Two Dutch classroom teachers, Jelmer Evers, and René Kneyber, have teamed up with Education International to produce a stimulating book with a great title, Flip the System: Changing Education from the Ground Up. It originated as a project inspired by a genuine classroom teacher-driven movement in the Netherlands where Jelmer, an education “progressive,” and René, a self-declared “traditionalist,” joined forces to “reclaim our beloved teaching profession ourselves.” So far, so good.
A funny thing seems to have happened to that grassroots project on its way to publication. The teacher initiators decided that “neoliberalism” was the source of “top-down” education managerialism and turned to its sworn enemy, Education International, the global coordinating organization for teachers’ unions. While classroom teachers like Evers, Kneyber and Brit Tom Bennett ignited the movement, they turned to EI for funding and the ‘usual suspects’ for added credibility in an attempt to go global.
With a little help from EI’s Fred van Leeuven, a few familiar professional education change promoters began to surface, including Finnish “Fourth Wave” proponents Andy Hargreaves, Dennis Shirley and Pasi Salhberg. .Professor Gert Biesta, editor-in-chief of Studies in Philosophy and Education, 1999-2014, also joined the cause. It’s a real credit to the two editors that they actually found a place for the founder of ResearchED, Tom Bennett, a refreshingly forthright, independent voice for today’s teachers. His chapter on “The Polite Revolution in Research and Education” explains the origins of ResearchED and testifies to his commitment to put teachers “back in the drivers seat’ of the system.
Bennett’s 2013 book, Teacher Proof, was a direct hit on educational orthodoxy supported by flimsy explanations resting only on questionable social science theories. After a decade of teaching in East London, he knew something was amiss because a succession of pedagogical panaceas such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Brain Gym, learning styles, and ‘soft persuasion techniques’ simply did not work in the classroom.
His teacher training and PD programs promoted the latest methods of educating children and directing their behaviour as if they were holy scripture. “It took me years, “Bennett now says, ” to realize that the thing I smelled was a bunch of rats in lab coats.” Defenders of such pedagogical science justified such initiatives with little more than the common phrase ” the research shows.” Digging into the research behind such schemes, he discovered that whole movements like “Learning Styles” were “built on quicksand.” Freeing regular teachers from the “intellectual bondage” and “Cargo Cult Science” sustaining these orthodoxies became the whole raison d’etre of what became the British teacher-led movement for reform.
The ResearchED founder is notably more independent in outlook than many of the contributors to Flip the System. Co-editor Evers, in particular, sees neo-liberalism not only behind accountability testing but concealed in a whole range of initiatives threatening teacher autonomy. Judging from the introduction and his writings, he’s a committed education progressive viewing education though a very explicit ideological lens. Collected works sometimes make for strange bedfellows. In this case, Evers writings exhibit the same “bias confirmation” difficulties that so trouble Bennett and the key members of ResearchED.
Two very independently minded teachers, Andrew Old and Greg Ashman , are conspicuous in their absence from the collection. British secondary school teacher Andrew Old, creator of Scenes from the Battleground Blog, is a ResearchED supporter who is vigilant in exposing “fakery” in British schools and a staunch defender of tried-and-true teaching methods. For his part, Australian teacher-researcher Greg Ashman, host of Filling the pail Blog, is an effective voice for teachers ‘sick-and-tired’ of teacher forums that sound like a “share this idea” educational echo chamber.
In two recent commentaries, “The Trendiest Arguments for Progressive Education,” Old skillfully deconstructs four of the hollow claims currently made by ‘romantic’ progressives: 1) firm discipline and setting exams adversely affects children’s mental health; 2) “traditional” vs. “progressive” debates are stale, irrelevant and meaningless; 3) defenders of higher academic standards and knowledge-based curriculum perpetuate “white privilege” in schools; and 4) every new ‘reform’ initiative is an example of the “free market conspiracy” enveloping the system. Like Bennett, he decries the absence of plausible evidence supporting some of these outlandish claims.
Ashman specializes in exposing fallacies perpetuated by educationists and bureaucrats that complicate and frustrate the lives of working teachers. He’s a serious educational researcher pursuing his PhD at UNSW and his posts draw upon some of the best recent research findings. In his July 31, 2015 commentary, “Nothing to prove (but I will, anyway…),” he zeroes in on research that demonstrates “explicit instruction” is superior to “constructivist” methods such as “discovery learning’ and ‘maker-space’ activities. He really digs into the research, citing twelve different studies from 1988 to 2012, ranging from Project Follow Through to Barak Rosenshine’s 2012 “Principles of Instruction” study. Where, he asks, is the hard evidence supporting the current constructivist approaches to teaching and learning?
One of the studies unearthed by Ashman is an October 2011 research report, “All students fall behind,” providing a critical independent assessment of the Quebec Ministry of Education progressive reform, Project-Based Learning initiative from 2000 to 2009. The Reform was implemented top-down and right across the board in all grade levels with little or no input from classroom teachers. Comparing Quebec student performance in Mathematics from Grades 1 to 11, before and after the “constructivist” Reform initiative, Catherine Haeck, Pierre Lefebvre, and Philip Merrigan document a steady decline in scores, compromising that province’s status as the leader in Mathematics performance. “We find,” they concluded,” strong evidence of negative effects of the reform on the development of students’ mathematical abilities.”
Reinventing education from the ground up will, of necessity, involve engaging and listening to teachers. The education domain is littered with failed initiatives driven by totally unproven pedagogical theories. Following research where it leads instead of riding ideological hobby-horses would be a much sounder basis for education policy initiatives. In that regard, the researchED pilistines have much more to offer than many of the contributors to the hottest new book in education reform.
Turning the education upside down has its appeal, especially if you are a working teacher in today’s school system. Why do educational orthodoxies like traditional teaching and constructivism have such staying power? Why are teachers too often on the outside looking in when the latest education panacea comes down the pipe? If teachers were truly engaged and empowered, would explicit instruction again rule the school day?
Thanks for another vibrant presentation from a very fertile mind and concerned Canadian educator
I have always believed direct teaching vs constructivism to a false dichotomy. I am direct on Monday, constructivist on Tuesday and so on as most teachers I suspect are as well.
Doug,
I think you will find your comment falls nicely into category #2 “Debate Denialism” of Andrew Old’s “The Trendiest Current Arguments For Progressive Education Part 1” (link in Bennet’s article above). Here he says “This means that one can claim to use a mix of methods, or observe that most teachers use a mix of methods, and then can claim to be neither “progressive” nor “traditional” ignoring the philosophies that guide how we choose our mix.”.
It is this shifting of the goal posts as to the purpose of education- based upon “…ignoring the philosophies that guide how we choose our mix.” that Mr. Old describes quite effectively (and humorously) in his “Why it is Annoying to Discuss Teaching Methods” where he says:
“The problem is that in any discussion of teaching methods then the aims of teaching can be changed. They become broader, vaguer, less academic, and finally the teaching method becomes an aim in itself. We should teach students in groups because the point of lessons is to work in groups. We should give them projects to complete because the purpose of schooling is to complete projects. We should entertain students in lessons because schools are there so children can have fun. We should let the students do whatever they like because the point of education is to do whatever you like.” https://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/why-it-is-annoying-to-discuss-teaching-methods/
Or, to put it a more concrete form, imagine if your family doctor was to say: “I use Antibiotics on Monday and on Tuesdays I use a ‘laying on of hands’ approach.” I submit that you would probably conclude that his or her philosophical belief about the ‘purpose’ of medicine differed quite profoundly from the ‘purpose’ you imagined you were seeing them for. The decision to use demonstratively less effective forms of Medicine (or Teaching techniques- see Greg Asham’s link in the Article above) based upon one’s personal beliefs about the ‘purpose’ of medicine or education is- in an effectively ‘sole-source’ system like we have here in Canada- undemocratic at best.
No this means you assume that one way is correct and one way is incorrect when it is entirely situational.
Reblogged this on The Echo Chamber.
Doug, Can you describe to me a situation where group work is better to use than Greg Asham’s description of Explicit Instruction? In my child’s grade 2 class for example? https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/let-us-be-explicit-about-the-explicit/
Flipping School Governance To Teacher Control — Marxist Agenda
The newest book to hit the education radar is about flipping control of public schools so that teachers are in control instead of elected community trustees or government — Flip the System: Changing Education from the Ground Up — http://www.amazon.com/Flip-System-Changing-Education-Ground/dp/1138929980/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438550206&sr=8-1&keywords=flip+the+system
Routledge —world’s leading publisher of quality academic books — publishes the book but it is also clearly identified (on the cover) as a project “in association with Education International”. EI is a global federation of teacher unions — heavily influenced by progressive and Marxist ideology. A main goal of EI is worker control of the workplace, that is, teacher control of schools.
This is not a movement for teacher co-operatives. Not at all !
The book received a launching party last week in Ottawa at the EI World Congress attended by 1500 members. Undoubtedly many Canadians were delegates. BC Teachers Federation, a member, probably had a sizeable contingent along with others. Lots of books about flipping schools now in the hands of a lot of Canadians. Never saw any news in the media about this global congress !
But transparency is not an operating principle of EI. They are more like “El Chapo” having underground tunnels and under-the-radar methods for transmission of their goals.
This very well fits in with the economic analysis of “producer capture”, a phenomenon whereby the consumer, client, and taxpayer base is excluded or ignored. The World Bank explained this in a report about attempting education reforms in developing countries, saying that client power would be the way to get programs delivered more efficiently and effectively than the current distribution.
Most recently, the August 1 issue of The Economist quotes World Bank facts and figures prominently in their front-page feature on small low-cost accessible private schools in developing countries. http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21660113-private-schools-are-booming-poor-countries-governments-should-either-help-them-or-get-out
With this article hitting international newsstands and with Education Savings Accounts in the United States (parents getting education funding placed directly into their accounts for children’s services and schools) this ideological curve by some teachers to take control will have a hard time gaining credibility in the public arena. Of course, they will continue to drill away in their crafty underground fashion to obtain traction and power.
I, as a consumer, parent, grandparent, will strongly speak out against teacher control of the education system and am currently adamantly disappointed with government inertia in allowing teacher unions so much control already.
One reason why education reform has been so difficult is that teachers are not empowered to contribute openly and freely to the discussion. This is an important issue that has nothing to do with teachers’ unions or publicly funded school choice.
Touche, Christina ! Teachers have generally been on the receiving end of educational initiatives. Top-down decision-making seems to be endemic, whether it’s a ministry, school board or union. That’s what’s new about researchED. Let’s hope it does not go the way of EDCamp. A flourish of ideas, many faddish, that goes nowhere without official sanction.
No, and the reason for that is that teachers are so valuable to everyone in the system who does not teach. No other jobs other than teaching would exist in the education system if it were not for teachers using their classroom responsibilities to shunt work to those functionaries. Other than line administration jobs, the vast majority of those *other* jobs rely not on teachers teaching, but rather on teachers handing problems up the supply chain to keep feeding those extraneous jobs. So, let’s say with ESL… teachers might have a billion ideas as to how ESL kids can quickly and effectively achieve linguistic equality. But no functionaries besides teachers WANTS linguistic equality – they want ESL to be a huge problem, so that they can have meetings and conferences about it, teach courses about it, fight grievances and negotiate special contract clauses about it, write books about it, re-organize schools and bureaucracies around it, and just generally keep themselves busy and well-paid. Heaven forbid that those important functionaries (aka the monkeys on teachers’ backs) should have nothing better to do than go back into the classroom and actually TEACH! No, they need teachers to be in positions of intolerable stress so that their trade in teacher-stress-inducement can flourish.
Even the best of the consultants, like Paul Bennett himself 🙂 relies on problems being experienced in the system – and I don’t claim there isn’t a base level of problems that creates a base level of need for consultants. But for ENOUGH problems to exist to support the massive edifice of education as it is today, teachers have to be aggressively creating problems in their classrooms every day. That is the value of controlling teachers, not letting them speak freely.
That said, the core flaw with the whole “flip the system” & reforming “from the ground up” is also the fatal flaw of ResearchED & Tom Bennett’s objective of “putting teachers back into the driver’s seat.” Teachers are not the “ground” nor do they belong in the “driver’s seat.” Public education is a deal made between government and people/parents of the day, and teachers are merely hired to activate whatever the deal may be. That the deal presently involves literacy etc is purely coincidental; the deal could be remade tomorrow to require all children to master the circus arts, or the fundamentals of agriculture. Teachers need to be able to be effective at teaching whatever they are hired to teach – their conversation need not be WITH the parties that make the deal about what the deal is. Teachers’ conversation needs to be among themselves about how best to teach what the parties to the deal want taught. Hence, the value of research and evidence – for the outcomes teachers are hired to achieve.
Therefore, who “speaks” for teachers in the public conversation about education is worse than irrelevant – it does teachers a disservice by putting their voice where it does not belong and where their expertise does not reach. Teachers are hired, and work as, individuals TO SERVE THE DEAL, not to impose their own views. Because they don’t drive the system and aren’t the system’s fundamental purpose, in actual fact the teacher voice is entirely irrelevant in the overall MAKING of the deal. If all School Acts were rewritten tomorrow to put unicycling as the core purpose in response to public demand, any collective voice for teachers that seeks to oppose that does teachers a severe disservice; it misrepresents their interests and endangers their employment.
And indeed, all that hooey about teaching the whole child and instilling creativity and all that crap? That was never in the deal. That came from the consultants, was advanced in teachers’ name, and has created the whole education reform wars within which poor teachers now strive to find their balance.
Could you make your point using five sentences or less?
I welcome longer responses, Christina. It’s one of the few outlets serious education observers have here in Canada. I much prefer long, well-argued comments to the personal barbs that derail the discussion.
OK.
“Teachers have to be aggressively creating problems in their classrooms every day.” Seriously? That’s offensive.
“Their [teachers] conversation need not be with the parties that made the deal about what the deal is. Teachers conversations need to be among themselves about how best to teach what what the parties to the deal want taught.”
How are reforms ever going to happen that way?
Case in point. When teachers were told to teach math using the texts ‘Math Makes Sense’ the texts were quickly dubbed ‘Math Makes No Sense’. If teachers were given a way to provide feedback to the Ministry, they wouldn’t have had to wait until parents complained and until math scores dropped. We could have nipped it in the bud, but we were forced into silence. Now teachers are accused of being incompetent math teachers. Now we have to take that in silence too. We did and do talk amongst ourselves but unless we get the ear of the Ministry there will be no reforms.
“Who speaks for teachers in public conversation is worse than irrelevant.”
Huh? Why does feedback from teachers have to be a public conversation?
Why can’t teachers speak for themselves? You will notice I never mentioned public conversations or suggested anyone speak for teachers..
I could continue to quote things Karin said that don’t make sense to me.. But then this post would be very very long.
Christina, what I have explained to you is the perverse incentive structure in education. Once you understand that, you will realize that even if teachers could speak directly to the Ministry, or even if a teacher were to BECOME the minister (oh wait…), the Ministry would be no more likely to choose effective, efficient texts, build rational curricula, or to do anything else that real individual teachers might say if given the chance. But teachers cede their voices to various paid functionaries, and NO ONE who earns a living off teachers’ backs wants teachers to succeed. Hence the PD pyramid scheme, among others. Watch “mentorship” growing too; that’s the latest layer of the pyramid.
Karin has a point. The system exists to create new problems so there can be reasons to spend money on those who are usually responsible for creating the problems in the first place. With respect to the MMS textbook, this book was written BY teachers FOR teachers, and is heavily supported by BCTF Executuves, along withSchool District staff and Ministry staff. Many teachers do not like using this text yet say nothing about their displeasure using it. Perhaps if more dissatisfaction could be mentioned to their union reps en masse, there might be more support to get rid of this much maligned text. Thousands of parents have expressed their displeasure with this text, researchers have pointed out the multiple errors of this text to the Ministry, but we need to hear from those that are in charge of using this book. Teachers need to tell their union reps to ditch this book, and use a much better book, such as Saxon Math. Until we hear from the membership, nothing will change.
Unless a teacher has a complaint in the form of a grievance, the unions won’t touch it. A complaint about a textbook doesn’t qualify as a grievance. There isn’t anyone to complain to. So teachers do their best to struggle with lousy programs. Since teacher-made materials are OK, thousand of teachers now turn to web sites where they can purchase materials with their own money. Hence the spike in such sites. Teacher blogs used to be about classroom experiences. Most blogs today are all about teachers selling their materials
i was very outspoken about the poor programs and loopy ideas. The result was two letters of discipline claiming I was creating a toxic environment followed by a poor teacher review after a career of excellent reviews. I filed grievances. Two grievances were sealed because the union had filed them incorrectly. The poor rating was removed because I had been reviewed twice in a two year period. That was too stressful an experience to repeat so I shut up.Another teacher successfully silenced.
Precisely, Christina. Unions are in the business of selling services to teachers, and grievances are one of their highest-margin products. There is no money in the union being responsive to teachers IN A WAY THAT WOULD REDUCE THE NUMBER OF GRIEVANCES, or indeed, reduce the amount of conflict over all. Conflict is a union’s bread and butter; its raison d’etre. A union that has no conflicts to manage would only need to employ half of its present staff if that, so no one in the union industry would ever want to be responsive to teachers. Unions manipulate teachers for the purpose of having lots of conflict so teachers remain willing to pay ever increasing union dues and otherwise keep the union busy and important, as I wrote here years ago: http://edrogue.blogspot.ca/2013/02/teachers-angry-details-at-11.html?view=flipcard
That’s also why teacher stress is money in the bank for unions. Unions consistently agitate for precisely the conditions that escalate teacher stress.
Although the union has instilled the belief that “the union is teachers,” nothing could be further from the truth. Most staff of unions are not teachers, but even those that once were are now people who now earn their salary FROM teachers. The fact that they were once teachers, or may be again, is no more relevant than if your car salesperson was once a teacher.
None of this is a conspiracy; it’s simply a natural outcome of the system design and incentive structure in the business they’re in.
Teachers Need NOT Fear Or Oppose Parent Choice
While still but an “idea” and an “ideal” in Canada the American homegrown design of Education Savings Accounts (ESA) should be a strong conversation piece here.
See: Parental Choice 2.0 — ESAs are the smartphones of choice programs — http://spectator.org/articles/63652/parental-choice-20
After getting acquainted with the idea, the opportunities, the means to customize education of children with special needs, the freedom to shop, the economic cost savings to centralized systems constantly being badgered for more funding, etc., etc. the BIG QUESTION comes up — How will teachers respond to this idea?
Well, we do know that teacher unions, as any giant corporation facing competition and loss of customers, do vehemently oppose parent choice — of any kind — be it homeschooling, private schools, charters, vouchers, etc.
Also, individual teachers may despair, feeling that they are AGAIN left out of decision-making that affects their lives and jobs. It’s understandable that displeased teachers may actually buy into the radical progressive Marxist plan of worker-control-of-the workplace as in this latest book, “Flip The System”, where teachers control the system instead of current bureaucrats.
But teachers who take pride in their work and calling should look into the future about the promise of ESAs. Teachers would be able to easier form teacher co-ops. They could choose to work in specialized facilities which hang out their “shingles” that declare their certified offerings, for example whether they offer “traditional” or “discovery” math — a choice for parents and students and teachers!
Before doing the knee-jerk opposition to ESAs teachers should closely examine the pros and cons in context of our changing 21st Century and consider how their “professionalism” might actually bloom in a more free environment. Do read the linked article again and consider two things — 1) why ESAs are causing such excitement and interest; 2) what might be the positive benefits to parents, students, and teachers?
ESAs is not the question – the question is who should be funding ESAs. If parents decide to put their own money into ESAs then feel free to spend it on the programs of your choice. The question is how much access, if any, should parents have to the thousands of dollars that the public puts towards each child’s education in this country?
The challenge in this country with teacher driven reforms is that too many people associate teacher driven reforms with unions. The public needs to separate the two things if we want meaningful reforms.
Teacher unions are the voice of the profession of teaching. There is nobody else that speaks collectively for teachers. Any opinion from an individual teacher is just that- one persons opinion.
If researchEd is to be successful, the organizers will need to reach all teachers. The logical organization to facilitate this seems to me to be the Colleges of Teachers. The organizers of researchEd could set up a forum for teacher feedback on issues and concerns they have found to be universal. Such a forum might go a long way iin gaining teachers’ confidence and sparking interest. It would certainly be novel.
Teachers have zero respect for colleges of teachers. They would abolish them overnight if they could. If you want something that has zero cred with teachers college fit the job.
Doug,
There are lots of teachers who do not belong to a union. Your statement is so incorrect that it’s borderline laughable.
Nonsense. Teachers federations speak for teachers. That is recognized by the government as they are consulted on all issues as THE voice of teachers.
Teacher Union The Stumbling Block To Teacher Voice
Teacher Union The Stumbling Block To Education Reform
Teacher Union Hierarchical Straightjacket Prevents Flexibility At The School Site
Teacher Union Exerts Strict Discipline Over Members Who Rock The Boat
Teacher Union Diktats Rule The Public Education System
Teacher Union Prevents “Best Practice” — Promotes Ideology & Progressive Theory
Teacher Union Loves Power — Doesn’t Trust Individual Teachers
Teacher Union Ensures Handpicked Representatives to Consultation Groups, Curriculum Development, Policy Discussions, etc.
Teacher Union . . .
This comment from a teacher unionist stimulated a # of possible headlines for an essay:
*** “Teacher unions are the voice of the profession of teaching. There is nobody else that speaks collectively for teachers. Any opinion from an individual teacher is just that- one person’s opinion.”
I’m sure others can provide more possible titles for an essay on this thread. Flipping “the public education system” from top-down bureaucratic management to bottom-up management by teachers at the school site — hmmmm — what an idea ! Would the teacher union movement allow it? What is their opinion about this book — Flip the System?
Tunya,
Your posts are SO unhelpful to education reformers like researchEd. But then you don’t really want to help reform public education. Your solution is to opt out of it. So why not allow those of us who are seriously thinking of ways to reform the public system some breathing space from your all-too-tedious grinding?
I think we are a “big enough” in the Educhatter tent to accommodate a range of views. Might I suggest picking and choosing among the comments without keeping score.
I’m trying.
The new TNTP report, The Mirage, should find its way into this thread because it is raising serios questions about the effectiveness of PD initiatives. The headline in The Washington Post should stir things up: “Billions wasted on PD for teachers.”
How about someone taking on the report in this online discussion? It’s directly relevant because it exposes “PD done ON Teachers” and the resistance it engenders among rank-and-file members of the profession.
The challenge teachers face in helping to reform education is that there needs to be some collective effort to help implement changes. Unfortunately, the public’s biases towards unions undermine any profound changes that teachers feel are needed in the system. You research successful education systems around the world and one of the common components is a genuine respect for teachers from students and the public. This is a major issue in North America and undermines any attempts for improvement.
I took a quick look at the TNTP report and it supports the idea that one size does not fit all. Just because PD works in a small sample size, does not mean that it will work successfully in a larger and more diverse education system.
In the hands of the Ministry education has become a misery. Every curriculum is larder with hundreds of Overall Objectives and Specific Objective and Strands and rubrics and ‘program considerations’ that attempt to account for every hour of the day. It a part of de-professionalization and leads to profound teacher alienation from their jobs.
The are coming to despise their higher command of principals, superintendents consultants coordinators and especially the MOD. You can cut the tension with a knife and it has led to shouting matches.
The TNTP report appears to have failed to evaluate the content of PD, and failed to evaluate the programs teachers are given to work with. Sounds very much like Canada.
Another issue is that people continue to believe that there is a crisis in education. One problem with viewing things as a crisis is that money is thrown at things in hopes of a quick turn around. Students spend almost 15 years in public education while new initiatives seem to appear every few years. Perhaps more time is needed to allow initiatives to work.
Teachers often who talk about going to part one of a new initiative. Later on when asked about future parts they often mention that part two never happened and instead they are sent to learn about a new initiative. Seems like a waste of time and money.
When you are #1 in the world by far it is hard to be in critic mode but we can do better still by:
Further downward extension of public education to 2 year Olds.
Destreaming in many ways
Free Community College for now. Free university as many nations do later.
Shift towards constructivist education
Smaller classes
Less prescriptive curriculum
Abolition of EQAO Ontario and similar
More support staff
Major cuts to poverty.
Accomplish this and we will move to an 80% post secondary grad rate Uber alles.
You didn’t surprise me with this prescription, Doug. It looks mighty familiar to me after curating Educhatter for the past six years.
Your comments about what works in Teacher Development are well-founded so I don’t know why you felt the need to solve all of the issues.
Shouldn’t we be trying to figure out how we can bring EdCamp and ResearchED together? Looking at the outcomes of EdCamp made me shudder at the faddishness of it all. The collective risk-aversion was also something to behold. I think EDCamp with substance might move the yardsticks..
… and with all Doug’s fantasies, we will move ever further away from relationships of mutual respect – including with our children – and into stronger, longer, and deeper mutual/multi-directional coercion.
http://roslynross.blogspot.ca/p/main-idea-1-objectivist-version.html
Paul, there will be no moving of yardsticks, no matter what, or who tries to move them. The system’s consummate skill is in “making sure things stay as they are.” (That’s a Star Wars reference – the emperor: “In the Senate, I’ll make sure things stay as they are”). My second comment to this linked thread relates my experience watching the system destroy an effective inner city teaching initiative. That will always be the response.
We have to realize that every wave of reformers, be they parents or consultants or teachers themselves, are novices: there for the first time. But the system itself is a continuous presence, learning with each iteration, and with the benefit of institutional memory. Thus, by the time Mary Johnson did her reading initiative in the 1950s, the system was already pretty good at suppressing and ignoring. Now, with several more Mary Johnson cycles behind it, it is infinitely more skilled. We, in contrast, never change our tactics from generation to generation. Thus, it continues to win every time, whether change efforts come from inside or outside the system.
Karin
You’re right. Thinking about education reform is pointless. It’s been as cicely.
Christina, it’s not pointless at all, if you realize that to reform education you have to also redesign its structure to remove power from the elements that are motivated to resist reform. But if you try to reform it while also leaving those power structures intact, and especially if you rely on them to realize the reforms you want, then yes, it’s pointless.
Why do teachers resist reform?
Because they profoundly disagree to their very souls with most of the pillars of the reform movement.
They catagorically reject charters, vouchers, privatization, standardized testing and most other reform solutions.
It is like saying Mr Harper has clearly explained to Mr Mulcair why conservatism is better and still he resists. What is wrong with him?
So you’re saying that teachers have absolutely no comprehension of their role and status in the system relative to citizens and governments?
No. They have no responsibility to support privatization. FULLY PUBLIC EDUCATION is what they believe in. It is their church, mosque or synagogue. It is what they believe in in their soles. They will fight privatization forever.
If I were Czar of education I would make sure that not one nickel of public money ever went to private education. Unless they were a non profit I would tax them heavily. I would cap principal pay at the public level. I would make it easy for private teachers to unionize.
Soles souls 😦
So… you’re saying that teachers have absolutely no comprehension of their role and status in the system relative to citizens and governments.
Its what they say just to look good. Its not what they believe in their hearts. Teachers aren’t sheeple
It is what they believe. You don’t like it Edu beat but it happens to be true.
Teachers are a powerful political force in every province. They don’t always win but they play a critical role in making sure the neo – conservative PC’S don’t win in Ontario.
Public Policy Supposed To Benefit The Common Good
It is NOT to benefit special interests that public services are brought in by welfare-state governments. Public services are always justified as serving the broader public interest. In our Western democracies we still adhere to the principle of civilian governance.
Wikipedia is so clear:
“Civilian control of the military is a doctrine in military and political science that places ultimate responsibility for a country’s strategic decision-making in the hands of the civilian political leadership, rather than professional military officers . . . The de facto opposite of civilian control of the military is a military dictatorship.”
The same general principle applies to education. I have yet to get my copy of “Flip The System” and am wondering just how many contributors accept the theme of the two editors — “ ‘flipping the system’, a move that places teachers exactly where they need to be – at the steering wheel of educational systems worldwide.”
Interesting — hmmm. The blurb on Amazon.com continues: “This book will appeal to teachers and other education professionals around the world.” Well, this idea does NOT appeal to me, nor, I hope to others — educators or non-educators — monitoring our education systems !
I note that Pasi Sahlberg, spokesman for Finnish education, is also a contributor to this book. Also wondering what Tom Bennett, who is focusing on “evidence” and research says on the topic of teachers at the “steering wheel”.
Now, here is a quote from Pasi on this topic from a few years back:
Pasi was asked a question about policy and at a table of 10 how many should be teachers: “Why aren’t the teachers at the decision-making table?” Pasi’s answer: “There is a saying . . . that ‘war is too important to be decided by the military people’ and it’s the same with education. I think education is too important to be decided by teachers – and this has nothing to do with undervaluing teachers’ expertise . . . But the broad issues, the big issues, the principles of education should be based on a more balanced view and that’s why I would only have one practitioner in the room and divide this voice more equally to those who are the key stakeholders, (including) parents and the community members.” http://eltorofulbright.blogspot.com/2013/05/my-interview-with-pasi-sahlberg.html
Here is a graphic of the flipped pyramid: http://www.flip-the-system.org/?cat=2
NOTHING benefits the public like public education. It has made Canada the most educated nation on Earth by far.
NO successful nation in education uses privatization by charters, vouchers to achieve success. It is nothing more than a scheme to enrich greedy billionaires.
Education in Canada is controlled by the provincial government, post secondary by the province working with the feds in funding and on reserve education. It is controlled locally by elected trustees. In other words it is controlled BY THE PEOPLE.
The idea of control of education by parents is absurd. Parents of school age children are less than 30% of the population however all CITIZENS indeed all Canadian residents have an interest in public education.
A military dictatorship is not led by soldiers, of course, so an educational dictatorship would not be led by teachers. Soldiers, like teachers, are used by their leaders to control the population at large. North Korea is a good example of the two being used in concert.
When privatization is under discussion, another good analogy is journalism, if we imagine a world with only the CBC; facing deregulation, with private news outlets about to be permitted. Naturally “journalists” would be aghast (actually their leaders would be) about the prospect of not having all journalists conveniently leashed to one organization. The journalists themselves, however, would simply go where the jobs are, and might find themselves able to do better journalism in private, entrepreneurial, or even publicly traded companies – and earn more money doing it.
As such, the idea that teachers oppose privatization is a clear lie. It is their leaders who do, and they aren’t the leaders by teacher choice, either. If teacher leaders led a voluntary membership, there would be no need to fear privatization, because there would be no threat of losing their followers.
It really is not privatization that is under discussion when one talks of education reform or abolition. It is a question of deregulation, and as in any such case, after deregulation the customers are not in control en masse or through a representative structure, but as individuals in control of their destinies. So we’re not talking about parent control “of education” here. We’re talking about parent control of their own lives and their own children, independent of what 10000s of other parents are doing.
But deregulation isn’t nearly as good a bogeyman with which to frighten teachers into continued “unity” as “privatization” is.
Belatedly took a look at that flipped system. It’s a shame teachers aren’t taught any law – this would be called an “illegal delegation of authority” by the government, and in Canada, would violate several sets of Charter rights as well as statute & international covenant. Oh well. They’re teachers, who could possibly know more than them? *sarcasm alert*
There is nobody else qualified to comment “as a professional” about education except teachers.
Teacher are to education what doctors are to medicine and Lawyers are to law.
Teaching is not a profession, as I’ve written here and elsewhere: http://edrogue.blogspot.ca/2015/07/what-it-would-take-to-make-teaching.html
Teachers are distinguished from doctors and lawyers by many things, not least of which is that the system they work in is not a service that meets a CLIENT need, but a regulatory program that meets a GOVERNMENT need. Teachers have skill at delivering government programming, not correcting any client deficits. There is no demonstrated client deficit in schooling.
Doug makes a key point about any conversation that we have about education in Canada. Developing common reforms are perhaps unrealistic because education is a provincial responsibility. Even conversations about PISA results need to reflect more the results of each individual province than the country as a whole.
Many of the reforms suggested come from countries that have education systems that are considered inferior to Canada as a whole. We are reluctant to look to better systems to see what they do. I love playing a variety of sports and I would never think of looking at weaker players to see what they are doing – I would analyze the stronger ones.
The original question asked about giving teachers a greater role in reforms. I completely agree that teachers need to play a significant role in reforms. Who else can provide insight into the overall needs of a class of thirty students (and thirty set of parents)? Successful systems have many things, but one common elements is a respect of teachers by governments and the general public.
Matt, if teachers want to change what they do, they need to put down the iron rice bowl and offer it as an entrepreneur. If they want to agitate for a system change that makes such an initiative more accessible to all, then they need to agitate for the money that funds schools to fund, instead, parents directly, as is done with Education Savings Accounts in the US. As long as schooling is a government system, teachers have no legal standing to influence how it operates. If they don’t like it, the only intellectually honest action is to quit, not to use mob power to try to change it in their favour.
If they quit and go entrepreneurial, then they don’t need to provide insights into a class of students; rather, they will be able to attract the size of class of the type of students who they think will most benefit from their skills, with the full agreement of parents who have similar visions.
Being a member of a union is a statutory condition of employment in most provinces. Leaders of teacher unions are chosen in democratic election. Both local and provincial leaders are chosen by secret ballot.
Teachers federations have a dual purpose. They are both the collective bargaining agent for teachers they are also the professional organization of teachers.
Karin
You are not a lawyer. Teachers unions have many legal firms on retainer and have in house lawyers on their staff. Their rights to bargain and do whatever they want has been to the Supremes. The teachers won. You are in way over your head.
Doug, I’m far from over my head; I merely belong to the primary stakeholder group which, by some oversight, is not represented by retained or in-house lawyers. Our rights were simply not mentioned in those cases and I aim to change that. But whether I do it or a future parent activist does, do you have a problem with people asserting their Charter and statutory rights? If prostitutes and criminals have had their rights validated by the courts, why do you think parents will not do so?
Oh, and the federations do not have “a dual purpose.” They have one set of legal obligations to do with collective bargaining; all their powers are conferred for that purpose. However, labour codes permit such organizations to have collective bargaining “as one of their purposes” and so many of them have hybrid purposes. There appears to be no provision for avoiding conflict among those purposes.
My recent AIMS report, Maintaining Spotless Records, tackled the thorny question of the contradictions inherent in teacher union responsibility for upholding teaching standards and supporting members demonstrating signs of incompetence and-or allegedly involved in forms of misconduct. My co-author Karen Mitchell and I cited specific cases in Nova Scotia, BC, and Alberta where the unions thwarted efforts to clean-up the profession. It’s all part of restoring the professional standing of teachers so that they can assume a larger role in shaping decisions affecting teaching and learning in the classroom. In sum, a little house-cleaning is in order before we can “flip the system” in Canada’s provincial systems.
Karin you are what we in the actual education world call a “club house lawyer” .
Karin parents have no particular natural rights in education. CITIZENS have rights. We don’t restrict school board elections to parents for very good reasons.
Let me know when you find a real lawyer who will take up your case. You are not a lawyer you are what – dietician?
Paul, is a copy of that report available? I can’t find it on the AIMS site.
Doug: yes, but a FORMER dietitian (and the spelling is a thorny question). Not presently registered to practice.
I was shopping at Superstore yesterday; something I rarely do as I tend to shop local, organic, etc. and so I saw a population of shoppers I rarely have a chance to observe. I was (sarcasm on) wistfully pondering the benefits of a compulsory government feeding system in which professional dietitians specify everyone’s diet from birth to death, with an annual prescription based on weight and other parameters of health, the latter evaluated in part through a mandatory annual blood test and physical and mental health examination.
I estimate that with a population of 40 Million, Canada would require a national dietitian workforce of at least 100,000. Training that many would require university schools of nutrition to ramp up by a factor of 100 at least, and of course we’d need offices and equipment. In time we would not only prescribe to people directly but also want to control the inflow of food to the country and to the marketplace, so we’d be a very powerful political force in that direction, seeking to nationalize food distribution. Our work would be carefully co-ordinated through a series of administrative levels, who would have to have a lot of meetings to keep on top of things, and our continuing education needs would be very pressing, because nutritional science is very complicated and advancing fast – imagine how many nutrition professors would have to keep up a mad rush of publishing to qualify for tenure. We’d have to be conversant with all that literature.
Anyone seeking to choose their own food would, of course, be considered an enemy of dietitians; a dietitian-basher, in short. Probably a food troll too, a junk-food traditionalist and a promoter of dietary privatization. We would resist to the utmost of our being any suggestion that people are qualified to choose their own food because we care so deeply about each person’s well-being; left to their own devices, people wouldn’t make the right choices. How could they? They’re not experts. And besides, we’d have the healthiest population in the world, and the best food system, so why would anyone want to destroy that? (sarcasm off).
You really shouldn’t call me any kind of lawyer at all, however. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make a contribution to law. The evaluation of whether parents have any kind of rights in education is one that has never been put before the courts in quite the way I am doing, at least not in Canada. But while labour law has been developed through continuous litigation between employers and unions, so too has family law been developing through continuous litigation between parents, within families, and between families and governments. So as a matter of fact, parents’ rights, freedoms, duties, and entitlements are very well established in law. That body of law has simply not been brought into the courtroom to face off directly with labour law, which has, absent any equally powerful force, pretty much subsumed school law. However, recent legal cases in the US show that when pitted against the rights of families, labour law loses.
Parents Do Have NATURAL, BIOLOGICALLY IMPERATIVE, Rights & Duties
In the animal world the parents do not surrender their young to anyone! They are there till the youngster is successfully developed and taught through modeling — then launched into independency.
Two very important concepts in education are now in the forefront — ESAs in the Western World and cheap private schools in the Developing World. The conversations are happening about parent choice and parent duty.
ESA latest — Parental Choice 2.0 — http://spectator.org/articles/63652/parental-choice-20
The Economist article — Learning Unleashed — http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21660063-where-governments-are-failing-provide-youngsters-decent-education-private-sector
Now it’s time that responsible governments caught up with appropriate policies. Here is what I wrote to Jay P Greene’s blog on this topic:
Education Choice As Family Policy
With Education Savings Accounts getting more focus from policy-makers and legislators in our Western world — and with parallel stories about families in developing countries choosing affordable private schools, it’s timely that education choice as family policy be taken off the back burner. We should see some upfront attention on the matter of family policy — education-wise and for the sake of strengthening the family unit.
No one has articulated this need better than John E Coons — way before ESAs and affordable small private schools. Here is his quote from 2002 — http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2002/02/01/school-choice-family-policy-john-e-coons
“There are a lot of benign effects of school choice but, for me, choice is family policy. It is one of the most important things we could possibly do as therapy for the institution of the family, for which we have no substitute.
The relationship between the parent and child is very damaged if the parent loses all authority over the child for six hours a day, five days a week, and over the content that is put into the child’s mind.
What must it be like for people who have raised their children until they’re five years old, and suddenly, in this most important decision about their education, they have no say at all? They’re stripped of their sovereignty over their child.
And what must it be like for the child who finds that his parents don’t have any power to help him out if he doesn’t like the school? We are always complaining about the lack of responsibility in low-income families. But, the truth is, we have taken the authority away from them in this most important aspect of their child’s life. And then we rail at them for being rotten parents.
It’s a shame that there are no social science studies on the effect of choicelessness on the family. If you are stripped of power–kept out of the decision-making loop –you are likely to experience degeneration of your own capacity to be effective, because you have nothing to do. If you don’t have any responsibilities, you get flabby. And what we have are flabby families at the bottom end of the income scale.”
Even NGOs and private donors wishing to help poor children should adopt this policy and find ways to earmark funding to parents. The World Bank in some early report identified “elite capture” as one of the biggest problems sabotaging good intentions to help the poor. “Client power” they said is the direction to go.
Thank you, Tunya, for introducing the World Bank initiative to decentralize education by introducing more school-based management. I’ve studied the recent assessment reports and they seem to suggest that achieving “client power” is a tremendous challenge. Looking at a country-to-country and case-by-case analysis in Latin America, Africa and Asia, the best you can hope for is decentralized decision-making vested in local principals and parents. In this context, “elite capture” is difficult to assess because we are comparing national elites and local elites closer to children and families. It also takes 5-6 years of SBM to see any results and such experiments sometimes don’t last that long. It’s good in theory,but falls short in practice.
Paul, I really believe it’s quite simple to achieve client power if one simply gives the client the power :-). The challenge arises when one couches the question within a primary concern for the system.
The real challenge is not improving, or decentralizing, or personalizing “the system” but rather: better raising the children. There does not need to be a system at all. And where systems exist, which they will because communities build systems around everything, they will be responsive and thus ebb and flow, as all other systems do. Eatons goes, Superstore rises, and so on. They won’t have the inescapable permanence of the public schools.
We’ve been down this road before when we ended forced residential schools.
Now the conversation is about how Aboriginal kids are best raised, and parents are able to choose from a variety of options, which evolve, grow, and change as people test them.
But what’s always been fascinating about residential schools is that they are, on the face of it, not so different from elite boarding schools to which parents have voluntarily sent their children, and which have produced generally far better outcomes.
Elite capture is easy to overcome if one simply removes the children and the money. Until we have the cojones to do that, they remain in control. It’s why ESAs are so powerful: they do both, and they do it without drama.
I can’t picture how schools in rural settings would be able to exist and be fiscally responsible to taxpayers using the teacher as entrepreneur method? In addition, the community hub goal for many of these schools would be difficult to implement.
Any reforms to education need the input of citizens since it is the collective financial contributions of many people that fund the education for one student. I wonder what is the proportion of people that could independently fund their own children’s education based on the taxes that they pay each year?
Matt, I think that’s a misconception about “the input of citizens.” We collectively fund many services to individuals to which we have no direct input: welfare, EI, grants, prison sentences, court services, and the list goes on. The flawed assumption is that the whole community needs to have direct say on how each child is educated.
What I believe the community has the natural power to do is to provide ongoing feedback to parents and young people about how they were educated. Employers will hire, or not, and fire, or not, based on how good an education is, or young people will start their own businesses and notice gaps or strengths in their preparation. These actions become the guiding principles by which the next cohort of parents makes their choices. That is the hallmark of a sustainable society, I think: parents doing what they know works in their world, in their time. Not “experts” forecasting some utopian future and designing educational modules on the basis of their dreams.
Parents being direct recipients of tax dollars also creates an incentive to contribute, in their child-raising choices, to the community’s vibrancy and to integrate their child as much as possible; also to make them as independent as possible.
Karen: Still looking for my AIMS report on Teacher Professionalism. I think if you Google “Paul Bennett and Karen Mitchell, Maintaining Spotless Records” it still pops up as a PDF on the AIMS website. It’s also posted on Paul W. Bennett’s http://www.academia.edu page.
Hope that helps.
Got it Paul, thanks: http://www.aims.ca/site/media/aims/Bennett.Mitchell2014-Maintaining%20Spotless%20Records,%20Final.pdf
I don’t know why I keep forgetting that Google can search the whole web better than most sites can search themselves!
Odd, not one single successful nation uses a model anywhere close to this. Even Sweden which adopted a partial voucher system has since then fallen further and further behind Finland with its 95% public system.
As Matt says, why do we keep looking at what losers do instead of studying winners?
Answer: because profeteers and religious fanatics are determined to undermine the public system for reasons other than excellence.
You know Doug, if you could point to your alleged excellence, your arguments would be so much more effective. But I’ve just been skimming several of Paul’s papers, and the evidence of non-excellence is really too pervasive to ignore.
As for successful nations, who says any of the modern nations are optimally successful? As there is no shortage of political opposition in any of them, I would suggest there is room for improvement in all. Unless North Korea is your ideal, of course.
Just because none has yet seen that reducing, rather than increasing, child incarceration and teacher monopolization might be a way toward improvement doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.
When there are no winners to study, you have to innovate. And that is what the US is doing with ESAs. ESAs are not vouchers, they are supplier-diversifiers. And Finland is not successful by many measures, as a nation. You may be confusing that with their PISA results.
Institutional Inversion — Learning Webs
If the spirit of Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society) were with us today, the Nevada ESA project would undoubtedly please him.
Now, this is the timeline as I see it. The kid has to “seat warm” in a public school for 101 days before the parents’ ESA kicks in. That would be February 2016 before the kid can withdraw and funds can be applied to certified options.
There’s five months for things to happen.
1 The state of Nevada and its agencies set up the mechanism for the accounts.
2 Experts will decide what is certifiable as qualified education options — a whole range of possibilities will be considered — camps, farms, swimming lessons, First-aid courses, horseback riding and horse-care, academic camps, church basement classes, technological and online learning, specialized tutoring, teacher co-ops, etc., etc. Arizona has already established many remarkable options for its special needs students.
3 A lot of entrepreneurial energy will be applied to have more options ready for Feb’16.
4 Third party agencies will need to measure (test) for accountability the achievement of education goals, publish results and make them available to inform parents.
Innovation happens. Suppliers are diversified providing many choices. Parents and teachers can organize new schools. In Nevada, with a rapidly increasing population the choice was packing more portables on existing school sites or expanded parental options.
This is what Illich said in 1972:
“The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.” (See “Learning Webs” in the online book http://ournature.org/~novembre/illich/1970_deschooling.html )
Matthew Ladner in his article wrote:
“Education should operate on the basis of voluntary exchange between parents and a wide variety of service providers. School choice 2.0 is moving beyond just choice between schools to include choice between educational methods.
No coercion, no compulsion, no monopoly — just seeking best available education choices as needed.
And to move the discussion right along -From one of the most profound political thinkers of the last century comes insights just as applicable in education reform today as when it was written back then (BTW she also wrote The Banality of Evil reporting on the Eichmann trial)
-http://learningspaces.org/files/ArendtCrisisInEdTable.pdf-
Karin
You cannot let perfect become the enemy of excellent.
Canada places and graduates FAR more people from post secondary than any nation on Earth. There IS a general consensus that Finland, Canada, Japan, SOUTH Korea, and Singapore have the outstanding systems in the world. None use privatization to achieve this. The OECD opposes privatization and says it is counter productive. Chile has abandoned vouchers and Sweden is considering dialing it back since their collapse in rankings is congruent with its privatization.
Any nation that is not achieving needs to look at one word and one word only. It all boils down to POVERTY. Everything else is window dressing. The OECD tells the USA you are ##17 due to poverty exacerbated by “concentration of poverty” full stop.
These arguments to not fit the preconceived ideological arguments of right wingers so they are dismissed out of hand. This makes conservatives look like fools because all of the actual evidence supports the poverty thesis.
Doug, the people cannot let “what there is” be the enemy of “better.” Especially when “getting worse” is pushing in at the windows.
Your platitudes have no force of logic. Graduating from secondary or post secondary in Canada is not due to steadily escalating quality but rather steadily deteriorating expectations.
There is, at this point, no guarantee that a high school graduate can read or work out a percentage, and no guarantee that a university graduate has mastery of their topic.
This is because the toxin in universities, that is, education faculties, has now infected the entire enterprise. Having given discipline status to education, universities have been powerless to avoid using their teaching methods, and at the same time, the products of schools using bad methods (and bad policies) have become the university students, and now even the professors and deans, of today in all the fields. The whole edifice of advanced education is being taken down by a virus, in effect. John Dewey et al hacked in 100 and some years ago, and this is the outcome.
Another frequently cited platitude – I’ll spare you trotting it out – is that immigrants come here because of our excellent education system. This too has no basis in fact, because:
(a) the speaker takes for granted that impressions formed from afar are more accurate than those of people experiencing the system here,
(b) the speaker assumes that “education system” means the public school system, and
(c) the speaker fails to observe that the vast majority of private schools (in BC at least) enjoy the strongest patronage from immigrant communities, suggesting that even if they come for the public system, many immigrants flee it as soon as they experience it.
General consensus among service PROVIDERS is not meaningful when service RECIPIENTS are dissatisfied. As for the OECD, it is simply a parasitic organism growing like a cancerous polyp on the proliferation of child incarceration systems. Imagine an agency 400 years ago that dealt in best methods for getting slaves to their destination countries alive. That’s the equivalent.
A useful international comparison goes this way: ALL modern nations rely on compulsory schooling for the raising of their children. ALL modern nations suffer the same social and economic ills, differing in degree only. Compulsory schooling was an experiment without a control group. It’s time someone thought of trying modern democratic nationhood without child incarceration. Five states in the US are doing so.
The examples you cite have absolutely nothing to do with ESAs. ESAs are not privatization, and they are not vouchers. Both of those latter options are simply a transfer from one form of corporatism to another, and that’s why they fundamentally don’t work any differently than a government controlled system does. Charters don’t work sustainably for a related but different set of reasons that I won’t go into here. Corporatism is defined as a system designed to exert control, harnessing the regulatory power of government. ESAs are the only education reform initiative that is not corporatist.
And then there’s poverty. One really must cultivate a little skepticism, and a good place to exercise it is when prosperous, secure people cite other people’s poverty as a reason why they, the prosperous, cannot be expected to do better. Especially when poverty is cited as a reason why money cannot be taken away from the prosperous and given to the poor whose poverty is being cited.
Let’s go back to Tunya’s interview with John E. Coons. Here’s the crucial quote about poverty:
“Clowes: So if you are going to enhance school choice, it should first be for the poor.
Coons: Absolutely. ”
In opposing (or in your case, I think ignoring) ESAs, you keep the poor from making choices, and from having the money to make them with. As such, your citation of poverty can only be designed to enhance your own comfort and prosperity or that of the system, because it certainly isn’t helping the poor.
High school is actually harder than it has ever been. What is taught in math was taught in university in my day. You are just dead wrong about watering down.
Conservative just refuse to look at the data because all of it proves the left’s point. Test results and rich poor results are practically identical world wide.
Teaching university level math to high school students who have barely been taught to master multiplication and thus cannot grasp it does not negate the point that graduation from either high school or university is becoming increasingly meaningless. For those few who have the capacity to do university math, they should be in university. The timed incarceration of both these sorts of students in a common institution is what is absurd. At least, it is to me. If it makes sense to you, you are welcome to incarcerate your own children, but there is no reason you should have any power over anyone else’s.
And thank you for affirming my point about international comparisons. Every modern nation has dismal outcomes and it’s time someone thought to look to compulsory schools as a source of common problems.
“This makes conservatives look like fools because all of the actual evidence supports the poverty thesis.” yeah right
Denial I’d not just a river in Egypt. Take a look at the results.
Here are the results of reform policies. A serious teacher shortage across America.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/us/teacher-shortages-spur-a-nationwide-hiring-scramble-credentials-optional.html?_r=0&referrer=
Karin you have no clue what you are talking about. Canadian universities are HIGHLY internationally ranked. Canadian born students are graduation at higher rates every year. Almost 60% of Canadians have post secondary degrees or diplomas. No other nation is even close. Russia and Israel are next in order. No nation that uses reform policies is enywhere near the leading group.
You have drunk the reform kool-aid but it is all wrong. Every word and policy is 100% wrong. It has no redeeming features whatsoever.
Vouchers charters and testing actually makes national systems WORSE. The OECD says so.
Who is the OECD? The PISA people, and international capitalist think tank sp once red by the western nations not some pinko UN or union based outfit.
Testing increases the dropout rate as confirmed by four academic studies. The reform movement is wrong on every single issue every day. 60 years of academic study fingers POVERTY as the cause of the achievement gap.
You keep mistaking me for someone who is arguing for “vouchers, charters, and testing” and other corporatist reform initiatives.
Incarcerate in public schools kinda tips the hand of your extremist views. There should not be one red cent of public money for education outside public education. If you want to pay for private education yourself knock yourself out.
The basic fact is that the 94% of students that are in public schools and their families blame politicians like NY Governor Cuomo for the fact that there is now a severe teacher shortage in state after state and in the aggregate. Brilliant work reformers. Nobody wants to work under your conditions.
This Crunch Will Lead To More Education Savings Accounts Plans
Thanks Doug for the link to this NYTimes, Aug 9’15 story. It leads one to think more ESA projects will soon be proposed in more states.
Nevada had similar nagging problems — teacher shortage, ESL populations growing, etc. With adoption of its universal ESA plan, available to all public school parents, Nevada is being seen as a lighthouse. These are some of the reasons Nevada legislators chose this approach to get more “bang for their bucks”:
1 Tight state budgets; seeking alternate ways to save money and still achieve education
2 Rising student enrollments
3 Serious shortage of teachers
4 Crowded classrooms
5 Long waiting lists for popular schools
6 Aversion to placing yet more portables on current school grounds
7 Increase in ESL students, requiring specialist teachers
8 Parents more assertive to get services for special needs children and demanding psychosocial assessments without the long wait periods.
9 Poor school scores comparative to other states
By also providing funds to homeschooling families the teacher shortage will be somewhat alleviated.
Use of church basements and other available community spaces will ease the crunch on school spaces and take pressure off to build new schools if parents and teachers start co-ops.
Parents buying private tutoring services from already established agencies will ease space pressures.
Therapeutic services such as horseback academies will grow to help special needs children.
Many innovations will emerge that are certified as educational and therapeutic.
As well, more parents with their per child allowances, will be able to access private schools directly or by adding their own top-up funds.
Here’s an interesting thing, a 191-page, er, manifesto by Seth Godin. http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/stopstealingdreamsscreen.pdf.
His part 3 offers a historical perspective with a ring of truth to it, and it’s well put – I’ve heard iterations of this previously. Now, mea culpa, I have not read the whole document, but this reminded me of Doug’s concern about poverty.
With this history, it becomes clear that compulsory schooling entrenches poverty. Previously, a family with several children had several helpers, whether in keeping house, in the home business, on the home farm, or as income earners. Now a family with several children has several full dependents, and what’s more, has them till at least 18 if not longer, since they are now in effect prohibited from meaningful income by other obligations till 18 and then barely competent to get a job unless they become a net expense on the family during further training.
Schooling, then, entrenches family poverty in a way that it has never previously been entrenched, and then uses poverty as an excuse for failing to prepare children for meaningful income earning.
One of the most mysterious things about compulsory schooling is why the whole misbegotten enterprise, from the OECD to the union hall, from the highest level of government to the teachers they employ, insists on school/learning as being something that is crammed into childhood. In antiquity this too was not normal, and it is not natural. Children are eager to learn about life. Once they are competent at life, then their interest in more learning emerges naturally, and once they or their families are self-sufficient, they may do so in any manner that suits them while they continue to manage their lives: self-directed, trial-and-error, lecture style, Direct Instruction, immersion, or anything else. And if they wait till later to learn, until they have become economically self-sufficient, then poverty need not interfere with their education.
As it is today, in all modern nations, schooling displaces becoming economically self-sufficient – hence, entrenched, intractable poverty that consumes generation after generation, always using the promise of prosperity later – the carrot, held out in front of the donkey on a stick – if only they will give up the income their children could earn.
Instead, children “must” go to school, where instead of earning an income, they make it possible for millions of fatuous academics and functionaries to do so.
All of this is why Flipping the System is just another meaningless fad, putting a different dress on the same doll. Whether teachers or Ministers of Education set the stage and write the script, it is the power to compel, and specifically the power to compel children, that violates the most fundamental of human rights: the right to survive.
Nowhere has the public been more deceived than in the education sector and education funding.
Our tax dollars support the ongoing sham of zero accountability and the building of the edu-egomaniacs.Are they to be called Dr.`s with a PH.D. when they don`t follow the code of “students first”?
We are in the midst of preparing for a federal election.
For those of you that “know”what`s going on,let`s try to get heard.
Not one comment about the 42% low literacy of our adult population,cultivated in the early grades with completely flawed pedagogy,empty of all integrity.
Only one thing wins-Pearson and Nelson..ever take a look at some of those curriculums sold across our great nation and causing a failure epidemic?
And please Paul-don`t tout the merger of Educamp and ResearchEd…they are 2 very different views on education-one is entrepeneurial and airy fairy..the other has it`s viewpoints grounded in Research.They are a bright light..I say to them-finally,the voice of reason.
Where are our education mandates in our federal election?
My comment on ResearchEd and EdCamp was intended to suggest that EdCamp would benefit from a more research-based approach. Teacher-led research, independent of the unions, would produce much richer PD experiences. I attended ResearchED NYC, as you know, and it’s very presenter-centred. There’s room for more engagement in those conferences.
You can rest assured that I have not completely lost it…because most of what comes out of EdCamp sessions is “feel-good” curriculum and mutations of faddish concepts like “makerspace” creative learning.
The federal government has zero influence on K-12 education except for First Nations and funding for post secondary.
It seems to me that for most generations, teachers had a fair degree of autonomy in their classrooms. It has only been the last few years that governments and school boards have taken a greater role in prescribing what a classroom should look like and how things should be taught. A simple return to a system where teachers had more freedom to teach in ways that met the needs of their students would be a step in the right direction.
There needs to be more coordination between federal and provincial governments about the long term goals for our educated children. We have a disjointed system currently where the federal government promotes grants for apprenticeships while provinces have a more university bound focus for teaching our children.
Teacher autonomy is the ideal, Matt, but it is insufficient as a way of promoting professional growth. We need to look at positive incentives as well as accountability. Over a 30 year period, I’ve seen it all – teacher autonomy and little accountability to testing everything that moves, limiting teacher independence. In the 2000’s, I began to see the unintended consequences of testing and accountability, but brushed it aside I think that testing, driven by bureaucratic managerialism, has become part of the problem.
Keep this in mind: Systematizers in public education never go away and seem intent on standardizing as much as they can around them. In the 1980s, it was OBE and the curriculum and now it is standardized testing. Symmetrical thinking and one-size-fits all solutions are the real obstacle to improving teaching and learning. In 2010, Diane Ravitch had it half-right before she was captured by the school-reform resistors. That’s what saddens me.
Matt has asked for both more teacher autonomy and more government control at the same time. Put this way, those are not compatible goals; they are mutually exclusive. They are, however, both attainable if governments relate directly to parents while teachers become authentically autonomous. That is, with some system along the lines of Education Savings Accounts.
Paul, I mean no disrespect by saying that teacher autonomy cannot be an ideal in a government-run system. In a government-run system, the minister of education is responsible for it, and s/he cannot be responsible if s/he is not in control. Granting autonomy to teachers would be an illegal delegation of authority, and seeking teacher autonomy is seditious.
Autonomy also cannot be an ideal within a system that enjoys patronage by compulsion. The service provider cannot claim autonomy as to how to deal with a captive clientele, because there are certain conditions attached to the compulsion. Any degree of autonomy achieved within a system that has multiple levels of compulsion and that buffers teachers entirely from the consequences of any autonomous decisions they might make, has no authenticity at all. Any appearance of autonomy that is achieved is actually power, cloaked in a mantle of autonomy.
In fact, teacher autonomy does not work even within an individual school, because teachers must work within a school’s mandate. Principal autonomy works to a degree, even if constrained within government policy, but teacher autonomy does not unless a teacher is a sole service provider in an entrepreneurial setting.
If teachers wish to be autonomous, they must be responsible, and they can only be responsible as individuals.
Teacher autonomy within government schooling cannot exceed the degree of autonomy exercised by, say, border guards. The guards have considerable leeway in how they apply the policies of their department, but their job IS to apply the policies. They cannot substitute a different set of policies and objectives for those under which they are contracted to work. But in education, there are constant attempts to supplant the government’s policies. For example, the BCTF has adopted a competing mandate for the BC public education system.
But all that said, if, indeed, authentic autonomy is the ideal, then there is no role at all for teacher collectivism. An autonomous individual does not exercise their voice nor negotiate their contracts as one of 40,000 people.
The problem Paul, and the reason Diane a Ravitch is right, is that there was absolutely no need for reform in the first place. All of that time and effort (on both sides) has all been for nothing.
Despite all the “reforms” in USA, UK Australia … has done NOTHING to improve their international standing.
All social science research in this area from Coleman to Berliner has shown exactly the same thing- poverty is the issue – the only issue. When you eliminate poverty like Finland you get education results like Finland.
The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of standardization and testing everything that moves. Accountability of teachers is important, but the question is… what makes a great teacher? Connecting incentives and accountability to test results only paints a limited picture about the role of teachers in the lives of students.
I think again there needs to be a discussion about increasing local funding of education. I don’t know if there is Canadian research that shows that standardized test scores were lower when funding was more localized. Local funding allows smaller groups to have greater input into education. These smaller groups would also have opportunities to develop methods of accountability that suits the goals of the local community. Centralizing funding only encourages more and more people to feel that they should have input into how their tax dollars are spent. There is also a belief that just because some schools have something than other schools need it too.
Matt, there is no room for any small group decision making in the raising of children. Raising a child is an individual enterprise. Groups of people can have their impact on how children are raised through their participation in the organizing of the adult society within which the parenting is done, but even a small group evaluating a child’s schooling is wrong from a family law perspective.
And again, I see you calling for two different things here. If local control is a solution, then one cannot impose the objective of increasing test scores. Some communities will value entirely different qualities than test scores. If there is an imposed objective, there is no point in giving control to smaller groups, because the control is just window dressing.
I like your point about how central funding encourages more people to feel they should have input. It applies equally to central objectives.
Denationalization — THE REASON To Flip The System
Just received my copy of the book being discussed — Flip The System: changing education from the ground up. A quick skim tells me there is a FEAR going round — that the education system is itself shifting — and teachers feel their safe haven in public schools is being threatened by “denationalization” ! ! ! !
Here is a closing statement from the two authors, Evers and Kneyber:
“ . . . more and more states are losing the ability to control their education systems — something we can refer to as denationalization.”
That’s much more accurate than calling what’s happening as “privatization” !
So true. Different models of education of the young are being developed and the Education Savings Account is one of the best, in my opinion, coming from a parent and grandparent. Yes, better than charters, vouchers, magnet schools, etc., etc. Please do check out this video which I link in this reply I just sent to Jay P Greene’s blog:
ESAs — Education Watershed
An hour spent with this video is so worthwhile. The promise of meeting education needs of children in their lifetime through Education Savings Accounts in parents’ banks is so promising. Hopefully we in Canada can keep pace with this far-reaching model.
As policy analysts point out this is the smart phone vs. the rotary phone. The watershed analogy is quite correct and the speakers in this video show how this turning point, once established, is irreversible.
• Unbundling the school system — services, subjects, skill-training need not happen in one building
• Experimentation, innovation, diversity, leads to a natural evolution
• Student progress depends on proficiency not compulsory seat time
• Quarterly reports to monitoring agency checks authenticity of spending before next release of funds
• Parents themselves start help lines re how-to, choices, and positive/negative reviews of products, services
• The potential is there to meet disparate and unique needs of a wide variety of young students — special needs, Native Americans, low-performing schools, foster children, ESL, etc.
Considering the projected financial cost-saving to states, plus superior education results and high parent satisfaction surveys, hopefully, this model will spread quickly.
The facinating thing is that all of the highly successful nations, Canada, Finland, Japan, Korea use a high quality almost totally public, highly unionized system to achieve their goals.
Privatization is proceeding in loser nations like US UK. Those who experimented like Sweden and Chile are now reversing themselves.
Three cheers for research as it proves the above thesis.
The problem with your perspective, Doug, is that it disregards the bulk of the research about student, vs about nation, success – as indeed do agencies like the OECD. The only research you see is material that averages children out. But what your perspective entirely fails to account for is that successful nations include many unsuccessful children, and vice versa.
Parents do the most research on individual children. They study them daily, throughout their lives, and do comparative analysis. This research is, however, not published, not read, and not regarded.
In BC presently, there is a rash of deaths and near-deaths in teenagers due to heroin that has been poisoned with fentanyl. The system-sized research that you so value is ignoring this evidence, but parents of younger children are carefully studying these incidents and will be analyzing how to avoid them. There is a connection with schooling, and parents who wish their children to avoid this particular risk will be making this connection.
Let’s remember that Finland, your favourite successful nation, has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and that its school system developed as it did in part due to a high rate of alcoholism among parents, and institutionalizing children was an easier answer to this than addressing the alcoholism.
You are all about macro, while most people have some micro interests on which they will act, and have a legal right to act, regardless of the effect on the macro. The macro picture is the SUM of micro acts, and must change in response to them – the other way around is dictatorial. You keep trying to control the micro to add up to the result you want, and that is why you are an oppressive force that begets opposition. Your totalitarian outlook generates opposition in discussion just as totalitarianism in governance generates it in real life.
“It’s a great nation so 8 children per year must die of fentanyl poisoning” just doesn’t sit well with parents – and the fact that they need not let it is what makes Canada a great (or at least greatish) country.
As you can see the entire education system delivers class based results. Only income equality can provide educational opportunity.
Those who believe education cures poverty are blind. Curing poverty fixes education.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/11798317/No-matter-what-A-levels-you-get-your-parents-wealth-will-still-determine-your-future.html
Tunya aggregate education is all we need to concern ourselves with. “Reform” has proven totally ineffective at raising national results and when that finally becomes clear to Americans among others it will be rejected.
Americans are primarily worried that being #17 is a problem. Actually it isn’t. The way they have polarized their jobs between high tech vs service industry being #17 actually doesn’t matter.
Individual results are neither here nor there. It is the collectively that matters in the end.
YES, Aggregate Measures Are One Important Marker
In a year-end report, if results are UP, people feel their project is improving and succeeding.
In education, provided that variables* remain unchanged, scores continuing to go UP means that’s progress. (* Variables that affect scores include social promotion, dumbing-down curriculum, easier marking and other policies affecting performance and scoring.)
Yes, aggregate measures are important not only to the industry of public education but also they matter very much to the taxpayer — are they getting bang for their buck — is education actually happening?
This preface leads me to talk about Nevada’s Education Savings Account initiative, scheduled to proceed in the new year of 2016.
The gamble that is being played out is that the legislators are betting that they will achieve lower education costs, more satisfied parents, more educated students achieving at expected grade levels, and higher state achievement scores in standardized tests.
Nevada scores way down towards the bottom of 50 states!
This is an experimental reform that is built on some already good research evidence from 4 other similar state programs. We won’t know for a number of years how the scores will compute in Nevada’s project. The implementers are projecting excellent results on a number of benchmarks
What is regrettable is that a group of the usual suspects are opposing and litigating against this development. Why obstruct progress? Especially when not only the aggregate is expected to rise but the accomplishment of individual education goals and aspirations of so many more families and their children is also predicted ?
Or perhaps more germane, why would someone who, like Doug, is always citing the “research” obstruct further research? Because that is exactly what Nevada is doing – research.
If the majority of modern breast cancer specialists of the 1970s and 80s had had their way, no research on the efficacy of lumpectomies relative to total mastectomy would ever have been done. Overall survival rates were the best in the world, as their own research showed. Lumpectomies courted an unacceptable risk, in their view.
BUT IT WAS A RISK THAT ENOUGH PATIENTS FELT WAS WORTH TAKING. So the studies went ahead. Now it is no longer a given that post-breast-cancer survival entails perpetual swollen arms and the need for elastic bandages, disfiguring removal of the chest musculature, and other side effects deemed nearly intolerable by breast cancer survivors but inevitable and acceptable by their surgeons.
It was the patients – never the surgeons – who took the risk, and so it has been and will be in education. The beneficiaries of the status quo are always risk averse. The casualties of the status quo are not.
We don’t need experiments. We know what works. 95% public very well funded unionized environments work. We know that already.
Time to impose heavy taxes on private schools.
If Nevada works out like other states it will make no aggregate difference. Nevada is one of the state’s with a huge influx of Latinos mainly Mexicans. ESA are a way for not Latinos to escape poorer Latino schools. Why keep looking at odd ball experiments when leading nations show how it is done?
WWFD (What would Finland do?)
The entire idea of vouchers first arose with desegregation of the south. Racist whites wanted to escape going to school with blacks but didn’t want to pay private rates.
Basically the same motivation exists today. May shift from only black to a Latino and poor but same motivation.
At yet, Doug, it is precisely the fanaticism of your orthodox views and denialism that makes it impossible keep the conversation at the aggregate level. One cannot aggregate with someone whose perspective flattens everyone else into an immobile stereotype.
Black, Latino, and/or poor parents are among the plaintiffs defending ESAs. ESAs defeat their poverty barriers. It is only yourself you are painting into your mental corner. You appear happy there, but constraining others into it has a rapidly-approaching best-before date.
Karin Litzcke Agree with everything you say.and more posted here
There are major civil rights groups that oppose charter reform for example.
Some black groups have been deluded into thinking that without testing they will not be able to show that the system is racist.
Meanwhile there are 4 excellent academic studies that show that testing increases the dropout rate.
NAACP opposes charters and vouchers. Some black local leaders believe in charters because they want “black power control of Afrocentred charters is if it mattered” the majority od Chicago teachers are black. Makes almost no difference. Poverty is the issue. Race is just a catalyst.
society for quality education banned him from the site for this very reason,Doug`s politics don`t allow any conversation.
Parents hated to write in and receive these assaults.
I think we all feel the same way,good for you Karin,you haven`t lost your morale.
I haven`t either ,not at all.There is tremendous hope for improvement but sadly,we certainly can`t discuss it and get possible input from other educators or parents..Doug`s too busy telling us why and how we`re wrong.
Perhaps it’s time for a break because the discussion is degenerating again.
Reforms are always going to be a challenge in education because you ask 30 people what they deem as necessary reforms and you’re going to get 30 different answers. From the role of public education to how things should be taught, everyone has a different perspective and different experiences that have shaped their views.
If we want successful reforms in education than we will need to also consider reforms to society as a whole.
Exactly why there cannot BE a “conversation” about education that does not degenerate into an attempt at mutual coercion; there can only be freedom to act. The conversation is doomed so long as schooling is collectively compulsory and under a single entity’s control. The control of that entity is the prize in a never-ending civil war. Fortunately, we still fight with words in this country.
Just when it seemed that this topic was running out of steam — a light-bulb went on in New York City! Co-founder of Educators for Excellence Evan Stone, a New York teacher, caught the ear of The New York Times by asking “Who would go into teaching knowing it meant doing the same thing, over and over again, for thirty years?”
Teacher-led research would make answering that question a priority. It would also open the door to openly discussing fundamental changes including “career ladders, specialized roles, and teacher mentoring partnerships. Heavens, some North Americans might even stumble upon Stephen Dinham’s Australian model of Career Ladder teacher Development and Rewards.
Dinham sounds interesting:
http://www.aitsl.edu.au/docs/default-source/default-document-library/stakeholder_forum_measuring_and_recognising_effective_teaching_slides_101130
However, career ladder, mentorship, etc have been around for 20 years in Toledo & other locals of the US Teacher Union Reform Network. I studied those in my report on TURN in 2001.
Such initiatives and others designed to promote teacher success cannot overcome the economic and political incentives that predispose agencies to pursuing teacher failure. Until those monkeys (the agencies) are taken off teachers’ backs, teachers cannot be expected to excel, and once the monkeys are removed, teachers will excel effortlessly, without interminable superficial academic analyses of what they SHOULD be doing if only every force that acts on them were not pushing them in the opposite direction.
UBC/BCTF/BC Min of Ed currently are setting up a mentoring initiative. It’s just another cash grab for empire growth that will do nothing for individual teachers except place more demands on them to attend seminars, work longer hours, and subject themselves to more peer-reinforcement of the deliberate failure ethic.
Here’s a window into that particular job creation initiative:
http://teach.educ.ubc.ca/event/mentorship-institute-2-3-4-july-2015/
And as long as they can compel children to donate 13 years of their lives, every new iteration of teacher quality improvement will be a scam – taking advantage of teachers.
Education Ground Shifting — Will It Be Rescue & Salvage OR INNOVATE?
The big shift as I see it is towards consumer-driven developments in education. AWAY from system needs, priorities, rent-seeking, elite capture, behind closed doors collective bargaining, language changes, subversive behaviors, etc., etc. Flipping the system to favor teacher driven agendas is not going to work in mass education systems.
School-based management doesn’t have much interest now. Educator career ladders will only work in a tightly managed mass-production government civil service system.
AND, ironic for me to say, these developments toward customer satisfaction have little to do with any real pent-up demand from the consumer (families) NOR any parent movements. I, having worked steadfastly for the parent voice in education decision-making for the last 45 years, can say it’s not due to any of my efforts or that of like-minded advocates. Except, my involvement in home education movement, little else has stuck. (PS: HE, another essay to come, has had significant effect on these new shifts of mind and behavior.)
NO, it’s raw economics that’s driving new ideas and new ventures. Not the least of the reasons for Nevada’s near-universal Education Savings Account plan was its state budget problems. To fulfill the constitutional mandate to educate the young the state would have had to build tons more schools and hire many more teachers. Instead, they decide to release state funds (note: federal funds excluded) to parents to seek education where they can find it, and upon satisfactory quarterly reports, will continue to access their accounts.
Kansas has just signed a waiver bill to keep its public schools running in dire teacher-shortage, but by loosening the teacher credentialing procedures. Non-licensed personnel will be able to operate in areas belonging to the Coalition of Innovative Districts. This is to provide for flexibility in hiring and meeting the needs of students. http://cjonline.com/news/2015-07-14/state-board-passes-controversial-licensure-waiver
The BIG SHIFT is that governments are seeing that constitutionally — they are obliged to ensure education of the young — but that they don’t have to PROVIDE it.
To provide, produce,coerce the actual education (schooling) can be seen in TWO elementary radical ways: 1) it’s government indoctrination; or 2) it’s welfare assistance with government workers doing the work.
Probably the world’s #1 researcher of meta analysis says standards, choice and testing are no help in education.
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/08/13/430050765/five-big-ideas-that-don-t-work-in-education
Doug, who are you talking to? No one here has advocated standards, your limited understanding of “choice” as vouchers or charters, or testing.
Tunya is right, of course. My neighbourhood association has been lobbying unsuccessfully for years to reduce traffic on a local arterial road, and it seems we have suddenly got the city on side so we feel like we’ve won, but the fact is that what changed the city’s mind is that the Port plans to increase train traffic on a rail line that crosses the arterial. The Port wants the road closed outright, so “we” are going to get our wish. Truth is, we’d be getting this outcome whether we wished it or not.
At least, I think Tunya is partly right. It’s not just economics but politics and other unseen pressures to which the system is yielding.
Kirin
Charters vouchers testing and “higher standards” anti-unionism are a package. They form the pillars of the reform movement in education. I am not necessarily addressing you if you do not support all of these but the vast majority of reformers do support ALL. It is your limited focus that is in question.
BTW none of these reforms will remove the education gap as is becoming increasingly clear.
Overburdened Welfare State Sets Parents Free To Choose Schools
Even archconservatives accept that the state of today is a welfare state. Bread and circuses of old.
But even arch socialists like Daniel Bell (sociologist author, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, d 2011) admit that the welfare state can suffer excessive strain from insistent demands on public funds. Overburdened. Look at some of the headlines in Google:
– Child welfare system overburdened — Colorado could use at least 696 new employees . . .
– Jerry Brown Shrinks From Real Reform — WSJ — California has led the nation in so many ways, so it seems fitting that it is now showing the rest of us what the collapse of an overburdened welfare state looks like . . .
– The welfare state and the crisis: the case of Greece — etc., etc.
When a huge crisis looms, you do the best you can to survive, even if heartbreaking. Look at this story about BC wildfires: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/heartbroken-rock-creek-evacuees-set-animals-free-to-flee-wildfire-1.3191836
Well, Nevada faced a financial crunch — teacher shortage, overcrowded classrooms, need to build more schools, state budget problems, etc. Accountants did the calculations. And checked the alternatives. The legislators decided to let the parents on its public education rolls free to find their own providers.
The Education Savings Account plan is not yet in place. Parents are to open bank accounts for state education funds (deposited quarterly) to enable education or therapy choices from their community. Scheduled for early 2016. Also, still under dispute and in litigation. But, you see the drift.
The question was asked how would students be made college-ready. The answer was they would qualify under the same provisions as do homeschooled students.
This is not privatization as claimed by all the writers in the new book, Flip The System. They claim teachers in the public education system lack voice and agency in the current setup. Rather, it’s denationalization. Or deinstitutionalization as in the writings of Ivan Illich.
Constitutionally, the state is obliged to ensure opportunity for its young to be educated but it does not need to physically provide it. Public schools will still be there as a safety net. But, besides cost efficiencies the state will also be avoiding the tedious waves of education “reform” that beset the industry.
Teachers should anticipate such moves and have fallback plans in place when this hits their zone.
Your intent is to make public education the educational equivalent of public housing.
No educationally successful nation uses this model. This model exists for one purpose only -to make billionaires even richer. Looks like Rupert Murdock is pulling out. Not that easy. Reform has accomplished nothing whatsoever but to create a severe teacher shortage which plays right into the hands of the teacher unions.
Doug Little “Your intent is to make public education the educational equivalent of public housing”. (this time your’re right on the mark 🙂
If you were honest about it nobody would support that. No successful nation does that.
Americans do not support vouchers.
They want less testing and
They do not support using test scores to measure teachers.
Gallup for Kappa. PDK.
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