The incoming Obama administration’s transition team has published a position paper with a fairly high-level breakdown of their plan for addressing early childhood, K through 12, and higher education. For the purpose of this post I want to focus and comment on the K through 12 plan components including my comments.
Though I supported Clinton in the primary, I am really thrilled that Obama was elected and think he will be a transformational leader for our country. But the education policies of most any liberal democrat – Clinton, Obama, or most anyone else – I’m generally just not comfortable with. There is way to much bureaucratic, one-size-fits-all social engineering in most of my progressive comrades’ approach to education. Maybe I am overly jaded and need to give them the benefit of the doubt, or maybe I am naïve in my analysis… you be the judge.
BTW… you can post your own thoughts to the Obama-Biden transition team at http://change.gov/page/s/yourstory . I strongly urge you to click on that link and post some of your thoughts. Even if they are just crunched into statistical counts, the act of speaking out is a powerful one for the speaker, even if the speech is barely heard.
Here goes my take on Obama’s education plan…
Reform No Child Left Behind: Obama and Biden will reform NCLB, which starts by funding the law. Obama and Biden believe teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests. They will improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure readiness for college and the workplace and improve student learning in a timely, individualized manner. Obama and Biden will also improve NCLB’s accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.
My Comment: I think the whole concept of “No Child Left Behind” is profoundly flawed. In my mind it creates the image of one train leaving the station on a single track to a single destination. In a massive one-size-fits-all effort, all kids have to be on that one train or they are lost. I would rather see an education policy called something like “A Path to Success for Every Youth” that featured many metaphorical trains going in different directions at different times to many diverse destinations. That said, I am hoping that they really mean what they say about changing how student progress (and by aggregation, school effectiveness) is assessed. That would be a transformational change.
Support High-Quality Schools and Close Low-Performing Charter Schools: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will double funding for the Federal Charter School Program to support the creation of more successful charter schools. The Obama-Biden administration will provide this expanded charter school funding only to states that improve accountability for charter schools, allow for interventions in struggling charter schools and have a clear process for closing down chronically underperforming charter schools. Obama and Biden will also prioritize supporting states that help the most successful charter schools to expand to serve more students.
My Comment: I am uncomfortable with this one for many reasons. First of all there is an implication that only Charter schools are currently less accountable than regular public schools, which I don’t think is accurate. My personal experience with a Charter school (Valley Community Charter School), launched and run by people we know, is that they were required to be much more accountable than any non-Charter school. VCCS was in fact forced to close and re-charter after its fourth year because it wasn’t meeting the accountability metrics (but that’s another story). In my mind, the problem that VCCS and other more alternative Charter schools face is that the accountability standards favor conventional instructional schools (that basically teach to the test) and discriminate against alternative schools (that do not).
Make Math and Science Education a National Priority: Obama and Biden will recruit math and science degree graduates to the teaching profession and will support efforts to help these teachers learn from professionals in the field. They will also work to ensure that all children have access to a strong science curriculum at all grade levels.
My Comment: The challenge in my mind is to give all kids access to a strong science and math curriculum without forcing all kids to follow it. But it seems that in bureaucratically run school systems – where the decision-makers almost never meet the students, parents or teachers – the only sure fire way to ensure that access to a strong science and math curriculum is not denied to any student, is to force every student to follow that full curriculum, even if they have no aptitude or interest in it. I understand the history, that poorly resourced schools in poor neighborhoods have not made full access to programs available to their students, but it seems to me as a parent that there has to be a better way to ensure universal access.
Address the Dropout Crisis: Obama and Biden will address the dropout crisis by passing legislation to provide funding to school districts to invest in intervention strategies in middle school – strategies such as personal academic plans, teaching teams, parent involvement, mentoring, intensive reading and math instruction, and extended learning time.
My Comment: First of all encouraging personalized education, parent involvement and mentoring all sound like good things, focusing more on relationships than rules. Secondly, I have to believe that in many cases, a dropout is a kid (or their family in our case) “voting with their feet” that there is (or at least appears to be) no appropriate educational path available within the public school system. But if the current reading and math instruction isn’t working for some kids right now, intensifying and extending it sounds like something akin to the definition of insanity… doing more of the same and expecting a different result.
Expand High-Quality Afterschool Opportunities: Obama and Biden will double funding for the main federal support for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, to serve one million more children.
My Comment: I tend to like afterschool programs better because they are not mandatory. Kids (or at least their parents) choose to be in them, which in my mind makes all the difference. Who wants to be in a place full of kids if many of them don’t want to be there?
Support College Outreach Programs: Obama and Biden support outreach programs like GEAR UP, TRIO and Upward Bound to encourage more young people from low-income families to consider and prepare for college.
My Comment: Again, these are optional programs that kids (and families) can choose. I believe in personal responsibility for personal choices.
Support College Credit Initiatives: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will create a national “Make College A Reality” initiative that has a bold goal to increase students taking AP or college-level classes nationwide 50 percent by 2016, and will build on Obama’s bipartisan proposal in the U.S. Senate to provide grants for students seeking college level credit at community colleges if their school does not provide those resources.
My Comment: I am uncomfortable with any of these big bureaucratic initiatives, because again the decision-makers executing the program have little or no contact with the students and their families impacted by the program. That said, anything that gives high school students more access to community college classes is a good thing.
Support English Language Learners: Obama and Biden support transitional bilingual education and will help Limited English Proficient students get ahead by holding schools accountable for making sure these students complete school.
My Comment: I am glad they are talking bilingual education again rather than that immersion idea that was in vogue several years ago in California. But beyond the issue of bilingual education, I am uncomfortable with holding schools accountable for any student completing that school if the student does not belong there. This sounds more like incarceration than education and is one of the uglier features of a one-size-fits-all education system.
Recruit Teachers: Obama and Biden will create new Teacher Service Scholarships that will cover four years of undergraduate or two years of graduate teacher education, including high-quality alternative programs for mid-career recruits in exchange for teaching for at least four years in a high-need field or location.
My Comment: I’m a great believer in encouraging more people to be teachers, increasing the financial incentives to attract people to the profession, and then deferring to them as true professionals.
Prepare Teachers: Obama and Biden will require all schools of education to be accredited. Obama and Biden will also create a voluntary national performance assessment so we can be sure that every new educator is trained and ready to walk into the classroom and start teaching effectively. Obama and Biden will also create Teacher Residency Programs that will supply 30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to high-need schools.
My Comment: I am concerned that bureaucratic programs like this fall into a one-size-fits-all mindset and that kids will suffer from further standardization and homogenization of their teachers. I would rather see language here about finding unconventional teachers who can teach “outside the box”.
Retain Teachers: To support our teachers, the Obama-Biden plan will expand mentoring programs that pair experienced teachers with new recruits. They will also provide incentives to give teachers paid common planning time so they can collaborate to share best practices.
My Comment: Anything that promotes mentoring and collaboration among teachers seems like a good thing to me.
Reward Teachers: Obama and Biden will promote new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them. Districts will be able to design programs that reward with a salary increase accomplished educators who serve as a mentors to new teachers. Districts can reward teachers who work in underserved places like rural areas and inner cities. And if teachers consistently excel in the classroom, that work can be valued and rewarded as well.
My Comment: Again, I am for anything that increases the compensation for teachers. I just hope that the evaluation of teachers is by a jury of their peers and not based on simplistic metrics like test scores.
That’s it…
“But if the current reading and math instruction isn’t working for some kids right now, intensifying and extending it sounds like something akin to the definition of insanity… doing more of the same and expecting a different result.”
This is EXACTLY what we’re facing in January: mandatory Saturday School Intervention. I am completely bothered by the fact that we have no way to opt out. The school is basically telling my son that since he underperformed in math on his “STAR” exam from last year, he is going to be punished by having to go to an additional day of school for 11 weeks over the course of the next four months. While I think he could use more time with some math concepts that have been difficult for him, I don’t think assigning another day of school is the answer. He doesn’t view it as help, but as a result of him “failing” and that has really impacted his self-esteem.
I agree that big bureaucracy really doesn’t work in the public school system. It would be more effective for local districts to be able to work on their own mandating their own policies as they see fit, not have to succumb to state or federal rules. However, in a district as massive as LAUSD, this still could be a problem. It would be great to see neighborhood districts that really serve the population that’s there and who meet student needs rather than satisfy bureaucratic numbers and formulas.
I’m pretty positive that Obama will not be sending his kids to D.C.’s public schools, so none of these laws even apply to where his kids will be going to school. It’s hypocritical to want to reform something when one’s never even participated in it – I have a really big problem with that.
Cooper, I’m going to take the liberty of responding earnestly to you- I hope you’re cool with that. I want to start by saying I’m reading a lot of conjecture and gross generalization in your post.
* “massive one-size-fits-all effort”
-> There are more than 80 million students in public schools across the US. When schools were almost entirely individualized and self-controlled, prior to the 1940s, there was routine segregation and rampant dysfunction. This led to the majority of students not receiving an education beyond elementary, and high amounts of students who never entered schools. In turn, this reinforced social immobility and the notion of the worker-as-ignorant, which allowed the upper class to maintain strict socio-economic norms that alienated the working class. While it is true that compulsory schooling has not been wholly successful in ending that divide, the simple reality is that they’ve made progress that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. The “massive one-size-fits-all” effort is what made that real. There must be modifications, but one real difference between our perspectives is that I see a society without standardized education as a society without opportunity for all members to “progress” on their own terms. Instead they’d be entirely subjugated by the whims of others. At least this way, hypothetically and realistically, we’re given a chance.
* “Charter schools are currently less accountable than regular public schools”
-> Generally speaking, nationwide, charter schools are less accountable than public schools for student performance. Within many states there are different measures for charter school performance. Many embattled districts find their funding cut by charters and in turn share their federal government-imposed higher standards with those charter schools in order to balance the distribution of accountability. But in an era when the federal gov’t sanctions the abandonment and closure of “failing” schools I don’t think the left pinky should look at the right hand and say they aren’t getting a fair shake.
* “give all kids access to a strong science and math curriculum without forcing all kids to follow it.”
-> Math and science, neither of which are my strong suit nor do I desire to be in a situation where I feel like I must defend them. However, for the sake of argument and because I honor your thinking Cooper, I must say that access to any curriculum, strong or otherwise, is ultimately the responsibility of individual citizens engaging with their schools. More on this later.
* “bureaucratically run school systems”
-> 80 million students. What other type of system should it be? Reverting to the “organically” run systems of the 19th and early 20th centuries would take us back to the social/cultural/economic norms of those times, as well. Honestly, I don’t want to be the farmer my great-grandfathers were – in Ontario and Germany. Without public schools, well, its hard for me to argue that I’d be anything but that.
* “it seems to me as a parent that there has to be a better way to ensure universal access.”
-> Okay, expand on that.
* “a dropout is a kid (or their family in our case) “voting with their feet””
-> Or a kid who had to work more frequently because his mom fell sick after his dad was locked up. Or a kid who’s brother beat her and she had to get away from her house. Or a kid who became addicted and couldn’t find help at home or in their neighborhood and started running and couldn’t stop. Or a kid whose family became jobless and had to live out of their car. Or young people who are not motivated to work hard, who leave to become parent, or who leave to take care of a relative… Cooper, honestly, parents, families and students who simply stop going to school because schools don’t work are anomalous – and while that’s becoming less true, its not wholly untrue yet.
* “doing more of the same and expecting a different result.”
-> Thus the role of school change organizations that can introduce different models, programs and approaches that help systems adapt and meet the pressures of modern society.
* “I tend to like afterschool programs better because they are not mandatory.”
-> Some are. Community-based orgs don’t offer a panacea simply because they are community-based, either. They *can* be a step in the right direction, similar to charters, because they *can* be community-driven by real community members; however, they can be as corporate, bureaucratic and ineffectual as any public school – just like charters.
* “I believe in personal responsibility for personal choices.”
-> And this is where the role of the individual within the larger society comes. In a wholly interdependent society such as ours I believe we each have an ethical responsibility to respond to the needs of the greater society, as they ultimately serve us personally. However, the inverse is not as true: serving our own needs does not ultimately meet those of the larger society. Radicals have spent at least 40 years proving this notion true Cooper: as self-confessed liberals have withdrawn from mainstream society to meet their own needs, they’ve effectively proven the capitalistic mantra of “save yourself/serve yourself” true. In the meantime the instruments of democracy, including public schools, have suffered at the hands of the radical right, for whom neoliberalism has become the tool of choice for dismantling the public good. “Personal responsibility for personal choice” has led to the chaotic disenfranchisement of community as people righteously disconnect from their families and communities and abandon the instruments of democracy which secured those responsibilities and choices in the first place. We have an ethical responsibility and a moral obligation to engage with the democracy in which we live – including public schools.
* “I am uncomfortable with any of these big bureaucratic initiatives”
-> Thus why we need to take back the gov’t that is ultimately ours. HUMANIZE it by participating in it. Create community consensus that yes, indeed, we believe in the public good, we’re vested in the public good, and that the public good is our good. From there “these big bureaucratic initiatives” can become local, community-driven initiatives, which in turn are benefiting, and accountable to, the communities which drive them.
* “…beyond the issue of bilingual education, I am uncomfortable with holding schools accountable for any student completing that school if the student does not belong there. This sounds more like incarceration than education and is one of the uglier features of a one-size-fits-all education system.”
-> Yes, schools can feel like prisons, and in many cases they have become pipelines to prisons, particularly for low-income, black, and brown students.
* “…then deferring to them as true professionals.”
-> I’ll take umbrage to the notion of “teacher as true professional.” Teachers, as any other profession, must be critical and must be subjected to criticism. There are few who embrace that, either from their management, their students, the parents, or others. Let’s not put people on pedestals who don’t need to be their. No teacher is a king, and no professional need be exalted simply for having a degree and a job. Earn my trust as a parent, earn my respect as a peer, and we’ll go from there…
* “bureaucratic programs like this fall into a one-size-fits-all mindset and that kids will suffer from further standardization and homogenization of their teachers. I would rather see language here about finding unconventional teachers who can teach “outside the box”.
-> Yeah, there’s too much to say about this. I agree that “standardization and homogenization” are the major issues here. However, “unconventional” swings from far left to far right Cooper, and we must maintain some integrity in order to ensure that those 80 million students receive the same opportunities to succeed in life – right?
* “…not based on simplistic metrics like test scores.”
-> Let’s come up with that alternative. Identify it, describe it, and share it.
Ultimately, I believe in public education as a tantamount responsibility of the state. I believe in the democratic responsibility of every person becoming educated, and the responsibility of the state to provide that education. I believe schools must strive to be better, and that every person must engage in that struggle. And I think that includes you and me Cooper.
Adam…it seems that you and I have twice clashed on our thoughts so I feel like we are maybe “pushing each others buttons” to some degree and are each projecting some issue in ourselves on the other. Maybe that will play out over time. That said, I respect your opinion and wish to continue to collaborate and dialog with you. Here are my responses to your thoughts (trying to keep my buttons under wraps…*g*):
1. The argument that a giant bureaucratic one-size-fits-all education system that treats every kid the same is a step forward to a more egalitarian society is the best argument for that kind of schooling, and keeps many Democrats and other progressives supporting initiatives like No Child Left Behind. But I have to confess that I have lost that faith (for the time being at least) and have adopted more of a left-libertarian worldview, focused more on personal choice and personal responsibility within the context of community.
2. As you will see in my later blog post, I’m a firm believer in “Many Paths” (http://www.leftyparent.com/blog/2009/01/11/an-argument-for-many-paths/) as the path forward for the evolution of our education system. Government, particularly at the local and state level still has a role to play ensuring that every kid has access to an education, but I feel there needs to be many profoundly different choices for that education so that each kid and their family can find a path for them that leads to the best flowering of who they are, and the contribution they can make to a larger community.
3. As to charter schools, at least in California, they are on a much shorter leash than conventional neighborhood schools, which can be dysfunctional for years here without much consequence. My position may be biased on this point by being close with a group of people who started an alternative charter school that had its charter pulled because of bad standardized test scores. The school had its legitimate issues, but I think its main problem was they didn’t teach to the test and they went with their student’s interests rather that sticking close to the standardized state curriculum.
4. As to school drop outs, my experience is again the anecdotal experience of a parent, and a youth advisor for my Unitarian-Universalist congregation. I know several kid, including my own, who left school because it was way too formal, academic and unconnected to the real world for them. A more Sudbury-like public school, if such a thing could exist after Laura Stine’s was shut down, would be perfect for a lot of these kids. But it cannot exist within the one-size-fits-all bureaucratic regime of state-focused education.
5. With my son struggling with his three partners to create a green, highly ethical local business, I have a growing appreciation for the “small is beautiful” free-enterprise capitalism that is locally focused.
6. My contribution to “engage in that struggle” to make schools better is to fight for as broad a range of educational options as possible available to the largest number of families possible.
Anyway… Hang on to your passion and keep up your good work and hopefully I can be of some assistance helping you and your democratic school colleagues create an effective organization to push for democratizing our public schools.
Hey, this is really impressive!
Pete
Thanks Pete… Good to hear from you.