Diane Ravitch is particularly strong over at Bridging Differences, commenting on Charles Murray’s recent piece, The Age of Educational Romanticism, in the New Criterion. She’s not buying it.
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Archive for May 20th, 2008
Teacher blogger TMAO’s surprise announcement last week that he was resigning from his school was the edublog equivalent of LBJ announcing he would not run for re-election. Today he posts the reasons that were NOT behind his unexpected departure.
It’s not that he wasn’t prepared, successful, supported or paid. TMAO is basically burned out, conceding “I’m not happy unless I’m being the teacher I see in my head, but the process of finding that guy and living as him no longer makes me happy.”
Having been in TMAO’s shoes less than a year ago, I’ll say what I said then and many times since. Teaching in a struggling school is the easiest job in the world to do badly—but the hardest job in the world to do well. Setting high standards is something you do not just for students but for yourself. It’s not (and this, frankly, is something too many people who’ve never been in classroom will never quite get at a visceral level) about test scores or data. It’s so easy to take that first step down the path of least resistance. No one knows but you. Some make peace with it. Others — and it sounds like TMAO is one of them — simply can’t abide not “being the teacher I see in my head.”
This inevitable inability of even the most earnest, energetic young teachers to keep it up for more than a few years portends many things for education reform. None of them good.
Update: Corey Bunje Bower, a consistently thoughtful ex-teacher blogging at Thoughts on Education Policy weighs in candidly on the TMAO story and his own reasons for quitting.
Girls’ gains in the classroom have not come at boys’ expense, says a new report from The American Association of University Women. The Washington Post and the New York Times both have pieces on the group’s study out today, which finds that academic success is more closely associated with family income than with gender (Shocker, that).
The best quote comes from the redoubtable Sara Mead of the New America Foundation in the Times:
“There’s still a lot of debate about whether there’s something we should be doing differently in teaching boys and girls. The people on the feminist-leaning side of the debate see the conversation about a boys’ crisis as a strategy to advance the single-sex education agenda. I’m not sure that’s correct. I don’t think the kind of data we have about boys’ and girls’ achievement tells us anything useful about single-sex education.”
Thanks for clearing that up, Sara.
Update: More from Eduwonkette, the Queen of Charts
Nary a word about it in the domestic press, but overseas papers and gossip sites are thick with stories about Will Smith–yes, that Will Smith–who is reportedly bankrolling a new California Pre-K to 6 school, The New Village Academy of Calabasas.
The legitimacy of the reports can’t be verified, but a lot of care went into creating the school’s web site, which says its opening is set for Fall 2008. Check out the glossary of ten “educational theories” the school purports to use: a Chinese menu of models including constructivism, Piaget, Montessori, Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences, inquiry instruction, et al. Then there’s something called “study technology,” which the school’s web site describes thusly:
An educational model developed by L.R. Hubbard, study technology focuses on three principles. First is the use of “mass” (manipulatives and hands-on experiences) to foster understanding – children need to see and feel what they are learning about. Second is the attention to the “gradient,” which ensures sure students master one level before moving on to the next. Third is the “misunderstood word,” in which students master word definitions and are taught not to read past words they don’t know the meanings of in order to understand completely what they are reading and learning. NVA uses study technology as an umbrella methodology woven through the subjects.
L.R Hubbard? Yes, that L.R. Hubbard.
You knew it was coming, and today Sol Stern dissects the IES study documenting the “failure” of Reading First, describing it as neither rigorous nor comprehensive.
“The study found that students in a small sample of Reading First schools showed no greater improvement in reading comprehension than those in a similar group of schools that applied for the program but didn’t get federal grants. The IES’s poorly designed study, together with sloppy media coverage of its findings, will likely cause irreparable damage to Reading First—the only federal education program that requires schools receiving federal grants to adhere to instructional approaches backed by evidence and science.”
Sweden introduced free school choice about 15 years ago and the country’s voucher educational system is probably “the most ambitious of its kind in the world,” notes Per Unckel, a former Swedish Minister of Education and Science. No mean feat for a country “where competition within the area of public services has not generally been accepted.” Other countries, say Unckel, might find Sweden’s school system worth studying:
“Its schools are financed by local communities and work within the framework of a national curriculum designed by the parliament and government. But, while everyone must follow these rules, individual schools are run in a competitive manner. Anyone – parents, teachers, or even companies – can apply for a license to operate a school. The National School Board is, in principle, instructed to approve an application if the proposed school is likely to fulfill the national goals and has a solid financial base.”
The voucher system means that all students, irrespective of family income, can attend the school of their choice, Unckel writes. “Even in rural areas, there is now a wide choice of schools, and it seems that competition has improved the overall quality of Swedish schools, as non-public schools’ very existence has created a demand for reform of public schools.”
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