School Reform ?

Peter Schrag has a piece on the California Progress Report on School Reform: Why it’s  so hard? http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/school-reform-why-it’s-so-hard  I have read Schrag for over 30 years.  I once used an early book by him in a class I taught to future teachers.  I usually agree with him- but this time I disagree.  Here is my response.  It is from the summary of Chapter 13 Democratic School Reform: How do we get from Here to There ? of my book, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education.  ( 2010).

Note; what is the educational task of the California legislature and the governor?  Answer- to adequately fund our schools.  They have failed repeatedly in the last decade.  So, how are they experts on school reform?  

Duane Campbell

This  is time for a change for  our society and  in our schools.  This generation must  renew our democratic society.  As described in my book Choosing Democracy, we face  marked crises in government, politics, families, communities and in the schools. Public schools have a particular responsibility to reverse these crises and to renew our democratic society.  The first mission of pubic schooling is to equip all students for the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship – and  many of the schools in low income areas  are presently not fulfilling this mission. If we do not solve the problems of low performing schools our democracy suffers.  For  our  democracy to survive we  need to create schools  that value  all of our children and encourages  each of their educational achievement.

 All children need a good education to participate in our democracy and prepare for  life in the rapidly changing economy. Making schooling valuable and useful is vital to prosperity for all.   Lack of education is a ticket to economic hardship.  The more years of school that a student completes, the more money they are likely to earn as adults  and the better  their chance to get and keep a good job. Unemployment is highest among school dropouts as is incarceration for crimes.  When we fail to educate all of our children, the high costs of this failure come back to hurt us in unemployment, drugs, crime, incarceration, violence and social conflict.

We need to invest in urban schools, provide equal educational opportunities in these schools, and recruit a well prepared  teaching force that begins to reflect the student populations in these schools. We must insist on equal opportunity to learn, without  compromise.  When we do these things, we will begin to protect the freedom to learn for our children and our grandchildren, and to build a more just and  democratic society.

Teachers Union President: Those who blame teachers for everything

By ALAN SCHWARZ. NY. Times.

WASHINGTON — Amid one of the most contentious periods in recent memory for teachers’ unions, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, on Monday called for education reform that emanates from teachers and their communities, rather than from “those who blame teachers for everything.”

“Let’s refuse to be defined by people who are happy to lecture us about the state of public education — but wouldn’t last 10 minutes in a classroom,” Ms. Weingarten told a crowd of about 2,000 here in kicking off the national conference held every two years by the union, which has 1.5 million members.

In the past year, particularly in Wisconsin and New Jersey, governors and some state lawmakers have castigated teachers’ unions and schools’ performance while slashing budgets and pushing newer education strategies like charter schools and more rigorous teacher evaluation.

The Grand Coalition Against Teachers

Firing Line: The Grand Coalition Against Teachers

by: Joanne Barkan, Dissent | Op-Ed

IN A nation as politically and ideologically driven as ours, it’s remarkable to see so broad an agreement on what ails public schools. It’s the teachers. Democrats from various wings of the party, virtually all Republicans, most think tanks that deal with education, progressive and conservative foundations, a proliferation of nonprofit advocacy organizations, right-wing anti-union groups, hedge fund managers, writers from right leftward, and editorialists in most mainstream media—all concur that teachers, protected by their unions, deserve primary blame for the failure of 15.6 million poor children to excel academically. They also bear much responsibility for the decline of K-12 education overall (about 85 percent of all children attend public schools), to the point that the United States is floundering in the global economy.

In the last few years, attention to the role of public school teachers has escalated into a high-profile, well-financed, and seriously misguided campaign to transform the profession based on this reasoning: if we can place a great teacher in every classroom, the achievement gap between middle-class white students and poor and minority students will close; all students will be prepared to earn a four-year college degree, find a “twenty-first-century job” at a good salary, and help to restore U.S. preeminence in the world economy…..

For most ed reformers, better a train wreck than no reform. They want as much change as possible as fast as possible in order to take advantage of momentum and the favorable political climate. The rush to pass state laws has provided their greatest opportunity so far. In response, they’ve skillfully built state campaigns, spending millions on organizers who advise lawmakers and legislative staffs, generate grassroots support, and run ad campaigns. A pipeline of private money—most of it from large private foundations—funds their state operations just as it funds almost all the ed reform movement’s activities. Two groups in particular—Stand for Children(headquartered in Portland) and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER, headquartered in New York City)—have played substantial roles by setting up branches in legislative battle states. Stand has a long list of contributors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which donated $5.2 million between 2005 and 2010. DFER gets most of its money from financiers, especially hedge fund managers.