When it comes to education, Obama has no mandate

Obama won but if you listen closely to the right, you'll hear them chanting, "no mandate, no mandate, no mandate." Many conservatives are saying that Obama's slim victory does not provide him with a mandate.

“I think the real story here is that Obama won but he’s got no mandate,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News last night.

When it comes to education, Krauthammer and other conservatives (even Fox News) are entirely correct ( but likely for all the wrong reasons). Progressive educators across America (and around the world) supported Obama because when it came to education policy, Obama was the lesser of the two evils.

Don't confuse teacher support for Obama and their relief that Romney lost as a mandate to carry on with corporate reforms and standardized testing that undermines public education and teachers.

Like others, I'm glad Romney lost, but that doesn't even begin to explain whether I am happy that Obama won. These are two distinctly different feelings.

Alfie Kohn's tweet the day after Obama's win says it all:

Mitt Romney could have been trusted to carry on and intensify Obama's current education policies, but only Obama can be trusted to be courageous enough to rethink his first term of cancerous education policies. Defeating Romney was necessary but Obama's victory will not be sufficient in saving and supporting public education.

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."

What are you doing to make Obama rethink his education policies?

Best. Election cartoon. Ever.

New GERM outbreak in Scotland

This was written by Niall MacKinnon who is a Scottish school principal Niall MacKinnon highlights the need for rigorous GERM infection control measures in education reform programs. You can read Niall MacKinnon's extended version on this article here.

By Niall MacKinnon

In his speech to the Scottish Learning Festival this September, cabinet secretary Michael Russell claimed that GERM is not for Scotland. The Global Education Reform Movement is a concept of Finnish educationalist Pasi Sahlberg, presented in his recent book Finnish Lessons. The features of GERM are standardizing teaching and learning, a focus on literacy and numeracy, teaching a prescribed curriculum, management models from the corporate world and test-based accountability and control.

Scotland’s recent tightly controlled educational landscape of attainment targets, performance indicators and inspection judgements was an example of GERM. But Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) opened up a different pathway in the central “four capacities” concept, emphasizing and integrating wider focuses of linkage and personal development in revisioning pedagogy. CfE showed close affinity with the Finnish Way, outlined by Sahlberg as the antidote to GERM.  Finland encouraged risk-taking, learning from the past, owning innovations, shared responsibility and trust through professional dialogue. A central feature of decluttering for CfE was to focus on innovative approaches, emphasizing practice innovation and local professionalism, termed ‘building the curriculum’.

But just as this was coming together, linking proactive innovation, evaluation, and school systems to CfE, it fell apart. This was because of layers of prescription to different performance criteria in new multiple audit schedules, inspection templates and standards and quality reporting, to non-CfE criteria. The main emphasis was not exploring pedagogy, but micro-specification to serve the needs of external control and standardized calibration of schools. Then came hundreds of  “Es and Os” (experiences and outcomes) as a curriculum specification ‘painting by numbers’ kit. CfE was further lashed down to seven “required characteristics of successful implementation” framed in a product model of curriculum, delivery model of schooling and behaviorist model of audit. Self-evaluation split two ways, one as evaluation taking the concepts, principles and purposes, applying them evidentially yet discursively – GERM-free. The other, calibrating audit prescription to fixed, outdated notions and applying these in absolutist terms – GERM. This set up a huge conflict within CfE in Scotland, one which Sahlberg took from me in the chapter defining GERM in Finnish Lessons:

“Niall MacKinnon, who teaches at Plockton Primary School, makes a compelling appeal for “locally owned questions and purposes in realising practice within the broader national policy and practice frameworks.” He gets right to the point of how GERM affects teachers and schools: “There is the real practical danger that without an understanding of rationale and theoretical bases for school development, practitioners may be judged by auditors on differing underlying assumptions to their own developmental pathways, and the universalistic grading schemas come to be applied as a mask or front giving pseudoscientific veneer to imposed critical judgments which are nothing more than expressions of different views and models of education. Through the mechanism of inspection, a difference of conceptual viewpoint, which could prompt debate and dialogue in consideration of practice, is eliminated in judgmental and differential power relations. One view supplants another. Command and control replaces mutuality, dialogue and conceptual exploration matched to practice development. Those who suffer are those innovating and bringing in new ideas.” ” (p 104)

The paragraph came from my 2011 paper ‘The Urgent Needs for New Approaches in School Evaluation to enable Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence’ in the international journal Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability. My argument there was that specifications, grading and judgementalism destroy conceptual innovation and local practice professionalism, thereby negating CfE. Torridon Primary School and its headteacher Anne Macrae was my inspiration for that paragraph, now the case exemplar of GERM worldwide in Finnish Lessons.

Sahlberg shows how Finnish education placed central focus on professional dialogue, enabling pedagogy to link modern innovations to a long history of educational ideas. The central conceptual genius of CfE was the “four capacities” concept. It is not a slogan but a clarion call to get to know our pupils, and construct learning pathways by reaching out and revealing the dispositions latent in their potentials. These extend in so many ways out beyond conventional notions of learning, set in terms of delivery, targets and specifications.

We need to unpack learning, garner systemic understanding and enable formative development progression, for pupils, educators and institutions working together, not a “clear plan from A to B” as the Scottish schools’ inspectorate currently mandates. Scotland is now in the midst of GERM warfare between specifications compliance and pedagogic innovation, fought out over the morale and professionalism of Scotland’s teachers. As Dr Sahlberg said of GERM on his blog (30 June) “As a consequence, schools get ill, teachers don’t feel well, and kids learn less”.

Sadly GERM is for Scotland, and the case study of GERM is Scotland. But it could so readily not be, once this is ‘seen’ and something done about it, or rather undone, simply by removing the specificatory shroud and control freakery of judgmental absolutism to outdated notions. Let us ‘build the curriculum’ as intended and envisaged.

The central lesson from Finnish Lessons is not what Finland did, but rather what Finland did NOT do to its education system. “Transformational” change in the nature of curriculum and its realization in school education, which Scotland “says” it is undertaking, is not going to come about without similarly transformational change in the means of getting there.

School Choice: Maintaining the Hierarchies

This was written by Chris Wejr who is an elementary principal in British Columbia, Canada. This post first appeared here. Chris tweets here and blogs here.

by Chris Wejr

“Neo-liberal policies involving market solutions may actually serve to reproduce – not subvert – traditional hierarchies of class and race” — Michael W. Apple

Christy Clark, the new Premier in British Columbia, has long been an advocate of increasing the opportunities for parents to choose schools for their children. Most people’s response to this is that it sounds good – parents should be able to make a decision on which school best meets the needs of their child. In an ideal world, this may work but more questions arise as we look deeper into who truly benefits from school choice.

As most of you know, I believe the autonomy to choose is extremely important in life. Students, staff, and parents need to be provided with equal opportunity to choose how to do things in life. The key word in the previous statement is EQUAL.

When we think about school choice, who does it actually benefit? If a parent is to choose a school away from their neighbourhood school, they must have some of the following:

Only if you have the capital...

• a school nearby (within driving distance)
• the cultural capital to discuss school choice and knowledge of options
• a vehicle for transportation to another school
• a parent available to drive to another school
• the finances to be able to pay for private schools or academies (ie. sports academies in BC) as well as transportation

So I ask the question again: who does school choice truly benefit? The answer: students from middle-class urban households. It would be fantastic to be able to drive across town to participate in a Sports Academy – but the student must have access to a number of assets before he/she can even consider this option. I do not blame any parent for making informed decisions that best suit the educational needs of the child; in fact, I think parents need to be MORE involved in educational decisions. But how does school choice benefit a child from a family without a vehicle? One that cannot afford the tuition to a private school or BC academy? One that lives in a rural community in which the next school is hours away? One that has a single parent working two jobs? From a different angle, if students are choosing to attend schools outside of their neighbourhood, what does this do to the community sense of schools (although this argument will be discussed at another time)?

At my previous school, I attempted to bring the Hockey Canada Academy to my school (at a cost of almost $1000/student each semester). The idea is fantastic; students are provided with the opportunity to participate in something in which they are passionate. Unfortunately, as I grew as an educator I began to realize that not ALL students are provided with the opportunity – only those that have the capital. Why is it acceptable that only students who can afford choice schools are provided with the opportunity?

We are now seeing schools and districts compete for students. Parents are provided with Fraser Institute Rankings, ‘standardized’ test scores (that are often marked by their own schools), a variety of academies (that often come with an tuition cost), specialized schools, ‘traditional’ schools, and an option of attending an independent school (based on religion, culture, specialization, etc). Schools that refuse to market themselves, teach to the test, or compete with others schools are sometimes seeing parents choose to send their child elsewhere. Apple (2001) states that there is a “crucial shift in emphasis… from student needs to student performance and from what the school does for the student to what the student does for the school.” He also goes on to say that “more time and energy is spent on maintaining or enhancing a public image of a ‘good school’ and less time and energy is spent on pedagogic and curricular substance”.

As stated, I am not against choice in education. However, this choice must be available to ALL students so every student in BC is provided with equal opportunity for a ‘personalized learning’ experience. This means that if districts are going to provide specialized schools and academies, all students within the district must be provided with access – in particular, transportation and funding. This also means that rural schools must be provided with funding to be able to provide students with learning opportunities comparable to students in urban communities.

Premier Christy Clark’s education plan includes (from “Christy Clark’s Education Vision: More School Choice”:

• Support independent and faith-based schools, and promote public-school academies focusing on sports and arts. (She has long been a strong proponent of school choice; her nine-year-old son attends an independent school.)
• Keep the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) (our provincial standardized test that is used to publish and rank schools)
• Enhance and emphasize math and science, including promoting province-wide competitions to recognize excellence in those fields.
• Publish detailed information about school programs, achievements, operations and facilities on school-district websites so parents can make informed choices.

I see similarities from Apple (2001), in discussing the US situation, when he states “We are witnessing a process in which the state shifts the blame for the very evident inequalities in access and outcome it has promised to reduce, from itself on to individual schools, parents, and children.” Ball (1993) also states “markets in education provide the possibility for the pursuit of class advantage and generate a differentiated and stratified system of schooling”. A great blog post from Ira Socol also touches on this issue as he writes:

So parent-based systems reward the haves. They have choices because they have funds, knowledge, transportation, the ability to even home school. And the have-nots are punished. Those children have parents without access to information, without access to transportation (and thus charter choice), without access to their own successful educations as a support system.

School choice, as it is now in BC, does not solve the real problems of the hierarchies of class and race that exist within the current system – they actually maintain them. Unfortunately, we often only hear the voices of those with the cultural capital to speak on behalf of their children and we don’t hear the voices of the marginalized. When we hear that a solution to our education system challenges is school choice, we need to question where this voice is coming from – is it a voice that speaks on behalf of ALL students or just his/her child?

Clark also goes on to say, “My proposals are designed to involve all the stakeholders in creating a kindergarten to 12 system that truly reflects the needs of students.” I am not sure how providing school choice is a way to involve ALL stakeholders and meet the needs of ALL students. Ravitch (2008) writes that “Democratic education [means] that everyone must be educated as if they were children of the most advantaged members of society”. I realize that the funding formula in BC currently encourages schools/districts to compete for students so they are often forced in the direction of promoting school choice. Most will agree that our system needs to change but school choice, the way it is currently designed in BC, benefits primarily the students from advantaged families; schools need to collaborate, rather than compete, and be adequately funded so programs are not cut but are created so as to offer ALL students within each school REAL choice in their education.

References:

Apple, M.W. (2001) Comparing Neo-Liberal Projects and Inequality in Education, Comparative Education, 37(4), 409-423

Ball, S.J. (1993) Education Markets, Choice and Social Class: the market as a class strategy in the UK and USA, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14(1), 3-19

Ravitch, D.R. (2008) Education and Democracy: The United States as a Historical Case Study, in Coulter, D.L. & Weins, J.R. (Eds)Why Do We Educate? Renewing the Conversation, pp. 42-57 (Blackwell Publishing, Mass, USA)

Stand up for children's mental health

After 10 years teaching middle school children, I am now in my third year teaching children in an inpatient psychiatric assessment unit. It is a gross understatement to say that teaching in the hospital has been a life changing experience.

No one in their right mind is going to disagree with the sentiment of the video above. Saying that we should stand up for children's mental health is not a controversial statement... so why do so many children still suffer?

I won't presume to have the answer because there isn't likely one answer. It's complex. However, after spending almost three years teaching in the hospital and working with kids with mental health problems, I have a few thoughts:

• It's easy to get distracted. For the most part, parents and teachers are good people with the best intentions. We all want what's best for our children; however, when life get's busy and complicated, it's easy to get caught up with tests, grades, homework, competition, meetings, externally mandated curricula, quizzes, report cards, honour rolls, scholarships, winning, losing and sports.

• It's easy to assume everything is okay. When adults ask adults, "how are you?", adults tend to say, "good", even when things are not good. While adults do this often, the kids are watching and learning. If we ask, "is everything okay", we need to be prepared to hear kids say, "yes" but see that their body language says, "no".

• It's easy to assume that someone else will help. The bystander effect tells us that people are less likely to offer help when other people are present. Too often we relinquish our responsibility to help others by convincing ourselves that someone else will help.

• It's easy to make mental health a day that we check off on the calendar. Making mental health, bullying and healthy eating one-day special events might look good on our accountability reports but it does nothing to address what children need.

At the heart of a healthy home and a good school are relationships. When we get distracted, make assumptions and/or disengage from children, we fail them more than they could ever fail us.