"To counter the power of the city teachers union and business leaders in shaping school policy, New York City should use taxpayer dollars to create two new unions complete with their own budgets and lobbyists, one for public school parents and one for public school students, a group is proposing."
Editorializing about the recent test score gains in Washington, D.C., under new schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, the Washington Times asks :
Why did the city ever let Arlene Ackerman go--the last superintendent to improve so much?
Not that I'm not glad Rhee is here now, given the passion with which she has pushed for reform. But it's a reasonable question, especially now that Arlene Ackerman is wisely pushing for weighted student funding in her post in Philadelphia, while, sadly, Rhee works to undermine WSF (part of Ackerman's legacy) here.
(The answer, by the way, is that Ackerman left for San Francisco in 2000 partly out of frustration that the D.C. Council and the financial control board micromanaged her. That dynamic is obviously very different in D.C. today, under mayoral control.)
That's a fair way to describe presidential candidate Ralph Nader's opposition to No Child Left Behind, as presented in this Washington Post online chat transcript:
Pikesville, Md.: I am a 28-year-old father, husband, student and educator. Would you be in favor of repealing No Child Left Behind? Do you believe--as many educators do--that NCLB punishes lower-income students/schools while rewarding the schools that already have a wealth of money and community support? Explain.Ralph Nader: The Nader/Gonzalez campaign favors repeal of the No Child Left Behind law. Narrowly-based multiple choice standardized tests rupture the relationships between teachers and students and forces the teachers to teach to the test which themselves are of poor design. States are gaming the law, violating it and the overwhelming number of teachers are opposed to it--for good reason. There are far better ways to stimulate higher qualities of education and their assessment.
Tests "rupture the relationships between teachers and students"? I hadn't heard that one before.
That's my synopsis of this E.J. Dionne column about our current economic tribulations.
Since the Reagan years, free-market cliches have passed for sophisticated economic analysis. But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one, as even conservatives recognize that capitalism is ailing. You know the talking points: Regulation is the problem and deregulation is the solution.
I can hear the education blob-osphere now: "That's right, E.J., and we've had too much deregulation in education, too. Too many charter schools, too much ???alternative' teacher certification, too much power in the hands of principals. What we need are some good old-fashioned regulations!"
Hogwash.
First of all, I suspect that even E.J. would agree that merely calling for re-regulation wouldn't pass as "sophisticated economic analysis," either. But more importantly, in education, we're nowhere near the point where we've deregulated too much. Yes, there have been some high-profile examples when certain states or jurisdictions went too far; the early days of Arizona's or Texas's charter school programs come to mind, as quality-control mechanisms were not strongly in place. But the answer is not a return to old-fashioned regulation, but a move to smart regulation.
That's what the standards-based reform movement was supposed to be about: regulating outcomes (student learning especially) instead of inputs (class size, teacher credentials, etc.). We've followed through on the outcomes side (though still have plenty of tweaking to do when it comes to measuring student achievement fairly and accurately). But by and large we've failed to deliver on deregulating the inputs side. We still require teacher "certification" one way or another; plenty of states still mandate certain class size limits; most still require onerous procedures for removing ineffective teachers from the workforce; pretty much all of them burden schools with expensive and inflexible pension plans; and very few principals yet have significant control over their budgets.
Maybe some sectors of the American economy were deregulated too much. (I don't know--that's not my area of expertise.) But not the sector we call public education.
Catching up on the news out of the National Education Association conference earlier this month, I noticed that the union's "representative assembly," in its infinite wisdom, voted against accepting private school teachers and staff as members. As reported in Education Week:
A push by the NEA leadership to admit private school workers was strongly opposed by members who said it would generate conflicts when it came to the union's position on vouchers and religion in schools.
Actually, the smartest thing the NEA could do to dampen enthusiasm for vouchers is to organize private schools. A huge amount of the motivation for voucher supporters is to free poor children from schools under the grip of the unions. Creating unionized private schools would largely remove this motivational factor, and support for vouchers, I suspect, would largely dry up.
So thank you, representative assemblers, for voting as you did. Now, back to our regularly scheduled voucher activism.
Great article in today's Wall Street Journal about the Catholic church vs. Catholic school unions. It's especially intriguing because the Church-union relationship is slightly more complex than the typical pro- or anti-union situation. Catholics have, for generations, spoken in favor of and marched alongside unions in the United States and abroad. We know Catholic schools are in crisis, but how will the Church address its history of supporting other unions when the fight has now come to its own backyard?
Eduwonkette introduced her readers to some new blogs yesterday, including one chronicling the day-to-day life of "Mimi" the teacher. I know we've had some contentious back-and-forths about teachers on this site, but I think everyone can find some humor in this story from Mimi's site. End-of-the-year "thanks, teach!" presents don't get much better than this.
We love charters. They're a great idea. But even great ideas can go wrong, and when I read this great idea gone wrong, I thought it was a joke. But oh no, according to the Los Angeles Times , the LA School Board has really jumped off the deep end.
At Tuesday's school board meeting, district officials outlined plans to open an alternative school this fall that would offer independent study to at-risk students...,According to the plan, students would attend school for only two hours a week and be on their own to complete their course work the rest of the time. It was presented at the meeting largely as a way for the district to recoup money that is lost when students have poor attendance records, because schools receive state funding based on attendance.
This is probably every kid's dream--school-less school. Since we clearly created compulsory education laws for fun (didn't you know? Kids absolutely LOVE to go to school. In fact, we have to make them go home in the afternoon! It's the hormones--makes them great decision makers), why don't we just abolish school altogether and have kids learning on their own? And while we're at it, why don't we pull the wool over the state's eyes and squeeze them for more cash... and who cares if the kids are on perpetual vacation? GREAT IDEA.
Update: It's been pointed out to me that it's not clear whether or not this futuristic school-that-is-not-a-school is really a charter school. As this "plan" (if you can call it that) was juxtaposed with another alternative education charter school in L.A., I assumed that this new no-school school was also going to be a charter school. It is unclear.
I still stand by the fact that it is an unbelievably stupid idea.
Recently chastened, I offer this less controversial fare:
I recently stumbled across a blog called Learn Me Good, written by a teacher who is plagued with the martyrdom syndrome. I won't rehash that issue, which Liam so boldly took on last week, but I will address the whiny tenor of this article, written by said blogger. I agree with his premise--we do treat teachers like unskilled laborers; that's exactly why we Fordhamites hate on unions and support merit pay--but still I wondered, why the exceptionally whiny tone? I thought maybe I was being unfair to Mr. Learn Me Good, until I saw my observation corroborated in the comments section by someone named Roger:
I've never run across a group of professionals who whine as much as teachers. The only explanation I can think of is that since they spend so much time in the company of children, they take on this quality.
Roger, you're a riot! Of course, the other readers of this article didn't find him so funny as they proceeded to clobber him for never having taught before. That may be true, but you don't need to spend time in the classroom to know whiny when you hear it.