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Governor Lamar Alexander's "Better Schools Program" was presented to the Tennessee legislature in January 1983 as the centerpiece of his second-term agenda. It had multiple elements, of which the boldest and most contentious was a "career ladder" for teachers--in effect, a merit pay plan.I was thrilled to be a member of the governor's brain trust, batting out memos, drafts, talking points, explanations, and questions-and-answers on my Vanderbilt typewriter, and joining innumerable meetings at the statehouse and executive mansion. I also relished introducing Lamar to Al Shanker--we lunched at the Baltimore airport during a day trip via state plane--who responded with interest to the governor's "master teacher" plan, wrote supportively about it in his New York Times column, and invited Alexander to address the AFT convention later that year.
After much arm-twisting, compromising and revising, legislators agreed to key parts of the "Better Schools Program," including the contentious career ladder. Lamar thus won his spurs as an "education governor," among the first such. But neither of us fully appreciated the rubber-band-like nature of k-12 policy and how it yearns to snap back into its previous shape as soon as the tension eases. Once Alexander's term ended, the Tennessee Education Association and its allies began to "revise," "improve," "make fairer," and generally erode the performance-pay scheme and other prickly parts of his plan.
Any lasting policy change in education, I was coming to realize, must include a vigorous "war of ideas" because the broader political culture either subscribes to obsolete beliefs or has delegated responsibility to a priesthood that stubbornly clings to them. Just as important, however, is Alexander-style political leadership--astute, brave, goal driven, results oriented, and relentless. Yet even with those assets in place, a leader's boldest reforms are apt to prove transitory once he/she leaves the scene and the establishment strikes back.
I'm going to have to get the book.
Probably Al Shanker's book, too.
tattoo this to your forehead
Any lasting policy change in education, I was coming to realize, must include a vigorous "war of ideas" because the broader political culture either subscribes to obsolete beliefs or has delegated responsibility to a priesthood that stubbornly clings to them.
Not to be grandiose about it, but what we do here at ktm-2 -- what the whole crew of bloggers and web sites linked to on the sidebar do -- is important.
The war of ideas needs boots on the ground, and we're the boots.
41 comments:
Parents want what works, there's a reason whole language keeps changing its name every few years or masquerades as phonics or makes the claim, "we teach phonics, too."
Sometimes even when the ideas are won the battle is not.
However, ideas do have consequences, and there is a war.
We need more troublemakers like that!
It looks like an interesting book.
A related book that is well worth reading is "Let's Kill Dick and Jane," see Ravitch's review here:
Ravitch Review
Here's the first 2 paragraphs from Ravitch's Review of "Let's Kill Dick and Jane."
"This book tells the story of Blouke Carus’s heroic but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to reform American education. Carus founded the Open Court Publishing Company in 1962 with two aims that did not seem to be at all contradictory: first, to teach children to read, and second, to do so while introducing them to classic children’s literature.
Carus was an engineer, not a professional educator, which may explain why he thought that he could revolutionize the schools and overturn the publishing industry merely by creating a superior product. He proved to be hopelessly idealistic and naive, traits not usually associated with engineers. Even though his company’s elementary reading textbooks achieved superior results, at best, according to this account, they garnered 2 to 3 percent of the national market for reading books. The company died struggling to find the formula that would make the Open Court readers acceptable to the nation’s teachers and administrators. Few seemed to care that reading scores soared in the districts that used the books, nor did anyone notice that the contents of the books were richer and more substantive than the competition."
The book was fascinating, if somewhat depressing. (Just because after reading the book, I realized that things were even worse than I had thought, and I was not overly optimistic to start with.)
there's a reason whole language keeps changing its name every few years or masquerades as phonics or makes the claim, "we teach phonics, too"
right
awhile back I decided that one of the reasons I instinctively gravitated to the realists (hey! that should be our "camp's" name! not "traditionalists," but realists!)
(Does it work? I think it might...)
Anyway, one of the reasons I instinctively gravitated to the realist camp was the difference in language.
Put the prose of an Engelmann (or a John Taylor Gatto!) side by side with the prose of a Lucy Calkins and the choice makes itself.
For me, it does.
Educators love to complain about the factory model approach to education. I read a commentary today that says that teacher unions and contracts were originally derived from the blue collar factory model of union contracts. Those job definitions and work rules are even stronger today. They do not benefit the kids. We need schools that accept more responsibility for learning. Factory model unions don't do that.
"Parents want what works..."
What doesn't work is having my son spend the entire (!) day today (morning to night - I'm not kidding) doing 90% art work and 10% learning. He definitely has to work on his planning and efficiency, but there would be no problem if the silly crayon and art work is taken away.
He learned more in the 45 minutes he took doing his straight-forward pre-algebra work on adding mixed fractions and finding common denominators.
We talked about a code of silence before, but I don't think that's true. Parents do complain, a lot. It's more like a code of smile, nod, and do nothing by the school; a code of stonewalling.
Instead of teaching my son to write a proper book report, he had to create 9 artifacts (art work) for an historical fiction book. I want to go screaming into the school and ask when the real learning begins.
How can parents work with a school if they have a completely different idea of education?
I read a commentary today that says that teacher unions and contracts were originally derived from the blue collar factory model of union contracts.
Oh, absolutely.
Unions & unionization are the antithesis of professionalism. This is historically true as well as logically true.
I've got to get Ed to write something short about the professions, how they came to be, what distinguished a profession from a trade or a craft, and so on.
I am not a professional, btw. I was a little sad to learn this.
As a writer I practice a trade or a craft.
Uh, Steve,
There are no such things as "book reports" in school anymore. That is so yesterday. Use that term and the teacher will look at you like you've spoken some new language.
Those are simple-minded artifacts from another era.
Susan S.
What doesn't work is having my son spend the entire (!) day today (morning to night - I'm not kidding) doing 90% art work and 10% learning.
Welcome to Middle School.
Also to high school.
We talked about a code of silence before, but I don't think that's true. Parents do complain, a lot. It's more like a code of smile, nod, and do nothing by the school; a code of stonewalling.
See, the difference between my district and Steve's district is: we've gone past the smiling-nodding thing to the threaten-to-sue-the-parents thing.
We talked about a code of silence before, but I don't think that's true. Parents do complain, a lot. It's more like a code of smile, nod, and do nothing by the school; a code of stonewalling.
See, the difference between my district and Steve's district is: we've gone past the smiling-nodding thing to the threaten-to-sue-the-parents thing.
Steve's right; parents complain constantly.
Years ago, when Ed and I were in our honeymoon phase, the president of the PTSA said to me, "Ed and Catherine. The only two happy parents in town."
When Chris came home towards the end of 7th grade and announced that he was to "construct a historical artifact," Ed (a historian, for people passing by) pointed out that, by definition, you cannot construct a historical artifact.
It's a contradiction in terms.
I think C. has written maybe 1 book report in 9 years.
That assignment was way over his head. The teacher told me he was to use "the NY TIMES book review model."
There is no NY TIMES book review model as far as I can tell.
The model she provided was a newspaper book review drawn from a different paper, not the TIMES.
That's real-world constructivism.
Give the kids assignments they can't do. Then give them Cs and Ds when they try and fail.
There were probably more than a few kids in the class who couldn't even read the book review provided as the model.
That teacher was great, though, apart from the writing instruction.
Schools can't do writing instruction, period.
Now that they've all been Lucy Calkinsized, writing instruction is a particular nightmare.
I want to go screaming into the school and ask when the real learning begins.
You do that, Steve!
Tell us how it goes.
The Earth Science class just had to create a "scrapbook" featuring 10 photographs of natural phenomenon accompanied by 10 paragraphs identifying and explaining these phenomenon, with footnotes to the text.
This assignment is pretty much undoable by a 13-year old -- or, at least, by a 13-year old boy.
It is doable by parents, and the expectation is that parents will be "involved."
Thus: many more hours of our time have been commandeered by the school without so much as a "please" and "thank you."
What is especially objectionable about the assignment is that neither parents nor students are expert in Earth Science. All of these scrapbooks will be filled with mistaken interpretations of natural phenomenon, which will become wrong learning.
It's pretty astounding to have your kid enrolled in an Earth Science course that never leaves the school building.
Do they take a field trip to the Museum of Natural History?
nope
Do they take a walk outside the school and observe and identify natural phenomenon?
nope
The parents handle all this.
The scrapbook assignment would be interesting if it were done as a class, under the teacher's supervision. The teacher should have toured the surrounding land with her students, explained what they were looking at, and taken the pictures.
Not the parents.
Ed, after perusing the Earth Science scrapbook extravaganza produced by the mother of one of the most successful students in the class, was actually going to go out and buy a photograph album for C's project.
This after I had purchased a plastic 3-pronged folder for the thing. He took one look at my selection and turned up his nose. A 3-pronged folder wouldn't do. We have to trek out to Michael's and pick up a photograph album.
I told him: Over my dead body.
In so many words.
You should all be homeschooling.
In general, homeschoolers have zero complaints about the quality of the education their children are receiving.
Here is one bunch of happy homeschoolers: http://www.lifewithoutschool.typepad.com/
Here is another one:
http://melissawiley.typepad.com/bonnyglen/
"Those are simple-minded artifacts from another era."
I just wish that one of the "artifacts" my son had to create was a book report. Maybe I should write an historical fiction book about traditional teaching and expectations. I would call it "The Boy Who Flunked Third Grade". It would never win an award. They would think it's science fiction, or torture.
Actually, I don't think they would say that it's simple-minded. I think they just don't like to dive right in and get to work. Almost all of my son's classes dance around the outside of learning. Only his 7th grade pre-algebra class has a textbook and homework that doesn't waste time and directly develops skills.
I talked in the past about an apparent jump or change between 6th and 7th grades. Up through sixth grade, it's all about mixed-ability, low expectation, play learning. Then, abruptly, things change in 7th grade. I think part of it is that many states require that teachers have certification in the field they are teaching. The other is that they can't ignore the transition to high school, especially the placement in math and foreign languages. Our school got rid of CMP and started using the same algebra book as the high school specifically for this reason. It's amazing that they went so long with a huge curriculum gap between 8th and 9th grades.
This doesn't necessarily mean better teaching. It does mean, I hope, that the art work will be gone. It's one thing for my son to work all day on homework, but quite another to have it be a waste of time.
We colored and colored for years. Even this year (7th grade) there has to be art and coloring in his notebooks that are graded. If it was assigned to punch up a subject here and there, it would be one thing. But it is a daily grind.
I just found it odd through the years that the only writing they seemed to do was either answers on a packet sheet, notes to be illustrated and colored, or 5 paragraph essays. That was it. There was never a paragraph or two assigned, never a one-age or two-page report about anything.
Since my son was allowed (along with the others) to type out things as early as 3rd grade, his actual writing practice by hand became restricted to short note taking. Spell check took care of things so he didn't have to learn spelling or punctuation too closely. They weren't graded for that on top of it.
There's a lot of lost practice time that teachers seem to assume is either happening or just unnecessary, that is until the kid gets to late middle school where the expectations go up and the tracking begins.
As far as book reports go, or whatever they call them now, the only few I found were in the structure of the 5-paragraph essay. Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted my son to do short assignments so that he wouldn't look at writing as something that was always long-winded with a good deal of naval-gazing involved.
SusanS.
"You should all be homeschooling."
I understand your point, but that's not the solution for either my own personal case or for the larger problem of education. There are two issues that go on at KTM. The first is what do we do about our own kids, given our individual circumstances and choices, and the second is what will provide the best educational opportunities for all kids.
For my son's case, we moved him from public school to private school in second grade because he was doing absolutely nothing new in class. This was an improvement; not perfect, but an improvement. Then, when he got to fifth grade, we saw the path ahead and it was SSAT and applying to private high schools. One of the teachers said: "Once an independent school kid, always an independent school kid." She didn't mean it that way, but I thought that was scary.
We weren't going to send him off to a boarding school, we didn't want him to be a day student in a boarding school, we didn't want him riding a bus for hours each day, we weren't going to move, and we really didn't want to spend $25,000+++ for high school when our own public high school wasn't bad. We bit the bullet and brought him back to our public schools for sixth grade. Perhaps this was a year too early, but at least he was able to move up to 7th grade math instead of sixth grade Everyday Math. Another couple in our town followed that same path; private school for K-6, then back to the public schools for the rest. They said that with the proper support from parents, kids can get a good education and be prepared for any college. This doesn't fix the problem, but it's a solution, and it means that I still have to do my share of homeschooling or homefixing.
I could view KTM as a way to let off steam, but I think that KTM is more than that. It's a resource for parents and a challenge to schools to defend their positions. The details and arguments at KTM go far beyond anything you would find in an editorial section. Parents are shut out at school and ignored when we send our kids to other schools or do homeschooling. They can't shut out KTM.
I am homeschooling and I still don't think it's right for school districts to defraud the public about what they are doing with the money.
Homeschooling only solves part of the problem for my own kids. The best solution would be for the school to offer quality programs so that I could get my money's worth when I send them my property taxes every year which I pay whether I send my kids or not.
And while we are lucky enough to afford to live off of only one income at least half the kids out there have only one parent and many of the intact families can't afford one income. Homeschooling just isn't possible for everyone.
ktm is definitely more than a way to let off steam, though it is that
ktm really, truly is part of the "war of ideas.'
That war has to be waged.
Period.
This is another topic I'll have to get Ed to write about. No revolution happens, ever, without "intellectuals" and theorists.
I assume that's true of reforms, too: reforms as opposed to revolutions.
One further observation on this point: I no longer believe the public schools are reformable.
The public schools are, however, "undermine-able." Blogs like ktm and virtually all the blogs listed on the sidebar undermine the credibility of the schools and the "priesthood" that controls them.
If we can't change things (and we can't, I think), we can bear witness.
ktm serves a second & related purpose, which is that it helps parents teach their kids. Although my own "afterschooling" hasn't been brilliant, it has kept my son alive in math, and put him at least within hailing difference of his peers in Europe and Asia.
Well.... "hailing distance" may be stretching it, but I can't come up with the correct analogy at the moment. He is certainly in far, far better shape than he would have been without my efforts.
Without my efforts he would be "off the math track," period. My school district seems to have no commitment to preparing kids to take college math.
sidebar: I once told the math chair that "our goal" was to have Christopher able to take math courses in college. The math chair responded coldly, "He has to take math to graduate high school." I have never heard a soul in the district say that Irvington graduates will be prepared to take college-level math. Everything -- EVERYTHING -- is "literacy." The idea seems to be that our kids will be prepared to take courses in the humanities.
The mathematically gifted kids will be prepared to take college-level math.
I don't know that this is the conscious or unconscious belief of our administrators, but this is what comes across.
Back on subject:
Waging the war of ideas and (re)teaching our kids, in plain view is a very different enterprise from what's happening at eduwonk & Fordham & c.
In its way, ktm is a radical enterprise.
In a sense, what ktm has done is to
We have refused to have our authority usurped, not just over "character ed," but over academics.
Which means, certainly in my case, that I don't transfer sovereignty to the pundits and policy wonks, either.
That said, if I had it to do over again I would certainly figure out a way to homeschool.
I'd probably also be engaged in creating an alternative or charter school.
And I'd be trying to figure out a way to recruit good teachers for my kids outside the public school structure.
Which would not be easy.
5 paragraph essays
C. doesn't seem to know how to do this
His social studies teacher this year is working his tail off teaching the kids how to do dbqs.
We've had some skepticism about this, mainly because dbqs were created to be assessment tools, not teaching tools. (I think I've mentioned that Ed was one of the inventors of the dbq, back in CA. He doesn't know whether he was the first inventor, or whether he and his group reinvented the wheel. Nevertheless, Ed "invented" the dbq as an assessment tool for CA state tests.)
However, I've had several parents tell me that this teacher's students do better in high school than other kids who've had other teachers.
They're doing a research paper now and this teacher has given them a DAILY assignment & timeline to follow.
So the kids are all getting some very serious instruction from a VERY hardworking teacher.
My problem, unfortunately, continues to be that the kids are working over their heads. Ed says Chris still can't write a decent summary paragraph but he's doing a research paper.
But this is a problem that transcends the class & the teacher.
It is a core problem of public education these days - and a huge problem in "high performing districts," I've come to feel.
Then, abruptly, things change in 7th grade.
I think that distinction is faltering or failing (redkudu has MUCH to say on this, btw -- and she's teaching high school)
The details and arguments at KTM go far beyond anything you would find in an editorial section. Parents are shut out at school and ignored when we send our kids to other schools or do homeschooling. They can't shut out KTM.
Right!
That's what I meant.
I am homeschooling and I still don't think it's right for school districts to defraud the public about what they are doing with the money.
exactly
Homeschooling only solves part of the problem for my own kids. The best solution would be for the school to offer quality programs so that I could get my money's worth when I send them my property taxes every year which I pay whether I send my kids or not.
ditto
ditto, ditto, ditto
The other issue is that we pretty quickly come to the end of our ability to homeschool the liberal arts disciplines.
How do you homeschool high school?
I'm thinking, now, that community college might be the answer....but I'm a little unclear on this.
Can most 14-year olds take their high school courses from the remedial offerings of community colleges?
And Myrtle's right about the income issue.
We live on two incomes.
It would have been pretty hard to live on Ed's income when he was just starting out as a professor.
"Ed, after perusing the Earth Science scrapbook extravaganza produced by the mother of one of the most successful students in the class, was actually going to go out and buy a photograph album for C's project.
This after I had purchased a plastic 3-pronged folder for the thing. He took one look at my selection and turned up his nose. A 3-pronged folder wouldn't do. We have to trek out to Michael's and pick up a photograph album."
Sigh.
This reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip. Calvin is giving a report in class and says, "Before I begin, I'd like everyone to notice that my report is in a professional, clear plastic binder. .... When a report looks this good, you know it'll get an 'A'. That's a tip, kids. Write it down."
It is sad and interesting that Calvin has concluded that presentation trumps content.
If I were running a class that required reports, I'd probably insist that everything be in something like 10 point courier. With no binders (what, staples don't work?). The idea would be to try to focus in the words, not on the font selection, etc.
-Mark Roulo
This "war of ideas" really is where it's at.
I'm in the Twin Cities, MN. Well, specifically, I'm in St. Paul, but the available educational system I'd consider taking my kid to is well over half of the greater Twin Cities metro.
There are over a hundred schools here available to a parent of grammar school or middle schools aged student. There are over two dozen high school options available. The public school system allows you to attend any public school which has space--you lottery in for the most wanted ones, of course, but usually, people get what they want. We also have charter schools. We have magnet schools. We have DOZENS of Catholic schools and at least a dozen other religious schools. We have private non religious schools. And we've got homeschoolers. Tuition ranges from 0-22k for each and every possible grade, preK to 12. I mean, from the outside, this is a mecca of educational opportunities!
And yet everywhere I go, I meet parents desperate to start new schools, pulling their kids out of schools, switching between private, public, and homeschoolign mid year, and parents organizing to try and change their schools.
From the outside, it looks like madness: how can NONE of these schools fit the bill? how come NO ONE can find something that works for their kids? If parents just want what works, what is the problem?
For all of these so called choices, the answer is: for the grammar schools: no one here has a school that is excellent academically with a reasonable price point (and the unreasonable price points aren't always better academically either), and some of them still have (regardless of their religious ed or claim of religious culture) terrible problems with bullying, fights, and social problems in the classroom. For the high schools, almost none of them are excellent in all academic subjects. I've yet to hear ANYONE tell me of any high school that was excellent in science here, even though several offer IB and AP courses. I've yet to hear anyone say they have even moderately decent science in the grammar or middle schools, and that includes a magnet school.
Parents keep moving their kids around trying to find something that works for them, but they don't seem to get any traction. That's because, on some level, most of these parents still don't have a way to wage the war of ideas. All they can do it opt in or opt out, and hope something is close enough to work for them.
The ones who start a charter school or a private school are waging a different war--and sometimes, they fail too, because they still don't know how to HIRE people with ideas that work. While my homeschooling and charter schooling friends know about Saxon Math and Core Knowledge, none of them have heard of Direct Instruction or Precision Teaching. They are always reinventing wheels trying to find a way to hire faculty that won't make their school have the same problems as every other school they've got around them.
The war of ideas matters. More than anything else, because without it, we lose the way to communicate what it is we really want.
Mark - DITTO
Catherine,
I don't know what we will do once we hit high school. If a single one of my kids places into rememdial anything in community college I'll consider myself an unmitigated failure. And I'd consider myself a failure if they finish high school algebra, geometry, and algebra II only to place right back into elementary algebra in cc. What the hell were we doing for three years of high school if they couldn't pass the subject matter on a placement test?
In the Singapore system the kids are done with high school at the end of the 10th grade and the 11th grade is junior college. So it seems reasonable that given the correct preparation we can expect them to be capable of taking cc courses by the 11th grade.
none of them have heard of Direct Instruction or Precision Teaching. They are always reinventing wheels trying to find a way to hire faculty that won't make their school have the same problems as every other school they've got around them.
I'm with you there.
When I discovered Precision Teaching, the scales fell from my eyes.
For some reason, Direct Instruction hadn't quite....."caught" me. I don't know why. I was probably, like so many people, over-focused on "scripting" and Engelmann himself (much as I admire him).
I think I may have missed the forest for the trees.
When I stumbled across Precision Teaching I suddenly realized how very far the field of learning theory had come since I studied it in college, where I majored in psych.
Reading Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog in the wake of learning about the Morningside School made me realize I've been barking up the wrong tree.
Cognitive science is fine, but learning theory is "where it's at."
These people actually know what they're doing; they are developing, or have already developed, a science of teaching.
Bullying is part of the "package."
When you don't have a behavioral orientation, with expertise in learning theory, all the standard problems are going to emerge and plague you.
Ed has been talking to a woman who teaches at one of the good private schools in Manhattan.
She said it's quite difficult to hire good teachers. She can hire superbly prepared content specialists, and she does.
But good teachers are few and far between.
In particular, new teachers have a very difficult time assessing student work well.
She spends a VERY large amount of time teaching teachers to teach.
I assume she had to teach herself how to teach.
Allison is absolutely right; almost all teachers, everywhere, have to reinvent the wheel. People like the department chair to whom Ed has been talking do it and the rest of us rely on this small crew of "naturals" to teach what they discover on their own to others.
We need a science of teaching.
Myrtle - not sure I follow - I was thinking of using community college high-school level courses as a form of homeschooling - or is that what you meant, too?
I guess what I'm asking is: can a homeschooling parent use community college courses in place of high school courses?
Would that work for a lot of kids?
For most kids?
I had never really thought about starting community college at age 13 or 14....
Actually, you're right; I'm certainly hoping C. would place out of remedial math at a community college right around now.
I think he's pretty close.
So I misspoke.
I'm asking about sending your 13 or 14-year old to community college as your way of homeschooling high school.
Moorpark Community college in California has a program called the High School at Moorpark College, which works in tandem with our local high schools.
http://www.moorparkcollege.edu/hs/
There was an article written a while back hailing the achievements of one student from this program. The young lady had managed to obtain her AA degree before she would receive her local high School diploma.
This is an option we will certainly look into for our son when the time comes.
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