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)
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
– Nelson Mandela
“Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.”
– George Washington Carver
“A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.”
– Frederick Douglass
gbk,
I think the point is that they aren’t rare. Schools that are considered to be “successful” have lots and lots of kids who hate to be there.
http://www.amazon.com/Wounded-School-Recapturing-Learning-Standing/dp/0807749559/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378949401&sr=1-1&keywords=wounded+by+school
From the forward by the author’s doctoral adviser at Harvard…
“In her first foray into the field–in-depth interviews with an award-winning architect, a distinguished professor, a gifted writer, a marketing executive–Olson certainly expected to hear stories of joyful and productive learning, stories that mixed seriousness, adventure, and pleasure, work and play, desire and commitment. Instead, she discovered the shadows of pain, disappointment, even cynicism in their vivid recollections of schooling. Instead of the light that she expected, she found darkness. And their stories did not merely refer to old wounds now healed and long forgotten; they recalled deeply embedded wounds that still bruised and ached, wounds that still compromised and distorted their sense of themselves as persons and professionals.”
Every high school has a group of kids who do well and enjoy it and a group of kids who don’t and hate it. There are even groups of kids who do well and hate it. The kids who hate it are being failed by our system, which pretends that they’re “rare exceptions.”
LJM,
Where’s Frederick Douglass? Oh, sorry, this is the white exceptional list.
LJM,
Let’s pick the rare exceptions, shall we?
I don’t see your moniker there.
School is great for some students. But it’s always been not great at all for others. (emphasis added below, by me)
————————-
Mark Twain:
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.
—–
Albert Einstein:
It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of education have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.
—–
Plato:
Knowledge that is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
—–
Winston Churchill:
How I hated schools, and what a life of anxiety I lived there. I counted the hours to the end of every term, when I should return home.
—–
George Bernard Shaw:
There is nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school.
What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.
—–
Henry David Thoreau:
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
—–
Bertrand Russell:
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.
Education is one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
—–
Paul Karl Feyerabend:
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education.
—–
Gilbert K. Chesterton:
Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.
—–
Helen Beatrix Potter:
Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.
—–
Margaret Mead:
My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.
—–
William Hazlitt:
Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
—–
Laurence J. Peter:
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
—–
Anne Sullivan:
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.
—–
Alice Duer Miller:
It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its natural functions by artificial means. Thus we suppress the child’s curiosity and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic difficulties.
—–
David P. Gardner:
Much that passes for education is not education at all but ritual. The fact is that we are being educated when we know it least.
—–
Ivan Illich:
Together we have come to realize that the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school.
—–
John Dewey:
It is our American habit, if we find the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory, to add another story or a wing.
Elaine, We have discussed testing several times. I do not want testing to be the primary source of evaluation. Having taught, I understand the vagaries of testing,and I also understand that teaching is a craft that needs to be evaluated on several levels. However, the strident stance against testing is simply not flying anymore. There needs to be some standardized measure. The debate is pretty much over on that everywhere but in circles like this. Our more significant differences are w/ charter and vouchers. We’ll just have to disagree..that’s all. Would you want a world where everyone agreed? I sure as hell don’t.
When I spew invectives it is much stronger. I become a Buckeye. But, we all have different sensibilities. I worked in the education industry and therefore have more real world knowledge and more of a “reliable source” than those who have not. However, I would never offer myself as an “expert” as some are quick to do. Much of my experience was in a “sleazy profession.” And, as we all have been told, I provide “possibly false” anecdotes.
No. That implies that no one is going to enjoy every subject or even enjoy them equally.
As long as they’re involuntary, that’s true. Not enjoying something isn’t equal to pain. Hating something is, and no normally functioning human should be forced to “learn” something they hate. A “well-rounded” education can and does occur without having to study something one hates.
It does not address you are attempting to measure an objective quality with subjective evidence.
We disagree then on the factual qualities of self-reporting on happiness. I think if you ask a normally functioning person if they’re happy, then their answer is objectively true.
So you don’t think elementary education should be compulsory? That hardly seems to comport to the Jeffersonian ideals vis a vis education and its importance to democracy.
Absolutely, I don’t think elementary education should be compulsory. In my opinion, the coercive aspect of education is grotesque paternalism. As if, when given access to free elementary education, large groups of people will say, “No, we prefer our kids to be illiterate.” That just doesn’t happen. Pretending it might is to have a rather low opinion of lower-income people.
Any kid who isn’t being educated should have the opportunity to be educated if he or she wants to be, in the way he or she wants to be. The fact is that kids generally want to learn. They don’t always want to learn in the way that adults arrogantly think are the best ways for them, but they want to learn.
As far as Jefferson is concerned, I agree with him on some things and not on others. Of course, educated people make for better government (though one might not be able to tell), but unlike in Jefferson’s day, people are unlikely to keep kids from school so they can work on the farm.
I believe you don’t know squat about evaluation of HPT factors or evidence in general if you think you measure the objective with the subjective. That’s not just an opinion, but a fact as it relates to the proper deployment of the scientific method. Empiricism is the realm of the objective.
Doctors and psychologists measure self-reported happiness on a regular basis. They record that information and treat it as empirical evidence. They base their treatment of people on this empirical evidence. Maybe you should tell them that they don’t know squat about HPT factors or evidence in general.
If you were truly interest in student choice, the only substantive choice would be provide either a compulsory traditional secondary education or trade schooling/apprenticeship programs . . . on a not for profit basis.
So if I don’t believe in coercing kids to go to a school, whether they want to or not, then I’m not truly interested in school choice? Could you please explain this a little further because it makes no sense.
Every dollar taken in profit is a dollar not spent on hiring good teachers and/or purchasing student resources.
The U.S. spends more on teachers and education than all but two other countries in the world. Availability of funds isn’t the issue. We throw away plenty of money in the public school system.
And you know what? We’ve already got private for profit schools in this country.
And even the ones that cost less than public school are closed to poor people. That’s a shame.
They’re optional and at the discretion of whomever is willing and able to pay for that education with that profit margin instead of attending a public school.
So, the people who are unable to pay for that education, with or without a profit margin, should be forced to attend a school that is either too violent or crowded or dirty or otherwise unsatisfactory. That doesn’t sound fair to me.
Charter schools or public schools is not a real choice at all. It is – however – a way to implement discriminatory practices back into public education while sucking away resources as profit.
Resources aren’t really at issue. They’ve been criminally mismanaged for so long, finding ways to make parents and students more satisfied is perfectly reasonable.
There are lots of poor and middle-class families who are very grateful for their local charter schools. If, that is, one accepts their gratefulness at face value, without dismissing it as subjective feeling.
They deserve whatever educational choices can be made available to them. Denying them those choices based on ideology (private = bad/public = good) is neither compassionate nor liberal.
“Not trying to piss you off. And sorry that you’re mistaking a misunderstanding for dishonesty.”
Don’t be sorry about using straw men. Just don’t do it.
“‘A well rounded education involves both pain and pleasure.’
That clearly implies that an education without pain is not well rounded.”
No. That implies that no one is going to enjoy every subject or even enjoy them equally.
“That’s why self-reported happiness is the best metric for education.”
That’s circular reasoning. Technically a strange loop. It does not address you are attempting to measure an objective quality with subjective evidence. Which is a non-starter on logical and evidentiary ground from an HPT perspective. Happiness is not an objective measure of applied problem solving. It’s an individual subjective reaction.
“I just think the process has to be personalized”
Opinion.
“and completely voluntary.”
So you don’t think elementary education should be compulsory? That hardly seems to comport to the Jeffersonian ideals vis a vis education and its importance to democracy.
“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.
I agree with this, too. The question is, how do we use our resources to give everyone who wants to to this, the opportunity to do so?”
By raising the quality of instruction and availability of resources.
“The fact is that not everyone is interested in having this ability. It cannot be forced on people.”
See the above statement about compulsory elementary education. Add to that model trade schools as an acceptable substitute for secondary education.
“That’s good. It’s a valuable goal. Maybe my resistance is to the word “properly.” The word “proper” is more subjective than the word “effective,” so maybe the goal is to get people to think effectively?”
“Proper” in this context means “of the required or correct type or form; suitable or appropriate”. “Effective” in this context means “successful in producing a desired or intended result”. Though not precise synonyms, they are acceptably interchangeable terms.
“‘As many ways as there are subjects.’
And there must be a variety of ways within those subjects, as well.”
True of most subjects, but in some there is simply the right way and the wrong way. Like classical physics.
“‘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.’
I think the very best teachers in the world are only as successful as their students and the rules governing their teaching allow them to be. There are wonderful history teachers, for instance, who are required to teach meaningless facts that act to diminish interest in history in many students. It’s not just the quality of teachers, it’s the curriculum they’re required to teach which determines their effectiveness.”
Which goes to the core issue Elaine has with standardized testing as currently implemented. On which I happen to agree with her.
“‘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.”
That sounds very reasonable, but post-secondary education is strictly voluntary. Secondary education is involuntary. Do you think the coercive nature of secondary education negatively affects the potential for post-secondary education?”
See the above statement in re trade schooling. One or the other should be compulsory.
“Absolutely, there is. And I think the word ‘properly’ in your “think properly” struck me as subjective. To ‘think effectively’ is perhaps a phrase which lends itself to more objective measurement.”
See the above statement about interchangeable terminology.
“’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.’
Sure, but when it comes to a person’s subjective perception of their happiness, when that person is showing no aberrant behavior, then that’s it, that’s the last word. You have to respect the normally behaving individual’s opinion on their happiness. To disrespect it, is to embrace authoritarianism.”
Nonsense. See above statements concerning measuring the objective with the subjective. Also an appeal to emotion and an attempt at guilt by association.
“‘From my point of view, you’re thinking solipsistically and not empirically.’
You believe I’m not thinking, let’s say, effectively.”
In addition to solipsistically and non-empirically, yes.
“’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 believe your view of the purpose of education is based on your opinion, and it dismisses the opinions of others which differ from yours.”
I believe you don’t know squat about evaluation of HPT factors or evidence in general if you think you measure the objective with the subjective. That’s not just an opinion, but a fact as it relates to the proper deployment of the scientific method. Empiricism is the realm of the objective.
“I agree with you that it should be a goal of mass education to get students to think effectively. But what’s the goal of individual education. If you put a bunch of students in a room and ask them what they want out of education, you’ll get a lot of different answers. You can tell them that education is about learning how to think effectively, but a few might say, ‘I don’t care about that. I just want to learn how to read and write and do math.’ Another might say, ‘I already know how to read and write and do math, I just want to learn how to brew beer’.”
Id., trade schools.
We’re free to sell the valuable “thinking effectively” product, but it’s up to the customer, the student, as to whether or not they’re going to buy it. If they don’t want to buy it, forcing them to sit at a desk for several years isn’t going to make them think effectively. Only the students who want to learn how to think effectively will learn how to think effectively.
“That’s my entire point. Education can only achieve what the student allows it to achieve. The student will only allow that which he or she chooses. Therefore, education is for whatever the student wants it to be for.”
That points to your position of choice vis a vis charter schooling is a boondoggle and not representative of a substantive choice except for the choice to either properly fund and administer public education on a not for profit basis or to opt for an education that (as Elaine’s evidence points to) is in some ways more flawed than public education and the primary difference is its for profit nature.
If you were truly interest in student choice, the only substantive choice would be provide either a compulsory traditional secondary education or trade schooling/apprenticeship programs . . . on a not for profit basis.
Every dollar taken in profit is a dollar not spent on hiring good teachers and/or purchasing student resources. And you know what?
We’ve already got private for profit schools in this country.
They’re optional and at the discretion of whomever is willing and able to pay for that education with that profit margin instead of attending a public school.
Those are your valid choices.
Charter schools or public schools is not a real choice at all. It is – however – a way to implement discriminatory practices back into public education while sucking away resources as profit.
There’s an analog for that in nature.
They’re called “parasites”.
Elaine,
That’s sounds exponentially more important that what we’re doing here. Hope you have a great day with your boss.
LJM,
I’ll have to respond later today or tomorrow. My granddaughter is awaking from her nap and calling for me. She’s my boss these days. I’m not exactly retired.
Gene,
A belated follow-up on the “pain” concept.
I don’t want you to think that I think that all learning has to be pain free and pleasant. I’ve practiced and taught martial arts, so I know that learning exists in worlds of pain (years later, I’m still sore). My point is that it has to be voluntary. The student has to know that a learning process will involve pain and then agree to that process in order for that pain to be an effective teacher.
I should have clarified that earlier, but my mind is in solipsistic chaos! 😉
Elaine, Gene,
I’d really like to hear your opinions on this essay.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/duh.htm
Excerpt:
The field of education bubbles over with controversies. It’s not unusual for intelligent people of good will to disagree passionately about what should happen in schools. But there are certain precepts that aren’t debatable, that just about anyone would have to acknowledge are true.
While many such statements are banal, some are worth noticing because in our school practices and policies we tend to ignore the implications that follow from them. It’s both intellectually interesting and practically important to explore such contradictions: If we all agree that a given principle is true, then why in the world do our schools still function as if it weren’t?
Here are 10 examples…
Another example that the charter school and voucher system is all about destroying the public school system
This is silly. There are many people who are helping to create charter schools who have no interest whatsoever in “destroying the public school system.” In Sweden, where vouchers have been used for 20 years, private school enrollment went up from 1% to a whopping 11%. The public schools in Sweden are doing fine.
A voucher system is like a universal healthcare system. Bad implementation doesn’t mean bad idea.
Let’s say Obama-care turns out to be a confused muddle of lower rates for some and higher rates for others and insurance companies happy as clams because they helped to write the damn thing. That doesn’t mean, as many conservatives will claim, that universal health care can’t work. It just means it has to be implemented honestly and competently (and maybe in different forms on smaller scales).
Gene,
I meant to thank you for answering my questions. You make very valuable points. I think our fundamental disagreement is less about what makes a good education, but rather about the coercive nature of it as it exists, and the value of self-guided, strictly voluntary education.
Gene,
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.
Not trying to piss you off. And sorry that you’re mistaking a misunderstanding for dishonesty. Here’s what you said…
A well rounded education involves both pain and pleasure.
That clearly implies that an education without pain is not well rounded.
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.
That’s why self-reported happiness is the best metric for education.
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.
I agree with this. I just think the process has to be personalized and completely voluntary.
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.
I agree with this, too. The question is, how do we use our resources to give everyone who wants to to this, the opportunity to do so? The fact is that not everyone is interested in having this ability. It cannot be forced on people.
To be able to interrogate the world and come to reasonably accurate conclusions based on reason and evidence gathered in a systematic manner.
That’s good. It’s a valuable goal. Maybe my resistance is to the word “properly.” The word “proper” is more subjective than the word “effective,” so maybe the goal is to get people to think effectively?
As many ways as there are subjects.
And there must be a variety of ways within those subjects, as well.
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.
I think the very best teachers in the world are only as successful as their students and the rules governing their teaching allow them to be. There are wonderful history teachers, for instance, who are required to teach meaningless facts that act to diminish interest in history in many students. It’s not just the quality of teachers, it’s the curriculum they’re required to teach which determines their effectiveness.
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.
That sounds very reasonable, but post-secondary education is strictly voluntary. Secondary education is involuntary. Do you think the coercive nature of secondary education negatively affects the potential for post-secondary education?
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.
Absolutely, there is. And I think the word “properly” in your “think properly” struck me as subjective. To “think effectively” is perhaps a phrase which lends itself to more objective measurement.
“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.
Sure, but when it comes to a person’s subjective perception of their happiness, when that person is showing no aberrant behavior, then that’s it, that’s the last word. You have to respect the normally behaving individual’s opinion on their happiness. To disrespect it, is to embrace authoritarianism.
From my point of view, you’re thinking solipsistically and not empirically.
You believe I’m not thinking, let’s say, effectively.
“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 believe your view of the purpose of education is based on your opinion, and it dismisses the opinions of others which differ from yours. I agree with you that it should be a goal of mass education to get students to think effectively. But what’s the goal of individual education. If you put a bunch of students in a room and ask them what they want out of education, you’ll get a lot of different answers. You can tell them that education is about learning how to think effectively, but a few might say, “I don’t care about that. I just want to learn how to read and write and do math.” Another might say, “I already know how to read and write and do math, I just want to learn how to brew beer.”
We’re free to sell the valuable “thinking effectively” product, but it’s up to the customer, the student, as to whether or not they’re going to buy it. If they don’t want to buy it, forcing them to sit at a desk for several years isn’t going to make them think effectively. Only the students who want to learn how to think effectively will learn how to think effectively.
That’s my entire point. Education can only achieve what the student allows it to achieve. The student will only allow that which he or she chooses. Therefore, education is for whatever the student wants it to be for.
Learn ABC’s – & IBM’s
By Yoav Gonan
April 18, 2013
http://nypost.com/2013/04/18/learn-abcs-ibms/
Excerpt:
At least a half-dozen companies got an unexpected boost in marketing their brands to New York’s children this week — with free product placement on the state’s English exams.
Teachers and students said yesterday’s multiple-choice section of the eighth-grade tests name-dropped at least a handful of companies or products — including Mug Root Beer, LEGO and that company’s smart robots, Mindstorms.
IBM, the comic book and TV show “Teen Titans” and FIFA — the international soccer federation — were also mentioned in the test booklets, some of them with what educators referred to as out-of-place trademark symbols.
“I’ve been giving this test for eight years and have never seen the test drop trademarked names in passages — let alone note the trademark at the bottom of the page,” said one teacher who administered the exam.
Students at JHS 190 in Queens said the inclusion of some of the brands both within and after the reading passages left them scratching their heads — particularly when the questions had nothing to do with them.
“For the root beer, they show you a waitress cleaning a table and the root beer fell on the floor and she forgets to clean it up. Underneath, they gave you the definition that it is a soda and then the trademark,” said Marco Salas, an eighth-grader at the Forest Hills middle school.
“I didn’t think they should put it there,” he said. “There is no reason for it. It is out of place.”
nick,
I guess you don’t get it. I DON”T support the status quo. I hope to reform the reforms brought into public schools by the corporate school reformers. The first thing that should be done is to eliminate the high stakes testing of children–which was implemented in public schools in the name of school reform. Teachers will then, once again, be able to spend more class time introducing innovative educational programs and meeting the individual needs of their students when they don’t have to spend so much time prepping children for high stakes tests.
As the establishment education industry scoff and look down @ their noses @ charter, voucher, home schooling, etc. the real world is passing you by steadily. However, I encourage you all supporting the status quo. You will need much encouragement, support and counseling in coming years. And, your derision and sanctimony will simply remind everyone of the failed industry. Reform is your villain, and you are our inspiration.
“As the establishment education industry scoff and look down @ their noses @ charter, voucher, home schooling, etc. the real world is passing you by steadily. However, I encourage you all supporting the status quo. You will need much encouragement, support and counseling in coming years. And, your derision and sanctimony will simply remind everyone of the failed industry. Reform is your villain, and you are our inspiration.”
What an astonishing contribution of aimless invective backed up with nothing but an opinion from an unreliable source………..Priceless.
Democrats for Neoliberal Education Reform
by Robert D. Skeels
March 31st, 2011
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/03/democrats-for-so-called-education-reform/
Excerpt:
“Like special interests, our constituents deserve some consideration also.
– Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte (Los Angeles Unified School District Board — LAUSD).
At least someone was thinking of parents and community before corporations and privatizers at LAUSD.
If we ever needed more insight into just how manipulative and insidious Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) is as an agent of the corporate and neoliberal agenda, they’ve published a white paper discussing how they managed to railroad the anti-community, anti-teacher, pro-corporate SB-191 through the Colorado Legislature. The bill, which further disenfranchised communities in favor of corporate “ed-reformers,” and stripped Colorado teachers of nearly any protections whatsoever is a prime example of how it isn’t only teabagging darlings like Florida’s Rick Scott and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker that want to destroy public education and bust all unions.
Using a systematic methodology of guile, deception, and select co-opting of various other entities, DFER politicians were able to pass a pernicious bill that all but turns the teaching profession into a career path akin to working as a fast food fry cook. Of course, that’s how the well heeled hedge fund managers that founded DFER view anyone outside of their insular world of finance capital to begin with.
Although the document is an extremely boring read — chock full of corporate “ed-reformer” jargon and buzzwords — it’s important for social justice activists and public education advocates to read it in order to understand what we are up against. These are the type of tactics the plutocrats and corporate reformers have perfected.
Probably the most disgusting and revolting passage in the paper:
“Not only as a respected interest group, but also as the primary consumer of the students Colorado schools produce, the sponsors rightly believed that the business community’s support would add important diversity and depth to the coalition.”
Although we shouldn’t be surprised that ultimately DFER espouses some of the vilest concepts of Freidman and Rand’s ideology, the fact that they openly discuss students as mere commodities to be consumed by the owners of the means of production is a grim reminder of what drives the so-called education reform crowd. For them the working class and our offspring are just a means for their financial backers to generate ever more profit, and DFER doesn’t even try to obscure the exploitation that the system depends on, indeed, they willingly embrace it.