A new educational venture, Teach for Canada (TFA), is certainly stirring up a fuss in the normally predictable, politically-correct world of Canadian K-12 public education. It’s the brainchild of two hyper-kinetic high achievers, Kyle Hill and Adam Goldenberg, and initially modeled after the Teach for America (TFA) organization, founded in 1989 by Princeton University grad Wendy Kopp. The Canadian offshoot was hatched by Hill and Goldenberg while they were Action Canada fellows during 2010-11, but it did draw its inspiration from TFA, a ground-breaking American school reform initiative that has recruited 30,000 top college graduates and professionals to teach in the nation’s “most high-needs classrooms” and to “work throughout their lives to increase opportunity for kids.”
Teach for Canada is still in its infancy and, so far, looks much like a paper tiger. Unlike Teach for America’s founders , its principal initiators are both small-l liberals rather than neo-conservative education reformers. Both TFA and TFC focus on bridging educational inequities, improving disadvantaged schools, and promoting a culture of teaching excellence. Under Kopp’s visionary leadership, TFA was also a serious attempt to challenge the status quo by recruiting higher calibre teacher candidates and promoting an alternative to traditional and restrictive teacher education programs. The Canadian variation, in fact, has much more in common with Teach for All, a recent spinoff now headed by TFA founder Kopp and active in 32 countries around the world.
Given its stated and laudable liberal reform objectives, why has Teach for Canada stirred up such a hornet’s nest? While it comes from centre-left field, it still represents one of the first attempts to seed the “New Progressivism” here in Canada. On top of that, TFA does challenge the current teacher certification regime and a licensing system that has survived, virtually unchanged, for much of the past century. Judging from the sharpness and ferocity of recent attacks on TFC, attempting to take direct action to allieviate stark inequalities faced in high-needs communities is threatening. Opening the doors to preparing teachers in a different fashion, such as the popular six-week Teach Like a Champion program, is heresy.
Painting Teach for Canada black sounds like the first step in the direction of black-balling. It’s not a surprise that faculty of education professors and B.Ed. certified teachers would feel threatened. Teacher education proponents in Canada, cheered on by Dr. Michael Fullan and other deans, have been campaigning since 1993 to stamp out one year B.Ed. programs. Clinical teacher education training appeals to them and moving to two -year programs is good for job security.
Regular teachers currently in the schools tend to get defensive. As for current certified teachers with a B.Ed. (like me), it’s hard to accept the mere idea that extraordinarily talented recent university grads and young professionals might make better teachers. Heaven help us if more academic and professional specialists (MAs, LLBs, and MBAs) are ever allowed in those classrooms. Don’t even bother to suggest that remote communities facing teacher shortages or high-turnover schools might benefit from an infusion of high energy, idealistic young recruits. After all, a Mathematics or Science class taught by a certified teacher teaching “out of field” is accepted as good enough in far too many school boards.
If Canadian education needs Teach for Canada, it’s regrettably not where the organizers have focused their project – on rescuing First Nations and Metis children and youth. Buying into the Stephen Harper Government’s agenda, embodied in the proposed First Nations Education Act, is ill-considered because it assumes that talented white teachers from largely urban lives can save students on the reserves. It runs counter to the fundamental principle of “Aboriginal Self-Government” in education and flies in the face of promising initiatives, like the N.S. Mi’kmaw Education Authority (MK), based upon preparing First Nations teachers for their own schools.
Teach for Canada may yet live up to its promise. It’s probably too late to establish a clearer differentiation between TFA and the Canadian project. The co-founders, and particularly CBC-TV’s Three to Watch panelist, Adam Goldenberg, a former Michael Ignatieff Liberal aide, should know better than to try to transplant an American initiative without anchoring it in the Canadian youth service tradition.
Perhaps it’s too obvious or just too archaic for bright-eyed millennials. Choosing the right cultural reference points is critical to the success of any school reform initiative. Bridging socio-economic gaps, engaging recent grads in youth service, and embracing community activism actually have more in common with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau tradition of Liberalism than with Wendy Kopp’s American educational “peace corps.”
What started out as a clone of Teach for America is beginning to resemble, in its mission, Canadian youth advocacy and education programs from the 1960s until the 1990s. Why not build upon Canadian foundations in youth service? Look to the Company of Young Canadians (1966-1977) to recapture that idealistic “fire in the belly,” to Katimavik (Inuktituk for “meeting place”) (1977-2012), for a passionate social service ethic, and to Youth Service Canada (1994-1997) for painful lessons about institutional resistance to youth employment ventures.
What’s causing all the commotion over Teach for Canada, especially among certified teachers and tenured faculty? Why did the co-founders start by attempting to import Teach for America into Canada? What’s wrong with building a “New Progressivism” in education upon clearly-stated reform objectives? Is it too late to reclaim the Canadian ‘small-l and Big L’ liberal tradition to clear away the structural barriers standing in the way of real educational change? And most importantly, does the provincial ‘certification regime’ represent a barrier to engaging more young teachers and reducing educational inequities in our schools?
Good post. Now lets hear from Canadian Education’s most self-important tweeter of delusional Marxist rhetoric, Tobey Steeves, aka @symphily
Our native Canadian children deserve REAL certified teachers not amateur hour.
You are inferring that the Teach for America recruits are merely parachuted into the classroom. Not so, Doug. New York teacher extraordinaire Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion, forms the core of the six to eight week teacher preparatory program:
Click to access 11-Research-ProvenPracticesTLAC.pdf
Looking over the 48 teaching techniques and the video demonstration lessons alone should compel you to look a little deeper. Most of the “certified teachers” I observed over a 20-year period could have benefited from learning these lessons.
It’s time for Canadian faculties of education to up their game. Top academic students seem to have stopped applying for spots, perhaps unwilling to do a two to three year teacher education program with limited job prospects at the end. Short-term teacher training has made Teach for America very popular among academically able graduate students and young professionals. In the United States, traditional ed schools ignored Doug Lemov’s manual and videos at their peril. Take naturally gifted student teachers, give them the essential teaching techniques, and they seem to perform very well, much to the chagrin of local faculties of education.
Real teachers only please
Teach for America is one of the truly bad ideas of the Global GERM movement.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/28/its-time-for-teach-for-america-to-fold-former-tfaer/
http://pilantsbusinessethics.com/2013/10/10/teach-for-america-has-always-been-a-bad-idea/
http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/teach-america-cult
You might want to remind your Edubeat poster that Joe McCarthy is dead and Red Baiting is low brow intellectualism
You seem to have missed The Economist report on Teach for America, September 18, 2013, pointing out that TFA teachers excel at teaching high school mathematics. Here’s the key passage:
“TEACH FOR AMERICA (TFA), a not-for-profit organisation founded in 1990, places its young “corps members” at schools in poor areas to teach for two years. Most come fresh from college, and they learn mainly on the job. On September 10th a report for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the research arm of America’s education department, suggested that TFA’s members excel at teaching maths (although older studies suggest they do no better than ordinary teachers at instructing children how to read). The report, which examined TFA members teaching maths in middle and high schools, found that the improved test scores of pupils were equivalent, on average, to an extra 2.6 months of school. Despite this seeming proof of TFA’s impact in classrooms, and its larger social mission, the organisation has many critics. Why?
The IES study’s methodology means its findings cannot be taken as representative of the not-for-profit’s work in general. Firstly, it looked at TFA members teaching secondary maths, when actually most of the organisation’s members work in primary schools. For example, in the Houston school district, with roughly 10,000 teachers, there were only 13 TFA high school teachers in 2010. Secondly, although TFA recruits were better in maths classrooms than other teachers, they were also more likely to be white, male and to have attended “more selective” colleges than those teachers with whom they were compared. That said, TFA is actually more diverse than the study suggests: 39% of its latest recruits come from minority backgrounds.”
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/economist-explains-7
You can argue that TFA training is too short and that up to one third of TFA trained teachers do not stick in the profession. Those appear to be valid professional concerns.
So far, however, TFA is making an impact on the quality of higher level mathematics instruction. That’s precisely my point.
The word de-professionalisation comes to mind.
You took the bait, Doug, and created an opening for a much wider discussion.
“Is Teaching a Profession?” or has it been degraded into a loose federation of “knowledge workers” through decades of “proletarianization” compounded by “standardization”? Professor Robert Runte makes a very persuasive case:
http://www.uleth.ca/edu/runte/professional/teaprof.htm
This raises the bigger question: If teaching is not a profession, then why bar new entrants claiming to have comparable knowledge and skills?
If I were you I would not say it is not a profession around many teachers.
Perhaps there is a parallel with what happened in the UK under Thatcher, which resulted in a reduced role for the schools of education. The idea was that schools of education, filled with people who knew nothing about business (it was said), were brainwashing trainee teachers, so the quicker new teachers could be got to the chalk face, the better.
You seem to be an advocate of stronger communities and an ethic of social service. Surely that belongs in a larger campaign to defend and promote what might be called civil society. Schools of education are a pillar of that civil society. They hold open a space for discussing the ends and means of education that is far more meaningful than anything on the blogosphere. This is one way of helping to sustain a culture that is relatively independent of business and of central government. Minimising that space represents an attack on civil society, weakening it so that it is less able to call the imperatives of the market and the state into question. The result is a weakening of democracy itself.
Their is no debate. Teaching is a profession.
Here is Diane Ravitch’s critique of Teach for America, published on WP Blog, The Answer Sheet, in February 2011:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/diane-ravitch/ravitch-the-problem-with-teach.html
Why do we continue to copy ideas from the US that are found wanting elsewhere around the world and are of dubious merit based on evidence to date?
Whatever the faults of our school systems we still beat the Americans in the PISA scores.
Why? B/C we believe in UK PK model free schools, US and NZ, OZ model charter schools and Alberta model magnet schools along schoolchoice That’s never going to change..
Dear Edu beat
your response is flawed since i only referred to the US
How many X do we need to prove that choice has no relationship to excellence?
Teaching teachers is a responsibility fraught with challenges. My old friend George D. Perry took a good run at the problem in his 2013 book, The Grand Regulator. Here’s my Book Review from The Chronicle Herald:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/books/1177067-teaching-teachers-has-its-perils
John Hattie and his colleagues conclude from their studies that Perry is mostly correct when you look at “what works”.
Jumping on fads and bandwagons is all too true in teaching, including teacher ed
TFA exacerbates what is known as “churn” the constant coming and going of new teachers. Keeps schools in a constant state of upset.
While we’re throwing links around regarding TFA’s supposed effectiveness, here’s one regarding that math-teacher study: http://cloakinginequity.com/2013/09/12/new-mathematica-tfa-study-is-irrational-exuberance/
To bsichel: You`re really suggesting that Mathematica stacked the deck. Mathematica is a very reputable research firm,so they`d never do that.
It`s completely rational that TFA is getting good to better math results.We have very weak math results in schools due to a new curriculum that came out about 15 years ago. The teachers accepted into the B.ED. may not be good at doing math because they had poor results personally.
If TFA has “math”people teaching,engineering students,physics,computer science majors, isn`t it logical that the results are improved?
A teacher`s certificate is simply a set of steps prior to going into the classroom,teachers are trained as generalists,not math specialists.
That`s why the bloody textbooks are so important,it`s the teacher`s tool,if it had been field tested and results could be assured,maybe things would be dramatically different and we wouldn`t be having this conversation..
No that is not logical jo anne. Wayne Gretsky is not a good coach. Teaching and practice are 2 totally different things.
Very few people do not understand elementary school math. Teaching it? Totally different.
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/13/teach_for_americas_pro_corporate_union_busting_agenda_partner/?source=newsletter
The real TFA
Go speak to EQAO about what the findings are…elementary math results are very weak.There has only been 10 newspaper articles about it in last 2 weeks and also in October after the EQAO scores came out?
You really are a rebel when it comes to accountability,the rest of us are all accountable.why should teachers be different?
Finally,Diane Ravitch has lost all respect,please don`t quote her,she is no longer an independent thinker but rather a supporter of the Unions.
There simply is no math crisis. PISA shows a dtop from 82nd to 80th percentile. Insignificant. Most new additions to PISA are unrepresentiyive cities. We are #7 of real countries out of 65.
Funny Diane Ravitch has lost respect with who, you? Michelle Rhee refuses to debate DR anywhere.
Most of the comments on Teach for Canada revolve around the value and skills acquired through completing a faculty of education teacher training program. In the United States, teacher education is under fire and much of the criticism makes the case that it is “a disaster.”
Yesterday’s Washington Post Answer Sheet (13 January 2014) featured a review by Mike Rose of the contending claims:
http://newsle.com/article/0/115772273/
Since a 2008 study by SAEE (Crocker and Dibbon). little has been written about the actual state of Canadian teacher education. This is just the kind of public debate we need here in Canada.
The OECD has told the USA what their problem is repeatedly. It is poverty and concentrations of that poverty. There is no other explanation of American failure except the hyperexploitation of their bottom 20%.
If I go to a Dr. and he has no explicit training in my problem or I go to a lawyer and he has no training,how do you figure it`s not a problem?
Doug,your statement makes no sense,in any discipline,the training must support the profession.
On a Linked in chat room for struggling literacy people with Masters degrees say that without a doubt they graduated without being taught how to teach kids to read..I am sure the same is true of math.
Facilitation is not teaching.
Aren’t you the people that support TFA the least non-professional training available?
The nations that MOVE UP the rankings in PISA are either the newly more affluent nations of the world, Brazil, Turkey, etc or the nations that focus laser like on exactly the schools that are pulling down the averages, not a scatter gun approach. They put the very best teachers in the very lowest scoring schools, they use math specialists since primary, they reduce the class sizes ONLY in those schools, they do what it takes to move up. This will move them ahead of the slackers like the USA who continue to slash budgets and continue to experiment with proven failures like charters and vouchers and all of than nonsense.
In the end they can move their peg up the board but it is not substitute for the elimination of poverty. The highly successful nations have the lowest % of children in poverty. You cannot escape this analysis. It is in your face with every new round of data.
The total failure of the GERM movement is based on its total denial of poverty as the root of educational failure. Smell the coffee.
Mayor Bloomberg in NYC did everything the reformers wanted. Testing charters all over. When he left office only 26% approved of his education reforms. The new mayor looks like he will reverse all of this. Reform as reformers want it proves very unpopular when actually in place.
Baby tigers make wonderful pets, and are adept at chasing mice. But after the second year, the neighbourhood dogs start disappearing too. That’s why educators are terrified of TFA.
KIPP was founded by two TFA rookies in a single classroom in 1994, and now has 141 charter schools. These schools are a beacon of hope to inner-city students across the US. More than 4,500 KIPPsters are now attending university, and that’s just the tip of the good news. http://blog.kipp.org/updates/7-highlights-from-2013-a-note-from-richard-barth/ Educators claim that poverty is the problem, but KIPP vividly demonstrates that to be nonsense.
Only outsiders can change a self-serving and insular industry, and TFA is bringing in the baby tigers. The TFA graduates who resume careers in finance and law will one day be captains of industry and government, with hands-on insight of how our children have been served by the education industry. The ones that stay in education are re-inventing it without much respect for the ‘profession’. Yes, education bureaucrats should be soiling their pants.
Yes, TFA are the grunt warriors in the corporate reform movement to privatize education except perhaps special ed and some other parts of the system where it is hard to make a profit for shareholders.
They have become scabs in boards where there are hired when others are laid off to save money.
TFA In Australia — Success Amidst Another Review
After six weeks of training at the University of Melbourne, TFA program graduates teach for two years in disadvantaged schools that serve students from low socio-economic backgrounds. About half teach in the high demand STEM subjects, as many are recent graduates themselves with specialist degrees.
Here is today’s news, Jan 15, 2014: On a fast-track to a career in education
http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/on-a-fasttrack-to-a-career-in-education-20140115-30txf.html
The TFA program will no doubt be an item in the Review just started by the new government of Tony Abbott. Part of the reason his Liberal/National Coalition won the last Australian election over the governing Labor regime was public disaffection with a new National Curriculum — six years in the making — with a worldview that was considered “leftist”, “New Age” and full of “gobbledygook”. [I guess that’s Australian for our “edu-babble”.]
Australia, like Canada, has also been sliding in international education scores, so the Review will look at curriculum as well as teaching capacities. Parents will have a say in the Review process. Nick Cater, a respected culture critic, says the curriculum is “beyond saving”. He disapproves of the “sustainability” agenda being “integrated” into all subjects — English, geography, history, mathematics, science — for example.
Cater says: “If the Education Minister is to be criticised, it is for imagining this irredeemable document can be tidied up and put back on the shelf when the only realistic course of action is to tear the damn thing up.”
Australia is a rather bi-polarized nation, thus it will be a lively time as the Review Duo is to report back in six months time.
I will be watching for these issues to be deliberated — Why a “national” curriculum at all when states are responsible for education? — Should public funding be freed-up for a wider diversity of alternatives? — Will teacher training be critiqued for its role in mindsets and standards? — Should one worldview predominate or would a pluralist nation benefit from a live-and-let-live broadmindedness?
And they can do it all over again when Labour win again.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/15/a-case-study-in-misconceived-urban-school-reform/
TFA teaches mainly in charter schools and has a gtowing responsibility for their corruption.
Why all the fuss about educators skipping the education faculty of training? Perhaps the reasons goes back to education after WWII, and the baby boom. The need to have classroom teachers where quite a few skipped the education faculties of training. The knowledge of the newly minted teachers who skipped the teachers’ faculties was vastly more important, than the qualification of attending a teacher faculty.
When I went to school, starting in the 1960s, the elementary school have 4 teachers who did not attend a teacher faculty. One teacher had a university degree in linguistics, who was the grade 1 teacher. The other three, an English, Mathematics and History degrees in grade 6, 7 and 8 respectively.
In 1966, my grade 6 teacher was entertaining my grade 6 class on the horrors of being force to attend the local teacher faculty to obtained a certificate, so he would be allow to continued to teach in an Ontario public school. Suffice, to say the four teachers who were force to attend a teacher faculty were not at all impressed with the pedagogy offerings of the teacher faculty. On the flip side, the other elementary teachers of the school, who had the certificate of a teachers’ faculty, were force to attend part-time to obtained an university degree, if they wanted to continued on teaching in an Ontario public school.
In high school, all the teachers had university degrees and only taught in their field of expertise. However my high school could boast that they had 4 teachers with PHDs in the fields of chemistry, history, and law. The four never had any intentions of becoming teachers, since they had jobs in their respective fields until Hitler and Nazi Germany came along to destroy their lives. Suffice to say, the four teachers with PHDs were the most popular teachers in the school, because the teachers had very deep knowledge bases,resulting in students learning beyond the curriculum standards. And yes, the 4 teachers with PHDs had to go to a teachers’ faculty to acquired a teachers’ certificate. Suffice to say, the 4 high school teachers were not at all impressed and felt that it was wrong to force teachers to become certified, in the light of their high levels of education expertise in their respective fields.and deep knowledge banks.
One could say as ‘therend’ has posed, the highly qualified teachers were the baby tigers who set the tone and direction of the schools of my youth. That said, I am more inclined to see Teach For Canada as a good thing than most parents based on my own school experience. Teachers who had skipped the teachers’ faculties are less likely to see children as broken, not academic material or not capable of learning. Why? They have not been infused with oversize helpings of questionable pedagogues and education theories that views learning through progressivism ideologies. Thus, they are more incline to be open-minded in trying different methods to reach all children, and never give up on children who struggled in learning. The latter being so common in the schools of today, students are given up by the educators, by handing students dumb-down work and low expectations.
Teach for Canada, the new baby tigers may be able to bring disruption into the public K to 12 education establishment, who still think and act like they are in the 19th century. My schools of the youth were quite progressive and avant-garde. Imagine, taking on students who had not developed verbal speech and had other strange problems that had no names for them? The shocking part, was the very idea of letting in the misfits to be taught in a regular classroom, instead of being put in a school out of sight and out of mind. The elementary school of my youth, was a disruption that caused much concern by the Ontario Ministry of Education. staff with education degrees, Given the foot traffic of the Ontario Ministry of Education coming into my school, not quite believing the success of educating each and every student to their full academic potential. My only worries for Teach For Canada, is that the teachers don’t get caught up with the progressive ideologies that 50 % of the students are not worth the merit and effort to educate them to their full academic potential. (reference – the Moore case ruling).
Ask the parents who overwhelmingly support the highest possible education standards in teacher professionalism.
Good luck with that.
Already have in my local area. The parents would point to the academic outcomes of their kids, and say – what professionalism? One would think that there should be no problem whatsoever in the 21st century, to identified the dyslexics with confirmation coming in by an assessment. But no, apparently in the 21st century K to 12 school, it is still too difficult to determined and it is best to follow the 19th century practice, of putting the dunce cap on the student. Some successful and rich dyslexics in the 21st century could attest to the remarkable resistance of the K to 12 education system to never employed any learning practices and strategies that may benefit dyslexic students. They must firmly remained at the bottom of the class wearing their dunce caps proudly, in the new progressivism.
That said, an interview – “In a wide-ranging interview with Blaze Books in connection with his just-released title, “The New School,” prolific professor Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) provided his insights on the 19th century Prussian industrial model of education that predominates to this day, the bursting of the education bubble, sage advice for students, parents and academic institutions, his predictions for new models in education, and much more. Below is our interview which was conducted via phone. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. If you missed it, be sure to check out our review of “The New School” as well.” http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/01/15/an-interview-with-instapundit-on-the-new-school-smart-people-make-better-electricians-and-other-musings-from-the-prolific-professor-reynolds/
I especially like the advice for parents – ” Well you know one of the big points of my book with regard to both K-12 and higher ed is that kids are different. And the old sort of educational and career path didn’t really take account of that very much. There are lots of paths to having a nice life. And one thing I think parents need to do is really think about which one is best for their kids based upon their kids’ characteristics and needs”
However, the K to 12 public education establishment and new progressivism are nailing and shutting the future doors of students as early as possible, so students will have limited choices and options. But the good news, the 21st century parents are becoming aware of the locked doors of their children’s futures and are demanding changes, as well as questioning the professionalism of education establishment. The parents of higher income will be leading the charge because they have grown tired of paying for private tutoring to upgrade their kids’ skills in the 3 Rs. The best part, it will be the electricians, the plumbers, the pipe-fitters, with the engineers, the architects, and the nurses leading the charge. It took a plumber to climb the barriers erected by the K to 12 education establishment, and have the highest court of the land to declared discrimination against a school board who refuse to provide the education services. The rise of the working class and trades, as in previous historical events will once again rise up to do battle with the K to 12 education system of the professional education class, who think and act within the 19th century matrix of beliefs, leaving their children without the skills and sets of knowledge crucial for the 21st century
By the way there is two definitions for new progressivism. The above link is one such example. The better one that lives in the 21st century.
Producer Capture, Provider Capture, Elite Capture
These above terms are used in economics, where in a virtual monopoly, it’s “the system” which runs the show, expands its industry, and produces “needs” couched in language to engender sympathy, eg, “in the students’ best interests . . .” The system controls the narrative, has public relations experts handling complaints and bogus “public engagement, and creates all kinds of means to line their own pockets and extend their reach and keep the “consumers” subdued and at arm’s length.
Sound familiar ? Certainly applicable to public education or government schooling.
During the last Australian election where the National Curriculum was one of the issues that helped topple the ruling Labor Party the now-current Prime Minister’s book “Battlelines” was referred to in the campaigns. This notable quote says a lot:
“ . . . the education agenda has been hijacked by unions, bureaucrats and professional associations that put their interests ahead of communities and students. Schools must be freed from this provider capture so that they can strengthen and raise their standards.”
It will be a glorious day for education, for students, and for parents when and IF the current Review will recommend that there be a drastic shift from producer capture to consumer driven approaches. Choice, Diversity, Alternatives, Innovation, TFA teachers and regular teachers, Funding following the student, Freedom not Coercion . . .
All may benefit from this lecture.
[video src="http://bcdownload.gannett.edgesuite.net/westchester-mobile/201401/736/37861007001_3064808021001_diane-ravitch.mp4" /]
I watched the first half-hour. Ravitch is superb at rhetoric but weak on facts, I amused myself by noting the half-truths in her harangue – they are at least half-true. But what to make of statements like ‘Policy makers love data, they don’t love children’ or ‘Students should be valued as individuals’ (and not measured). Shame on her.
I am comforted that she is outraged by federal education policies of all stripes. She complains that Bush attacked the public education system with NCLB, and is outraged that so did Clinton, and she now labels Obama’s policies as NCLB-2. Seeming both left and right administrations want to see educational outcomes improve, even if that isn’t comfortable for the educators.
She is quite open that this lecture is an appeal to populism in the fight against reform, an aw-shucks reminiscence of some mythical Lake Woebegone where teachers were loved and everyone was above average. Well, good luck with that.
Two wings of one bird controlled by Gates Broad the Waltons all for profit not for kids. No evidence ANY of the reforms have ANY merit.
I guess you can see from all of the education community at yhe speech parents teachers admin unions trustees all think corporate education reform is garbage.
Fellow travelers all. Ravitch is the Benedict Arnold of the education profession.Methinks as the Bard said ‘she doth protest way too much.’
Why Is Public Education So Vulnerable To Gurus
Michael Fullan, a leading guru in the education field — books, consultations, system turn-arounds, etc. — said it best, “People only call me a guru because they can’t spell charlatan”.
It’s amazing how gullible people in education are. As long as there is a sweet-talker, with lots of edu-babble and gobbledygook, with solutions that will take 10-20 years, they buy it. WHY? Because, anything to delay the inevitable disestablishment of the bureaucratic dysfunctional system is worth buying into.
So, actually it’s not gullibility. It’s practical, self-serving, “mutual need” to support these gurus (charlatans – I’m sure people on this site can rhyme off a dozen names). Gurus keep on working and chalking up the Air Miles, and “the systems” buy more breathing space to pad their bloated bureaucracies. And the politicians, who DO HAVE SOME POWER, are just slavish patsies in the hands of sophisticated apparatchiks.
Except in Australia where the new Prime Minister and new Minister of Education have just launched a Review of the National Curriculum developed by the ousted Labor regimen. These politicians want to determine what the public expects in education as they became convinced there was a “left-biased” worldview being fostered at present. A Report is due in 6 months time.
Regarding Diane Ravitch — of course she “protests too much”. Sol Stern of City Journal has probably produced the best treatment of how one person stood out in earlier education reforms as the voice of wisdom and knowledge and is now the opponent of practically all she stood for. http://www.city-journal.org/comments/index.php?story=9665#comments
Again, it says a lot for the susceptible nature of the education system that they accepted Ravitch for so long. This new wave of common core transformations, however, is not jumping on her protest bandwagon and anti-TFA barrage.
She claims she is right to repudiate her previous certainties as she has seen “the light”. But, Dianne, can’t you see the 800# gorilla, the elephant in the room? Are you blind? The teacher unions you champion must surely be acknowledged as part of the problem in public education. Credibility is shot when a blind-eye is turned on their role in dysfunction.
She has been asked to “atone” many times.
The primary education reformers like Michelle Rhee are afraid to debate Diane Ravitch.
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I watched the link of Diane Ravitch that Doug has given. It is amazing what she has omitted in facts to support her stance, or what she will not tell her supporters. It is par for the course, the new progressivism of many hues and colours. Ravitch calls Common Core, the Gates Common Core Standards. What she will not tell her audience, who are the authors of the Common Core Standards (CCSS)? ” The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center), working closely with the standards authors” http://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/13412-whos-behind-the-common-core-curriculum
Who are the authors of CCSS? The educationalists with PHDs along with the public policy wonks working at the highest federal and state levels within the political machine of operations and governance. “The Common Core State Standards is another of these sweeping phantom movements that have gotten their impetus from a cadre of invisible human beings endowed with inordinate power to impose their ideas on everybody.” Ravitch was correct, but she still blame Bill Gates, when she should be looking inward, and pointing the finger at her colleagues having PHDs in education.
Who jumped on the bandwagon supporting CCSS? The entire education establishment and the stakeholders. The top brass of the teachers’ unions had no problem endorsing CCSS, because the authors of CCSS are educationalists.
A NP article dated April, 2013, entitled U.S. education is going broke on progressivism – “The real vocation of some people entrusted with delivering primary and secondary education is to validate this proposition: The three R’s — formerly reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic — now are racism, reproduction and recycling. Especially racism. Consider Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction. It evidently considers “instruction” synonymous with “propaganda,” which in the patois of progressivism is called “consciousness-raising.”
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/04/04/george-f-will-u-s-education-is-going-broke-on-progressivism/
To round it off, a passage from a book – New Progrcssivism: Principles to Be Reviewed. It speaks of the principles of progressivist ideology…….”. They are the cornerstones on which educationists can erect structures of beliefs, which members of a modern teaching profession can unashamedly profess, without their feeling that the rest of the educational world has absconded long ago to firmer ground. It is the way principles are translated into practice which are expected to need rethinking, alongside—often enough—a clarification of what a progressivist principle might actually mean.” http://www.questia.com/read/102250127/new-progressivism
Ravitch herself brought up a common progressivist belief, that it is impossible to bring all students to proficient levels of education. It is indeed a troublesome belief of the education establishment, that leaves a path of destruction in its wake. The 19th century belief haunting the hallways of schools in the 21st century. Teach For Canada, represents a threat to the treasured belief of the K to 12 education establishment. “Canada’s lowest-achieving students perform poorly when compared with the weakest students around the developed world. Too often, the Canadian students who struggle the most are from rural, remote, and Aboriginal communities.” http://www.teachforcanada.ca/
Often the students of rural, remote and Aboriginal communities have only the teachers to rescued them from the destructiveness of progressivism ideologies, that claims fifty percent of the student population will never obtain average to above reading levels. It is my hope, Teach For Canada, will prove the public education establishment wrong, because the research based on the science of cognitive and learning has already shown, the vast majority of children can indeed obtain average levels in the 3 Rs.
Diane Who?
TFA, TFC — Filling A Niche, A Need
While Teach For Canada (TFC) is still in it’s infancy it is definitely well-meaning. The idea of Teach For All projects is now active in 32 countries around the world. Three main principles inform this movement — 1) overcoming education inequities, 2) improving disadvantaged schools, and 3) advancing teaching excellence.
What’s to dislike about that? It should appeal to all well-meaning folks, regardless of political stripe. The TFAustralia project was officially launched in late 2008 by the then Federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard MP (Labor).
Parents, in particular, are EXTREMELY anxious to get their children educated in their lifetimes. They are not easily put-off by promises of improvements over the long-haul. Increasingly, parents and public see choice as the only strategy to bring about satisfactory education in a young person’s lifetime.
In the UK a Report by the Sutton Group unleashed scathing headlines that parents were “cheating” when they found ways to enrol their kids in their preferred schools or who used tutoring services to supplement or remediate schooling. The title of the report — “Parent Power? Using money and information to boost children’s chances of educational success”. Why shouldn’t parents do all they can to help in social mobility? Keep them off the dole (welfare)?
Again, I’m going to applaud the Australian Coalition politicians who have launched a Review of the education system to determine public opinion. They, at least, seem to care about parents.
I find the comments of the new Minister of Education, Christopher Pyne, so refreshing.
*** “Those who are critical of the review and question the sincerity of the government’s motives might be forgetting that incoming governments not only have a right to review their predecessor’s policies, they have a duty to do so, to ensure policies are still relevant, needed, cost-effective and meet voters’ expectations, as variously expressed in the most recent and decisive election.
*** “we need a national curriculum, we must ensure it genuinely meets students’ needs, matches parents’ expectations and drives education quality.
*** “This nation’s curriculum policy must not be captured by any fad, by any vested interest group, or by those pursuing political or narrow agendas.”
This is tomorrow’s news from the Minister — they are ahead of us in more ways than one! http://www.smh.com.au/comment/politics-have-no-place-in-curriculum-review-christopher-pyne-20140119-312p8.html?rand=1390161192866
Our politicians in Canada would be petrified to have to listen to “parents’ expectations”. Besides, the BLOB won’t let our provinces have education Reviews. They’ve got the politicians wrapped up as pretzels.
Here is one that just breaks me up from the accountability movement. It is apparently UNFAIR to require ‘schools of choice’ who get public money, to write the state mandated tests that the public schools must write because it makes them look bad. Can you believe he said it with a straight face?
http://educationnext.org/49658143/
Choice – PER SE — Is A Value, In And Of Itself
For sanity, for peace of mind, for staying out of the grips of centrally controlled state institutions, I would want CHOICE, EXIT, ESCAPE.
When will people wake up and see that Core Curriculum, 21st Century Skills, Personalized Learning— whatever its name— is being IMPOSED without consent? These programs are heavy on changing beliefs and emotions, shifting away from skills and knowledge and preparing “global citizens” for collaboration and social responsibility — SAVE ME & My grandkids, PULEEZ!
It’s some kind of mass hysteria that’s happening, that’s being deliberately planted into our schools and of course, alternatives such as charters, home education, TFA teacher prep, independent schools stand in the way of this intended cultural homogenization.
For those people who have no experience with what a world without choice is, who have no relatives from the Soviet Union, but who may still LOVE FREEDOM, please read Aleksey and the tear jerker comments http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/forward.html
Seems reformers shamelessly want it both ways. Schools we don’t like, public schools must submit to accountability ie testing. Schools we like, private schools and charter schools that receive public money should not have to be accountable for it through testing. Hypocrisy thy name is corporate school reform.
http://reason.com/archives/2014/01/20/school-choice-foes-are-wrong
“Opponents of school choice aren’t heartless jerks, either, of course. They sincerely believe that giving poor families the same opportunity to choose education alternatives that rich families have would be a big mistake: If you make everybody stay on the Titanic, then maybe it won’t sink as fast. This doesn’t make them wicked. It just makes them wrong.”
I am a teacher and I can simply say that my time spent at the Faculty of Education was a colossal waste of 2 years.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/17/bad-news-for-teachers-in-an-automated-phone-call/
A merit pay system and contracts for the top 25% of teachers? If only it were true.
Deborah Kenny, founder of the superb Harlem Village Academies charter schools in New York relates how teacher’s unions had arranged thousands of robo-calls to mislead parents into believing that these new public schools would be charging tuition.
Another union tactic she describes: “I watched from a third-floor classroom window as unionized teachers from a failing school held up “Parents say no to Edison” protest signs, only to go inside the school to start working after the local NBC and ABC camera trucks left.” (D. Kenny, Born to Rise, pp 42)
The unions spend a lot of time and money fighting against good schools, without any ethical concern for truth or the ruined lives of children stuck in failing schools.
Agree Tom. Here is my take of Doug’s link – ” If teachers simply increase effort, educational ills will be solved and student achievement will increase. This idea is incorrect, as the majority of teachers are dedicated, professional individuals who already give maximum effort. Dangling a monetary carrot in front of teachers will not magically enable them to overcome, or “teach through,” the innumerable challenges they currently face. Powerful teaching occurs when educators recognize they are valued, are provided continual opportunities to evolve, and work within systems that are functional and sufficiently resourced.”
Why is it, the underlying assumption that teachers are dedicated professional individuals who already give maximum effort? Sure doesn’t look it from a parent’s perspective, whose child was having early struggles in the 3 Rs. So dedicated, that allows children to fall further and further behind by poor instructional methods and other school factors that are beyond the control of parents and students. Than have the gall to downplay their actions and behaviours by blaming it on outside factors?? ”
“Research has continually revealed that students’ out-of-school reality has the most influence on educational outcomes, yet the national reform narrative fixates on what occurs within schools and classrooms. ” No matter how many changes made outside of the school reality, my child would have fallen further and further behind because of the current curriculum, instruction and pedagogy practices.
That may be your opinion Nancy buy Research as far back as Coleman and everything since says “outside factors” mainly SES is the overwhelming Factor is success or failure.
Merit pay is a ridiculous joke. How many x does it have to fail? How many reports have to condemn it? There is nothing
new in it. It has failed and been abandoned over and over and over.
The only reason merit pay is opposed by the education establishment at the lower levels because they do not want to be held accountable to the student outcomes. One of the reasons behind merit pay, applies to non-certified teachers as well. Can’t have a non-certified teacher showing up the teachers with teachers’ certificates.
That said, an interesting article cross my desk today…….rather amusing to see the American teachers unions hook up with the Bill Gates Foundation for some big cash – “The National Education Association and the for-profit firm BetterLesson today unveiled a jointly designed, $7 million free platform with more than 3,000 lessons aligned to the Common Core State Standards—a move that comes concurrent with NEA’s strongest endorsement yet for the standards.
The standards have been politically attacked in the states—and by some of the union’s own members—but in an interview, the union’s president challenged naysayers to produce a better alternative.
“When I sit on panels and someone chastises us for supporting the common core, I always ask: ‘Are there specific things you believe should not be there?’ I never get an answer,” NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said. “Second, I ask, “What’s missing?’ I don’t get an answer. And the third thing I ask is, ‘What is the alternative? What do you want? Standards all over the ballpark, tests all over the ballpark?’ ”
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/01/nea_and_firm_unveil_curricula.html?intc=mvs
Meanwhile on another front, the lament of nationally-renowned teacher, psychologist, researcher and author, was one of the contributing writers of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Dr. Louisa Moats, goes unheard by the K to 12 education establishment of many self-serving agendas. “The standards obscure the critical causal relationships among components, chiefly the foundational skills and the higher level skills of comprehension that depend on fluent, accurate reading. Foundations should be first! The categories of the standards obscure the interdependence of decoding, spelling, and knowledge of language. The standards contain no explicit information about foundational writing skills, which are hidden in sections other than “writing”, but which are critical for competence in composition.
The standards treat the foundational language, reading and writing skills as if they should take minimal time to teach and as if they are relatively easy to teach and to learn. They are not. The standards call for raising the difficulty of text, but many students cannot read at or above grade level, and therefore may not receive enough practice at levels that will build their fluency gradually over time.”
Dr. Moats ends – “I’ve been around a long time, and this feels like 1987 all over again, with different words attached to the same problems. When will we ever learn?” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-bertin-md/when-will-we-ever-learn_b_4588033.html
Rather sad and amusing that it was the educators at the upper levels of the K to 12 establishment, that took an axe to the work of the authors of the CCSS, working along side with the test publishers to transformed the standards where well over half, if not the majority of students will not meet the standards of CCSS. Dr. Moats own words, not my and goes hand in hand with my last post that concluded, ” No matter how many changes made outside of the school reality, my child would have fallen further and further behind because of the current curriculum, instruction and pedagogy practices.”
But Doug, we’re not talking about the merits of merit pay. We’re talking about TFC, and you are posting bogus horse-pucky. If you want to join the discussion at the grownup’s table, you should behave better.
You opened the door commenting merit pay we can only wish. TFC also a really bad idea but I already said that. Our native kids deserve more than amateur hour.
Then why Dougie are you still trying to belabor the points being made here The world will unfold as it may. The same goes for merit pay.
The K to 12 education establishment of many private agendas are so threatened by Teach For Canada. A follow educator hailing from Nova Scotia – “Have you heard of Teach For Canada? It’s a new project spearheaded by Nova Scotian Kyle Hill, a Rhodes scholar and business consultant; and Vancouver-born Adam Goldenberg, former speechwriter for Michael Ignatieff and fellow at Yale law school.” http://solidarityhalifax.ca/2014/01/teach-for-canada-can-only-make-things-worse/
Let us carry out the exercise of breaking down the education background of the above educator, No need to go further than the above link – “Ben teaches Spanish and social studies, including Mi’kmaq Studies 10 and African Canadian Studies 11, at Prince Andrew High School in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He has a Master’s degree focusing on anti-racist education, equity and diversity from Mount Saint Vincent University. He is also the Dartmouth Local representative for the Nova Scotia Teachers Union. A strong advocate for equitable, high-quality, diversified education, Ben believes teacher unions have the power to make a difference in students’ and parents’ lives. ”
Prince Andrew High School – “Prince Andrew High School is a Canadian public school, in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. It is operated by the Halifax Regional School Board (HRSB) and is now an International Baccalaureate (IB) world school, offering the Diploma program. It also offers the O2 program (options and opportunities).
968 students currently attend, and graduating classes consists of approximately 300 students.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Andrew_High_School
Suffice to say, that Ben teaches at a school, that is highly selective of who will or will not attend Prince Andrew High School. Diversity of student population? Doubtful, but keep in mind it is an IB school, with an international agenda hailing from the global educationalists who have the agenda of globalizing education of a different set. The Student Handbook is the example of the agenda at display. Under School Information, click Student Handbook – on page 8, Essential Graduation Learnings – 1. Aesthetic Expression
2. Citizenship 3. Communication 4. Personal Development 5. Problem Solving
6. Technological Competence http://www.pahs.ednet.ns.ca/YHC.html
Just under are the Principles of Learning, that consists of the Constructivism and Discovery Learning principles – on constructing knowledge.
I am sure Ben, Joe Blower, and perhaps Doug would be at a total loss in a classroom located on a native reserve, let alone a low income school or a classroom where 10 children have learning difficulties out of a class of 25. They love to preach in the safety of the lofty perch of constructivism and equity pedagogues, but are never willing to leave their perches, to prove that non-certified teachers should not be in the classroom. Instead, they insult, cherry picked to the point of ad-nauseum of others, in fear of, that one would looked into their own backgrounds and outcomes of students. Ben doesn’t have to worry about student outcomes, because I am sure he has only taught the top achievers in his teaching career. The students with the near-perfect cognitive processes who have parents with deep pockets to provide the provide the private tutoring lessons on the things that the education establishment are no longer willing to provide. Teach For Canada, instead of preaching, they are taking action and putting their theory to the test, by going into the rural and aboriginal schools. Unlike the private agendas of educators carrying the banner of constructivism and equity pedagogues, who would never venture in a high school classroom, with reading and numeracy levels ranging from a grade 5 level to above grade level, with only a handful of students that was capable learning under the constructivism banner.