JONATHAN CHAIT OCTOBER 1, 2010
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Diane Ravitch, the converted anti-education reform apostle, rages against teacher-bashing:
For the past week, the national media has launched an attack on American public education that is unprecedented in our history. NBC devoted countless hours to panels stacked with "experts" who believe that public education is horrible because it has so many "bad" teachers and "bad" principals. The same "experts" appeared again and again to call for privatization, breaking teachers' unions, and mass firings of "bad" educators.
The scare quotes seem to imply, do they not, that there is no such thing as bad teachers. If so, that would make teaching the only profession in the world exempt from incompetence.
Ravitch proceeds to argue that it really is easy to fire teachers:
The claim that "tenure" is a guarantee of lifetime employment is a canard. Professors in higher education get lifetime tenure, but teachers in K-12 schools do not have lifetime employment: they have the right to due process if the principal wants to fire them. Teachers get due process rights only after a principal agrees that they have earned it. The reason for due-process rights is that teachers have been fired because of their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, or because a supervisor didn't like them. Teachers with due process can be fired, but only after a hearing by an impartial hearing officer.
Ravitch's portrait of a system that smoothly processes teacher terminations, weeding out only clear bias, is hard to square with cases like, oh, this:
Mohammed’s case was the first to reach arbitration since the introduction of an initiative called Peer Intervention Program (P.I.P.) Plus, which was created to address the problem of tenured teachers who are suspected of incompetence, not those accused of a crime or other misconduct. P.I.P. Plus was included in the contract negotiated by Klein and Weingarten in 2007. The deal seemed good for both sides: a teacher accused of incompetence would first be assigned a “peer”—a retired teacher or principal—from a neutral consulting company agreed upon by the union and the city. The peer would observe the teacher for up to a year and provide counselling. If the observer determined that the teacher was indeed incompetent and was unlikely to improve, the observer would write a detailed report saying so. The report could then be used as evidence in a removal hearing conducted by an arbitrator agreed upon by the union and the city. “We as a union need to make sure we don’t defend the indefensible,” Weingarten told me. Klein and Weingarten both say that a key goal of P.I.P. Plus was to streamline incompetency arbitration hearings. It has not worked out that way.
The evidence of Mohammed’s incompetence—found in more than five thousand pages of transcripts from her hearing—seems as unambiguous as the city’s lawyer promised in his opening statement: “These children were abused in stealth. . . . It was chronic . . . a failure to complete report cards. . . . Respondent failed to correct student work, failed to follow the mandated curriculum . . . failed to manage her class.” The independent observer’s final report supported this assessment, ticking off ten bullet points describing Mohammed’s unsatisfactory performance. (Mohammed’s lawyer argues that she began to be rated unsatisfactory only after she became active with the union.)
This was the thirtieth day of a hearing that started last December. Under the union contract, hearings on each case are held five days a month during the school year and two days a month during the summer. Mohammed’s case is likely to take between forty and forty-five hearing days—eight times as long as the average criminal trial in the United States. (The Department of Education’s spotty records suggest that incompetency hearings before the introduction of P.I.P. Plus generally took twenty to thirty days; the addition of the peer observer’s testimony and report seems to have slowed things down.) Jay Siegel, the arbitrator in Mohammed’s case, who has thirty days to write a decision, estimates that he will exceed his deadline, because of what he says is the amount of evidence under consideration. This means that Mohammed’s case is not likely to be decided before December, a year after it began. That is about fifty per cent more time, from start to finish, than the O.J. trial took.
While the lawyers argued in measured tones, Mohammed—a slender, polite woman who appeared to be in her early forties—sat silently in one of six chairs bunched around a small conference table. The morning’s proceedings focussed first on a medical excuse that Mohammed produced for not showing up at the previous day’s hearing. Dennis DaCosta, an earnest young lawyer from the Teacher Performance Unit, pointed out that the doctor’s letter was eleven days old and therefore had nothing to do with her supposedly being sick the day before. The letter referred to a chronic condition, Antonio Cavallaro, Mohammed’s union-paid defense counsel, replied. Siegel said that he would reserve judgment.
It is so difficult and draining even to fire the worst of the worst that there is a name given to the process by which principles try to slough off their under-performing teachers onto other districts: The Dance Of The Lemons. You can chip around the edges of the evidence supporting the reform movement and the simple narrative of "Waiting for Superman," but Ravitch's propagandistic response is simply embarrassing.
37 comments
What happened to Diane Ravitch? She used to know something.
- liberal reformer
October 1, 2010 at 4:46pm
Lib Ref and Chait -- see the last couple of responses to "Waiting for 'Superman'" thread. Pay attention to accurate information. Please. One anecdote doesn't disprove the basic evidence and long-time experience. Nor does it address the basic issues involved in the so-called education "reform" efforts in the current time frame. Again, take a look at the responses on the earlier thread.
- LISAH
October 1, 2010 at 5:28pm
And, I should have mentioned, Stephen Brill is a very poor source on education. He's made clear his opinionsand prejudices, to say nothing of his deliberate ignorance. Citing him just further proves Ravitch's point about the teacher-bashing mania now so popular among the privatizers, politicians, and money-making types as they do their best to destroy public education. And make no mistake -- that's where these misguided "reform" movements are headed.
- LISAH
October 1, 2010 at 5:37pm
I am with LISAH on this, sure, one anecdote represents tens of thousands of teachers. I read Ravitch's article and for the most part agree with it. Sure there is a lot of featherbedding and lousy teachers, but there is a lot in every line of work, lately, however it has been a steady drumbeat that everything is the teachers fault. Which is absolute bunk. I taught in China and Mexico now for many years. The teachers here don't have any of the level of resources or training American teachers have, but we don't have the discipline problems. And even between China and Mexico the differences are vast. (a topic for another thread, perhaps). If Chait were to teach in Orange NJ for one year he would be rendered into a sniveling child petrified to go to work. He really has no clue. However, let him teach in Somerset, NJ and he will think himself to be a genius. In reality, it is the environment.
- blackton
October 1, 2010 at 5:45pm
focusing on the teachers, and teachers unions, is just fucking weird, and if you're doing it, you're probably just an ignorant asshole reciting elitist cant. yeah, of course there are some bad teachers, whatever. media elites love saying the same 3 idiotic things: 1. teachers suck, fire them! 2. high standards!! 3. american schools are failing!!! Fact is, huge gains, particularly with primary school minorities have happened over the last 10 years. Second, 'high standards' is pretty stupid if your 4th graders are already 3 years behind. You should try to get them only 1 or 2 years behind. Finally, some teachers suck, but most lack resources. My solution? For primary grades (1-6), we go full centralization, bolshevik style. I'm totally serious. You have mr. bolshevik from bolshevik central come visit the school at the beginning of the year, evaluate the class, tell the teacher what the class makeup is (30% read way behind, 25% can't do any math, etc...), physically hand over the materials/guides and resources necessary (including desks and books or whatever), and give the teacher reasonable goals. (e.g., 4th graders who read like 1st graders need to read like 2nd graders at the end of the year). If the teacher fails to reach those goals; probation. Fails again; fire. If the teacher can get it done w/o mr. bolshevik's help, that's fine too. The number of problems in each grade is probably countable, bolshevik central should have clear answers to each one. Localization is bullshit. If a 4th grader reads like a 1st grader, I really don't give a shit if he lives in the Tennessee highlands or the South Bronx. Centralize it, completely. You then only have 1 bureaucracy to clean up, not 50. I heard that Brian Williams talked about Finnish schools last night. Schools in Finland. That literally has to be the stupidest fucking thing I've heard all year.
- mmathog
October 1, 2010 at 6:18pm
I think LISAH is exactly right about this, esp. in regard to Brill, whose own economic interests are easy to see here.
- benberger
October 1, 2010 at 6:33pm
Of course one anecdote proves nothing, but if you think its hard to find crappy teachers protected by the union hiring/firing system, y'all are in dreamland. Unless, that is, a lot has changed in the last decade in school hiring/firing. I knew personally a math teacher in their twentieth year of teaching in the local district who simply did not understand his subject - more than one my neighbors' kids came to me to be untaught and retaught so they could advance and take their ACTs. He was a coach; he stayed until he "honorably" retired. Just another anecdote, yes, but how hard to you have to scratch any given district to find one of two of these. Not very. Parents in my age cohort used to sit around trying to figure out how game the system or who to beg to get their kids out of the wrong classroom and into one that worked. Now, is this THE problem with American education. I doubt it. There's more going on for sure. But it is A problem, because the time lost from a year in the wrong classroom is damned hard to make up, and whether or not incompetent teachers are the singular foundation of education ills, it's still unconscionable. Where I work we fire people who consistently underperform - they don't have to demonstrate gross incompetence, they just have to consistently underperform. Three years in the bottom 15th percentile of evaluations, and you better be looking for another job. Few ever get there, though. The knowledge that one is to be hanged after the next evaluation cycle concentrates the mind on performance wonderfully. After the first year people work a lot harder. After the second, they either have gotten on track, or bail out.
- IowaBeauty
October 1, 2010 at 7:09pm
I don't disagree with anything you've said IowaBeauty. It's about setting reasonable and clear standards for the teachers though. If the standard is to teach 4th graders who read like 1st graders to read like 5th graders, that's ridiculous. If it's to teach them to read like 2nd graders, and you give them effective resources and they still don't perform, I'm fine with firing them.
- mmathog
October 1, 2010 at 7:16pm
It is silly to suggest that dismissing incompetent, organized, teachers is straightforward. But it is equally silly to suggest that the problems with American education could be solved by removal of incompetent teachers. There really are rather few of them.
- kpidcoc
October 1, 2010 at 8:25pm
Ravitch is still one of the great educational writers. The fact that she calls out the many charlatans who bilk school districts with their "research based quackery" is enough to give her high marks in my book. I love Chait. He is one of the smartest guys out there, and I agree with him 99 percent of the time. However, I think he is falling for the meme of teachers are the main problem. Paul A. Zoch's book "Doomed to Fail" looked at the systemic problems in American culture and our worldview that is a natural limit for the effectiveness of any reform. I also agree with those who say there is a whole bevy of corporate fronts that want to dismantle public education and the way to do it is to demonize teachers. There are other issues in education that are flying under the radar that need to be brought to light. For example, the financial squeeze districts are under with the rise of Special Education and the abuse of the ADA by some, that is hamstringing many good school districts.
- MikeB.
October 1, 2010 at 8:32pm
IowaBeauty -- No one's saying there aren't bad teachers. There are underperformers in every job category. That's just not the point here. The problem is the focus on teachers alone as the source/cause of the problems in education today. It does nothing to address the real needs; if anything, it takes the focus from those needs. These center on the home, the communities kids come from, the devastating conditions in the neighborhoods (whether inner city or Southern mountains), poverty, the inadequate, devastated conditions in all too many schools, political interference and lack of interest -- and now the meddling by private sector money-grabbers and test-mad politicans yelping about merit pay as they try to get the spotlight off their own failures. Teachers and their unions can be effective partners. They know the clasroom. They shouldn't be targets.
- LISAH
October 1, 2010 at 8:35pm
I have talked to four European teachers who have taught in American suburban schools. All four were from different countries and regions of Europe. They all said the same thing. It wasn't that American kids were so bad compared to Europe or teachers were bad. They were shocked at the way American schools cower before parents and the community. They have no experience with the idea that a parent could demand grade changes, etc. and get them. Teachers in America are regularly told in subtle and not so subtle ways that what a parent wants is what they need to do. They have the business model. Parents are customers. Even when parents don't interfere the mere fact that they will and teachers will have no support from admin. makes them surrender pre-emptively with grade inflation, etc.
- MikeB.
October 1, 2010 at 8:36pm
The anti-Chait comments on that thread are nigh on worthless. So why should Jonathan and I pay attention? Blackton, you are a teacher, so I understand your opposition. And Lisa, I peg you for a teacher, too. Maybe I am wrong. So you people are trying to tell me that terrible inner city schools are not the fault of teachers? Whose fault is it, then? I know, it is everybody else's fault: school administrators, reactionary Scrooge-like politicians, et al. Well, guess what, you can throw huge amounts of money at schools and not improve them one iota. That is why I worry about Mark Zuckerberg ponying up $100 million to the Newark school system. J. Chait and John McWhorter are far more convincing on education than you people are.
- liberal reformer
October 1, 2010 at 9:27pm
How many times do I have to tell you, Lib Ref, that I'm not a teacher? I meandered from a link at The Volokh Conspiracy (they're not teachers either) to a site called http://www.savethewords.org/ (it's a hoot, folks) and discovered: Magistricide: The killing of a teacher or master. Usage example: To reduce the chances of magistricide, all teachers will be attending the school reunion in bullet-proof vests. Time to take the targets off their backs.
- LISAH
October 1, 2010 at 9:45pm
No, it's not all the teacher's fault. But that doesn't mean there aren't some bad teachers, or that it's not inordinately difficult to get some of them out of the profession. In New York City in 2006, about 1% of teachers were given an "unsatisfactory" rating (the system only provides two options). Does that seem realistic? And my understanding is that proceedings can't be started against a teacher until that rating is given. Now it's up to about 2.3%, which still seems pretty darn low. I'm a former teacher, and I know how hard the job is (I didn't last very long). I have great sympathy and respect for those who even attempt it. And I agree that an anecdote is no a substitute for data. But I also think job protections are one of the factors hindering teaching from being a true profession. The trade-off should be a big pay increase in exchange for less "due process." Attract people with more confidence in their skills and they won't worry about being fired for no good reason; those who have good skills and are fired unjustly should have the confidence that they will be rehired elsewhere. And if we want good principals, I think we need to give them what is a manager's most important responsibility: determining who will be on the staff. It's amazing to me that we can get people for that job and hold them accountable for results when their staffing decisions are so constrained. Teachers need to be accountable for what goes on in their classrooms, and principals need to be accountable for hiring and firing their teachers.
- dsimon
October 1, 2010 at 9:59pm
"And I agree that an anecdote is no a substitute for data." dsimon et. al. who keep hitting on teachers -- you have an obligation to access and read the data. "...in exchange for less 'due process.'" There should never be less due process.
- LISAH
October 1, 2010 at 10:09pm
Jon, you're wrong on this. Sure, there are broken processes in places, but there are a lot of places where process works. Good administration even agrees that good processes protect them too. It's worth the hassle.
- jet
October 1, 2010 at 11:02pm
LISAH: "dsimon et. al. who keep hitting on teachers -- you have an obligation to access and read the data." I don't "keep hitting on teachers." I only point out--using data--that there are bad ones and that it may be unreasonably difficult to dismiss them. "There should never be less due process." There should be when it makes it too arduous to dismiss people who should be dismissed. I don't know of any other "profession" that make it this difficult, and it's not helpful to everyone else in the field when this is so. I also think other "professions" are better compensated, which is why I think that should be the trade-off. Professionals should rely on their professional skills for their job security, not on a collective bargaining agreement. That should be a credit to the vast majority of those in the system, not a criticism.
- dsimon
October 2, 2010 at 12:02am
LISAH - First, I said I didn't think teacher competency was the singular source of problems in education. Still, your response to my post does a pretty good job of framing why teachers are the whipping boys of the educational debate. I can see the idiot teaching math being protected by the union while it simultaneously refuses to even consider anything resembling merit based compensation, and I can hear the union (and yourself) saying that's not the problem, that what's really wrong is that just about everything else is broken (including, by implication, the home life of my children). Do you really think folks are going to hear the litany of stuff the teachers claim is beyond their control and making their job impossible, when those teachers refuse to even look at the things that are within their control? As a profession teachers have very little credibility in this debate in no small part because they stonewall and pretend on one of the most visible parts of the problem.
- IowaBeauty
October 2, 2010 at 8:36am
Education is a perpetual energy machine upon which long term uses of all other resources depend. But the political priorities were revealed to me when our leader had espoused that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories.
- Nusholtz
October 2, 2010 at 10:28am
Mr. Chait, You distort Diane Ravitch's points and the issues themselves. You write: "The scare quotes seem to imply, do they not, that there is no such thing as bad teachers." No, the quotes do not imply such a thing at all. Nowhere does Ravitch suggest that bad teachers do not exist. She suggests that the national media (in this case NBC) has been focusing excessively on policymakers who blame our schools' problems on bad teachers. You then write: "Ravitch proceeds to argue that it really is easy to fire teachers." No--she just explains what teacher tenure really is. She doesn't say it's easy to fire teachers or that the present system is exactly as it should be. As for the issues, I am speaking for myself below. But I recommend Diane Ravitch's new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, which makes similar points. Why not make the entry requirements more stringent for teachers? Not in terms of number of credits, paper certification, etc.--but in terms of actual knowledge. Then ensure that schools honor the subjects that teachers come in to teach. As for tenure, make it harder to obtain, and have procedures in place for dismissing truly incompetent teachers. But keep tenure--so that students can benefit from the continuity, so that teachers can refine their practice over the years, and so that schools have wisdom and experience. Growing up, I attended many schools, both in the U.S. and abroad. I had what I would call incompetent teachers in junior high--in particular a math teacher who read from the textbook every day. When I went to the guidance counselor and told him I wanted more challenge, he replied that junior high was a time for socializing and that I should just relax. It is no coincidence that the less-than-inspired teachers were in a school that downplayed learning and had no curriculum other than the textbooks. It is not that curriculum solves all problems or brings about good teaching, but it can have a great effect on the culture and morale of the school. As a New York City public school teacher, I saw schools place great emphasis on the processes in the classroom--group work, structured conversation, and prescribed activities. In ELA and ESL, there was no curriculum of actual literature that students should read--just strategies they should practice when reading. Teachers were supposed to give a short mini-lesson and then circulate to assist students as they worked in groups or alone. They were not supposed to correct students explicitly; in some schools they were not supposed to write on students' work. You could get away with teaching literature if you were clever about it--but it is a shame that a teacher would have to get away with it at all. Policymakers should take a closer look at what actually goes on in schools. They will find that "bad teaching" is not the main source of the problems. They will find, too late, that measures such as mass firings and published value-added scores solve nothing and cause a great deal of damage and pain. Diana Senechal
- dsenechal
October 2, 2010 at 12:33pm
liberal reformer, your facts are wrong. inner city schools have improved a ZILLION iotas in the last 10 years. typical, you comment on an issue you know nothing about.
- mmathog
October 2, 2010 at 12:50pm
I subsribed just so I can respond to you misunderstanding of Diane Ravitch's book and message. If you support the RE-SEGREGATION of our schools based upon socio-economics go ahead and support the charter schools who take in the high performing kids. Unfortunately low test score to the extent they are valid (they are not) are closely correlated with poverty misery and to minority groups. If you further the isolation these kids experience by creating a two tier educational system you hurt the future diversity of our society, let alone the children you supposedly advocate for. Our society needs to control what and how children are educated and not leave the decisions to Gates and the billionairs... come of it and don't send me your misguided newspaper...its my donation to get through to you people
- gidgid4u
October 2, 2010 at 1:23pm
Mr ChaitIf you want to understand what u obviously did not here is a good lesson to aleviate you illiteracy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_HwI6S92Eo
- gidgid4u
October 2, 2010 at 1:27pm
yeah, gidgid4u, so true. this right wing propaganda is getting really tiring. ignorant assholes like chait and 'liberal reformer' don't even know the basic facts. They once attended 5th grade, so they think they know everything. Lazy.
- mmathog
October 2, 2010 at 2:27pm
Good to see you back mmathog, agree with you or not: sometimes do, sometimes don't. Good posts, straight to the point, no bullshit, no wasted words and smart.
- basman
October 2, 2010 at 2:37pm
libref: you state that the problem in terrible inner city schools must be the teacher when don't you find it strange that terrible inner city is part of the sentence? Honest to God, try teaching in Paterson NJ, not to have the high schoolers curse in a sentence is an achievement (not even cursing in a bad way, just that it is so much a part of their speech that it infuses everything) much less having to worry about being assaulted by a 250 pound over 6 foot tall 11th grader because you tell him to sit down. It is a nightmare. How the hell can anyone state that a teacher in North Caldwell High School deserves higher merit pay because the children who attend there, whose parents are worth millions of dollars, because the students perform better on tests than kids in Paterson do? Even for me, and this is after years and years of teaching, some of my classes run swimmingly and others terrible, there are so many dynamics semester to semester, how well the students interact with each other, the time of the class, even the relative level of knowledge within the group is always different. This is not typing in computer code or making soap, this is educating a group of children whom you meet new every year, each coming in with their own life experiences. Chait and so many of you think, hey I taught my kid how to...so how difficult can it be to teach 25 of them? It is nuts. I grew up in an education household, my father was a principal, my sister an assistant principal, I teach. I have been hearing the same shit for all my life from people who simply don't have a clue. Yes, some teachers are bad and should be fired, but this idea that we can have only the best teachers everywhere is absurd, in every field there is the best and worst, we can try to weed out the worst, but it has to be in fair evaluations of what is worst. Teachers in Paterson NJ will look like failures compared to teachers in North Caldwell NJ. And if you were to fire the teachers in Paterson NJ there would be NO ONE to replace them. I have a friend who got a job teaching in Orange NJ in a junior high, he was shocked at how easy his interview process was, it was only after he started working there that he realized why, they were desperate for teachers because the area is a nightmare. He only lasted a few months (and he had previously taught in Englewood, leaving to get his Masters). Now he teaches College and he is happy.
- blackton
October 2, 2010 at 3:14pm
I agree with Mike B. One crucial problem in American education is the threats embodied by so-called local supervision and by the parents -- the idea that the job of education is to provide an experience of institutional life and intellectual growth necessarily different from what students get at home is lost.
- ironyroad
October 2, 2010 at 5:11pm
I have found often that "high standards" is kind of like the phrase "small government." Everyone is for it, until it has to apply to them. I have seen in my career good, solid, and demanding teachers worn down and chased out of teaching as parents demand that their children be given high grades as the admin. throws the teachers to the wolves and provides no support. Paul Zoch has written about this happening in schools. The easiest thing to do is to pre-emptively surrender often.
- MikeB.
October 2, 2010 at 10:40pm
No, Mr. Chait: Ravitch puts "bad" in scare quotes because sophisticated journalists, or unsophisticated journalists, whose first language is English have not generally used that word to describe workers or professionals of any sort whatsoever. Usually, employees are ineffective, unproductive, "not team players," sometimes "lazy." The use of the word "bad" in this context is an imprecise, lazy, and global statement that implies many things about a person's character that have nothing to do with their effectiveness at his or her profession. Even second-graders are more precise: they delineate between "mean" and "nice" teachers. My sense is that the word's increasing use these days in the media and by so-called reformers stems from the resentment, perplexity, and frustration felt by parents and others toward the complex problem of fixing nation's crumbling schools. But the job of journalists is not to absorb people's feeling and spew them back to their readers--unless you're Glenn Beck or Limbaugh. We need you to give some thought to those feelings and articulate something more complex. In this case, the media--even the (genuinely) liberal media--is simply giving up. And the result is shameful.
- khedlund
October 3, 2010 at 5:29am
When did it become so hip for liberals to bash unions? Would Chait say about steelworkers (or even professional athletes?!) what he says about teachers: "It is so difficult and draining even to fire the worst of the worst." Oh, I feel your pain! You must be exhausted! Once we get rid of tenure, a superintendent will be able to fire five hundred teachers in an afternoon and still have the energy for happy hour and a tennis match!
- khedlund
October 3, 2010 at 5:37am
I'm a student at UCLA's graduate film school. The Gates Foundation came here recently to ask students to produce (with donated labor, of course) a batch of short films supporting its education agenda. Their message was quite clear--here's your conflict: Teachers vs. Students. I caught Gates, Michelle Rhee and the director of Waiting for Superman on Oprah the other day. It was frightening: if I were a young person considering going into the teaching profession, that show would have convinced me that as a teacher, American society--including Oprah!--would consider me lazy, untrustworthy, expendable, and fully--fully--responsible for the woes of the nation's education system. Regardless of whether or not the tenure process could use some revision, the amount of credibility that teacher-bashing has gained among very smart people is not only shocking but absurdly short-sighted: if we cannot show "good" students that teachers are worthy of respect, then how can we expect them to want to become teachers?
- khedlund
October 3, 2010 at 5:54am
I'm thrilled -- and I'm sure LisaH is too -- to read all of these comments finally voicing skepticism and criticism of our narrow, misguided school reform movement and the fawning attention it receives in media outlets both big (NBC) and small (TNR). We need to cool it with the scapegoating of teachers and start discussing this issue seriously. Any such discussion must begin with the purposes of education, which reformers barely mention. In that regard, I highly recommend Martha Nussbaum's recent book -- a short "manifesto" -- called "Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities." She is very concerned that our education policy at every level is increasingly reflecting a narrow economic conception of the purpose of education -- to get a job and contribute to the nation's economic growth and global competitiveness. This is a Great Leap Forward sort of attitude and does not befit a liberal democracy. A liberal democracy should be concerned with encouraging the development of imaginative, skeptical, and empathetic adults who possess both the skills and the knowledge to realize their potential, think for themselves, and be good citizens in full -- and not merely useful money-makers with technical skills that, for the moment, are in global demand. The latter characterizes India today, and it's very ugly. Nussbaum assails Obama's praise of Singapore's education system -- as she did in TNR recently -- when Obama said that they teach what's necessary, and skip what's not. Necessary for what? The implication is, necessary for global economic competitiveness. But what does it profit a nation to gain the whole world and lose its soul? Nussbaum rips Arne Duncan for slashing humanities in the Chicago Public Schools when he headed them. (Nussbaum and I are both from Chicago.) She decries the overemphasis on tests, which don't, and in some cases can't, test what's most important, and encourage anti-educational test prep and rote learning -- the stifling pedagogy that America led the world in abandoning a hundred years ago. She doesn't dismiss the notion of accountability, however. She argues instead that it needs to be practiced in a more intelligent, nuanced, and comprehensive way, and recommends the following book in that regard: Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right, by Richard Rothstein. I haven't read that book, but I will. We need to wise up on this topic and start having a real discussion about it. Those of us who are skeptical of the school reform movement of the moment are routinely accused of not caring about kids. Nonsense! We are very worried about the turn our education policy is taking precisely for their sake. And, p.s., in my experience, nobody cares more about kids and their education than teachers, who are apparently just supposed to accept this recent cultural barrage of condescension and ridicule, as they witness the decline and fall of the public school system and the core values that should animate it.
- JakeH
October 3, 2010 at 2:24pm
Khedlund: Bashing unions is a cottage industry at TNR: it goes way back to the Mickey Kaus days at this magazine. Also, every single word of blackton's last post is true. I've taught at the university level, I've taught at two inner city high schools in the Bronx, and I've taught at one of NYC's flagship specialized high schools. The difference in venue is very important. Regarding my high school experience, one would have to conclude that my skill level as a teacher improved dramatically as I moved from one venue to another. How is it that I'm highly successful in one place but dogged by failures at another? Well, the answer is that it's not me. You'd be surprised how much you can accomplish when the students show up everyday, have engaged parents, possess basic skills, and don't force you to teach in the teeth of opposition. That opposition, by the way, can be every bit as physically exhausting and soul crushing as blackton suggests. It just weighs on you. It retards you. It damages you. And that is why the rate of turnover at those schools is so high and why people who stick it out deserve some modicum of protection. If you teach long enough, you get introduced to innumerable game-changing reforms: group work, eliciting the aim, the point-of-entry method, pair and share, pivotal questions...the list is endless. Worse, you're expected to greet every new innovation with unrestrained zeal and enthusiasm, even though all the ones before have been forgotten and discarded as failed. Intelligent people have a hard time with that because it demands that one have no memory or capacity to learn. Of course, because I have taught, liberal reformer can dismiss my ideas as biased. That's brilliant. blackton is right. The term "inner city" is telling. If want better educational outcomes, you need fewer ghettos, because the pathologies that accompany poverty are very, very daunting for every educator out there.
- propjoe
October 3, 2010 at 2:39pm
Mr. Chait, I believe we all have a right to express an opinion provided they are factual, or presumed to the writer to be factual. However, (here it comes!) your 'implied' comments misrepresenting Dr. Ravitch's words were so flagrantly incorrect, that it causes the rest of your article to go up in flames. You neglected to post a link to the complete article you chose to mis-cite--Diane Ravitch's article entitled, "Education Crisis: Testing & Firing Teachers Doesn't Work." First of all, defining Diane Ravitch as "an anti-education reform apostle" is blatantly false and misguided. In her extraordinary 45+ year career, Diane has been a strong proponent of high quality and accessible education for all children and nations. Diane is pro-education reform--the kind of whole-child education reforms that work. She is opposed, I believe to the corporate reformers' failed reforms still in play and the half-baked reform ideas such as merit pay on standardized tests, which research says will fail. On my #1 Hit List of misrepresentations in your piece: 1) You state that Dr. Ravitch implies "There is no such thing as a bad teacher." 2) You further enhance that blunt mis-statement by adding that Diane "argues that it is really easy to fire teachers." 3) Then the creme de la creme of moronic conclusions which should not be attributed to any intelligent life form--"Teaching is the only profession in the world exempt from incompetence." I gave the piece to six independent retirees knowing nothing about education reform, asked them to read her article, then posed your statements. No one agreed with your conclusions. There was my scientific evidence needed to post my comments in response! The confidently written article by Dr. Ravitch, replete with references of indisputable research and evidence can be found here. http://shar.es/0jTXf At last glance, over 4,196 fans had recommended her article and re-posted it. That must break some sort of record! Evidentally, others believe the article to be of great value. Dr. Ravitch, a highly respected Education Historian, former Assistant Secretary of Education, appointed by two Presidents to the NAEP Governing Board, member of the Brookings Institution, and author of 21 books on education is not some empty headed blogger you are sparring with. Her first widely acclaimed book was probably written around the year you were born. If there are any experts in this world on Education Reform, it is this brilliant woman you unfortunately opted to berate and demean in a slipshod article. The contents of your article made no sense to me after reading Diane's article. Perhaps you should let your readers decide who gave, as you wrote, a 'propagandist response that is embarrassing." To quote you from another column the same day, "Dept of Easy Answers", you wrote: .."When you see somebody doing something that makes no apparent sense, usually the reason is ignorance or stupidity rather than some complicated scheme." Which one is it for you, Mr. Chait?
- rsolnet
October 3, 2010 at 2:50pm
Yes, JakeH -- it's good to read the comments that get it about education reform and what's needed, and perhaps especially those from people like blackton and propjoe, who have real experience in the classroom. Those from rsolnet, khedlund, and others with suggestions for viable reform ideas. It's been good, also, to see the overwhelmingly supportive comments to Ravitch's article (no -- I didn't actually read them all -- does anyone have enough of a caffeine supply for that? And I do have a day job.). Nice, also, that NY Times blog commenters seem to be shifting from bash-the-teachers to many who get it. Saw the movie over the weekend. It's loaded with dubious statistics and misuse of those stats, out-of-context use of material generally, serious omissions (like, Green Dot, a charter chain carefully barely mentioned, is unionized) and total failure to dig into the real issues, from the impact of privatizing and charters on resegregation to the weird way it addresses the impact of communities and family life. On one hand it sort of has Canada (don't get me started) and others noting the problems in the neighborhoods and with parenting but the 5 kids it follows clearly have supportive families. Would have been far more honest to see what these oh-so-dedicated "reformers" can do with troubled kids from the totally dysfunctional families more typical of those desperately in need of help, whether from the inner city or the Southern mountains. It uses quotes from AFT president Randi Weingarten and pictures and historical references to the teacher unions with no background. And I could've done without the Chuck Yeager bit, to say nothing of the whole Superman nonsense. The tear-jerking ending is pure propaganda. I didn't see "An Inconvenient Truth." If it was as much of a mess as this is, Guggenheim should give back the Oscar.
- LISAH
October 3, 2010 at 5:46pm
LISAH and JakeH: The Hs? Mr. and Mrs. H? Is this a conspiracy of Hs, who may be joined at the H? What the H gives?
- basman
October 3, 2010 at 8:43pm