In an interview with the Journal-Sentinel published the day prior to the meeting, Secretary of Education Duncan noted:
“Where the challenges are so large, you need all hands on deck . The best way I can think to get everyone rowing in the same direction is from leadership at the top, and that comes from the mayor.”
Leadership or control? Duncan means control.
It is a funny conundrum. We invented (a century and a half ago) universal public education on the grounds that it was a prerequisite for democracy. But democracy is an idea we have such little faith in that we fear allowing control over schools to lie in the hands of their own constituents, or any combination of such constituents. I refer here mostly to parents and teachers, and the immediate community served by the school, and possibly even its students. But friends of mine often agree with Duncan on the grounds either that, on one hand, it is too dangerous (they might sneak in school prayers, creationism and, of course, racism), and on the other hand they would not dare take the kind of radical steps necessary for the sake of the children or our nation’s economy. In essence the new reformers argue that “politics” (local, close to the site) is bad for schools, while Mayoral and Federal control are good.
Every authoritarian movement or leader has for centuries made more or less the same arguments: that “the people” will misuse their power or that the people are too timid or selfish to take the necessary revolutionary measures that are in their interests. “We,” the enlightened, must do it for them.
Can schools, in which even well-educated professionals are seen as too risky to trust, a likely place to inculcate respect for democracy? Of course, democracy is filled with trade-offs that make it hard to always help us arrive at the best decisions. There are places where I too have favored federal, rather than local control. For instance, I supported the kind of authoritarian directives from the Supreme Court that, in the name of democracy, outlawed school segregation. (Of course, the limits of even such righteous power is well noted in the limited impact that directive had.) And I regret the Supreme Court’s subsequent decisions against implementing such policy through affirmative action or quotas. Where they went wrong perhaps was in trying to micro-manage it? But both were essentially “political” decisions.
Nor, in the name of accountability, am I against the State’s role in the collecting of data that exposes the impact of schools and society on different races, ethnicities and economic substrata. Information is a form of power needed by “locals.”
The idea that we can decide virtually all of the important decisions made within a school through authoritarian means and then insist that the institution’s role is to promote democratic thinking is just plain stupid, absurd and, in fact, an oxymoron. To put this on a somewhat more trivial level, it reminds me of the experience kids have trying to invent board games. They have great ideas. They love doing it. But it’s only in actually playing the game that one discovers whether it works. Ditto for democracy. Churchill’s quote in defense of democracy—that it’s a thoroughly absurd idea “except for when one considers the alternatives,” is one I keep in mind morning, noon and night.
If we are to support democracy as well as invent better forms of it—appropriate revisions of the game—we need a citizenry that understands the game better. Why ever did we invent a rule that allows 40% to veto 60%? Why can nine men (or women) appointed in times past, outlaw legislation that 60% now support? Why do some individual citizens votes on national matters count 5, 10 or 100 times more than other citizens? Why do experts on the economy not get more votes on economic decisions than outright ignoramuses? Bah humbug to democracy if such absurdities define it….or, is it possible that I too at times count on such roadblocks to common sense? There may be good reasons—though debatable ones—for each of these. But students and their teachers need to be exposed to such arguments, not only through the written word but also through experience.
A democratic citizenry needs habits – of mind and heart – that hold them back from the momentary appeal of authoritarian measures. Probably not even democracy can guarantee that we make wise decisions about democracy. But both institutional and personal habits can provide us the time to correct and revise our passions of the moment. It is in crises that our habits are most tested. Skepticism, which I much value, is not the same as “the habit of distrust.” In fact, as a habit, I rather like the default position of trust. It is a habit that helps smooth the way for democracy. But—and this is a big but—we need to counterbalance the habit of trust with the habits of skepticism. We need to balance trust with an acknowledgment that there are good reasons to distrust.
The same goes for “civility” of manner and mutual respect and tolerance. These are all three good habits. But….. They are dangerous without a critical second opinion, the habits of indignation, the willingness to act even in face of uncertainty, the habits associated with solidarity and empathy.
In short—a good education requires us to continually rethink our own habits, as we also honor them, to take note of the consequences and accept responsibility for them. And on and on. Will schools that engage in this, while also engaging in teaching kids specific skills and academic knowledge, survive? Indeed, if they can’t, neither will democracy writ large. At least, for starters, we ought to try it out in the ways we adults interact and implement decisions in our schools. To do so, we need to leave more power inside the schools.
Finally, there’s a interesting auxiliary reason: kids are not comfortable in the presence of powerless “wimpy” adults. And adults who are always having to say, “I didn't decide that, so don't blame me” are actively promoting a mindset which runs in direct conflict with the environment best suited to learning. It also substantially undercuts the desire of the young to grow up (and be powerful), and their respect for their teachers.
This column is an exploration of a subject of increasing interest to me. Comment below or send me an email.
Deborah.
December 2009
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
What’s Wrong with Our Schools?
April 2009
Recently Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post, in his article “How Bill Gates Would Repair Our Schools” (Monday, March 30, 2009) explains the answer is: replicate KIPP and more Charters. The trouble is simple, the article explains
Institutions stand in the way. School boards resist the expansion of charter schools. Teachers unions resist measuring and rewarding effectiveness. In fact, Gates said, evidence shows no connection between teaching quality and most of the measures used in contracts to determine pay. Seniority, holding a master's degree or teacher's certification, and even, below 10th grade, having deep knowledge of a subject -- these all are mostly irrelevant.
The absence of a correlation between good teaching and the teacher’s own education, certification, or deep knowledge appears pretty astounding. Even Teach for America lays its claim to fame, for example, on the value of an Ivy League diploma.
What is intriguing is that neither Gates nor Hiatt stop to wonder if the absence of correlation might indict the tool for measuring the impact of teaching: standardized test scores.
If I reported on studies showing something similar in the field of health—that seeing a credentialed doctor didn’t prove any more successful than consulting the man on the street—I would face somewhat more skepticism, I suspect. What kind of measuring rod could I be using, would be the first question. Ditto if I argued that you do not apparently need to know how to play an instrument well to teach it well, you might want to know how I defined “well,” and how I measured it.
But lo and behold, by some measure that passes the sniff test for Gates and company, teachers don’t have to be well-educated people to pass “it” on to kids. He may be right: if tests are “it.” Then what is needed, apparently, are trained drill sergeants that explicitly teach testing skills. When I started teaching this was something that the test companies explicitly called cheating! (Sort of akin to my artificially raising the temperature on the thermometer as a child when I wanted to stay home from school.)
Psychometrics—as a discipline—was built around a different paradigm: prepping, they argued, literally invalidated the results. (On LSATs, Lani Guinier pointed out that there is reverse correlation between high scores and lawyer’s performance of public service. Which do we value more?)
In the new aggressive drive for higher scores—by any means--have we lost something more important?
Imagine a concern over the driving skills of Americans which focused on the low scores on the standardized bubble-in portion of driving tests. We might conclude that current driving instruction— with it’s focus on the road test—was having no impact on test scores. Shock and surprise. We might then decide that we were wasting money on driving instruction. How about intensive prepping for the test and less driving of the car? Lo and behold neither class size, driving experience or expensive simulations seemed to matter when it came to the paper-and-pencil driving test. Maybe those who preferred to take the old-fashioned driving road test could go to expensive private schools for it. In the name of equity though the cheaper bubble-in test would do as well.
It wouldn’t take long before some smart sociologist noted that we were ignoring the critical measure: road accidents. In fact, road accidents and driving test scores were having a decreasing correlation. (And alas rich people couldn’t escape being victims of bad drivers too.)
Unfortunately there is no real life definitions of being “well-educated.” In education we have literally mistaken the test for the real-world measure, and then cut off opportunities for those who didn’t perform well on the test. There is no road experience to fall back on. In fact real experiences with the subject under study is less and less fashionable.
If we judged musicians on the basis of paper-and-pencil simulations, we wouldn’t need musicians to train future musicians either. That would make school music programs easier. Think how much we could save if we didn’t even need instruments to play on, and could teach music testing skills in a large lecture hall, or via distance learning programs.
Is there an alternative? Yes. Of course. But it would take teaching intellectual, social and moral habits with the same seriousness as we teach soccer, tennis or the piano—when we want excellence. No other field of endeavor except K-12 education has such absurd ratios of “supervisors/teachers” to pupils, has such little respect for “hands-on” expertise, or cares so little about the side effect of its instruction. We haven’t even stopped “doing” reform for a few hours to ask what the purpose of schooling is, above and beyond incarcerating youth for 12 years and then sorting them out at the end.
Shame on you, Mr. Gates.
Shame on you Mr. Hiatt for assuming that Bill Gates is an expert on education.
–Deborah
© 2009 Deborah Meier
Recently Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post, in his article “How Bill Gates Would Repair Our Schools” (Monday, March 30, 2009) explains the answer is: replicate KIPP and more Charters. The trouble is simple, the article explains
Institutions stand in the way. School boards resist the expansion of charter schools. Teachers unions resist measuring and rewarding effectiveness. In fact, Gates said, evidence shows no connection between teaching quality and most of the measures used in contracts to determine pay. Seniority, holding a master's degree or teacher's certification, and even, below 10th grade, having deep knowledge of a subject -- these all are mostly irrelevant.
The absence of a correlation between good teaching and the teacher’s own education, certification, or deep knowledge appears pretty astounding. Even Teach for America lays its claim to fame, for example, on the value of an Ivy League diploma.
What is intriguing is that neither Gates nor Hiatt stop to wonder if the absence of correlation might indict the tool for measuring the impact of teaching: standardized test scores.
If I reported on studies showing something similar in the field of health—that seeing a credentialed doctor didn’t prove any more successful than consulting the man on the street—I would face somewhat more skepticism, I suspect. What kind of measuring rod could I be using, would be the first question. Ditto if I argued that you do not apparently need to know how to play an instrument well to teach it well, you might want to know how I defined “well,” and how I measured it.
But lo and behold, by some measure that passes the sniff test for Gates and company, teachers don’t have to be well-educated people to pass “it” on to kids. He may be right: if tests are “it.” Then what is needed, apparently, are trained drill sergeants that explicitly teach testing skills. When I started teaching this was something that the test companies explicitly called cheating! (Sort of akin to my artificially raising the temperature on the thermometer as a child when I wanted to stay home from school.)
Psychometrics—as a discipline—was built around a different paradigm: prepping, they argued, literally invalidated the results. (On LSATs, Lani Guinier pointed out that there is reverse correlation between high scores and lawyer’s performance of public service. Which do we value more?)
In the new aggressive drive for higher scores—by any means--have we lost something more important?
Imagine a concern over the driving skills of Americans which focused on the low scores on the standardized bubble-in portion of driving tests. We might conclude that current driving instruction— with it’s focus on the road test—was having no impact on test scores. Shock and surprise. We might then decide that we were wasting money on driving instruction. How about intensive prepping for the test and less driving of the car? Lo and behold neither class size, driving experience or expensive simulations seemed to matter when it came to the paper-and-pencil driving test. Maybe those who preferred to take the old-fashioned driving road test could go to expensive private schools for it. In the name of equity though the cheaper bubble-in test would do as well.
It wouldn’t take long before some smart sociologist noted that we were ignoring the critical measure: road accidents. In fact, road accidents and driving test scores were having a decreasing correlation. (And alas rich people couldn’t escape being victims of bad drivers too.)
Unfortunately there is no real life definitions of being “well-educated.” In education we have literally mistaken the test for the real-world measure, and then cut off opportunities for those who didn’t perform well on the test. There is no road experience to fall back on. In fact real experiences with the subject under study is less and less fashionable.
If we judged musicians on the basis of paper-and-pencil simulations, we wouldn’t need musicians to train future musicians either. That would make school music programs easier. Think how much we could save if we didn’t even need instruments to play on, and could teach music testing skills in a large lecture hall, or via distance learning programs.
Is there an alternative? Yes. Of course. But it would take teaching intellectual, social and moral habits with the same seriousness as we teach soccer, tennis or the piano—when we want excellence. No other field of endeavor except K-12 education has such absurd ratios of “supervisors/teachers” to pupils, has such little respect for “hands-on” expertise, or cares so little about the side effect of its instruction. We haven’t even stopped “doing” reform for a few hours to ask what the purpose of schooling is, above and beyond incarcerating youth for 12 years and then sorting them out at the end.
Shame on you, Mr. Gates.
Shame on you Mr. Hiatt for assuming that Bill Gates is an expert on education.
–Deborah
© 2009 Deborah Meier
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