Obama’s own bolder, broader plan…

He’s calling for a new New Deal that could provide millions of jobs, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and construct new schools. What a shift from the neocons, the great redistributors, who oversaw the greatest redistribution in wealth in history, from poor to rich. The failed "Ownership Society" along with his disastrous eternal "war on terror" will be Bush’s legacy.

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For those of you relying on the Gates Foundation for school improvement or restructuring dollars, you may have to move to Plan B. As one social entrepreneur, writing in the NYT, puts it:

The work of individuals... or even Melinda and Bill Gates — can never serve as a substitute for government investment and public policy.

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Here’s the latest from the $40 million evaluation of Reading First, the $4 billion phonics-based scandal-ridden reading program now under congressional investigation. What do you want first—the good news or the bad? Well, the good news is that RF helped some kids improve their reading skills. The bad news is, they can’t understand what it is they’ve read.

'Texas Miracle' redux

Duncan's big lie

Bush’s Sec. of Education, Rod Paige had his big lie—he claimed he had eliminated dropouts in Houston’s high schools. It was called the Texas Miracle and together, he and Bush rode it to power in Washington. Now Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan hopes to ride his own big lie, the Chicago Miracle, all the way to D.C. It goes something like this—closing schools in the black community, firing teachers, and privatizing school management has led to amazingly higher test scores:

"We are one of the few districts in the country that has shut down underperforming schools and replaced the entire school staff. This turnaround school strategy has taken some of our lowest-performing schools and doubled or tripled test scores within a few years. Same kids, different teachers, new leadership, a new educational approach, and the results are dramatic.” (Testimony before House education committee, July 17, 2008.)

The NYT, the same paper that exposed the Bush/Paige miracle, appears to have bought Duncan’s miracle. But Chicago educators know better. The question for Obama’s transition team is: Will this be a credible narrative to bring into the new DOE?

Uh uh.

No, Virginia. There was no Chicago miracle. Here’s the real deal, and here ,and here.

Teacher activists don't want Klein, Duncan

A coalition of activist teachers has made it clear that they want neither New York Chancellor Joel Klein nor Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan to be appointed to the Secretary of Education post. Teacher Activist Groups (TAG) is circulating a petition to build opposition to both short-listed candidates.

TAG, has this to say:

We wish to turn away from a corporate model of education that claims that teaching and learning can only improve by imposing market perspectives and processes onto our public education system. Education should be a fundamental human right, not subject to privatization by firms whose primary concern is a profit motive and the bottom line. We have all witnessed the failures of this free market system in recent months and do not support this model for our public schools.

Chicago's PURE is on board:

PURE’s vision for education is to reject the push to remake our schools in the image of business, and stop promoting “competition” as the answer to underperforming schools. We hope our nation will return to an approach that addresses the whole child and focuses on preparing him or her to be a happy, contributing citizen. This is the change that parents want.

TAG, and many progressive educators seem to be favoring Obama's top education advisor, Linda Darling-Hammond. But the very thought of LDH as Sec. of Education has sent hedge-fund school reformers DFER and conservatives from Center on Education Reform into a tizzy, writes Russo. The Fordham Foundation's Liam Julian sounds like he will stroke out should LDG get the job.

I could say something not very nice right now...

The inevitable "total failure" of reform

I've spent the last two days in a typical, large, comprehensive, mid-western high school working with teams of teachers on differentiated instruction. They seemed anxious to pick up skills for dealing with the wide range of student learning styles, levels of abilities and interests. They also seem to enjoy having some dedicated time together with their colleagues, trying out different strategies and tuning their plans. Mostly they like talking about their students with other members of their team and figuring out how to reach even the most resistant among them.

But the situation, as usual, cries out for structural change, beyond the immediate scope of classroom teaching and professional development strategies. The results were that most teachers were glum about the prospects of really using DI, given constraints of classroom size and a test-prep culture that doesn't reward or otherwise encourage personalization or project-based learning.

Their high schools are too big and badly organized. This isn't an excuse but their daily reality. Teachers don't have adequate time to meet, plan or collaborate and little time to reflect or think about the needs (many of which arise from conditions born outside of school) of every one of the 150 or so students that come in front of them each day.

One major problem is, the pendulum is swinging back away from the structural and cultural reforms, many of which have positively impacted high school teaching and school change during this past decade. The inevitable failure of top-down reform plus the fact that no single reform or structural change is the magic bullet it is often cracked up to be, usually leads to the abandonment of every hopeful reform strategy by the mega-foundations, before they have had a chance to be fairly evaluated.

This in turn, brings that inevitable smug, "I told you so" response from cynical traditionalists or the conservative think-tankers who could have told us all along that public schools were un-reformable and that the only solution is privatization, teacher firings, school closings, union busting, or even more draconian measures imposed on schools from the outside.

The recent negative presidential-campaign-inspired verdict on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which has been written off as a "total failure" because of its minimal impact on standardized test scores, was a case in point. Another example was the way that the Gates Foundation seemed to be retreating from its small-schools initiative on the grounds that small schools weren't the panacea they originally thought them to be. (See Diane Ravitch's I-told-you-so commentary on behalf of the right-wing Hoover Institute, on Gates' reversal).

But nearly all these current reforms as well as their reversals have come from the top-down and have left out the very teachers who are charged with implementation and who ultimately get blamed for the failure of badly conceived reform initiatives that always seem to be done too them, rather that with them or by them.

More thoughts about the inevitable failure of top-down reform in coming posts.

Quotables

Obama's choice

The ever quotable Diane Ravitch on Obama’s Sec. of Education pick

Yes, it matters very much who is selected by President-elect Obama. It matters more than ever. Let us pray that it is not one of the hedge-fund managers or prosecutors or swing-the-axe superintendents whose names are now being floated in the press.

On the racist backlash against Obama’s election

"Most of this movement is not violent, but there is a substantive underbelly that is violent and does try to make a bridge to people who feel disenfranchised," says Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. "The question is: Will this swirl become a tornado or just an ill wind? We're not there yet, but there's dust on the horizon, a swirling of wind, and the atmospherics are getting put together for [conflict]."

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Californian Jeff Ecc sent me this release from the Association of Raza Educators

F O R I M M E D I A T E R E L E A S E

The Association of Raza Educators (ARE) is ramping up its national campaign with a protest November 20, 2008 outside Hispanic Scholarship Fund headquarters in San Francisco demanding HSF stop discrimination against undocumented students. Twenty CBOs are endorsing the effort. HSF has given out almost $250 million in scholarships and as a private org is one of the few sources undocumented students can turn to since they do not qualify for state or federal aid. ARE is asking HSF to take a leadership role in helping Latino students that need it most by no longer inquiring about their legal status. A petition has been created at: http://petitiononline.com/2college

More information and videos produced by ARE calling on HSF board members Cheech Marin and Maria Elena Salinas (whose father was undocumented) to change the policy can be found at:
http://openHSF.com

Crisis killing small schools

Faced with spiraling budget deficits, school districts across the country are closing their small schools and consolidating students into larger schools and larger classrooms here, here, here, and here.

The school closings bring with them teacher lay-offs, accompanying cuts in school services and after-school programs, and more disruption in children’s lives. Larger, more anonymous school settings are also raising the risk of serious school violence. Economic pressures combined with possible cuts in federal and foundation big-school restructuring dollars could combine to sound the death knell for the small schools movement.

Also see Van's comments on the Littleton school closings, below.