Last month, William C. Mims was appointed to Virginia’s Supreme Court after a public career that included service in the House of Delegates, the state Senate, and as the state’s Attorney General. I remember when he was first running for Delegate and knocked upon my door to ask for my vote.
He asked whether I had any concerns that he could act upon as a legislator, and I did. Under the law, my daughter was born a month and a half too young to start public kindergarten, when we as parents thought was appropriate and would have been consistent with the law when I was young. He expressed his sympathy, because his own daughter had suffered under the same legal limitation. However, he said that as a legislator that he would be in no position to change that law.
As a parent, he knew that the law was inconsistent with the educational requirements of specific children. Despite his concern for his own daughter, he did nothing to advance her educational interests. Given his influence, an opportunity, and the power to right a wrong for future individuals, he refused to act. He suspended his own independent judgment and deferred to the opinions of others.
In contrast, I paid for private kindergarten so that my daughter would advance her education. However, the next year, the public school refused to recognize her achievement and wanted her to repeat kindergarten; despite her ability to read, write, and compute. As parents, we pushed to get her tested and put into 1st grade over the objections of her teacher and the school’s principal.
As a result of our continuing to exercise our independent judgment, our daughter started taking AP courses in her sophomore year and graduated high school with nearly enough credits to start college as a sophomore. She graduated summa cum laude with two degrees from a great college, where she engaged in numerous leadership opportunities. Now, she is about to start on a five year master’s-doctoral program.
While my daughter did all the work to achieve her own goals, as parents, we acted to make those opportunities available to her; however, the experts administering the public schools, attempted to obstruct her advancement by failing to treat her as an individual.
Parents have a choice to make; either defer to the opinions of the public educrats who fail to account for individual variances, or use independent judgment to focus decisions upon the requirements of your own child.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Our Students' Potential Gap
This weekend my niece, a first-grader, picked up Ralph Ketcham’s biography of James Madison from my shelf, and began correctly and unaided to read it aloud. As she is early in her education, she is not yet corrupted by public school and eagerly competes with her older siblings to demonstrate her own individual capacity.
Within that book, I recently found an interesting observation by the author about Madison’s pre-collegiate education:
Primarily, this potential gap ignored by ineffective publicly hired specialists is bridge by the parents; thus, those professionals frequently fault their clients for failing to perform the job for which the educrats are paid.
Given limited time resources, expertise, and private secular alternatives, how can loving parents assist the educational development of their children? At this point, I conclude that hiring a mature and professional tutor focused upon your individual child’s development and personal goals is needed to supplement the time and money wasted in public schools.
Within that book, I recently found an interesting observation by the author about Madison’s pre-collegiate education:
- A student of Madison’s endowments can sometimes overcome a series of poor teachers; that he was blessed with good ones at almost every step of his education undoubtedly contributed importantly to the characteristic discipline, keenness, and polish of his intellect.
Primarily, this potential gap ignored by ineffective publicly hired specialists is bridge by the parents; thus, those professionals frequently fault their clients for failing to perform the job for which the educrats are paid.
Given limited time resources, expertise, and private secular alternatives, how can loving parents assist the educational development of their children? At this point, I conclude that hiring a mature and professional tutor focused upon your individual child’s development and personal goals is needed to supplement the time and money wasted in public schools.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Coulson on Replicating Success
In a recent WSJ opinion piece, Andrew J. Coulson--Director of CATO’s Center for Educational Freedom—identifies a key defect in American education: its inability to replicate successful results. [HT: Thrutch]
The persistence of this problem is not for lack of effort or high level commitment. Coulson notes that the goal of identifying and propagating the best methods and materials drove Horace Mann’s effort in establishing centralized state direction of public education in the early 19th century. Yet more than 150 years later, President Clinton observed, about those who have devoted themselves to education reform, they “…are constantly plagued by the fact that nearly every problem has been solved by somebody somewhere, and yet we can't seem to replicate it everywhere else."
The recent death of one of America’s best known teachers provided Coulson with a concrete example of his point. Jaime Escalante, made famous in the movie “Stand and Deliver,” created a program to successfully teach calculus to poor inner city kids. Despite his success, the teachers union contested his large class sizes, which gave access to all willing students. He experienced conflicts with other teachers and the administration, plus he received threats of violence. Eventually, he was pushed out of his position as head of the math department, which precipitated not only his resignation but also the demise of his successful program.
In contrast, Coulson points to two recent examples of success: the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) network of 82 charter schools, and the Kumon tutoring centers, which help 4 million students in 42 countries.
However, I would note two criticisms of these examples, which get to points that I have made previously about “public” education and proper instructional methodology. First, Diana Ravitch had noted that charter schools as a whole do not foster better student performance than regular public schools; which further supports Coulson’s overall point that publicly financed and regulated schools fail to replicate innovation, thus the overall charter school results return to the same miserably ineffective level. Second, as Coulson acknowledges, the rote drill methods of instruction typical of Japanese education, such as Kumon, do not promote the conceptual thinking necessary for a student’s later success in life.
Extrapolating from Coulson’s essay, I find three additional important points about education reform, which provide a substantial challenge.
The first relates to the lack of properly trained teachers. Escalante’s efforts were hampered because he had more motivated students than qualified teachers. This relates to Ravitch’s proposal for stricter certification of teachers, which would require a demonstration of subject matter expertise. However, raising the standards does not create suddenly qualified teachers; instead, it identifies what we already know: students require better teachers than those created by our teacher colleges. If all schools were privatized tomorrow, we would still have the problem of poorly trained and poor performing teachers.
As I mentioned earlier in the week to a prospective teacher, I view the lack of properly trained (according to my own standards) teachers as the largest constraint in establishing and scaling up my own educational institutions, thus I have to plan to retrain the teachers myself before I can begin with students.
Second, the process of replicating best practices in private industry leverage two relevant tools: franchising and independent auditing. Within Coulson’s context, I refer to the aspect of franchising that documents procedures and practices, and provides supporting training to implement uniform and optimized standards across a distributed enterprise. Ravitch recommends external auditing of troubled schools as a lever to identify and target resources for improvement. However, the critical aspect of auditing is “what standards shall be used for measurement?” Applying the wrong standards re-enforces negative outcomes; as the Escalante case demonstrates, public school values are incompatible with actual education. In fact, school reform efforts have been frustrated over issues of what to audit and how to do so.
Third, teachers unions have proven to be an impediment to actually teaching students. While Ravitch objects to the wholesale firing of all teachers in failed schools, an alternative that should be considered is terminating the union from that school. This is not an anti-union reflex, but focused upon the question of “What is the purpose of teachers unions within education?” If one of their key purposes is not facilitating the delivery of excellent education or they have failed to do so, then they should be excluded.
In summary, related to Coulson’s observation about American education’s inability to replicate successful results, such efforts are incompatible with public management, regulation, and financing of schools. Further, even with privatization, significant improvements must be made in labor relations, teacher training, and the establishment of objective standards for measuring and implementing best education practices.
The persistence of this problem is not for lack of effort or high level commitment. Coulson notes that the goal of identifying and propagating the best methods and materials drove Horace Mann’s effort in establishing centralized state direction of public education in the early 19th century. Yet more than 150 years later, President Clinton observed, about those who have devoted themselves to education reform, they “…are constantly plagued by the fact that nearly every problem has been solved by somebody somewhere, and yet we can't seem to replicate it everywhere else."
The recent death of one of America’s best known teachers provided Coulson with a concrete example of his point. Jaime Escalante, made famous in the movie “Stand and Deliver,” created a program to successfully teach calculus to poor inner city kids. Despite his success, the teachers union contested his large class sizes, which gave access to all willing students. He experienced conflicts with other teachers and the administration, plus he received threats of violence. Eventually, he was pushed out of his position as head of the math department, which precipitated not only his resignation but also the demise of his successful program.
In contrast, Coulson points to two recent examples of success: the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) network of 82 charter schools, and the Kumon tutoring centers, which help 4 million students in 42 countries.
However, I would note two criticisms of these examples, which get to points that I have made previously about “public” education and proper instructional methodology. First, Diana Ravitch had noted that charter schools as a whole do not foster better student performance than regular public schools; which further supports Coulson’s overall point that publicly financed and regulated schools fail to replicate innovation, thus the overall charter school results return to the same miserably ineffective level. Second, as Coulson acknowledges, the rote drill methods of instruction typical of Japanese education, such as Kumon, do not promote the conceptual thinking necessary for a student’s later success in life.
Extrapolating from Coulson’s essay, I find three additional important points about education reform, which provide a substantial challenge.
The first relates to the lack of properly trained teachers. Escalante’s efforts were hampered because he had more motivated students than qualified teachers. This relates to Ravitch’s proposal for stricter certification of teachers, which would require a demonstration of subject matter expertise. However, raising the standards does not create suddenly qualified teachers; instead, it identifies what we already know: students require better teachers than those created by our teacher colleges. If all schools were privatized tomorrow, we would still have the problem of poorly trained and poor performing teachers.
As I mentioned earlier in the week to a prospective teacher, I view the lack of properly trained (according to my own standards) teachers as the largest constraint in establishing and scaling up my own educational institutions, thus I have to plan to retrain the teachers myself before I can begin with students.
Second, the process of replicating best practices in private industry leverage two relevant tools: franchising and independent auditing. Within Coulson’s context, I refer to the aspect of franchising that documents procedures and practices, and provides supporting training to implement uniform and optimized standards across a distributed enterprise. Ravitch recommends external auditing of troubled schools as a lever to identify and target resources for improvement. However, the critical aspect of auditing is “what standards shall be used for measurement?” Applying the wrong standards re-enforces negative outcomes; as the Escalante case demonstrates, public school values are incompatible with actual education. In fact, school reform efforts have been frustrated over issues of what to audit and how to do so.
Third, teachers unions have proven to be an impediment to actually teaching students. While Ravitch objects to the wholesale firing of all teachers in failed schools, an alternative that should be considered is terminating the union from that school. This is not an anti-union reflex, but focused upon the question of “What is the purpose of teachers unions within education?” If one of their key purposes is not facilitating the delivery of excellent education or they have failed to do so, then they should be excluded.
In summary, related to Coulson’s observation about American education’s inability to replicate successful results, such efforts are incompatible with public management, regulation, and financing of schools. Further, even with privatization, significant improvements must be made in labor relations, teacher training, and the establishment of objective standards for measuring and implementing best education practices.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Ravitch Admits Errors, Then Repeats
Education historian Diana Ravitch has been getting press lately over her new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, especially played up in such accounts is her repudiating the policies of No Child Left Behind--the Bush Administration’s education reform initiative. However, it is presumptuous to cite this as a significant change in her positions or that the new specific policies that she advocates are any more palatable to the critics of NCLB.
In her prior book Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, Ravitch begins her conclusion by writing:
In a new Washington Post op-ed, Ravitch outlines her new agenda for school reform. Why new? As she previously stated, data should drive decisions; she cites the lack of significant improvement in reading and math test scores as evidence that the current policy has failed. She states that idealistic goals of 100% proficiency have corrupted education by dumbing down standards as a means of defrauding the process. Further, she states that parental choice through charter school programs has failed to create improvement in public schools, while these alternatives do not outperform them.
The focus of her new agenda is fixing failed public school management. First, she advocates enhanced standards for teacher certification, including rigorously testing teachers for competence in their core subject, literacy, and numeracy. Second, she advocates a shift in the expertise of principals and superintendents from administration to experience as excellent teachers. Third, she calls for more effective and substantial tools for assessing student knowledge. Finally, she repudiates the practice of identifying and closing schools that fail to improve, and instead calls for additional investments in solutions tailored to those schools' specific demographic challenges.
Ravitch is consistent; she uses data to identify that prior school reform efforts have failed and then pragmatically asserts a new program of reforms. She attributes her prior erroneous advocacy to a foundation in belief and faith; hardly, the data driven rigor she aspires to. As she did in the conclusion to her prior book, she explains her new agenda Rationalistically, by starting with an asserted truism disconnect from its context that should link it back to reality.
Ravitch remains in the tradition of John Dewey’s Pragmatism, which has dominated the failed century of school reform criticized by Ravitch. As Tara Smith explained in her article “The Menace of Pragmatism”, William James wrote that pragmatism does not stand for any results or specific substantive doctrines; rather, it is distinguished by its method of ‘clarifying ideas’ in practical terms by tracing the practical consequences of accepting one idea or another. Abandoning a conceptual framework of integrated principles tied to Reality, the fundamental causes of failure are not examined; instead, the cycle restarts with new and different action proposals based upon consensus derived truisms.
In embracing a renewed drive to fix public schools, Ravitch fails to correct one of her fundamentally flawed premises: that schools should be public. She criticizes hybrid efforts to bring business principles to school reform, while missing that the public nature of schools is one of the education’s key problems. Government is force, which puts force—and not Reason—as the fundamental driver in public education.
In addition, the teaching methodology used in our schools, and re-enforced by Ravitch’s proposals, share the flaws exhibited by Ravitch’s processes: Rationalism and Pragmatism. Currently, instruction lacks conceptual integration and fails to tie the material back to reality; which causes students to repeatedly wonder what the lessons have to do with their lives. Meanwhile, our schools foster unprincipled actions focused upon ephemeral outcomes without regard to enduring values.
While a famed historian of education, Ravitch admits to recently promoting failed school reform, and advocates a new action agenda. However, she has not learned the lessons from the history that she has studied and lived. By evading the need for principles as a guide to action, she advocates marginal improvements instead of identifying the transforming changes required by our schools and students.
In her prior book Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, Ravitch begins her conclusion by writing:
- “If there is a lesson to be learned from the river of ink that was spilled in the education disputes of the twentieth century, it is that anything in education that is labeled a ‘movement’ should be avoided like the plague. What American education most needs is not more nostrums and enthusiasms but more attention to fundamental, time-tested truths. It is a fundamental truth that children need well-educated teachers who are eclectic in their methods and willing to use different strategies depending on what works best for which children. It is another fundamental truth that adults must take responsibility for children and help them develop as good persons with worthy ideals.
“Massive changes in curricula and pedagogy should be based on solid research and careful field-tested demonstration before they are imposed on entire school districts and states. There has been no shortage of innovation in American education; what is needed before broad implementation of any innovation is clear evidence of its effectiveness. Schools must be flexible enough to try new instructional methods and organizational patterns, and intelligent enough to gauge their success over time in accomplishing their primary mission: educating children.”
In a new Washington Post op-ed, Ravitch outlines her new agenda for school reform. Why new? As she previously stated, data should drive decisions; she cites the lack of significant improvement in reading and math test scores as evidence that the current policy has failed. She states that idealistic goals of 100% proficiency have corrupted education by dumbing down standards as a means of defrauding the process. Further, she states that parental choice through charter school programs has failed to create improvement in public schools, while these alternatives do not outperform them.
The focus of her new agenda is fixing failed public school management. First, she advocates enhanced standards for teacher certification, including rigorously testing teachers for competence in their core subject, literacy, and numeracy. Second, she advocates a shift in the expertise of principals and superintendents from administration to experience as excellent teachers. Third, she calls for more effective and substantial tools for assessing student knowledge. Finally, she repudiates the practice of identifying and closing schools that fail to improve, and instead calls for additional investments in solutions tailored to those schools' specific demographic challenges.
Ravitch is consistent; she uses data to identify that prior school reform efforts have failed and then pragmatically asserts a new program of reforms. She attributes her prior erroneous advocacy to a foundation in belief and faith; hardly, the data driven rigor she aspires to. As she did in the conclusion to her prior book, she explains her new agenda Rationalistically, by starting with an asserted truism disconnect from its context that should link it back to reality.
Ravitch remains in the tradition of John Dewey’s Pragmatism, which has dominated the failed century of school reform criticized by Ravitch. As Tara Smith explained in her article “The Menace of Pragmatism”, William James wrote that pragmatism does not stand for any results or specific substantive doctrines; rather, it is distinguished by its method of ‘clarifying ideas’ in practical terms by tracing the practical consequences of accepting one idea or another. Abandoning a conceptual framework of integrated principles tied to Reality, the fundamental causes of failure are not examined; instead, the cycle restarts with new and different action proposals based upon consensus derived truisms.
In embracing a renewed drive to fix public schools, Ravitch fails to correct one of her fundamentally flawed premises: that schools should be public. She criticizes hybrid efforts to bring business principles to school reform, while missing that the public nature of schools is one of the education’s key problems. Government is force, which puts force—and not Reason—as the fundamental driver in public education.
In addition, the teaching methodology used in our schools, and re-enforced by Ravitch’s proposals, share the flaws exhibited by Ravitch’s processes: Rationalism and Pragmatism. Currently, instruction lacks conceptual integration and fails to tie the material back to reality; which causes students to repeatedly wonder what the lessons have to do with their lives. Meanwhile, our schools foster unprincipled actions focused upon ephemeral outcomes without regard to enduring values.
While a famed historian of education, Ravitch admits to recently promoting failed school reform, and advocates a new action agenda. However, she has not learned the lessons from the history that she has studied and lived. By evading the need for principles as a guide to action, she advocates marginal improvements instead of identifying the transforming changes required by our schools and students.
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