We are not calling for an end to ESEA and to suggest otherwise is to engage in a lie. We want all of NCLB's provisions undone and a return to ESEA pre NCLB.
Since NCLB only added accountability measures, the Education Roundtable wants to go back to those halcyon days when the feds' role was to "slop the hogs" with money and educators would feed hungrily at the trough without anyone looking over their shoulder. That kids and taxpayers were the only special interests that weren't benefiting from such a system does not seem to bother the Education Roundtable.
Let's hit some of the more unintentionally hilarious points made in the petition. According to the Roundtable, NCLB needs to go because:
8. Reflects and perpetuates massive distrust of the skill and professionalism of educators.
I'm speechless. Let's say I go take my driver's test and fail the exam. Would other drivers have reason to distrust my driving skills?
12. Applies standards to discrete subjects rather than to larger goals such as insightful children, vibrant communities, and a healthy democracy.
Now those are standards that I'd like to see--state standards for evaluating when children are insightful, when communities are vibrant, and democracies are healthy. Hopefully, schools will teach to the test and devote the morning to teaching insightfulness and the afternoons to teaching vibrancy. Hopefully, they'll do a better job teaching these subjects than they did teaching math and reading.
10. Emphasizes minimum content standards rather than maximum development of human potential.
11. Neglects the teaching of higher order thinking skills which cannot be evaluated by machines.
Have you ever seen a person with higher order thinking skills who couldn't answer basic skills-type questions? No? Me neither. If anything, NCLB has shown that schools aren't doing a very good job imparting basic skills, let alone those elusive higher order thinking skills. Let's stick to baby steps.
5. Ignores the proven inadequacies, inefficiencies, and problems associated with centralized, "top-down" control.
Isn't that the existing problem? Public schools have always been run in a centralized, "top-down" manner.
1. Misdiagnoses the causes of poor educational development, blaming teachers and students for problems over which they have no control.
It may not be true that those that can't do, teach. But what is becoming increasingly obvious is that those that can't teach want to shift blame.
Funny Update One: The Rountablers are attacking in the comments and showing us that non sequiturs, logical fallacies, and blind adherence to ideology don't make for compelling arguments. You're being ridiculed in the edusphere and your saner liberal allies have hung you out to dry. Time to reevaluate your position. First rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging. They do seem itching for a fight. Maybe Edspresso will host one of their week-long debates. You listening, Ryan?
Update Two: Once again I've profitted from heeding the advice of America's greatest president, Calvin Coolidge, who once said “If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.” In this case my inestimable band of frequent commenters have fought back the swarm of tinfoil-hat-wearing roundtablers much better than I could have.
27 comments:
So the table is against applying "standards to discrete subjects" and prefers insight, vibrancy and democracy. (Why both can't be had beats me).
At the same time, the table complains that other discrete subjects are driven out:
14. Drives art, foreign language, physical education, music, geography, history, civics and other non-tested subjects out of the curriculum, especially in low-income neighborhoods. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Why bother with any subject if vibrancy is the goal?
The table also complains about
"minimum content standards." Maybe the thing to do is to have maximum content standards for all subjects. But then it might interfere with vibrancy.
YAWN.
Your cutsie deconstruction of a document hammered out by practicing educators is almost entertaining.
Are you still practicing law or do you do stand up comedy full-time?
I have no time to leave a long comment showing how wrong you are,
so what do you say to a one-on-one debate?
I am sure we can find a radio station to facilitate it, and with your razor wit and refined intelligence, i'm sure you'd destroy me.
Philip Kovacs
Director, Educator Roundtable.
Standards-based accountability tranlates into teaching to the test. If school was boring and irrelevant to the lives of kids before, NCLB and other similar state-level programs that pre-existed it (e.g., The New ABCs of Education in NC) make things worse. Our best and most creative teachers can't stand the current conditions. Hence, we're suffering a growing teacher shortage. It's going to get worse.
Opposing NCLB is also NOT Bush-bashing. There were plenty of Dems who pushed this brand of "ed reform" before Bush.
But what's most important about NCLB is that it's not intended to improve schools. It's designed to
1.) control the labor of teachers so that schools don't teach dangerous ideas (i.e., anything that doesn't encourage passive obedience to corporate power and the security state that enforces corporate power all domestically as well as internationally), and 2.) set schools up to fail in order to justify handing the management of schools over to private corporations who will do a better job of ensuring #1.
If you think FoxNews is propaganda for the business class, wait until you get a load of FoxSchools.
David Gabbard
Educator Roundtable
I'm fascinated and dismayed by your comparison of a driver to a teacher. To extend the metaphor, all students are cars which simply need to be driven. One merely need wait in line and pass a vision test in order to continue driving. What fun it will be to run children like cars! In fact, rather than returning to the halcyon days of ESEA (a reading you provided, yet nowhere in the Ed Roundtable site can I find mention of halcyon days of any sort in the history of education), let's turn back the clock to Fordism at its finest. Oh wait, no need. In education we never left the factory model of schooling.
There are a number of other misreadings you provide your audience, and I highly encourage you to accept the invitation given by the Ed Roundtable Director, Philip Kovacs.
Misrepresentation is what served to establish NCLB in the first place, please don't work to further perpetuate such irresponsibility.
Well, if there were any doubt that the education roundtable folks were left-wing wackjobs, they've dashed them.
"control the labor of teachers so that schools don't teach dangerous ideas (i.e., anything that doesn't encourage passive obedience to corporate power and the security state that enforces corporate power all domestically as well as internationally"
Pardon me while I snort -- derisively, yet nurturingly.
rightwing prof...after reading your profile, i'm not sure you are in any position to level the term "nutjob" against anyone save yourself.
"12. Applies standards to discrete subjects rather than to larger goals such as insightful children, vibrant communities, and a healthy democracy."
Since the tablers venture in here, maybe they can explain if there is a connection (correlative or causal or even casual) between subject matter mastery and vibrancy. If there is, what's wrong with expecting subject matter mastery? Wouldn't such mastery promote vibrancy?
I have been scratching my head all day and would appreciate a clarification.
So the keeper of this sight and others who hang out here think that teaching to the test (drill and kill) is a healthy pedagogical approach for sustaining a democratic civic culture? Talk about making people giggle!
And before you go calling people nutjobs, why don't you study the matter? Read the history of propaganda and corporate pressure to downsize democracy, not just in schools, but in media and other spheres.
Mr. Kovacs,
If Mr. DeRosa declines your invitation, I would be happy to debate you.
My link to Petition to Jettison NCLB-What A Joke will give you a link to my email. We can certainly talk privately there.
I think your proposition to be naive at best and demonstrates the very sort of "leadership" that has lead our schools astray in the first place.
I don't believe that the education roundtable really exists. And I don't believe that the so-called comments by the "roundtablers" are real either. They're just too ridiculous to be believable. Even educators can't be that stupid. You're just making this stuff up to draw attention to your blog.
Any pedagogical approach that results in students being unable to read and do basic math as demonstarted by their inability to pass the simplistic tests that states have developed in response to NCLB is detrimental to "sustaining a democratic civic culture." That would be a minimum level of competency we should expect. We should expect more and NCLB does not prevent us from expecting or obtaining more.
How do you "downsize" democracy?
This is truly a disgusting essay.
If I didn't see so much pain, so much harm come out of NCLB compliance, perhaps I could tolerate your irresponsible comments.
I can't help but believe that your arrogance is somehow related to your distance from the ugly realities in our schools.
My children, our students are being tortured systematically in their own neighborhood schools.
Their teachers are gagged and bound to policy that flies in the face of everything they have learned, have experienced, and know about teaching.
If this situation is one to mock, I can only tell you how truly sorry I am that there are people like you who can laugh when others are suffering.
The intentions of the Educator Roundtable are nothing to be mocked. And the negative comments you extend to a strong contingency of educators, parents, and other people who care so deeply about public education leaves me wondering exactly what your stake is here.
If you think you are clever, and you need to bash someone, write about something less important than our children and our teachers.
In response to Ken's update: you bet I'm listening. If any of the folks with the Education Roundtable would be interested in doing a week-long debate, please drop me a line--I would be happy to set it up.
My children, our students are being tortured systematically in their own neighborhood schools.
Why on earth are you leaving your children in schools where they are being tortured? What sort of monster are you?
And if other children being tortured, then for heaven's sake call the police.
I assume however that you are indulging in hyperbole here. No one wants kids to be tortured in schools. The debate is between those who want all kids to learn to read and do basic maths, and those who are happy with an educational system that fails 30% of kids.
Their teachers are gagged and bound to policy that flies in the face of everything they have learned, have experienced, and know about teaching.
Given that the schools were failing to teach about 30% of kids to read to even a basic level, (see http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/facts/reading_facts.html)
who cares what teachers have learnt, experienced and know about teaching?
Only those teachers who have successfully and reliably taught even disadvantaged kids to read (as measured by independent tests) have useful views. The reason the NCLB was introduced was due to the historic failure of the vast majority of teachers to teach all kids (bar those with significant cognitive disabilities) to read and do basic maths (or anything else). Teachers are currently not professionals and they, en masse, do not have a history of producing effective outcomes.
control the labor of teachers so that schools don't teach dangerous ideas (i.e., anything that doesn't encourage passive obedience to corporate power and the security state that enforces corporate power all domestically as well as internationally)
I think you are displaying a lack of knowledge of history here. Very few revolutions, for better or worse, have been lead by those who are illiterate. The leaders of the American Revolution, the French Revolution, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Frederick Douglass, all of them were literate. Some of these revolutionary leaders I approve of, others I don't, but there is no historical reason to believe that teaching all kids to read and do basic maths will close their minds to dangerous ideas or increase obedience (of any sort) to the state.
By failing to teach kids how to read or do basic maths schools are currently contributing to not teaching dangerous ideas - after all the kids are far more limited in how they can come across said dangerous ideas if they can't read. Political participation is greater amongst the literate than the illiterate.
2.) set schools up to fail in order to justify handing the management of schools over to private corporations who will do a better job of ensuring #1.
Judging by these comments here, this will indeed be the result of the NCLB (apart from the fact that literate people historically don't seem to be particularly obedient). However, if educational professionals actually got serious about teaching reading and basic maths, this fate could be avoided. Ken De Rosa has quite a bit of stuff here on effective teaching models - why not browse this site and make use of it?
Not only will you avoid your school being handed over to different governance, you will achieve the much more important goal of increasing the numbers of people who can read and do basic maths, and therefore increase their life options, not just for work but politically and socially as well.
"You think Ted Kennedy and John Kerry are part of a cabal to hand the management of schools over to private corporations? Since the two honorables, along with quite a few other legislators not noted for their slavish devotion to the almighty corporation, voted for NCLB it seems unlikely that licking the boots of the capitalist exploiters is what they had in mind. Maybe you could explain why Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Joseph Biden, Richard Durbin, Carl Levin, Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton found something of sufficient value in NCLB to vote for the bill? Take your time."
Don't demonstrate your lack of understanding of American politics. The Business Roundtable has very close ties with most of these Democrats through the DLC. And don't forget, the Dems are still just the moderate (not-fascist) branch of the US business party. So, bringing up the names of the DLC faithful does nothing to dispute my point.
I bet you thought you'd set me on my heels by bringing up those names, eh? "Take my time?" Didn't take much, trust me. And before you even go there, the Dems were BIG proponen ts of NCLB because Dems had done similar things in states (e.g. North Carolina), and most of the ideas behind NCLB came from a Democratic Party Think Tank. Further, A Democratic lawyer from Texas (Sandy Kress) was Bush's front man on NCLB.
So this is NOT a partisan issue. It's one of the biggest challenges we face in trying to liberate students and teachers from the standards-based accountability system of enslavement to the tests.
This is an older piece, but it's important background.
http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=15
America's greatest president, Calvin Coolidge
Please tell me your tongue was in your cheek when you wrote that.
What a sorry set of "reasons".
All I do is tell parents to look at the actual questions on the test. Look at how few questions a student has to get correct to pass the minimal NCLB proficiency cutoff for their state. Chances are, however, it will be difficult to have anyone explain the formula to them. That's because the cutoff is extremely low. Parents would be horrified. Schools get great mileage from this confusion. Our public schools are "High Performing and Improving", but that refers only to getting most kids over a very minimal hurdle. Parents think it has to do with the quality of the education.
Good schools should laugh at these tests. Good schools should have plenty of time to do whatever fuzzy, high level, world expanding teaching they want. It's never been a question of either/or. These "reasons" are really just excuses. At best, they are just opinions. They know that many parents disagree completely and want to set much higher grade-level expectations of content and skills. The Education Roundtable wants to maintain the monopoly and to impose their own opinion of education on everyone else - at least those who can't afford to send their kids to another school. The arrogance is quite awesome.
Choice is not just about market forces. It's about giving parents the option to get far, far away from the educational thinking shown by the Education Roundtable's "reasons".
Maybe someone should point out to the anti-standards crowd that Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Joseph Biden, Richard Durbin, Carl Levin, Harry Reid and Hillary Cliton all set their children to (private) schools where discrete subjects were taught to very high standards and no one worried about about the vibrancy of the school or making the students insightful.
Would the parents of children at St Albans or the Dalton School tolerate the sophmoric ramblings of the anti-NCLB crowd? I doubt it.
"rightwing prof...after reading your profile, i'm not sure you are in any position to level the term "nutjob" against anyone save yourself."
No, just Marxist nutjobs who seem to think the mission of education is social engineering instead of education. The Marxist nutjobs who are the reason I have to waste my time teaching my students the knowledge the should have learned in high school but didn't, because they were being taught "higher order thinking skills" instead of actual knowledge.
It's one of the biggest challenges we face in trying to liberate students and teachers from the standards-based accountability system of enslavement to the tests.
Because of course kids are so liberated when they don't learn to read.
Do you guys listen to yourselves? What is the point of schools if they are not to teach all kids (barring the severely cognitively disabled) to read and write and do basic maths?
"Because of course kids are so liberated when they don't learn to read."
Judging by the rhetoric of the tablers, they are followers of the screwball ideology of Freire and of so-called critical pedagogy. Critical Demagogues
In the view of these hallucinators, learnng fundamentals contributes to the enslavement of the masses. I am not sure how, but I guess it serves corporate oppressors.
Hey there now, Tracy -- Who says the severely cognitively disabled can't be taught to read and do basic math? Maria Montessori would shudder at the thought! :)
If teachers actually possessed the characteristics of "vibrancy" and "creativity" and so on, then don't you think maybe they should apply those characteristics to make "teaching to the test" enjoyable?
Anything which helps master the subject can be "teaching to the test." You can do your drilling in the form of a game show (any game show). You can do a swap meet - pass out number cards and have the students trade them until they can form an equation to get the desired results. Let me see, I have a 6 and a 5 I need the result 9 - who has a 4 or a 3 to trade?
Anything that works the desired skill is practicing.
If you can't do the basics, there is no such thing as mastery for you.
Teachers need to do a reality check, and apply their own rhetoric to themselves. They're the ones in need of increased creativity.
Twill -- But wouldn't that actually require effort?
My children, our students are being tortured systematically in their own neighborhood schools.
I have read NONE of this thread yet....but this caught my eye.
In my district it's the parents being tortured.
Seriously.
Of course, some of the kids are looking a bit hang-dog.....
hmm
I might have to take that back.
A friend of mine visited the middle school recently (something none of us is supposed to do) and came back reporting that the place is being run with security measures so tight you don't see them inside govt buildings.
She said her own 6th grader is getting demoralized.
I'm not surprised. Put an 11-year old boy inside an institution with a sign-in/sign-out system for the bathroom and 25-year old unmarried childless female teachers handing out Fs for binder organization in math class ("My goal is to encourage students to take ownership of their learning") and, ok, you're not talking torture, but you're also not talking POSITIVE ATMOSPHERE FOSTERING HIGH ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT.
Why don't I go read the thread now?
do you know what's really nice Ken?
success.
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