Classroom Technology: Nightmare or Dream?

Technological advances in our schools in the last 10 years have been remarkable, and there is no doubt that technology will continue to disrupt our schools in both helpful and harmful ways. To be clear, I love technology and use it every single day. I teach with it and learn with it. It's important to remember, however, that technology cannot be allowed to have a monopoly on innovation in our schools. If public education is to survive the next 10 years, we need to see how technology and personalization can be read as either a dream or a nightmare, depending on who is writing the story.

If Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Arne Duncan, and Michelle Rhee are writing the plot, then personalization in learning is about using technology for union busting, test score analytics and the marketization of our children's minds. In this story, the rich get a computer and a teacher but the poor get just a computer. Herein, technology and personalization isn't about learning – it’s about money. In this story’s final chapter technology functions as a Trojan horse, sneakily shouldering an army of economists and shadow industries that have been stalking public education for a very long time, waiting for an in.

If Sir Ken Robinson, Pasi Sahlberg, Alfie Kohn, Yong Zhao, Linda Darling-Hammond, Will Richardson and Diane Ravitch are writing the plot, then personalization is about student excitement, creativity, intrinsic motivation, curiosity and citizenship. In this story, all children are given computers and teachers, even when it’s cheaper to deny some students the latter. Herein, personalization and technology is used for the purposes of universal education not subordinated to the interests of big business.

Personalization and technology can be about collaborating to discover our passions (the dream) but it can also be about competing over profits (the nightmare). Worse still, personalization can turn into a kind of hyper-personalization, where computers are given to students with zero facilitation from real life teachers. This is akin to pilotless flying and surgeonless surgery and yet this is precisely the vision of many in power, a vision where technology uses the learner, instead of the learner using the technology. However, this can only become a reality if good people remain silent. Classroom innovators and public educators must speak out against the nightmare narrative of technological implementation (of Gates and Murdoch) so that technology and personalization can assist the dream of learning for all.

Diane Ravitch's Forward for Finnish Lessons 2.0

This was written by Diane Ravitch as the forward to Pasi Sahlberg's Finnish Lessons 2.0: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland?

by Diane Ravitch

Pasi Sahlberg's Finnish Lessons was published exactly when it was most needed. When it appeared, the so-called education "reform" movement was ascendant in the United States and elsewhere and growing stronger.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan were enthusiastic supporters of "reform." Their program, called Race to the Top, was launched in 2009, and it contained the key ingredients of the reform paradigm: testing, accountability and choice. Educators were caught by surprise, as they had been led to expect that President Obama would end President George W. Bush's much-hated No Child Left Behind (NCLB). But the Obama program was built directly on the shaky foundation of NCLB. Instead of jettisoning high stakes testing, Race to the Top increased the importance of testing. Now, not only would students and schools be held accountable for student test scores, but teachers would be given a bonus or fired based on test scores.

The reform movement moved into high gear in 2010. Newsweek magazine ran a cover story that spring declaring "we must fire bad teachers," as though schools were overrun by "bad" teachers. That fall, the film Waiting for "Superman" was released with massive publicity. Its message: our public schools are failing, and the only hop for children stuck in "failing" public school sis to escape to a privately managed charter school. The then-chancellor of the District of Columbia public schools, Michelle Rhee, became a media sensation, with her tough talk about the schools and the pleasure she took in firing teachers and principals.

Some of the nation's richest foundations -- the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and many others -- poured millions into this reform movement, encouraging high-stakes testing, Teach for America, charter schools, and even (in the case of the Walton Foundation) vouchers for religious schools.

Several states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana, rolled back collective bargaining rights, and teachers' unions became scapegoats, blamed for low test scores and for driving up the cost of education because of their health care and pensions. Surveys showed that teachers were demoralized -- as well they should be -- by the attacks upon them and upon their profession.

Thus it was that when Pasi Sahlberg's Finnish Lessons was published, it injected a new dimension into education debates. Finland had high test scores in international student assessments, and it was not doing anything that our American reformers demanded. It had a strong public school system. It did not have charters or vouchers. It had very high standards for entry into teaching; there was no such thing as Teach for Finland that would allow inexperienced young college graduates to teach in Finnish schools. Sahlberg described a 5-year teacher preparation program that all teachers must complete to teach in Finnish schools.

Teachers and principals belong to the same union, which not only negotiates wages and working conditions, but advocates on behalf of children and schools. Although Finland has a national curriculum, teachers have wide latitude to shape it to their own needs and strengths. Best of all, Finland does not subject students to standardized tests until the end of their high school years. As Sahlberg writes, the schools are a standardized testing-free zone.

What many American educators loved about Finnish Lessons is that it portrays an alternative universe, one that respects educators and enables them to do their best work, one that recognizes that society has an obligation to ensure the health and well-being of children. Sahlberg knew that the Finnish story stoop in sharp contrast with what was happening in the United States and other countries. He refers to this movement for testing and choice as GERM: the Global Educational Reform Movement.

Yes, indeed, the United States, Britain, and many other countries are infected with GERM. Finnish Lessons 2.0 is a disinfectant. It reminds us that nation can consciously build an admirable school system if it pays close attention to the needs of children, if it selects and prepares its educators well, and if it builds educational communities that are not only physically attractive but conducive to the joys of teaching and learning.

Bill Moyers interviews Diane Ravitch

The high cost of turning our schools into profit centres:

• Public education is one of the foundations of a democracy, and America's public education is under assault.
• Charter schools are booming and controversial. There are 6000 in the United States -- double from a decade ago. They are publicly funded and privately run.
• Wall Street is drooling over investing in for-profit education companies.
• Profit$ not pupils are driving Corporate School Reform.
• Profiteers and privatizers see a gold rush in American K-12 Public Education which pulls in over $500 billion in taxpayers revenue.
• Diane Ravitch's book Reign of Error is a must read. 
• The Department of Education, led by Arne Duncan, has become an enemy of American public education.
• If we continue down this path, many cities like Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia, etc. will have no public schools. And if there are any, they will become a dumping ground for the children that the charter schools deem inconvenient or too expensive to educate. 
• American public schools are not broken and they are not failing. American public schools are dealing with some major challenges, including the fact that 1 in 4 children in the US live in poverty. Where there are public schools that are in trouble, there are communities that are in trouble.
• Charter schools were suppose to collaborate with public schools by seeking out innovations that the public schools could learn from but charter schools have become cut throat competitors, poaching public funds.
• If you make test scores the purpose of education, you don't want the children with disabilities,
  
  you don't want the children who don't speak English, you don't want the trouble makers, you don't want the children with low scores. You want to keep those kids out of your school.
• Not all charters are bad, but even the non-profit charters are typically owned by for-profit corporations. 
• Charter schools are not public schools, and in many states, charter schools are not required to hire credentialed teachers.
• The problem with turning over public education to the private sector is that they don't know anything about education.
• The American Legislative Exchange Council creates model legislation that states legislators copy to privatize public education, end collective bargaining, end due process for teachers, and merit pay for teachers.
• The assault on public education is a bipartisan effort.
• The Network for Public Education is a network of people who are fighting back against Corporate School Reform.
• Judging teachers via standardized test scores is wrong -- so there is now a mass exodus of people from the teaching profession.
• The Opt-out movement from standardized testing is growing and becoming main stream.

PART II

• The American Indian Model Charter School has been praised as one of the best charter schools in the country. In 2000, the school changed its demographics from predominantly Native American to Asian American. The change allowed the school to now brag about its test scores, which are some of the highest in California. They changed their student population to chase high scores.
• Some of the charter schools have CEO who are making $400,000 per year. 
• We are abandoning civic responsibility for consumerism. 
• Charter schools have select and conditional admissions which means they choose which children to admit or deny and which children to keep and expel.
• We should take billionaires advice for how to invest our money, and ignore their advice for how to teach and how to manage public education.
•  When Americans are asked about public education in general, they recite what corporate billionaires and corporate media tell them -- it's terrible. But when Americans are asked about their own public school, they say their public school is great.
• School choice is a synonym for segregation. The Charter movement is rolling back Brown vs Board of Education which led to the de-segregation of schools.
•  If we never change our mind, why have one? 

My second day at Network for Public Education Conference

The morning's first session included a panel on the Common Core:

Randi Weingarten:

• The push back from teachers on Corporate School Reform is not being ignored. It's noticed by those who are in power and it frustrates them.
• During this period of privatization and de-professionalizing of teachers, the idea of public education as a public good is under assault.
• National standards might be a good thing to help raise the standards and opportunities for children living in poverty.
• The Common Core standards are not appropriate for children in K-2.
• The testing will conflate and destroy any good that might have come from Common Core.
• The middle class is disappearing. We need to rebuild the middle class.

Paul Horton:

• If you are from Chicago, then you are angry. In the coming weeks, some Chicago teachers may be fired.
• No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top were born in Texas. The Texas 
• The Common Core is tied to data collection, the tests and Charters. There is no legal way of separating the Common Core from the Tests.
• The people who created the Common are test makers.
• Teachers don't need multi-billion dollar corporations to create curriculum and assessments that they should be paid to do.
• 
  

Geralyn McLaughlin

• Kindergarten is no longer the child's playground.
• Young children are being exposed to developmentally inappropriate, sit and get, drill and kill stuff.
• Many of the Common Core standards are not developmentally appropriate.
• The Common Core assumes that all children develop at the same rate. 
• Average age for learning to read is 6.5 years. Half learn earlier. Half learn later. Early readers are not better readers. 
• The Common Core demands that Kindergarteners read with fluency and accuracy.
• Let's stop demanding children be ready for school and have schools be ready for the children. Meet them where they are at.
• Children need play today more than ever.
• What the US can't learn from Finland.

Mercedes Schneider

• Common Core is not the same as national standards
• Common Core is the noose. Standardized testing is the scaffold. The high stakes and cut scores are the tightening of the noose.
• Common Core and Corporate Reforms ignores teacher professional judgement. 
• Common and standardized are not the same thing.
• No Child Left Behind has morphed into Common Core. Both need to be rejected.
• 
  

Jose Vilson

• Unions rightfully protect outspoken teachers.
• I don't teach kids for a higher teacher evaluation.
• The Common Core feels intentionally rushed.
• When we know that more than half of the children will fail the test, there is something wrong with the test.
• Too often we have the "experts" in one room and the teachers in another. Teachers are not considered the "experts" in their classrooms.
• Corporate School Reforms are destroying public education by demanding schools do things that they wouldn't make their own children do.
• We need to focus on the whole child -- not testing.

Opposing standardized tests that have no stakes is low hanging fruit. The real work is in opposing standardized tests that have the highest stakes. 

Diane Ravitch:

Diane Ravitch and me.

• Network for Public Education is a grassroots movement made by people who understand that public education is a public good not a private interest.
• Network for Public Education was Anthony Cody's idea.
• Randi Weingarten provided free legal aid to help start Network for Public Education
• Why we will win? 
• Robert Scott said we now have an educational-industrial complex and it was born in Texas.
• The assault on public education is a feature, not a bug, of Obama's administration.
• We may be out funded but we are not 
• I'm angry that powerful billionaires beat up on teachers who make less than their secretaries.
• I'm angry when legislators tell teachers how to teach.
• I'm tired of hearing people say they care about children and then do nothing about the 1 in 4 children who live in poverty.
• The Department of Education is an enemy of public education.
• The Democrats and Republican have merged into a bipartisan agenda that is really the Republican Agenda.
• I'm tired of people who say parents should have choice but then don't let them opt out of the testing. 
• We are going to win for several reasons: Everything proposed by the Corporate School Reformers fails.
• If privatization works, it should have worked in Milwaukee. It didn't work in Milwaukee. 
• Value Added Measurements shows who the students were in the class -- not the quality of the teacher. Value Added Measurements is junk science.
• We are being over run by 'disruption'. Children don't need disruption.
• Charter movement in US is resegregating America. 
• A 'for-profit public school' is an oxymoron.
• 90% of charters are no union schools.
• Every dollar of tax payers for public education should go to public schools not investors.
• Standardized tests measure the achievement gap -- they don't close it.
• Virtual Charters are a ponzi scheme.
• Main stream media is failing public education -- so we need to find other means to get our word out.
• Politicians and Legislators who think so little of our children should have to take the standardized tests and have their results published.
• Deborah Meier has been the voice of wisdom for longer than I have.
• Pittsburgh got a new school board and cancelled their contract with Teach For America.
• We are going to win because we own social media.
• Michelle Rhee was suppose to debate Diane Ravitch but Rhee wouldn't sign the contract. Rhee said she needed a partner -- so she got Rod Paige -- but then she wanted a third partner but couldn't find one so she wouldn't debate Ravitch.
• Corporate School Reformers are stealing tax payer dollars.
• We must stand in solidarity. We must be united. We must abandon ideological purity. We need a big tent. We need to stop pissing in our tent.
• Corporate School Reformers are the status quo
• Liberals think that facts persuade people -- conservatives know that stories persuade people. We need to reclaim the narrative. We must re-frame the argument against public education. We are defending democracy and children.
• We need retired teachers to speak up -- they can't be fired.
• I'm not going to be here forever. Who is going to take my place? You will. 
• Walls of Jericho will come tumbling down.

Teach for America looks to infect Canada

"Teach for America is no substitute for thoughtful, long-term federal and state policies to transform the recruitment, preparation, and retention of career teachers." 

~Diane Ravitch

I've been following the train wreck that is American education reform for a few years now.

I've learned that when a strategy for dismantling public education is born in the US, Canada need only wait a year or two before those same ideas look to contaminate the north. In the past, it's been standardized testing, school choice, replacing teachers with technology and/or merit pay.

Now Teach for America looks to infect Canada.

Here are some facts about Teach for America (TFA):

• Wendy Kopp created Teach for America in 1989 and since then has created an alumni of almost 30,000. 
• TFA attracts America's top college graduates and trains them for five weeks before placing them as full-time instructors in low-income, high-need classrooms across America.
• School districts agree to pay $2000-$5000 for each TFA instructor.
• TFA instructors are required to agree to a two-year commitment at their school. More than 50% of TFA teachers leave after two years, and more than 80% leave after three years.
• Check out a summary of the research on Teach for America here.

So why bring TFA to Canada?

Only 40% of First Nations students living on reserves graduate from high school. In Alberta, for example, there are many education initiatives around supporting First Nations, Metis and Inuit (FNMI) students. Canadians know that too many FNMI students are underserved and underprivileged. On a personal note, I teach in a children's inpatient psychiatric unit, and I am disheartened and disturbed by the number of FNMI children who present with a wide variety of mental health problems, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and or live in abject poverty. 

Canadians also know that attracting qualified teachers to work in native and rural communities can be very difficult. Sometimes the problem isn't just low-quality teachers -- sometimes the problem is that there is no teacher at all. 

At first glance, it would appear that importing Teach for America might be a great solution to Canada's challenges and inequities for FNMI students.

However, if this is an important problem, and it is, than we better be incredibly mindful about the solutions we employ.

So let's take a closer look at Teach for America.

In her book Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools, Diane Ravitch devotes an entire chapter titled The Problem with Teach for America. She writes:

It's hard to be critical of Teach for America (TFA) because the idea is so positive and the young people it attracts are so terrific. Who could possibly object to an organization that recruits thousands of smart young college graduates to teach for two years in some of our nation's most distressed urban and rural schools? Who could question the sincerity and idealism of these young men and women? 

It is necessary, however, to distinguish between the young people who join TFA and the organization itself.

Let's examine Teach for America's grand ambition. Ravitch continues:

TFA is not content to send out young people to do useful work in the schools. Flush with media acclaim and corporate largesse, TFA sells its brand as the best means of changing American education and ending educational inequity. It maintains that its teachers are singularly equipped to save children's lives, because TFA teachers have high expectations, clear goals, and a sense of purpose. It portrays itself as a prominent actor in the new civil rights movement, a force to abolish inequality and establish a new civil justice. It is as though the Peace Corps claimed that its young volunteers are more successful than seasoned diplomats, know how to bring about world peace, and should be making foreign policy. 

On the face of it, such claims should have been laughable. No first year teacher, especially one with only five weeks of training, is fully prepared for the challenges of a classroom filled with boisterous students in the nation's poorest communities. How can these young people expect to close the achievement gap and establish equality across the land when they agree to remain only for two years? Even though some stay for three or four years and a few decide to become career teachers or move into administrative roles, this makes no sense. 

It seems even more improbable to say that TFA is leading the new civil rights movement when Wendy Kopp often says that we don't have to fix poverty, we have to fix schools. What civil rights leader would say that? What civil rights leader would assert that we can "fix" the schools instead of improving jobs, healthcare and housing?

In her book A Chance to Make History, Kopp writes that when she started, "many assumed that fixing education would require fixing poverty first." She is now convinced, however, that TFA teachers, "even in their first and second years of teaching, are proving it is possible for economically disadvantaged children to compete academically with their higher-income peers." This actually isn't true, but no matter. She asserts there is "hard evidence that we can ensure all of our children in urban and rural communities have the opportunity to attain an excellent education." She maintains that "over the last twenty years we in the United States have discovered that we don't have to wait to fix poverty to dramatically improve educational outcomes for underprivileged students." When she appeared at Harvard in 2012, Harvard Magazine summed up her presentation: "Two decades ago, many educators thought urban schools could improve only if progress was made against poverty. Wendy Kopp thought there was another way to make a difference." 

But Kopp was wrong. The educators who thought we could improve schools by making progress against poverty were right. We must work both to improve schools and to reduce poverty, not to prioritize one over the other or say that schools come first, poverty later. Children are more likely to do well in school if they arrive in school healthy and ready to learn. TFA teachers are no substitute for jobs, nutrition, good housing, and healthcare. Poverty rises and falls in response to the economy, not in response to smart young people who teach for two or three years in poor communities or work in the state department of education, even state commissioner. 

It's important to note the most prominent alumni of Teach for America:

• Michelle Rhee who is a prominent opponent of teachers' unions and teachers' tenure and an outspoken advocate of high-stakes testing and privatization.

• John White who is the state superintendent of education in Luisiana and graduate of the Broad Superintendents Academy who helped launch an effort to privatize education by diverting money from public education to charters and vouchers and for-profit online businesses and private vendors. 

• Michael Johnston is a member of Colorado's state legislature who wrote legislation that made student standardized test scores count for 50% of every teacher's and principal's evaluation -- despite evidence that this is a very bad idea.

Wendy Kopp brought TFA to America, but it is Kyle Hill and Adam Goldenberg who are co-founders of Teach for Canada. When I visited their website, they name a four-member board of directors (which includes Hill and Goldenberg) and mentions, but does not name, a "core group of two dozen volunteers from across the country". Of the four named to the board, only two biographies hint towards anything that resembles teaching experience, and that is limited to Hill who "volunteered as a summer teacher in Jamaica and Ukraine" and Christie Kneteman who was a "former volunteer teacher in Ghana".

While Kyle assured me via twitter that Teach for Canada is "working with educators to build our program", I have a hard time finding confidence in such a vague and hollow statement. If Teach for Canada was working with an impressive list of teachers, why not make that known on their front page? I don't know too many organizations that are humble or bashful about the impressive people they are working with.

It's also important to note that Kyle Hill is a Strategy Consultant at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). So who is the Boston Consulting Group and what do they have to do with education?

BCG is one of those companies that helps corporations do strategic planning -- and when it comes to education, they have an agenda that includes:

• closing public schools
• recommending privately managed charter schools
• eliminating collective bargaining for teachers and due process (tenure)
• merit pay that links teacher pay to students standardized test scores
• heavily promoting online learning

BCG has done this in Delaware, North Carolina, Dallas, Arizona, Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Memphis. Consultant groups like BCG have immense influence in the US, which is why some have dubbed No Child Left Behind as No Consultant Left Behind -- one analysis concluded that 25-35% of federal funding for School Improvement Grants went not to the schools but to consultants. And Kyle Hill, co-founder of Teach for Canada, is a consultant with BCG.

Any Canadian who is proud of our public education system and our efforts to make education more equitable for everyone should be at the very least concerned that the alumni of Teach for America are such advocates for reducing education to standardized test scores and privatizing public education.

More specifically, I enjoyed Alex Usher post where he pointed out that:

The idea that what First Nations need are a lot of well-meaning but inexperienced white kids showing up in their communities saying, “we’re here to help!” is plain ludicrous. There’s no doubt that education for First Nations, particularly those from more remote communities, is in a desperate state, and deserving of vastly more money and policy attention than it currently receives. But youthful enthusiasm just isn't a substitute for money and teaching experience.

With all the baggage that Teach for America carries around, it makes sense that Hill is trying to show how Teach for Canada is different from Teach for America. The first example comes from an e-mail Hill sent me. Hill writes:

We have many reservations about the Teach For America model. The big one is that Teach For America sees its mission as addressing teacher quality, while we're focused on teacher supply.

The second example is from Teach for Canada's FAQ:

Will you be doing the Teach for America five-week summer training model? 

No. 

We will equip our teachers with the very best pedagogical techniques, taught in an intense setting over an entire summer.

If these are differences from Teach for America, they are differences without distinctions.

Firstly, Teach for America's original mission was to address teacher supply, but a bad case of mission creep has twisted and bastardized Teach for America into thinking they can address teacher quality.

Secondly, let's be crystal clear, an "entire summer" is 8 weeks of training. That's a whopping 3 weeks more than Teach for America. That's hardly something to brag about especially when Canada's already strong teacher workforce comes from Universities with 4 or 5 year Bachelor of Education programs, and that doesn't count another 1 or 2 more years to get a Masters.

The Alberta Teachers' Association's Research tells us that one of the major causes of early-career teacher attrition is inadequate pre-service preparation (which traditionally has been a greater concern in the US than in Canada) and difficult working conditions (particularly in under resourced schools) and professional isolation. Canada doesn't necessarily have a teacher shortage problem -- we have a teacher leakage problem. Because of systemic problems, anywhere between 25-50% of teachers leave inside of before five years on the job.

Many beginning teachers experience what some call "praxis shock" which describes the challenge of coping with classroom realities for which pre-service training has not adequately prepared them. Many beginning teachers may come to feel betrayed by their professional preparation after being faced with the hard realities and complexities of teaching.

Programs like Teach for America and Teach for Canada are at best unhelpful and at worst harmful because they misidentify the problem (teacher supply vs teacher attrition) and employ solutions that ignore and exacerbate the real problems.

We need a stable and well-educated teaching profession, not a revolving door of graduates who see teaching as a bullet on their resume before they move on to bigger and better things. When it comes to complex problems like educating Canada's First Nations, Metis and Inuit children, there are solutions like Teach for Canada that are clear, simple and wrong.

Grant Wiggins responds to my take on his open letter to Diane Ravitch

This was written by Grant Wiggins and is a response to my response to Grant's open letter to Diane Ravitch. You can find Grant's open letter here and my response here. 

by Grant Wiggins

Thanks for your considered reply to my post. I am delighted that people have responded so thoughtfully to it, which was the main point: thoughtful dialogue.

The entire focus of my piece was the pressing need for school change and that it is in our control. To turn it around and say that I think poverty is not in our control is not really what I was driving at. Growing inequality is a terrible problem; poverty is a blight on society. But to say that educators should focus directly on it instead of what they can do to make schools better immediately is kicking the can down the road. It makes a nice excuse for keeping schools as they are.

The best thing we can do as educators to eliminate poverty is to improve education, as all the data show. That's where I think you are misrepresenting my ideas somewhat. I am a progressive democrat, having never voted republican in my life. But like President Obama and the New York Times - hardly conservatives - I am calling for serious reform of what is in our control: how teachers teach and how schools are run. What I greatly resent is having you or Diane or anyone else lump all of us reformers in one bunch as anti-teacher, anti-social welfare, anti-public-education. I am none of those things, and I think my record of 30 years of trying to improve public education shows it.

I think Diane is hurting, not helping, the process by such crude categorization and harsh polemics. I agree with her fears; I strongly disagree with her tactics. And I must say, I disagree with your last sentence. I don't see much of a clear, explicit, and comprehensive reform plan from Diane. Her focus is almost totally on how to save schools from greedy and mean-spirited privatizers. And if my email is any barometer a lot of people agree with me.

Thanks for the dialogue, as always.

You may print this if you wish.

Cheers, Grant

My response to Grant Wiggins and his open letter to Diane Ravitch (and like minded educators)

Grant Wiggins wrote an open letter to Diane Ravitch titled Is significant school reform needed or not?: an open letter to Diane Ravitch (and like minded educators).

Wiggins takes issue with Ravitch's stance against privatization and poverty because he thinks she is avoiding "the elephant in the room" which is "to what extent today's teachers are doing an adequate job." Wiggins goes on to make the argument that "merely undoing harmful privatization is thus nowhere near sufficient to make schools serve our students properly." Wiggins punches home the point that, "we face a complete lack of quality control in teaching in most schools, in most districts. Unlike poverty, this is in our control as educators."

Is there common ground?

Even though I am a staunch supporter of Public Education, I am very aware of the problems that plague traditional schooling. I believe that school needs to look a lot less like school.

Like Wiggins, I am very critical of traditional-formal education that makes school something done to children while they play a passive role, and compliance and obedience are the gold-standard. Like Wiggins, I object to the idea that if a child can sit quietly through a morning's worth of lecture followed up with an afternoon of filling in worksheets, then students are receiving a good education and teachers are doing their jobs.

Which kind of school do you want for your child?
Which kind of school is good enough for other
people's children?

For too many people, the game of school sounds all too familiar. It's like the learners and teachers exchange winks that say: I will pretend to teach and you will pretend to learn; it won't be all that enjoyable, but it will be easy.

While I agree that undoing privatization is not sufficient in improving our schools, it is necessary.

Where do we differ?

After I read Grant's open letter, I tweeted him:

If Wiggins believes that Ravitch's fight against privatization is distracting us from improving school, might it be said that Wiggins' fight to improve schools is blinding us from the dangers of privatization and poverty?

No where in Wiggins' open letter does he address privatization -- instead he focuses with laser like proficiency on teacher quality. (For the record, the book I co-edited on De-Testing and De-Grading Schools is strong evidence that I agree with some of what Wiggins writes about.)

I'm the first to criticize elements of traditional schooling but you don't fix public education by destroying it, abandoning it or throwing it to the free market.

Wiggins wants teachers to focus less on things he perceives as out of our control (poverty and privatization) and more on things that are in our control (teacher quality). But who benefits from encouraging teachers to see poverty and privatization as things outside of their locus of control? Do we really want one of public education's greatest advocates, teachers, to see poverty and privatization as none of their business or a distraction to be avoided?

It's important not to talk ourselves into believing that poverty and privatization are out of our control. Poverty and privatization are no more or less out of our control than teacher quality. Inequality is a choice and our social policy choices have an indelible mark on our school's successes and failures. (I consider addressing inequality and poverty more like the civil rights issue of the 60s than choice)

The good news is that we don't need to choose between addressing poverty, reversing privatization and improving our schools, and I think this is why Diane Ravitch's most recent work is so important. She's helping us understand that we must stop going in the wrong direction before we can go in the right direction.

I see Diane Ravitch as someone leading the charge on all three fronts: address poverty, reverse privatization and improve our schools.

Cyber Charter Schools: a wrecking ball for public education

Albertans place a premium on public education.

This is precisely why it is important for Alberta to see the United States and their education reforms as a cautionary tale and that the border offers zero insulation from policies that undermine and privatize public education.

This is why the Parkland Institute's most recent research Delivery Matters: Cyber Charter Schools and K-12 Education in Alberta is so important. I blog almost daily about how and why school needs to be a little less like school, and I am an advocate for substantial improvements to public education, teacher quality and equity.

However, I don't want my criticisms for school to come across like I don't like public education or that I want to destroy it. Unfortunately, too much of what is sold as education reform amounts to nothing more than a wrecking ball for public education which is precisely what Cyber Charters represent.

The report states:

While research on student outcomes remains preliminary, cyber charter schools have a patchy record, including significant risk of poorer education outcomes and very high rates of withdrawal. They also fail to address what the public school system has long taught as the skills of citizenship — how to get along with others, how to reason and deliberate, how to tolerate differences. From this perspective, cyber charter schools risk leaving large gaps in the education of young people. 

The US experience with cyber charter schools makes clear that the private delivery of public education is a risky path. There is little evidence to demonstrate that corporate interests add value in training the compassionate, skilled, and technically savvy citizens of the future. Instead, the cyber charter schools model encourages profiteering and mismanagement at public expense and at significant risk to students.

Alberta Teachers' Association Mark Ramsankar agrees with the report and states, "Cyber charter schools undermine the critical role of the student-teacher relationship in child development and socialization." 

In a statement, the Alberta Teachers' Association rightfully identifies that "the Parkland report demonstrates that the vision of Inspiring Education would be compromised by introducing cyber charter schools, where students rarely hear from their teachers and only occasionally interact face-to-face."

In her best-selling book Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools, Diane Ravitch dedicates an entire chapter on busting the myth that "virtual schools will bring the promise of personalized, customised learning to every student and usher in an age of educational excellence for all." Ravitch begins her chapter by rightfully outlining, however briefly, the promise of technology, but then warns:

Yet with all its great potential, technology can never substitute for inspired teaching. Students will respond with greater enthusiasm to a gifted teacher than to a computer with the world's best software. Electronic technology has its charms, but it can't compete with the lively interchange of ideas that happens when students discuss a book they read or a math problem they wrestled with or a play they saw or an unsolved mystery in history or the most recent elections. Ultimately, it is imagination, joy, and disciplined inquiry that makes education valuable, that distinguish real education from seat time, that constitute the difference between learning and a credential. 

Closer to home, the Alberta Teachers' Association's Phil McRae wrote a profound piece on the Rebirth of the Teaching Machine through the Seduction of Data Analytics where he outlines how the move to personalize learning with "any time, any place and any pace" is anything but new. His concluding paragraph speaks volumes:

Emerging technologies and smart data certainly have a place in educational transformation, but they must be employed to enhance what research in the learning sciences continues to reinforce as the foundation of learning: the pedagogical relationships between students, teachers, parents and community. Attempts to displace this human dimension of learning with the teaching machine (whatever you imagine this to be) is a distraction to the most important support great schools can offer students each and every day – relationships, relationships, relationships.

Are US charter schools public schools?

Some people support charter school in the United States and deny that they pose a threat to public education.
Some people like to argue that charter schools are public schools.
Diane Ravitch disagrees. She writes:

When [charter schools] have been taken to federal court for violating employee’s rights, they insist that they are private corporations acting as contractors and not subject to state laws.

To learn more about why the charter and reform movement is actually the privatization movement, consider reading Ravitch's new book Reign of Error.

For more on how charter schools are a gravy train with biscuit wheels to fat city, read this post from Forbes.

My favourite excerpt from Reign of Error

Here is one of my favourite excerpts from Diane Ravitch's new book Reign of Error. Ravitch nails it by identifying the problems that are plaguing public education (and our democracy), while providing clear solutions:

In this book, I will show why the reform agenda does not work, who is behind it, and how it is promoting the privatization of public education. I will then put forward my solutions, none of which is cheap or easy, none of which offers a quick fix to complicated problems. I have no silver bullets -- because none exist -- but I have proposals based on evidence and experience. 

We know what works. What works are the very opportunities that advantaged families provide for their children. In homes with adequate resources, children get advantages that enable them to arrive in school healthy and ready to learn. Discerning, affluent parents demand schools with full curricula, experienced staffs, rich programs in the arts, libraries, well-maintained campuses, and small classes. As a society, we must do whatever is necessary to extend the same advantages to children who do not have them. Doing so will improve their ability to learn, enhance their chances for a good life, and strengthen our society. 

So that readers don't have to wait until the later chapters of this book, here is a summary of my solutions to improve both schools and society. School and society are intertwined. The supporting research comes later in the book. Every one of these solutions works to improve the lives and academic outcomes of young people. 

Pregnant women should see a doctor early in their pregnancies and have regular care and good nutrition. Poor women who do not receive early and regular medical care are likely to have babies with developmental and cognitive problems. 

Children need prekindergarten classes that teach them how to socialize with others, how to listen and learn, how to communicate well, and how to care for themselves, while engaging in the joyful pursuit of play and learning that is appropriate to their age and development and that builds their background knowledge and vocabulary. 

Children in the early elementary grades need teachers who set age appropriate goals. They should learn to read, write, calculate, and explore nature, and they should have plenty of time to sing and dance and draw and play and giggle. Classes in these grades should be small enough -- ideally fewer than twenty -- so that students get the individual attention they need. Testing in the early grades should be used sparingly, not to rank students, but diagnostically, to help determine what they know and what they still need to learn. Test scores should remain a private matter between parents and teachers, not shared with the district or the state for any individual student. The district or state may aggregate scores for entire schools but should not judge teaches or schools on the basis of these scores.
As students enter the upper elementary grades and middle school and high school, they should have a balanced curriculum that includes not only reading, writing and mathematics but the science, literature, history, geography, civics, and foreign languages. Their school should have a rich arts program, where students learn to sing, dance, play an instrument, join an orchestra or a band, perform in a play, sculpt, or use technology to design structures, conduct research, or create artworks. Every student should have time for physical education every day. Every school should have a library with librarians and media specialists. Every school should have a nurse, a psychologist, a guidance councelor and a social worker. And every school should have after-school programs where students may explore their interests, whether in athletics, chess, robotics, history club, dramatics, science club, nature study, Scouting, or other activities. Teachers should write their own tests and use standardized tests only for diagnostic purposes. Classes should be small enough to ensure that every teacher knows his or her students and can provide the sort of feedback to strengthen their ability to write, their noncognitive skills, their critical thinking, and their mathematical and scientific acumen. 

Our society should commit to building a strong education profession. Public policy should aim to raise the standards for entry into teaching. Teachers should be well-educated and well-prepared for their profession. Principals and superintendents should be experienced educators. 

Schools should have the resources they need for the students they enroll. 

As a society, we must establish goals, strategies, and programs to reduce poverty and racial segregation. Only by eliminating opportunity gaps can we eliminate achievement gaps. Poor and immigrant children need the same sorts of schools the wealthy children have, only more so. Those who start life with the fewest advantages need even smaller classes, even more art, science, and music to engage them, to spark their creativity, and to fulfill their potential.

There is solid research base for my recommendations. If you want a society organized to promote the survival of the fittest and the triumph of the most advantaged, then you will prefer the current course of action, where children and teachers and schools are "racing to the top." But if you believe the goal of our society should be equality of opportunity for all children and that we should seek to reduce the alarming inequalities children now experience, then my program should win your support. 

My premise is straightforward: you can't do the right things until you stop doing the wrong things. If you insist on driving that train right over the cliff, you will never reach your hoped-for destination of excellence for all. Instead, you will inflict harm on millions of children and reduce the quality of their educations. You will squander billions of dollars on failed schemes that should have been spent on realistic, evidence-based ways of improving our public schools, our society, and the lives of children. 

Stop doing the wrong things. Stop promoting competition, and choice as answers to the very inequality that was created by competition and choice. Stop the mindless attacks on the education profession. A good society requires both a vibrant private sector and a responsible public sector. We must not permit the public sector to be privatized and eviscerated. In a democracy, important social goals require social collaboration. We must work to establish programs that improve the lives of children and families. To build a strong educational system, we need to build a strong and respected education profession. The federal government and states must develop policies that recruit, support, and retain career educators, both in the classroom and in positions of leadership. If we mean to conquer educational inequity, we must recognize that the root cause of poor academic performance are segregation and poverty, along with equitably resourced schools. We must act decisively to reduce the causes of inequity. We must bring good schools to every district and neighbourhood of our nation. Public education is a basic public responsibility: we must not be persuaded by a false crisis narrative to privatize it. It is time for parents, educators, and other concerned citizens to join together to strengthen our public schools and preserve them for future generations. The future of our democracy depends on it.

33 reviews for Ravitch's Reign of Error

Reign of Terror: Diane Ravitch's Personal Crusade by Sam Chaltain

Reign of Error: the important new book by Diane Ravitch by Kenneth Bernstein

"Reing of Error" Reviewed: Ravitch Rises by Anthony Cody

Ravitch's Reign of Error: My Review by Mercedes Schneider

New Ravitch Book Exposes Bush-Obama School Reform as Reign of Error by Jan Ressenger: 

Ravitch Seeks Broad Reforms to End Reign of Error by David Cohen

REVIEW: "Reign of Error," Ravitch 3.0 by Paul Thomas

Reign of Error - A must read by Ralph Ratto

Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch by Dora Taylor

Let it Reign! by Gary Rubenstein:  

Reign of Error in Your Ways: An Open Letter to Arne Duncan by Chris Goering

Ravitch to the Rescue by Nicholas Tampio

The Reign of Error: My New Activist Handbook by Peg with a Pen

Diane Ravitch could awaken the sleeping giant in school reform - public school parents by Darcie Cimarusti

Diane Ravitch Focuses on the Reign of Error by Peter Dewitt

Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Schools by Teacher Tom

More Chapter Headings: Proposed Solutions from Diane Ravitch by Guy Brandenburg

End of an Error? by Jennifer Berkshire

Reign of Error by Deborah Meier

Diane Ravitch: Public School's Modern-Day Dewey by Steve Strieker

Do NOT underline important parts of Diane Ravitch's new book, Reign of Error by Ken Previti

Reing of Error - Diane Ravitch's Book by Perdido Street School

Reign of Error: What's Wrong With Preaching to the Choir? Norm Scott

Reign of Error: A Short Review by Accountable Talk

"Reing of Error" Ends Here: Diane Ravitch and the Facts of "Education Reform" by Kids in the system (David Chura)

An expert speaks... Diane Ravitch's new book, Reign of Error Wendy Lecker (Via Wait, What?) by Wendy Lecker

America's Education Spring Goes Mainstream by Jeff Bryant

The Most Important Book for Educators and Parents by Louisiana Educator (Michael Deshotels): 

Ravitch Seeks Broad Reforms to End Reign of Error by David Cohen

Diane Ravitch's new book, Reign of Error, takes reformers to task by Jersey Jazzman

Ten Memorable Quotes From the New Diane Ravitch Book That Are Backed Up By Fact by Urban Ed

I am Diane Ravitch and I'm Tired of Your Shit (A review of Reign of Error) by Jose Vilson

Ravitch's Reign of Error: the best book on education you can read today by Joe Bower

Ravitch's Reign of Error: The best book on education you can read today

Diane Ravitch's latest book Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools is available today.

I had the good fortune of getting a review copy in advance so that I could write a series of posts (starting today) about how important this book is to public education and our democracy.

Let me start off by saying that this is the most important book on education I have read since Alfie Kohn's The Schools Our Children Deserve. While Kohn's book focuses intensely on what classrooms should look and feel like, Ravitch's Reign of Error articulates what a progressive and democratic education system should look and feel like.

Who should read this book? 

School reform's reign of error is not confined to the United States. Pasi Sahlberg has rightfully identified the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) that has infected public education systems worldwide. Anyone and everyone who cares about our public education and democracy needs to read this book.

Diane Ravitch writes:

The corporate reform movement has a well-honed message: We are the reformers. We have solutions. The public schools are failing. The public schools are in decline. The public schools don't work. The public schools are obsolete and broken. We want to innovate. We know how to fix schools. We know how to close the achievement gap. Great teachers close the achievement gap. Teachers' unions are greedy and don't care about children. People who draw attention to poverty are just making excuses for bad teachers and failing public schools. Those who don't agree with our strategies are defenders of the status quo. They have no solutions. We have solutions. We know what works. Testing works. Accountability works. Privately managed charter schools work. Closing schools with low test scores works. Paying bonuses to teachers to get higher scores works. Online instruction works. Replacing teachers with online instruction not only works but cuts costs while providing profits to edu-entrepreneurs who will spur further innovation.

This book was written to challenge those who believe in the corporate reform movement. This book was written for those who are aware of the ills of the corporate reform movement but need more facts to articulate a sound argument. This book was written for those who suffer from apathy and cynicism. This book provides the energy and encouragement we need to provide schools that all of our children deserve.

The only thing necessary for destructive mandates and cancerous education policies to succeed is for good teachers, parents and students to say and do nothing. When far-off authorities invoke their ignorance with the force of law, remember that your silence is read as assent -- and at some point your silence is betrayal to those who do speak up and take action.

It is said that Franklin D. Roosevelt once met with a group of activists who sought his support for legislation. He listened to their arguments for some time and then said, "You've convinced me. Now go out and make me do it." The spirit of Roosevelt's advice is likely what inspired Robert Reich to say, "Nothing good happens in Washington unless good people outside Washington become mobilized, organized, and energized to make it happen."

Like democracy, public education is reserved for those who fight for it, and Diane Ravitch's Reign of Error is the rally cry we can use to mobilize, organize and energize the fight for our public schools.

3 Myths about Teacher Quality

Here are three popular statements about teacher quality. Would you say they are fact or fiction?

1. The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. 

2. The most important single factor in improving quality of education is teachers. 

3. If any children had three or four great teachers in a row, they would soar academically, regardless of their racial or economic background, while those who have a sequence of weak teachers will fall further and further behind.

If you are convinced that these are true, then I would ask that you read Pasi Sahlberg's post "What if Finland's great teachers taught in U.S schools?"

The best education systems understand that school culture matters more than teacher quality. 

No school or school system has ever become great without great teachers, but what can an excellent teacher do about a child who needs glasses, has cavities or is hungry? To say that teacher or school quality is the most important variable in education is at best naive. Education historian Diane Ravitch writes, "Reformers tell us that teachers are the most important influence within the school on student scores, and that is right. But the teacher contribution to scores is dwarfed by the influence of family and other out-of-school factors."

Ultimately, great teachers make great schools, but great teachers can't do it alone – they require the support of an equitable society. If we are not careful, we risk misinterpreting the scores, and instead of waging war on poverty and inequity, we end up waging war on teachers and schools.

Dispelling the Corporate "Reform" Agenda

Finland's Pasi Sahlberg has sounded the alarm about the focus on competition, standardization and test-based accountability around the world. He warns, "education has become a commodity where the efficiency of service delivery ultimately determines performance."

Alongside the rush to introduce unproven technologies into classrooms, standardized testing has become a political instrument wielded by organizations such as Students First, Democrats for Education Reform and the American Legislative Exchange Council. Linking teacher pay to student test scores and eliminating tenure and collective bargaining is nothing less than a direct assault on the teaching profession and public education. Standardized test scores are used to undermine confidence in public schools so that education entrepreneurs can pour private equity and venture capital into companies that aim to profit from the public.

After a decade of intense standardized testing and sanctions under No Child Left Behind, California Democrats passed a resolution that aims at supporting public education and dispelling the corporate ‘reform’ agenda by stating, “the reform initiatives of Students First, rely on destructive anti-educator policies that do nothing for students but blame educators and their unions for the ills of society, make testing the goal of education, shatter communities by closing their public schools, and see public schools as potential profit centers and children as measurable commodities.”

In the face of tough economic times, some governments might see this as a way of easing pressure on their beleaguered budgets; however, Diane Ravitch warns us that, "Our schools will not improve if we expect them to act like private, profit-seeking enterprises. Schools are not businesses; they are a public good. The goal of education is not to produce higher scores, but to educate children to become responsible people with well-developed minds and good character."

Over the last two decades, the United States has proven to be a cautionary tale for how Canada, and the world, should not reform education, and Canadians would be wise not to think that the 49th Parallel offers any kind of inherent insulation from the corporate education reformers’ agenda.

Ravitch: Should Computers Grade Essays?

This was written by Diane Ravitch who is an advocate for progressive education reform who works tirelessly to call out education deformers and their corporate-style reforms that work to undermine teachers and public education. Diane blogs here and tweets here. This post was originally posted here.

by Diane Ravitch

Todd Farley is the scourge of standardized testing. His book, “Making the Grades,” is a shocking exposé of the industry. Todd spent nearly 15 years scoring tests, and he knows the tricks of the trade.

In this article, he skewers the latest testing craze: machine-scoring of essays.

Having demonstrated the fallibility of humans who score essays, Farley is no more impressed by computer scoring. As he puts it:

“…the study’s major finding states only that “the results demonstrated that overall, automated essay scoring was capable of producing scores similar to human scores for extended-response writing items.” A paragraph on p. 21 reiterates the same thing: “By and large, the scoring engines did a good [job] of replicating the mean scores for all of the data sets.” In other words, all this hoopla about a study Tom Vander Ark calls “groundbreaking” is based on a final conclusion saying only that automated essay scoring engines are able to spew out a number that “by and large” might be “similar” to what a bored, over-worked, under-paid, possibly-underqualified, temporarily-employed human scorer skimming through an essay every two minutes might also spew out. I ask you, has there ever been a lower bar?”

Farley quotes the promoters of automated scoring, who say that the machines are faster, cheaper and more consistent than humans. Also, they make money.

He concludes: “Maybe a technology that purports to be able to assess a piece of writing without having so much as the teensiest inkling as to what has been said is good enough for your country, your city, your school, or your child. I’ll tell you what though: Ain’t good enough for mine.”

One of the responses to Farley’s post came from Tom Vander Ark, who is a tech entrepreneur and a target of Farley’s post.

Vander Ark wrote: “The purpose of the study was to demonstrate that online essay scoring was as accurate as expert human graders and that proved to be the case across a diverse set of performance tasks. The reason that was important is that without online scoring, states would rely solely on inexpensive multiple choice tests. It is silly to suggest that scoring engines need to ‘understand,’ they just need to score at least as well as a trained expert grader and our study did just that.”

A reader of this blog saw this exchange on Huffington Post and sent me this comment:

“Diane–we use an automated essay scorer at my school, and I have seen coherent, well-thought out writing receive scores below proficient, while incoherent, illogical writing (with more and longer words, and a few other tricks that automated scorers like) receive high scores. The students who suffer the most are the highest level students, the verbally gifted writers who write with the goal of actually being understood, “silly” as that may be.”

“In fact, all standardized testing penalizes the brightest students–those who think outside the box. Standardized testing is the box.”

Ravitch: How Teachers Unions Lead the Way to Better Schools

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Diane Ravitch on How Teachers Unions Lead the Way to Better Schools:

What do you see as the role of teachers unions in preserving public education?

For many years, there has been an effort to diminish teachers unions and to blame them for all the problems of public education. I believe the reason, first of all, is that some people just hate unions. But there’s also a political reason that’s very specific. That is that if you silence the union, then there’s nobody at the table when the legislature or the governor wants to cut the budget, so they can hack away at will. That’s happening in states across the country. I was in Texas a few weeks ago, and there the legislature cut over $5 billion dollars from the education budget, but they did manage to squeeze out $500 million dollars for more testing. They have a weak union. They had no one at the table to say, “You can’t do this.” And no one cared what the teachers thought anyway.