My Next Book | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

My Next Book | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

My Next Book

I will have a new book published by the end of this year called Confessions of a School Reformer. How an idea becomes a book even after all I have written, remains mysterious to me. In reconstructing the process which often means demystifying what occurs and making it appear linear and logical, I remain uncertain of exactly how I got the idea and how that idea morphed into a book proposal and then a contract with a publisher and voila!, the book appearing on my doorstep.

Here is what I believe occurred.

I had finished Chasing Success and Confronting Failure in American Schools (2020) and was thinking of my next project (yes, I need to have projects to look forward to). The theme of Chasing Success was how ideas of success and failure in public schools have a long history in American life and showed up repeatedly during three major reform movements that blanketed the 20th and 21st centuries. I wrote the book but I could not get these surges of reform that roiled the nation and schools, and to my surprise, my entire life, out of my head.

A century ago, the Progressive movement swept across the nation’s schools and faded away by the 1950s only to be followed by the widespread quest for equality central to the civil rights movement that then gave way in the late-1970s to business-inspired reforms tying school improvement to the nation’s changing CONTINUE READING: My Next Book | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Biden’s American Rescue Plan is actually a huge new school reform - The Washington Post

Biden’s American Rescue Plan is actually a huge new school reform - The Washington Post

Biden’s American Rescue Plan is actually a huge new school reform

President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is aimed at helping the country recover from the coronavirus pandemic — but it is another thing, as well: a major federal school reform unlike those we’ve seen in the past few decades.

While the new law is aimed at helping families get back on their feet and helping businesses and schools reopen after a year of turmoil, it includes measures that together have the potential to slash poverty among the 12 million students who live in low-income households.

Biden himself tweeted recently: “No child should grow up in poverty. The American Rescue Plan will expand the child tax credit and cut the child poverty rate in half.”

Outside estimates on its impact have come to the same conclusion, including one from the nonprofit Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, which said that two key tax credit provisions could “together lift more children above the poverty line, 5.5 million, than any other economic support program.” An Urban Institute analysis of the plan said the child poverty rate in 2021 will fall by more than 52 percent, largely from changes in tax law and the $1,400 stimulus checks that are part of the relief package.

It should be noted that most of the provisions in this new law will remain in effect only for a year or two — and there is no guarantee what will happen beyond then. But directly aiming to reduce child poverty is exactly what many advocates for children have long said is needed.

Policymakers have been focused for decades on improving public schools with a culture based on standardized testing, the expansion of charter schools and other “school choice” measures, and, in some places, the demonization of teachers. Child poverty, they said, was an excuse for poor performance by adults.

But the testing/choice/big data approach has not closed the achievement gap, and on some measures, it has barely moved.

Critics say research clearly shows that standardized test scores are fundamentally a metric of the state of child poverty in America, not of school quality. Students who live in low-income Zip codes virtually CONTINUE READING: Biden’s American Rescue Plan is actually a huge new school reform - The Washington Post

2021 Medley #4 – Indiana Still Hates Public Ed | Live Long and Prosper

2021 Medley #4 – Indiana Still Hates Public Ed | Live Long and Prosper

2021 Medley #4 – Indiana Still Hates Public Ed

School “reform” in Indiana

In April of 2019, I wrote,

This year, just like in the past, the state of Indiana, ruled by one party with a supermajority in the legislature, has worked to disrespect public schools and public school teachers. The only way to fight this, aside from the daily grind of contacting legislators about every single damaging piece of legislation, is to elect people who don’t hate public schools and public school teachers.

One would think we’d be able to get the teachers, themselves, on board with this…

Sadly, nothing has changed and my fellow Hoosiers, including many of my former public school colleagues, continue to send the same anti-public education folks to Indy. In this year’s session of the Indiana General Assembly the Republican supermajority, like Republican legislators across the country (see here, and here, for example) are doing everything they can to damage the public schools of the state.

They are attempting to divert more money for the state’s already expansive voucher program…despite the studies that have shown that vouchers don’t improve education. They will likely succeed. The state, of course, hasn’t looked CONTINUE READING: 2021 Medley #4 – Indiana Still Hates Public Ed | Live Long and Prosper

Steve Nelson Believes America’s Obsession with School Policy Based on Standardized Tests Is All Wrong | janresseger

Steve Nelson Believes America’s Obsession with School Policy Based on Standardized Tests Is All Wrong | janresseger

Steve Nelson Believes America’s Obsession with School Policy Based on Standardized Tests Is All Wrong

Steve Nelson is the former Head of School at the private, progressive Calhoun School in Manhattan, but he has also spoken passionately about the danger of current trends in public school policy.  I recommend his book, First Do No Harm: Progressive Education in a Time of Existential Risk, and I also enjoy his new blog, where, last week, he warned against the problems in federally mandated standardized testing—a big issue right now as education advocates are urging the new U.S. Secretary of Education to grant states waivers to cancel federally mandated standardized testing in this COVID-19 school year.

Where did our fixation and obsession with standardized testing come from? Nelson weighs in: “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.”

Today’s accountability-based school reform is, writes Nelson, “an increasingly rigid, closed loop of assessment… systematically making schools worse: CONTINUE READING: Steve Nelson Believes America’s Obsession with School Policy Based on Standardized Tests Is All Wrong | janresseger

Top-Down Reform in Chinese Schools and Classroom Practices | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Top-Down Reform in Chinese Schools and Classroom Practices | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Top-Down Reform in Chinese Schools and Classroom Practices

While I do read a lot of articles and books on the history of Chinese education and once spent a month lecturing at Beijing universities in 1987, I am no expert on how children and youth are schooled in the People’s Republic of China. But journalist Lenora Chu who wrote about Chinese schooling from the perspective of a mother of a kindergartner, Rainey–see previous post–and her deep interest in grasping the complexities of the planet’s largest state system of schooling also may not be an expert but she surely has more data than I ever had.

Chu’s family experienced seven years of Chinese primary school and she wrote engagingly of the intersection of state-driven curriculum, culture and classroom teaching. She reached for that elusive policy-to-practice continuum that marks every national system of schooling on the globe: from the PRC’s Ministry of Education policy mandates to Teachers Chen and Wang hovering over the 28 children in Rainey’s kindergarten. No easy task.

I had a glimpse of that policy-to-practice journey in my brief experience as a lecturer over three decades ago. I was there during Premier Deng Xiaoping years as leader of the nation (1978-1997) when he pushed modernizing the country CONTINUE READING: Top-Down Reform in Chinese Schools and Classroom Practices | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Beliefs in School Reform Evolve Over Time | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Beliefs in School Reform Evolve Over Time | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Beliefs in School Reform Evolve Over Time

School reform is steady work. As a teacher, administrator, superintendent, and university researcher for over six decades in working to reform classrooms, schools, and districts, it should come as no surprise to readers that what I thought about reform in the mid-1950s as a teacher, what I believed school reform was when I ran a district in the 1970s and 1980s, and how I conceptualize reform today as a retired professor has changed. Looking back at my strongly held beliefs on reforming schools then and how, I can see how they have morphed into quite different views about school reform today.

There may be wisdom in this “confession” about evolving beliefs about school reform. And even if some readers were to think so, I am well aware that wisdom cannot be told to others because reflecting on one’s direct experience more often than not trumps others’ advice. So I offer these reflections on how one educator’s beliefs about reform changed over time to get readers to ponder what their beliefs once were and are now about teaching, learning, and, yes, of course–reforming schools.

Changes in reform beliefs over time is surely common especially as educators accumulate different experiences over time. What may be uncommon is to document those changes and then reflect on those changes in beliefs.

And that is what I have done in the final chapter of my next book. What I present below is a draft–not a final version so I am open to CONTINUE READING: How Beliefs in School Reform Evolve Over Time | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Will the State Senate Punish Ohio’s 1.6 Million Public School Students by Letting School Funding Reform Die? | janresseger

Will the State Senate Punish Ohio’s 1.6 Million Public School Students by Letting School Funding Reform Die? | janresseger

Will the State Senate Punish Ohio’s 1.6 Million Public School Students by Letting School Funding Reform Die?

The Ohio House Finance Committee voted unanimously (32-0) on Wednesday to refer Substitute House Bill 305, the proposal for a new Fair School Funding Formula, to the full Ohio House for approval. And late yesterday afternoon, the Ohio House of Representatives passed the bill by huge margin: 84-8.

The Ohio Senate, however, is dragging its feet on Senate Bill 376, the companion bill. Plain Dealer reporter Laura Hancock quotes Senator Matt Dolan, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, hinting that he will not bring SB 376 to for a vote by his committee:  “I remain hesitant to pass this… There are still studies that need to be done. I think it’s going to be difficult to pass this out, out of the context of a state budget.”  Senator Dolan has said that he doesn’t want to enact a plan that will eventually cost a lot of money without having the money up front.

The authors of the new school funding plan know the legislature currently lacks the money to pay for the plan’s full implementation, which is why they prescribe a six-year phase in. The authors describe it as a blueprint for an equitable and adequate system.

I don’t know anybody other than Senator Matt Dolan—and likely Senator Matt Huffman, the incoming Senate President—who believes more studies are needed before we know how the plan is designed to work. Representatives Bob Cupp and John Patterson built the plan upon at least three years of study by experts. The House has held a number of hearings since the the plan was originally introduced in the spring of 2019 and incorporated further adjustments to CONTINUE READING: Will the State Senate Punish Ohio’s 1.6 Million Public School Students by Letting School Funding Reform Die? | janresseger

Reimagining the Public High School in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Reimagining the Public High School in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Reimagining the Public High School in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Part 1)

Since 2016, the XQ Institute has awarded almost $140 million to 19 schools across the country to “reimagine” the American high school. They have had five years to do so. Backed by philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, these high schools are in the midst of putting into practice the major changes they proposed for their schools.

Then the coronavirus pandemic struck the U.S. Except for essential services, businesses, schools, and public services closed in March 2020. Of the 24,000 secondary schools in the U.S. (2018), nearly all shifted from in-person classroom interactions to remote instruction. Such an immediate and fundamental shift in the medium of instruction had never occurred before in the history of American public schools.

In effect, schooling, under the shadow of Covid-19, was forcibly reimagined by school boards and superintendents. Historically, reformers have talked about fundamental change for decades and have sought such planned changes in previous incarnations of high school reform. Now, massive, sudden, and I must add–unplanned basic changes in classroom teaching and learning happened over night.

While the pandemic caused the emergency closures, such fundamental change in CONTINUE READING: Reimagining the Public High School in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Education Improvement Thwarted by “Reform” | tultican

Education Improvement Thwarted by “Reform” | tultican

Education Improvement Thwarted by “Reform”

By Thomas Ultican 10/1/2020

For more than two decades, bureaucratic style top down education “reform” has undermined improvement efforts by professional educators. For budding teachers, beginning in college with the study of education and their own personal experience as students, an innate need to better education develops. However, in the modern era, that teacher energy to improve education has been sapped by the desperate fight to save public education from “reformers,” to protect their profession from amateurs and to defend the children in their classrooms from profiteers. 

Genuine advancements in educational practices come from the classroom. Those edicts emanating from government offices or those lavishly financed and promoted by philanthropies are doomed to failure.

The writer Kristina Rizga conducted a four years’ study of Mission High in San Francisco. She discovered a great school whose students do not test especially well. One of her clarion observations that almost all teachers would hardily CONTINUE READING: Education Improvement Thwarted by “Reform” | tultican

Another Look at “Tinkering Toward Utopia” | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Another Look at “Tinkering Toward Utopia” | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Another Look at “Tinkering Toward Utopia”

2020 marks a quarter-century since Tinkering was published. Still in print, the short book on the history of school reform that David Tyack* and I wrote has been praised and panned. Over the years, David and I have spoken and written about the ideas we expressed in the book about history of U.S. school reform and subsequent shifts that we have seen in reform-minded policies pushed by federal and state authorities. And, of course, the hyperbole that accompanied each reform’s rhetoric, action, and implementation.

We have been asked many questions over the years about the logic of the central argument we made and evidence we had to support it. We have been asked about why schooling (both private and public) seem so familiar to each generation of parents even with new buildings, furnishings, and technologies.

Not long ago, however, I was asked one question that I don’t remember ever being asked: Whose utopia are you tinkering toward?

That question returns to me during the current pandemic as U.S. public schools  shut down for a half-year erratically open for in-person schooling but, more often than not, with remote instruction. The question got me thinking anew about the ever-shifting aims of reformers who champion how schools should be. “Should be” is the key phrase in reform because buried within each major reform that has swept across U.S. schools with either gale-force winds or stiff breezes is a vision of a utopian schooling and a “good” place for children to be.

As schools re-open still in the midst of Covid-19, online instruction for the CONTINUE READING: Another Look at “Tinkering Toward Utopia” | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Dr. Leslie Fenwick Explains Why the “Schemes” of Reformers Keep Failing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Dr. Leslie Fenwick Explains Why the “Schemes” of Reformers Keep Failing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Dr. Leslie Fenwick Explains Why the “Schemes” of Reformers Keep Failing

In this brief video, Dr. Leslie Fenwick, former dean of the College of Education at Howard University, explains why the “schemes” of corporate reformers always fail. She doesn’t hold back about charters, vouchers, Broad superintendents, and Teach for America.

The video is part of a series of hundreds of interviews of educators, conducted by former teacher Bob Greenberg. He calls his series the Brainwaves Video Anthology. After you watch Dr. Fenwick’s wonderful interview, you should browse his collection. It’s very impressive.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick Explains Why the “Schemes” of Reformers Keep Failing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Now Here Is a Balanced Discussion of Teachers Unions! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Now Here Is a Balanced Discussion of Teachers Unions! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Now Here Is a Balanced Discussion of Teachers Unions!

The Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance is led by Professor Paul Peterson, an advocate for school choice. It would not be off the mark to say that PEPG exists to promote the DeVos agenda. Soon after she was confirmed, PEPG invited her to speak, and her speech was disrupted by Harvard students not affiliated with PEPG. Peterson has been the mentor for a generation of pro-school choice academics, including Jay Greene (University of Arkansas, Department of Education Reform), Patrick Wolf (same, also served as “independent evaluator” of Milwaukee and DC voucher prigrams), and Martin West (Harvard Graduate School of Education). Peterson recently appeared at the White House to support Trump’s call to reopen schools and co-wrote an oped with Dr. Scott Atlas (both are senior fellows at the rightwing Hoover Institution). Dr. Atlas supports Trump’s views that mask-wearing should not be mandatory, that children and adolescents don’t get the virus, th ast schools should reopen without delay, and that lockdowns are unnecessary. In many articles about Dr. Atlas, Peterson is his reliable defender.

The event today asks whether teachers unions can be part of the solution. Michelle Rhee and George Parker. Parker was head of the Washington Teachers Union when Rhee was chancellor. When he stepped down, he went to work for Rhee. He now works for a charter school lobbying group. More than 90% of charters are non-union.

Fall 2020 Colloquium Series: Can Teachers Unions Be Part of the Solution?

The PEPG Colloquium series continues Thursday, Sept. 24, with “Can Teachers Unions Be Part of the Solution?,” a talk by Michelle Rhee, Founder and CEO, StudentsFirst, former Chancellor for District of Columbia Public Schools, and George Parker, Senior Advisor, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, former President, District of Columbia Teachers Union.

Thursday, Sept. 24
12-1:15 p.m.

Register to attend the Zoom webinar

CONTINUE READING: Now Here Is a Balanced Discussion of Teachers Unions! | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: DC: Lessons About Charter Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: DC: Lessons About Charter Schools

DC: Lessons About Charter Schools

DC schools have a history of being messy. There's the entire checkered history of Michelle Rhee, followed by the entire checkered history of the people either trying to build on or clean up after Michelle Rhee. I'm reminding you of this as context for the revelations that are about to be unintentionally provided about the DC charter sector.

You can get a taste of the mess in the public schools from two pieces of testimonial from Richard Phelps, who came on as Director of Assessment just as Rhee was edging toward the door in 2010.Part One looks at how Phelps worked hard to poll over 500 staff members to come up with concrete improvements for the testing system, which boiled down to a ton of work that was summarily rejected by four central office staff, including Rhee. He was supposed to get the staff to buy in to the crappy existing system, not make it better. The Ed Reform Club. he concluded, was there to exploit DC for its own benefit. Part Two looks at the cheating scandals, most specifically the scandal that never became a story--DCPS's technique of using the test blueprint to teach to the test. In the end, he concludes, despite their rhetoric, school leaders Rhee, Henderson and McGoldrick had no interest in making their system more transparent or accountable.

So in a way, I guess it's not surprising that the charter sector that has blossomed in DC is also filled with the same Ed Reform Club problems. And this comes from looking at a piece, not by a DC charter critic, but by one of their big cheerleaders, who can't help saying some of the quiet parts CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: DC: Lessons About Charter Schools

Can Covid-19 Take School Reform in a New and Different Direction? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Can Covid-19 Take School Reform in a New and Different Direction? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Can Covid-19 Take School Reform in a New and Different Direction?

Covid-19 offers the opportunity to think anew and differently about the direction of schooling in America. Chances are it won’t happen.

Consider mandated state tests. U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos said states could waive the spring tests which occurred at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. As to whether the Secretary of Education will permit states to waive the fall administration of those tests is yet to be decided. In mid-July, one of her Assistant Secretaries said that “[a]ccountability aside, we need to know where students are so we can address their needs.” He told reporters that “Our instinct would not be to give those waivers.”

Now, that is goofy. Since the default option for schooling has been remote instruction during the spring and fall semesters with some districts opting for hybrids of it and in-person classroom lessons. What makes a decision to give state tests as mandated by the Every Student Succeeds Act (2016) particularly dumb is that student attendance rates that usually run above 90-95 percent during the 36-week school year have been running well below that figure and in some instances 80 percent attendance especially for those schools with high numbers of low-income minorities (see here, here, and here).

Moreover, continuing technical lapses have occurred before and during remote CONTINUE READING: Can Covid-19 Take School Reform in a New and Different Direction? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

UPDATE: Richard Phelps Reviews Michelle Rhee’s “Reforms,” Ten Years Later, Part 1 & Part 2 | Diane Ravitch's blog

Richard Phelps Reviews Michelle Rhee’s “Reforms,” Ten Years Later, Part 1 | Diane Ravitch's blog

Richard Phelps Reviews Michelle Rhee’s “Reforms,” Ten Years Later, Part 1

A decade ago, Richard Phelps was assessment director of the District of Columbia Public Schools. His time in that position coincided with the last ten months of Michelle Rhee’s tenure in office. When her patron Adrian Fenty lost the election for Mayor, Rhee left and so did Phelps.

Phelps writes here about what he learned while trying to improve the assessment practices of the DC Public Schools. He posts his overview in two parts, and this is part 1. The second part will appear in the next post.

Rhee asked Phelps to expand the VAM program–the use of test scores to evaluate teachers and to terminate or reward them based on student scores.

Phelps described his visits to schools to meet with teachers. He gathered useful ideas about how to make the assessments more useful to teachers and students.

Soon enough, he learned that the Central Office staff, including Rhee, rejected all the ideas he collected from teachers and imposed their own ideas instead.

He writes: CONTINUE READING: Richard Phelps Reviews Michelle Rhee’s “Reforms,” Ten Years Later, Part 1 | Diane Ravitch's blog

Richard Phelps Reviews Michelle Rhee’s Reforms, Part 2 | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-rOk via @dianeravitch

How Covid-19 Froze School Reform (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Covid-19 Froze School Reform (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Covid-19 Froze School Reform (Part 3)

Covid-19 has not only frozen prior reforms–BC (Before Covid)–see Parts 1 and 2–but the spread of software and devices throughout schools prior to the coronavirus pandemic has led to a total embrace of online instruction or DC, During Covid-19. Districts are providing families with laptops and tablets like popcorn.

I take up particularly the work of entrepreneurs and school districts to spread “personalization” software and claims of tailoring teaching and learning to each student, a reform that will finally reach the Holy Grail of mass schooling–individualized learning at home and school. Using devices and software is now not a choice, it is a must. *

That is the story I want to tell. I begin with the word, palimpsest:

Palimpsest: “A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition, 2000, p. 1265).

Personalized instruction in 2020 is like a palimpsest.

Tailoring knowledge and skills to the individual student and given students CONTINUE READING:  How Covid-19 Froze School Reform (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Covid-19 Froze School Reform (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Covid-19 Froze School Reform (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Covid-19 Froze School Reform (Part 2)

What was school reform like before Covid-19 ( BC)?

Since the mid-1980s, U.S. public schools had been enthralled with and institutionalized a series of reforms that are now called the “standards, testing, and accountability movement.” It is nearly three decades long.

Recall that the Progressive movement began in the 1890s and, depending upon the historian one reads, lasted until the 1920s or through World War II. The other reform movement that flowed across the schools had a shorter life-span. The civil rights movement spilling over public schools is usually dated by the 1954 Brown decision and peters out by the mid-1970s. Soon to be overtaken by the “standards, testing, and accountability” reforms that readers know so well.

Civic and corporate leaders allied with enthusiastic donors turned public schools in the 1980s to building human capital essential to fostering economic growth and stronger competition for global markets. Their overall strategy was (and still is) to apply a business model of competitiveness, innovation, and efficiency to public schools that fixed attention on the bottom line of test scores and return-on-investment in high school graduates entering and completing college.[i]

These leaders and foundation officials over the past three decades have created beefy portfolios of reform ventures including changes in funding and structural innovations such as vouchers, charter schools, common curriculum standards, testing and accountability including using student scores to determine district CONTINUE READING: How Covid-19 Froze School Reform (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice