readiness.”
Dr. Cohen is part of a group of thoughtful and courageous superintendents in Long Island who have been traveling school districts across the Island to explain what good education is–and what it is not.
Dr. Steven Cohen is a hero of public education and of students. He richly deserves to be on the honor roll of the blog.”
The New York Times’ Editorial Board published an opinion on Congress’ coming review of bills that aim to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also know as the No Child Left Behind Act. The article notes a couple of items of interest to me.
First, it acknowledges that NCLB has it’s drawbacks, however, the Act should not be amended altogether, but rather adjusted for its shortcomings. Particularly, the Act, as it is now, arguably mislabels schools, which causes stress on teachers, administration, parents and students:
“This provision failed to adequately distinguish between chronically failing schools and otherwise good schools that missed improvement targets for particular subgroups, like special needs children. As a result, as many as half the schools in some states were listed as needing improvement, seen by the public as “failing,” which mystified educators and parents, and generated a predictable political backlash.”
This part of the Act instills unnecessary insecurity in schools, students, parents and teachers that are more than the labels suggest. It makes students and teachers doubt what they’ve accomplished and undermined actual achievements. I understand why general labels are used to indicate a school’s academic performances. But rather than broadly labeling schools, a system where broad labels and short and specific labels are combined could be a sufficient remedy. Or, perhaps, a two score system where there is a overall grade and a grade that highlights the strongest need of improvement section. I do acknowledge how this can cause confusion, but I also think that it is absolutely necessary to try and provide more context to the present labeling system because education is so complex.
Furthermore, NCLB requires testing children once a year in grades 3-12. The testing has created a frenzy of constant preparation and rote education. Clearly, this environment takes away the creativity of education and allows people to see testing as a value of education, rather than a component.
One bill’s remedy to this, according to the Editorial Board, is to relinquish the state of its mandatory obligation to involve itself it into failing (or otherwise) schools. This takes a way the mandatory yearly testing on both a national and state level. This proposed bill would allow districts and cities the opportunity o make up their own grading and evaluation systems without consideration for what other schools, districts and cities are doing.
The board notes, and I agree, that this free flow of teaching with such a large public school systems, such as New York City, allows for less understanding of how peers across the board are performing and provides parents with an uncentralized basis on how their children are performing.
What I think the Board should have emphasized is the chaos individual district/city grading and evaluations would create. School districts would attempt to create their own systems, one that seemingly fits the district’s needs. I acknowledge the value in this. The current system is too broad and isn’t the best fits for a lot of schools. But I also recognize that practice can be very different from theory and when the two oppose each other, correcting it may be difficult to achieve, primarily because the type of system has either never been done before, doesn’t have an immediate or transparent fix or has nothing to compare it against.
Leaving the state out and removing centralized education also destabilizes the education system and introduces us to a world where educational factors are forever changing and uniformity becomes less of a factor. Comparing apples to oranges, pears to grapes, carrots to brussel spouts will make understanding quality education across the board, even on regional or demographically similar level, much more difficult.
Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, says there should be yearly testing for students in grades 3-8. But, the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teachers’ union, says testing should not be yearly but done every few years, or, as they call it, in grade spands.
For Yearly Testing:
Kati Haycock, president of the the Education Trust said, “…Kids who are not tested end up not counting.”
For Span Testing:
Lily Eskelsen García, President of the National Education Association said, “Parents and educators know that the one size fits all annual federal testing structure has not worked.”
While this is a very brief summary of the debate, I have done further reading and still find myself sort of stuck in between the two viewpoints.
One of the main concerns for people in favor of span testing is the emphasis that is taken away from teacher performance based on standardized tests and the treatment that sll students take tests equally. I think these two ideas are very poignant and it seems that span testing could be the solution that addresses these pressures that both students and teachers face.
However, without an annual indicator, like standardized tests, it would seem difficult to find something that allows parents, teachers and students to follow students progress effectively and take measures to ensure that students are getting the help they need on a time schedule that allows them to be college or career ready.
Perhaps, the best solution would be to find a substitute (or two or three) that would provide parents, students ad teachers with some kind of real measurement of progress. It is a little unclear on what those yearly indicators would be, but thinking about them is definitely a start to a more comfortable but effective learning environment.
“The purpose of teachers unions is to prioritize the pay and privileges of members. That is their job. I don’t think that’s the problem,” she said in an interview. “What I think the issue is is we don’t have an organized national interest group with the same heft … advocating on behalf of kids.”- Michelle Rhee
Unions are so caught up in trying to guarantee teachers maintain their jobs that they do not realize that the cost of one person’s job can effect the prospect of multiple students’ careers.
I agree with her 100% on the problem with teachers’ unions!
“The purpose of teachers unions is to prioritize the pay and privileges of members. That is their job. I don’t think that’s the problem,” she said in an interview. “What I think the issue is is we don’t have an organized national interest group with the same heft … advocating on behalf of kids.”- Michelle Rhee
HuffPost and International Unemployment
This week the Huffington Post is doing an amazing series that features six graduate students in six different countries, who find themselves unemployed. I love getting a taste of what is going on in other countries, especially when it deals with the economy.
Canada:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-blastorah/generation-y-canada-millenials_b_2900997.html
Spain:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ivan-escalante-lopez/a-day-in-my-life_b_2924787.html
U.K.:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/charlie-lemay/uk-day-of-unemployment_b_2882878.html
Lewis,once again, does a great job on explaining the financial crisis of 2008. In “Boomerang” he does something different (at least different from his other two books I’ve read- “Liar’s Poker” and “The Big Short”). He explores the crisis of other, very unique countries.
Now, if you’re like me, you assumed that the crisis might have happened or came about in a similar way and of similar attitudes as the American Culture. Like, I thought it happened because people became greedy, self-absorbed, blind, and naive all for money and they idea that it results in happiness and his a measure of success.
This is not the case from some of the countries that were heavily impacted by the sub-prime crisis. The only way I can describe this is that Lewis narrates people who act like their country and country that act like their people. It is the culture that is within the country, that brought about major financial disaster.
For example, and I won’t give too much a way, Iceland lost big time primarily because they simply were not a people of bankers (despite how much they thought themselves to be). They did not belong, and therefore, from the start were destined to fail.
All the countries that he explores fail for their own cultural behavior.
At the end of the day, his overall point is that if we want make a better the economy of the nation we live in, we need to focus of the the culture that masks it.
I so strongly agree with this point. Certain cities a California have filde for bankruptcy or on the verge of doing so. So people of those cities still refuse to increase taxes. Lewis points out that some places were given the opportunity to BEFORE things started to get bad, but at a time when they were projected to hit that particularly city bad soon, people still wanted to spend way beyond their means.
I think people are so stuck in their ways that they are still in denial about the amount of debt that we are in. Because there are government bailouts (And, I do think they were necessary) they permit people to think that even while at the edge of the cliff, even as they job, there will be some how this magical bungee rope that will save them from that fall… I think I will expand on this idea further in a different post.
Overall, great and easy read. He does an amazing job of taking us into the mindest of of other cultures while maintaining the simplicity in which he explains the complex financial meltdowns (although if you’ve read his other books, even the financial part is easy because it is more or less the same).
On Education: Curriculum, Equity & Public Education 