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Ditch the Corpse

Published September 8, 2011 on Schools Closed
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DITCH THE CORPSE

Both social promotion and holding children back in grade for failing to achieve according to arbitrary standards are counterproductive. The first is a disservice, the second a punishment. Both of these notions constitute a fundamental denial of the learning process and could easily be eliminated from the current educational narrative in one fell-swoop by simply eliminating grade levels.

If there were no grade levels from what are now considered kindergarten or first grade to 5th or 6th grade levels and if instead achievement or developmental levels were the gauge there would be no social promotion and no holding back. Nothing can change the simple fact of life that all  learning is personal and is accomplished at a rate appropriate to each individual.

So, what’s the deal here with this urgent push to end social promotion and replace it with the Draconian practice of holding back? What personal, social or political agendas are being served by demeaning and humiliating children with this form of punishment? Is there an assumption that children who do not learn according to arbitrary expectations are doing so deliberately? Have any of those who are making these proposals ever taken instruction in human developmental psychology? We are not talking about Skinnerian pigeons here, we are talking about children – human children – and it is a given that all humans, children and adults, learn at their own rate according to their abilities. (n.b.: Not all of Skinner’s pigeons learned at the same rate either.) I would ask the so-called reformers who propose the holding-back policy how well they would do today in a differential equations class. How would they feel if they were socially stigmatized for not keeping up with others who are more mathematically inclined in a chat about Newton’s thoughts on the Binomial Theorem for Fractional or Negative Exponents?

What do the proponents of holding children back believe would be gained by social stigmatization? Do those who propose this antediluvian educational practice believe they are actually helping a child when they humiliate him or her in front of peers, and are they presuming to speak for the child and assert there is no need to feel humiliated? Do they want not only to specify how quickly a child should learn but also tell the child how to feel about being held back? This sounds to me a lot like adding insult to injury.

ARE THERE ALTERNATIVES?

How can anyone claim with a straight face that cutting school budgets, eliminating teachers, shortening the school day or week and limiting various classroom resources produces better educational outcomes and better serves a child who might be held back?

Where is common sense here? How can schools achieve more learning with fewer necessary resources? I think most educators would agree that, of all the educational resources, time is the one most closely related to good instructional outcomes. All of the most successful schools in the U.S. are making more time a priority and the KIPP schools are a sterling example of this. In one case, the Brooklyn Generation School ” … replaced most administrators with teachers and staggered all employees’ schedules allowing it to increase learning time by 30 percent without additional cost.” The result of this reordering of priorities and resources? “Last Spring, 90 percent of seniors graduated on time.” And this in the face of the fact that when those students entered the school, ” … only 20 percent were at grade level.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/opinion/shortchanged-by-the-school-bell.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Shortchanged by the Bell&st=cse So, what is the logical answer to the challenge for better alternatives? I would say more teachers and more time for them to teach and for children to learn.

In “The Process of Schooling” (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1967), J.M. Stephens tells a beautiful story to illustrate the ongoing educational debate.

“This preoccupation with the conspicuous and artificial aspects of education reminds one of an amusing, if spurious, account of the origins of agriculture. There was once a suggestion that, in some early burial services, it was customary to place wild grain in the grave for the use of the deceased in his new life. Inevitably some of this grain was spilled around the edge of the grave. In that fertile soil it took root and flourished, ultimately providing a harvest. The survivors noticed this result, and soon a definite principle was formulated: At a certain season, bury a corpse with all the proper ceremonies, and in due course there will be grain to harvest. The corpse, of course, was the most prominent feature of the process, and it became the focal point around which the whole principle was organized. When the planting season came around, corpses were in great demand and were even produced to order when not otherwise available. It was upon treatment of the corpse, moreover, that the success of the harvest was supposed to depend.”

Sooner or later it dawned on people that the corpse could be left out of the equation which, needless to say I suppose, depressed the market for corpses.

Stephens went on to say: ” It is easy to focus our attention on the conspicuous, dramatic events that call for deliberate attention. Conversely, it is natural to ignore the humble ever-present forces that work consistently, independent of our concern.”

I used to read this passage to my students in both my “Schools and Society” and “School Reform” classes because it illustrates how we become enamored of and wrapped up in certain kinds of ideas – ideas which lead us away from a more fundamental and effective understanding of the process of schooling, the natural processes of teaching and learning. I wanted to focus their attention on those “humble ever-present forces” that determine the outcomes of teaching and learning. So many “great” ideas have repeatedly come and gone, such as the mechanistic approach with all its whiz-bang gadgets and the Draconian approach with its punishment and humiliation regimes, and so on. None of these easy answer approaches has ever worked, which is exactly why they are always playing musical chairs with each other in the ongoing educational and political debate. It’s time to ditch the corpse of the grade level system and get on with the task of meaningful education.

Good and effective education is not about social promotion or holding back – it is about time and attention given by dedicated and committed adults, teachers and parents equally, exactly as it was when people taught their young to haft a spear-head or cook a bison. Life and learning go on as they have for eons and some things will simply never change. Properly teaching a child what he or she needs to know to survive is the result of care, concern, close attention, thoughtful mentoring and a belief that teaching is important work, which belief must be reinforced by the community at large. It should go without saying I suppose that the whole of society must participate in and respect this essential task. Educating children was, is and always will be a community responsibility for the simple reason that our children are our collective future.

This post may also be viewed at: www://NMPolitics.net

Public Education and the Tentacles of Profit

Published August 31, 2011 on Schools Closed
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PUBLIC EDUCATION AND THE TENTACLES OF PROFIT

A new reality is beginning to unfold. This other-reality is inhabited by fabulously wealthy people who want, indeed are compelled, to become even more wealthy since having all but a tiny percentage of the real world’s income is not quite enough – they apparently want it all. The May 2011 edition of Vanity Fair reports that 1% of the US population takes in 25% of all income and holds 40% of the nation’s wealth. http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105 There is today, it seems, an epidemic of consummate sociopathic greed by people who profit on everyone else’s losses and who buy politicians with the same ease normal people buy groceries. To further their ends the other-reality hosts pool-side gatherings at plush resorts for ambitious and eager other-reality wannabes to discuss how best to go about achieving their agendas. In these settings the wannabes rub shoulders with the other-reality folks and offer their services and willingness to assist the sponsors in their quest for an even greater slice of the National Pie. We can only wonder what the rewards can be for providing such assistance. One example, perhaps, of what possibilities might exist is revealed in how Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, cheerfully responded to a caller he thought was one of the multi-millionaire Koch brothers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBnSv3a6Nh4

Privatizing Public Education is one potential source of new wealth being explored by the other-reality people. Achieving control of the Public Education system which has existed, for better or for worse, in the US for more than a century, requires operatives appointed to governmental offices of education willing to carry out the agenda, New Mexico being one such example. Why not start the take over process with politicians who could use a little financial help with their campaigns provided by “Foundations” dedicated to the preservation of Democracy? A little help here and there results in such appointments to public office as I have described above and pretty soon you are on your way to grading schools and grading teachers and, in the end the inevitable conclusions that students are failing, teachers are failing and, of course, public schools are failing. Our only hope then in this scenario is privatization.

If you think the above is exaggeration please check out the following web sites which were provided by a reader of one of my earlier essays, “Hemingway” and I share his annotations here, with my thanks:

” Hemingway

August 2, 2011 • 9:23 am

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) sponsored model bills aiming to privatize public education, eliminate teacher’s unions, and make American universities adhere to the right wing and libertarian viewpoint.

http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/Privatizing_Public_Education,_Higher_Ed_Policy,_and_Teachers

http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&Template=/Templates/TemplateHomepage/ALEC_1502_20070319T102535_LayoutHomePage.cfm

The Kochs have given ALEC contributions exceeding $1 million—not including a half-million loaned to ALEC when the group had financial problems. “The Kochs’ mistrust of public education can be traced to their father, Fred, who ranted and raved that the National Education Association was a communist group and public-school books were filled with “communist propaganda,”

http://www.thenation.com/article/161973/alec-exposed-koch-connection

Interestingly ALEC was behind the scenes in Wisconsin in the education fight. Read this article by Dr. William Cronin.

http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/2011/03/15/alec/

This is wrong! ”

The Koch Brothers and others of their political persuasion it should be pointed out are not, lest we demonize them, the only example of moneyed people financing a social agenda. Money is power of course and the willingness to use it for social change has always been with us as a society. Recall the Carnegies and Rockefellers and presently Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and so on who are using their fortunes to sponsor scientific exploration and the advancement of technology and knowledge and create a safer disease-and hunger-free world.

WHO IS FAILING WHAT?

Let’s examine the failing schools agenda and how it is being rationalized for public consumption. Are teachers failing? Who says so and what is their agenda? Here is an exchange between the actor Matt Damon (whose mother is a teacher) and a “reporter” from a Libertarian “news” organization: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFHJkvEwyhk&feature=player_embedded

Teachers seem to have become a favorite soft target for the industrial reformers. Teachers are a convenient target for several reasons including their own unions which have failed to seize the moment and take control of the narrative. As an example of the assault on teachers, one of Governor Scott Walker’s first legislative “achievements”, in his opinion at least, was to disenfranchise Wisconsin teachers’ unions. An August 10th, 2011 item on the KOAT-TV web site details the problems teachers in Albuquerque are going to face with a 7% increase in class sizeshttp://www.koat.com/news/28819192/detail.html    And, rest assured these class size increases will result in matching increases in standardized test result failures. This will be one more blow against the autonomy and authority of classroom teachers setting them up as scapegoats for politicians. Teachers will be blamed for the failures and the privatization band will strike up its familiar marching tune – “Privatize, privatize – Oh the results you’ll see. You won’t believe your eyes!

http://www.utahnsforpublicschools.org/policycenter/KeyLessonsClassSizeandStudentAchievement.htm

Tests can also exert a corrupting influence as we recently saw in the exposure of wide-spread cheating of No Child Left Behind test results in Atlanta, Georgia. According to ABC News in reporting the story at the time: “In Georgia, teachers complained to investigators that some students arrived at middle school reading at a first-grade level. But, teachers said, principals insisted those students had to pass their standardized tests. “Teachers were either ordered to cheat or pressured by administrators until they felt they had no choice, authorities said.” In New Mexico 87% of schools fell short in the state-wide evaluations. Are schools failing? The best answer is probably, yes, and for good reasons. Are privatized schools doing better across the board? Not really.

It isn’t that privatized schools, as such, are instruments of some hidden social control agenda, many are not. The KIPP charter schools, for example, are first rate. The administrators, teachers and students are motivated. The educational results gained by these schools are excellent with a high number of graduates going on to college although I am not in favor of using that as an absolute metric for assessing schools and public education. But, more importantly KIPP schools motivate their students to learn. They mentor and develop their teachers in earnest, they engage parents, and they engage children holding their attention for a longer school day and week than public schools do. The “sample daily schedule”, as posted on the KIPP web site, gives teachers two hours of prep time between 8AM and 3PM, during which time they also teach 3 one-hour classes and get a 40-minute lunch break and get an hour for “advisory meetings”.  The hours 3PM to 5PM are a blend  of electives, prep and meetings. These particular charter schools are educating children with great success.

However, in spite of all the good these schools do the question remains – why can’t public schools do the same? Why can’t the existing public schools system be charged with the same responsibility, given the same resources and accomplish the same results?

AUTHENTIC EDUCATION

I have stressed many times in these essays that education is not a manufacturing process and uniformity is not the objective of authentic learning. There is no such thing on Earth as a “Standard Child” and by that reasoning alone standardized testing as the ultimate measure of pedagogical success is false out of the box. To claim otherwise is to trivialize human nature and human experience – it is, in fact, dehumanizing. To contend that standardized testing is a fair and proper method of assessment betrays a diminished view of humanity and ignorance of the educational process. The key to authentic education is interest and when interest is absent so too is authentic learning. Needless to say authentic learning and teaching go hand-in-hand and neither can function when a teacher cannot devote an appropriate amount of time to each learner. So, when a school system increases class sizes and decreases the number of available classroom teachers no claim to authentic teaching and learning can be made. This is a prescription for failure writ large. Class sizes must be adjusted to reasonable levels if effective teaching and learning are to take place. Next parents must be as fully engaged in the process as they are required to be in the charter school schemes.

In a recent news report( http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/education/social-promotion-could-be-on-agenda) about the push to eliminate, by statute, social promotion in New Mexico, Robin Gibson (A fourth grade teacher at Sandia Base Elementary School) said, ” … it’s unreasonable to think all students learn at the same pace. Kids are all coming from different backgrounds and we need to work with them and not punish them for something they can’t control.”  So, what is the answer to this push, this fixation, to punish kids who don’t learn at the same rate as test writers think they should? How about doing away with grade levels at the elementary level and rather setting performance standards for matriculation? So simple. This is what REAL school reform needs to be about, the simple recognition that children, just like adults, do not all learn at the same rate. Next, in the lower grades do away with the fixation on standardized testing. Tests can certainly be useful as diagnostics (their only real value actually), instruments of policy and policy making or, just as easily, justification for the privatization of public education.

 

There are people out there waiting to pounce on failed schools and failed school systems. The hucksters will promise greater instructional success with lower costs and greater uniformity of results across the board. This will be brought to you by people who have social control and profit foremost in mind. These entrepreneurs can buy with ease politicians and acolytes; the real victims will be children and the greatest loss will be felt by society itself. Is this the new reality we wish to subscribe to, making rich people richer and, at the same time, impoverishing public education and consequently our children? It will be a hollowing out of the social contract and of our civil society. These possibilities cannot be taken lightly and certainly cannot be dismissed as paranoid rant – it has happened to other countries and societies throughout history and it can happen in the US just as easily. It does us well to consider that those who do not remember history are destined to repeat it.

What must we do to make schools safe from privatization and loss of public control? In my opinion perhaps the most important first step must be to depoliticize public education. This is a matter of grave consequence as partisan politics have no place in the process of schooling. Authentic school reforms must be immunized against politicization, commercialization and interference by people whose only qualification is that they have managed to be elected or appointed to public office. Educators must speak out forcefully, defend their expertise and demand control of the process of schooling. I think class sizes must be held at a level where each child can receive proper attention. How can teachers teach where class sizes clearly exceed any possibility of individualized attention? I cannot emphasize this class size issue too strongly. Each child as a learner is a unique center of experience and each child learns at a rate particular to that child so how then can any normal human teacher accomplish the level of individualized attention required to instruct each child with large class sizes and why aren’t parents up in arms over this breech of trust? Parents must be fully integrated into the educational model as the ultimate source of motivation and discipline. Being educated and being able to test out are two vastly different things. The question is, simply put, what are we after in public education – educated individuals or test-taking automatons?

Here’s The Plan, Stan….

Published August 2, 2011 on Schools Closed
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Here’s The Plan, Stan.

What’s the plan? Well, here’s how we do it. First we make sure we cut as much from public school budgets as we can without actually closing them. Then we hire a bunch of consultants from out of state who have the right political credentials to pronounce that the schools are dysfunctional and must be privatized in order to “save” them.

This scenario reminds me of a television news report I watched during the Vietnam war. The correspondent was lying in a ditch with an Army officer as bullets and artillery rounds whistled overhead. Every once in a while a helicopter gunship would spray machine gun fire and at least two aircraft swooped in overhead and dropped napalm. All the ordnance was impacting on what appeared to be a tiny village in the near distance. The cameraman was reacting to the explosions as the camera and image jumped around. The correspondent and the officer were lying on their backs and the microphone was placed in the officer’s face with the question: “What’s going on here, what’s the plan?” The reply was cool, calm and entirely without irony as is to be expected from a combat hardened trooper: “Well, we’re going to have to destroy this village in order to save it.”

Here we are, in 2011, destroying public education in order to “save” it. That’s the plan, Stan. We are at it again. The Bush-initiated No Child Left Behind scam is working its magic and schools all over the US are flunking the test. Teachers in Atlanta, Georgia, have been caught cheating the test results to make it look as though their students were actually passing the national exams; 178 teachers and administrators were named in the report!  Florida is often held up as a place where students have improved but, in fact, their students still perform below national averages, so why is experience in Florida held up as a qualification to run a school system? Another question: Why is the charter school held up as a paragon? In Los Angeles the charter school faculty turnover rate is 50% per school year! One teacher described the situation thus; “By the time students graduated from my school, there was not a single teacher who had been there the whole time.” Then there are the demeaning lotteries for placement in charter schools, schools funded with public money. Watch the film “Waiting for Superman” online at http://www.waitingforsuperman.org/  to see how the charter school system works and then ask if you would want to place you child in this scene.

THE WAR ON PUBLIC EDUCATION

The working assumption here is that schools exist because society deems it important and necessary to educate children. And this is why schools should be left out of the political agenda where they seem now to occupy a central position. One has to wonder why someone like Jeb Bush would be touring the country advocating for policies that, in the end, will only damage the educational process. I have long wondered why political conservatives of a certain class (wealthy, privileged, politically influential) have such a fixation on schools and schooling. It is most certainly not because they have the welfare of children in mind. Republican Governor Rick Perry of Texas, now a presidential possibility, is cutting $4 billion from the Texas school budget! In New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie attempted to cut $800 million from that state’s education budget but is being challenged by the courts and the story in Michigan is pretty much the same. Along with the usual budget cuts, Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Walker, encouraged by billionaires with no apparent connection to public education, has added disenfranchising teacher’s unions to the agenda.

When the same attacks are happening across the country one doesn’t have to be paranoid to question what the “real” agenda is. Here is a comment from the  BuzzFlash on the blog site Truthout on Friday 17 June 2011 from a reader named Mario:

“This is really an assault on the working class. A good education is the first step towards upward social mobility. An ignorant populace (the Republican dream) is one that is easier to control and convince.

The BuzzFlash editor, Mark Karlin, added:

This will result in a caste system that will create not a “free market,” but a relatively closed one. Wealth and economic well-being then become not a result of ingenuity, education and entrepreneurialism, but rather of family inheritance. This is also called a fossilized economy.

The Objectives – The Cruel Myth of Privatization.

The first and foremost objective of the school privatization activists will be the elimination of teachers unions. The next objective they will seek to achieve will be greater social control of students and the composition of school population by social class distinction. Poor kids will go to poor-kids schools and well-off -kids will go to well-off-kids schools. The net result will be even greater social polarization, even greater alienation and much less commitment to the whole of society – a parlous path to the future to say the least. The privatization of schools has more to do with greed than altruistic feelings about improving education for all. It is about social control as well.

Adding to this dismal vision of the future are billionaires hiring politicians and lawyers to lobby for privatizing public education. Why? Not because they want to improve education for the masses but because they smell a profit. What then if they are successful? What happens to those who cannot or will not pay? Kids who are barely educated now, who come from homes where parents are indifferent or discouraged will certainly be excluded. That scenario obviously becomes a portrait of disenfranchisement, disillusionment and, worst of all alienation. At least when kids are in school they are exposed to adults who are caring and invested in preparing young people for a life in society, imperfect though it may be. As a result of the press for privatization the US will find itself with an alienated underclass with no commitment to a common social contract. We will become a society that puts a price on everything and knows the value of nothing – especially people.

This essay also appears at: NMPolitics.net

Standardized Children?

Published July 21, 2011 on Schools 1 Comment
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Have you ever met a standard child? Just one in your entire life? Were you, perhaps, a standard child yourself? No? Neither have I met one nor was I one. So what is it then with the idea of, the concept of, Standardized Tests for children? I am here making a distinction between early childhood education, let’s say from nursery school thru middle school. In the news on July 16th, 2011 a story is a about a cheating scandal in Atlanta, Georgia. The cheaters were not school children but teachers fudging the standardized testing such that No Child Would Be Left Behind nor would any teacher be tossed out or penalized because one of their students had failed the standardized test. Apparently teachers colluded to, among other things, erase wrong answers and replace them with correct ones. Are you surprised? I’m not.

The Georgia state report published this past June indicated that the cheating had been going on since 2001 and named 178 teachers, 82 principals and affected tens of thousands of children. According to the report the schools, as a result of the pressures of the No Child left Behind business, operated in a culture of “fear, intimidation, and retaliation,”. It is telling that teachers were told that even children entering middle school who were reading at a first grade level had to pass the standardized test at the middle school level or else!  Teachers were intimidated by administrators with humiliation and threats of dismissal.  So much for professionalism, so much for comprehending the innate abilities of children as individuals. So much for education whatever that might mean to the designers of No Child Left Behind which, in my opinion, was one of the many scams perpetrated during the Bush administration.

A clarion call? Perhaps.

At the July 2011 biennial conference of the American Federation of Teachers, AFT president Randi Weinegarten exhorted teachers stand up and push back against the new self-anointed education experts who seem to be coming out of the political woodwork around the country, Ms Weinegarten raised many important and critical issues including the destructive rhetoric being deployed against teachers and the cuts to education budgets among others. She made very good points including criticizing the making of testing “targets” more important that education. More of this needs to be heard and it needs to be addressed to parents as well as the general public.

We are not talking about utopia here we are looking at the cold hard realities of the state of public education today. In a July 10, 2011 article in the Sunday NY Times, Paul Tough, offered the following prescription for school reform.

“It means supplementing classroom strategies with targeted, evidence-based interventions outside the classroom: working intensively with the most disadvantaged families to improve home environments for young children; providing high-quality early-childhood education to children from the neediest families; and, once school begins, providing low-income students with a robust system of emotional and psychological support, as well as academic support.”

This prescription falls short of my own beliefs in several ways one of which is that it is not only disadvantaged children who are disadvantaged. Middle-class children have problems of their own that interfere in their educational lives and those concerns must be addressed as well. The whole of school reform encompasses much more than what happens in school and within families. School reform must be a sustained national priority.

A dismal vision of the future.

We are becoming to a large extent a society that puts a price on everything and knows the value of nothing. With regard to education, the most dismal outcome of this dynamic would be, in my opinion, the taking over of public education by private corporations, billionaires and their politicians and lawyers – their hired hands. Why are they promoting the privatization of public education? Not because they want to improve education for the masses you can be certain of that, but because they smell a profit. What then, if they succeed? What happens to children whose families cannot or will not pay – kids from homes where parents are themselves barely educated, indifferent or discouraged? What happens to schools in impoverished neighborhoods?

The first and foremost objective of the school privatization activists will be the elimination of teacher’s unions. Their next objective will be greater social control of students and the composition of school populations by economic class distinction. Poor kids will go to poor-kids schools and well off kids will go to well-off kids schools. The net result – even greater social polarization and alienation than we now see and much less commitment to the whole of society – to a viable national social contract. The privatization of public education has more to do with greed than altruistic feeling about improving education for all. It is about social control as well; standardized children are an essential component of that venal dystopian vision.

Getting down to basics.

Published June 27, 2011 on Schools Closed
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Try to imagine, if you would, a professional football team having budget problems, and management’s solution is to lay off players but hang on to the front-office staff. As a result, they can field only a 10-man team. How would that work out? Does it make sense if their purpose is to win games? How could they win a game?

No professional football team in its right mind would attempt to pull off a stunt like that, but school systems seem not to give it much thought at all. Laying off teachers is no different from laying off players in this scenario.

Compare the impact on children and on the quality of instruction between laying off 50 administrators and laying off 50 teachers. Lay off teachers, increase class sizes and complain when kids don’t learn? Oh, then test the kids and, presto, you have a self-fulfilling scenario in which you can now declare that schools are failing. Got it?

I learned in the Air Force as a strategic air command combat crew officer that the mission must always come first. Those who carry out the mission are the priority, which means functionality outranks administrative services. On a SAC base the base commander was subordinate to the wing commander and nothing was allowed to trump the combat crews and their equipment – in other words, mission first.

Translating this to schools would properly mean teaching and learning are the mission and teachers, as the “mission” personnel, would have priority. Ideally, teachers would set the school’s priorities and establish the operational policies.

The administration would be subordinate to the needs and priorities of the teachers. Parents would be held responsible for both the physical and the mental attendance of their little darlings.

We can imagine a flat organization in which teachers and administrators are at the same level but with different responsibilities and functions. Regardless of the formal arrangements, the administration’s only reason for being must always be to support the mission of the school – that being educating children, which means providing teachers with what they need to carry out their responsibilities to the children.

The hierarchy would be defined by the mission and not by a person. Could this work? Of course it could, if people would set aside their ego issues and subordinate themselves to the mission. Administrators would have to get over their “front office” syndrome, work cooperatively and put teachers and children first.

This essay first appeared on nmPolitics.net

School reform? First we need parenting reform.

Published June 16, 2011 on Schools 2 Comments
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School reform? First we need parenting reform.

We are presently witnessing an historical moment of truth as one state government after another begins a budget massacre. Getting the axe first will be the softest target of them all – public education. Aside from the obvious, immediate damage this does to public education, it shows how deep the belief in education goes in contemporary American society. The “real” social value of education to the public and to politicians these days is revealed – when budget cutting is the current issue, education gets it in the neck first. The only reasonably intelligent question that can be asked is, “Why?”

One possibility is that education is no longer as valued a part of the national belief system as it once was. Education seems to no longer be held as an investment in the future, but more of a fungible line item in a strained budget. Why should it be this way? Here are some of the arguments being expressed:

– Has education made getting a job easier or even possible?

– Teachers are merely putting in their time to retirement.

– Teachers have too much prep time.

– Schools have too much vacation time.

– Teachers are paid too much and there are too many of them.

– Kids aren’t learning how to read as well or as quickly as the new “experts” tell us they should, and that is, no doubt, the fault of teachers.

Schools, we are told, need the guidance of “experts” like Jeb Bush of Florida and Hanna Skandera in New Mexico, neither of whom has a background in education. Apparently they don’t need experience or background. I suppose we could all be grateful they aren’t interested in doing brain surgery.

Easier to pick on teachers

Why have public schools and teachers become the soft target of the moment? One reason, I believe, is because schools are simply vulnerable to this sort of attack; they are easy to criticize and difficult to defend. Not all kids learn at the same rate nor do they all have the same motivations to learn – they are not production-line widgets; hence, their achievement progress is not uniform. Children too often come from homes where parents are more interested in big screen TVs, sports, recreational activities – anything but learning. Research has shown that many children come from homes where there are scant if any reading materials at hand. Oh, and let me suggest one more reason – parents’ lack of interest in assuming responsibility for their kids’ performance in school.

If politicians and the new educational experts were to pick on parents the way they pick on teachers, it would be a parlous situation for their political ambitions. If the new self-anointed experts spoke up about curriculum and instruction, it would be too obvious that they don’t know what they are talking about. So, the response is to require more testing and pick on teachers – much easier. Imagine, if you can, one of these politicians standing up before an audience of parents and saying, “These are your children, dammit, and you are responsible for them.” Not in this lifetime, I assure you.

Parenting reform

Where can we go from here? We cannot even begin to discuss school reform until we deal with parenting reform. How can we convince parents that they are the front lines of education? I would suggest one first step would be to stop the politically motivated rhetoric. Next, stop the eye-wash and propaganda about testing. Seriously, folks there is no better indication that you don’t know what you are talking about when you promote more testing as educational reform. An experienced classroom teacher is never not testing. Never!

Next we need political leadership that instructs – yes, instructs – the public about their role in the process of educating their young. (See above.) We need public dialog that elevates teachers and teaching to the same level as firemen and cops. Have you ever heard a politician mouth-off about firemen and policemen on a par with what we hear about public schools and teachers? I doubt it. Teachers, for their part need to get their backs up and start educating the public – not just parents, but the body politic.

Teachers, weed out the deadwood

Teachers also need to clean up their profession and weed out the deadwood. Stop hunkering down and denying the obvious – there are ineffective, lazy people in the teaching profession, and teachers and their unions are the only ones who can properly get rid of them. Be proactive, get over the notion that protecting the deadwood protects you – it does not. In fact, you will all look better when you give those guys the boot.

When I was a member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, I never saw a bad carpenter protected by anyone. The best were separated from the good, the good from the bad, and the bad eliminated. It wasn’t the employers who enforced the standards either, it was the union.

The carpenters and joiners are a strong and respected union because they insist on excellence. If they can do it, so can the American Federation of Teachers. Come on Randi*, get with it!

* Randi Weingarten, AFT president.

This essay first appeared on nmPolitics.net

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