Deborah Meier on Education

Some of the additional facts regarding international comparisons need to become common knowledge–to back up the previous (below) blog. Also from Tienken article. (Anyone know how you can link into this?) Examples. .
2009 PISA. The US scores were better than 77% above of 65 OED nations. Better than you thought? BUT–and that’s where it gets interesting–Tienken documents why we’re comparing apples to oranges. “Because of (a) selective sampling on the part of some countries, (b) (the effect of) negotiating questions to align with a country curriculum sequence, and (c) lower overall child poverty in the United States” even that’s deceptive. Because, every country that outranked us had substantially lower poverty rates. If controlled for poverty we’d “be at the top.” Even without such “refinements” in fact 4th graders in the US ranked 7th out of 53 in 2011 science tests. And Mass., despite 15% poverty (vs 3% in Finland–but low for the US)) — was in 2nd and 5th place internationally on most test comparisons. So we turned, of course, not to Mass. (which at the time had no state-wide testing) but to Texas to find a solution? Thus the “Texas miracle”. Will unequivocal lies, disguised as “just the facts”, ever fade away?

In fact, of course, while tearing up our public schools and teachers, we have more than ignored the conditions of life for those in poverty–which have been declining in virtually every measurable way–more or less at the same time that we discovered the schooling crisis. And note: “we” simultaneously discovered that more money, lower class sizes, more art and music, better facilities, etc were a wasteful use of public funds–for poor children (the rich already have those). So much for worrying about the “gap”! It was an excuse from the start and remains one today. The everyday life gap between poor kids–white, back, Latino, et al–and middle and wealthy kids is what is shameful. And no, it’s not true that previous immigrants overcame such poverty and closed these educational gaps without first solving the money gap–through the rise of unions, welfare state policies, WWII, the GI Bill and more. It’s racism that kept African-Americans from catching up–and it’s still with us.

There is a crisis–in short–but not the one we’re focused on.

Yes, KIPPer friend Elliott, knowledge is powerful.

Read Tienken’s article in Kappa Delta Pi Record, April-June 20013 and Christopher Tienken’s new book with Dan Orlich, The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth and Lies for more.` And David Berliner’s old book–The Manufactured Crisis needs rereading.

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I cant get used to it! Skeptic that I am, the lies astound even me.
Thank you Christopher Tienken for providing us with the Gerald Bracey info we always counted on! Everyone–get hold of his article in Kappa Delta Pi Record, current April-June issue, “For the Record: Conclusions from PISA and TIMSS Testing.”
Aside from his amazing conclusions (if it’s test scores that make a nation great we’ve already won). Plus he has some interesting little facts about Shanghai and HongKing, as well as how nations have a voice in which test items to include and exclude, and picking the sample.
Why, Tienken wonders, does the USA do such a poor job on excluding items that are not taught at that level in US schools?
Answer: Because we’ve been led for many years by folks who want us to look bad.

They can’t declare victory–even on their test score terms–because it would kill off their real purpose. They are enemies of public institutions of all sorts and have chosen education as one of their major targets. Yes, “they”. International test scores–alas–have been their vehicle for calling it a crisis for all of America. Since I’m not a fan of test scores as good or bad news, I haven’t paid attention once Bracey left us–how I miss him! Or why wasn’t I noticing others who were saying this??

The stories we’ve been told are phony; yes yes yes. Just plain phony data. They have managed to take child poverty off the public table as a mere “excuse”. Their aim: to bash unionized teachers and public schools while at one and the same time lining their pockets, centralizing power in forms they can control, dumbing down our perception of our fellow citizens as an excuse for lowering wages, and lessening the power of one of the few remaining strong unions in the land as a source of opposition and an alternate view of possibilities. How do we get the word out–that, in fact, we do well on PISA and TIMSS. Are you, out there, as surprised by this information as I am??? Shame on me. (If Mass. was a nation they’d be number one–even before MCAS and all that! There was no crisis.)

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There she was–ordered by the King to turn straw into gold within 24 hours…as I recall. Terrified she agreed to give up her first born child to Rumpelstiltskin in return for his promise to do so. But, when the time came she recognized that she couldn’t go through with it… So she cheated and discovered his name–and was free at last.

Now children are neither straw nor gold (see previous blog) but the deal we’re making with the devil bears similar risks–inch by inch the day of Rumpelstiltskin’s final victory gets closer and closer. But it’s natural to put off looking at the future for survival in the present. It’s even healthy. If… if we use the time to mobilize ourselves intellectually, morally and politically to when we can say “no” without all losing our heads to the tyrant King.

A bit too whimsical a comparison perhaps—but alas, we have less to lose (no one is threatening us with our lives–just our jobs) and there is no Rumpelstiltskin out there to rescue us until we discover the secret of his name. We have to figure this out ourselves.

But coming back from Boston where I spent time celebrating Eleanor Duckworth with her many fans – talking and demonstrating the “having of wonderful ideas,” and attending an inspiring memorial service for a wonderful friend and his many friends and family–Allen Graubard. His best known book (an old one), Free the Children, is worth a reread. The two events meshed – and I drove home on a cloud of joy at two people’s indomitable spirit – who managed to do honest and important work while remaining authentic people with incredible integrity and loved by many. And Eleanor keeps going and going creating for us all the insights we need to hold on to truly high expectations. Go to Critical Explorers to learn more about her current work.

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Dear friends,

Perhaps it’s a good thing that we keep looking for someone, somewhere who has created the utopia we’e dreaming about. In my lifetime I’ve lived through a number of grandiose claims: Russian communism (for some Fascism), various third world utopias, then Cuba, and of course, China. And many in-between. Ditto for schools. We keep reinventing “success” rather than exploring the history of our past successes. Instead we let them die for lack of support whenever a new fad rolls in.

Even the ones–the schools– I co-created with friends young and old in NYC and Boston were always short of what I hoped for. Having been through it personally I laugh when others are heralded not because they don’t “deserve” it but they deserve it usually for every reason except the one acclaimed: their high test scores or graduation rate, etc Like Obama’s peace prize, I got a MacArthur for the success of our CPESS secondary school in NYC before it had anything but 7th graders. I appreciated it because it gave me just the extra leeway I needed to actually become a 7th-12th grade success–until finally it too succumbed approximately a decade after I moved on. But it enabled me to go from being a lowly elementary head teacher to a very wise and renowned leader of Education–even a “genius”.

I thought about this as I was reading David Kirp’s latest book: “Improbable Scholars”–the success story of a the Union, New Jersey school district, relying on no miracles or gimmicks, just nurturing and protecting good teaching and good school mastering.

I’m halfway through and I half believe it. Especially since in January 1989 David believed me when he wrote a piece entitled BadAss Principal for Mother Jones magazine. Actually its about 3 principals: Badass Joe Clark, George McKenna and Deborah Meier. They made a movie about Joe, called Lean On Me.

He ends his well-baanced piece with the following: “Perhaps Deborah Meier would be eaten alive in the Pattersons of this world. But maybe she’s onto something….better the intimate enclave of learning than either the plantation of fear or the factory of love.”

I know, I know…but is it “replicable,” can we “scale it up” to serve millions? The answer is yes and no. Remember, it wasn’t even strong enough to survive the next decade. If we wanted to we could make it easier, rather than harder, for others to explicate, if not replicate, their own “intimate” settings in which young and old get love with learning. More, David, after I finish your book. Your words 23 years ago made a difference. Let me repeat what you said then about our work at CPESS: “we might be onto something.” There have now been enough of “us” to convince me that it’s the right track to follow–and that the paths our “followers” will take will never be identical, but they will off and on meet and comfortably recognize each other’s dreams.

And the “fad” this time may be more damaging, because Joe Clark’s work might be a closer description than CPESS of the dream that the so-called corporate reformers have in mind.

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Friends,

The continued existence of democracy, much less an even stronger one, is what is in a crisis. The “school crisis”, along with many others, is a distraction. Just a symptom of the more serious crisis we face. Schools are simply one of our many institutions that are under attack. The very “idea” of democracy is being undermined over and over again–and its not easy for me to see how we can put humpty-dumpty together again. Because it’s democracy that is the real basis for the idea of accountability! “Throw the rascals out” is where it all begins. But “accountability” is now being used as a tool to undermine democracy!

The democracy we have experienced for several hundred years was pretty thin at it’s start, and began slowly to take on some flesh—as more and more of us were included, viewed as members of “the ruling class” with a right to make decisions about our future. But on every front we’re losing ground: voting? Clearly between gerrymandering and media consolidation and huge spending by rich individuals, corporations and foundations (so-called) the decks are heavily stacked against “us”. For perhaps the first (or 2nd?) time in our history the people’s vote for Congress is not reflected in who got elected to represent us. The number of low-income and black citizens who are now in jail make a mockery of democracy–and deprive millions of their right to vote. And the campaign to restrict voting further continues. (No country comes close to having as many of its people in prison!) And on and on.

I remember….when people said that our “exceptionalism” was due to our unusually large middle class, our social and class mobility, etc. These are not true anymore. We are lower on the international lists of mobility, care for children, income and wealth inequality than almost all OECD countries. Thank god for Russia and Mexico–who did even worse. In comparison, US schools look pretty good!!!!

But the same is true no matter what and where we look. Public libraries are endangered, local Post Offices closed, local school boards eliminated or increasingly irrelevant (In 1940 we had 200,000 such boards, today we have maybe 10,000–and many more students ). We want college degrees for “all”–but tuitions keep rising higher and higher, and now interest rates on tuition loans are increasing too!

Taxes are more unequal–and less onerous for the rich than they have been since before the New Deal–80 years ago. Fear, the enemy of democracy as FDR noted, is rampant. Secure pensions and social security seem precarious. The “government” thus cannot be “trusted” to hold our money safe for our future, claim the democracy enemies.

And the one major “balancing power” –labor unions–haven’t been so weak since I was a child.

I’ve barely covered a small part of what’s in store for us. And those behind these developments are moving as fast as they can–so that unraveling them becomes harder and harder to imagine. I hesitated to write this down–because it can paralyze us if it’s true. But it mustn’t.

Who is to stop this assault? I know, us.

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Another book! I’ll be writing about this one many many times. It’s title: Education and Democracy in the 2lst Century. The author, Nel Noddings. I’ve highlighted page after page, sentence by sentence. So you really just have to read it from page one to the end. I’m writing now to encourage a discussion about the meat of her argument. We could start by “arguing” over chapters one and two!! I don’t have to rush into print writing a book on the topic–which I keep wanting to do. Instead we have Nel’s who has already written it to wrestle with.

It’s Teachers College Press, just off the presses, and only 157 pages long, and very readable.

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A good read about democracy: Born to Rise.

I’m amazed at how successful the so-called “reformers” and their allies have managed to implant a lie in the minds of otherwise quite interesting and kind people!  In my travels to colleges (mostly fairly selective) students buy into the anti-union talk about schools, claiming that it’s wrong for them to have a guaranteed lifetime income just because they got through two years of teaching. I have no trouble disabusing them of this lie, but…  It reminds me how widespread this view may be if you don’t come from a union family yourself.

So I forgive Deborah Kenny for writing an interesting book, Born to Rise, for her misinformed – even slanderous – claims about the impact of unions.   She assumes, for example, that everything in the contract is there because the unions want it to be there!  Many of the practices she ad I abhor existed before teachers unions had collective bargaining rights and in many states that do not bargain with unions, and in many many fields of endeavor that are not unionized.  My problems almost always came from management, not the union.  That’s why Sy Fliegel’s  ”creative compliance” strategy, which she refers to, works.   If tried.  I fear the current reforms will bring us more, not less, docile teachers.

I forgive her because it’s a very good book to read—useful, informative and inspiring.   Also–Deborah Kenny has nice words to say about me and our East Harlem schools, and her educational values are close to mine.  She’s turned off by rote learning of mathematics–which matter a lot to her, and loves the life of school for many of the reasons I do.  And her name is Deborah.

She tells us about her work creating the Harlem Village Academies with passion and useful detail.  She should have come to Boston with me and started it as a fully public school instead!   Her only mistake–stemming from ignorance I suspect–is that as a result she concludes that freedom and accountability are the only two keys needed. What shines through, however is a ore important key: her respect for and trust of her peers as well as the students–and her understanding that her first task as principal was to create a communal culture that represented the values she cherished for adults: including the time and space for collegiality. And her readiness to put up with the inevitable–we’ll never get it perfectly.

Since the crisis we face is about democracy, not schooling Kenny’s contribution to creating a description os what democratic staff culture might be like is critical.

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