For nearly all of the 41 years I have been covering public education, the people in charge have been focused on competition, most often with other nations. Of course, educational competitiveness didn’t start when I began reporting in 1974; In 1957 the Soviet space satellite Sputnik got America’s juices flowing and led to the National Defense Education Act. It hasn’t stopped {{1}}; ever since, most of our leaders have pushed schools, teachers and students to try to outperform the rest of the world.

Think ‘A Nation at Risk {{2}}’ in 1983, or President George H.W. Bush’s “Education Summit” in 1989 that spawned Goals 2000 and a drive to make us ‘First in the World’ in math and science. {{3}} IBM’s Chairman Louis V. Gerstner convened two more Education Summits in the years that followed. The Glenn Commission on Math and Science Teaching issued a dire warning at the turn of the century.

The Clinton administration and George W. Bush’s presidency upped the ante, and the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top,” fueled by our fear that we are losing to Finland, South Korea and a host of other nations, has raised the stakes even more.

The people in charge have for years been challenging students and their teachers, asking in effect “How intelligent are you? Prove it by doing better than X and Y and Z.” And many in leadership positions have also been roundly criticizing the system for its perceived failures.

Has our obsession with beating others worked? Is it working now? Have years and years of “education reform” produced the kinds of schools and students that we are proud of?

Well, we are still ‘losing’ to Finland, South Korea, Singapore and a host of other nations; we are falling behind in college graduation rates, and so on. High school graduation rates have climbed, but record numbers of those graduates end up in remedial classes when they get to college. Not a great scorecard, but our leaders seem to determined to keep criticizing our schools and teachers until they shape up, which undoubtedly brings to mind that cartoon about how “the whipping will continue until morale improves.”

41 years later, I see a nation of people who don’t trust their government, who don’t vote, and who don’t even speak to people who hold different points of view. The adjectives ‘angry’ and ‘disillusioned’ describe a lot of the people I meet. How much of this is a result of their having attended schools that were organized to designate a few of them as ‘winners’ and most of them as ‘losers’ from Day One?

The question we need to ask is pretty basic: is beating someone else the best way to motivate students to learn? Does the competitive approach help develop competent adults who can be happy, productive citizens able to adapt to a fast-changing world?

What if our schools were designed to ask “How are you intelligent?” of each child? What if schools and classrooms were structured to encourage both individual growth and teamwork? What if we focused on the child, not the world?

You may remember the parable of the father and child. The kid wants to play catch in the backyard, but Dad wants to read his magazine. Tired of being pestered, Dad tears a page from his magazine and shows it to his child. On the page is a map of the world. The father tears the page into small pieces, hands the kid the pieces, and says, “We’ll play catch as soon as you can put this page back together.” Then he resumes reading, confident that he’s bought himself an hour of peace.

But the kid is back within minutes, the page scotch-taped together perfectly. “How did you do that,” the father demands? “It was easy. On the other side there was a picture of a child. I just put the child together, and the world took care of itself.”

OK, it’s a hokey parable, but you get the point: focus on the child.

If we did, our schools would provide more intensive attention in the first few grades, but those smaller classes would be replaced by larger classes in which older students were engaged in group projects and self-directed learning. Technology will allow them to collaborate beyond the walls of their classrooms, and so fewer teachers will work with more students, on projects that have real meaning for the kids.  New forms of assessment will also emerge over time, and these will, I believe, be integrated seamlessly into the learning loop.

This approach will be more effective, I believe. It seems certain that it will, in the long run,also be cheaper. (That got your attention, didn’t it!)

Face it: Our competitive ‘teach and test’ approach is expensive. School systems spend billions of dollars every year on textbooks, test-prep materials, testing, test grading and reporting. School systems also pay many more millions to people whose job is to watch the teachers (because teachers aren’t trusted and have to be watched).

We can realize a lot of savings there.

We have to find ways to cut costs. Teachers are already the largest single part of the American labor force, and their numbers are growing at a rate far faster than the student population’s rate of increase. Yes, we have more students…but, fueled by demands in special education and English language learners, schools are hiring many more teachers.

Despite the high rate of churn that keeps bringing young people into the field, education’s labor and unfunded pension costs are spiraling out of control {{4}}. Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania follows these trends closely, and he told me recently, “It’s a ticking time bomb. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see how employee numbers can go up at a couple times the rate of the client base.”

The job of school is to help grow adults. All three words matter: ‘Help’ because education is a team sport involving families and the larger community. ‘Grow’ because it’s a process of fits and starts that cannot be measured or judged on one moment’s performance (i.e., a test score). And ‘Adults’ because that’s the end game, not a test score.

Right now we have a prohibitively expensive approach to schooling that doesn’t work very well. Shall we keep on tinkering? What do you think?

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[[1]]1. There have been occasional lulls when we directed our attention away from international competition, like the pause that led to The Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.[[1]]
[[2]]2. That spawned the inevitable “A Nation STILL at Risk” reports down the road, of course, like this one from the right: https://www.edreform.com/edreform-university/resource/a-nation-still-at-risk-1998/ [[2]]
[[3]]3. In 2002 Learning Matters and I produced a program for Frontline called “Testing Our Schools” Here’s a pretty good summary of those years, and the film as well: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/standards/bp.html[[3]]
[[4]]4. http://www.governing.com/gov-data/state-pension-funds-retirement-systems-unfunded-liabilities-obligations-data.html
http://www.statebudgetsolutions.org/publications/detail/promises-made-promises-broken-2014-unfunded-liabilities-hit-47-trillion [[4]]

If you’re at all like me, somewhere in your home you have at least one can of WD-40®, because the stuff works wonders. If you teach science, I believe that you ought to have a large WD-40 poster on your classroom wall. Not to advertise the product but to teach a basic lesson about learning: failure is an essential part of succeeding.

You may know the story of WD-40.{{1}} More than 60 years ago the three employees of the San Diego-based Rocket Chemical Company were trying to develop a product that would prevent rust, something they could market to the aerospace industry. They tried, and, being methodical, they kept careful records. They labeled their first effort Water Displacement #1, or WD-1.

I’ll bet you have figured out how many times they failed before they were finally successful.

Students need to know that adults try and fail and fail and fail–and keep on trying. More than that, they need to experience failure. While I am a big fan of both project-based learning and blended learning, I believe the most critical piece of the pedagogical puzzle is what we ought to call ‘Problem-based learning.’

Projects where the teachers already know the outcome won’t work, especially with older students. Blending technology and teaching so students can add fractions faster? That’s not the best approach either.

Give students problems to tackle–and make the problems real! Lord knows we have plenty of problems worth tackling that can be given to students. They cannot be intractable (how can we achieve peace in the Middle East?) or trivial and uninteresting (what color should classrooms be painted?)

A pedagogy based on discovery flies in the face of what seems to be happening in most classrooms and schools {{2}}, where the emphasis seems to be on ‘critical analysis’ to get the predetermined answers.

Some years back I interviewed a math teacher in Richmond, Virginia, who told me how he used to take his students down to the James River and challenge them to determine how far it was to the opposite shore. He didn’t give them a formula; just the challenge. Then they put their heads together and, he said, eventually worked it out. Lots of failure…and lots of genuine discovery. Sadly, he said, the new state-mandated curriculum doesn’t allow time for field trips and discovery. Now, he said, he has to give his students the formula and a bunch of problems to solve. Which group of students is more likely to have retained that information?

Here’s a genuine problem-based project that’s easy to incorporate into the curriculum. Equip every third grade class in the city, region or state with an air quality indicator {{3}}. Have students go outside and take the measurements four or five times a day. They plot the data. Share the data with other third graders. Look for differences. Take photos to see if the measurements correlate with cloud patterns. Figure out the possible causes. Study weather patterns. Bring in scientists and meteorologists and ask them questions. Write up the findings, including everything that they could not explain. That is, write about the failures, the as-yet-unanswered questions.

That’s real work, something those third graders won’t forget doing. And, while they may not be aware that they’re also developing a skill set that will serve them well as adults, that is what will be happening.

Oh, and those kids will probably do just fine on whatever standardized tests the system throws their way.

©John Merrow 2015

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[[1]]1. http://wd40.com/cool-stuff/history [[1]]
[[2]]2. The entrepreneur Elon Musk has started his own school because he wasn’t happy with what his kids were experiencing. It sounds as if the entire curriculum in this school-without-grades is based on problem solving. [[2]]
[[3]]3. A device can cost as little as $30.[[3]]

When my wife and I moved recently, the process forced me to dig through piles of stuff and discard what I didn’t care enough about to pack and then unpack. In the process I came across some really good stuff, and that triggered this list of books, organizations, films, and websites that I value. {{1}}

The Hechinger Report is celebrating its fifth anniversary as a reporting organization, after many years of focusing on training education reporters and editors. It’s first rate. Help them celebrate.

New Visions for Public Schools just celebrated its 25th Anniversary. What has it accomplished? Today roughly one in five NYC high school students has benefited or is benefitting from the educational opportunities provided by New Visions schools. Small schools, strong leadership, and a commitment to learning opportunities for all students drive this exceptional organization. New Visions embraced the idea of small high schools before they were cool, grew when the Gates Foundation started writing checks, flowered when Joel Klein was Chancellor, withstood the Gates Foundation’s sudden departure, and continues to create opportunities for thousands of New York City’s children.

CEI, the organization created when the Center for Educational Innovation and the Public Education Association merged in 2000, has been helping schools improve since–take your pick–1989 when CEI was created, or 1895 when the Public Education Association was founded. Either way, it’s a remarkable track record. I got to know its principal, Sy Fliegel, in the late 1980’s when he was running District Four, the NYC school district that put school choice on the national map.

Reach Out and Read, Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library….and every other program that puts interesting books in the hands of children. Click on this link to learn what’s at stake and what can be done.
Here’s our NewsHour piece about Reach Out and Read.
We profiled Dolly Parton’s program as well.

Speaking of reading, Readworks is a wonderful resource for teachers who want their students to become better readers. (That’s just about every teacher I’ve ever met.)

“The Game Believes in You,” by Greg Toppo, is a mind-changing book by an outstanding reporter. Published by Palgrave Macmillan, it carries the subtitle “How Games Can Make Our Kids Smarter.”

I have Sir Ken Robinson’s new book, “Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution that’s Transforming Education,” in my books-to-read pile.

Also awaiting me is Freeman A. Hrabowski’s “Holding Fast to Dreams: Empowering Youth from the Civil Rights Crusade to STEM Achievement.”

Speaking of books, “Cage-Busting School Custodians” is Rick Hess’s newest effort in his franchise series. Write Rick directly at rhess@AEI.org to order the sequel to “Cage-Busting Leadership” and “The Cage-Busting Teacher.” Rumor has it that the prolific author has a contract for yet another in the series, (working title) “Cage-Busting School Crossing Guards.”

The Education Writers Association, which seemed bound for oblivion when the number of newspapers with education reporters declined precipitously, has reinvented itself under the leadership of Caroline Hendrie. In the mid 1970’s the tiny, disorganized organization {{2}} kept its financial records in a shoebox. EWA grew under Executive Director Lisa Walker’s leadership, floundered when newspapers began to go under, and then bounced back. Today EWA is an invaluable resource for anyone attempting to report on education. It’s there for us, every day, 24/7.

“Education Week” has been required reading since forever and remains so.

Blogs from Diane Ravitch and Whitney Tilson make my list of Good Stuff. http://edreform.blogspot.com is published by Mr. Tilson, who views education from the right. He notes, “I sometimes don’t have time to post here everything that I send to my school reform email list, so if you want to receive my regular (approximately once a week) emates, please email me at WTilson@tilsonfunds.com.” (I read his email, not his blog.)
At one time Diane Ravitch also viewed education from the right. Now easily the blogosphere’s most influential person on the left, Dr. Ravitch posts many times every day. Signing up for her email feed allows you to glance at everything and then read whatever you find compelling. She’s had more than 20,000,000 pageviews!

The Harmony Program puts musical instruments in the hands of school children who might not otherwise be exposed to serious music, and then provides excellent lessons taught by professional musicians.  You can watch our NewsHour report about this wonderful New York City-based program as well.

Investigative reporters Marian Wang and Heather Vogell, whose work for ProPublica is shocking readers and waking up lawmakers. Marian Wang exposed the machinations of Baker Mitchell, a North Carolina charter school operator whose ‘non-profit’ charter school has fattened his personal bank account.
Before moving to ProPublica, Heather Vogell blew the whistle on Atlanta’s school cheaters.

The Khan Academy: free learning opportunities in easily-digestible chunks. Did I mention that it’s free?

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The remarkable Ron Thorpe has revived this organization, blending into it the “Celebration of Teaching and Learning” that he created when he was at Channel 13 in New York City. Teaching is a profession that should be harder to enter but easier to practice, and the National Board is doing everything it can to make that a reality.

KIPP. The Knowledge is Power Program had to do something with the powerful knowledge that most of its graduates were not succeeding in college. Yes, KIPP has been growing, but it has also been reinventing itself.

Community Schools, Project-based Learning, and Blended Learning. They’re all significant, and, best of all, they’re not mutually exclusive.

“Most Likely to Succeed” is a new, as-yet-unreleased documentary that is ostensibly about project-based learning but that actually covers a much bigger topic: what we want for our kids. Look for it.

“If You Build It” is a terrific documentary about a refreshing way of learning.

And don’t miss “Brooklyn Castle.”

Our own “School Sleuth: The Case of the Wired Classroom” makes my list, of course. This 1-hour film brings back our film noir parody detective, The School Sleuth, who’d been on hiatus since he solved “The Case of an Excellent School” in 2000. This film hasn’t been released, but I predict you are going to love it. It’s a light-hearted way of exploring a serious issue, the use and misuse of technology in schools.

That’s my list. What have I forgotten? What’s on your list?

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[[1]]1. Because I have some sort of personal connection to nearly every item on this list, I am not going to go into detail. If you think I’d make recommendations based on friendships, then you probably still believe that I am on the Board of Pearson Education. Stop reading now….or keep reading until you discover the fake one.[[1]]
[[2]]2. My first reporting award came in 1974 from the National Council for the Advancement of Education Writing, which must have been the organization’s original name.[[2]]

I wrote the paragraphs below nearly five years ago. Besides changing a few names, how much revision is needed to make the observations accurate in mid-2015? Perhaps we haven’t been running in place, but I am convinced that we are fighting the wrong battle in the last war.

“Microfiche,” the 14-year-old asked, staring at the machines tucked away in the New York Public Library? “What’s microfiche?”

How many people under age 30 could explain it? Her question is a powerful reminder of how technology has turned learning on its head. Just a few years ago, libraries and schools were the places that stored knowledge—on microfiche, in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and in the heads of the adults in charge. We had to go there to gain access to that knowledge.

Not any more. Today knowledge and information are everywhere, 24/7, thanks to the Internet. Unless libraries have been closed because of budget cuts, they have adapted to this new world. Most have become multi-purpose centers with Internet access that distribute books, audio books and DVD’s. Librarians encourage patrons to ask questions, because they need to keep the public coming through their doors.

By contrast, schools remain a monopoly, places where children are expected to answer questions, by filling in the bubbles or blanks and by speaking up when called upon.

Providing access to knowledge, one of three historical justifications for schools, no longer applies in the usual sense. Of course, children need teachers to help them learn to read and master numbers, but, beyond that, a new approach is required. More about that later.

A second justification, socialization, has also been turned on its head by technology. Today’s kids don’t need school for socialization in the usual sense of learning to get along with their peers in the building. Why? Because there are Apps for that, dozens of them, including Facebook, FarmVille, MySpace and so on, and so ‘socialization’ takes on new meanings when kids routinely text with ‘friends they’ve never met’ across the continent or an ocean. Again, schools must adapt to this new reality.

Only custodial care, the third historical justification for school, remains unchanged. Parents still need places to send their children to keep them safe. So does the larger society, which has rejected child labor and does not want kids on the streets.

But when schools provide only custodial care and a marginal education that denies technology’s reach and power, young people walk away, as at least 6,000 do every school day, for an annual dropout total of over 1 million.

And, unfortunately, some of those who remain in marginal schools will find themselves in danger, because the youthful energy that ought to be devoted to meaningful learning will inevitably be released, somewhere. Often it comes out in bullying, cyberbullying and other forms of child abuse by children. That is, marginal education often produces dangerous schools.

Unfortunately, those in charge of public education have not been paying attention to these seismic changes. Instead they are warring over teacher competence, test scores, merit pay and union rules, issues that are fundamentally irrelevant to the world children live in.

Who are these warriors?

On one side in this battle is a cadre of prominent superintendents and wealthy hedge fund managers. Led by New York’s Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, 15 leading school superintendents issued a 1379-word manifesto in October 2010 asserting that the difficulty of removing incompetent teachers “has left our school districts impotent and, worse, has robbed millions of children of a real future.”

This side believes in charter schools, Teach for America, and paying teachers based on their students’ test scores. Publicly pushing this “free market” line is a powerful trio: Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman” movie; NBC’s semi-journalistic exercise, “Education Nation;” and Oprah Winfrey. And if one movie isn’t enough, this side also has “The Lottery” in the wings.

It has identified the villains: bad teachers and the evil unions that protect them, particularly Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers.

The other side is clearly outnumbered: The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the two teacher unions; many teachers and some Democrats. Its villains are No Child Left Behind and its narrow focus on bubble test scores in reading and math. This side’s far weaker megaphone is wielded by historian Diane Ravitch, a former Bush education policy-maker turned apostate. …….

But what’s most striking about this bitter battle is its irrelevance. The adults in charge are fighting the last war, and whoever wins doesn’t really matter to the millions of young people now being denied on a daily basis the learning opportunities that modern technology affords.

Our young people should be learning how to deal with the flood of information that surrounds them. They need guidance separating wheat from chaff. They need help formulating questions, and they need to develop the habit of seeking answers, not regurgitating them. They should be going to schools that expect them to discover, build, and cooperate.

Instead, most of them are stuck in institutions that expect them to memorize the periodic table, the names of 50 state capitals and the major rivers of the United States.

That’s what I wrote five years ago. Since that time, Diane Ravitch’s megaphone has proved to have an astounding reach {{1}}, and Dr. Ravitch herself has only grown stronger, despite a serious knee injury and the normal physical challenges that age brings. Joel Klein has moved on, “Waiting for ‘Superman’” has been thoroughly discredited as a propaganda film with staged scenes, “Education Nation” has been shelved, MySpace has disappeared, and the Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top” has supplanted “No Child Left Behind” as the left’s federal whipping boy.

When I wrote those words in 2010, the Common Core State Standards existed on a drawing board. Today, they’re under attack by critics from left, right and center. The catalyst for the current battle was the CC testing now being administered. The ensuing “Opt Out” movement seems likely to lead to cuts in the number and frequency of standardized testing.

Just being opposed to ‘excessive testing’ is not enough, but, unfortunately, very few educators are addressing the fundamental irrelevance of schools, which was my point five years ago.

This rebellion will lead to less regurgitation, but no one who cares about the future of our democracy should be satisfied with that small step. It’s time for schools to enter the 21st Century, which, in my view, means embracing both “blended learning” and “project-based learning.”

We will always have schools, where working parents will send their kids. Beyond that, everything has to change. Young people’s bodies may be within a building, but their brains should be engaged with students across town, in other cities and around the globe. Young people can and should be doing real work. Discovering, not parroting.

Do any of the declared or likely presidential candidates get this? Any governors or mayors? Educational leaders?

—-

[[1]]1. As of today, her blog has had 20,244,461 page views.[[1]]

Something’s significant seems to be happening in the complex world of public education. The Common Core testing has been the catalyst, but what’s now going on appears to be a much bigger deal.

My quick take: The opting out surge will be followed by a decrease in the total number of standardized tests (and test prep) being administered across all grades. That’s already underway in Florida.

If this analysis is correct, then it’s time to answer the essential question: “If schools are not going to focus on test prep, what should they do instead?”

Opting Out now seems to be a genuine grassroots movement. Yes, it’s tangentially supported by teacher unions and the Tea Party, but it is primarily driven by well-organized parents (and individual teachers) who are concerned about excessive testing. Nearly 15% of New Jersey’s high school kids in the testing grades opted out, along with about 5% of elementary students who were supposed to take the tests. Students in California, Colorado, Washington State and elsewhere have voted with their feet in droves. Even states that are ‘prohibiting’ opting out are finding their rules to be difficult to enforce. FairTest has been keeping a scorecard of sorts, which you can find here.

The 5% threshold matters because federal law requires that districts which fail to test at least 95% of all students risk sanctions. With so many schools failing to meet that threshold, the U.S. Department of Education is in a bind. What can or should it do? At the recent Education Writers Association meeting in Chicago, Secretary Duncan was asked about the probable violations of federal law. His response: it’s up to the states, but he added that he would be watching.

Daniel Koretz, the Harvard professor who wrote “Measuring Up,” believes that the rapid growth of the Opt Out movement has gotten the Department of Education’s attention. “At first I thought it was mostly the right wing, but it’s clear that it goes well beyond that,” he said.

Yes, it does. Now testing–”excessive testing”–is squarely in the critics’ sights.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho of Miami-Dade (FL) public schools has announced what he calls “the most aggressive decommissioning of testing in the state of Florida, if not in the country.” The politically astute leader has cut the number of district-developed, end-of-course exams from 300 to 10 — including all elementary school tests. He said his goals are to “restore teaching time” and to “respect the educational environment.”

At least a dozen other Florida school districts have announced plans to do the same thing, and reporters there say that number is likely to grow. Florida Governor Rick Scott just signed a law that’s meant to reduce the number of standardized tests given to students, and Superintendent Carvalho has seized the opportunity to act. And take note that this is happening in Florida, where former Governor Jeb Bush pioneered “test-based accountability” for schools and teachers.

Mr. Carvalho is no ordinary superintendent: he is the current National Superintendent of the Year, proclaimed and honored by the American Association of School Administrators. And so what he does matters.

In our conversation, Professor Koretz recalled previous protests about schools during the ‘age of reform’ that began in 1983 with the publication of “A Nation at Risk.” Generally, he said, the education establishment reacted by seeming to agree with the protests, saying “We got the details wrong, but we can fix it with a better curriculum, or fairer tests, or higher standards or more choice.” That line of defense defused much of the protests in the past, but this time, he speculated, talking about ‘details’ may be inadequate. This time the concern is deeper. It’s not just about ‘narrowing the curriculum’ or ‘too much test prep’ this time. Now many parents and observers seem sense that something is deeply wrong….something that is not fixable by tinkering.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress regularly confirms our educational stagnation, whether it’s 12th grade reading or 8th grade geography.

But the strongest evidence that something is seriously amiss is what’s happening at the end of the school line, when students finish college. For 16 years they bought system’s pitch: “Work hard so you can get to the next step on the ladder (advanced placement, honors course, a first rate college, and a great job).” But now that they have reached the promised land and have that college diplomas, they find themselves underemployed or unemployed and deeply in debt, a debt they cannot pay. {{1}}

Is it time to conclude that 30+ years of ‘school reform’ have not worked? Time to seriously question the ‘more rigorous’ approach and its goal of higher test scores? No other advanced country approaches educational accountability the way we go about it, testing students to judge teachers. “Getting tough on teachers” seems to be driving people away from the profession. Does anyone seriously believe that’s a good way to ensure a quality education for our children?

The brilliant new film “Most Likely to Succeed” makes the point that technology is destroying jobs faster than it’s creating them. To survive and prosper in the adult world, children are going to have to become builders, creators and producers while they are in school. No more ‘regurgitation education’ but real and meaningful work.

The challenge, as school districts cut back on bubble testing, is to determine what students and teachers will do with all the free time. “More direct instruction” is the worst possible choice, in my view. Today’s technologies offer remarkable opportunities for exploration and creation, but if educators just swap computers for textbooks, the enterprise is doomed. As we show in our new film, “School Sleuth: The Case of the Wired Classroom,” nothing is impossible….but only if educators are willing to take risks.

For more than 30 years the ‘school reform’ crowd has been asking one basic question of every student: “How Intelligent Are You?” They tested to find out, and then grouped, stacked and categorized kids accordingly. That hasn’t worked for the vast majority of kids.

A warning is in order here, because the reform crowd acknowledges past missteps–even as they ask for just one more chance to get it right. For example, a new report from the American Enterprise Institute talks the talk but then proceeds to put forth the same old stuff: more choice, less regulation and so on. A sample line: “Although many education reform efforts have fallen flat over the years, there are promising initiatives on the horizon that state leaders would be well-advised to pursue.”

Do today’s ruling reformers deserve another chance? Under their leadership, an entire generation of kids has grown up in the internet world, a 24/7 flood of information. Those young people needed to learn how to ask questions so they’d be able to sift through the flood of information and separate truth from falsehood, but school reform policies reward compliance and the giving back of the right answers, what I call ‘regurgitation.’

It’s time for those folks to step (or be pushed) aside, so that others can ask a far more important question of every child, a question that ‘reformers’ have not asked: “How Are You Intelligent?”

Listen to the answers and act accordingly. Build schools and create classrooms that enable students to discover and grow. When students do meaningful work in schools, they will also learn to read, write, calculate, work with others, process information, and separate truth from falsehood. They are a good bet to emerge from school ready for the new world that awaits them.

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[[1]]1. Many are back in their family home. Graduate school doesn’t necessarily make things better. Some 40% of law school graduates are working in jobs that do not require a law degree.[[1]]

Does the opt-out movement have legs? Or could what some are calling a ‘revolution’ just be nothing more than normal growing pains for the Common Core State Standards? Whichever of those is accurate, it’s also a rare opportunity to rethink the wisdom of the strange path we are heading down.

The extent of opting out and the passion of its proponents have surprised a lot of observers, and, of course, it’s not over yet. While I haven’t heard any recent public statements from Secretary Arne Duncan{{1}}, radio, television, newspapers and the web are full of reports and analysis. {{2}}

How widespread is opting out? In New York State, where about 60,000 students opted out last year, at least 200,000 opted out of the first round of testing (English Language Arts), with math yet to be tested. Across New Jersey, Colorado, Washington and Oregon and elsewhere, thousands and thousands of parents chose to withdraw their kids from the Common Core State Standards tests. In some schools, less than half of students slated to be tested actually took the exams, and in as-yet-uncounted number of districts, the percentage tested fell below the magical 95% required under federal law.

As we reported on the NewsHour last month, it’s a ‘perfect storm’ that has brought together the left and the right, generally with very different motives but with a common purpose: slow down or stop the testing machine. Sweeping generalization: Most on the right want to get rid of the Common Core State Standards and anything that smacks of federal control; most on the left believe schools test too much, and this is their moment to draw a line in the sand. As one CCSS testing opponent said, “We are not anti-testing; we are against these tests.”

What makes America’s approach different from nearly every other country is that we use test scores to judge teachers, not primarily to assess either students or schools. The people in charge do not trust teachers. That, to be blunt, is the root cause of the mess we are in. Years ago we trusted teachers{{3}} but had no system for verification; today, however, trust has virtually disappeared, and education is about verifying — using scores on standardized tests to weed out ‘bad teachers’ and reward ‘good teachers.’ {{4}}

Trust without verification doesn’t work. Verification without trust is a disaster.

But what exactly are we intent on verifying? There are three basic options: Student progress, teacher performance, and school quality? That’s the key decision.

The Obama Administration has put its money–lots of it–on assessing teachers, and standardized test scores are the essential measure. A requirement for “Race to the Top” millions was a test-based system of teacher accountability.

But that was then. Has Secretary Duncan been ‘evolving,’ as politicians like to do? Two years ago at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, he said, “Despite the flaws of today’s tests, we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don’t believe that the problems of assessing student growth are so unsolvable that we should take a pass on measuring growth—or bar the consideration of student progress in learning from teacher evaluation.”

At the beginning of this school year, he threw the critics a bone, saying “(T)esting should never be the main focus of our schools.” He went on: I believe testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools – oxygen that is needed for a healthy transition to higher standards, improved systems for data, better aligned assessments, teacher professional development, evaluation and support, and more.

But he did not back away from his central belief that student test scores must be used to evaluate teachers; he just gave states a bit longer. “States will have the opportunity to request a delay in when test results matter for teacher evaluation during this transition. As we always have, we’ll work with them in a spirit of flexibility to develop a plan that works, but typically I’d expect this to mean that states that request this delay will push back by one year (to 2015-16) the time when student growth measures based on new state assessments become part of their evaluation systems.”

This may be moot, because the current rewrite of ESEA/NCLB takes away a lot of the Secretary’s power. That, and the election of a new President next fall, mean an opportunity to rethink the big picture.

To many in education, testing students in order to measure, reward and punish teachers is a flawed strategy, because half of students are not in testing grades. Most are also studying subjects that aren’t tested, but of course those teachers have to be evaluated. So, bending logic beyond recognition, some teachers are being judged by the scores of students they’ve never taught! If there’s no standardized test for, say, music, then music might as well be dropped from the curriculum.

Testing kids in every subject — including art and music — just so their teachers can be rated may strike you as an idiotic notion, but it’s the logical outgrowth of federal policy.

Focus on students, argues the new president of the National Education Association, Lily Eskelsen Garcia. She says that No Child Left Behind defined ‘success’ as a test score. That has to change.

What we need instead is a whole dashboard of indicators that monitor better measures of success for the whole child — a critical, creative mind, a healthy body and an ethical character. And we need indicators of each student’s opportunities to learn — what programs, services and resources are available?

Success should be measured throughout the system — preschool to high school — but a standardized test tells us so little. We want to know which students are succeeding in Advanced Placement and honors programs, where they earn college credit in high school. You can measure that. We want to know which students have certified, experienced teachers and access to the support professionals they need, such as tutors, librarians, school nurses and counselors. We want to know which students have access to arts and athletic programs. Which middle school students are succeeding in science, technology, engineering and math tracks that will get them into advanced high school courses, which will get them into a university. You can measure all that, too.

And we want the data broken down by demographic groups, so we can ensure that all types of students have access to these resources. Without this dashboard of information, how would the public know which children are being shortchanged? How would anything change…?

I like President Garcia’s ‘dashboard’ image and the multiple measures, but why not put the emphasis on measuring school quality? Test scores could be on the list, but so would graduation rates, college/career readiness, classes in the arts, community service, teacher and pupil attendance, teacher turnover and more.

I would argue that no school should be allowed to stay open if most of its students consistently fail the state’s tests. At the same time, no school would dare to ‘dumb down’ its curriculum and devote hours to ‘drill and kill,’ because of those all-important multiple measures it’s being judged by.

“Multiple measures” cannot be handed down from on high. We need to trust each community to create the kinds of school programs it wants for its children, instead of the state or federal government making the rules. I hope citizens would accept this wisdom: “We are what we repeatedly do {{5}}.”

A community might choose:

• Significant programs in art, drama, journalism and music.
• A community service requirement.
• Project-based learning.
• Competence in a second language.
• At least 30 minutes of recess daily.
• Honors recognition for academic excellence.
• An emphasis on ‘blended learning,’ the healthy mix of teaching and technology.
• Teacher-made tests to regularly measure student progress.
• Uniforms for all students.
• Economic and racial diversity.
• Early college opportunities for advanced students.

Give a community one point for each vibrant program it establishes. For argument’s sake, let’s say a school must get at least 10 points to stay open. However, merely having some or all of these programs would not be enough to earn a “passing grade” for a school, because every school must also earn points by doing well on the high-stakes test and demonstrating that its graduates are capable of moving on.

That’s the verification side of the equation.

Give three points if 60 percent of kids score basic or above; four points if 75 percent reach that level; and five points for a score of 85 percent or above.

The idea is to establish multiple priorities and provide a program that is valuable to the community. A school couldn’t just “drill and kill” to pass the test, because it wouldn’t earn enough points to stay open. Nor could it just have a host of wonderful programs that make everyone feel good, because passing the state test and preparing graduates for their future are also requirements.

Trust the community to decide what kinds of programs it wants for its children, but look to  (a smaller number of) standardized tests and the college/career readiness results for proof that the community’s trust is justified — or, in worst cases, evidence that changes must be made.

I’m suggesting that states should focus on verifying the progress of schools, not teachers, while the federal government should return to its roots: assuring the rights of the disadvantaged. However, we need to trust a school’s community (of teachers, administrators and parents) to see that everyone in that school is pulling their weight–and to do something about those who are not.

Today’s bitter battles about the Common Core State Standards and their tests could become an opportunity for community leaders to bring people together to talk about what we want for all our children. Doing so could lower the temperature in education — and help us begin to catch up with other industrialized societies.

—-

[[1]]1. Speaking on background, a Department official questioned whether it’s a real movement. “It’s far too early to judge that. States will report their participation data to us later this summer, and the testing window is still open in some states.”[[1]]

[[2]]2.I was surprised–and disappointed–by the front page story in The New York Times on Tuesday, April 21, which reports that opting out is union-led and union-driven.  That was not the case in New Jersey, where the union got involved only late in the game.  The national effort led by Peggy Robertson says it has received no support from either teacher union. The Times’ story cites analysts but no parents.[[2]]

[[3]]3. When teaching was one of the few jobs open to competent women, classrooms were staffed by smart, responsible and caring women, women who would probably be attorneys or executives today.  When a changing economy opened doors for women, schools suffered. The teaching force changed, and trust gradually eroded as we learned the hard way that trust alone did not produce results. Perhaps the final nail in the coffin came in 2003, when a high school valedictorian in New Orleans failed the math portion of the state’s graduation test five times.
By then we were well into the test-intensive era of No Child Left Behind, the federal law that requires all children to be achieving at a basic level by 2014. Today, public education is all about verifying, and states are falling over themselves to rate teachers according to their students’ test scores. Washington, D.C., led the way, but now about 30 states require the evaluation of teachers based on test scores, a requirement most added to qualify for Arne Duncan’s “Race to the Top” money. [[3]]

[[4]]4. This approach has had unintended consequences, particularly outbreaks of cheating by adults determined to increase student test scores.  Atlanta is the poster child, of course, but only because no one in power in the District of Columbia had the courage to investigate what went on during Michelle Rhee’s tenure as Chancellor.[[4]]

[[5]]5. The aphorism continues: “Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” I and most others attribute this to Aristotle, but apparently these are the words of philosopher Will Durant, who was riffing on an observation of Aristotle.  I’ve also learned that Mark Twain did not say about Wagner, “His music is better than it sounds.” He was quoting another humorist, Bill Nye.[[5]]

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” William Butler Yeats wrote in 1919 in ‘The Second Coming.’ Yeats was describing the world after the Great War, but it aptly describes American education today{{1}}: polarized, shouting at, but rarely listening to, each other. We disagree about dozens of issues: the Common Core; whether ‘opting out’ of the Common Core tests is appropriate (or even legal); the role of unions; the effectiveness of charter schools; the federal role; the amount of standardized testing; how to evaluate teachers; poverty’s impact on children’s learning, and more.

Now, out of the blue, we have two{{2}} points of agreement: 1) Draconian punishment for the Atlanta cheaters is unjust, unseemly and counter-productive; and 2) students are the losers when adults cheat.

By now everyone knows that 11 Atlanta educators have been convicted for cheating and could be facing serious time behind bars. Thoughtful observers like Richard Rothstein, Robert Pondiscio and David Cohen are weighing in. Mr. Rothstein’s piece takes the deepest dive, and so I suggest you start there.

Even though everyone agrees that kids{{3}} were cheated, we don’t agree on what should be done. Should they be offered free tutoring? Or is an apology enough?

And we disagree about who’s really to blame for the cheating in Atlanta. Superintendent Beverly Hall was too ill to stand trial and died before the decision was handed down, but for many the buck started and stopped with her.{{4}} Others blame the unrealistic demands of No Child Left Behind for the cheating in Atlanta, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio and Austin, Texas.

Everybody’s got a villain, whether it’s Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top; an obsession with ‘data-driven decision-making; education profiteers; greedy teacher unions; or a right wing vendetta against those same unions. {{5}}

Can’t we agree on something else? I suggest two big ideas that everyone who is genuine about putting kid first can support. One, expose hypocrites and hypocrisies, wherever they may be. Two, school spending should be transparent, because we are talking about taxpayer dollars, and sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Of course, the two are related, because hypocrisy often involves money and secrecy.

To me, the biggest hypocrites are those who preach, “Poverty can never be offered as an excuse” (for poor student performance) but then do nothing to alleviate poverty and its attendant conditions. What they are saying, bottom line, is “It’s the teachers’ fault” when kids in poverty-ridden schools do poorly on tests or fail to graduate.

These preachers disguise their mendacity with words of praise for teachers, calling them ‘heroes whose brave work changes the lives of their fortunate students blah blah blah.’ Sounds great, but when it comes from those who discount all the other factors that affect outcomes, it’s hypocrisy. They’re setting up teachers and schools to be blamed.

How satisfying and convenient to have a simple, easy-to-grasp analysis. And how hypocritical.

OK, poverty is not an excuse, but surely substandard housing, inadequate health care, poor nutrition, abuse and abandonment (all of which are more likely in high poverty areas) are factors in poor academic performance. So why are these hypocrites either standing by silently or actively opposing efforts to alleviate poverty and thereby improve the lives of students outside of school?

Are they benefiting personally? Are they mouthing the words of their rich and powerful supporters?

Even if these so-called “thought leaders” genuinely believe that poverty is not an excuse, shouldn’t they be outraged that most states are actively making things worse for poor kids {{6}}? At least 30 states are systematically shortchanging poor areas when they distribute education dollars, as the Hechinger Report made clear recently. “The richest 25 percent of school districts receive 15.6 percent more funds from state and local governments per student than the poorest 25 percent of school districts, the federal Department of Education pointed out last month. That’s a national funding gap of $1,500 per student,” Jill Barshay reports.

And money matters. The centrist-right Alliance for Excellent Education has addressed this issue in a report that demonstrates the clear link between poverty and academic outcomes.

According to the Alliance’s report, 1200+ high schools with graduation rates at or below 67 percent can be found in nearly every state.{{7}}

“These high schools predominantly, and disproportionately, enroll traditionally underserved students. In Michigan, for example, African American students represent only 18.4 percent of K–12 students in the state, but they account for 69.1 percent of the student population in the lowest-performing high schools. In Massachusetts, Hispanic students represent 16.4 percent of K–12 students, but they account for 51.3 percent of the student population in the lowest-performing high schools.

Nationally, of the more than 1.1 million students attending these low-graduation-rate high schools,

• 40 percent of students are African American, even though African American students make up less than 15.7 percent of the overall K–12 public school student population;

• only 26 percent of students are white, even though white students make up 51 percent of the overall K–12 public school student population; and

• 70 percent are students from low-income families, even though students from low-income families make up 50 percent of the overall K–12 public school student population.”

So let’s ask, “Who benefits?” Whose lives would be disrupted most if the status quo were to change and we stopped “underserving” so many poor kids and so many non-white kids? Who gains an advantage from the current situation? To answer those questions, follow the money…..

We might want to start the investigation with charter schools, both the for-profit and the non-profit varieties {{8}} (because, when it comes to money, they’re almost indistinguishable). Rarely do they disclose how they spend their public tax dollars. And why should they, when their political enablers don’t demand it?

I hope you are following Marian Wang’s reporting on this issue for Pro Publica. She documents how some charter operators are laughing all the way to the bank, taking your dollars to put in their accounts.

However distasteful you may find the notion of adults diverting dollars from the education of kids to their own personal use, what they’re doing is legal. Politicians and charter authorizers have made it legal, and we ought to ask them why they don’t demand transparency. How are they benefiting?

The leadership of the charter school movement is culpable here, it seems to me, for not strongly supporting transparency in all financial matters. I put the question to Nina Rees, the Executive Director of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NinaR@publiccharters.org) in June, 2014. Here’s the relevant part of my letter:

What I wonder is how many Charter Management Organizations {{9}} are playing fast and loose with the system. Here’s one case in point: We are looking into a CMO that is growing; its records indicate that its President owns the building his charter schools operate in, and so he billed the CMO for rent—a hefty sum. The CMO pays him a salary, a 16% management fee and an additional 7% or so for ‘professional development’ for the staff. In recent years he has added categories, notably ‘back office & support’ for nearly $300,000 and ‘miscellaneous equipment rent’ for $317,000. In FY 2008 he billed for $2.6M, but in FY 2012 the number climbed to $4.1M. His 5-year total is $15.8M….and he’s a CMO, not an EMO.
We have a number of other examples, which prompts my questions: who’s minding the store, and whose responsibility is it?
Is it the role of national organizations like yours to set standards for transparency? State politicians? I have no idea but would love to hear your thoughts.

She responded almost immediately:  “I would say it’s the authorizers more than anyone else – if they fail, the state lawmakers. We are here to shine a light and guide though, so if you think there is a systemic problem, it’s important for us to know.”

She seems to be saying that her national organization bears no responsibility for policing the charter movement, for pushing states to write tighter rules, or for calling out the profiteers.  That’s someone else’s job.

“Remedial education” is another money pit. Follow the money, you will discover that big bucks being spent on remedial education at every level, and, while some kids get ‘remediated,’ the situation never changes. The adults in charge may be wonderful, likeable human beings, but their jobs depend on a steady stream of failed students, meaning that they do not have a stake in fixing the system. I wrote about this three years ago when I announced that I was leaving PBS {{10}} to make my fortune in remedial education.

Follow the money: How many millions of the $100 million Mark Zuckerberg donated to ‘fix’ Newark’s public schools have gone to consultants? How much money goes into the trough labeled ‘professional development’ and is never seen again? How much are school systems spending on highly paid central office staff ($100K+ per year) whose job it is to go watch teachers they don’t trust to do their jobs? How much of the increase in college costs is directly attributable to spending on administrators? Quite a lot, according to the New York Times. {{11}}

Schools would be improved if we’d agree to: Follow the money. Call out the hypocrites. Demand transparency. And stop blaming teachers.

Do you agree?

—-

[[1]]1. And perhaps our society as a whole.[[1]]
[[2]]2. I am not counting our agreement that ‘children come first,’ because everyone has to say that. It’s what people actually do that reveals their true beliefs.[[2]]
[[3]]3. In some cases the cheating was essentially covered up. Washington, DC, where massive cheating took place, lacked the political will to go after the adults who were responsible. Chancellor Michelle Rhee and her deputy, Kaya Henderson, controlled most of the investigations and were aided by an inept and uncurious Inspector General. Mayor Adrian Fenty and his successor, Vincent Gray, preferred to believe that schools were improving, and the Washington Post raised no objections. Thousands of students received inflated scores, and no adult has been held accountable. (http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6232 , http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6332) [[3]]
[[4]]4. The obsession with higher tests scores in Atlanta and elsewhere precedes NCLB. Dr. Hall arrived in Atlanta in 1999, but her predecessor, Benjamin O. Canada, had already eliminated recess, so that kids could spend more time getting ready for tests. Dr. Hall kept that ball rolling, but she didn’t give it the first push.[[4]]
[[5]]5.Peter Cunningham, Arne Duncan’s Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, told me after the Atlanta cheating came to light, that Secretary Duncan believed that ‘tighter test security’ would solve the problem.[[5]]
[[6]]6. Are you thinking that most Americans believe in helping the neediest? As the Bible (Acts 11:29) has it, “And the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief….” But in 1875 a fellow named Karl Marx copied the Frenchman Louis Blancin’s rephrasing: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” That gives politicians an out, because nobody interested in a political future wants to echo Marx, even if he was borrowing from the Bible.[[6]]
[[7]]7. Nineteen states have at least 20 such schools. California and New York have 105 and 199 of these schools, respectively, while southern states, such as Alabama and Mississippi, have more than fifty; Georgia has 115.[[7]]
[[8]]8.I don’t want to live by a double standard or knowingly hold charter schools to a higher standard. Teacher unions have had corruption issues, and their national leadership hasn’t made much of a fuss. The American Medical Association is not upset, not publicly anyway, about Medicaid and Medicare fraud committed by some doctors, and so maybe it’s unfair to expect the supporters of charter schools as the last best hope to be raging against the frauds and cheats.[[8]]
[[9]]9. CMO is the term for non-profit public charter schools. EMO’s are set up to make money and represent somewhere around 12% of all chartered schools.[[9]]
[[10]] 10. In the same vein, I announced last week that I was joining the Board of Pearson Education.[[10]]
[[11]]11. From the Times op-ed: “Interestingly, increased spending has not been going into the pockets of the typical professor. Salaries of full-time faculty members are, on average, barely higher than they were in 1970. Moreover, while 45 years ago 78 percent of college and university professors were full time, today half of postsecondary faculty members are lower-paid part-time employees, meaning that the average salaries of the people who do the teaching in American higher education are actually quite a bit lower than they were in 1970.
By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.”[[11]]

It hasn’t been officially announced yet, but I want my friends to know that I will be joining the Board of Directors of Pearson Education. This was not an easy decision, and I know that some of my friends, particularly those on the left, will be angry with me. I ask you to withhold your judgment until you have finished reading this.

Pearson has been criticized, unjustly in my view, for putting profits ahead of children, but I have gotten to know some of Pearson’s leadership, and I can attest that they are caring parents who are devoted to their children. Recently I took one of my grandchildren to a polo match at the home of a Pearson executive. When my little girl fell and scraped her knee, our host attended to her every need. He could not have been more caring. Pearson hostile or indifferent to children? I don’t think so. I know better.

Pearson has gotten a lot of bad press, and I may have contributed to that with my reporting about the ‘Opt Out’ movement and its attacks on assessment. For example, when the Pearson Foundation was forced to shut down and fined $7.7 million for some questionable practices, the press coverage made it sound as if the Pearson Foundation had been guilty of child molestation. All it did was entertain some decision-makers in an effort to create a relaxed atmosphere where they could make important decisions about purchasing tests and other education products, perhaps from Pearson Education but also available from McGraw-Hill and other companies.

Why have I accepted Pearson’s invitation? Well, it’s not the money. Yes, it is true that I will receive something north of $100,000 per year plus stock options, but I publicly pledge that I will donate some of that largess to charity.

I am doing this because, frankly, I believe I can do more good from the inside than I can from outside {{1}}. Pearson is huge, with fingers in every aspect of American education, from testing to teacher evaluation. Carping from outside will not soften the edges of this behemoth nor restrain its harsher hyper-capitalistic instincts, but my strong commitment to holistic, child-centered education will move Pearson in a direction that its critics will one day celebrate.

I am sure some cynical readers are thinking that I will now start pulling my punches in this blog, but I give you my word that I will not hold back. Whenever Randi Weingarten of the AFT or Lily Garcia of the NEA cross the line, they will hear about it from me. If I learn about teachers lying down on the job, I will write about it. If McGraw-Hill behaves unethically, you will read about it right here. And if I praise Pearson, it will be because Pearson is an honorable company.

Why does Pearson want me on its Board? I believe the invitation is based on their respect for my 41 years of ‘telling it like it is’ in American education. I’m sure the cynics, aware that the current Board is entirely Caucasian, believe that Pearson wants me for diversity. Wrong! Pearson assured me that my status as a Native American (I am 1/128th pure Cherokee) did not influence its decision.

As always, friends and countrymen, I am grateful to you for lending me your eyes and ears.

My term on the Pearson Board of Directors begins today, April First.

—-
[[1]]1. I am not the first ‘outsider’ to seek to restrain (and retrain) Pearson. The current President of Teachers College served on its Board for many years.[[1]]

Imagine you’ve been made responsible for making dramatic improvements in our public schools…but with the stipulation that you must choose one point of attack and focus almost all of your energy and resources on that.

What would you choose? Pre-school? Teacher training? Professional development? A longer school day and year? More technology? More sophisticated assessments? Greater parental involvement?

The list of possibilities is intriguing and daunting. On one level, this is a parlor game, but it’s also a serious question because policy-makers make choices like this all the time.

Recently five Chicago principals-in-training, a college professor, the President of Catalyst and I were relaxing after an evening celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Catalyst {{1}}. Wanting to take advantage of all that brainpower, I posed the question, but with a twist: once someone had chosen an option, that one was off the table, and the next person had to select–and argue persuasively for–a different way to improve schools.

I should have taken notes on what ensued because it was fascinating. I was surprised that no one focused on technology or a longer school day and year. In fact, the primary emphasis was on teachers, perhaps not surprising because just about everyone at the table had been a public school teacher (including me, years and years ago). The participants argued for more professional working conditions for teachers, for improved teacher preparation and for relevant professional development (lots of scorn for what is now offered in PD). Preschool and early childhood programs were also eloquently supported, and one principal-in-training argued for fewer but better assessments of student learning.

When my turn (8th and last) came, seven ‘good’ and ‘obvious’ choices were off the table. No matter, because it gave me the chance to speak in favor of a change that would, I believe, transform the way we run schools. It would be inexpensive to boot, although most teachers would need training (and some would need a full makeover).

I proposed that, to bring about major improvements, at least half of the school year should be devoted to project-based learning. Not ‘some’ but at least 50%, and in every subject.

Doing that would mean a complete makeover; it would mean that teachers in different subjects would have to collaborate, as you see them doing in my colleague John Tulenko’s superb report about Portland, Maine, a few years ago. The best projects begin with a question that the teachers do not know the answer to, so they become genuine searches for knowledge. Many projects will be strengthened by the use of today’s remarkable technologies, and virtually all of them will require teamwork, data analysis, careful writing and a public presentation–all skills that young people will need as adults. This change would put schools in the ‘deeper learning’ camp, which is where they belong, in my view.

Yes, better training, more preschool, and greater parental engagement are fine ideas, but they do not get at the heart of schooling’s problems.  Today’s schools are out-of-date, horribly antiquated.  Because young people swim in a sea of information, 24/7, they need to learn how to figure out what information to trust and what to reject.  They need the exact opposite of the ‘regurgitation education’ that most schools now offer. Genuine exploration through a project-based curriculum is the best way I know to provide what kids need.

Now it’s your turn. Where would you put your money and effort?

—-

[[1]]1. A remarkable publication that has consistently pushed Chicago to improve its education system. http://catalyst-chicago.org/ [[1]]

I had planned to devote time to Alexander Russo’s critique of my reporting for the PBS NewsHour about students “opting out” of the Common Core States Standards tests. However, we have too much going on {{1}} for me to spend excessive time looking back.

So, quickly, here’s the backstory: Alexander emailed education reporters to say he was writing an analysis of media coverage of the Common Core tests and asked for interviews with anyone who was covering the subject. I agreed to an interview, which–because we were in different cities–took place by email. He sent questions, which I answered. No other reporters cooperated, he acknowledged in his short online article.

Mr. Russo took me to task for ignoring the number of tests that were successfully administered, for not providing accurate counts of the numbers of students who ‘opted out,’ and for highlighting student protesters in Newark. I addressed these issues in my written interview, but that apparently did not meet his standards of journalism.

In his critique, he cites as authorities an individual who works for the Gates Foundation and another whose organization has received millions in contributions from the Foundation. He accepts without question reports from Pearson and others that the tests have gone well, even though a modest degree of skepticism would lead one to wonder what ‘going well’ means. A spokeswoman from PARCC, one of the two test developers, told me that it meant ‘without technological failure,’ but she did not know how many students might have been flummoxed by the technology, et cetera.

Even though the tone of some of Mr. Russo’s questions made me think he’d made up his mind before he began his reporting, I answered him in detail. Here is my complete, unedited response, with his questions underlined:

Alexander,
I am answering your questions on the assumption that you are writing about media coverage and not just about our piece. If you are doing the latter, then I choose not to participate and am declaring the material below to be ‘off the record.’ Fair enough?
John

1. Are there any particular aspects of reporting the Common Core testing/opt-out story that are particularly challenging or unusually complicated?

This is THE interesting question because there are multiple players with different agendas. It makes answering the ‘W’ questions very difficult, particularly Who and Why. Opting Out is seen by these groups as their chance to change the course, although they do not agree on a new direction. The protesters, whatever their politics, have been, as I see it, marginalized in the coverage, partly because of habit and partly because it’s difficult if not impossible to judge the strength of this (or any) grassroots movement. Most media, it seems to me, tend to echo the official line and present the usual faces. So the ‘left’ part of Opt Out is dismissed as tools of the union (as your third question suggests), which is a convenient story line but not accurate, as far as we could determine.

It’s a difficult story in another way: the response of the establishment has been over the top, especially if they truly believe that it’s just a few disgruntled folks and union pawns. But that story doesn’t get told (and it’s not in our piece). But you might ask why no reporters are asking why Arne, the Chamber, Mike Petrilli et alia are going nuclear. I think of Gertrude, ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

2. The connection between the Newark sit-in and opting out of the Common Core seems pretty thin — why’d you include them in the piece so prominently?

Thin in what way? Many of those kids were also part of other, specifically anti-CC testing events, and the proliferation of testing was one of their issues at the sit-in. Because they had more than one issue (quite a few, actually), does that disqualify them from being in the piece?

3. Why no mention of the NJEA, whose opposition to the future uses of the Common Core tests is behind at least some of the concerns and opting out that’s taking place?

The NJEA began running ads as the testing approached, but we did not see strong evidence that the union was calling shots or pullings strings. The NEA has provided small amounts of money to United Opt Out, according to Peggy Robinson {{2}}, but again the financial scales are so heavily tipped the other way. {{3}} Let’s just talk Gates for a moment: The Gates Foundation has played a major role in the Common Core State Standards. Between January 2008 and November 2010, it contributed more than $35 million to the Council of Chief School Officers and the National Governors Association Center; it gave Achieve $12.6 million in February 2008; $3 million to ASCD, and another $1 million to the National PTA to organize parent endorsement of Common Core. The list goes on and on. “It is not unfair to say that the Gates Foundation’s agenda has become the country’s agenda in education,” said Michael Petrilli, vice president for national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C., which itself has received nearly $3 million in Gates Foundation grants. (and those numbers are somewhat out of date because I wrote that paragraph a while back…and Mike Petrilli has become even more prominent as a supporter of the tests and the CC, along with Peter Cunningham, another recipient of Gates largesse (and other foundations)).

So, if you want a story, why don’t you compare spending and then analyze the language of the reporters and the reporting (starting perhaps with the assumptions behind your question???)

4. How did you protect against exaggerating or overstating the breadth and depth of the opt-out movement? Would it have helped to indicate the number of tests administered or kids tested as of the time of the broadcast?

We fessed up to not being able to provide numbers, even ended the piece with that question, “How strong….?” But we also reported that there were anti-testing events every night of the month, often multiple events. And we tried to capture the diversity of the folks speaking out. We tried to give the audience a sense of how difficult it would be for kids to step up, and I feel we did not do an adequate job there. Quite a few school districts put up obstacles, gave misleading information and established a threatening ‘sit and stare’ policy that would make opt out kids feel like outcasts among their peers. In short, they did a lot to prevent opting out. I don’t think we captured the guts it must have taken in quite a few districts.

Re numbers, the districts weren’t releasing any, and Pearson wasn’t responding, and we were of course not willing to report the counts provided by bloggers with an axe to grind. You no doubt saw that Pearson released numbers favorable to its position, which some media simply xeroxed and reported, but those numbers don’t provide adequate information. (Q for you: why isn’t the NJ Department of Education on top of these numbers? Does the Department have a responsibility to address the spreading of misinformation, for example?)

5. Do you feel like your peace (sic) was as balanced and contextualized as you wanted, or are there things you wanted to do or would have done to make it better?

Alexander, I work for the only place on television that will give a story like this 8 minutes, and I am eternally grateful for that privilege. But do I wish we had 10 minutes, or 15, or 20? Of course I do.

The points above are ones that we would have loved to tackle in the piece, but cooler heads prevailed down in Washington. However, I have a hunch that very few reports have given this much time to those opposing the tests, which is odd considering that it’s a story about ‘opting out.’

6. Anything else about the assignment, development, or editing of the piece that you think readers (especially other education reporters) should know?

It’s a tough story to report. We filmed in Florida at the National Opt Out conference and used maybe five seconds of that. We filmed at a school in NYC whose principal is opting out her own kids in NJ but has to devote days to test prep in her school…and is seriously conflicted about that contradiction—and that story didn’t make the piece either.

(When I retire, someone is going to get a hell of an archive of raw tape!!)

Mr. Russo, who seems to be trying to position himself as an independent judge or referee of education journalism, assured me that he would be analyzing other coverage, although it turns out that no other reporters cooperated with him. There must be a lesson in there somewhere.

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[[1]]1. Including our new film, “School Sleuth: The Case of the Wired Classroom” and two pieces for the PBS NewsHour. [[1]]

[[2]]2. My error here. The founder of United Opt Out is Peggy Robertson, not Robinson[[2]]

[[3]]3. I not only got her name wrong; I apparently misinterpreted what she told me on the phone in January. My notes say ‘small support,’ which I incorrectly interpreted as ‘small amount of money.’  Peggy (Robertson) assures me that United Opt Out has received neither dollars nor encouragement from the National Education Association. I apologize for my error.[[3]]