I haven’t looked into this in great detail, so if any of you know more about the issue, please expand, but I find this kind of think to be tragic:
I was devastated by Michael Winerip’s article on how the No Child Left Behind Act has affected the creative teaching at a New Hampshire middle school. It used to be that eighth graders at Oyster River Middle School chose semester-long “genre” projects in English class. They’d pick “a subject area like mysteries, read masters like Agatha Christie, study the writer’s craftsmanship (‘Explain how the author foreshadows doom’), then draft their own.” In science class they would spend two weeks building a real underwater vessel; in social studies they reenacted the Boston Massacre.
But No Child Left Behind is changing all that. Based on the law’s annual progress requirements toward 100 percent proficiency by 2014, 69 percent of New Hampshire schools are failing. Oyster River is one of them, largely because of the scores of a dozen of its 110 special education students. The bottom line? The school will cut back on its mainstreaming of special-ed kids (unfortunate in itself) and start aggressively teaching to the test. Its new motto, Mr. Winerip reports, is “Fill the Box.”
In a related vein, I read in the local paper a couple of weeks ago that one of the surrounding states run by a wingnut governor (I can’t remember if it was Kasich’s Ohio or Corbett in PA) was radically cutting back arts, music, and phys ed with sharp budget cuts. I can’t draw a stick man or carry a tune in a bucket, but I consider myself very lucky that I had really good art and music classes both in public school and for the few years I went to a private school. I still remember hating carrying that damned saxophone in the clunky faux-alligator skin case up the ginormous hill, but my art and music classes still stick out in my memory. I even remember what instruments my friends played, and that was 30 years ago. I also hated those stupid damned recorders, fwiw. But back on point- a basic understanding and appreciation of art and music is a vital portion of any education, as those things makes us what we are as humans. Every culture finds its roots in food, music, and art, and to ignore that is to ignore the better aspects of what civilization has produced over the last several thousand years. Everyone likes to talk about the genius of Steve Jobs, but what made Steve Jobs a genius is his devices made it easier to deliver and create art and music in the computer age.
It’s a god damned shame what is happening.
Walker
The Yglesias rejoinder, is that if the students are still failing, then the creative methods cannot be that effective. And that would mean something if the tests were actually a good assessment of learning. But they aren’t, and that is why NCLB is causing so much damage.
Gilles de Rais
My wife’s a high school teacher.
I can’t say too much about the circumstances, but she’s run afoul of her administration and as a result has been given a ton of special ed students (who, by law, have to be placed in mainstream classes) by way of retaliation.
This drops her scores and makes her look like a bad teacher.
No Child Left Behind has been a godsend to vindictive administrations all over the United States. Let the maniacs (like the superintendent of Los Angeles Unified) who want to tie teacher pay and retention to test scores have their way and it will be game over for the teaching profession – which, needless to say, has been their intent all along.
Mowgli
This has been going on since NCLB was passed. My sister-in-law has been an educator for 20 years in three different states and she has told me many times how appalling the impact of NCLB has been on creativity in the classroom. We are not only churning out kids who have been pummeled with rote facts, we are driving creative and inspired teachers out of education as it transforms into another form of factory work.
cathyx
With less money coming from the state, all public schools have had to cut back. My daughter’s school district is in jeopardy of cutting so many days, the the seniors will not have enough required school days to graduate. Not sure what the plan is for that.
singfoom
Critical thinking will just get you in trouble. In order for a more perfect corporate union, we must have more docile drones. Nice drones that do what they are told, understand rote instructions and can accomplish tasks by themselves.
Arts and music just encourage the drones to be individuals, and we know how caustic that can be to a well run machine.
Villago Delenda Est
Our Galtian overlords do not want creative serfs.
They want compliant drones who will die on a battlefield or in a factory or on a farm for the glory of the Galtian overlords.
Arclite
I agree. PE is almost non-existent at my daughter’s school (4th grade): Once a week. We had it almost every day when I was in elementary school. I have to supplement with swim team at park and rec a few days a week. Same with art, almost non-existent, so I have her enrolled in hula, and occasionally some other class like ukulele, pottery, or cooking, again at park and rec.
Kids need an hour of exercise per day for good health. The system is failing us in this regard. And America’s great advantage has been its creativity. If we emphasize rote learning, we will sacrifice that creativity. Obviously there needs to be some standard of academic learning for schools, but you can’t really measure creativity on a test, so it can’t be tested for. Time and resources need to be allotted for creativity, and that’s not happening.
arguingwithsignposts
But did you carry the sax uphill both ways?
Violet
Are the expensive private schools that the children of our overlords attend cutting art and music classes and following the NCLB dictums? Or is the stuff like NCLB just for peons who don’t go to fancypants schools?
Martin
Our 21st century education motto:
Everything kids need to know, they can learn from Ayn Rand.
Dave
NCLB reminds me so much of the old English rote learning system, where facts were hammered into students. Which is great for reciting Shakespeare. Not so great for creating people that can be creative and adapt to different situations.
What this kind of schooling will do is kill the creative spark that enabled so much growth in recent decades. And it ignores a key fact: kids learn in different way. My son, for example, is a visual learner. If you tell him to do something, he struggles. If you show him how to do it, he gets it right away. Put instructions down on paper so he can read it and he has no problems. NCLB ignores things like this and creates a “one size fits all” mentality that is harmful to educators and students alike.
Samara Morgan
NCLB is a market based policy. Schools are funded by performance on standardized tests. Alas, its impossible to make all children in America “proficient”, unless schools teach to the test.
And unfortunately, the rest of the world is not taking Americas test.
That is why America is currently 25th in science and 30th in mathematics.
Zifnab
My high school saw an exodus of good teachers since the law passed. I remember asking my kid sister about this teach or that teacher that I loved when I was enrolled, and she said they’d all retired. When I went back and started asking around, the general response was “The school started getting very linear in what it allowed teachers to cover and what activities the teachers could schedule. So a lot of the teachers just took that as a reason to transfer or retire early.”
NTLB, like so many other Bush initiatives, has been a god damn disaster. What a surprise.
Yevgraf
COLE, WHY DO YOU GOLDURN LIBRULS HATE ACCOUNTABILITY? DON’T YOU LIKE THE IDEA OF HOLDING THEM UNION PARASITE SOCIETY SUCKING EDUMACATORS TO A MERITORIACRATICAL SET OF STANDARDS????!?!?!?!
Anyway, I’ve been suffering through educational accountability in my state for my kids’ entire academic careers, but it has been exacerbated by NCLB. My younger two haven’t had educations worth a shit, and their creative abilities have not been tapped in the academic realm, so everything we’ve done has come at great cost.
twiffer
the arts and humanities are always on the chopping block for schools. if people bother to raise an outcry, they shut ’em down by threatening to cut football instead.
that was the state when i was in high school, in the glory days of grunge. i assume that was the state prior.
rote memorization is mostly useless. critical thinking skills are what need to be taught; arts and humanities aid this. thinking citizens tend to, however, ask questions.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Destroying this for everyone except the Galtian ruling class is a feature, not a bug. How can we have a 2nd Dark Ages if we don’t turn out the lights?
Villago Delenda Est
I see Singfoom and I are on the same page.
Emma
@Villago Delenda Est: We have a winner.
A friend of mine, a former elementary school teacher, once told me that the American school system was being deliberately redesigned to provide fodder for wars and minimum-wage jobs. I accused her of being a cynic. I am taking this chance to apologize wholeheartedly. She was right.
S. cerevisiae
@singfoom: Goddamn 1000 times THIS. I’ve learned as much about doing science in my philosophy classes as in any pure science course. Critical thinking is a skill that needs to be taught, and you can’t do that by only teaching rote memorization.
The Moar You Know
@Violet: From the Department of Education:
So yeah, for the peons.
Samara Morgan
@Mowgli: just wait until No Teacher Left Behind gets going.
:)
evinfuilt
@Violet:
I assume you already know the answer. In fact you’ll find them selling heavily on the amount of arts and creative learning methods.
I sometimes wonder if our public schools will in the end become more like military schools (or those hell camps that get in the news for abusing children.) I’m sure thats the goal of defunding and teaching to the test. If schools don’t offer a real education, either go to the military school (there’s always another war against those people, and “we’re” not sending our kids) or go to the factory (once we get rid of those silly child labor laws and minimum wage, then when you’re hired for a job the boss requires you to bring in your kids for 80 hours a week
Martin
When my kids were trying to choose an instrument, and hit the point that they couldn’t decide, I told them to choose the smaller one.
Adults seem to be quite well dialed into the fact that you’ll carry a 5oz cellphone every day without issue, but make it 9oz and you’ll find every excuse in the book to leave it at home, or just get rid of it. Somehow, we never think that our kids will tire of of the trombone simply because they hate lugging 7 pounds to school and home every day.
If harmonica had been an instrument choice, I’d have signed my kids up for it in a second. At least they’d have an instrument they might actually play into adulthood if they choose to not be a professional musician.
Gin & Tonic
The way NCLB is structured also means “don’t let any child get too far ahead,” which is tragic for those who can master the material quickly and want to move forward as in, for example, math.
RosiesDad
Corbett has instituted massive cuts to school districts and state colleges.
http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/budget_reform/030811-education-slammed-in-pa.-budget-cuts
The costs are then passed along to the community as school kids and their parents do whatever they can to raise money to keep programs running. Its a free market thing. And in my Republican township, the school board and the township are fairly determined not to raise taxes of any sort to meet shortfalls.
Disgusting.
PeakVT
Schools must do better, but school budgets must be cut.
Sounds like a good way to wreck public education.
peach flavored shampoo
Why are the Special Ed students getting something special? Why cant all students get the special treatment? Aren’t they, in effect, leaving a large number of students specially behind?
Lysana
My mother-in-law retired from teaching in no small part because of NCLB. She hated how she was forced to teach to tests and other metrics without enough resources to actually get the kids to like learning.
I, too, remember hearing in the 1980’s how the schools were turning into little better than factories. My public school experience didn’t speak to that, but I was in good schools even with working-class surroundings (yeah, white working class with enough richer people to skew the standards and before people started passing school-killing property tax laws).
Shit like this is why I’m glad I didn’t breed. Homeschooling would have been the only way I could’ve managed to survive watching my kids grow up. And I may mean that literally; the grind of watching my children face NCLB may’ve done me in.
gene108
@Zifnab:
The budget cuts in school districts, at the state and local levels, because of the Great Recession has accelerated the retirements and compounded them with lay-offs; teaching is no longer trading in pay for job security, it is a lose-lose proposition.
From talking with teachers, Obama’s “Race to the Top” is basically doubling down on the same kind of NCLB stupidity, for all intents and purposes.
Teachers, right now, are a mighty angry lot because of cut benefits and increased class sizes, due to retirements and lay-offs, i.e. more work, less pay and more bureaucratic bullshit does not make teachers happy.
@Arclite:
But India turns out more engineers than there are people in the U.S. and their educational system is almost all rote memorization….we have to keep up with the emerging “threats”…
I blame Eisenhower for NCLB.
He was making sure the U.S. put up a satellite that actually could gather some type of useful information, as opposed to Sputnik, which just went beep-beep-beep as it orbited the Earth.
That loss in the space race caused the U.S. to question its educational system and we haven’t looked back in bitching about how our kids are learning, over the last 64 years.
daveNYC
WTF, I’m all for keeping track of progress of special ed kids, but isn’t the general point of being special ed that they’re probably going to have crappy test scores? Why the hell would you include them in a metric for the quality of the schools like that?
Lysana
@peach flavored shampoo:
1/10.
Troll harder.
singfoom
I am reminded of a series of books I read several years ago, by I think Daniel Quinn I think, “Ishmael”, “My Ishmael”, “The Story of B”. One of the assertions that Quinn made in the books is that secondary schooling is a way to delay entry into the job market. I don’t think it’s quite that simple, but very few people would accept the idea that kids could learn in an unstructured environment at this point.
We need people with active left and right brains, not just one side.
Sly
You think its bad for the students, you should see the impact it has on teachers.
In New York we call this APPR, or Annual Professional Performance Review. Constantly “assess” the students in order to get at some vague and ill-defined standard of teacher effectiveness. It is everywhere and everything. Walk into any elementary or secondary school faculty office or lounge in New York State and let “APPR” cross your lips, and you will have effectively sucked every ounce of energy and passion out of that room. Its like a specter haunting the doorstep of every classroom.
And it is incredibly difficult to arrive at any other conclusion than to believe that the whole point of the system is to kill teaching as a professional occupation.
kay
@Walker:
IMO, the push-back to “school reform” is coming to a sort of head, a tipping point.
There are more and more former (liberal) true believers who are speaking out.
This is both heart-breaking and fascinating. It’s from a TFA alum and former recruiter:
The for-profit K-12 schools are going to do even well-intentioned reformers in, and replacing experienced teachers with people who took a 5 week training course is bait and switch. The pubic was never told deregulating education meant for-profit and replacing teachers with less-expensive TFA’s and they’re still not being told.
It was and is deceptive. It’s going to bite them in the ass, and they deserve it.
cathyx
Just like with everything, if you want more than the mere basics, you need to pay for it. Only the rich will get enriched.
Mnemosyne
@Arclite:
And that same school is probably sending you scary information every week about the epidemic of child obesity and how you have to reduce your kid’s calorie intake RIGHT NOW, right?
It drives me nuts that apparently absolutely no one in charge can make the connection between forcing kids to sit at their desks for 6 hours a day with no recess or gym class and skyrocketing obesity rates.
And don’t even get me started with how the increased regimentation of school is causing marginally ADHD kids to have to go on medication to keep up when even the slightest bit of teaching flexibility (and recess/gym class) would mean they could do just fine without meds.
iriedc
Key parts of NCLB could very useful if it didn’t hardware the mindless testing into everything. DC plans to start testing 2nd Graders due to NCLB drivers & stupid Obama Administration policies regarding the ranking of schools and teachers. (yes this Obot said “stupid” and “Obama Administration” in the same sentence). You’d be amazed at the amount of energy educators have to devote to figuring out how to keep school a place of learning and not just testing. I am amazed at how much they have to do as a highly interested observer of my kids’ Charter school. Sadly many parents have the test score fever so the school has to walk a very fine line. True education can’t be done with tests and no money – ask any 1 percenter with kids in elite private schools.
Short Bus Bully
I know you hate new tags and such John, but this kind of thing really deserves a “AND DICKENS WEPT” or “IS THE CHILDREN LEARNING” bit for the archives.
Punchy
Did you catch the “No Child” part of the NCLB acronym?
Violet
@The Moar You Know: @evinfuilt:
Yeah, I kind of already knew the answer, but it’s worth asking the question. And especially worth asking the question of the folks that seem to be in favor of cutting arts and music from everyone else’s kids schools. But not their own, of course.
kay
@Walker:
Where’s Yglesias on for-profit charters? Does he know how many there are? Does he know that the people who are paying for them think they’re “public schools”, and are completely unaware that they’re operated by large for-profit companies?
How does that fact influence his opinion on accountability and incentives? Was that how this was sold? If not, how did we get here? What happened?
Linnaeus
@twiffer:
Yes, and that’s going to be extended to all levels of education, from primary up right through undergraduate. It’s all about “job skills”, and the implied definition of those skills typically excludes the arts and humanities, although you’ll still hear lip service paid to those fields. But the actions of our educational institutions are showing otherwise.
One possible silver lining is that as this situation continues, we as a society may actually be compelled to have some kind of discussion about what “education” really means, what it’s supposed to enable us to do, etc. and the costs (economic, social, and cultural) of what path(s) our society elects to take. That’s not happening right now.
R-Jud
@Emma:
This is why I personally couldn’t continue with teaching school, particularly on the South Side of Chicago (2001-04, the first years NCLB was in effect). By the end my hands were so tied that I felt like I was really just functioning as one of a series of holding pens for those kids until society could legally jail them.
iriedc
@Kay you’ve nailed it regarding how people are feelings about TFA. A reaction I see more and more in DC parents when you say “TFA teachers” is rolled eyes and heavy sighs. Our charter has plenty of TFA alums on staff but no fresh new TFA teachers- I no longer wonder why.
ETA– we are in complete agreement that for-profit charter schools are an abomination that should not be allowed in federal or state legislation.
Naive and Sentimental
I went to middle school during Bush’s tenure as governor where Texas served as the prototype for NCLB as a whole. My English class was “How to write a TAAS essay.”
About 13 years later and I remember two things from 8th grade English: a project where we packed suitcases pretending we were Holocaust prisoners going to a concentration camp, and that a TAAS Essay should be 5 paragraphs long. Each paragraph should have at least four sentences. The first paragraph is your introduction where you give a solid opening sentence that is the summary of your entire essay, followed by sentences explaining what the topic of the next 3 paragraphs will be. Paragraphs 2-4 will be different aspects of your opening statement and paragraph 5 will be a conclusion to wrap everything up.
I couldn’t tell you what books or short stories I read in that class, maybe we read Night and that’s why we did the Holocaust thing, but that’s just a guess.
Redshift
It’s pretty damn clear that purpose of NCLB was to push as many public schools as possible into the category of “failing” by establishing impossible “all children above average” testing standards. Then politicians have no choice but to get rid of what’s “failing” and replace it with new models with no evidence to support them but plenty of money for slick campaigns.
Yet another thinly veiled excuse to shovel government money into corporate pockets.
Gilles de Rais
@gene108: In that, you are wrong. It is demonstrably worse.
@daveNYC: For the same reason, I shit you not, that non-English speakers get included.
Poor school? Lots of immigrant students? Tough shit, teach, you should have gone to a rich district. Sorry about the pink slip, maybe Starbucks is hiring.
kay
@iriedc:
Well, of course. They were told they would get the best and brightest for under-served districts. They weren’t told we’d be chasing out experienced teachers and replacing them with people who stay two years.
They wouldn’t have jumped on that deal, now would they? :)
People are always way ahead of national pundits and opinionaters. By the time they jump on, the real-world cracks are appearing.
President Obama is on the wrong track, and he’s going to get burned. He needs to go to the states, and look at what’s actually happening.
Redshift
Ms. Redshift teaches at a community college, and things have been going downhill as students come in who have spent more of their school time under NCLB. A few years ago, they started expecting “study guides” for tests (in college!), because they’d come out of a system where what was most important was for them to pass tests, not to learn enough to be able to pass it. She still refuses to give them, but sadly, a number of other professors have given in.
R-Jud
@Linnaeus:
Do you know, this is the only area where I feel I can get wingnut friends and relatives to begin to see my point of view. I ask them what they think education is for– is it just to provide workers? Or is it so we can continue to have, you know, jury trials and elected representation and this whole “We The People” thing they claim to cherish?
Because if it’s the latter (and they always bluster and claim of course it is!), multiple-choice and five-paragraph TAAS essays like the ones Naive and Sentimental describes above aren’t going to cut it.
Litlebritdifrnt
I know I am late to this thread but gutting arts and music programs is just utterly stupid. Study after study has shown that kids who are in music programs DO BETTER in math and science. My husband’s High School band almost always has the top tier students, including the valedictorian, the salutorian and all the marshalls.
negative 1
There was once the belief that there was only so much you could attack government, because ultimately communities were so dependent on the quality of their schools (even for property values) that it became a sacred cow. Ironically, the public sector employees who are now being called leeches were sacred cows (teachers, firefighters and cops).
It occured to enterprising conservatives that the way to attack this was to attack “urban” (read: minority) districts for receiving more federal and state aid than suburban districts. This made it simple — attack the teachers in those districts for being lazy and say that there was nothing that anyone could do about it because the unions were stopping them from firing the teachers. Teachers pushed back by saying (correctly) that the gains they were making in students’ lives were huge, it’s just that they started off so disadvantaged. Conservatives pushed back with tests that show the problems these kids face, but now blame it on the teacher.
Then, the message from conservatives becomes simple: these kids can’t pass these tests. See how government is failing them? We shovel all this money at these union teachers and they’re too lazy to help these kids. Privatization is the only answer. If you want a kick in the a** press release to go with it, talk about how idiot liberal teachers want to teach these kids Shakespeare while they need to know trades, ’cause let’s face it they’re not headed to college so they need job training. You could laugh if it weren’t so sad.
Bostondreams
Wow, this sort of stuff drives me nuts. I am a social studies teacher, formerly in Florida, where I taught high school courses, and currently in North Carolina, where I teach middle school state history. And both states have responded to the demands of education ‘reform’ by gutting teacher pay, increasing class sizes, and doubling down on testing.
In Florida, Governor Voldemort signed legislation that effectively cut teachers pay by 3% and removed the state contribution to retirement, eliminated tenure for new or transfer hires, and established a merit pay system that the state is refusing to pay for, but requires tests in EVERY subject area that counties must pay to develop. And Social Studies is barely taught until middle school; some schools have dropped it at the elementary level altogether.
In North Carolina, wages have been frozen for four years (including NO cost of living adjustment), testing drives instruction, and the social studies are an irrelevant subject. Consider, for example, that in middle school, KIDS DO NOT HAVE TO PASS SOCIAL STUDIES to move on to high school. Yeah, that removes a lovely incentive for success.
Sigh.
Citizen Alan
Has it occurred to you that the people pushing these policies cannot reasonably be regarded as human.
Bostondreams
And THIS, by the way, is one consequence of this standardization of schooling. Students wanted this professor gone because he made them work together and asked them questions when they, oh no, didn’t even raise their hands.
Sasha
Florida’s FCAT is probably going to live on a bit longer considering who we have as governor.
kerFuFFler
@Redshift:
It’s worse than you realize. I know a professor at a business school (gasp, ivory league no less) whose students wanted to stage a rebellion when they found out there were to be closed-book tests. The nerve of him expecting them to, uh….like, ya know, learn something.
slag
As someone who is picking up the violin again after a many year lapse, I totally agree with this sentiment. There are so many aspects of learning music that go beyond just becoming more musically inclined–music seems to be a big brain stimulator. And re-learning an instrument adds even more dimension to the process.
If anything, we need more music education in our public schools–not less. Without it, we’re just going to be increasing the divide between the rich, who will still have all of the benefits that music education provides, and the poor, who won’t have those benefits.
PTirebiter
@mowgli
My wife teaches 7th grade English in a well heeled district here in Texas. She’s Leaving the profession after 11yrs.
Despite the exemplary scores of the students district wide, the district has adopted a new text that provides a day to day script English teachers cannot deviate from.
The students, parents and teachers are unhappy and test scores are down but the program is expanding. They really are looking for a non union assembly line model.
kerFuFFler
@Litlebritdifrnt:
When our district tried to do away with the instrumental music program in the elementary program because of the budget, a teacher got hold of a budget analysis study commissioned by the district a decade earlier. Turns out the expert had recommended spending every possible penny on the music program. The savings from disciplinary problems and remedial programs would easily offset the expenses.
Administrators cutting out the arts will be confronted by “savings” that never materialize. And once the schools have gotten into worse financial straights for having closed their arts programs, they won’t be able to find funds to start them up again. So fight hard to keep your arts programs vibrant—-it can be done! (We won that fight but remain vigilant….)
ellenelle
and what made jobs a genius is that he studied and loved art, and imposed it on his creations, his products.
what makes this whole policy thing so ultra-sad is the documented fact, by research, that the brain needs the arts, music, physical activity, all this non-3R investments in order for the 3Rs to work optimally. kids who have access to these programs do far better in their academics.
uh, duh.
i do believe the word for education programs and for that matter, cultures, that are void of these important cultural fundamentals is impoverished.
which applies here on so very many levels ya wanna just cry.
Hungry Joe
negative 1: You nailed it, just nailed it. “Our” tax dollars are being squandered in a hopeless attempt to educate “them.”
As for P.E. … Many years ago we had phys ed every day, and I always tried to have it somewhere around the middle of my schedule because it was such a great, refreshing break from the March of Classes. Eliminating it is madness.
As for the arts … It’s possible that teaching the arts does nothing whatsoever for math & science learning, or even for that matter, for the economy. However, I remember reading something about “the pursuit of happiness,” and it’s not unreasonable that we allocate some of our assets toward helping our children along that path.
mish
@RosiesDad:
FYI, in PA they can’t raise taxes more than the Act 1 index, which was 1.7% for the current year, without going to a voter referendum. With only 20% household participation in public schools in my neck of the woods, I know how that will end. When the referendum fails, the program must be cut. That’s the way the law was written.
Next year the index will be even lower. The governor will make additional cuts to the school districts. This does not bode well for public education in PA.
Bostondreams
@PTirebiter:
This is ‘teacher-proofing’ the curriculum. The idea is that anybody can teach, and the curriculum should be designed that anyone can come in and pick up any lesson at any time, because it is scripted. All students will be at the same place at the same time in the entire district. It also makes test development easier.
All that stuff you learn in colleges of education about creatuve instruction and student engagement? Forget it.
J. Michael Neal
@kay:
You know, if people want to know what Yglesias thinks on a subject, they would probably be better off reading him rather than asking questions of someone who habitually misrepresents him.
Sorry to tee off on you, but the lying about what Yglesias has said on any number of subjects is really starting to bug me a lot. Post #1 is a prime example. Yglesias has not said that if creative teaching is failing to produce good results on the current tests, then they should be abandoned. What he has said related to this is two different things:
1) If public schools are going to receive public money, then there needs to be some way to hold them accountable. Absent this, there isn’t any justifiable reason to think that the problem is a lack of money. No one is doing anything more than guessing, and that’s a crappy basis for public policy.
Where teachers come in is that they are one of a number of groups that have stood in the way of producing accountability. They are far from the only ones doing this, and they are far from the only ones he has targeted. Nevertheless, a lot of his critics on the left like to tell you that he somehow holds teachers to be fully responsible for this when even a cursory reading of what he posts would show that this is dishonest.
His criticism of teachers and teachers unions is that they have consistently opposed coming up with any measure of accountability. He has not defended the current standards, except to the extent that we have to use something. If teachers don’t want to see the current measures continue to be used, then they need to be a part of the process of creating better metrics rather than just claiming that it’s impossible to measure what they do.
He says that, if it really is the case that teacher performance isn’t measurable, then the public policy case for more money goes up in smoke. He follows that by saying that he doesn’t think that this is the case, and that putting the proper measures in would demonstrate that we do need to pour more money into the schools. This is something that liberals understand in many contexts, but apparently not in education.
2) With regards to schools in poor areas, he argues that the current measures really are better than nothing. This is not true in better off areas, where he thinks they may be worse than nothing, but would like some data. The point about poor school districts is that all of the evidence, both quantitative and anecdotal, suggests that they are doing a terrible job of teaching *anything*. In these instances, the alternative to NCLB driven measurements wouldn’t be to free up more resources for creative teaching, but rather to produce graduates that can’t even read and write by rote, let alone all of the other things we want them to do. Is that really a better alternative?
Matt Yglesias may be wrong in his arguments. I disagree with some of them. But if he is wrong, it’s in a completely different and more nuanced way than people say he is.
gene108
@kay:
Obama’s problem in dealing with public education is that he has no personal experience, with public schools.
Sure he dished out ice cream at Baskin Robbins,while in high school, so he didn’t have a totally elitist upbringing, but he did go to private schools for his entire K-12 education.
I don’t think a guy as driven and smart as President Obama really gets how the other 99.9999% of us, who aren’t as smart and/or as driven, see the world and what we need from our K-12 education.
I think he and Duncan and a lot of other big shots, who want to reform education, view public schools through the lens of what they would want or what changes they feel they would’ve benefited most from a K-12 education.
Unfortunately, Obama, Bill Gates, et. al. are not representative of most folks, in terms of how people relate to competition, ambition and other factors that separate these Type A+++ personalities from the rest of society.
oldswede
In our culture, new movies are rated by the dollar gross they take in on their first weekend. Just a straight total.
This same mindset is at work in education. Administrators want simple numbers that they can show the brain-dead politicians. There is no way to quantify creativity and inspiration, so no one in charge cares.
oldswede
Bubblegum Tate
@Martin:
My parents tried that with me, but I was absolutely determined that I was going to play tenor sax, not that pissant little alto sax that everybody else wanted to play. I’d say I made the right call. And I absolutely cherish the music education I got in school (which, by the way, was better in my public middle school than it was in my extremely snooty private high school). I consider myself lucky to have gotten that music education, but I think it’s unfortunate that I should consider myself lucky and not typical for having gotten that music education.
cathyx
My daughter has wanted to play the sax since she read about Froggy playing one in one of her books. So at 7 she took recorder lessons because fingering is the same and she was too small for the sax. Then when she was 10, she played the clarinet for the same reasons she played the recorder. Finally when she was 12 she was big enough to play the sax. Now 2 years on the sax, she’s first chair in her jazz band at school.
kay
Gene108, It’s a good point, but Obama is a parent.
Didn’t ‘market based’ tip him off?
When are kids ever well-served by commercial markets?
Nutrition?
Entertaintment?
I spent 90% of my time as a parent keeping marketers away from my kids.
‘That’s not good for you’
‘That’s a rip-off, put it back’
Obama thought he’d put them in schools?
WTF?
Dan Carmell
I attended Oyster River HS in the late 1970s. A large segment of the student population are the children of professors and other professionals at the UNH campus right there in Durham. I don’t think they will stand for this, not quietly, anyway.
Fun bonus fact: Oyster River HS is “Durham HS” in Stephen King’s “Carrie”.
Dan Carmell
Oakland, California
J. Michael Neal
@kay:
By the education system in Sweden, which is extremely market oriented, including for profit schools. Finland’s is fairly similar. Both rely heavily upon what we would call voucher schools, and both perform very well.
Also, since you’re a front pager, I had a lengthy response to one of your earlier posts that is stuck in moderation, and probably now so far up the page that no one will read it.
apocalipstick
@Violet:
I can answer that. If a school is not a Title I school, the NCLB score can be -27 and nobody will say a word. There is a public school in an affluent town not far from me that is fortunate enough to be able to decline Title I funding. Everyone else gets their AYP status trumpeted far and wide, while Moneybags High gets to say nuttin’. Gee, isn’t it convenient that the criteria is based on the financial situation at a school?
kay
J Michael, that’s a gross oversimplification of Finland’s system.
They don’t rely on test scores, and teachers have more discretion, not less.
If I put a national ballot issue up on for-profit schools, how do you think people would vote?
If you want to sell them publicly-funded for profit K-12, why not tell them that’s what you’re selling?
Interrobang
I have to disagree with the author of the original piece — de-streaming is what’s “unfortunate in itself.” You can’t possibly teach a class effectively (and I say this as someone who’s taught at a community college, where there is no streaming and you do get the occasional really tragic case) where you’ve got kids with severe learning disabilities, severe disciplinary/behavioural problems, mental retardation, and everything else lumped in with various flavours of what’s euphemistically called “gifted” kids, plus everyone who falls into the middle two quartiles.
What winds up happening is that the slowest kids get cheated out of the help they need, the middle quartiles get classes that go more slowly and aren’t as rigourous as they could cope with ideally, and the brighter kids get ripped off by being left alone to basically sink or swim — teach themselves if they’re disciplined, or fuck around and become the dreaded “bright underachievers.”
I went to a high school that had three “normal” (non-“Individualised Programme”) streaming levels — Basic, for the tech/vocational programme kids, General, for the community-college types, and Advanced, which were the university-prep type courses. You could mix and match them, retake courses to change levels, drop back a level if you needed to, or just about anything. Plus we had the usual sorts of “Special Ed” (Community Living and remedial help for people with LDs and so on, although the remedial programmes were not full-time), plus a supplemental programme for the “gifted” kids that was 3h per week. Both the remedial help and gifted programmes allowed participants to “skip” a regular class to attend, or to attend during their lunch hours if they wished.
I personally got to see quite a lot of how that worked, up close and personal, since I was on the kind of IP that had me taking both Advanced and General level courses, remedial help, and the gifted programme. The high school I went to at the time was known for its academic high achievers in post-secondary education of both sorts here (community colleges and universities), which encompassed most of the student body, so they must have been doing something (a whole lot of somethings) right.
Also, as someone who frequently in elementary school wound up being voluntold to “peer-tutor” the slower kids all the time, I fucking hate destreaming. I’m not getting paid to be an EA; I’m fucking eight years old! Jesus.
J. Michael Neal
@kay: Sure it’s oversimplified, but that’s the only question you asked. Both countries have very market oriented education systems. They *also* have a number of policies in place that ensure that they are properly functioning markets. Dismissing reforms out of hand based upon the idea that markets never help kids is not only grossly oversimplified, it’s also grossly wrong.
gelfling545
A former co-worker who was an amazingly creative teacher of ELA was reprimanded for “wasting too much time” on literature.
Th current English curriculum requires the teacher to READ FROM A SCRIPT.
Some schools are not teaching any science, social studies, etc. below grade 7 and suspend classes in the higher grades to emphasize test practice for 4-6 weeks before the test.
kay
J. Micchael, you deserve a better answer than I gave, but I can’t stand typing on this phone, so I shoudn’t have started it.
We’ll have to fight about this some other time:)
Sorry. DISCUSS this another time.
tzt
@J. Michael Neal:
Um, Michael, market oriented education system in Finland? I don’t think it’s quite like that. (I was born and educated there.)
bemused senior
To see what rigorous evaluation of proposed programs to improve learning looks like, read this paper:
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/no_ex_pub_schools.pdf
One important thing I took from it is that we don’t know how to improve reading/language arts skills in kids that have reached middle school.
Regarding teaching literature from a script, the highly touted scripted reading program that was being pushed by the Bush II education department turned out to be a scam by the vendor of the curriculum, who had fudged the numbers. Don’t have time to look this up atm, but will Google around later for linking in the inevitable next thread on this topic.
Steeplejack
@Emma:
Actually, there is a body of literature dealing with the idea that the American educational system has been set up this way since about 1900, i.e., to provide drones and cogs for the American industrial machine. (With a bit of a disruption between 1965-80.)
Ohio Mom
Re: Finland & Sweden: Very misleading comparisons. Both of these countries have extremely low rates of child poverty, in the low single percentage points. When you look at US schools that have similiar rates of poor children, the scores are as good as or better than these other countries.
However, the US has a lot of poor children — at least 20% of all of our children are poor. The more poor children a school has, the lower its scores and these lower scores bring down the entire US average. The problem is poverty, not teaching! See http://nasspblogs.org/principaldifference/2010/12/pisa_its_poverty_not_stupid_1.html
Re: Special ed students: I wonder if special ed families moved into that district because of its reputation, because we special ed families who can afford to do so, do so. I wonder this because schools don’t have to report “sub-groups” scores if that sub-group is under a certain size– if they had fewer spec ed students, they wouldn’t have to worry about their scores.
What an irony if my suspicion is correct — special needs kids do better in the long run if they are included/mainstreamed as much as possible. Also, these kids also have a civil right to a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment, a right that is trampled upon when they are segregated for test score’s sakes.
Finally, re: Matt Y: Sorry to get personal, but he works for an organization that is pro-school “deform” and his girlfriend is an up-and-coming school deform wonk. In other words, he has a lot of peer pressure working against him ever taking an honest look at these issues (or even seriously considering any of his commentators who continually try to educate him on these topics).
englishmajor
I’m so glad you juicers are waking up to the pub ed war. It’s a big fucking deal. It’s not just about whether kids have uniforms or go to school from 7:30-4:00 instead of 8:00-3:00. Or even whether they have art – though that, and all the curricular issues are important. It’s about who controls our public systems, who makes our public policy, who wins – it’s an ideological game being played with the lives of non-rich children and their poor damn beleaguered, over-worked, over-tired, overwhelmed and frightened parents.
I always comment too late because I can’t be glued to Twitter or RSS feeds, but I hope you all – who seem to be largely childless which is super duper, but means K-12 ed isn’t a high priority – will take up this topic more frequently.