Why A ‘Blue Wave’ May Depend On Changing Education Politics

Why A ‘Blue Wave’ May Depend On Changing Education Politics

Why A ‘Blue Wave’ May Depend On Changing Education Politics

Democratic party strategists and supporters may believe a “blue wave” is coming in the midterm elections because of widespread opposition to President Trump, but they risk their party’s success if they forget that state and local races more often revolve around issues closer to home – like education.

Education, often overlooked during presidential elections because of the federal government’s relatively small footprint on education policy and funding, rises in prominence in off-year political campaigns, because candidates running for state and local offices have to explain how they’ll spend tax dollars on local schools – or not. This year’s contests are not an exception.

“Education is a top issue in the midterms,” declares a headline of an article in TIME that reports on the close contest for governor in Oklahoma, where the Democratic candidate Drew Edmondson is up by a point over his Republican opponent, according to recent polling. The reason for the uncharacteristic advantage the Democratic candidate may have in a deeply red state is “public anger over education funding,” the article contends.

The reporter traces the surprising political turnabout in the Sooner State to “the wave of wildcat teacher strikes” that occurred earlier this year in a number of red-leaning states, including Oklahoma, and finds “a similar dynamic is playing out in” electoral contests elsewhere.

For years, Democrats have more often than not been somewhat agreeablewith their Republican opponents on most education issues. But this Continue reading: Why A ‘Blue Wave’ May Depend On Changing Education Politics

What’s Behind TIME Magazine’s Teacher Hate Turnaround?

What’s Behind TIME Magazine’s Teacher Hate Turnaround?

What’s Behind TIME Magazine’s Teacher Hate Turnaround?

The recent TIME Magazine article about teachers describes beaten-down, courageous individuals, struggling to remain in a profession where they are not honored like they deserve. TIME seems to suddenly love teachers.

It had those of us who support public schools and teachers scratching our heads. TIME hasn’t been kind to teachers in the past. Remember this cover story about rotten apples? Here’s what I wrote about it at the time. I called it “Teacher Hate.”

Or how about this one with the Reform Queen Michelle Rhee sweeping away the “bad teachers”?

TIME is not alone. The media has condemned the teaching profession and public schools for years. They’ve helped to drive corporate school ownership by individuals who know little about children. They’ve made it their business to report unfair high-stakes testing results. They’ve help to foist standards, including Common Core, and strict accountability standards.

They’ve done this all while praising “no excuses” charter schools, like KIPP, or shown off the corporate millions spent on programs like Teach for America. They created an artificial debate that education failed our kids, by pumping up for-private enterprises that were supposed to change the status quo. Remember the bias NBC’s Education Nation, in-part sponsored by the for-profit University of Phoenix?

Scan articles by USA Today, or even the liberal leaning New York Times, and you will Continue reading: What’s Behind TIME Magazine’s Teacher Hate Turnaround?

Diane Ravitch On TIME Magazine's Attack on America's Teachers - https://www.commondreams.org/node/85963 via @commondreams

Rick Hess’s Mistake: Failure of Test-and-Punish Is Not Limited to a Few Districts That Have Disappointed | janresseger

Rick Hess’s Mistake: Failure of Test-and-Punish Is Not Limited to a Few Districts That Have Disappointed | janresseger

Rick Hess’s Mistake: Failure of Test-and-Punish Is Not Limited to a Few Districts That Have Disappointed

Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, has always been a corporate education reform kind of guy. That is why Hess’s honest analysis this week of the ultimate fraud of a succession of school district miracles—Washington, D.C.’s test score and graduation rate miracle under Michelle Rhee and those who followed her, Alonzo Crim’s Atlanta in the 1980s, Houston’s Texas Miracle under Rod Paige, Arne Duncan’s Chicago, and Beverly Hall’s Atlanta—is so refreshingly candid.

In all of these cases, as Hess points out, there was “a remarkable dearth of attention paid to ensuring that the metrics (were) actually valid and reliable.”  Second, it was “tempting for civic leaders and national advocates to accept happy success stories at face value—especially when they (were) fronted by a charismatic superintendent.” And finally “reformers and reporters (made) things worse with their lust for ‘celebrity superintendents’ and ‘model systems.’ Their fascination nurtur(ed) an echo chamber in which a handful of leaders (got) exalted, often for too-good-to-be-true results.”

One must give Hess credit for honestly admitting the failure of so much of what his own kind of school reformers have been exalting for the past quarter century—business school accountability for schools, driven by universal standardized testing, and evaluated by two primary outcomes—standardized test scores and graduation rates. But Hess makes a mistake when he attributes the problem to a few “model” school districts that have disappointed.

Hess’s explanation is inadequate.  Inadequate because the system itself—the whole idea of school reform based on high stakes testing—cannot work.  Daniel Koretz, the Harvard specialist on testing, tells us why in a recent book: The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better.

Koretz defines the problem with high-stakes-test-based school accountability by exploring a primary principle of social science research. Forty years ago, Don Campbell, “one of the founders of the science of program evaluation,” articulated a core principle now known as Continue reading: Rick Hess’s Mistake: Failure of Test-and-Punish Is Not Limited to a Few Districts That Have Disappointed | janresseger

Second Draft: A Continuum of Personalized Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Second Draft: A Continuum of Personalized Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Second Draft: A Continuum of Personalized Learning

A year and a half ago, I published a post that tried to make sense of the spread of “personalized learning” as the “next big thing” in U.S. schooling. To make sense of the heralded innovation in teaching and learning,  I created a continuum of programs self-styled as “personalized learning” based upon my research in Silicon valley districts, schools, and classrooms. I received many comments on the post and continued reading reports from schools and districts after which I revised the continuum. Here is my second draft.

Background

In 2016, when I visited Silicon Valley classrooms, schools and districts, many school administrators and teachers told me that they were personalizing learning. From the Summit network of charter schools to individual teachers at Los Altos and Mountain View High School where Bring Your Own Devices reigned to two Milpitas elementary schools that had upper-grade Learning Labs and rotated students through different stations in all grades, I heard the phrase often (see here).

But I was puzzled by what I saw and heard. When asked what a teacher, principal or district administrator meant by “personalized learning“ I heard different definitions of the policy.  I heard that PL was an actual program, an instructional application,an academic strategy. Not a surprise since the history of school reform is dotted with the debris of earlier instructional reforms that varied greatly in definition and practice (e.g., New Math, Socratic seminars, mastery learning, individualized instruction). While scores of crisp definitions dot educational journals, social media, and professional organizations, no one definition of “personalized learning” monopolizes the reform terrain.Continue readingSecond Draft: A Continuum of Personalized Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice