Reauthorization of NCLB very unlikely

[Washington Post] The politics of No Child Left Behind have always been difficult to navigate. In the strange-bedfellows world of education reform, Bush finds himself fending off foes from the left and right. Teachers' unions stand alongside hard-line conservatives against the program, while civil rights groups team up with business organizations in support of it.

The threat to the education accountability program comes as test scores hint at progress, with the gap between white children and minorities narrowing. "There's no reason to turn back the clock," Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said in an interview. "We're on the move. This is working."

If it is not reauthorized, the law will remain on the books unchanged, although even supporters, including Bush, think it needs to be updated to fix problems and establish "deeper roots," as Spellings put it. Moreover, inaction would represent another punishing defeat for Bush after the death of his plans to overhaul Social Security, immigration law and the tax code. . . . [read on]

The importance of teachers

crossposted from dailykos where it was on the recommended list

I have just finished reading a book I have to review entitled Be a Teacher. One of the editors is Phil Bigler, who has won all three of the big national teaching awards: Disney, Milken and National Teacher of the Year. It is a book aimed at those considering teaching or near the start of their teaching careers, and is subtitled with "You Can Make A Difference" and is listed as "by America's Finest teachers." It contains reflections by Bigler and his coauthor, herself an award winner, and 12 others who have been greatly honored for their own teaching. It is an interesting book, and when I do write my review I promise to cross-post it or summarize it here.

Today I am going to crib from one appendix, and then offer a few additional remarks of my own. This won't be long. I encourage you to keep reading.

Appendix B contains "Twenty-Five Inspirational Quotations about Teachers and Teaching." I want to offer a few of these, and then offer some comments of my own.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where is influence stops. - Henry Adams

Teaching is a timeless profession. It is the basis of all other professions. Good teachers plant seed that make good doctors, good accountants, good public servants, good statesmen, good taxi drivers, and good astronauts. When former students return to see me over the years, my heart fills up in the knowledge that I have been part of a wonderful accumulation of experiences that followed them through life. - Mary Bicouvaris

If your plan is for a year, plant rice. If your plan is for a decade,plant trees. If our plan is for a lifetime, educate children. - Confucius

I am a teacher because of teachers. They showed me that someone other than my mother could love me. - Guy Doud

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else. - Lee Iacocca

What else is needed is something that teachers themselves are reluctant to talk about openly and it's our respect for them. It's what is missing in America, and it's what has been too long withheld from a profession so important to our national well being, as important as doctors or captains of industry or TV commentators. From sunup to sundown, the school teachers you have seen tonight work harder than you do - no matter what you do. No calling in our society is more demanding than teaching. No calling in our society is more selfless than teaching. No calling in our society is more central to the vitality of a democracy than teaching. - Roger Mudd

To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching. - George Bernard Shaw

Each of these quotes speaks to me, not merely because I am a teacher, although that is part of it. Like Guy Doud, I am in part a teacher because of other teachers, and love - directly expressed or not - was certainly part of it. It was my AP American History teacher Thomas Rock who challenged me to live up to what I could do, and it was Music Professor John Davison who demonstrated the deep love for every student who passed through his care, including me. I hope that I return both lessons with my own students.

I know the importance of respect. I cannot demand it from my students but must earn it, in large part by acting with respect towards them. It might be helpful were the media and many politicians and far too many parents not reinforcing a different attitude. In part it is because we do not pay teachers, and if they make so little, they cannot be that important, right? Except, as I might note, in one 45 minute period I spend more quality time with some of my students than they get from their parents, which is a different tragedy. Our society needs to reexamine how we value people, and not have such an emphasis on money and overt power.

The Henry Adams quote is one I have long cherished. The affects of my own teachers continue on me today. And I have now taught long enough to be no longer be surprised at some of the students who come back to thank me. It worries me that some of my longterm affects upon students might not be so salutary, which is one reason I try to be aware of how my words and actions can have impact far beyond their immediate purpose. I am only in my 13th year of teaching, but am already experiencing some of what Mary Bicouvaris writes about.

IF you are a parent, you have every right to demand that your children's teachers see them as individuals, but please remember yours may be one of almost 200 children that teacher deals with every day. If you want more personal attention for your child, demand smaller classrooms, lower student loads per teacher so that they are capable of giving that attention.

If you are a policy maker, remember that the decisions you make can support or prevent the kind of teaching environment that makes a difference in the life of a child. Teaching is about much more than cramming information into heads so that it can be given back on high stakes tests which really do not tell us all that much useful information.

All of us have had teachers. And even if we were too shy, or too stubborn, to express our thanks at the time, we can always drop a note or make a call, or if possible stop by and say hello, and thank those who made a difference for us. Sometimes we worry about the students who pass through our care, that we did not do enough, care enough, and it can help a teacher who is wondering whether to continue the struggle to hear of the differences s/he made. Sometimes that can be the one thing that keeps a teacher going for one more year.

I know I can make a difference. And I am not making these requests on my own behalf. But while I claim to speak for no one except myself, I also acknowledge that I have a voice - and a keyboard - that seems to be able to express in ways others may not be able to, to reach eyes and ears and minds to which many do not have access.

So this is my offering today. It is about the importance of teachers. You probably already know about that importance, but I figured a gentle reminder might not hurt.

Peace.

A New Majority of the Poor in Southern Public Schools

All across the South, small town businesses have been shuttered as new Super Wal-Marts spring up out on the bypasses, leaving the town squares weedy and broke, where people peck out a living from odd jobs and food stamps. Manufacturing jobs that once offered steady employment have been exported to China and India, where slave labor now makes the goods that show up on the toxic shelves of those southern Super Wal-Marts that offer the "everyday low prices" that the broke and destitute must now be thankful for.

The big houses on the west end of Main Street have been bought up by retiring yankees who have cashed out on Wall Street to enjoy their golden years in the sub-tropical glow of an imagined small town life that disappeared even before the original owners died. These new transplanted residents hire the illegals to cut their grass and clean their houses and boats down at the land-locked marina where the lake is disappearing. At night loud pickup trucks prowl the streets and roads, keeping alive an underground economy based on illicit trade, pot production, and the manufacture of crystal meth.

Back in the other world that most of us consider the real one, a new report from the Southern Education Foundation now shows that low income students constitute a majority of school populations in 11 out of 15 Southern states (AP piece here). A couple of their charts are included here (click charts to enlarge).

This is part of the picture in the new, New South, the hotter, drier one that is suffocating from an epidemic of morbid obesity, diabetes, neglect, and addiction--the one where anger is quickly replacing hope in those who have not yet entirely despaired.

Nooses in school yard trees? With the Federal government turning its back on civil rights enforcement and the economic, health, and education needs of its rural and small town people, I'm afraid you ain't seen nothing yet.

Cross-posted at Schools Matter

Democrats? Independent?

My work focuses primarily on neoconservative and neoliberal think tanks and their influence on ed. policy. Recently I�ve been taking a closer look at think tanks/organizations that claim to represent "democrats" or to be �independent.�

I know that many of you are aware of the Heritage Foundation, of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute, all organizations understood by myself and a number of others to lean heavily to the political right. But have you heard of the Democrats for Educational Reform or the Education Sector? I warrant several of you have not, so this post will serve as a brief introduction. Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll detail how these organizations generate consent for corporate friendly school reform.

Democrats for Educational Reform

Two years ago, a group of education reformers in New York and Washington, DC got together to see if an all-Democratic group could help nudge our party to press for real education reform. We were disheartened by the widespread failure of the public school system to give poor kids in America an opportunity to compete in the modern world, and we were frightened by our own party�s unwillingness to take on powerful entrenched interests to help them.

I am not sure which entrenched interests they mean, but given that Joe Williams runs the organization, I understand the phrase to mean unions.

A quick message to union members nationwide, most democrats pander to you like conservatives to evangelicals. At the same time, if there are individuals visiting this site who think the unions support teachers, teaching, or democracy, I�ll need you to explain Randi Weingarten�s, president of the United Federation of Teachers, agreement to implement merit pay based on test scores, and while you are at it, I could do with an explanation of the NEA�s determination to reauthorize NCLB without significant changes to AYP or privatization initiatives...

From the �What we stand for� section of DFER�s website:

� We support policies which stimulate the creation of new, accountable public schools and which simultaneously close down failing schools.
� We support mechanisms that allow parents to select excellent schools for their children, and where education dollars follow each child to their school.
� We support governance structures which hold leaders responsible, while giving them the tools to effectuate change. We believe in empowering mayors to lead urban school districts, so that they can be held accountable by the electorate.
� We support clearly-articulated national standards and expectations for core subject areas, while allowing states and local districts to determine how best to make sure that all students are reaching those standards.

The Democrats for Educational Reform include, but are not limited to:

� Boykin Curry � Eagle Capital, co-founder of Girls Prep Charter School, NYC.
� Tony Davis - Anchorage Capital, board chair for Achievement First in Brooklyn.
� Charlie Ledley - Cornwall Capital, NYC, board member and treasurer of Harlem Village Academy and Leadership Village Academy Charter Schools.
� Sara Mead - New America Foundation, former analyst for Education Sector and the Progressive Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.
� John Petry - Gotham Capital, co-founder of Harlem Success Academy Charter School, NYC.
� Andrew Rotherham - Member, Virginia Board of Education, co-director, Education Sector, former White House education advisor to President Clinton, author of the blog, Eduwonk.com.
� Whitney Tilson - T2 Partners and Tilson Funds, vice chairman of KIPP Academy Charter Schools in NYC, co-founder of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City.
� Caprice Young - President of the California Charter Schools Association, former president of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, and former assistant deputy mayor in Los Angeles.

These are the �democrats� for educational reform?

Is there a party speaking for democracy through education? If so, can you point me in that direction?

Education Sector

Founded in 2005 by Andrew J. Rotherham (former aid to Clinton and member of the Democrats for Educational Reform) and Thomas Toch, �Education Sector is an independent education think tank.� Claiming to be �nonpartisan� and �both a dependable source of sound thinking on policy and an honest broker of evidence in key education debates,� Education Sector produces both research and policy analysis and markets �outstanding work by the nation's most respected education analysts.� The �nonpartisan� and �independent� Education Sector�s Board of Directors, Research Advisory Board, and Non-Resident Fellows include individuals such as:

� Bruno V. Mano, a trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and longtime advocate for charter schools;
� Ira A. Fishman, �a national leader in educational technology, [who] was special counsel to the Federal Communications Commission during the commission's crafting of the E-Rate program for schools and libraries . . . .He served as the first Chief Executive Officer of the Schools and Libraries Corporation, the non-profit organization created to administer the E-Rate program.� The E-Rate program was riddled with fraud and millions of tax dollars were wasted and stolen;
� Eric Hanushek and Paul T. Hill, both members of the Hoover Institute�s Koret Task Force;
� Frederick M. Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute; and
� Various members of the Center for Reinventing Public Education, which �engages in research and analysis aimed at developing focused, effective, and accountable schools and the systems that support them.�

This list of individuals makes the following statement problematic at best and a flat-out lie at worst. I apologize for the long quote, but it speaks to the necessity for the creation of some body, some organization, active in both public and political spheres, working to negate �democratic� and/or �independent� propaganda.

Education policymaking in the United States suffers from a dearth of high-quality, independent analysis. Far too often, the quality of deliberation and decision-making on critical education issues is compromised by ideologically driven research and commentary. Important debates are dominated by the distorted claims and counterclaims of individuals and institutions with ideological or political agendas. Many policymakers and the public, as a result, simply don't trust much of the evidence put before them on key education questions. In a 2003 survey by the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, a large majority of journalists covering education dismissed most education research as �ideologically motivated.� The journalists told surveyors that they �hunger for assistance from an objective, neutral source� in education debates. There is thus a tremendous need for a new, rigorously independent voice in education policymaking. Education Sector will be such a voice, an organization devoted to innovative solutions to the nation's most pressing educational problems, a source of sound thinking on education policy and an honest broker of evidence in key education debates in Washington and nationally. Education Sector will produce rigorous, independent research and analysis on a wide range of elementary-, secondary-, and higher-education topics. We will eschew the ideological orthodoxies that have polarized the national debate on so many education issues. We believe that public officials, journalists, business leaders, and the public at large will embrace education reform if they believe such reform is justified by solid, independent evidence. Education Sector will play a key role in producing such evidence and making it readily understandable to a broad audience of policymakers, the media, and other opinion-makers with the power to leverage meaningful change in American education.

Take a look again at the people running the Sector and explain to me how they can "eschew the ideological orthodoxies that have polarized the national debate on so many education issues."

The Education Sector is one of many, hundreds perhaps, organizations �producing evidence and making it readily understandable to a broad audience.� As this �evidence� is produced and distributed, where are we? And here I mean the we on this blog as well as the �we� in organizations such as AESA, followed by the �we� in academia who believe children, and this country, deserve more than what they've been fed for, well depending on who you ask, the last 200 some odd years.

At present organizations such as these dominate policy making. I�m interested in ending that dominance. Perhaps the problem is that we have not pushed ideology enough. The belief that education should serve democracy is an ideological position, is it not? Perhaps we need to do a better job of marketing that brand...

The Week in Ed Science Links

Rush, Little Baby

How the push for infant academics may actually be a waste of time - or worse.

What works in education: the lessons according to McKinsey

Now, an organization from outside the teaching fold�McKinsey, a consultancy that advises companies and governments�has boldly gone where educationalists have mostly never gone: into policy recommendations based on the PISA findings. Schools, it says*, need to do three things: get the best teachers; get the best out of teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind.

Social Decision-Making: Insights from Game Theory and Neuroscience

By combining the models and tasks of Game Theory with modern psychological and neuroscientific methods, the neuroeconomic approach to the study of social decision-making has the potential to extend our knowledge of brain mechanisms involved in social decisions and to advance theoretical models of how we make decisions in a rich, interactive environment.

Lifted from Bookforum.com: The tickle monster needs to lie down now

From Vision, a review of Nurture the Nature: Understanding and Supporting Your Child�s Unique Core Personality by Michael Gurian; Right From Wrong: Instilling a Sense of Integrity in Your Child by Michael Riera and Joseph Di Prisco; Raising Kids with Character: Developing Trust and Personal Integrity in Children by Elizabeth Berger; and Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues That Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing by Michele Borba. The power of birth order: Parents insist that how kids turn out depends on when they were born, and more and more, science agrees. The tickle monster needs to lie down now: Why don't parents like to play with their kids? Snooze or Lose: Overstimulated, overscheduled kids are getting at least an hour�s less sleep than they need, a deficiency that, new research reveals, has the power to set their cognitive abilities back years.

Adventures in the wheel of consciousness

Ekai Txapartegi (UC-Berkley): Functionalism and the Qualia Wars. Tan Kock Wah (Sarawak): Heterophenomenology Debunked. A review of Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness by Daniel C. Dennett. A review of Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World by Christopher D. Frith. An interview with Tim Crane on how the mind relates to the body. A review of When the Impossible Happens: Adventures in Non-ordinary Reality by Stanislav Grof. With consciousness, there is no agreement on anything, except it's very difficult. An article on the ethics of erasing a bad memory. A review of The Head Trip: Adventures on The Wheel of Consciousness by Jeff Warren (and more).

Report: Are Private High Schools Better Academically Than Public High Schools?

This study, based on an analysis of the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988-2000, finds that, once family background characteristics are taken into account, low-income students attending public urban high schools generally performed as well academically as students attending private high schools. The study also found that students attending traditional public high schools were as likely to attend college as those attending private high schools. In addition, the report also finds that young adults who had attended any type of private high school were no more likely to enjoy job satisfaction or to be engaged in civic activities at age 26 than those who had attended traditional public high schools.

5 Myths About That Demon Crack

At the peak of the panic over crack cocaine in the mid-1980s, Congress passed a rash of laws requiring longer prison sentences. One such law created a 100-to-1 disparity between crack and cocaine offenses. You have to get caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine -- but only five grams of crack cocaine -- to get a mandatory minimum sentence of five years.

A Sleepless Brain is a Sensitive, Angry Brain

On a poor night's sleep, tiny problems often seem large, and large problems become utterly defeating. That, at least, is how it feels -- and now neuroscientists have imaged the pessimism as it happens.

Ten Principles of Feminist Economics: A Modestly Proposed Antidote

Since such lists represent what are widely proclaimed (by their authors) as universally accepted principles and therefore worthy of teaching to students, we might also wonder about the missing or other perspectives. Despite the inherent dangers of constructing a list that purports to cover the key economic ideas of any perspective, in this paper we yield to temptation and offer a feminist alternative to these standard principles of economics.

The Economic Power -- And Pitfalls -- Of Positive Thinking

In general, people who are optimistic are more likely than others to display prudent financial behaviors, according to new research. In small doses optimism can lead to wise decision making, but extreme optimists "display financial habits and behavior that are generally not considered prudent," according to researchers.

Resistance To Thoughts Of Chocolate Is Futile

Thought suppression can lead people to engage in the very behaviour they are trying to avoid, according to new research. The study also found that men who think about chocolate end up eating more of it than women who have the same thoughts.

Brain Activity Differs For Creative And Noncreative Thinkers

Why do some people solve problems more creatively than others? Are people who think creatively different from those who tend to think in a more methodical fashion? Scientists found a distinct pattern of brain activity, even at rest, in people who tend to solve problems with a sudden creative insight -- an "Aha! Moment" -- compared to people who tend to solve problems more methodically.

Most Parents Can Accurately Evaluate Their Teen's Substance Abuse, Study Says

Addiction research suggests that most parents are aware of and accurately evaluate the extent of their teenager's cigarette smoking, marijuana use, drinking and overall substance use.

'Where Do I Know You From?' Recognition Shows Distinct Memory Processes

New research suggests that the sometimes eerie feeling experienced when recognizing someone, yet failing to remember how or why, reveals important insight into how memory is wired in the human brain.

Let's draw low-income students into college

University of Texas system chancellor Mark Yudof argues that we should give low-income families some clue about their financial aid status before their children's senior year in high school. As he explains, the details are very tough to manage, but it's a smart idea, and it should be part of the breadcrumb trail to college we need to leave for students from low- and moderate-income families.

4 Million Dollars and 24 New School Nurses: Beyond Pedagogy to Collective Power (Community Organizing and Urban Education)

To read the entire series, go here.

WINNING CONCESSIONS

Last week, in the just-passed Wisconsin State budget, a couple of lines give four million dollars (in new state and federal money) to the Milwaukee Public Schools for 24 school nurses.

Sometimes it�s hard to trace the influences behind policy changes. But in this case, I know for certain that these lines in the budget are a direct result of the work done by myself and a small number of leaders in Milwaukee�s MOVE congregational organizing group. It is because of MOVE and our work that thousands of the poorest students in Milwaukee will have health services that they did not have before.

BE LIKE ME?

Most of us spend a lot of time working with teachers, or writing articles. Few of us spend any time working to generate power to contest the forces that prevent our ideas and pedagogical advice from leading to significant change.

Some have misread or misheard me as arguing that everyone should do what �I� do, and that anything else is worthless. This isn�t my argument at all. Many of us do very important work, and I�m working, myself, on a book about Dewey and democratic theory. So I�d be a hypocrite if I said everyone should put their pens down and get out of schools and join organizing groups.

The problem is not that everyone needs to change. People have different skills and gifts. Teachers need to learn to teach, and we still need to think about how to teach better.

THE NEED TO CHANGE DIRECTION

The problem is that work on schools is almost ALL we do, and it is NOT ENOUGH. Our focus has remained so narrowly on teacher education that we constantly ignore the fact that pedagogical and administrative skills aren�t really the core problems facing inner-city children.

What have we really done to change the reality of inner-city public schools and, more importantly, the success of students coming out of these schools in the last four decades or so? Maybe we�ve kept things from getting worse. Have we made things better on any broad scale? The honest answer would have to be: NO.

For the vast majority of children in inner-city schools, WE HAVE FAILED. I�m not sure how anyone could honestly argue anything else.

Furthermore, in an article I published a couple of years ago, I showed that the field has developed NO effective models for bringing inner-city schools into any significant authentic interaction with impoverished communities. Except in relatively rare (and always tenuous) circumstances, the institution of schooling in America lacks any significant capacity for healthy community engagement. In other words, a focus on schooling as our only task inherently rules out any real collaboration with communities.

Baldly stated, however, without empowered communities, we will not be able to change schools.

Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

ORGANIZING AS ONE OPTION

Community organizing is one of a number of different strategies for generating community power and consensus in impoverished areas that are increasingly oppressed in America. Elsewhere I have discussed some of these other approaches, but organizing is the one I am most familiar with. So when I talk incessantly about organizing it�s not because it�s the only answer, but because it�s an effective answer that I know something about.

Community organizing is not about winning on individual issues. It is about generating durable POWER for communities that currently lack power.

Winning these 24 new school nurses for MPS schools represents the most significant effect my work has ever had on actual students in schools. Yet this specific win, by itself, is not the goal. The point is that we were able to get the State and the district to pay attention to MOVE. Success in one arena, in the ideal, builds a reputation for effectiveness that can support other efforts in the future. For example, we are moving forward to look at dental services in impoverished urban schools in Wisconsin. I am able to sit at tables with other stakeholders and work together on a campaign to improve dental services not because I am a professor or because I know much about teeth (I don�t) but because I am a representative of MOVE.

WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

Schools of education as institutions should start making community empowerment a part of their core charge, institutionally. It�s not enough for a few individual professors to do this on their own time.

There are all kinds of worries about what can happen when academics get involved in community activities. But the fact is that there is desperate need for more resources of all kinds in impoverished communities if they are going to gain any significant power at all to resist and act. At the least, scholars bring with them the capacity to read scholarship. As Oakes and Rogers and others have shown, this can be an extremely important contribution to community efforts. And there are other ways to participate.

But in the long term, to be helpful without being harmful, we need to bring real expertise about community engagement and action into our faculties�either by gaining that experience ourselves, or hiring people who have it.

And we need to get beyond our focus�our obsession�with teacher and administrator education as sufficient, in itself, as a path towards long-term improvement in the future life success of inner-city kids.

To be honest, I don�t think any of this will really happen on any significant scale.

It is possible, however, that the field of foundations�because of its interdisciplinary nature, its amorphous focus, and its concern with equity more broadly�may be one of the most promising places for change. In fact, as Dan Butin and I argued at AESA, community engagement as a scholarly arena and as a source of enrollment might actually provide one avenue for saving foundations in American education. But that�s for another post.

[P.S.: If we don�t learn more about how POWER works, and about how to influence the powerful, we can�t hope for much impact in the policy arena (NCLB?) either.]