Note: Summer is usually a more relaxing time of year for both educators and parents.  While still not a “normal” time, we return to a time when kids are supposed to be at home (as opposed to our forced remote learning experience) and we are supposed to be able to sit down a bit and catch up on overdue relaxation.  I want to take a bit of this precious time and share with you several posts that have made a deep impression, both as an educator and as a parent. As I’ve shared in this space previously, Dr. James Ryan offered in his commencement  speech in 2016 (Harvard Graduate School of Education) that one of the most critical questions we can ask is “What Matters?”  As you read this post, I urge you to do so with that question in mind. What we choose to offer to our kids as learning experiences reflects our understanding of the purpose of education.  It’s a question which must be answered first and which deserves far more time than we’re allotting.

This  piece is from one of my favorite people.  If you’ve been following my work, you’ve undoubtedly read of my admiration for Jan Resseger. Jan is a gifted writer, a thorough researcher and am inspirational person.  In this piece Jan, too, suggests the need for reflection on the purpose question.  

Each of her blog pieces begins with this banner…

“That all citizens will be given an equal start through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right for all children…. is rooted in a kind of moral blindness, or at least a failure of moral imagination…. It is a failure which threatens our future as a nation of citizens called to a common purpose… tied to one another by a common bond.” —Senator Paul Wellstone — March 31, 2000

She lives this belief much as Nancy Flanagan suggests for each of us.  Here is Jan’s post .  In it, Jan looks at the controversy surrounding the ways in which the history of our country (and, by extension, that of other countries as well) can be communicated to our children. Using her exceptional research skills, Jan has provided food for reflection on what has become a “flash point” for discussions about what learning experiences and opportunities might look like in a democratic country.

The History of Public Education Demonstrates the Importance of Understanding the Implications of Racism

Posted on July 21, 2021 by janresseger

Conservative legislatures and state boards of education across the states are trying to prohibit what they call the teaching of “critical race theory,” which these far-right ideologues are redefining as any ideas that might make white Americans uncomfortable.  At the same time, on Monday, the NY Times featured an article about a tragic violation of our nation’s declared values of equality and justice for all—the century long mandate that American Indian children be enrolled in U.S. government-run boarding schools. Children were taken forcibly from their families and communities and sent, often far away, to boarding schools designed to force them to assimilate into the American dominant culture.

In a stunning history, Education for Extinction, David Wallace Adams describes the establishment in the 1870s of mandatory boarding schools for American Indian children and the philosophy of education that defined their purpose: “The word was civilization. European and American societies were civilized; Indians on the other hand, were savages… Indians must be taught the knowledge, values, mores, and habits of Christian civilization… The first priority was to provide the Indian child with the rudiments of an academic education….  Second, Indians needed to be individualized… In the philanthropic mind Indians were savages mainly because tribal life placed a higher value on the tribal community than individual interests… Education should facilitate individualization in two ways. First, it should teach young Indians how to work… But teaching Indians how to work was not enough. In the end, they must be inculcated with the values and beliefs of possessive individualism. They must come to respect the importance of private property… and they must come to realize that the accumulation of personal wealth is a moral obligation… The third aim of Indian education was Christianization.” (Education for Extinction, pp. 12-23)

The Boarding Schools’ purpose was forcing assimilation. Students were punished for using their primary languages and forced to speak English. They were given “American” names. This week’s NY Times story describes Dzabahe, a young Navajo girl renamed “Bessie Smith” by her boarding school: “The last day Dzabahe remembers praying in the way of her ancestors was on the morning in the 1950s when she was taken to the boarding school… Within hours of arriving at the school, she was told not to speak her own Navajo language. The leather skirt her mother had sewn for her and the beaded moccasins were taken away and bundled in plastic, like garbage. She was given a dress to wear and her long hair was cut—something that is taboo in Navajo culture.  Before she was sent to the dormitory, one more thing was taken: her name.”

The boarding schools for American Indian children represent one example of the ways the United States contradicted its founding promise that all are created equal and all are worthy of liberty and justice  In his profound book, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, James D. Anderson begins by acknowledging the blindness, bias, and misunderstandings that have defined the project of expanding the meaning of equal education for our nation’s children: “The history of American education abounds with themes that represent the inextricable ties between citizenship in a democratic society and popular education. It is crucial for an understanding of American educational history, however, to recognize that within American democracy there have been classes of oppressed people and that there have been essential relationships between popular education and the politics of oppression. Both schooling for democratic citizenship and schooling for second-class citizenship have been basic traditions in American education.

These opposing traditions were not, as some would explain, the difference between the mainstream of American education and some aberrations or isolated alternatives. Rather, both were fundamental American conceptions of society and progress, occupied the same time and space, were fostered by the same governments, and usually were embraced by the same leaders.”(The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, p. 1)

American Indian boarding schools are now a thing of the past, but today we have a lot of work to do before we can move forward to address injustices.  We must find a way to understand the truth of our history in spite of today’s ideologues who insist that what Anderson calls “the politics of oppression” never existed and certainly does not operate today. In a powerful new book, Scripting the Moves: Culture & Control in a ‘No-Excuses’ Charter School, Vanderbilt University ethnologist Joannne Golann dissects the biases she uncovered in her 18 month study of the culture of one of today’s no-excuses charter schools, which she identifies with a pseudonym, “Dream Academy.”  Although Dream Academy’s staff believe they are imparting social capital and so-called “middle class values” to their mostly African American students, Golann’s research demonstrates that the no-excuses school inculcates in children a very different understanding of their social place and their rights than the sense of entitlement possessed by more privileged children. “(W)e can interpret the rigid behavioral scripts employed by no-excuses schools as in line with a long history of managing poor youth of color through social control, surveillance, and punishments. The poor have long been viewed as intractable, in need of guidance and reform.” (p. 14)

Golann continues: “Instead of putting the onus on schools and teachers to provide the extra supports to help all students achieve, the no-excuses philosophy was reinterpreted in the context of the school’s behavioral script to mean, as reflected in… (a) teacher’s words, ‘holding students responsible for their character and their actions and their education.’ This perspective attributes the failures of urban schools to low-income Black and Latino children who are seen as lacking the right attitudes and values (like hard work, diligence, personal responsibility) to be successful and sees success as holding these children to tighter expectations.” (p. 40) “As students learned to adhere to the school’s demanding scripts in order to gain privileges, they developed what I call a sense of earning… A sense of earning, however, contrasts with a sense of entitlement, which sociologist Annette Lareau has identified as a middle-class mindset…  Schools… cater to middle-class White families, positioning them as ‘consumers’ whose needs ought to be attended to rather than ‘beneficiaries’ who should be grateful for the privilege of attending the school.” (p. 46)

In a profound 1998 book, Common Schools: Uncommon Identities, Walter Feinberg, professor emeritus of educational philosophy at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, considers the urgent importance of a critical approach to the teaching of the nation’s history: “To be an American, that is, to submit to the nation’s laws, is different than to identify oneself as an American and to participate in the public will formations that determine the direction of national action and inaction. This identification is active and requires an engagement with interpretations of events that comprise the American story. That there is an ‘American story’ means not that there is one official understanding of the American experience but, rather, that those who are telling their versions of the story are doing so in order to contribute to better decision making on the part of the American nation and that they understand that they are part of those decisions. The concept is really ‘Americans’ stories’…  This means, among other things, that students must learn about the various meanings that people from different backgrounds might give to different events. They need to address these differences in ways that promote continuing discussion…  (T)he common school must be involved in teaching students both to speak from the knowledge that their cultural identity provides and, as audience, to hear the voices of others… It is within and across this medley of difference that the common school continues the dialogue begun during the American Revolution about the nature of national unity and the character of national identity.” (Common Schools: Uncommon Identities, pp. 232-245) (emphasis in the original)

In a recent letter, 135 academic and professional organizations protest the far right attacks on public schools’ teaching honestly about the racism in American history.  They conclude: “Suppressing or watering down discussion of ‘divisive concepts’ in educational institutions deprives students of opportunities to discuss and foster solutions to social division and injustice. Legislation cannot erase ‘concepts’ or history; it can, however, diminish educators’ ability to help students address facts in an honest and open environment capable of nourishing intellectual exploration.”

My Thoughts…

Throwing boulders vs. throwing pebbles.  For quite a while now (longer than I care to admit) I’ve been privileged to work with teams of people engaged by school districts to bring about large-scale change (usually defined by a rise in test scores).  Our hopes and plans were bigger than our skills.  This work might be described as trying to throw boulders in the ocean, hoping that there would be a tsunami of change.  Our recent conversations have been based on more modest ambitions… using pebbles instead of boulders and hoping for ripples of change. Our learning…people are attached to and value the familiar.  Moving away from the familiar, whether this is offered to parents or educators, is a steep hill to climb.  One of my epiphanies in this process was the rediscovery of the power of beliefs. in a conversation several years ago, I was asked what I believed about kid learning.  I was offered these two slides and asked (1) to reflect on my beliefs about them and (2) how these were reflected in my practice.   What would  slides look like if the questions asked were “What do you believe is the purpose of education?”  

Missing the routine of school?  Here’s a homework assignment… Using these slides as a framework, create two slides about the purpose of education.  

 Note: Summer is usually a more relaxing time of year for both educators and parents.  While still not a “normal” time, we return to a time when kids are supposed to be at home (as opposed to our forced remote learning experience) and we are supposed to be able to sit down a bit and catch up on overdue relaxation.  I want to take a bit of this precious time and share with you several posts that have made a deep impression, both as an educator and as a parent. As I’ve shared in this space previously, Dr. James Ryan offered in his commencement  speech  in 2016 (Harvard Graduate School of Education) that one of the most critical questions we can ask is “What Matters?”  As you read the next few posts, I urge you to do so with that question in mind. 

We Are A Country Without A Purpose…

Wait! What?  “A Country Without a Purpose”?   What if we are finding ourselves on the edge of a time which is no less unsettling than the time of the Revolution, the Civil Way, the Great Depression?  What if we are where we are because we have grown to value quick, politically expedient decisions rather than careful analysis of complex problems?  What if, as Peter Drucker and Russell Ackoff suggested, there is a significant difference between trying to so things right and doing the right thing.  What if we have fallen into the Drucker/Ackoff trap of trying to do the wrong things better rather than actually trying to ascertain what the “right thing” is?

A quick example… During the time that I served as an assistant commissioner in the NJ Department of Education, we were heavily involved in the implementation of the Core Curriculum Content Standards as well as the development of specifications for the state’s large-scale assessment designed to measure the level of student achievement of these standards.  Who applied the greatest pressure to insure the development of “tough” standards and through assessments?  The state’s teachers?  No.  It was the state’s Chamber of Commerce.  Why the Chamber?  Because the Chamber and its membership had concluded that the major function  – i.e., purpose — of school was the development of a well-trained workforce.  People who knew better (or who should have known better) didn’t challenge this “purpose”.  For almost 30 years now we have been “chasing” the test scores.  Those of who spent time in schools during this time, will have no problem identifying the programs, policies and procedures designed to do test- focused “achievement” better.  Only recently, in the time of the pandemic, have we seen the beginning of serious discussion/reflection about the problems created by trying to do the wrong thing righter.  Drucker and Ackoff would be proud.  Millions of students and their teachers, not so much. It’s time to get serious about defining the right thing that we want to our kids and the learning.

Wait! What?  Why am I asking this question right now?  Why am I asking it in a blog that focuses almost all posts on things related to education and learning?

Frequent readers may recall that, occasionally, I’ll suggest that it might be helpful to get a glass or two of your favorite adult beverage to make the post easier to digest.  This time, while I’m offering the same suggestion, it’s for a very different reason.

Since “retirement” I’ve gotten into the habit of beginning each day with a scan of the things that have magically appeared in my inbox overnight. My interests are pretty eclectic and include a number of education-oriented blogs as well as the scan of major news outlets. 

Recently, my scan I encountered two “big question” pieces.  They resonated with me as I hope they will with you.  They seemed to “beg” for thinking time. Hence the adult beverage suggestion.  The pieces that I’ll be sharing are not so much shocking as they are food for reflection.  I hope you’ll take my suggestion and read each of them.  This post will focus on the first piece by Nancy Flanagan.  It appeared in the  daily blog of the Network for Public Education and is used with her permission.

Context

At the beginning of our first response to the pandemic I wrote several pieces that urged educators to avoid the “let’s get back to normal” urge and use the time we had been given to reflect on what learning could be.  My timing was horrible.  I neglected to acknowledge the all-consuming nature of the process of trying to juggle the realities of school in “survival” mode.  We saw firsthand the sometimes competing purposes of school – child (and educator) safety, child care, student achievement, family support (food and social services), access to technology.  The purpose often varies depending on the day, the access to technology,  or the family… all aimed at trying to do what have always done as right as possible. Nancy writes that we have reached a point in the discussions about schools, schooling, educational funding, success or failure of the American system of public schools etc. where we can no longer sidestep a serious discussion/analysis/reflection about the purpose of education in our country. 

Nancy Flanagan is a retired teacher and a long-lasting blogger. Sometimes she looks at the big picture, and sometimes the nitty gritty. Reposted with permission.

I could write a blog every week on all the Big Important Things that nobody pays attention to in public education. But then—that would make me a philosopher and not a teacher.

Right now, we really need deep thinkers, visionaries, those dedicated to clarifying our mission in public ed, trying to prevent dumpster fires, rather than putting them out, which is now a fair part of teachers’ work.

Instead, we have shallow, attention-seeking chatterheads lighting fires, then sprinting away—looking at you, Mike Petrilli and Tucker Carlson, and all  the ‘Concerned Moms’ who don’t want their children to, you know, feel bad about the facts of American history.

In fact, when you look at the sweep of schooling in America—going back to Horace Mann—there is no one overriding set of principles upon which public education has firmly rested for two centuries. Mann promoted a free, secular education, open to all children—the local academic melting pot that would lift an unruly, barely civilized nation into democratic greatness.

And what a magnificent idea that was—probably the last inspiring, visionary plan to educate the citizenry. Except, of course, for all the people who were left out, or given scraps and hand-me-downs. Or weren’t even considered citizens. Not so great for them, and they were building the nation, too.

There’s always been lofty rhetoric about public education. And the reality has always been far more complicated and far less effective at achieving whatever it is public ed is supposed to achieve.

And that’s the rub. What are we trying to accomplish, in our public education system? What’s our purpose? What are our overarching goals? What’s our product? (bold, italics mine)

It’s a great question to ask in a new-teacher interview: What’s your philosophy of education?

Back in the 1970s, I got that question a couple of times (and had an answer—it was part of my undergraduate education as a prospective teacher, that pedagogy coursework everyone denigrates).

Today, the interview questions are pragmatic—test scores, standards, deliverables—but there is real value in figuring out what’s most important to teach, what your students need. What you believe. What the country needs, even.

On July 7, Joe Biden tweeted this: The fact is 12 years of education is no longer enough to compete in the 21st Century. That’s why my Build Back Better Agenda will guarantee four additional years of public education for every person in America – two years of pre-school and two years of free community college.

Well, I’m all for free preschool and community college. You go, Joe. They’re only pieces of the comprehensive, coherent plan we need, but the education community is accustomed to working with (and around) bits-and-pieces ed policy. We’ll take positive fragments, any day.

Jennifer Berkshire had an interesting response to Biden’s tweet: Biden’s insistence on defining education solely in economic terms is so discouraging. IMO, this is a big part of why public education is as precarious as it is right now. Not only does it put the blame for being economically *noncompetitive* onto individuals themselves, but it leaves out the essential role that schools play in a democracy.

Bingo. Which comes first—the random policy promise, or the philosophy?

Berkshire and her co-writer Jack Schneider, an education historian, wrote this in an excellent piece in The Nation:

Our schools can’t fix the problems of poverty, and parts of the Biden administration seem to know that. But until education policy breaks free from this framing of the purpose of school, it will remain difficult to recognize what our schools can do. At a time when voting rights are increasingly being restricted, when we continue to debate the value of Black lives, and when we can’t agree on basic facts, public education has an essential role to play. We don’t have public schools in this country so that young people can compete for advantage against each other—or so that the private sector can reduce the costs of training labor. Instead, we tax ourselves to pay for universal K-12 education because public schools are the bulwark of a diverse, democratic society.

And—voila!—there we are, back to Horace Mann. The mission of public education is an educated, engaged citizenry. Open to absolutely everyone. Too bad we routinely lose sight of this core purpose, a defined public good.

If you want to read an excellent synopsis of how our national (non)philosophy of education has morphed and evaporated, over the decades, I recommend Consuming the Public School, by David Labaree:

We ask schools to promote equality while preserving privilege, so we perpetuate a system that is too busy balancing opposites to promote student learning. We focus on making the system inclusive at one level and exclusive at the next, in order to make sure that it meets demands for both access and advantage.

Does this sound like a system that just puts out emergent fires with policy band-aids—or a system grounded in principles of democratic equality? Other countries have overhauled their education systems after having a national conversation about what public education should be focused on. Why can’t we?

Oh, right. It’s political. 

While large scale change discussions have become highly politicized, what would happen if we each asked and answered the question with which Nancy ends her post…

What would your belief statement about public education look like?

My thoughts…

What would happen if each teacher, each administrator asked, answered and acted on such a question?  Would the whole system change?  After years of working with schools around the country on ways to help them implement large scale change, I no longer believe that meaningful change happens that way.  I believe it happens one person at a time, one teacher in one classroom decides what she/he believes about learning, about the purpose of education, about the importance of building a classroom culture caring and empathy.  Too many of us have sat by for too long trying to implement the ideas of others… ideas which have equated a child’s learning and development by scores on an annual state test (tests which have done far more to enrich test developers than they have to improve student learning), ideas which have stolen precious time and opportunities to build and nurture the critical  relationships with our students that are so important  to learning.  It hasn’t worked.  It won’t work. 

What if we each defined and acted on our beliefs about children and their development?  Couldn’t/shouldn’t we at least try? It’s tempting to be offended by the implication that we as teachers, administrators, parents don’t act on our beliefs about the basic goodness of children and our responsibilities for nurturing them.  Of course we do. We also work in organizations that seek to do what we are doing  even better… and many of us recognize that this involves the development of practices, policies, and procedures which are aimed at efficiency  and convenience…  doing things “righter” is not the same as doing the right thing.  

Be well…

US Department of Education Inks Contract with Wharton and Harvard Business Schools to Prepare Teachers and Manage “Failing” Schools!

Just kidding… I hope.   Watching the legislatures of more than 30 states move to privatize their public school systems via increased choice, charter and voucher options further increases our commitment to treating the education of our children more like a business and makes such a partnership seem almost inevitable.

NOTE:  This post will offer observations (and possible insight) into the growth of charter and voucher programs.  In the interest of full disclosure, while serving as an Assistant Commissioner in the NJ Department of Education, one of my responsibilities was to oversee the approval, evaluation and, sometimes, closure of charter schools.

I’d like to apologize for my “disappearance” for the past few weeks and suggest that you get a glass or two of your favorite adult beverage. This one is long!

In addition to struggling with the hacking of my email account, I’ve been struggling with finding a way to connect two seemingly disparate ideas. In the first of these, our small team, the Four Amigos¹, has been engaged during our weekly chats with growing disappointment and appropriate response to the apparent loss of opportunity that the pandemic has presented – i.e., the opportunity to revisit the way we think about learning and schooling. This has been all the more troubling because it seemed that we were seeing an increase in discussions about the ways we might use the experiences of the last 18 months to unlearn what we know about schooling and rediscover what we know about the learning.

The second issue is one I’ve steered clear of in previous blogs… the increasingly obvious and planned assault on our system of public education.  Over the time I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve worked pretty hard to shy away from political statements.  But I need to highlight here something that has been happening and which cries out for our attention..  Depending on where you reside, you will be more or less familiar with the significant push to increase choice options for parents.  What has been less clear and what has received minimal attention in the media is the dramatic increase in such efforts and the source of the financial support for them. 

Critical Concerns

• What these choice, charter and voucher policies have in common is that they are all funded by allowing the aid that is received by public schools to follow the child to their new school, in many cases significantly decreasing the amount of funding remaining for the public schools. Bruce Baker is Professor in the Rutgers’ Graduate School of Education.  His recent research focuses on state aid allocation policies and practices.  His findings referenced here  focus on the impact of a the diversion of state aid dollars to various choice options… 

 This is not intended as a criticism of charter schools. In my time as Assistant Commissioner as well as a national consultant, I visited a number of charter schools.  Some were exceptional, many were not. 

• Charter schools and/or voucher, tax credit or scholarship programs have been around for a while, but what we are witnessing is an unprecedented influx of private money in local school board elections and the creation and lobbying efforts by so called “AstroTurf” lobbying groups… groups with names that imply parent leadership, parent participation as well as the right to choose, at public expense, schools other than those in the public system. Closer investigation reveals minimal participation or direction by parents, often providing a kind of anonymity for ultra-conservative or libertarian libertarian billionaires.  The climate of uncertainty about how and when schools will be open and what type of instruction will be provided when schools are open, has left many parents and community members unsettled and concerned.
• Although originally designed and promoted as “laboratory schools” … schools that would improve learning by being unhindered by bureaucracy or stifled by regulation, a large percentage of the charters and charter school chains are, de facto, for-profit enterprises. 
• The federal government has devoted millions of dollars to charter program seeding and support. Recent reports revealed that a huge portion of that funding went to charter schools that never opened or have closed. Regular readers of this blog will recognize the name of Jan Resseger.  Jan is an exceptionally talented researcher and writer who works tirelessly in support of the maintenance of a viable and equitable system of public education.    Here , Jan details how the Federal Charter Schools Program has enabled the academic and fiscal abuses by for-profit charter operators. 

The Real Danger of Privatization – an economic theory on life-support

 While many of us have been blessed with education, careers, and standards of living that are more than adequate to ensure our survival,  we are becoming increasingly confronted by inconvenient truths about the lives of too many of our fellow citizens.  While we are regularly exposed to media, politician, and pundit praise for the accomplishments of our country, the reality of many challenges such pictures.  While we continue to canonize the American system of free enterprise, we currently live in the poorest rich country among industrialized countries.  We have the highest education costs, the highest health care costs, the shortest lifespans, the highest incarceration rates. Are we now to believe that the folks that brought us to this would be the ideal designers and providers of education for our kids?

Don’t like the measures I chose to highlight?  How about what has already been done to our kids?  Look at the public investment in education since the Great Depression of 2008.  The majority of states, primarily those whose elected leaders self-identify as fiscally conservative or libertarian, have yet to restore school funding by their state to levels prior to 2008! 

In an article  which appeared in the NY Times Magazine prior to COVID, the writer shared data that indicated we were  in a time when the incidence of pre-adolescent stress, anxiety, depression and even suicide had never been higher! Has our focus during the past 30 years of educational reform been on increasing counseling services, improving social and emotional health?  It has not.  In fact, since the Great Recession of 2008, the majority of states have not yet returned school spending to pre-recession levels.  This before the increase in such issues connected to the pandemic.

While our kids were suffering in increasing numbers,  we “enjoyed” the great accountability movement… the improvement of education by adopting the practices of business … Hours and hours of state and federally mandated tests, a whole new market for test prep materials, rewritten standards-based textbooks, student data available for sale, attacks on the skills and commitment of teachers., etc., etc., etc.  Education has become business, indeed BIG business…Billions are spent annually to design and administer large-scale state-wide assessments.  Billions are spent on the purchase of technology required to take the tests. Billions are spent both publicly and privately to purchase test prep materials and tutoring services. And now, we see the hijacking of research promoting  the benefits of individually tailored learning experiences with the press for “personalized” learning… a term most frequently used to justify the purchase of computer delivered and paced software which is anything but “personalized”.  The great business model direction has turned our kids into commodities… commodities whose data can be used to target ads, determine Facebook feeds, and distance them even further from the connection so important to their development as functioning adults.  Less personal contact under the guise of “personalized” learning? To be identified by their test scores?  Is this what we want for our kids?  As parents? As educators?

What to do

I’ve spent a lot of time in schools.  I spend a lot of time listening to the experiences of families, kids, and educators.  This is not a solely a red or a blue issue.  The changes and conditions that I have shared here have occurred during the administrations of both Democrats and Republicans.  One of the Greek philosophers once said that the health of a society is measured by the way it treats its weakest members, the very young and the very old.  We’re not doing well on either right now. 

What to do now is to get involved.  Know what is happening in your schools/in your state 

• Go to a board meeting. See how many topics deal with kids and their learning?  How many items are really about adult convenience, management, compliance?  Look at your school’s mission statement and ask what specific experiences they provide to make the mission a reality. 
• Contact legislators… local, state, and federal. Affirm that it is the right of parents to have their kids attend the school of their choice.  Affirm as well that it is not the right of parents to have the costs of these choice decisions paid by government nor it is appropriate to have the costs of such choices reduce the ability of the public schools to offer equitable to all students regardless of socio-economic status, race, gender, or disability.
• Work to reduce the impact of billionaire philanthropists can have on social policies which reflect their individual agendas more than the good of our children. See here  For background on the mixed blessings of the rise of philanthropy in the past two decades.

Summary

• I am not a fan of the current version of education… a test and punish culture driven for the past 30+ years by federal programs such as NCLB, Race to the Top, Every Child Succeeds, etc.  I am, however, a huge fan of a system of taxpayer supported public education. 
• Our current system of public education (and only recently the content of that system) is under attack for ideological and political reasons which have little or nothing to do with improving the lives of children.
• The attack on public education is a part of a much larger campaign to reduce the size of government and to move many, if not all, public services to private enterprise.
• This has become an ideological struggle guided to a large extent by significant amount of philanthropic dollars offers by billionaires who have never set foot in a public school.
• Education in the US has become a huge business and source of income for a limited number of large corporations. In the process of developing these sources of income, our children have become both commodities and consumers… commodities whose data has huge value and consumers of large-scale assessments, as well as of test-prep materials and services.
• Early experiences with alternatives to traditional public schooling – i.e., vouchers, tax-free scholarships, charter school programs — have produced mixed results at best and have significantly limited the programming for students remaining in the traditional public schools.
• The experience with the pandemic version of education has encouraged criticism of district responses to both safety and learning. The concept of “learning loss” has been promoted as yet another “failure” of the public school system. 

Normally this would be the place for a kind of motivational paragraph… one that moves the reader to action.  If you’ve read this far, you don’t need such a closing.  What you may need is time to reflect and a place to express your reactions… a time to reflect on individual responsibilities when it has become clear that something very important to us has been or is being threatened. It is also a time for action … a time to speak with friends, local school leaders and politicians, representatives in state government and let them know that big money and big business should not be architects of the education our kids should receive. This is about grownups behaving badly… needing to be right, needing to win, and treating the children of this generation as pawns in a game in which there will be no winners.   

Thank you for your continued support of my writing. Be well.   

 ¹Some time ago, while participating in Will Richardson’s on-line community, Modern Learners, I had the good fortune to develop relationships with three very talented colleagues (two us were from the US while two resided and worked in Canada).   We found common ground in the realization that, as committed as we all are to the concept of publicly funded education for all, education in each of our countries had become more about schooling than about learning. Distressed by this realization, we decided to see what we could do to bring the focus back the learner.  Our areas of interest and expertise are as diverse as our experiences.  For two years now we have met weekly to support our mutual growth and to offer our learning to others. 

“The development of the Common Core State Standards is a success story of meaningful, state-led change to help all students succeed.

Statement appearing on the site www.corestandards.org

For more than 20 years now, we have been told that a major component of the “standards movement” was the creation and use of large-scale assessments required by federal funding programs. These were sold as a critical source of information about how much our kids are learning.  While the reliability, validity and usefulness of the large scale assessments required by No Child Left Behind and its successor, Race To the Top, have been refuted almost unanimously by assessment specialists without challenge, the research has been clear.  These annual tests are far more reliable predictors of family wealth than as tools for helping teachers better respond to student needs.

Educators have known this and have frequently tried to alert us to the misunderstanding and the misuse of these tests. What has happened as a result?  These teachers and school leaders have been vilified.  They have been described as lazy, casual about the failure of their students, and opponents of accountability.  And who are the loudest critics of these educators?  No surprise there.  It’s the test companies, the publishers of test prep materials, and politicians for whom school bashing is low-hanging fruit and who have rarely set foot inside a school except for a photo op. 

This is a multi-billion dollar business folks… a multi-billion dollar business that sees the pandemic as a perfect opportunity to solidify their hold on the educational establishment.  And how are they seeking to do this.  Simple. Two words. Learning Loss!  We need to continue these tests.  We need to measure exactly how much our children have lost during the pandemic response to schooling.  BTW…It will surprise almost no one that students who take the same science test in September that they took in May, score significantly lower.  Summer learning loss?  

But what if the tests required by various pieces of federal legislation never really tested learning at all.  What if they tested recall of the many isolated and disconnected facts that were championed under the “Success Story” of the core curriculum standards? What if the tests provide almost no insight into the real learning needs of kids… not the recall of information easily found in mere minutes on Google, but the development of a set of contemporary skills which includes creativity, curiosity, critical thinking, entrepreneurship, collaboration, communication, growth mindset, global competence, and a host of skills with different names (Duckworth and Yeager, 2015; Zhao et al. 2019). 

And none of this even considers a new dimension of the big lie of learning loss…  The reality that our kids have suffered and are suffering through the worst disruption of “normal” most of them have ever experienced.  Their social worlds have been turned upside down, the contact with their friends disrupted, their schooling moving between remote, in-person, hybrid experiences… often with almost no notice.  But more than that… say that again… more than that, they have heard or watched the impact of COVID on their families and loved ones.  They may have lost friends, relatives, perhaps even parents. And our response… Let’s measure learning loss and, oh yeah, let’s use a test that no one believes in.  

That can’t be our response.  Couldn’t we at least contact our elected representative (both state and federal) and join the many organizations who have asked for the elimination of tests?  Thank you.  Be well.

I’m frightened for us as a society. I’m frightened for the world my grandkids will experience.  I’m frightened of who we’ve become… a nation of self-interested acquirers.  We’ve become what the Greeks called “idiots”.

In classical Greece, this was a term of the greatest derision.  They were “Private people…People consumed with self-interest.”  There was an understanding that democratic societies dominated by “idiots” could not survive.  Their argument went like this… a society whose people are only concerned with themselves can’t look out for any kind of common good or shared interest. Such a society would lapse into poverty and then, violence. 

Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Garrett (2020) in their book entitled The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How WE Can Do It Again, using evidence about economics, politics, society and culture, make a case that the U.S. has gone through periods of:

• ‘I-ness’ (self-centeredness) – 1870s to 1890s
• ‘We-ness’ (concern for others) – 1900 to 1970s and back to the present period of
• Excessive ‘I-ness’ – late 1970s to the present.

America and “I-ness”

People only concerned with themselves can’t look out for any kind of common wealth or shared interest.  Want proof? While generally associated with more conservative economic thinking and policies, the development of  excessive ‘I-ness’, has spanned years of control by both major political parties. And, during this same span of years, we have seen an increasing reluctance to invest in social needs and/or institutions while experiencing a significant loss of jobs, increasing personal debt,  increasing costs for health care, prescription drugs, and a declining life expectancy.   There are numerous signs that our infrastructure is in trouble (roads, public lands, transportation system, etc.) and the pandemic has highlighted the ways in which issues of equity (or lack thereof) have affected our concerns for public safety, our institutions, and our faith in government.

A recent study showed that since 1970, the wages of 90% of our citizens have remained almost totally flat while the incomes of the top 1% have increased 700 times their former value.  This  development has, in many ways, strengthened the “I-ness” focus.  It has validated our fears that we actually live in a world dominated by scarcity.  In this culture, my needs are in competition with the needs of others… we’ve internalized that there’s not enough to go around.  Not enough jobs, not enough basic elements (food, shelter, clothing, etc.).  I have to get mine and your needs are in competition with mine.  In this situation “I-ness” is understandable, even predictable.

“I-ness” and education

Investment in education offers a particularly clear and troubling example. Our investment in our schools has yet to return to even the dramatically reduced levels associated with the Great Recession of 2008.  Let’s see… taxes vs. the education of our children.  Ah, lower taxes win! Self-interest wins! Idiocy wins.

I know, I’m sure this description would have been easier to read if the Greeks hadn’t chosen the word “idiot”; however, watching the collective performance of our elected leaders it’s hard not to wonder if perhaps the Greeks got it right.

Here’s a sobering reality.  Lapsing into poverty is no longer just a possibility for many of our citizens. It is a reality.  A Pew Research Center report shows that “as of 2015, middle-income households have become the minority.”  Other studies reveal that 75% of Americans can’t raise $500 for an emergency.  By 2014 80% of us lived paycheck to paycheck.  What does this shrinking share of the American Dream lead to?  It leads to selfishness.  It leads to “I-ness”.  

This is not the world I want for my grandkids or for the kids who we see each day in our schools (or in our Zoom calls).  How are we responding?  I’ve heard shouting matches, I’ve seen politization of kids’ and teachers’ lives, I seen/heard debates about who should get vaccines first.  And there is still the ever-present ranting about taxes and the cost of schooling. In the meantime, kids are moving into and back out of schools so frequently that the best investment might now be in the installation of revolving doors.

As I was reflecting on whether or not to write this negative a post, I was “gifted” a post  by Jan Resseger.  Regular followers will know that I admire Jan’s work and her commitment to equitable access to quality public education for each and every child in America. In her post, Jan cited the work of Steve Nelson, the former head of school of a private, progressive school, the Calhoun School in Manhattan. In a recent post , “Measuring the Wrong Things”,  Nelson warned of the problems in federally mandated standardized tests… a bigger issue now that President Biden has reneged on his campaign promise to halt their use.

In contrast to most critics of the nation’s standardized testing commitment, in his post, Nelson offers a different perspective…

Education reformers and so-called policy “experts” are constantly collecting and analyzing data. Many of these experts are, not surprisingly, economists. It’s not for nothing that economics is sometimes called “the dismal science.” The hostile takeover of education by non-educators is filled with intelligent sounding phrases: “evidence-based,” “data driven,” “metrics and accountability.” At every level of schooling, mountains of data are collected to inform “best practices” based on the alleged cause and effect implications of data-based instruction and the feedback gleaned from tests. 

…Throughout education, an increasingly rigid, closed loop of assessment is systematically making schools worse: Define things children should know or be able to do at a certain age; design a curriculum to instruct them in what you’ve decided they should know; set benchmarks; develop tests to see if they have learned what you initially defined; rinse and repeat.

…These behaviors (pressing academic work on young children) are a direct result of measuring the wrong thing (test scores). If we measured the right things (social development, curiosity, empathy, imagination and confidence), we would engage in a whole different set of education behaviors (play, socialization, arts programs, open-ended discovery). (Italics mine)

After more than 20 years of reading, observing, teaching and presiding over a school, I’m convinced that this simple statement — “Measure the wrong things and you’ll get the wrong behaviors” — is at the root of what ails education, from cradle to grave. Measuring the wrong thing (standardized scores of 4th graders) drives the wrong behaviors (lots of test prep and dull direct instruction). In later school years, measuring the wrong thing (SAT and other standardized test scores, grade point averages, class rank) continues to invite the wrong behaviors (gaming the system, too much unnecessary homework, suppression of curiosity, risk-aversion, high stress).

Measuring the right things is more complicated and less profitable. But if we measured the things that we should truly value (creativity, joy, physical and emotional health, self-confidence, humor, compassion, integrity, originality, skepticism, critical capacities), we would engage in a very different set of behaviors (reading for pleasure, boisterous discussions, group projects, painting, discovery, daydreaming, recess, music, cooperation rather than competition).

As Nelson wrote in his opening, he was tempted to write this in ALL CAPS.  The educational policies that have determined the learning experiences of our children have been created by “American Idiots”… in the truest sense of the Greek.  The entire standards and assessment business has been extremely profitable for a small number of companies.  At what cost to our children?  How about the disappearance of arts programming, the increase in test-related remediation and test preparation, the increase in technology infrastructure required to administer the large-scale assessments… assessments billed as critical to the identification and guidance of instruction for children (while results are frequently not available to teachers until the fall of the subsequent year)!

What our kids don’t need… more trauma

We are right to be frightened.  Our kids have been living with varying degrees of trauma since last March.  I use the “t” word advisedly.  Diane Ravitch shared a letter to the feds from a NY school board in New York State (Port Washington Union Free School District on Long Island) captures the situation more eloquently than I can…

The pandemic has caused our country’s children immense psychological harm and stress. Children are best served by face-to-face interactions and connections with teachers. staff. and know students, in a school building setting. Our school buildings are our children’s ecosystem, and for many, it’s their primary source of emotional and social support, (not to mention food and nutrition and sometimes even clothing). Last March. all of that was taken from them. literally overnight. Sadly. to this very day. many schoolchildren nationwide. including in New York State, have yet to return to in-person instruction, and even for those who have returned. in-person instruction is often not full time and is plagued by constant quarantines of both students and staff. 

This is a common tale. And how have we spent our time? As the school board letter demonstrates, we continue to argue whether or not large-scale assessments should be given this year… tests which cost millions and are better predictors of socio-economic status than learning.   We project the degree of “learning loss” being suffered by  our kids. We struggle with  what kind of grading policy should we be using.  Did you know…Prior to COVID our students were experiencing record high incidences of stress, anxiety, and depression?  And that was before the pandemic.  

The Implications…

We cannot hope to return to school the way it was before the pandemic and expect different results.  And we need different results.  We have ample proof that entrusting the direction, focus, and experiences of schooling, as the majority of our kids experience it, to the latest round of American Idiots and expecting different results is lunacy.  Whether we do this as individual parents, as educators, or as policy makers, we cannot continue our current path.  We cannot depend on those who created the way our kids experience school to offer different solutions. 

The Next Steps…Imagining our way to the future

 A look at the “seen” and the “unseen” realities of our experiences… a paraphrase from Untamed by Glennon Doyle 

I believe that there are two orders of things: There is the seen order unfolding in front of us every day in our schools, on our streets and in the news. In this visible order, there is contention about where our kids should be learning… remotely at home, in-person in school, a mix of both options (hybrid). There is contention about what to do with “learning loss”, etc.  We see our children experiencing and suffering from increased trauma.  We see kids failing and disengaged.  We see kids without the resources necessary to participate in remote schooling. We see increasing violence in our streets, We call this order of things reality. This is “the way things are.”

“It’s all we can see because it’s all some of us have ever seen. Yet something inside us rejects it. We know instinctively: This is not the intended order of things. This is not how things are meant to be. We know that there is a better, truer, wilder way. That better way is the unseen order inside us. It is the vision we carry in our imagination about a truer, more beautiful world—”