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Current School Reform Is Bad Math

Here is a list of reasons why the advocates and priorities of the current school reform movement don't add up.

Venture philanthropy is a relatively new concept (i.e. buzz word) in education reform, but it’s largely driving the education reform movement. Financed by billionaires, well-funded foundations and conservative PACs, and championed by everyone from Bill Gates to Michelle Rhee to U.S. Education Sectary Arne Duncan, the movement pushes for a free-market approach to public education. There are two fundamental issues with the movement; venture philanthropy advocates for a data-driven approach, but the data doesn’t support this type of school reform. The other issues is that applying a private sector solution to a public sector problem will inevitably change one into the other.

Here’s a run-down of the contradictions and lapses in logic guiding the current education reform agenda.

Michelle Rhee – A education reform darling and the poster child (along with her StudentsFirst organization) for cutting school budgets, increasing accountability, and attaching teacher pay to test scores; Rhee has exactly three years of real in-the-classroom experience from back in the 1990’s. Plus, she’s making a lot of money (personally) by being the poster child for this well-funded reform movement, which often has the effect of sustaining ideology even in the face of bad math.

Arne Duncan – Former superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, worked with the Gates Foundation in the early aughts when Bill and Melinda were just starting to dabble in social engineering via “venture philanthropy.” The first education reform effort, which Duncan agreed to pilot in Chicago with the Gates’ money, failed miserably. Today, the Department of Education, lead by Duncan, is staffed with friend and former employees of the Gates’ Foundation as it works pass Bill and Melinda's "education reform 2.0."

Gates’ Foundation – The Gates Foundation promote using venture capitalism strategies in philanthropic endeavors. In this case, applying free-market ideas to improving the public education system. The Foundation, and their many partners, advocate for higher teacher pay which is tied to student performance, particularly on standardized tests. They also advocate for corporate-style reorganization of failing schools, often by for-profit companies or private companies backed by public funds and a public charter. However, venture capitalism also uses sound data to build strategy, which is not necessarily present in venture philanthropy.

Teacher Pay and Student Test Scores – Evidence clearly shows that a value-added formula for assessing teachers’ performance based on student test scores is inconsistent and inconclusive. There are frequently wild swings from year to year in student achievement, because “value-added” looks at the performance of a teachers’ students year-to-year, which means they’re taking data from different students each time. Even Michelle Rhee, who supports value added formulas for determining teacher pay, that they’re not accurate. But, she says, “they’re the best measure we have.” Who would want their salary based on something with that kind of endorsement?

Charter Schools – Every nonpartisan study on the effectiveness of charter schools fails to provide clear evidence for or against. Some charter schools function remarkably better than the public school they reorganized (like the ones highlighted in the documentary Waiting for Superman). However, many charters also perform much worse than the schools they replaced. Finally, and this is an argument almost as old as the country itself, increased privatization will only create even larger inequities in the education system. The research backs this up, showing that from Florida to Colorado to Connecticut, low-income and minority children are served in far fewer numbers than traditional public schools. If closing the achievement gap between vulnerable populations of children and the rest is a national priority, charter schools clearly will not accomplish that.

Multicultural Educations

As a white person, I haven’t spent much time thinking about my own race, but rather my lack of a race as defined by American society. In other words, my multicultural education has consisted of recognizing that my White race gives me certain advantages in national and international settings, advantages that most other races do not have anywhere in the world.

Still, while my backpack of White privilege will follow me wherever I travel, I am currently teaching abroad at a Chinese university and have learned what it feels like to be a minority, although a well-liked one. As one of the only White people in this part of China, I am constantly stared at on the streets and in grocery stores, and while the faces are friendly, it’s certainly jolting to be a racial minority for the first time in my life. I studied abroad in Austria as an undergraduate for four months, as well, but I was only a linguistic minority there, but still fit in physically. It’s unusual to be different, particularly in a country as racially homogenous as China.

A good multicultural education should allow minority students educators with some sort of experience with that student’s minority group(s) who will not make that student feel like the poster child for her group (s). In other words, students have multicultural backgrounds that help shape their identities, but they are individuals first.

Certainly, I feel very lucky to have attended an undergraduate institution where many different types of students could succeed. There, for example, I roomed with a Bangladeshi international student in my freshman year, and became good friends with a black gay man.

While my university experience spoiled me in terms of what acceptance should look like, I know that many universities are not quite as accepting of diversity as my school was. Additionally, as I look back on it now with rose-colored glasses, I don’t know how ethnically-diverse and international students were acclimated into a rigid campus climate.

Still, I know that these resources do exist in most campus communities or cities. Rather than assuming that we will be the best resources, teachers should also be comfortable with referring students to other places or people that could better serve each group. This might be particularly appropriate for multicultural students who don’t take classes that include material created from diverse perspectives and by diverse individuals—it’s understandable that isolated minority students may want role models with whom they can relate in terms of diversity.

If You Have to Cut One, Save the Arts and Cut the Sports

Arts programs are a better investment in our children's futures, and athletic clubs can always pick up the slack.

We often look at the arts through the lens of practicality, and sports through one of idealism. Learning to play the violin, painting abstracts, and acting on stage provide no tangible benefit to people or the economy. Those kids are never going to be able to make a living at it anyway. Athletic programs, on the other hand, enjoy a kind of deluded optimism, with people cheering their kids on to hit harder, jump higher, run faster, and maybe they’re get a college scholarship. Maybe they’ll go pro. The truth is that our children are much more likely to make a living in artistic pursuits than they are in athletic ones, and that career typically has a much longer lifespan. However, schools that are cash-strapped, facing consolidation, or declining enrollment habitually cut their fine arts programs.

Whole child education, and what it means to have a “liberal arts education” aside, arts education is not only relevant, but it’s economically and culturally important to sustain in our schools. The creative class, that contingent of people within the workforce that create the content that the rest of us consume, is entering the driver’s seat in the 21^st century. Graphic designers, animators, copywriters, innovators in every industry are the future of our economic and cultural trademark. That class of people requires the kind of creative and conceptual cultivation that an arts education provides.

Critical thinking, non-linear conceptualization, the ability to synthesize information from various sources into unique ideas, are all components of an arts education. You’re not going to get that from a “robust” science course whose standardized assessment requires filling in the correct bubbles on a multiple choice test over the periodic table. You’re also not going to nurture out of the box thinking on the football field, where kids are required to “do this when you’re told to”. Figuring out how to turn a photograph into a unique oil painting is conceptual thinking. Working with four other kids to perfect a jazz ensemble contest piece is promoting teamwork as well as rigor. Recreating the physical and vocal characteristics of a German soldier from a script and some research for a school play is synthesizing information to create something truly original.

These are the skills and qualities that are needed in the workforce today, and if we’re looking at a triage situation in terms of which programs to cut at school, the arts programs are the investment we should be making.

Athletic programs have their own benefits; applying effort, teamwork, loyalty, and strong lifestyle habits of exercise and nutrition. Most of these programs are already fed by club teams, and even those smaller districts that aren't can easily start them. Arts programs need specialized instruction, and often require more expensive materials. However, most administrators in a school district are going to look at the amount of money that a Friday night football game brings in, and the amount of money the school band concerts bring in, and are often making purely fiscal (and popular) decisions. Arts education is too important to cast off as a non-contributing, non-important facet of our public education system, but if it is, we're going to see a significant depletion of our intellectual and creative capital in the generation to come.

Failing Public Schools a "National Security" Liability?

A task for from the Council on Foreign Relations has us flashing back to Reagan's "A Nation At Risk", and not in a good way.

In a Presidential election that, so far, has been devoid of any specific educational policy ideas, the recent release of a new report may force President Obama and the Republican nominee onto an educational platform. The report is entitled U.S. Education Reform and National Security, and is a product of an independent task force from the Council on Foreign Relations, chaired by former head of the New York City public schools Joel Klein, and former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. The findings of the report conclude that the state of U.S. public education right now threatens the future of our national security and ability to compete globally. The report states that, "Educational failure puts the United States' future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk.”

The study conducted by the Task Force highlighted 5 areas of potential impact on national security; economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion. They found, among other things, that nearly a quarter of high school students do not graduate, that nearly 8 in 10 speak only English, and that 22 percent of high school graduates are “college ready” according to ACT standards (a college entrance exam) in all core curricular areas.

The report was very similar in tone and purpose to a report done during the Reagan administration called “A Nation at Risk”, a report that initiated much of the ideas that are currently being pushed by education reformists.

Some of those ideas are included in the policy recommendations of the CFR task force’s report.

Implement standardized performance expectations and assessments in areas that are “vital to national security.” This is largely an endorsement of the Common Core Standards, which are education benchmarks for students to meet before graduation in the areas of Science, Math, Reading, and Writing.

Change the structure of schools and the system to provide “enhanced choice and competition”. Again, this is an endorsement of the present administrations push for a voucher system that allows parents to move their kids to different schools based on achievement comparisons.

Launch a “national security readiness audit” to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness. Putting another bureaucratic system in place to force external accountability on schools, and to publicize school achievement results in order to force schools to take responsibility and to make the public aware of schools’ successes and failures.

The document’s alarmist language seems to have been chosen very carefully for the purposes of inciting public demand, and for forcing further political and social action. Invoking the always hot-button idea of “national security” is the clearly evidence of this. Whether the report will incite the kind of fervor that similar efforts did only several years ago, remains to be seen. In the past economic issues have trumped educational ones on news casts and political campaign trails.

For a reaction to the report and its recommendations by the author, check out School Inc.

Public Education Inc.: It's Not Privatized, but It Might As Well Be

The corporate culture is driving deep into public education, and even education advocates are adopting the corporate mindset.

Gene Carter, Executive Director of ASCD, an educational leadership organization, writes eloquently about the purpose of schools in the 21^st century, and the poor policies that are guiding current education reform. However, he does one thing that I think is symptomatic of the shallow way that we address education today; he puts the premium on global competition. Schools in the 21^st century are to build students with skills that can contribute meaningfully not to society, and not even the democratic process, but to the workforce. In that way we’re bringing corporate culture to our schools, framing education as job training and making every school a trade school.

Standardization is a way of quantifying and commoditizing performance, both of students, teachers, and administrators. It’s a way of creating a bureaucratic system around communication that should simply be happening between parents and teachers. Yes, it allows us to compare schools in a way that they haven’t been able to before, but the primary political push behind that agenda is so that parents can harness their “free market” rights in school choice. In other words, if they can see a spreadsheet comparing the achievement of kids across schools, we can move our kids to the best one. The problem is that schools are not restaurants or gas stations, and when a school is abandoned of all investment, the community around it withers as well. Particularly in the rural areas, a school is often the center of those communities. Consolidate or shut down a school and you take away a piece of that community’s identity.

The current scapegoating of budget shortfalls and low achieving schools on teachers has been explained in terms of comparison to the private sector. Educators’ pensions, strong because educators have been forced to unionize in order to protect what mediocre compensation they do have, have become the target of elected leaders around the country. In addition, they look at compensating teachers equal to their performance as the right way to run a school simply because its how the private sector works. “You should be paid for the quality of the job that you do.” Ideally, that would sound fair, but unfortunately a teacher’s performance is contingent upon the student’s attitude, the parental support, the home environment, and most influential: the students’ peers.

Finally, the tendency of education reformers and professionals to place the premium on global competition is to inevitably compare American schools to school systems in China, Singapore, India, and elsewhere. The fundamental disconnect here is that those schools may be turning out engineers and scientists, but their educational systems have serious issues of their own. For one, a Chinese scientist is not trained to innovate, to think critically, or to question foundational knowledge. In fact, for those sorts of experiences, their engineers and scientists come to the United States!

Mr. Carter did make the point that “whole child” education is, according to both research and conventional wisdom, the most effective and worthwhile educational platform. However, current policy may not be in keeping with that, but neither is focusing on education as “work training”. Kids should not be judged on whether they’re “career ready” in the U.S., because according to Gallup, most people have 4 or 5 careers over their work lifespan. Let’s leave career readiness to those careers, most of whom train on the job anyway, or to higher education. They can learn how to be a good competitive worker then. K-12 education should be for teaching kids how to be good, cooperative people first.

The Demoralization of the American Teacher

Standardization, budget cuts, layoffs, and public outcry are leading to a severely demoralized education work force.

There’s a crisis within public education that is outside of the concerns of pro-privatization billionaires and educational reformists in Washington. Teachers are coming to work more demoralized and broken down than ever; struggling to teach kids that don’t have a home, or food in the refrigerator; facing year after year of salary freezes and lay-offs due to state and district budget-cuts, and attempting to give kids real-life skills despite spreadsheet–style standardization. We are facing the corporatization of our childrens’ education, and it’s leading to the lowest teacher job satisfaction rating in decades.

It’s easy for MBA-wielding reform and crusading politicians in need of a good campaign talking point to make the case for widespread standardization and freezing or even lowering teacher pay. These individuals are looking at “the evidence” in terms of glossy consulting firm presentations and a couple of charter school walk-throughs where the administration has had three weeks noticed to buff their floors and paint over the graffiti.

The reality in schools is that the education reform agenda has gone well beyond what was ever realistic, or even productive. Instead it’s been moralized, made a political ideology, and pursued with the kind of dogged determination that can only be produced by venture capitalists that have “caught the scent”.

The result is that teachers, parents, and students are feeling the crush. According to the METLife Survey of the American Teacher of over 1,000 teachers and parents in 947 public schools across the country, things are getting pretty bad. Amid many disparate reform agendas, near-austerity budget cuts, and increasingly prevalent teacher layoffs, teachers are reporting the lowest job satisfaction since 1989. Just 44% of teacher respondents reported being satisfied with their jobs. Of those, only 27% reported actually enjoying their job. What does that mean for America’s schools? As “broken” as the media cycle and politicians would have you believe the system is, the education work force is feeling the pressure of heavy-handed regulation and public outcry.

What’s important to mention in all of this is that according to most national polls, individuals are by and large happy with their own children’s teachers. The perception of low-quality teachers in public school classrooms is often one that people attribute to other schools and other teachers. Well if most people are happy with their own schools and teachers, then most schools and teachers must be doing OK, and this national epidemic of low-quality teachers is more misperception than reality.

Of course there are stagnating schools out there, and there are low graduation rates and underachieving minority students and everything else that the statistical data actually says (not to be confused with what politicians and pundits will attempt to make the statistics show). However, to attempt to demonize an entire workforce of individuals that are famously (infamously) under-compensated is to further damage the profession of an already overworked, overburdened, and underappreciated group of people.

The Politics of Homeschooling: A Conversation

The insights on homeschooling of two journalists with opposite politics

Whether or not to homeschool has been a controversial topic since K-12 public education became a legal mandate in the 20^th century. In the past several decades, however, we’ve seen a movement from home-schooling as the province of religious fundamentalists and anti-government extremists to that of individuals with no home-schooling background themselves concerned over the present national education reform debate. A recent article in Slate by education journalist Dana Goldstein, and a subsequent rebuttal in Atlantic Monthly by Conor Friedersdorf highlights the rift between educational traditionalists and reformers and the emerging liberal ethic of holistic education.

More and more, families are turning to home-schooling as a last resort; pulling their kids from a system they see as narrowly standardized, overly-restrictive, and encouraging mediocrity. Instead, many home-schooling parents prefer to give their children opportunities for growth, creativity, exploration, and “whole child” education that they believe is being exorcised from traditional classrooms.

However, Goldstein, in her Slate opinion piece, accused home-schooling parents of alienating their children from the broader cultural and societal diversity in our country. “In a country increasingly separated by cultural chasms,” Goldstein writes, “should we really encourage children to trust only their parents or those hand-selected by them?” Goldstein points to a study by Amy Stuart Wells that supports the idea that attending socio-economically and racially diverse schools improves empathy, cultural awareness, and social skills regarding diversity.

However, Friedersdorf counters that just because a child is home-schooled doesn’t necessarily effect their ability to function within a socially diverse environment. He points to the difference between institutional diversity and the real diversity that we see outside our door every day. Friedersdorf uses the analogy of religious private schools that promote different faiths and ideas, that don’t necessarily contribute to the diversity within their institution, but fill a very important role within the diversity of our society at large. Should everyone attend public school, that “wisdom”, as he calls it, would not survive.

One last point I would add to the discussion is regarding Goldstein’s assertion that when advantaged children are removed from public education, the “peer effect”, by which children increase or decrease the learning of their peers through the power of influence and culture, is essentially removed from public schools. This, she argues, hurts low-income and minority students. She writes that when, “college-educated parents pull their kids out of public schools, whether for private school or homeschooling, they make it harder for less-advantaged children to thrive.”

This is one of the hardest pills to swallow concerning the modern public education; the mediocritization of student learning. It devalues our children’s individual efforts, it translates them to numbers in a formula, or pieces on a board, and it places the emphasis on investment in our lowest achieving students rather than on all students. Goldstein’s argument, from my perspective, is hurt by her overtly buying into this very “educational reformist” idea.

School Choice – A Positive Thing?

My now 16 year old daughter started out her educational career in the Seattle Public School system. One thing that seems to set that district apart from some, and makes it unique even here in Western Washington, is that you get the option to choose your school, instead of the neighborhood school being basically the only option. When you enroll a child for school in the Seattle Public School District, you put down your top three choices. Typically kids that are in range of the school will have a better shot but that is not the only deciding factor.

My daughter got into the first elementary school of our choice, which was a public Montessori and traditional elementary school, combined. She was on the waiting list for another school and I could have had her attend there as well. Luckily we got the school of our choice. We did live pretty close to the school that she ended dup attending, less than one mile.

However, once middle school started, we did not get the school of our choice and instead ended up at one that was on the other side of the city and it really didn’t make much sense either way. We ended up moving out of the district anyways, the summer before middle school started, and she never attended that school.

I’m a fan of school choice personally and it worked out pretty well for us. However, people do criticize it as there may not be as much of a feeling of community if a bunch of kids attend different schools. Those are valid criticisms but I maintain that school choice can certainly be advantageous as well. I’m so glad that I had that option.

Elementary in LA hit by two predator teachers

Two Los Angeles elementary school teachers have been arrested for lewd acts. Although the incident are not connected, it still begs the question of how can this happen to our children in the classroom?

Earlier in the week, sixty one year old Mark Berndt was arrested after photos he had developed at a local CVS were reported to police, as their content depicted children in bondage. Reportedly, more than two dozen photos of Berndt’s students were subsequently collected by police. The photos showed children bound in chairs and blindfolded with spoons held to their mouths (containing a substance DNA labs determined to be Berndt’s semen). Apparently, the children in the photos were unaware that their teacher was performing lewd acts upon them and only thought the blindfold was a apart of a game. Berndt is now being held at 23 million dollar bail and is set to be convicted of 23 counts of lewd acts upon a child.

As if this was disgusting enough, police investigation into Berndt’s crimes led to another discovery. On Friday police found “new information” leading to forty nine year old Martin Springer’s behavior. He is accused of fondling two 7 year old girls (over the past three years). Springer is not also being held at a 2 million dollar bail.

Although authorities say the two mens were not connected and their actions were mere coincidence, it is unclear whether the men prayed upon the same students.

Parents whose children are enrolled in Miramonte Elementary School are furious and some have even begun the process of pulling their children from the school.

Healthier School Lunches Can Lead to Eating Disorders?

There was a news report released this week stating that the federal Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act that has been enacted to serve healthier school lunches to school kids may actually go too far and lead to disordered eating. There is some concern that approximately 30% of kids may be exhibiting at least one symptom of an eating disorder. Honestly, I cannot see much of a connection. The school programs just serve food healthier than corn dogs and pizza, although those might be on the menu too. How exactly does that lead to eating disorders?

I firmly believe that children need to be given healthy information about their bodies and food. But, to say that a program like this could cause eating disorders is ludicrous at best. No one is lecturing children. Instead it’s just healthier food. The school’s message when talking about this should be, and likely is, focused on nutrition and not weight.

A bigger contributor to disordered eating is the attitudes of the parents and the images and pressures in the media. There are of course other factors. Simply serving children healthier food and providing nutrition information, and facts on portion size, could really go a long way.

If there are concerns, parents just need to sit down and explain to kids exactly why there is a food change and how it nourishes their bodies. While some of the reasons that the programs are being put in place are childhood obesity, part of it is nutrition as well. It’s about time that we upgraded the food being served to children in public school.

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