Tag Archive for ‘education reform’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

Tag Archive for 'education reform'

Who’s A Reformer?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 3, 2008 in Educational Policy. 1 Comment

The traditional educational battle lines among the political parties are being redrawn, notes Diane Ravitch on her Bridging Differences blog, which makes a welcome return following its summer hiatus. Historically, she notes, the Democratic party advocated more funding for disadvantaged students and policies that promoted equity. The Republican party advocated choice, privatization, merit pay, and accountability, and criticized the teachers’ unions as the main obstacles to reform.

In this election cycle, that familiar divide has changed dramatically. The Republicans still advocate choice, privatization, merit pay, and accountability and are still critical of the teachers’ unions. But now there is a significant movement within the Democratic party that advocates the same positions as the Republicans.

Ravitch is concerned that ”the mantle of ‘reformer’ has passed to those who would dismantle public education, piece by piece.

Update: USA Today’s Greg Toppo picks up a similiar theme in this morning’s paper, noting, “A funny thing happened to the Democratic Party on the way to an education platform: The party has visibly split with teachers unions, its longtime allies, on key issues.”

Magic Bullets Frustrate Reformers With Elusive Ways

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 2, 2008 in Curriculum and Educational Policy. 8 Comments

The magic bullet for raising tests scores is….constant assessment? Tracking the progress of individual students? Parental involvement? All of the above? An AP story quotes Colorado educators who have discovered — mirabile dictu! – there is no single magic bullet.

Apropos of that, the best post I’ve read this week comes from Fordham’s Mike Petrilli, who asks on the Gadfly, “Are we sure that “improving teacher quality” is the panacea that so many have suggested? Is it possible that our current fascination with ‘human capital development’ is misguided? That both presidential campaigns’ embrace of this issue is ill-considered?”

Yes, the research is quite clear that the quality of a student’s teacher has a greater impact on that student’s achievement than anything else that schools can control. It’s also clear that low-income and minority children are much less likely to be taught by “high quality teachers” (however defined) than are affluent and white children. So reformers make the jump: If we could just fill every classroom with society’s “best and brightest,” we’d have our education problems licked. Or, they continue, if we could just get our most talented teachers to serve in our neediest schools, we’d have our achievement gap beat.

The problem obviously, is that we’re unlikley to fill every classroom with the best and the brightest–the numbers are simply too great–and other favored solutions like merit pay are equally unlikely to work at scale. “Shouldn’t we be thinking about how to make average teachers more effective, too, and augmenting them via technology and other stratagems, rather than putting all our eggs in the “superstar teacher” basket?” asks Petrilli.

Petrilli’s measured and thoughtful post offers a useful roadmap. As Donald Rumsfeld did not say, “You go to school with the teachers you have. Not the teachers you wish you had.”

Forgive the inelegant analogy, but raising student achievement may not be a disease we’re going to cure, but rather a chronic condition we can manage with a cocktail of interventions and strategies. One of those strategies ought to be a national core curriculum and common standards. It would certainly be a great help (not a magic bullet) in improving teacher quality, since it would enable teachers and staff developers on improving the craft of teaching–focus on the “how” of teaching, instead of what to teach.

More: Joanne Jacobs agrees with Petrilli on the relative lack of superstar teachers, but has questions about the efficacy of technology

All Things To Everyone

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 14, 2008 in Educational Policy. 4 Comments

AFT president-to-be Randi Weingarten says No Child Left Behind is too badly broken to be fixed and will offer an alternative vision of public schools as “community centers that help poor students succeed by offering not only solid classroom lessons but also medical and other services,” reports the New York Times.

Weingarten is expected to be elected to the presidency of the AFT today in Chicago. The Times this morning publishes excerpts from her speech:

Can you imagine a federal law that promoted community schools — schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need?…Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities, child care and preschool, tutoring and homework assistance. Schools that include dental, medical and counseling clinics.

There’s nothing wrong with the vision, which is thoughtful and humane. The devil, as always, is in the details. Too often in my South Bronx elementary school it felt as if education were an afterthought, and that we functioned as the social services agency of last resort. The resources required for all schools to function as community centers are daunting, to understate the case.

Aligning herself squarely with the “broader, bolder” ed reform group, Weingarten tells the Times in an interview: “We all have to work tenaciously to eliminate the achievement gap and to turn around low-performing schools. But the folks who believe that this can all be done on teachers’ shoulders, which is what No Child tries to do, are doing a huge disservice to America.”

I expect there will be lots more to say as the day goes on.

Toch Finds the Sensible Center

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 18, 2008 in Educational Policy. 1 Comment

The winner for the best, most reasonable take on the reform vs. “status quo” contretemps goes to Thomas Toch of Education Sector, who sees both right and wrong in the “Bigger, Bolder” camp as well as the Klein-Sharpton, “Education Equity” group:

Yes, we should find ways to reduce the effects of poverty on students. Doing so will allow them to achieve at higher levels. But no, we shouldn’t assume that schools can’t make a difference on their own. Yes, we need to hold schools and teachers accountable for their performance. Too many of them simply haven’t embraced high expectations on their own. But no, we shouldn’t pretend that poverty has no impact on students. No accountability system can work unless it is credible, and NCLB, as currently crafted, is not.

I struggled to find the same middle ground as Toch, but he said it far better than I did. And attention should be paid to his wise lead, noting “extremes in school-reform debates always seem to conspire against the middle, making change a lot tougher to achieve. ”

If Toch turns this into a compromise manifesto, I’d happily sign it.

Learning From Sweden

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 20, 2008 in Curriculum and Educational Policy. 0 Comments

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.”

A Nation at Risk at 25

Published by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. on April 22, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

The following commentary appears in the current issue of Education Week.

In American educational history, A Nation at Risk is significant as a very dramatic official recognition in the 1980s that our schools were declining in effectiveness not only in relation to schools of other nations, but also in relation to our own results in earlier decades. In the 25 years since the report was issued, energetic reform efforts have been put forth, to small overall effect. The best single gauge of overall national school effectiveness—the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test of 12th graders—has remained flat, and has even declined slightly. This persistent lack of significant improvement is owing to the unwavering persistence of the very ideas that caused the decline in the first place—the repudiation of a definite academic curriculum in the early grades by the child-centered movement of the early 20th century. Given the continued content vagueness of state standards in early grades, especially in language arts, that underlying condition has not much changed. There is still no definite, coherent academic curriculum in the early grades. That is the principal source of the low academic achievement of our high school students.

The elementary grades are much more important than is apparently credited by philanthropies like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has recently been giving many millions to high school reform—with negligible results per dollar. For many years, the philanthropic and policy worlds have placed a lot of emphasis on the two ends of precollegiate education—high school and preschool. They are right about preschool—but not about high school. The general knowledge and vocabulary required for effective learning at the high school level are the fruits of a long process. The way to reform high school is to prepare students effectively in the elementary years to thrive there. If, in recent decades, high school has become a place where students are offered a smorgasbord of watered-down subjects, that is because watered-down subjects are all that our ill-educated students are now prepared to understand.

Philanthropies cannot be altogether blamed. In their emphasis on high school, they have followed the lead of A Nation at Risk,which was overwhelmingly concerned with high school. Its assumption was that the elementary years are foundational, and should be spent on the enabling skills of reading, writing, and reckoning. The authors therefore conceived the truly decisive arena for educational improvement to be grades 9-12, where there had been a severe decline in verbal and math scores. Indeed, for most of its length, A Nation at Risk ignored the first eight grades of schooling. Then, in its last pages, the report finally alluded to the early curriculum as follows:

The curriculum in the crucial eight grades leading to the high school years should be specifically designed to provide a sound base for study in those and later years in such areas as English language development and writing, computational and problem-solving skills, science, social studies, foreign language, and the arts. These years should foster an enthusiasm for learning and the development of the individual’s gifts and talents. (Page 72)

Continue reading ‘A Nation at Risk at 25′

They Said It

Published by Robert Pondiscio on April 15, 2008 in Educational Policy and Opinion. 0 Comments

“Stop defending NCLB. It has proven to be ineffective, harmful for kids, devoid of what matters most in education, hostile to knowledge-acquisition, and downright bad for the future of education.”

–Diane Ravitch

“Let’s stipulate that George Will is right that some liberals hold under-educated Americans in contempt. Isn’t it strange that many of these same liberals defend the very public education system that arguably created the “under-educated” masses? And that resist promising policies that might improve said education system, such as tough-minded accountability, high-quality charter schools, and a more limited role for teachers unions? If these liberals want more Americans to be “thinking people,” why don’t they jump on the education reform bandwagon?”

–Mike Petrilli

Both Ravitch and Petrilli are from Flypaper, an entertaining and extraordinarily energetic new blog from Fordham. Good stuff!

Yes We Can!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 14, 2008 in Curriculum and Educational Policy. 1 Comment

Everybody on the bandwagon. Instructivism is en fuego!

Sure, Daniel Casse of the White House Writers Group, a Washington consulting firm, writing in the Weekly Standard is merely catching up to Sol Stern’s City Journal piece and the attending sturm und drang. (Aside to Petrilli: See?) But it’s national ink for an important idea, which Casse credits to E.D. Hirsch, Jr.: you either make curriculum content part of the agenda, or you leave it to “bureaucrats, textbook writers, and political activists” to have their wicked way with what gets taught. “That’s not only what parents really care about,” writes Casse, “it is the thing that matters most to educational achievement.”

“That’s why the next political agenda for school reform, if it ever emerges, will be one that figures out how to redefine the notion of the public school so that traditional school authorities lose their grip on local school systems,” Casse concludes. “In other words, school reform will have to be about not just the way we think public schools ought to be organized, but also what we want them to teach in the classroom at every grade level. Neither the incentivist nor the instructionist side of the debate has been willing to take on both sides of the argument. But Sol Stern’s second thoughts suggest that a successful political movement for better American schools will have to do just that.”

Why I Resigned From Education Next

Published by Diane Ravitch on February 13, 2008 in Assessment and Testing and Curriculum. 0 Comments

The New York Sun (Feb 13) reported that I resigned from the editorial board of Education Next because that magazine has just published an article implicitly endorsing Mayor Michael Bloomberg for President. That is not entirely right. I was not thrilled about the endorsement, inasmuch as the editorial board had not been consulted. But my reason for resigning was that the article was a puff piece for reforms that thus far are not working.

NYC is hardly a paragon of education reform. Annual spending has increased from $12.5 billion to nearly $20 billion under Mayor Bloomberg. Yet NAEP scores showed no gains in 4th grade reading, 8th grade reading, or 8th grade mathematics.

The school system devotes inordinate resources to testing and preparing for tests, to constant measurement and evaluation, while paying negligible attention to curriculum and instruction. This strategy has not worked, has not even produced impressive test score gains. Saddest of all, even if it did produce large test score gains, the students would still not be getting a good education.

Update: You read it here first, but Diane Ravitch has more to say in an op-ed in this morning’s (Feb 15) NY Sun –rp.

The Middle East Needs Ed Reform

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 6, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

This blog has enough on its plate with curriculum, teaching, and ed policy issues in our own country, but a story about education reform in the Arab world got our attention this morning. A World Bank study shows the quality of education in the Middle East and North Africa is not keeping up with the needs of the changing and increasingly globalized economy.

“This is a very youthful region where 60 percent of the population is under 30 years of age,” says Marwan Muasher, a senior World Bank official who was responsible for the report’s preparation. “Close to 100 million new jobs need to be created in the next 10 to 15 years in the Arab world. If we are to create such jobs, then we have to start with improving the educational systems.”

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