I am dictating this blog post using a Jawbone bluetooth headset and Windows Seven Speech Recognition. This is a very easy way for your students to begin the writing process, eliminating the struggles with holding a pen, or keyboarding, or spelling, or just the mechanical transfer from brain to hand.
One of the biggest issues I see in student writing is all the things which block students from effectively telling their stories, all the things which burn up cognitive effort and leave nothing left over for communication.
Holding a "writing implement" is very hard for many children, especially left-handers and, of course, boys in general. Keyboarding can also be quite difficult - especially on the anti-ergonomic full-size QWERTY keyboards, whether "real" on laptops or desktops, or "virtual" on touchscreens (keyboards injure more people each year than any other workplace tool, the awful stress placed on the wrists and blood vessels in the wrists by the "touch typing" hand position is a massive issue). Troubles with spelling - typically caused by a lack of phonological awareness - makes the writing of every word, via keyboard, pen, or pencil, a deeply troubling task. And any or all of this robs students of their voice, and their active participation in the world.
Solving this was once difficult and expensive. Now, however, it is free and easy. Every Windows computer running Windows 7 or Windows Vista comes equipped with a top performing Speech Recognition/Voice-To-Text system, free, included.
You may not have seen it yet. You need to look in your Programs menu, under "Accessories" and then "Ease of Access." Right click on "Speech Recognition" and pin that shortcut to your start menu, and send it your desktop.
People with iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads can install Dragon Naturally Speaking free from the App Store.
Both software packages do the same thing. They listen to you, and write down what you say. Both require some patience and training (though Dragon likes to deny this), but the more you use either program the more accurate they become, especially if you actively correct mistakes within the program, as the software learns to match your pronunciations with correct words. Setting up Windows Speech Recognition Getting best results from Dragon
Speech recognition will never misspell a word, but it will get the words wrong, so students should use a grammar checker, with appropriate settings, whenever writing with SR. But there's a touch of magic in the "no misspellings," when kids consistently see their spoken words turn into correctly spelled words, their sightword recognition grows and their spelling often improves.
Why the Jawbone headset? For two reasons. The bluetooth connection allows students to move as they want without being tethered, and bluetooth digital transmission is far more accurate than using audio plug-connected headsets (USB headsets are the best wired solution). But most importantly because Jawbone's technology relies primarily on the vibration of the jaw, and combined with remarkable noise and wind suppression (originally a defense department solution for tank command), allows the lowest volume speaking with the least environmental (classroom noise) interference.
My Jawbone headset came free about 18 months ago with a phone, but you can buy basic models for under $50. You'll want to use the ear loop for kids, the earbud will not stay in small ears by itself.
Try this in your classrooms. Liberate students from the cognitive waste going to mechanical issues which have nothing to do with effective communication. Help them to become communicators and storytellers, and let your teaching focus on construction of effective writing, and what separates "writing" from "talking" in our culture.
Rememver: Pens, pencils, typewriters, keyboards... these are all tools for getting words from your brain to "paper." These tools have no particular value in and of themselves, they are simply a means to an end. If there is a better tool for many of your students - and now there is - you are doing nothing but holding your students back by not using it.
Just about everything I see or hear in the "Main Stream Media" about education seems to be a lie to me. All of the political rhetoric around education, seems the same, deliberate falsehoods and words designed to hide real intentions. After Part OnePart TwoPart Three here is part four...
Parents are the customers in education
Parents are the customers for schools. That's the charter school argument. Parents are the customers and get to make the choices.
Business is the customer for schools. That's the Andrew Carnegie/Bill Gates argument. Business is the customer and it is the job of schools to create the kind of employees businesses want.
Society is the customer for schools. That's the social conservatives' argument. The purpose of education is to uncritically reproduce the society we have.
Who is the customer in education? How you answer this question pretty much determines what kinds of schools you will create, and how you will judge and treat students.
Parents will not like this, but if you believe that parents are the customer you embrace the idea the children are parental property, to be pushed forward or held back at the whim of the adults who "own" them.
I think about this every time a KIPP school opens, or a charter, requiring specific knowledge and actions on the part of parents. I think of this every time a teacher tells me, "his parents won't let him use the internet." I think of this every time I see the difference in IEP meetings when parents are wealthy and powerful vs. poor and uneducated.
Parents are, and can be, an incredibly effective advocate system for kids, but parental resources vary so greatly, that any "parent-based" system inevitably becomes socially reproductive - that is, parents with power and knowledge get what their kids needs, and their kids succeed. Parents without don't get what their kids need, and their kids fail.
So parent-based systems reward the haves. They have choices because they have funds, knowledge, transportation, the ability to even home school. And the have-nots are punished. Those children have parents without access to information, without access to transportation (and thus charter choice), without access to their own successful educations as a support system.
What about business? Bill Gates wants trained employees. That, I suppose, is reasonable. But Gates is part of a long line of American industrialists who view the purpose of education as being to provide the American industry of the moment, prepared, compliant laborers. The problem with this, in a rapidly changing world, is that even if we thought it was our societal goal to enrich Microsoft, if we prepare workers for Microsoft now (a fine place to work from all that I understand, by the way), who will be preparing people to work on what's coming next?
The first question to be asked is, why do corporations, which do everything they can do to avoid paying taxes to support schools, get to make the decisions for our children?
We still run schools designed to prepare workers for
the best jobs of 1910
The second question to be asked is, do businesses have any idea of what their future needs will be? Punch card operators? Typists? Mainframe computer maintenance? This is not a knock on vocational education, which I think is an excellent option when done well - see, say, Automotive and Aviation High Schools in New York City (let us not dwell on the absurdity of Automotive High being concerned with SAT prep - that is the idiocy of NCLB, the Obama Administration, and Mike Bloomberg). But it is a challenge as to the effectiveness of our business leaders at judging what is coming next. Not to mention the third question...
If our schools are designed to produce workers, how is this different from a feudal society?
As for society, well, society pays for education. Society has a compelling interest in education, but if we want to avoid becoming Brave New World, society cannot be the "customer" in education either. If it is we guarantee social reproduction, and we limit personal freedom.
'"My good boy!" The Director wheeled sharply round on him. "Can't you see? Can't you see?" He raised a hand; his expression was solemn. "Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!"
"Major instruments of social stability. "Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg. '"Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!" The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. "You really know where you are. For the first time in history." He quoted the planetary motto. "Community, Identity, Stability." Grand words. "If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved." "Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology. '"But, alas," the Director shook his head, "we can't bokanovskify indefinitely.'- Aldous Huxley
So, to me, the customer in education will always be the student. The student who has an individuality separate from his or her parents. The student whose future should not be dependent on his or her parents wealth or resources. The student who has rights as an individual human, to make decisions on their own - to learn to make decisions on their own. The students whose future doesn't belong to Microsoft or Google or Toyota.
If you are hungry, you are focusing on being hungry, not on learning. If you are worried about being evicted from your home, you are focused on fear, not on learning. If your parent is worried about feeding you, they are probably not helping you learn about the world. If your parent is exhausted by working two full time jobs, they are probably not helping you learn about the world.
In order to take the intellectual risks necessary for real learning, humans need to be comfortable. Yes, you can teach a few rote skills through fear and intimidation, but you will never create understanding and new possibilities that way.
So poverty is the enemy of learning in every way. Poverty is fear. Poverty is discomfort. Poverty is pain. And all those emotions take over the brain, and prevent higher level thinking.
We know this.
So education cannot solve poverty. Solving poverty, however, can do much to fix education.
That is not to say that schools cannot help. Schools - at their best - provide safe places for kids at risk, they provide food for kids who are hungry - they work really hard to give kids the things they need. And all that makes a big difference...
But it cannot equalize opportunity.
So we, in education do everything that we can, but until our societies, particularly American society, decides that children matter, we'll be fighting an uphill battle.
And deciding that children matter means having Universal Health Insurance focused on preventative care. It means having a true living wage, not a minimum wage, so that forty hours of work makes a family economically safe. It means having mandatory paid vacation time so parents have time with children, and mandatory paid parental leave for when schools need parent involvement or kids are sick. It means having reasonable housing support, unemployment insurance, and welfare programs so that children due not become unsafe when bankers screw up. And it means funding community safety programs and law enforcement so that children do not die because a foolish schools superintendent forces them to walk between gang neighborhoods.
City College of New York, diverse, and completely free
1847-1976
We might add in strong, massive, support for public libraries, community centers, and other neighborhood resources. Because it is absolutely true that the moment and place of America's greatest social mobility - New York City from 1900 to 1960 - combined a vast public health system with a vast public housing system, strong minimum wage laws, free university tuitions (1847-1976), great libraries in every neighborhood, and a highly affordable 24-hour transit system which made expenses such as car ownership unnecessary.
It is these systems which, in European nations, have shifted societies toward equity, and made their educational systems much more effective at equalizing opportunity.
And until America stops being anti-child and anti-family, our problems in education remain tough to solve.
You can change educational results without fundamentally changing the system
This is the biggest lie of all. Without undoing the structure which is designed to fail most students, we won't get the change in results we want.
Age-based grades ensure that students who are "different" in any way fall behind and cannot catch up. Age-based grades also create disability - if you are not "on grade level" you are, first "behind," and then, "retarded."
The competitive educational environment created by the giving of grades divides students into winners and losers, preserving failure as our number one result.
Dividing content into discrete classes, separated by bells, assures that Passion-Based Learning cannot take hold, leaving most students bored.
All the nonsense bandied about by the Obama-Duncan-Gates-Rhee-Kopp crowd - changing managers, changing teachers, changing standards, changing examinations - leave the system exactly as it is. A system which we all know doesn't work because it attempts to manufacture human beings.
Perhaps you don't agree with me that this group of reformers wants education to fail, but you have to admit that they are doing nothing to stop it from failing.
In 1962 the doctors in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan went on strike for over three weeks in an attempt to block the introduction of Universal Health Insurance. Though the strike failed when the government held firm and brought in doctors from Britain to staff clinics and hospitals, the threat of this type of labor action was used repeatedly by the American Medical Association over the next 30+ years to derail attempts to bring a contemporary single-payer health system to the United States.
This is just to point out that teachers are not the only organized group of professionals in the United States. This is because, in a democracy, people have a right to association, and a right to organized action. According to the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights (a treaty ratified by the United States of America), this includes "the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."
Andrew Jackson's Spoils System, undone by
Chester A. Arthur, reinstated by New Jersey
Governor Chris Christie?
Unions, whether for private employees or public employees, and the collective bargaining which is the heart of union rights, exist to balance out power inequalities. In private business unions balance a few things - first, the legal "fiction" of the corporation - which allows "capitalist" investors to hide their actions from personal responsibility. Because corporations are created by governments to protect owners, unions exist - in most industrialized nations with similar government protections - in order to protect workers. In private business unions also balance the power of trade associations. Whether Chambers of Commerce or industry groups or purchasing co-ops such as American hardware and drug stores belong to, businesses are allowed to organize, so workers must as well.
In public service unions provide another kind of balance. To begin, public service unions provide protection for the civil service system which, however flawed it might seem, is far superior to the political graft system of public employment which dominated life in America before the Chester A. Arthur administration. In the "spoils system" all government jobs were dependent on who got elected, and most importantly, who had contributed to who got elected. Elections would turn over all public office holders, with political loyalty and out-and-out bribery replacing judgments of competence.
But more importantly public service unions provide the only possible balance for workers with both very limited employer choice and very limited strike opportunities. And they protect employees from the kind of political wrath being unleashed by bullies like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who would legislate working conditions and compensation for political revenge.
But let's talk teachers' unions specifically. And as we do so, let me state that I don't begin from a neutral point-of-view. I am a member of the American Federation of Teachers, my mother was an organizer of the AFT local in her school district. I am old enough to remember her being paid minimum wage with few benefits in the "minimally unionized" early days of her career.
That is not to admit that I think, at times, certain teachers' unions, especially some components the National Education Association, have been agents of professional conservatism. And yet I understand that unions - and how they operate - are always a response to an environment. If a teachers' union acts as if its members are industrial line workers this is really no surprise, since teachers are often treated by school boards - and today by the United States Government - as industrial line workers.
Still, most often, I see teachers' unions doing the hard work of professionalism. It is only because of unionization that teachers' salaries have become middle class salaries. Still far below lawyers and doctors and others with equivalent educational expectations, but middle class. Beginning at about $25,000 in most states and topping out a bit under $50,000. It is only because of unionization that teachers are working on their jobs at night instead of working second jobs (as I see most non-unionized private and charter teachers doing). It is only because of unionization that teachers have planning time and professional development days. It is only because of unionization - and the tenure it has brought - that great teachers are willing to take chances to move their students and the profession forward.
In my experience, just as a student, I watched unions fight for educational re-design, for open classrooms and alternative schools. I watched them fight for the jobs of great teachers who otherwise might have been fired for "rocking the organizational boat." I watched them insist on ongoing professional development. And I watched them keep great teachers in schools by paying them decently. At the same time I've watched school boards and governments change educational policy by whim and by election. I've seen school administrative and political vendettas. I've seen curriculum and practice politicized.
So, in my mind, unions are essential, and the evidence seems to show that unions make education more successful: "Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows: South Carolina – 50th, North Carolina – 49th, Georgia – 48th, Texas – 47th, Virginia – 44th. If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country." Yes, that's only one measure, but it backs up much other data, from the US and elsewhere, that by the measures prized by "educational reformers," unionized teaching staffs produce better results.
Teachers should be paid less than Wall Street bankers or brokers (or Governors)
That is a typical anonymous blog response to the question of teacher pay. It follows the line promoted by Bill Gates, by Wendy Kopp, and by Arne Duncan that teaching is both easy and relatively unimportant.
And that is the societal position. In the United States, where the power structure constantly argues that high pay is justified - not just justified but essential - to bring good workers to important jobs, teacher salaries remain among the lowest of all professionals.
Yes, we can laugh at Republican (US) - Tory/Lib Dem (UK) - Liberal (Australia) hypocrisy on this. CEOs won't work unless paid a billion. Brokers won't work unless paid millions. Teachers need "merit pay" to motivate them, but, teachers, police officers, firefighters don't really need to be paid well, but the fact is that these capitalist societies demonstrate "value" of a profession through pay. And by this measure, these societies see teachers, and education, as unimportant.
Now I think differently. I think teachers save more lives every year than doctors. I think teachers protect more people's rights every day than most lawyers will in their careers. I don't think that there is anything society does which is more important than moving our next generation forward. So, to me, teachers deserve to be among the best paid professionals in a society.
They also need to be among the best trained, with ongoing in-service training as a part of every schedule, just as it is for doctors.
This is really not a question of national resources. It is a question of distribution of national resources. Every time taxes on the wealthy are high, or are raised, and resources are shifted to public service and public works, the American economy improves as the health of the middle class improves and as opportunity improves because of better public services. So when Eisenhower was U.S. President and the top marginal tax rate was 91%, those funds built schools and universities, paid teachers and professors, and opened up professional careers to many. Research funds created computers and jet engines and nuclear power, cured polio, and made measles rare. When Bill Clinton raised taxes and invested in police protection for America's cities, it created a safer society in which entrepreneurship could flourish in urban areas. These two "high tax" eras represent the real growth moments for the post World War II United States economy.
So raising taxes on the rich in order to pay teachers salaries Republicans consider "middle class" makes sense all around.
corollary - Superintendents are overpaid
Chris Christie, home above,
thinks you are overpaid
“We must wake up to the new economic reality that government must be more efficient and cut the cost of the bureaucracy,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement on Monday. “Reducing back office overhead, administration, consultants and encouraging consolidations are the best targets to find savings.”
Remember, these are the same governors who won't raise taxes because "talent" might leave their states if take home pay is in any way reduced.
Now superintendents are easy targets. They are the highest paid people in each school district (except maybe in Texas, where no pay limit has been suggested for high school football coaches), and superintendents tend to make enemies as they negotiate the competing interests pulling at their organizations.
But I always wonder why businesses must pay big bucks to get the best employees (see above) but government requires no incentives to attract talent? And I wonder why a CEO making 262 times the average worker's pay is 'appropriately compensated' (and in need of a tax cut) but a $250,000 per year superintendent running a huge organization with an average salary of, perhaps, $40,000, is 'grossly overpaid'?
Core of Knowledge." These are, of course, not policies but advertising slogans designed to convince you that those in power have your best intentions in mind. I'm here, again, to remind you, that maybe they don't. Part OnePart Two
Unions make no sense for "Professional" teachers
In 1962 the doctors in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan went on strike for over three weeks in an attempt to block the introduction of Universal Health Insurance. Though the strike failed when the government held firm and brought in doctors from Britain to staff clinics and hospitals, the threat of this type of labor action was used repeatedly by the American Medical Association over the next 30+ years to derail attempts to bring a contemporary single-payer health system to the United States.
This is just to point out that teachers are not the only organized group of professionals in the United States. This is because, in a democracy, people have a right to association, and a right to organized action. According to the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights (a treaty ratified by the United States of America), this includes "the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."
Andrew Jackson's Spoils System, undone by
Chester A. Arthur, reinstated by New Jersey
Governor Chris Christie?
Unions, whether for private employees or public employees, and the collective bargaining which is the heart of union rights, exist to balance out power inequalities. In private business unions balance a few things - first, the legal "fiction" of the corporation - which allows "capitalist" investors to hide their actions from personal responsibility. Because corporations are created by governments to protect owners, unions exist - in most industrialized nations with similar government protections - in order to protect workers. In private business unions also balance the power of trade associations. Whether Chambers of Commerce or industry groups or purchasing co-ops such as American hardware and drug stores belong to, businesses are allowed to organize, so workers must as well.
In public service unions provide another kind of balance. To begin, public service unions provide protection for the civil service system which, however flawed it might seem, is far superior to the political graft system of public employment which dominated life in America before the Chester A. Arthur administration. In the "spoils system" all government jobs were dependent on who got elected, and most importantly, who had contributed to who got elected. Elections would turn over all public office holders, with political loyalty and out-and-out bribery replacing judgments of competence.
But more importantly public service unions provide the only possible balance for workers with both very limited employer choice and very limited strike opportunities. And they protect employees from the kind of political wrath being unleashed by bullies like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who would legislate working conditions and compensation for political revenge.
But let's talk teachers' unions specifically. And as we do so, let me state that I don't begin from a neutral point-of-view. I am a member of the American Federation of Teachers, my mother was an organizer of the AFT local in her school district. I am old enough to remember her being paid minimum wage with few benefits in the "minimally unionized" early days of her career.
That is not to admit that I think, at times, certain teachers' unions, especially some components the National Education Association, have been agents of professional conservatism. And yet I understand that unions - and how they operate - are always a response to an environment. If a teachers' union acts as if its members are industrial line workers this is really no surprise, since teachers are often treated by school boards - and today by the United States Government - as industrial line workers.
Still, most often, I see teachers' unions doing the hard work of professionalism. It is only because of unionization that teachers' salaries have become middle class salaries. Still far below lawyers and doctors and others with equivalent educational expectations, but middle class. Beginning at about $25,000 in most states and topping out a bit under $50,000. It is only because of unionization that teachers are working on their jobs at night instead of working second jobs (as I see most non-unionized private and charter teachers doing). It is only because of unionization that teachers have planning time and professional development days. It is only because of unionization - and the tenure it has brought - that great teachers are willing to take chances to move their students and the profession forward.
In my experience, just as a student, I watched unions fight for educational re-design, for open classrooms and alternative schools. I watched them fight for the jobs of great teachers who otherwise might have been fired for "rocking the organizational boat." I watched them insist on ongoing professional development. And I watched them keep great teachers in schools by paying them decently. At the same time I've watched school boards and governments change educational policy by whim and by election. I've seen school administrative and political vendettas. I've seen curriculum and practice politicized.
So, in my mind, unions are essential, and the evidence seems to show that unions make education more successful: "Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows: South Carolina – 50th, North Carolina – 49th, Georgia – 48th, Texas – 47th, Virginia – 44th. If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country." Yes, that's only one measure, but it backs up much other data, from the US and elsewhere, that by the measures prized by "educational reformers," unionized teaching staffs produce better results.
Teachers should be paid less than Wall Street bankers or brokers (or Governors)
That is a typical anonymous blog response to the question of teacher pay. It follows the line promoted by Bill Gates, by Wendy Kopp, and by Arne Duncan that teaching is both easy and relatively unimportant.
And that is the societal position. In the United States, where the power structure constantly argues that high pay is justified - not just justified but essential - to bring good workers to important jobs, teacher salaries remain among the lowest of all professionals.
Yes, we can laugh at Republican (US) - Tory/Lib Dem (UK) - Liberal (Australia) hypocrisy on this. CEOs won't work unless paid a billion. Brokers won't work unless paid millions. Teachers need "merit pay" to motivate them, but, teachers, police officers, firefighters don't really need to be paid well, but the fact is that these capitalist societies demonstrate "value" of a profession through pay. And by this measure, these societies see teachers, and education, as unimportant.
Now I think differently. I think teachers save more lives every year than doctors. I think teachers protect more people's rights every day than most lawyers will in their careers. I don't think that there is anything society does which is more important than moving our next generation forward. So, to me, teachers deserve to be among the best paid professionals in a society.
They also need to be among the best trained, with ongoing in-service training as a part of every schedule, just as it is for doctors.
This is really not a question of national resources. It is a question of distribution of national resources. Every time taxes on the wealthy are high, or are raised, and resources are shifted to public service and public works, the American economy improves as the health of the middle class improves and as opportunity improves because of better public services. So when Eisenhower was U.S. President and the top marginal tax rate was 91%, those funds built schools and universities, paid teachers and professors, and opened up professional careers to many. Research funds created computers and jet engines and nuclear power, cured polio, and made measles rare. When Bill Clinton raised taxes and invested in police protection for America's cities, it created a safer society in which entrepreneurship could flourish in urban areas. These two "high tax" eras represent the real growth moments for the post World War II United States economy.
So raising taxes on the rich in order to pay teachers salaries Republicans consider "middle class" makes sense all around.
corollary - Superintendents are overpaid
Chris Christie, home above,
thinks you are overpaid
“We must wake up to the new economic reality that government must be more efficient and cut the cost of the bureaucracy,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement on Monday. “Reducing back office overhead, administration, consultants and encouraging consolidations are the best targets to find savings.”
Remember, these are the same governors who won't raise taxes because "talent" might leave their states if take home pay is in any way reduced.
Now superintendents are easy targets. They are the highest paid people in each school district (except maybe in Texas, where no pay limit has been suggested for high school football coaches), and superintendents tend to make enemies as they negotiate the competing interests pulling at their organizations.
But I always wonder why businesses must pay big bucks to get the best employees (see above) but government requires no incentives to attract talent? And I wonder why a CEO making 262 times the average worker's pay is 'appropriately compensated' but asuperintendent making, say, $250,000 in an organization with thousands of employees (averaging, say, $40,000) is 'grossly overpaid'?
Remember, when you hear the words of "educational reform" that they are carefully constructed newspeak. Who can argue with "Teaching for America," with "Leaving No Child Behind," with "Sharing a Common Core of Knowledge"? These are, of course, not policies but advertising slogans designed to convince you that those in power have your best intentions in mind. I'm here, again, to remind you, that maybe they don't. Part One
Teach for America is a "noble" idea
Even if we criticize Teach for America for "committing to doing nothing," surely there cannot be anything wrong with these eager young "volunteers." They are "passionate," "excited," "true believers" in educational possibility, right? And they bring - according to supporters - "teachers to classrooms which would otherwise have no teachers."
Only if you believe that teachers are "missionaries" whose job is to convert students into a second-class version of the missionaries themselves.
Because the purpose of Teach for America, according to its founders and funders, is twofold. First, to bring examples of societal success to the poor - this is why TFA claims to be superior to other uncertified teachers - because its corpsmembers are shining examples of "achievement" (we may want to bring back the "born on third base" thing here, but that's not the point). Second, to get this future "leadership cohort" interested in education so, I suppose, the next group of "powers that be" will not ignore schools.
But dig down a bit... these arguments are based on a couple of underlying assumptions: One, that poor children need to emulate rich people - Ivy League and other elite school graduates - in order to succeed. Two, that those graduates can represent some kind of role model for kids born without any of the resources of those who grow up like Wendy Kopp. And three, that a good way to train future educational leaders is to let them "play" traditional role teachers for two years.
(There's also the assumption that this is the best way to spend $42,000 per new 2-year-career teacher, a figure which includes TFA costs only, not teacher salaries or benefits or school district turnover costs.)
"As a country, I think we can attract more talented people to teaching by raising awareness of educational inequity and getting the public to understand from individual classrooms, schools, and cities that this is an issue that can be solved. When people think the issue can be solved, it becomes a moral imperative to be part of the solution," Kopp told The Economist.
So, Kopp is against systemic change (which might threaten her status), suggesting that only faith and belief are needed to convert the poor and unwashed into a non-threatening and minimally-contributing underclass. And she is filling our systems with "leaders" who believe deeply in this same British Imperial concept of economic colonialism.1 There is no shifting of resources or systemic changes which might enable minority success on a par with Kopp's social class. There are no tax changes, no funding changes, no teacher salary changes, no alteration in expectations to celebrate non-traditional skills. Just "moral imperative" to do 'just enough' so nothing will change.
The obvious fact is that, as with standardized testing, this "role model" approach is designed to ensure that students from poverty and/or differing backgrounds can never actually catch up. If forced to imitate their missionary mentors, their energy goes there rather than into moving forward along their own path. As Nigerians, Irish, Indians could never be "equal" British citizens within the Empire no matter how much cricket they played or tea they drank "properly," Teach for America celebrates no former students among its ranks of "graduate successes" after twenty years. The only people winning this game are the missionaries and their enriched leadership.
None of this implies evil intent among those who join Teach for America. Just like missionaries going off to run schools for Benjamin Disraeli in the Africa of 1875, most head into "the jungle" with the best of intentions - though surely there is at least anecdotal evidence that TFA ranks are now swelled with "CV Builders" (as the British Colonial Service was filled with "career builders"). But it does mean that the program itself is not a benign use of tax or charitable dollars, and it means that those encouraging the growth of the program don't have equality of opportunity in mind.
A Core Curriculum is essential
I don't know if E.D. Hirsch, Jr. is an evil guy or not. I know he is a bad historian and a really bad judge of what people need to know.
Likewise, I doubt most encouraging "Core Curriculum" efforts in the United States are bad people, but I know that their efforts will make education less effective, and less relevant.
The problem is, like most twistings of language, "Core Curriculum" sounds so positive. "The rigorous Core Knowledge curriculum provides school districts with a common instructional focus, and decreases learning gaps caused by student mobility. By providing a sequenced plan for coherent learning from grade-to-grade, Core Knowledge enhances shared planning among teachers and schools, which helps to ensure quality classroom experiences for all learners. The content-rich curriculum also provides a strong foundation of knowledge for success in high school and beyond."
This sounds so effectively European. One curriculum for all. Wherever students are, its all the same. You could move to a different school every day and still follow a purely sequential educational program, learning exactly what E.D. Hirsch, Jr. thinks is important to know.
Except, good European schools don't operate like that at all. Yes, there are national expectations of knowledge, often tested once, or twice, or three times by national exams, but the heart of successful schools lies in autonomy for learners and teachers regarding how to assemble that knowledge.
So, when Common Core advocates insist that Second Grade students "will" "Compare and contrast two or more versions of the same story [pdf] (e.g., Cinderella stories) by different authors or from different cultures," and "will" "By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories and poetry, in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range," they are buying into the very same destructive forces which leave students behind today via filtering. Students will operate as E.D. Hirsch's grandchildren might or they will, and their teachers will, be labelled as failures.
Why is a second grader "comparing and contrasting"? Because the Common Core is designed to preserve education as a self-contained hazing ritual for wealth and power maintenance. From the start we are preparing students to write the worthless five paragraph essay, so that those who comply best succeed best.
OK. Let me put it this way. I believe that there are things we should all know. But making that list? Well, how do we do that? A Portuguese friend of mine insists that "no student should leave high school without knowing which nations their nation has colonized." I agree. E.D. Hirsch, Jr. does not. I believe there's value in every American student seeing a "canon" of films - from Birth of a Nation to Mississippi Burning, from Missing to 400 Blows, from The Caine Mutiny to A Few Good Men, but my guess is that E.D. Hirsch, Jr. disagrees.
Shouldn't every American student analyze the US overthrow of the Chilean government?
I'm assuming that others have "core ideas" on their lists that I don't think belong. It is the nature of the pluralist society which I think Hirsch hates.
But there is something else. These common core standards have timelines attached. In other words, they are just one more set of "grade level expectations" - and grade level expectations are the vile remnant of the Prussian system of filtering students so that all those not "raised in the right families" and those "not average" will fail.
That second grader who won't "compare and contrast"? They are a failure. Again, Hirsch's grandchildren win, the rest of our kids lose.
The fact is that there are decent ways of seeking out "common understandings." I'm a fan of the Irish Leaving Cert exams in many ways (go here, look at the 2010 Leaving Cert > English > Higher - a pdf download). (based on reading an interview with Seamus Heney - "'Early-in-life experience has been central to me.” Imagine yourself fifty years from now. You have achieved great success and public recognition in your chosen career. Write the text of an interview (questions and answers) about the experiences and influences in your youth that contributed to your later success.")
Finland has similarly effective evaluations of student achievement without implementing a play-by-play instruction manual in colonialism.
Final words... we can have common expectations, but the Common Core is more of the deadly same.
"Core" subjects are more important than other subjects
Those 'Pilgrim Fathers' of America had a very limited, obviously Calvinist, idea of what constituted "important learning." You had to read so you could read the prayer books. You had to count in order to build the mercantile (neo-capitalist) economy. You had to write in order to put down contracts. History - as it was told - was a way of enforcing views of religion and reality.
But music, art, the debate of history, the mathematics and celestial mechanics of the Jesuits, the core of learning in the Catholic world, were left out. They were unimportant - or worse - tools of the devil.
And this became the model of American education. Yes, higher maths crept in during the 20th Century as manufacturing and war required. Yes, science was introduced after Sputnik in 1958, though it remains remarkably controversial still. But we remain with our concept of "core subjects" and "extras."
And that destroys education.
It is, of course, within those "extras" that the human spirit lies. Why learn to read if you cannot read about the things which matter most to you? Why learn to write if you can not write a song? Why learn to count if you do not appreciate the value of what you are counting?
The reason we must abandon "core subjects" and embrace Passion-Based Learning is that today we give students absolutely no reason to learn anything. We have turned school into a series of chores with no purpose. Eight-year-olds hate books and reading because they've spent three years drilling in decoding - literacy is pointless effort, not a path to passions. Sixteen-year-olds hate mathematics because they've spent eleven years drilling with numbers, x-s and y-s - maths are totally irrelevant, not a link to a magical world of real and virtual construction.
Human knowledge is a real, vast, diverse thing, with many paths. Do not accept "conventional wisdom" and force all of your kids down a single, horribly boring, highway.
- Ira Socol
next: Unions and Pay
1 - "The vast majority of our 17,000 alumni are still under the age of 30, but we already have nearly 450 school leaders, several area and district superintendents (including Michelle Rhee in DC), and a number of entrepreneurs who have started some of the most significant reform organisations in the field. The KIPP charter school network was started by two alumni, The New Teacher Project was launched out of Teach For America and its president is an alum, and here's one a lot of people don't know—the IDEA schools network, founded by alumni in South Texas to serve migrant students"
George Orwell knew of what he wrote. The first step in the destruction of democracy is the destruction of language, the twisting of language in the service of disinformation. Today, the language around public education is deep in "newspeak," and it is time to challenge "the Big Lies." Here's Part One.
Competition is good for education
America is built on capitalism, so the story goes, and capitalism is built on competition. And, of course, our creativity and invention is born of capitalist competition. Thus, our educational system needs competition to improve.
Except. Wait. First, despite what we Americans are taught in our national myths, some Socialist nations succeed quite well. Germany is a close second to China in global exporting with the world's highest wages, strongest unions, with limits on executive pay, with required union participation on corporate boards, with universal health insurance, with state ownership stakes in many large businesses. And somehow, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler-Benz, Siemens, et al all seem like pretty creative companies.
Second, many of America's great achievements come from quite non-competitive government-sponsored efforts, from the Erie Canal (built by New York State), to the Trans-Continental Railroad (a Lincoln Administration government funded monopoly effort), to the development of computers (Bell Labs as part of a government protected monopoly), to the defense and space contracts which made America number one in aerospace capabilities.
Early New York State Democratic Party Socialism, the Erie Canal,
made the "upper Midwest" possible
But the biggest problem with this lie is not in the "D-student" misreading of history and/or economics, it is in the bizarre acceptance that education, or health care, or fire protection, or police protection, is somehow "like a business."
You know that "demand curve" from Econ 101? What happens when the demand is pegged at 100% of the market, and must remain there for the basic health of society?
Apple Corporation can get rich with 5% of the market. Microsoft survives and does quite well even if a product or two flop badly, like Internet Explorer or Windows Mobile. FoxNews still makes a ton of money despite a peak viewership equal to less than 1% of the population (advertisers will pay a lot to reach the kind of consumer which uncritically accepts FoxNews type arguments).
But our society needs fire protection for all. Otherwise the community is at risk for burning down. It needs police protection for all. Otherwise the chaos grows and spreads and engulfs the community. It needs individual health, or diseases spread. And it needs an agreed upon level of education for all, or some will need to carry the burden for the many, because we will not be maximizing our human potential.
So these are "100%" operations, and 100% operations are inefficient when they compete. Resources are poured into marketing and repetition - in my little community one "community" hospital built a new clinic across the street from where a "competing" "community" hospital had just built a new building. Down the road, three hospitals compete with new facilities along a new highway. Meanwhile, vast areas of all surrounding communities go unserved. As all across America, our "competitive" health care system chases the rich and insured and ignores the rest. The result is third-rate health outcomes and the highest possible cost.
So competition in education, by design, is intended to "leave children behind." Competition, by design, creates winners and losers. This is the dirty little secret of the "charter school advocates," that the goal is "good schools for some," just as we have "good health care for some," "good housing for some," and "good food for some."
But I, "we," want "education for all," and that requires not competition, but a collaborative system which re-distributes both resources and opportunities in a way which makes 'what matters' equally available to all.
So when people talk to you about "competition," ask them who gets to lose in that competitive environment. Then ask them why distributing resources equitably within public education wouldn't be better. Then ask them to send their children to whatever schools they advocate for other people's children.
Standardized testing is necessary to measure student achievement
Standardized testing is that "gold standard" of "accountability," but what is being measured by standardized testing?
Whose world is judged by a standardized test?
By definition, standardized testing measures compliance. This is why we evaluate our standardized statistics with the tools developed by Guinness to ensure that every batch of beer was identical.
What standardized testing measures is how a student complies with a fictional human "average" built according to the expectations of a societal elite (those who write and require the test).
Thus, when Barack Obama wants standardized testing, what he wants is for all the children in your classroom to be measured against his daughters at the same point in life. This sounds nice, a single standard, that "high expectations for all" newspeak phrase. But what it means is that your children - not born rich to two parents with doctorates from Ivy League schools, raised with multigenerational support and in small-class-size private schools - will never be able to catch up or keep up.
Measuring human growth and development is not like measuring the reproduction of a single prototype on an assembly line. It is a complex system of helping to figure out where a student is, and how to help them get where they are going.
And you can not do that with multiple choice questions, simplistically-scored essays, number two pencils, or bubble answer sheets.
Bill Gates, Jr. is a smart guy worth listening to
Bill Gates is a smart guy, no doubt about it, but we need to begin by understanding that his success is 75% birth situation, 20% luck, and maybe 5% accomplishment. Born rich, to a highly educated and highly connected family, Gates had every possible advantage, from private schools (unlike any he suggests for the poor), to a fully-paid seat at Harvard, to a dad who could link him to the highest echelons of the [then] world's largest computer company. He also had a brilliant partner in Paul Allen who (a) knew how to write code in ways Gates never knew, and (b) could track down a little program called QDOS and buy it cheap so the two could re-sell it and become very rich.
None of this makes Bill Gates a bad guy. There are lots of rich kids, obviously, who've done worse with big inheritances. But Gates is, essentially, a lucky guy who got rich off of turning in a purchased thesis. He then leveraged that well. I like many Microsoft products. I always have, even if they've often been clever copies of other people's work, from Windows (Mac OS), to Office (Smart from Innovative Software), to IE9 (Firefox), but Microsoft has never invented anything. They've never, not once, had "the big idea."
The integrated office suite did not begin with Microsoft
That says something about the leadership of the company. They are master marketers. They are good at watching the marketplace, but they are not original thinkers. So when Bill Gates, Jr. turns his eyes toward education, he resists real innovation as well, preferring to grab for ideas from among those he allows into his inner circle.
And like many of today's "corporate reformers," from Wendy Kopp to Michelle Rhee, the circle of "advisors" is the type of small echo chamber which rich kids are used to living in. The kind of people who convince them that "being born on third base means they hit a triple" to use the classic baseball metaphor. Worse, this echo chamber is filled with those who know how to sell to the rich - remember - Gates is not rich because he had a product the public wanted, he is rich because his father could link him to IBM executives - Kopp isn't famous because she had a great idea everyone wanted in on, she's famous because her parental connections could link her to rich people who found her childish missionary zeal useful - so Bill Gates, Jr. primarily listens to capitalists to have an agenda to sell him.
What this all means is that Bill Gates, Jr. is a rich guy, who's lived an incredibly isolated life, who has no actual knowledge of the public education system he discusses, nor knowledge of teaching in public schools, nor knowledge of the effort it takes to overcome the problems of being born poor or unlucky.
That's not a felony, but neither is it a reason to listen to anything he says outside of "how to run a large company."
- Ira Socol
next, Teach for America, Core Curriculum, Core Subjects
"Following the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Finland experienced a severe recession, not dissimilar to current difficulties in Ireland. "Unemployment climbed from 3 per cent to 18 per cent in two years. GDP dropped 13 per cent at the same time and Finnish public spending reached close to 70 per cent of the overall state budget.
"The Finnish Government of the day bravely decided that increased investment in education was the roadmap to recovery."
At the same time they chose to ignore the other nation which lay atop those comparatives, Finland.
This mirrors America's response to that 'first Sputnik moment' - when American leaders also chose to celebrate a miserable, dictatorial nation as a "model" for our youth.
Or really, the "truly original" "Sputnik moment" came a century earlier when young America was completely enamored of the Prussian Empire, and chose to import that nation's system of filtering out students - the age-based grades we still live with.
Why the love of the dictatorial? Why the love of the education systems of societies which none of us would choose to live in?
And why might Finland's results be seen as unimportant due to a lack of diversity much less significant than the lack of diversity in Shanghai's "high-performing" schools?
Is it just that Finland outspends us on education? That Finland believes - unlike Arne Duncan - in highly trained teachers? That Finland pays unionized teachers extremely well? Part of that "is it" - Finland's success runs counter to all that our "political class" wants Americans to believe about schools. If we "believe" in what Finland is doing, than Duncan, Gates, Obama, Rhee, Bloomberg, Oprah are all wrong, The New York Times and Washington Post are wrong, and these "leaders" of politics and opinion are not likely to admit that.
But it goes further and deeper. Finland, an egalitarian, democratic, and socialist nation can not be allowed to be a model, in our leaders' eyes. That would suggest that much about America is wrong in ways which would threaten everything from Bill Gates' fortune to the place of privilege in the future held by Barack Obama's daughters.
If Finland is allowed to be a model it might mean that the US would need to accept social mobility, and the children and grandchildren of New York Times editorial and corporate employees would no longer be guaranteed admission to elite schools. If Finland is a model, there's a chance for all to succeed, which means that both the achievement gap and the income gap might close.
How much better for the ruling elite to celebrate hierarchical, brutally divided societies where "the little people" have no voice and no influence?
So American "leaders" look to China now* as they did to the Soviet Union in 1958 and the Prussian Empire in 1858 because they want education to fail most children, because they want society to remain as it is.
If they wanted things to change they'd be talking about Finland night and day.
"Interestingly, Finland has not employed any of the market-based educational reform ideas in the ways that they have been accepted within education policies of many other nations, United States and England among them.
"By contrast, a typical feature of teaching and learning in Finland is high confidence in teachers and principals as respected professionals.
"Another feature involves encouraging teachers and students to try new ideas and approaches rather than teaching them to master fixed attainment targets. This makes the school a creative and inspiring place for students and teachers.
"What is important is that today’s Finnish education policies are a result of three decades of systematic, mostly intentional development that has created a culture of diversity, trust, and respect within Finnish society in general, and within its education system in particular. The result is a cocktail of good ideas from other countries and smart practices from the tradition of teaching and learning in Finland.
"The Finnish way has transformed an education system deemed as mediocre by international standards in the 1980s to a celebrated model two decades later."
- Ira Socol
* I think the only thing that the US Republican Party and the Chinese Communist Party disagree on is abortion. On all other issues, from the environment to workers' rights, from free speech v. state security to the role of business leaders, John Boehner and Hu Jintao are in perfect sync.
One night recently Gary Stager sent me a link to a blog post he'd written at Tech&Learning. "Want to join in?" he asked, knowing - I assume - that I sure would.Now Gary and I are hardly joined at any hip on education issues, we can clash as often as we agree, but (a) we're both serious Jets fans, and (b) what Gary was doing here, diving into the heart of the "sell tech to educators industry" and challenging their assumptions, needed and deserved support.
Specifically their assumptions regarding the value of branded Interactive White Board (IWB) systems , which cost schools about $5500 (US) apiece.
After writing my first response I went back to a current night-time ritual: working through the episodes of the 1951-1952 "live" TV science fiction series Tales of Tomorrow on Hulu. And this episode appeared, and episode focused on a retired professor who builds himself a "reading robot."
The robot uses scanner eyes, converts those images of the pages into digital text, and reads on the simple command, "Read to me, Herr Doktor."
And the debate at Tech&Learning merged with the start of this Frankenstein story as I watched.
There is an imagination deficit in our tech planning in education. A serious imagination deficit. And that deficit costs us to buy foolishly and throw money away. No, I'm not talking about all the schools which bought iPad v.1 - because you needed just a smidgeon of historical knowledge, not imagination, to know that you never buy Apple's initial release of anything.
But maybe in a way I am, because the failure of imagination is based replicating ("scaling up") things we see around us right now (or five years ago) and not imagining what will be possible before our kindergartners get out of primary school. And so like The Simpsons episode where the answer to the question "Where can we show something like this?" (A 16mm film), is, of course, "The School!" We continue to build museums of technology.
In the debate on Gary's blog, Alan November says this, "Professor Mazur spent 3 years developing his questions for his physics class that he uses with the clickers," and Chris Betcher says this, "I wouldn't buy a $1000 projector for a room for the same reason I wouldn't buy a $500 netpad as my main computer." And in both cases they are discussing the need to project five years ahead in thinking. But the problem is, their five years ahead seems to assume that nothing will change.
"beep"
I don't want to buy a (non-auditorium) projector I have to amortize over five years for the same reason I don't want to buy a mobile phone I need five years to pay for - I won't want it in three years. It will be ancient, inefficient, limited technology in three years. I will know that in two years.
Lowest investment, best multiple purposes. Or, if not that, I'll hook my TabletPC up to any projector and I have a cheap, pass-around-the-room IWB. But either way I won't be bolting a $5500 piece of equipment to a teaching wall... because I don't want to reinforce the teaching wall.
What I want is for kids to interact cooperatively with information in ways which better "fit" them and which offer better acess for kids on this margins. That's where I start when I think about things which might lead me toward purchasing touchscreen technologies of any kind. But we often tend to miss the first question regarding purchasing Information and Communication Technology for schools. "What do we want to do?"
With that question in mind, we can start letting our imaginations mix with research. The first time I held a nano-projector in my hand two years ago, I immediately imagined a classroom where we passed four or five of these around to link to students' mobiles. And I probably decided that IWB purchases would now become rare in my mind. Not because I could go out and buy a ton of those two years ago, but because I knew what was coming.
So where might that lead my tech purchasing? Toward cheaper IWB-like solutions now, and toward the WiFi and phone system and AC/Electrical technologies to support schools full of individual - and probably very different - mobile devices.
Likewise, if I want kids working and researching in the global cloud, I might not be buying top-of-the-line MacBook Pros or very expensive PC Laptops, but cheaper short term solutions of various kinds so that we might (a) judge student use and response, and (b) put some real cash into widening our data pipelines.
But no matter what the "What do we want to do?" question is, we should really leave anything beyond three years a set of hazy considerations.
Question, dream, imagine, consider the education you want to offer. Then look, research, question. Then buy what works now in a way which allows you to respond to the future you know is coming.
. You'll want to use the ear loop for kids, the earbud will not stay in small ears by itself.
