What Education Reformers Can’t Do (And What They Should)

The corporate education reformers love to tell teachers what they need to do, what they have failed to do and where they need to place their focus. One of their favorite pieces of advice to teachers is that since teachers can’t fix the problems outside of school (such as poverty), they should focus on what they can do in school, which is improve instruction and learning.

I am all for the continuous improvement of teaching and learning, in fact, I have dedicated my life to it, first as a classroom teacher and later as a teacher leader. I believe that most of us who are in education are dedicated to continuous improvement of practice; that is the very definition of professionalism.

To believe, as we are told by the corporate education reformers, that education is the only or best way to end poverty in this country, is to believe in magical thinking. Poverty is not the fault of lax education and poor educators and it cannot be fixed by focusing on the classroom.

But, since the reformers like to tell educators what they can and cannot do, I would like to return the favor. Here is a list of things that various reformer groups can’t do, along with some suggestions for what they can do.

Education Reform Plutocrats

What they can’t do: Improve the quality of public education through market forces.   

    

            These plutocrats love to spend their tax deductible dollars in an attempt to reshape public education in their own narrow corporate competition model. The model will not work. Study after study has shown that effective school improvement comes through a strong collaborative process that involves teachers and school leaders working together on continuous improvement (Anrig, 2013). The corporate competitive model, which includes charter schools, vouchers and teacher accountability based on test scores kills collaboration and turns public education into a reality TV version of The Hunger Games.

            The “market forces” paradigm will enrich a few corporations and a few individuals and destroy public education, without improving teaching and learning.

What they can do: Spend their money elsewhere for the public good.

            1. Support wrap around programs that provide for prenatal health care for all children, universal high    quality pre-school and health clinics in schools in high poverty areas.

            2. Support a livable minimum wage

            3. Pay a fair share of taxes, instead of hiding behind tax dodges, and support the spending of those tax dollars on making sure poor people have more money. This country significantly reduced senior citizen poverty through Social Security. Similar programs would reduce poverty much more significantly than a focus on schools could. Making sure people have more money is the only way to attack poverty (Bruenig, 2013).

The US Department of Education and Arne Duncan

What they can’t do: Test and punish schools into improvement.

            No Child Left Behind established that test and punish was a bankrupt educational reform plan. By bribing states to double down on that false idea, through Race to the Top, Duncan and Obama have insured a narrow curriculum focused on what is being tested and a toxic school climate where teachers and supervisors view each other as enemies rather than partners.

What they can do: Get out of the test and punish business

            Since the 1980’s the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has shown to be a rigorous and reasonably valid and reliable assessment of how our nation’s school children are performing. This is the only assessment with which the federal government need concern itself.

            Once out of the test and punish business, the US DOE and Mr. Duncan can  focus on building partnerships for innovation with public schools aimed at collaboration and professional development aligned to sound educational practice.

Charter Schools

What they can’t do: Claim to be public schools

            As long as charters use methods to exclude struggling learners from their rolls, maintain unusually high attrition and suspension rates, use draconian discipline policies and fight audits of their finances, they cannot claim to be public schools and they should not receive public funds.

What they can do: Become partners within the public school system and centers of innovation

            This would mean reverting to the model of charter schools envisioned by Albert Shankar, where public school educators joined together to try out innovation with hard to teach children in charter schools and then shared the ideas that work with teachers in other schools.

           

Governors:

What they can’t do: Improve education by attempting to destroy teachers unions, raiding pensions and denying teachers due process rights.

What they can do: Insure that urban areas get their fair share of tax dollars so that they can provide a quality education in an adequately staffed, fiscally stable, safe, clean learning environment.

Teach for America

What they can’t do: Teach (unqualified and uncertified)

What they can do: Remake themselves as Teacher Aides for America (TAFA) and work as valuable teacher aides in the classroom, while taking coursework toward teacher certification (if they do want to make a career of teaching).

Michelle Rhee

What she can’t do: Run a school district

What she can do: Go away. Please.

I will end with this quote from Matt Bruenig, “I can’t tell if education reformers are stupid, riddled with ideology, or just trying to make their projects seem grander than they are. But when they say you can’t solve poverty without education, they are wrong wrong wrong. If they don’t stop saying it, they should rightly be understood as antagonistic to the interests of poor people” http://mattbruenig.com/2013/09/21/education-and-poverty-again/

Public Education Meets Carrot and Stick: Kids Lose

The only advantage I can imagine to being stuck on the tarmack for 2 hours at Austin-Bergstrom Airport last week while the plane was being de-iced was that I got time to read Greg Anrig's excellent book, Beyond the Education Wars: Evidence that Collaboration Builds Effective Schools, which  has been sitting on my Kindle for a few months now. Anrig, is vice president, programs, at The Century Foundation, author of several books and a former journalist.

Anrig's book begins with a brief history of management theory, focusing on two dominant theories put forward by Frederick Winslow Taylor and W. Edwards Deming. Taylor's thoeries eminated from the idea that workers could not be trusted and so he designed a management style based on punishment and reward. Taylor determined how much a worker should be producing and set workers goals accordingly and then tied their pay to productivity. Modern exemplars of the Taylor approach are bill collecting agencies, customer service call centers and national retail chains (Walmart?).

Decades later, Deming, working in Japan after World War II, argued that long term business success required constant incremental progress, the kind that required workers and management to be deeply engaged in sharing information and ideas with each other. Modern day exemplars of the Deming model include Toyota, Sony, Southwest Airlines and Kaiser Permanente.

Clearly, as Anrig points out, the national political debate over education reform has been driven by the Taylor model of management. There is a direct line from the Taylor model to such reformy ideas as merit pay, standardized testing and tying teacher evaluations to test scores. In other words, education reformers have embraced Taylor's carrot and sticks management style of education that failed the American auto and steel industries and that is currently used for only the most low levels of employment.

Anrig shows that there is ample evidence that this carrot and stick method will not work in schools and plenty of evidence that a more collaborative approach, such as that endorsed by Deming, and used by many of the most successful corporations in the world, is a better way to go.

Anrig cites solid research reports starting in 1990 that support the concept of a collaborative design for school improvement. These studies include those done by the Consortium for Chicago Social Research, The National Center for Educational Achievement and Century Foundation fellow Gordon MacInnes all of which come down to two key findings, strong leadership matters and a strong culture of collaboration between teachers and school leadership matters most of all.

The studies found that change is slow and incremental, but it can be successful in any setting, including in high poverty areas, although change is even more challenging there.

Education reformers do not trust teachers. Because they do not trust teachers, just as Taylor did not trust industrial workers long ago, reformers put forward management plans that seek to control workers, rather than engage professionals in systematic improvement. Education reformers wish to motivate change with the carrot of merit pay and the stick of the highly flawed Value Added Measures (VAMs) tying teacher evaluation to student scores on standardized tests.

We know, and Anrig's book very persuasvley lays out, what works. Collaboration works. Teachers and principals working together to improve schools works. Having teachers compete for merit pay through flawed VAMs, not only will not work, but it will destroy the very collaboration that is so necessary for a highly functioning school culture.

We want teachers working together to share instructional ideas, to puzzle out solutions to persistent problems, to design authentic assessments for students. The concept of the professional learning community, where teachers meet to share ideas and solve problems holds great promise for the continuous improvement of teaching and learning. The test and punish model of the corporate education reformers will inevitably kill collegiality and cooperation and, ultimately, public education.

Concerted group action is the enemy of corporate education reform movement. That is why the reformers demonize teacher unions and support policies that will turn teacher against teacher. By driving a wedge through the profession, the education reformers hope to destroy public education and turn it to a for profit enterprise run like a widget factory. This is one way to distract the public from the real issue facing school improvement - poverty. And poverty is one thing the corporate education reformers do not want to touch. Really dealing with poverty would upset the status quo that is paying off so handsomely for the 1%.

In these times, it is more important than ever for teachers to stick together, not only in the sense of unions, but also in the sense of building and maintaining the kind of collegial culture in the every school  that reasearch has shown is the one true way to effect continuous improvement.

Reading Anrig's book will help arm all in the profession against the false narrative of the corporate education reform movement.

Anrig, Greg. (2013) Beyond the Education Wars: Evidence that Collaboration Builds Effective Schools. New York: The Century Foundation Press.

Pearson Announces the Education Reformer Starter Kit

Pearson International, bullish on the profit potential of the education reform movement, has decided to branch out beyond the development of Common Core aligned tests and curriculum materials and is now offering The Education Reformer Starter Kit, designed for those venture capitalists, Wall Street Financial Analysts, and former sports stars who wish to get into the lucrative business of privatizing public education.

Pearson spokesperson, Phillip (Flip) Emoff, said the starter kit is custom made for the aspiring entrepreneur looking for new opportunities to tap into public funds for personal profit. "The public coffers may be the last frontier for big business," said Emoff, "and our starter kit will provide all the young Ivy League grad will need to tap into that market."

The Education Reformer Starter Kit will contain the following:

• The All Occasion Reformy Phrase Book - Contains all purpose phrases designed to resonate with politicians and journalists and deflect real questions from parents and teachers. Some of the phrases include: We're in it for the kids; Work Hard, Be Nice; No Excuses; Poverty is not destiny; Zip Codes should not determine opportunity; unions protect bad teachers; and many more.
• A completed application, ready for signature, for a grant from The Gates Foundation
• A letter of recommendation from Jeb Bush and Educators for Excellence
• A lifetime membership in Chiefs for Change
• A Teaching Certificate approved by the United States Senate
• A Common Core Decoder Ring
• A DVD of David Coleman's close readings of iconic American texts
• A framed 8 by 10 glossy of Michelle Rhee suitable for hanging
• A "Get Out of School Free Card" (for use after 2 years)
• An Arne Duncan Action Figure
• A gift certificate for dance lessons with Mike Petrilli
• A "Teach Like a Champion" lapel pin
• An all purpose PARCC Standardized Test with gold plated number 2 pencil
• A Charter School co-location divining rod
• A "No Excuses" coffee mug
• A Diane Ravitch voodoo doll

Spokesperson Emoff said the kit will be in stores this spring at a list price of $99.99. Expect discounted prices at Walmart.

The House That Gates Built

When I taught in the primary grades, I loved to read aloud to children cumulative story books like There was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly, The Napping House, and The House that Jack Built. Here is a reformy version of that last title. If you want to read the original you can find it here.

The House that Gates Built

This is the house that Gates built.

This is the money that lay in the house that Gates built.

These are core standards that were bought with the money that lay in the house that Gates built.

These are the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

These are the children all forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

These are the teachers all tattered and torn

Who are judged by test scores of children forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

These are the TFAs newly shaven and shorn

Who replace the teachers all tattered and torn

Who are judged by test scores of children forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

These are the reformers smearing teachers with scorn

Who hire the TFAs newly shaven and shorn

Who replace the teachers all tattered and torn

Who are judged by test scores of children forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

This is the Secretary, apparently sworn

To defend reformers smearing teachers with scorn

Who hire TFAs newly shaven and shorn

Who replace the teachers tattered and torn

Who are judged by test scores of children forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

This is the President, champion of reform,

Who appointed the Secretary, apparently sworn        

To defend the reformers heaping teachers with scorn

Who hire the TFAs newly shaven and shorn

Who replace the teachers tattered and torn

Who are judged by test scores of children forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

Arne’s World

In 2009 two things happened that we're bad for children: Elmo's World stopped production and Arne Duncan became Secretary of Education. 

Over the past five years, children and all advocates for children and public education have been entangled in Arne’s World.

Arne's World (to the tune of Elmo's World)

Lalalalalala lalalalala

Arne's World                                                            

Lalalalala lalalalala

Arne's World (Arne's World)

Arne loves his charters 

And his Common Core

That's Arne's World.

YEAH!

In Arne’s World, American school children are dumb and educators have been lying to parents about their children’s progress. Read more

In Arne’s World, “white suburban moms” are deluded about the abilities of their children and the Common Core and standardized tests will set them straight. Read more

In Arne’s World, bribing governors and state education leaders to adopt the Common Core and teacher evaluation based on test scores is the American Way. Read more

In Arne’s World public school teachers are the problem. Read more

In Arne’s World teacher preparation programs are the problem. Read more

In Arne’s World, merit pay will improve the quality of learning for children. Read more

In Arne’s World, Bill Gates has no seat at the education policy table, despite being the person who financed the development and implementation of the Common Core and despite having financed the MET study that advocates for teacher evaluation and compensation based on standardized test scores. Read more

In Arne’s World, Hurricane Katrina, which killed hundreds of people, is the best thing that ever happened to education in New Orleans. Read more

In Arne’s World, the way to address struggling neighborhood public schools is to close them and turn them over to charter school privatizers. Read more

So, welcome to Arne’s World folks. A world of self-delusion and arrogance. A world that invites the powerful plutocrat to the table, while belittling the people on the front lines trying to make a difference every day. A world where closing a school is a better solution than working with parents, teachers and community members to improve a school. A world where kids are dumb and their parents deluded. A world where teachers are the problem instead of part of the solution. A world where you can say "poverty is not destiny", and then ignore its impact on learning. A world where public education, a crowning achievement of American democracy, is being handed over to private interests. 

Last year we learned from Tea Party zealots, that it is difficult to have a functioning government when elected representatives don’t believe in government. Over the past five years we have learned that it is difficult to move forward in public education when the Secretary of Education does not believe in public education.