Racing Downhill, When the GPS System is Wrong!

[cjbgreen]

The negative consequences of Race to the Top continue to be ignored by the Obama administration, even when the voices of respected educators such as Diane Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education to George Bush, warn the president that this effort is not working. The race to the top is being driven by individuals outside of the education profession with no understanding of the damage they are causing driven by an ignorance of the pedagogy and science that is the basis for teaching and learning. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/diane-ravitch/ravitchs-modest-vision-for-sch.html.
This administration is wrong to think that those who object are not advocates for change and reform. They are wrong because they think that change equals reform and reform is synomous with improvement. Labeling something as we learned from George Bush, the compassionate conservative, is not the same as taking the right actions or achieving results that are in the best interest of children. Replacing knowledgeable leaders with novices who use threats and bribes does not produce long term improvement. And ignoring rigorous scientific inquiry and research does not usually lead to improvement.
The 2009 Rand report on charter schools found that student performance in charter schools was lower than their counter-parts attending public school. http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1700/MR1700.sum.pdf. In the District of Columbia where Chancellor Michelle Rhee, a non-educator, is viewed as the face of public reform because she fires teachers and principals claiming their incompetent and not meeting standards and replaces them with Teach for America recruits. And still in DC, the gap between poor minority students and middle class students is widening and test scores in the elementary schools declined.
Despite the evidence and community concerns that this “Race to the Top does not improve the quality of children or their communities, the administration persists and here is where there is agreement, our children can’t wait and they can’t be politically sold to the highest bidder. According to David Hersenhorn, New York Times, 2007,
Eli Broad and Bill Gates, two of the most important philanthropists in American public education, have pumped more than $2 billion into improving schools. But now, dissatisfied with the pace of change, they are joining forces for a $60 million foray into politics in an effort to vault education high onto the agenda of the 2008 presidential race. Experts on campaign spending said the project would rank as one of the most expensive single-issue initiatives ever in a presidential race, dwarfing, for example, the $22.4 million that the Swift Vets and P.O.W.s for Truth group spent against Senator John Kerry in 2004, and the $7.8 million spent on advocacy that year by AARP, the lobby for older Americans. Advocating merit pay to reward high-quality teaching could force Democratic candidates to take a stand typically opposed by the teachers unions who are their strong supporters. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E2DA143EF936A15757C0A9619C8B63

As we’ve learned from the BP disaster, big money can buy scientists, politicians, universities, and judges. Big money influences networks, newspapers and politicians. And most of us don’t understand how or why policies that undermine the basic foundations of our society change because of big money. We only find out when it is too late when art, music and physical education are eliminated and when there are no community schools and when education is not about children how to live with other children from other neighborhoods and when our teachers are no longer trained professional educators. Our children are not for sell.

[SheilaT]

1. One of the things I finally realized when I had

kids in school, is that teaching is harder than I probably knew. I'd always known that I would myself make a terrible teacher. And I am willing to criticize the incompetent teachers out there, but just to blame teachers for everything that's wrong with the schools is dumb. And wrong.

I was able to send my two kids to an independent (meaning private secular) school. I moved them from the excellent local public schools in my area for reasons that were pertinent to m specific kids. It became blindingly clear that small classroom size is the number one thing to make good schools.

And especially because the public schools must take all comers, educate all regardless of ability level or special needs, they should be very highly funded for that purpose.

If we can spend billions of dollars to kill people on the other side of the world, we should be able to spend billions of dollars to educate our own here.

[LWolf]

2. Excellent Thank you. k&r.

[Mid_FL_voter]

3. Listen to Ravitch!

The opposition to NCLB and Race to the Top is strong among many Dem voters. There is a facebook page from Florida (STOP SENATE BILL 6) that was started because of a state bill that was eerily similar to Race tt Top. Behind it all appears to be a move to privatize much of public education. The grassroots efforts resulted in the governor vetoing the bill. But everyone expects a very similar bill to return next year. Similar bills have popped up in other states.

The administration needs to get a grip and listen to the parents, teachers, and community members who are opposed to this education agenda, many who are life long Democratic voters. Education reform is needed. But not the Race tt Top emphasis on flawed high stakes testing.

[Igel]

4. Nobody wants to listen to Ravitch.

They want Ravitch to listen to them, and will at least allow Ravitch to be heard when she agrees with them.

Right, left, or orthogonal to the usual left-right "number line."

Hence the problem. She's had suggestions for schools for years and disliked rather intensely both right and left approaches to them. Conservatives "discovered" her when she seemed to support testing and "rigor." Liberals discovered her when she suddenly dismissed testing as being wrong-headed.

I think testing is important. I think it's misused. A spate of letters to the NYT spoke of using testing to gauge student learning; most people want to use testing to gauge the effectiveness of teaching. They're different things. You can engage in teaching a turnip, but it's not going to learn anything: That says nothing about the quality of the teacher, but it says something about the learning ability of root vegetables and the wisdom of the administrator appointing the teacher to teach turnips and the legislators forcing turnips into the classroom.

Most people also want to try to the entirety of a student's learning by testing. That's idiotic. Standardized tests good for gauging minimum adherence to standards. They should be minimum standards and stop there.

Charters, different story. Most people can't keep straight public vs private charters, charters that are public but run by private groups and public charters run by the BOE. It's like private schools: People often have in mind elite, $20k/year tuition private schools and overlook the all-Latino or all-black Catholic schools with $4k/year tuition.

[dionysus]

5. great post.

[OhioBlue]

6. you make great points in this post

I would love to see them expanded upon. If you already have in another thread, please post a link. I've thought many of the same things in your post, but don't have the knowledge base to expand upon them.

[cjbgreen]

8. public and private and Ravitch

Thank you for your clarification regarding testing. As educators we do need to examine and measure student learning and progress. We have an obligation to make sure the tests reflect the curriculum and how best to assess student application of knowledge and how best to measure learning. It also I think is important to recognize that all knowledge is not of equal importance and testing does not necessarily measure knowledge acquisition.
Regarding your second point, there is a difference between private and charter. Charters are funded with publicly resources and usually are privately run. The creation of charters diverts funds away from public schools and limits curriculum options. Although states vary in regards to oversight and accountability, charters are not necessarily held to the same level of accountability. There are good and bad charter schools. At one point public schools provided opportunities for children to be exposed to students from different faiths, economic and cultural backgrounds. This was considered an important aspect of education although this writer recognizes that school culture plays an important role in teaching respect and modeling respect (which when not modeled at the top becomes more complicated). There are people who listen to Ravitch but there are many other researchers such as Larry Cuban and Debra Meyers, who raise serious concerns about intended and unintended consequences of no child left behind. I think Ravitch is thoughtful about education and her comments do change based on contemporary events. I also viewed her as quite conservative but scholarly. Thanks for your comments.

[boppers]

7. Teachers make plans for change, other teachers argue against it...

If anything, what RttT has taught me is that education debate is less honest than a debate between Rush Limbaugh and Amy Goodman.