kitchen table math, the sequel: pick one

Thursday, October 23, 2008

pick one

Lynn G and I watched the debate between Lisa Graham Keegan & Linda Darling-Hammond two nights ago, and now you can, too. The last 6 minutes are worth the time.

The debate was terrific, I thought, though the fact that curriculum and pedagogy, the twin issues that have driven my own family from the public schools, were barely mentioned goes quite a ways towards explaining to me why I've become an "Independent." I put "Independent" in quotation marks because I wasn't planning to become an Independent and don't consider it a badge of honor to be one. I am a believer in two-party politics, as a matter of fact; I just don't happen to have a party to believe in.

Of course, having become a person without a party and a parent without a public school, I'm thinking maybe now's the time to morph from small-l libertarianism to the real thing.

But I think I'll hold off on that. I can't be a libertarian; I have to carry on supporting NCLB if only to be the one parent in all of leafy suburbia who does.* It's my job.

Speaking of leafy suburbia, on the video you'll hear Linda Darling-Hammond giving a shout-out to Scarsdale superintendent Mike McGill and his strategic use of resources or some such. That is horsepucky. The secret to Scarsdale Mike McGill's success is tutors. Lots and lots and lots of tutors.

And don't you forget it.



* Me, and the hardy band of commenters and readers around these parts.
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10 comments:

SteveH said...

None of the above.

Blah, blah, woof, woof. I wish they would say exactly what they mean. Actually, Linda was the scarier one.


I'm not independent. I'm unaffiliated. I think it was Ross Perot who forced that distinction. I care about issues, not slates. I'm anti-party.

October 23, 2008 at 7:35 PM
Tex said...

Linda Darling-Hammond, “one of the most tragically influential education professors today “, according to an oldie but goodie article, “Why Johnny’s Teacher Can’t Teach” by Heather McDonald.

The rejection of testing rests on premises as flawed as the push for "critical thinking skills." Progressives argue that if tests exist, then teachers will "teach to the test"—a bad thing, in their view. . . . One of the most tragically influential education professors today, Columbia’s Linda Darling-Hammond, director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, an advocacy group for increased teacher "professionalization," gives a telling example of what she considers a criminally bad test in her hackneyed 1997 brief for progressive education, The Right to Learn. She points disdainfully to the following question from the 1995 New York State Regents Exam in biology (required for high school graduation) as "a rote recall of isolated facts and vocabulary terms":"The tissue which conducts organic food through a vascular plant is composed of: (1) Cambium cells; (2) Xylem cells; (3) Phloem cells; (4) Epidermal cells."
. . . It never occurs to Darling-Hammond that there may be a joy in mastering the parts of a plant or the organelles of a cell, and that such memorization constitutes learning. Moreover, when, in the progressives’ view, will a student ever be held accountable for such knowledge? Does Darling-Hammond believe that a student can pursue a career in, say, molecular biology or in medicine without it? And how else will that learning be demonstrated, if not in a test? But of course such testing will produce unequal results, and that is the real target of Darling-Hammond’s animus.
. . .
Linda Darling-Hammond’s description of collaborative learning perfectly captures how inextricable the political is from the educational in progressive theory. "Whereas traditional classrooms tend to be still but for the sound of teacher talking, learning-centered classrooms feature student talk and collective action." (The "learning-centered classroom" is Darling-Hammond’s jargon for a student-centered classroom.) "Collective action"—how exciting!

http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_2_a1.html

October 24, 2008 at 5:12 AM
SteveH said...

"But of course such testing will produce unequal results, and that is the real target of Darling-Hammond’s animus."

And this was back in 1998!

"Anything but knowledge"

They've redefine education to meet their social agenda. Meanwhile, reality ignores them completely.

It's very discouraging. We won't change these people. All we can do is speak to other parents.

My first big encounter with this was in first grade. I (naively) told my son's teacher that my son loved geography and knew all the states and capitals, and could find any country in the world. She said: "Yes, he has a lot of superficial knowledge".

October 24, 2008 at 5:46 AM
PaulaV said...

"When people say, particularly rich people, that money doesn't matter, I don't see them trying to give it up."

So Linda Darling-Hammond thinks rich people aren't spreading their wealth around? Where have I heard this before?

I am not rich, but I enjoy a comfortable life. My husband makes a good salary. We pay taxes and those taxes go toward the school budget. I volunteer in my sons' school and I give money to every fundraiser. I buy school supplies for teachers when they need extra items for their classrooms. When they request books from the book fair, I buy them. When will it ever be enough?

October 24, 2008 at 5:51 AM
Anonymous said...

Near the end of her speech, Ms. Darling-Hammond briefly alluded to the equalization of resources across all schools and that urban schools, mainly Black and Hispanic students, need this so they will be afforded equal opportunity for a quality education. I too felt that way until performing some research shed some light on the truth of the matter, at least here in Illinois. The data below can be found on the Illinois Board of Education web site, which has extensive data covering school performance, spending and funding sources.

Consider the following, students in the Chicago Public Schools (707,000 students), District 299, are funded at $11,033 each. The average across the entire state is $9,907 per student (1.8 million students) so I believe she is dead wrong on the inequality of funding issue, at least here in Illinois. While there are districts that receive more than Chicago schools, several hundred out of over seven hundred districts in the state that are funded at far lower levels and are achieving significantly better academic achievement.

If we were to equalize funding across the state at the level of the Chicago Public School’s, $11,033, taxpayers will see tax’s rise to cover the $2.6 billion dollars, that's billion with a B! Obviously, Chicago schools would see none of this increase. If the average funding level were increased to say, $13,000 per student, thereby granting Chicago Schools an additional $2.000/student,additional tax dollars would be on the order of $5.8 billion dollars or $458 for every resident in the state.

One last point here, City of Chicago schools are already receive 50% of their funding from non-local sources, i.e., state and federal taxpayers, meaning we non-residents are already providing significant support for these schools. A number of schools that are funded at much higher levels obtain up to 96% of their money from local property taxes and not from state or federal coffers.

There are problems in our urban schools will not respond with better results with any amount of money. One such example is the absentee and truancy rates. In Chicago high schools, it is approaching 18%. The most egregious example is Harper with greater than one in four students absent every day. The chronic truancy rate in the worst schools exceeds 50% of the student body. Your not in school your don’t learn. That simple fact seems to elude educational elitists.

The media and the educational Pu Bah’s won’t disclose the truth so you will have to do as I did and dig it out yourself. Equalizing funding is a redistribution scheme that doesn’t have a chance of affecting educational outcomes, except in a negative way.

October 24, 2008 at 8:32 AM
SteveH said...

Hi JoeH,

My take is that when they talk about equalizing resources, they don't mean equalizing money. They mean spending enough money to make the results equal. This means you have to spend more in urban areas just to achieve equality. If the results aren't equal, then they need more money. It's a no-lose argument.

Playing the devil's advocate, I could argue that urban schools need more money and early learning resources to prevent truancy in later grades.

This, of course, assumes that there is a money solution to all of this or that they will use the money properly. That's their problem. They waste the money. Pouring more money into what they want to do achieves very small gains. Rather than separate kids based on willingness or ability (or, heaven forbid, parental choice), they try to keep all of the kids equal. It's the old problem of equal education versus equal opportunity.

All sides talk about choice these days, but you have to look at the choices and see who's in control of the money.

October 24, 2008 at 11:16 AM
Ben Calvin said...

It's very discouraging. We won't change these people. All we can do is speak to other parents.

I'm afraid I agree. You can work at the margins, pick your battles and look for alternatives.

October 24, 2008 at 12:18 PM
Ben Calvin said...

…curriculum and pedagogy, the twin issues that have driven my own family from the public schools, were barely mentioned.

I’ll believe the U.S. Public School system can be reformed when I see districts piloting Core Knowledge and Direct Instruction schools.

But I’m dubious it will happen because curriculum and pedagogy are now ideological issues. Instead of judging programs by the results, the results are judged by how closely they conform to the preferred ideology.

October 24, 2008 at 12:27 PM
Anonymous said...

SteveH
I listened to her blah, blah, blah again and she specifically says, “we need to look at what works, scale it up…this will require equalization of resources”. In the same breath, she talks about investment, a bureaucrat’s shorthand for higher taxes in case anyone listening didn’t catch her meaning. So, I do believe she in fact is talking not only about equal dollars across the board, but far more of them, much like my example.

Your devils advocate question raises an interesting point, why limit additional funding to only urban schools, why not any district that is “underperforming”? I can point to suburban and rural districts that make the same argument you make for urban schools. Where does it end? Where do we set the equality bar? Then there are the community issues that are beyond the capability of any school district to remedy; astronomical out-of-wedlock birth rates, teenagers having babies, a high proportion of single parents, high crime rates and so on. These are all the problems over which the schools have no control or any hope of solving even with an infinite amount of resources.

Over the last 3 years, our suburban school board in response to the community input has cut spending growth. To come to this same community and ask them to take money out their wallet and send it elsewhere for education is far more than they will tolerate, particularly when our per student expenditure is less than it is in Chicago.
Cheers,
Joe

October 24, 2008 at 3:01 PM
SteveH said...

"Then there are the community issues that are beyond the capability of any school district to remedy; ..."

You could say that a good education is the way out of poverty, or you could say that good education will eliminate poverty. The first view focuses on academics and the individual, and the second view focuses on social issues and statistical averages. Many educators adhere to the second version. They see education (their role) as social, not academic. They want education to be a pump and not a filter. This leads to lower academic expectations. Kids are treated as statistics, and it is unthinkable to separate kids by ability or willingness to learn. Individual kids see their fate tied to everyone else around them. They might have the ability and desire to get to MIT, but their teachers and schools are happy to see them go to the local community college. A rising tide might float all boats, but that doesn't do much good if you're an airplane.

October 24, 2008 at 7:38 PM

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