Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In a recent New York Times article titled At Charter Schools, Short Careers by Choice, Mitoko Rich wrote of how charter schools seem to be developing something of a “youth cult” in their teaching ranks. She reported that in the charter network “teaching for two to five years is seen as acceptable and, at times, even desirable.”
Teachers in the thirteen YES Prep Schools, which are located throughout Greater Houston, have a reported average of two and a half years of experience. The teachers who work for Achievement First—which has 25 schools in Connecticut, Brooklyn, and Providence, R.I.— “spend an average of 2.3 years in the classroom.” And the individuals who teach in the KIPP schools and the Success Academy Charter Schools stay in the classroom for an average of four years. This youth culture—or culture in which most classroom practitioners have little teaching experience— differs from that of our country’s traditional public schools where teachers average nearly fourteen years of experience…and where public school leaders have made it “a priority to reduce teacher turnover.”
In the NYT article, Jennifer Hines, senior vice president of people and programs at YES Prep, was quoted as saying, “We have this highly motivated, highly driven work force who are now wondering, ‘O.K., I’ve got this, what’s the next thing?’ There is a certain comfort level that we have with people who are perhaps going to come into YES Prep and not stay forever.” (Note: New teachers at the YES Prep schools receive just two and a half weeks of training over the summer before arriving in the classroom.)
Rich says it was Teach for America (TFA) that was mostly responsible for introducing the idea of a “foreshortened teaching career.” TFA is an organization that recruits “high-achieving” college graduates and places them in some of our neediest schools. In a piece for Policymic, Benjamin Cosman wrote about TFA recruits. He said that after just five weeks of training, “Teach for America participants lead a classroom for two years, slap it on their resume, and leave the school with a bevy of opportunities.”
Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, contends that “strong schools can withstand the turnover of their teachers. The strongest schools develop their teachers tremendously so they become great in the classroom even in their first and second years.” (Question for Wendy Kopp: Are you sending your teaching recruits into the “strongest” schools?)
Mark Naison, a professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University and a man who once viewed Teach for America as a positive program, has a difference of opinion regarding teacher turnover. He has been disappointed that TFA doesn’t instill a commitment to teaching in its program participants. In fact, Naison no longer allows TFA to recruit his college students.
Naison said the following about Kopp’s organization:
Until Teach For America becomes committed to training lifetime educators and raises the length of service to five years rather than two, I will not allow TFA to recruit in my classes. The idea of sending talented students into schools in impoverished areas, and then after two years encouraging them to pursue careers in finance, law, and business in the hope that they will then advocate for educational equity really rubs me the wrong way.
He added:
Never, in its recruiting literature, has Teach For America described teaching as the most valuable professional choice that an idealistic, socially conscious person can make. Nor do they encourage the brightest students to make teaching their permanent career; indeed, the organization goes out of its way to make joining TFA seem a like a great pathway to success in other, higher-paying professions.
Several years ago, a TFA recruiter plastered the Fordham campus with flyers that said “Learn how joining TFA can help you gain admission to Stanford Business School.” The message of that flyer was: “use teaching in high-poverty areas as a stepping stone to a career in business.” It was not only disrespectful to every person who chooses to commit their life to the teaching profession, it effectively advocated using students in high-poverty areas as guinea pigs for an experiment in “resume-padding” for ambitious young people.
After reading Rich’s article about the high turnover rate of teachers in charter schools, Catherine M. Ionata responded in a letter to the editor. She wrote:
The charter school representatives in your article defend the rapid turnover of teachers. Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, even says that teachers can become great in one or two years! Would we expand this idea to other professions? Do we think the best lawyers are those fresh out of law school? Should we choose a rookie physician for complex surgery, because this surgeon is more “enthusiastic” than veteran surgeons?
Ronald Thorpe, president of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, said, “To become a master plumber you have to work for five years. Shouldn’t we have some kind of analog to that with the people we are entrusting our children to?”
Education expert Diane Ravitch also weighed in on the subject after reading Rich’s article:
Can you imagine that a “teacher” who graduated college in June is already “a great teacher” by September?
Why do we expect entrants to every other profession to spend years honing their craft but a brand-new teacher, with no experience, can be considered “great” in only one or two years, then leave to do something else?
This is a recipe to destroy the teaching profession.
How can anyone say they are education “reformers” if their goal is to destroy the profession?
What other nation is doing this?
This is not innovative. In fact, it returns us to the early nineteenth century, when the general belief was that “anyone can teach, no training needed.” Teaching then was a job for itinerants, widow ladies, young girls without a high school degree, and anyone who couldn’t do anything else. It took over a century to create a teaching profession, with qualifications and credentials needed before one could be certified to stand in front of a classroom of young children. We are rapidly going backwards.
Henry Seton, a humanities teacher at Community Charter School of Cambridge in Massachusetts, was another educator who responded to Rich’s article. He wrote:
The high teacher turnover at charter schools leaves these institutions fragile and ill equipped to support their most vulnerable students. It takes far more than a year or two in the classroom to develop that elusive set of skills needed to serve our nation’s neediest cohorts of students — young men of color, English language learners and so on. And I have seen some of the most well-regarded charters here in Massachusetts left reeling and in danger of closing after extensive teacher departures.
Benjamin Cosman (Policymic) wrote that young teachers in charter schools “are supposed to save education in the United States.” He thinks, however, that there is a “very real danger in valuing inexperience in the teaching field…” He believes this “supposed remedy” may possibly be hastening the “demise of public education.”
In his article titled It’s Harder for Charter Schools to Keep Teachers, Francisco Vara-Orta wrote about information provided in data collected by the Texas Education Agency. The data, taken from 47 local school districts from 2006 to 2011, showed that the “average teacher turnover rate for charter school districts was 46 percent, compared with 13 percent for traditional school districts.” Vara-Orta wrote that analysis of the data showed that teachers leave charter schools in Bexar County nearly three times more often than teachers in traditional public schools, “which generally pay more and perform better academically.” He continued, “Of the 10 districts rated academically unacceptable by the state in Bexar County last year, all were charters, with turnover ranging from 38 percent to 65 percent…”
Researchers from Vanderbilt University found that the teacher turnover rate in charter schools was nearly twice as high as that of traditional public schools. In addition, the researchers found that teachers in charter schools were also more likely to leave the profession.
Excerpt from the Vanderbilt report titled Teacher Turnover in Charter Schools:
Our analysis confirms that much of the explanation of this “turnover gap” lies in the differences in the types of teachers that charter schools and traditional public schools hire. The data lend minimal support to the claim that turnover is higher in charter schools because they are leveraging their flexibility in personnel policies to get rid of underperforming teachers. Rather, we found most of the turnover in charter schools is voluntary and dysfunctional as compared to that of traditional public schools.
A second reason is that attrition is highest among teachers that are new to the profession. Past research found teachers make important gains in effectiveness in their first three years and smaller gains over the next few years (McCaffrey, Koretz, Lockwood, and Hamilton, 2003; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2005). Given that almost 50% of teachers leave the profession within their first five years (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003), many teachers are leaving the classroom before they have developed into optimally effective practitioners. Moreover, exiting new teachers are often replaced by similarly inexperienced teachers and consequently students in schools with high turnover may rarely be exposed to experienced teachers.
Third, turnover affects many of the organizational conditions important to effective schooling, such as instructional cohesion and staff trust. Effective schools hold shared beliefs in similar instructional goals and practices (Fuller & Izu, 1986; Bryk & Driscoll, 1988). Schools with high turnover are challenged to develop a shared commitment towards the same goals, pedagogy, and curriculum. The constant churning of teaching staff makes it difficult to collaborate, develop standard norms of practice, and maintain progress towards common goals. This can lead to fragmented instructional programs and professional development plans that must be adapted each year to meet the needs of a teaching staff in constant flux (Guin, 2004). High turnover also makes it difficult for teachers to build relational trust, which is critical towards productive collaboration in schools (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Guin, 2004).
Critics of charter schools argue that students and schools need stability. “When you stay in a school or community, you build relationships,” said Andrea Giunta, a senior policy analyst for teacher recruitment, retention and diversity at the National Education Association.
As might be expected, studies have shown that teacher turnover often “diminishes student achievement” and has a negative impact on “the overall school environment because it creates instability and a loss of institutional knowledge.”
Matthew Ronfeldt, an assistant professor of educational studies at the University of Michigan—along with colleagues Susanna Loeb and James Wyckoff—conducted a study on teacher turnover. Their report was titled How Teacher Turnover Harms Student Achievement. Loeb, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, said that the problem of teacher turnover had been well-documented. She noted, “One in three teachers leaves the profession within five years.” In their study, the three researchers sought to find out if students “do worse in the year after there is high turnover.” They discovered that high teacher turnover hurt student achievement in English and math—and that the negative impact was as “significant as the effect of free lunch eligibility (a standard measure of poverty) on test scores.” They also found the negative impact to be strongest “among schools with more low-performing and black students. “
In a Texas Tribune article dated January 27, 2010, Brian Temple wrote that at some charter schools in the state “it’s the teachers who can’t wait to clear out at the end of the school year.”
Temple reported that according to data that had been released at the time, 79 percent of the faculty of Accelerated Intermediate Academy in Houston turned over before the 2008-09 school year. At Peak Preparatory in Dallas, 71 percent of teachers did not return…and at Harmony Science Academy in College Station, “69 percent of teachers split.”
Temple continued:
In all, more than 40 of nearly 200 charter operators the state tracked — some which oversee multiple schools — had to replace more than half their teaching staffs before the last school year. Even more established and successful operators, including KIPP and YES Prep in Houston, lose nearly a third of their teachers annually. In contrast, just six of more than 1,000 non-charter school districts statewide had more than half their teachers leave, and none of the 20 largest school districts had a turnover rate higher than 16 percent.
The financial cost of teacher turnover is high. According to a study conducted by the National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future, teacher attrition costs approximately $7.3 billion per year. Since teacher attrition is so costly and has been shown to have a negative effect on student performance, Benjamin Cosman wonders why TFA and charter organizations like the Yes Prep schools encourage teachers to have a “get out while you can” mentality.
Cosman argued:
We should be cultivating teachers who are in it for the long haul, who build steady careers based on longevity, who become the wizened old stalwarts who’ve been around the block a few times. Yes, there are problems with tenure and bad teachers sticking around too long, and those issues need to be addressed. But the exact opposite — getting teachers in and out as fast as we can — is certainly not the solution.
Excerpt from Teacher Attrition: A Costly Loss to the Nation and to the States, an issue brief released by the National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future (NCTAF) in August 2005:
There is a growing consensus among researchers and educators that the single most important factor in determining student performance is the quality of his or her teachers. Therefore, if the national goal of providing an equitable education to children across the nation is to be met, it is critical that efforts be concentrated on developing and retaining high-quality teachers in every community and at every grade level…
According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ 1999–2000 “Public School Teacher Survey,” 47 percent of public school teachers worked with a mentor teacher in the same subject area.12 Sixty-six percent of teachers who were formally mentored by another teacher reported that it “improved their classroom teaching a lot.”13
Mentors are an important factor in providing support for new teachers as they enter the real world of the classroom, but mentoring alone is not enough. Comprehensive induction proves most effective at keeping good teachers in the classroom. Studies demonstrate that new teacher turnover rates can be cut in half through comprehensive induction—a combination of high-quality mentoring, professional development and support, scheduled interaction with other teachers in the school and in the larger community, and formal assessments for new teachers during at least their first two years of teaching.14
I can speak from experience. Mentor teachers can prove invaluable in helping young and inexperienced teachers by providing them with advice, insight, educational ideas and materials that have proved successful in the classroom, and by being a sounding board for them when they feel a need to express their frustrations, insecurities, and fears. Experienced teachers helped me when I was a teaching “ingénue.” Later, when I was a seasoned professional, I helped guide and advise young teachers. I shared books and teaching materials with them. I also listened to their new ideas. Other experienced educators at my school and I found that mentoring new teachers helped us to bond with them and to become a close-knit educational community.
Older teachers provide wisdom. Young teachers bring in a “breath of fresh air.” I think the healthiest school communities have teachers with different perspectives and levels of classroom experience—new teachers, teachers in mid career, and the old sages who have been around the block more than a few times.
One has to wonder how difficult it must be for young and inexperienced teachers to find mentors in their schools if most of the classroom practitioners have little more experience than they. One has to wonder how schools where teachers stay for just two or three years can develop their own culture and institutional memory—as well as a sense of stability and community. One has to wonder how children feel when their teachers come and go so frequently and rarely show evidence of a commitment to their schools and the student population.
It saddens me to think that there are “school reformers” in our country who encourage “foreshortened careers” in education…who think that youth trumps experience…who don’t instill a commitment to education in the young people they recruit for their teaching programs.
SOURCES
At Charter Schools, Short Careers by Choice (New York Times)
The High Turnover at Charter Schools (New York Times)
Charter schools are developing teachers with short tenure (Examiner)
Teacher Attrition in Charter vs. District Schools (CRPE–Center on Reinventing Public Education)
High teacher turnover in charters: Does student achievement suffer? (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
A Revolving Door (Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff)
Teacher Turnover in Charter Schools (Vanderbilt University)
It’s harder for charter schools to keep teachers (My San Antonio)
Teacher Attrition in Charter Schools 2007 (NEPC–National Education Policy Center)
Professor: Why Teach For America can’t recruit in my classroom (Washington Post)
Teacher Turnover Negatively Impacts Student Achievement in Math and English (The Journal)
Teacher turnover harms student learning (University of Michigan)
Teacher turnover affects all students’ achievement, study indicates (Stanford University)
Churn, Churn, Churn, Is Not Good for Kids or the Teaching Profession (Diane Ravitch)
LA students more true to their charter schools than teachers, studies say (UC Berkeley)
Charter Schools Battle High Teacher Turnover (Texas Tribune)
Teach For America: Let’s Stop Encouraging Teachers to Leave After Two Years, Maybe? (Policymic)
Guest Post: Teacher turnover – who stays and who leaves (Stanford University)
High Teacher Turnover Rates are a Big Problem for America’s Public Schools (Forbes)
Teacher Attrition: A Costly Loss to the Nation and to the States (NCTAF-National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future)
NCTAF Study: Teacher Attrition Costs U.S. Over $7 Billion Annually (American Association of Colleges for Teacher education)
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20130909-state-closes-dallas-charter-school-pending-staff-background-checks.ece Being exempt from rules that traditional school districts must follow does not always work out so well.
Elaine,
ALEC and Education spoken together is sickening. Another example that the charter school and voucher system is all about destroying the public school system and privatizing education and turn it into a for profit institution.
Peas in a pod: Koret Foundation, The Hoover Institution, and Democrats for Education Reform
1/26/12
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/01/peas-in-pod-koret-foundation-hoover.html
Excerpt:
It’s no secret that the malicious types running Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) hold the same ideological positions as the furthest-right think-tanks around. Starting with their founder Whitney Tilson, [2] who channels American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Andy Smarick at every opportunity, DFER is a bastion of right-wing thought that amounts to an enormous serving of Milton Freidman’s free market fantasies finished with a healthy dollop of Ayn Rand’s infantile insistence that “Big Business” is “America’s Persecuted Minority.”
Much like Eli Broad’s economic hit-men (and hit-women) trained at his various residencies and academies, DFER operatives have done astonishing damage to the public commons and undermine democracy at every opportunity. In Democrats for Neoliberal Education Reform I outlined the duplicitous underhanded craftiness DFER Colorado operatives Mike Johnston and his colleagues employed to “railroad the anti-community, anti-teacher, pro-corporate SB-191 through the Colorado Legislature.” More importantly, we looked at the language of their own document which gleefully “discuss[es] students as mere commodities to be consumed by the owners of the means of production.”
In the past right-wing Democrats like those comprising the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) pretended that they were somehow different than the John Birch Society inspired organizations that informed the DLC’s policies. DFER, on the other hand, makes no attempts to mask their muses and ideological allies. Much like Arne Duncan’s ballyhooed “education reform” tour with serial bigot (and philanderer) Newt Gingrich, DFER makes no bones about the fact that their natural allies are fringe-right creeps that would put children back to work. [3]
Case in point Gloria J. Romero, DFER California Director, just completed a panel entitled “School Choice, Special Interests and the Education of Our Children” along with arch-reactionaries Terry Moe of The Hoover Institution and Lance Izumi of Koret Foundation. The event, held in “honor” of deceptively named “school choice week,” was moderated by teabagger and staunch anti-unionist Lary Sand, who some might recall as having moderated a school privatization event held by Ben Austin, Ben Boychuck, and Bruno Behrend. DFER’s Romero, whose hatred of organized labor echoes that of the Brothers Koch, must have been very confortable on a panel with reactionaries whose views up ten years ago were considered extremist even by the mainstream GOP.
Any guesses as to who the panel considered “Special Interests?” It’s safe to say that it wasn’t The Broad Foundation, The Gates Foundation, or The Walton Family Foundation. Let’s look briefly at our ideological peas in a pod.
Terry Moe, who writes with all of the authority of Philip Morris treatise on the health benefits of smoking, is a favorite in the Murdoch, Walton, DeVos, Bradley, Koch, and Scaife circles. The extreme right-wing Hoover Institution (named after the vile president who stood by and did nothing the last time the banksters and Wall Street swindlers crashed the economy) is wont to lionize right-wing monsters (and Milton Freidman acolytes) like the butchering murderer Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet.
Lance Izumi, who spends much of his time writing fallacious fact-frees texts trying to scamboozle middle class parents into accepting “school choice” and distance learning in order to bolster the burgeoning charter and online school sectors, is a senior fellow at the Koret Foundation. Koret, which unabashedly promotes Freidman’s discredited ideas while simultaneously celebrating the Nakba, have their — in their own words — “free-market think tank, Pacific Research Institute” based at The Hoover Institution.
Gloria Romero is best known for her obsequious service to the lucrative charter school industry. While a California State Senator, she worked tirelessly to ensure Caprice Young, Jed Wallace, and other charter school tycoons would continue to dine voraciously at the public trough. Among her dubious accomplishments was SB-592 which handed public school property over to private corporations. Romero’s most famous betrayal of the working class people of California was her collaboration with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ben Austin to create the vile corporate charter trigger, which allows well funded Charter Management Organizations to increase market share. Since her ignominious defeat in her bid to garner the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction seat on behalf of the California Charter Schools Association, Romero has worked harder to union bust and privatize public schools than all of the teabagger elected governors combined…
http://www.ronpaulcurriculum.com/ Even blog favorite Ron Paul is in the school curriculum business. He does not have a charter school yet but maybe there will be some in Texas in the future.
Swarthmore mom,
Thanks for that link.
http://whitepridehomeschool.com/ Here’s a new home school curriculum that is being marketed to those that don’t like the “social engineering” that goes on in public schools.
Special Report
Cashing in on Kids: 139 ALEC Bills in 2013 Promote a Private, For-Profit Education Model
by Brendan Fischer — July 16, 2013
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/07/12175/cashing-kids139-alec-bills-2013-promote-private-profit-education-model
Excerpt:
Despite widespread public opposition to the education privatization agenda, at least 139 bills or state budget provisions reflecting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) education bills have been introduced in 43 states and the District of Columbia in just the first six months of 2013, according to an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, publishers of ALECexposed.org. Thirty-one have become law.
***
ALEC Vouchers Transfer Taxpayer Money to Private and Religious Schools
News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch has called public education a “a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.”
But this “transformation” of public education — from an institution that serves the public into one that serves private for-profit interests — has been in progress for decades, thanks in large part to ALEC.
ALEC boasts on the “history” section of its website that it first started promoting “such ‘radical’ ideas as a [educational] voucher system” in 1983 — the same year as the Reagan administration’s “Nation At Risk” report — taking up ideas first articulated decades earlier by ALEC supporter Milton Friedman.
In 1990, Milwaukee was the first city in the nation to implement a school voucher program, under then-governor (and ALEC alum) Tommy Thompson. ALEC quickly embraced the legislation, and that same year offered model bills based on the Wisconsin plan. For-profit schools in Wisconsin now receive up to $6,442 per voucher student, and by the end of the next school year taxpayers in the state will have transferred an estimated $1.8 billion to for-profit, religious, and online schools. The “pricetag” for students in other states is even higher.
In the years since, programs to divert taxpayer money from public to private schools have spread across the country. In the 2012-2013 school year, it is estimated that nearly 246,000 students will participate in various iterations of so-called “choice” programs in 16 states and the District of Columbia — draining the public school system of critically-needed funds, and in some cases covering private school tuition for students whose parents are able and willing to pay.
But promised improvements in educational outcomes have not followed. “If vouchers are designed to create better educational outcomes, research has not borne out that result,” says Julie Mead, chair of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin. “If vouchers are such a great idea,” after twenty years in effect, “they would have borne fruit by now.”
The ALEC education agenda also fits into the organization’s broader attack on unions: by lowering teacher certification standards and funneling public money to non-unionized private schools, ALEC undermines teachers unions, which guarantee fair wages and working conditions and are a major political force that have traditionally backed the Democratic Party.
***
ALEC Education Bills Undermine Free, Universal Public Education
ALEC-influenced bills introduced in 2013 include legislation to:
Create or expand taxpayer-funded voucher programs, using bills such as the “Parental Choice Scholarship Act” (introduced in three states). Under many state constitutions, the use of public dollars to fund religious institutions has been rejected on separation-of-powers grounds, but the ALEC Great Schools Tax Credit Act, introduced in ten states in 2013, bypasses state constitutional provisions and offers a form of private school tuition tax credits that funnel taxpayer dollars to private schools with even less public accountability than with regular vouchers.
Carve-out vouchers for students with special needs, regardless of family income, through the “Special Needs Scholarship Program Act” (introduced in twelve states), which sends vulnerable children to for-profit schools not bound by federal and state legal requirements to meet a student’s special needs, as public schools must. A proposal in Wisconsin would have allocated up to $14,658 to a for-profit school for each special needs student.
Send taxpayer dollars to unaccountable online school providers through the “Virtual Schools Act,” introduced in three states, where a single teacher remotely teaches a “class” of hundreds of isolated students working from home. The low overhead for virtual schools certainly raises company profits, but it is a model few educators think is a appropriate for young children.
Offer teaching credentials to individuals with subject-matter experience but no education background with the Alternative Certification Act, introduced in seven states. The bill is part of ALEC’s ongoing effort to undermine unionized workers and promote a race to the bottom in wages and benefits for American workers.
Require that educators “teach the controversy” when it comes to topics like climate change — where the only disagreement is political, not scientific — through the Environmental Literacy Improvement Act, introduced in five states.
Create opportunities to privatize public schools or fire teachers and principals via referendum with the controversial Parent Trigger Act (glorified in the flop film “Won’t Back Down”), introduced in twelve states. First passed in California, a modified Parent Trigger bill was brought to ALEC in 2010 by the Illinois-based Heartland Institute, which is perhaps best known for controversial billboards comparing people who believe in climate change to mass murderers like the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
Create an appointed, state-level charter school authorizing board through the Next Generation Charter Schools Act, introduced in seven states, which effectively shields charters from democratic accountability. The legislation “would wrest control from school boards, and likewise from the community that elects those school boards,” Mead says, since it takes away their power to authorize charters in the community.
No Child Left Behind: A Brainchild of Neoliberalism and American Politics
Carlos Alberto Torres
New Politics
Winter 2005 Vol:X-2 Whole #: 38
http://newpol.org/content/no-child-left-behind-brainchild-neoliberalism-and-american-politics
Excerpt:
Neo-liberalism and neoconservatism are in the driver’s seat right now and this is not only happening in education. (Michael Apple)
Cultural critic and educator, Michael Apple offers a critique of the current situation in education, where liberalism has been displaced by neoliberalism, deeply affecting education and social policies: “. . . liberalism itself is under concerted attack from the right, from the coalition of neoconservatives, ‘economic modernizers.’ And new right groups who have sought to build a new consensus around their own principles, following a strategy best called ‘authoritarian populism.’ This coalition has combined a ‘free market ethic’ with a populist politics. The results have been a partial dismantling of social democratic policies that largely benefited working people, people of color, and women (these groups are obviously not mutually exclusive), the building of a closer relationship between government and the capitalist economy, and attempts to curtail liberties that had been gained in the past.” (Apple, xxiv)
Throughout the world, a neoliberal agenda promoted by international organizations, professional organizations, and in the case of the United States by the American establishment, includes a drive towards privatization and decentralization of public forms of education, a movement toward educational standards, a strong emphasis on testing, and a focus on accountability. That is to say, educational neoliberal reforms are based on an economic model of educational policy…
Thus, the first important learning is that NCLB passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and enthusiasm because it reflects the perspective of the American establishment, and was originally supported by a number of professional organizations.
Make no mistake. The NCLB increased the role of the federal government in accountability like never before. Although the federal government only funds 7 percent of the total expenditure of education in the country, it has tried to leverage those funds for specific purposes. DeBray explains the process: “The 1994 ESEA reauthorization altered the federal role in accountability for states and schools in two significant ways. First, the Clinton administration proposed that states adopt clear standards and assessments for all students in Title I, a strategy that was intended to use the money in Title I to drive the “seed money” for standards-based reform provided in Goals 2000, a much smaller federal program enacted earlier in 1994 (DeBray, 57)
NCLB creates a condition in which the federal government diminished the educational autonomy of the states strengthening the federal role by increasing requirements for states. (DeBray, 58). NCLB is a reform model claiming raising standards while at the same time defining what those standards are, and what quality of education is or ought to be. It is a model that bases the understanding of education in strictly and overwhelming economic terms (e.g., Senator Kerry ‘s idea that NCLB is a jobs act). It is a model based on cognitive measurements of students, schools and teachers, making testing and accountability the buzzwords of the moment in educational environments. And finally, like in the Wizard of Oz, “education” has become the magic word that is supposed to transform the world around us.
The entire “school reform” movement presents a broad topic that has been infused with much dire rhetoric. Elaine, who has done many blogs on this topic chose an incisive way to approach the issue by looking at the thinking espoused by those who would “reform” our public schools when it come to the staffing of those schools. I think we can all agree that teachers approaching their careers as “stepping stones” to other endeavors are almost by definition not the highest quality of teacher available. This of course begs the question as to what is really going on with this “reform” movement? I will lay out schematically what I think is behind all of this that gives lie to the pretense that it is really about educational reform.
1. “Brown v. Board of Ed.” was not simply a declaration that in education “separate is not equal”, but in fact spoke to the entire range of public educational opportunities available in the U.S. Although of necessity the case was argued from the perspective that segregation produced unequal educational opportunity and disparate funding of public schools, the essence of this case was that public school funding in the U.S. disproportionately underfunded lower income neighborhoods, despite their racial and ethnic demographics.
2. We must remember that it then fell to a Republican Justice Department to enforce the SCOTUS ruling and we saw “busing” become the “solution” to the problem. Not so curiously most of the burden of “busing” fell on lower middle class neighborhoods whose own school systems were underfunded when compared to more affluent neighborhoods and this produced racial friction and tension. Conveniently then, the real public education issue which was the disproportionate funds available for public schools in neighborhoods of diverse economic wherewithal got lost in an argument of whether Black children “hurt” the public schools affected.
3. The simultaneous reaction in the South was the setting up of private schools that were Whites only. Some of them were even called “Freedom Academies”. We then saw years of struggles by these alternative schools to receive government funding and much legal battling ensued. Since these private schools were more costly than public schools, by definition, we saw that left in the southern public schools systems were mostly students who were economically disadvantaged, whether Black or White. This then caused much intra-school strife and a disintegration of quality. However, the real basis of this disharmony was not racial, but economic, but it was reported in racial terms.
4. After the Goldwater loss in 1964 many wealthy conservatives came together in funding a concerted effort to battle “liberalism”. The establishment of “think tanks” like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute brought together conservative intellectuals who began to develop strategies to promote their cause. I would argue that this wasn’t really true Conservative philosophy, but a mixture of radicalism, elitism and corporatism, that appropriated the Conservative Movement, overwhelming it with the funding from wealthy hyper-conservative families.
5. The rise of Christian Fundamentalist Conservatism, or should I say the co-optation of Jesus Christ as a corporate tool added momentum to this movement. Local school boards were put into play by this movement and the beginning of the dumbing down of the American public education system began in earnest.
6. As all this went on many entrepreneurs were lured by the vast sums spent in this country spent on public schools. This was the discovery of yet another profit center and so these entrepreneurs hitched a ride on what had already developed into a movement to denigrate public schools and fund private education through public dollars
7. To finally return to what Elaine so thoroughly began let me state that the idea of using inexperienced teachers for only a few years fits in very well with the alarming corporatist trend in the U.S.. Firstly, it is an attempt to destroy the power of Teacher’s Unions, which are an anathema to
corporatist conservatives, as is the entire union movement. Secondly, it reflects the “Walmart” method of employment. These new teachers are cheaper, will get less benefits and not be around long enough to build up seniority.
8. What there seems also to be general agreement with on this thread is the proposition that standardized testing as a measurement of classroom effectiveness is a hollow sham. Education should be a process that not only imparts knowledge to the student but also teaches them how to think for themselves logically. I believe that up until the 60’s the educational system in the U.S. was generally superb, though profoundly unfair to Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans. Nevertheless, it has always been true that the educational systems in more affluent areas were superior because of better funding.
9. Like LJM and Elaine I think that there needs to be a re-thinking of education methodology. Unfortunately, our educational system mirrors the mass production system and that cannot produce the highest quality of education. The system, however, can’t be effectively revised unless there is a general commitment to developing an educational system that really educates. This means funding public education in a country wide, rather than local manner and ensuring that all citizens have access to quality education. given the current climate I am skeptical that this will ever come about. However, I am quite certain that school vouchers, standardized testing and charter schools are little more than a a scheme to enrich some and to ensure the continued poverty of many.
I’m sorry I’ve not been able to comment for the last few days since family business had my attention. However, I’ve followed every comment on this thread and I’m quite impressed by the level of discussion. One of the points raised by LJM consistently is the matter of parental choice. While I admire the point of view and certainly endorse it, unfortunately I think it has been used by those in the for profit school movement as a smokescreen which hides the real intent of those propounding this premise for their own motives.
This excerpt below from and article titled: “Don’t Buy Conservative Ideas Sold with a Civil Rights Rhetoric”, from the Education Opportunity Network Website shows the real situation:
“Really, you have to admire conservative messaging. From the Supreme Court down, they’ve cleverly figured out how to strike down programs that achieve real school desegregation while they advocate for market-based education gimmicks like vouchers and other forms of “school choice,” using the language of equal opportunity for all – as if a competitive market has ever been an arena where everyone wins despite their circumstances.
Further, conservatives make their case for vouchers and choice despite evidence of what their schemes produce.
Louisiana’s voucher-choice program was patterned after one created in New Orleans, which has resulted in, according to a detailed account from NOLA blogger Mercedes Schneider, “a tedious, open-enrollment process designed to destroy all sense of the community school.”
Parents are saddled every year with completing multiple applications for multiple schools with no guarantees of getting into preferred programs – even if the school is next door. Many of the best-performing schools require admission tests that block all but the best students.
The type of “parental choice” exemplified by the New Orleans choice-voucher program, according to Schneider, is “a forced competition for too few … seats at preferred and thriving schools. As such, the requirement of parental choice in New Orleans contributes to the endless churn upon which privatization depends, always keeping the community off-balance as privatizers move in, make their money, and move out.”
In fact, Reuters reporter Stephanie Simon called the Louisiana voucher program “a bold bid to privatize education.” Some school children do get into good schools for sure, but that only accounts for “a few slots,” according to Simon.
Schools “willing to accept the most voucher students,” however, resemble nothing that would be considered a high-quality education. In many of the schools targeted to receive voucher money, Simon found students in “cubicles” or “bare-bones classrooms,” working through curriculum materials influenced by Christianity, in school buildings bereft of libraries or playgrounds.
More recently, at the Care2.com site, Crystal Shepeard reported, “Of the approximately 130 voucher schools, 20 purposely use textbooks and guides in their ‘science’ programs that promote Biblical theories.”
If the education of Louisiana voucher schools is shaky, the finances are even shakier.
A recent audit of Louisiana voucher schools found “systemic, widespread problems,” in particular, with most of the schools refusing to comply with the requirement to keep voucher money in a separate account. The one school that did comply – the school, in fact, receiving the most voucher slots from the program – was found to be charging the voucher students more than other students, running up over $400,000 in overcharges to the state.”
http://educationopportunitynetwork.org/democrats-shouldnt-buy-conservative-ideas-sold-with-civil-rights-rhetoric/
Another excerpt discusses the methods of this propaganda:
“First, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal penned an op-ed in The Washington Post that took after president Obama and his administration’s lawsuit against his state’s school voucher program.
Wrote Jindal, “The Justice Department has challenged my state in court for having the temerity to start a scholarship program that frees low-income minority children from failing schools … And, in the ultimate irony, they are using desegregation orders set up to prevent discrimination against minority children to try to do it.”
The George Wallace comparison came from the editors of that bastion of conservatism The National Review, who wrote, “Playing the Wallace role this time is Eric Holder, whose Justice Department is petitioning a U.S. district court to abolish a Louisiana school-choice program.”
There are plenty of reasons to doubt the sincerity of these conservatives. First, it would seem sensible on its face that when there is evidence of a “failing school,” it is incumbent on political leaders to fix it. Creating a voucher program – what Jindal has cleverly re-branded as “scholarships” – to provide an escape route for a few children does nothing for the ones left behind.
To evoke the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in an appeal for a voucher program, as Jindal does, is farcical. King didn’t “have a dream” for a fortunate few black children to escape poverty and prejudice because their parents were savvy enough to work the system. His dream was for “all” children.
For the editors of the National Review to make an argument for vouchers and “parental choice” based on their belief in desegregation is beyond cynical. As Pope “Mac” McCorkle, a professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, recently recalled, “The National Review denounced the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education as an ‘act of judicial usurpation.’”
The magazine’s founder and editor at the time, William F. Buckley, “insisted that Southern whites … represented ‘for the time being, the advanced race.’ And in 1960 Buckley declared: ‘We frown on any effort of the Negroes to attain social equality by bending the instrument of the state to their purposes.’”
What we’re seeing with this “school choice” movement is actually a retrogressive attempt to return to the days before Brown vs. Board of Ed. and reintroduce both racial and economic segregation back into our school system under the propaganda rubric of “helping” those who are getting a poor education. I’ll expand on this idea further in my next comment.
I don’t care what he does so long as he follows the rules. Which he now does for the most part. Snark and non-substantive commentary are not against the rules.
Fair enough…
AY,
It doesn’t bother me. I’m used to it.
Elaine,
You might be right… But you guys put a great deal of volunteer effort in your postings…. Disagree and move on….
AY,
It’s Nick’s modus operandi. Stop by and make a snarky comment–or one that contributes nothing to the discussion–and then leave. Of course, anyone who disagrees with his point of view has a drill or a mindset. He’s different from LJM who is willing to discuss the subject of charter schools, school choice, and education reform at length.
Nick,
What dril? You were insulting to Elaine…. Is that a drill for you?
LJM, What a great speech. Are you understanding the drill now??
“People are polled on satisfaction and happiness all the time. If you talk to 10 people and 6 of them tell you they are satisfied, then, objectively, 60% of those people are satisfied.”
What you have is objective data about a subjective impression.
“That’s great for you. But it’s a fact that different people learn in different ways. For some people, pain works. For others it doesn’t. Suggesting that a person you don’t know anything about needs to suffer in order for them to learn is really presumptive, and not very compassionate. To say that all people need pain in order to learn is not based in objective fact.”
Your use of straw men is really starting to piss me off. “Need” was not the word I used. Apparently honest argument was not a skill that you ever learned. That being said, people do indeed learn in different ways, however, one person’s pleasure is another person’s pain. For every student that loves mathematics but hates history, there is an inverse. That does not negate the value of learning either.
“Education, as it involves the profoundly personal act of learning, is fundamentally subjective.”
The same can be said about how we each experience reality. The world does not revolve around making each person happy. Happiness, being a state of mind, is subjective. Some who objectively appear to have a situation most would consider “happy” have miserable lives while others who have objectively appear to have a situation most would consider “miserable remain happy. Happiness is a reaction. Each person owns their own reactions. Indeed, it is one of the few things in the world over which the individual has complete autonomy.
“Ah, you know, my dad used to say that. “Schools should teach kids how to think, not what to think.” Now, I’m all nostalgic for our endless arguments. Thanks a lot!
Okay, so we’ve established our dramatic difference of opinion on what education is for. I think it’s for whatever the student wants it to be for.”
Then your father seems to have learned proper English. Education in the context of an end goal is a body of knowledge acquired while being educated; an enlightening experience. Enlightenment is to acquire (or to give someone) greater knowledge and understanding about a subject or situation. How a person uses their enlightenment is up to them but either they understand any given subject in the shared objective way in which we as a species define our common reality or they do not. Reality is what we agree in common it is by applying reason to the interrogation of the universe. An education is not how you choose to apply it.
“You think it’s so that students will learn to think properly (and I agree in cases where the student wants to learn how to think properly!).”
I think that if you haven’t learned to think properly, you can have all the data in the world at your disposal and not understand anything in context or have the deep knowledge that comes from synthesis.
“Now, some serious questions. They might sound facetious, but they’re actually serious.
What is it, to think ‘properly?’”
To be able to interrogate the world and come to reasonably accurate conclusions based on reason and evidence gathered in a systematic manner.
“How do you measure that?”
Problem solving.
“How many ways can one think properly? What, exactly, are those ways?”
As many ways as there are subjects.
“Does thinking properly apply to aesthetic subjects as well as math and science? To politics? Religion?”
Yes. Each area of study is predicated upon certain logics.
“Do you think the school system has ever been successful in getting all or most students to think properly?”
I think that the use of the term “the school system” is misleading. I think individual teachers have been successful in getting most of their students to think properly about a given subject or subjects but that the success of systems for deploying education to the masses is in direct correlation to the quality of individual instruction whatever form that system takes.
“What percentage of high school students are thinking properly when they graduate? Do they have to go to college to finish learning how to think properly?”
Beyond the scope of this inquiry, however, if one wants to talk what should be the ideal outcome of elementary versus secondary education, the answer is simple. Elementary education should provide the student with a base level of skills and knowledge to get by in the world, secondary and post-secondary education should provide the student with the skills and knowledge required to be a specialist or an expert in a given topic.
“Will students who have suffered more think more properly than those who suffered less or will they just learn to think properly more quickly? (Okay, those last two were a little facetious. Sorry.)”
No need to apologize. I answer smart ass questions at my discretion.
“See, I think your ‘think properly’ idea is even more subjective than my ‘satisfied’ idea.”
See, I think you don’t know what the word “objective” means. In this context, it means not dependent on the mind for existence. Solipsism, the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist, is both ignorant of empiricism and selfish and often the sign of a malformed ego. The universe exists beyond your subjective experience of it. There is an objective reality.
“If a person says they’re satisfied, it’s objectively true that they’re satisfied.”
Not necessarily. You’ve got a present sense datum of their subjective perception. Nothing more.
“If a person gives you an answer you don’t like on any number of subjects (or even if they arrive at correct answers in an unorthodox way), you can always say that they’re not thinking properly.”
But can you empirically and/or logically prove they are wrong? Again, “like” is a subjective judgment. I may not like an answer, but that does not make it counter-factual. Logic and reasoning has rules. So long as a conclusion is based on valid verifiable observation and sound logic and reasoning, “like” hasn’t got squat to do with it being real or not.
“From your point of view, I’m not thinking properly right now.”
From my point of view, you’re thinking solipsistically and not empirically.
“Objectively, we have a disagreement on the issue of the purpose of education.”
True enough.
“Subjectively, you’re thinking properly about the purpose of education, while I’m not.”
Objectively, I know that you aren’t applying the word “objective” properly either in meaning or in context as demonstrated by your solipsistic view of the purpose of education. Hint: It isn’t to give everyone a “warm fuzzy”.
“I can’t imagine a school in this day and age where the teachers and administrators say, ‘We don’t care if the students are happy. We want them to think properly.’”
Both an appeal to emotion and a straw man. I didn’t say that student happiness wasn’t important. I said it wasn’t the appropriate measure of success in education. Their ability to solve problems, which can be measured objectively, is the proper metric.
This is a graduation speech, given by the valedictorian of the Class of 2010 at Coxsackie Athens High School. I believe she’s thinking properly, but that’s just my opinion.
http://americaviaerica.blogspot.com/p/speech.html
There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, “If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, “Ten years.” The student then said, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast – How long then?” Replied the Master, “Well, twenty years.” “But, if Ireally, really work at it, how long then?” asked the student. “Thirty years,” replied the Master. “But, I do not understand,” said the disappointed student. “At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?” Replied the Master, “When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path.”
This is the dilemma I’ve faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.
Some of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn’t you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.
I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.
John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, “We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness – curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don’t do that.” Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.
H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not…
..to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States. (Gatto)
To illustrate this idea, doesn’t it perturb you to learn about the notion of “critical thinking.” Is there really such a thing as “uncritically thinking?” To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?
This was happening to me, and if it wasn’t for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.
And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.
We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren’t we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.
The saddest part is that the majority of students don’t have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can’t run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be – but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.
For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, “You have to learn this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.
For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.
For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.
So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn’t have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.
I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a “see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let’s go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we’re smart enough to do so!
Let me add, that I’m sure there are schools who want their students to think properly, but there are few who believe that unhappy students are likely to do so.