The Face of Progressive Education Reform

Originally posted at DailyKos


There's been a lot of chatter this past week in edu circles. Apparently our president-elect is about to announce a new Secretary of Education or some such thing? Well, two groups, The Educator Roundtable and A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education have been busy rolling out agendas for reform during this critical transition period.

The Educator Roundtable sent emails last week to all 34,186 people who have signed this petition. In it the ER called for support for Doug Christensen, former Education Commissioner of Nebraska, to get the top spot of Secty of Ed. A lot of progressives support Linda Darling-Hammond (I am one of them), but ER's thinking is that she will not be selected because she is on Obama's transition team. If that's the case, I also strongly support Dr. Christensen, an educator who has successfully fought the edu-biz agenda of the US Dept of Ed.

Also in the ER email was a letter to all friends of democratic public school reform. The letter referenced a school in Utah that asked parents (!) what they wanted the school to provide their children. The parents responded that they wanted educators to respect their children as individuals, encourage their curiosity, and help them get along with others.

To this end, a group of long experienced educators and parents have formed a coalition to introduce a higher vision of teaching, thinking and learning. We offer a framework or "skeleton" upon which each community can build.

The framework is called "Educating for Human Greatness," and consists of seven "ribs" that each community can use to create strategies for its accomplishment:
Identity, Interaction, Inquiry, Imagination, Initiative, Intuition and Integrity.

The Educating for Human Greatness group believes that the purpose of education should be to

Develop great human beings to be contributors (not burdens) to society by focusing on 7 Dimensions of Human Greatness:

Identity – Help students learn who they are – as individuals with unlimited potential, develop their unique talents and gifts to realize self-worth and develop a strong desire to be contributors to family, school and community.

Inquiry – Stimulate curiosity; awaken a sense of wonder and appreciation for nature and humankind. Help students develop the power to ask important questions.

Interaction – Promote courtesy, caring, communication and cooperation.

Initiative – Foster self-directed learning, will power and self-evaluation.

Imagination – Nurture creativity in all of its many forms.

Intuition – Help students learn how to feel and recognize truth with their hearts as well as with their minds – develop spirituality and humility.

Integrity – Develop honesty, character,morality and responsibility for self.

I've joined the Human Greatness Group and would love to hear any comments, questions, or suggestions you might have about it's purpose or the above components. Also, if you're of like mind, please join! Everyone's welcome.

A Bolder, Broader Approach has also been busy recently, advancing its campaign by sending emails to 860+ signers of its statement. BBA's conviction is

that schools alone cannot close the achievement gap, but that school improvement must be complemented by improvements in the social and economic conditions from which children come to school -- specifically by high-quality early childhood programs, provision of comprehensive routine and preventive health care, and high-quality after school and summer programs.

This, of course, is a direct response to those in organizations (such as Teach for America) who believe that high teacher quality is the only factor necessary to get those test scores up. These groups work against teacher unions and bash many older,established teachers as being uncaring and mediocre.

BBA is now forming an advisory board and committees to help direct each of it's goals: Outreach and Recruitment (e.g., new BBA signers); Health (including school clinics); Early Childhood; School Improvement; After-School and Summer Programs; and Comprehensive and Coordinated Services.

Additionally, BBA will sponsor a series of forums on Capitol Hill, as
well as, where possible, state capitals, on various aspects of the broader bolder approach. At these forums, signers of the BBA will describe more specifically the statement's principles. We plan initially to sponsor sessions on the importance of health care for achievement, on what is known about the impact of early childhood programs, on what is known about the impact of after school and summer programs, and on how accountability policies can be sufficiently comprehensive to ensure that a broader, bolder approach can be carried out.

Our Web site (www.boldapproach.org) will be further expanded, and become, we expect, the definitive resource for state and federal policymakers for research on, and solid evidence for, this broader, bolder approach.

We will sponsor a series of demonstration projects, in half a dozen cities nationwide, where school improvement, early childhood programs,adequate health care, and after school and summer programs will be coordinated to produce real outcome gains for disadvantaged children.

Please check out their website for updates!

I Wish Linda Darling-Hammond had said THIS

Originally posted at Daily Kos

I guess Newsweek has bought into the propaganda spewed forth by the media wing of the Business Roundtable. From the Dec. 1, 2008 magazine (found online here):

As president, however, Obama will have a chance to greatly improve D.C. schools-and, possibly, inner-city public education across the country. The chancellor ofthe D.C. system, Michelle Rhee, has proposed an innovative teachers' contractthat could allow her to reward the best teachers and dismiss the bad ones.
Educators everywhere are watching to see what Obama says and does. If he backs Rhee's proposal, he will send a powerful signal to struggling inner-city schools that reform is possible. If he fudges or says nothing, it will be a signal that little will change for the poor and mostly black children in the capital's nearly dysfunctional apparatus.

Where to begin?! President Elect Obama does have the opportunity to greatly impact urban schools, for better - if he selects someone like professor and education researcher Linda Darling-Hammond -- or for worse (if he selects someone who wants to standardize test our kids back to the stone age, bust unions, bash teachers, and privatize public schools). But is fixing D.C. schools the president's job?

Here's D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee's "innovative" proposal: Current teachers must make a choice: be a "red tier teacher" at current teacher pay in order to protect their tenure, or be a "green tier teacher" in order to be paid in the six-figures, but give up tenure. Where's the money to come from for higher salaries? Private corporations and foundations. Yeah, that money should be around forever. When D.C. teachers refused to sign up for six-figure salaries and the unions protested, Rhee thought up a plan and she thought it up quick. Ask the Feds to declare a "State of Emergency" so that she can circumvent the pesky union all together.

But my favorite part is Newsweek's assertion that if Barack Obama doesn't back Michelle Rhee's agenda he is letting all poor and black kids in D.C. swing in the wind. That racist bastard!

Here's more...

The education community is badly split on the issue of how to hold teachers accountable. The establishment sees tenure as a shibboleth, teachers' only guard against politics and arbitrary firings. The reformers regard it as the chief obstacle to change, since it is next to impossible to remove ineffective teachers in almost all public systems.

Actually, the education community's split on teacher accountability involves much more than just tenure. But since they've mentioned the T word, let me say this from my experience as an urban school teacher and alum of inner-city public schools. Yes. Many urban schools have The Teacher. The one that probably shouldn't still be there. They're ineffective or worse. But all of those schools have 20-100 (depending on their size) other GREAT teachers. I am tired of the teacher bashing from Teach for America, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, the Business Roundtable and the MSM.

Finally, there's this:

Some union backers were heartened when Obama appointed Linda Darling-Hammond, a Standford professor and a favorite of the unions, as head of his transition policy task force. Reformers view Darling-Hammond as "anti-accountability"
because she is a critic of standardized testing and teachers' performance pay being linked to test scores. She has been very critical of Teach for America,the organization that sends thousands of recent college grads into inner-city schools each year. Darling-Hammond has argued that the answer is not to bring young, eager and untrained teachers into the classrooms, but rather to better train the teachers already there. "People don't want to say anything publicly, because of the 'No-Drama Obama' stuff," says one well-placed reformer with ties to the incoming administration. "But many of us were stunned that Linda Darling-Hammond is still as influential as she is. We see her as very symbolic of the 'old school' of reform." Darling-Hammond responds, "The critiques of being 'old school' are particularly ironic since I have been fighting for a lot of reforms before they were recently on the national radar."

Notice the framing of the issues here. Linda Darling-Hammond/critics of high-stakes standardized testing = union backer, anti-reformists.

Now. As for the "well-placed reformer with ties to the incoming administration". Someone didn't get the memo. See, Obama welcomes and sees the value of having multiple opinions and voices advising him. I'm thrilled. This is democratic policy formation at its best. Linda Darling-Hammond's response is good. But what I wish she had said is this:

"If 'old school' means being an actual career educator; caring about the psychological well-being of my students; wanting to educate my students without teaching to a test; improving the quality of all schools, not just charters; and reforming schools through a DEMOCRATIC process, then I'm PROUD to be called 'old school'! "