Attending a Forum on Education Reform

Several months ago I had attended an education reform event by the Connecticut Forum at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford, CT. Among the panelists to speak were Joel Klein, who has or will soon be leaving his post as the Chancellor of Education in New York City, and Davis Guggenheim, the Director of the movie Waiting for Superman. From advertisements I understood there to be the opportunity to email advance questions for the panelists as well as the opportunity to submit them during the intermission before the Q&A segment of the event. I emailed several well thought out and constructive questions ahead of time and developed several more during the intermission which specifically and directly pertained to statements made by individual panelists. Sadly, not one of my questions was remotely addressed. I left the event feeling melancholy, not because I felt ignored but because the event seemed more like a propaganda maneuver to support the current education reform paradigm initiative than a forum to discuss the problems currently contributing to our failing education systems and develop strategies to compensate for them while establishing mechanisms to correct the situation on a long term, permanent, basis.
One thing that said “Old Boy” like nothing else was when Joel Klein portrayed Dr. Steven Adamowski, the also recently or nearly intending to do so departing Superintendent of Schools in Hartford, CT., as a wonder child of school redesign to overcome failing status. There are really two issues here. One is if these individuals are the men on white horses who have come to save us, why are they going away so soon? I know Hartford has been looking for a good Superintendent for many years. I am sure that if they found one they would do anything to keep him at their helm short of strapping him to his horse like El Sid. But no, these head administrators have turned their systems inside out, redistributed the administrative hierarchy and funding avenues and corrupted the assessment and accountability processes for teachers by circumventing their professional resources and union protection affiliations to the point that there is no semblance of the prior system or access to it as a lifeline. The result is mass confusion, carnage of educational property, devaluation of teachers and their intellectual properties, ineffective distribution of curriculum and squanderous spending of the budget without effective oversight. While everyone’s head is still spinning and no one is certain what is working if it is and if it is not, what’s not or why not because there is no actual architecture to these plans. There are only endless irreconcilable directions which further contort and twist the vortex that has been initiated. Then the masters of the design say… “I’m going to leave now.” However they leave someone whom they have groomed in charge or move on in some other capacity that offers high personal return for their influence and association with education all the time claiming it is all about the children. The successor head administrator has one go to if faced with questions of situations beyond their immediate grasp, their groomer/predecessor who I am sure will remain at their service on an as needed consulting basis. That would be a considerably well paid basis I assure you. It seems it is all about the dollar at the expense of the children who do not understand the reality yet due to their cognitive stage and experiences. This is the very reason we educate. So, what you are seeing is a monumental perpetual drain on school budgets that are already strained, no long term guarantees on fixing the original problem and a case Humpty Dumpty concerning trying to turn back and regroup.
A second remarkable incident occurred when Davis Guggenheim responded to a question about education methods and strategies. He commented that he witnessed, while directing Waiting for Superman, an innovative, exciting, revolutionary and effective thing happening in schools in NYC that was developed by Joel Klein and differed to him to expound on it. I was flabbergasted when Joel Klein said it was something he called differentiated instruction. Folks, I do not recall from my Master’s Degree program in Secondary Science Education, professional development opportunities while teaching or any other source that Joel Klein developed differentiated instruction. I know from my teaching experiences dating just several years prior to his ascension to his position in the NYC school system that differentiated instruction has been a known education methodology since before he became involved in the industry and take great disgust at his allowing Davis Guggenheim, the Connecticut Forum, the audience and anyone else to believe, even if by omission of clarification, that he single handedly developed differentiated instruction. He exuded tremendous confidence as he sat in his chair and elaborated on his conceiving the notion and incorporating it into his redesign format for schools in NYC. My maternal grandmother was a teacher in Appalachia in the 1920’s and I know she did it even if she didn’t know it would be given a name 80 years later. It is more than just good teaching but Joel Klein did not discover it in the past couple of years.
Much of the rest of the event was a series of volleys between panelists that took aim at “traditional design” teachers as being inherently bad and cowering under the protection granted by tenure and protected by unions while lauding the promise of “new design” teachers being actively recruited for Teach for America to replace “ineffective teachers who should get out and go do something else.” This remark was made and defended by several panelists. The term “ineffective teacher” also seemed to reflect any teacher the new design empowered supervising administrators did not want to keep without preference. This means someone with minimal classroom experience can be made a principal of a new design school and determine effectiveness by their own whim because their authority supersedes previous teacher assessment systems because, oh yes, they too are bad.
In total I found the evening to be enlightening. It showed me how deeply in trouble our education systems are. Not deep in trouble because of the long road to failure they are deemed to suffer from but deep in trouble because the new education paradigm is like Grant’s Total War. It is not reinventing the wheel but it is destroying the framework. In building renovation it’s called “good bones”. Basically a renovator looks at the fundamental structure for flaws. If the fundamental structure is sound the interior, utilities, trim, appliances, trim and landscaping can all be gutted, removed and replaced with quality materials using a skilled workforce to produce a good building. Only when the fundamental structure is not viable is demolition an option and that too has a cost. Just because you tear down a building does not mean it is a cost free initiative without risk to the environment or community. In American education today we are seeing the seemingly effortless and cost free demolition of school entities and career educators’ livelihoods, some of whom would have gone on to become administrators and superintendents, to create an infrastructure wasteland where businessmen with self serving agenda can propagate their own version of lesser quality education services with autonomy over the tax budget money to create outlandish personal revenue streams for themselves. The winners: Them. The losers: The students.
So, perhaps yes, it is all about the children. It just is not about their benefit. The path we are on will almost certainly provide our students with an amazing and inspired, second class at best, educational opportunity while destructively draining the school budgets, destroying the careers of truly compassionate educators and flooding the workplaces and post secondary education institutions with graduates who are actually less prepared than ever before for the next step. Just because a new design administrator says scores and graduation rates are up while dropout rates and grade retentions are down does not mean that the problem is solved. Sixty percent up also means forty percent away from where it should be and you still do not know what you are actually measuring. Ask a high school student to spell a word or count you change on a purchase? I know it sounds archaic but in general, using random populations, I think the results will astound you. Recently American Education was reported to rank 24th out of 30 some developed nations. The slide from the #1 spot has occurred over the past 20 years. If the fix is so certainly the intellectual product of these wonder child administrators why are their tenures so short? Why do we not make then stay and finish the job? Why do we pay them so highly for this product? It seems that they should pay us, our children, to experiment with their lives and futures.
I will generate another post soon about my attempt to become certified in New York State and my job hunt in NYC.

The Culture of Science

   I frequently tell my students that studying science is like visiting a distant and exotic location. Preparing for the trip should include learning some simple phrases and important words of the language to help attain lodging, meals, transportation and negotiate the currency for an equitable experience. I tell them this is what lecture and homework is in science. Laboratory on the other hand I tell them is all about the culture. It is about how to have a good time and how to move about effortlessly in a different society even if you do not speak the language fluently. It is about respect and friendship of another people, their place and their culture. Although I try and make it seem like a vacation to be enjoyed I know it is not all easy. I enjoyed Physical Chemistry in college although it was third degree sunburn, Malaria laden mosquito bites and limb consuming shark attacks all wrapped up together for some students. I remember the horrifying tales of infectious opportunities told by my Parasitology professor. Sometimes I feel I am beguiling my students to become contestants on "Outbreak Island"! All in all respect for the unexpected and an ability to remain focused in the face of extreme adversity should be a part of the science learning curriculum of any school or institution. For that reason I am offering extra credit opportunities to my current students pertaining to the presently unfolding circumstances in Japan. The loss of life is staggering but the effects are potentially of epic proportion especially due to the nuclear power plant component. I am excited when my students freely approach me to talk about the latest episode of Amazing Race, Big Bang or Fringe where for the first time they felt connected to the program due to a scientific point that otherwise would have flown right past them. Now they have a real scenario to assimilate to, hopefully that will captivate their hearts and their minds simultaneously and give them a greater connectedness to education than they have ever known before. One of the factors educators struggle with is that our society has grown corpulent and fuzzy around the facts, relying too heavily on the omniscience of Dell, Apple, HP et al for the important stuff, not understanding the difference between the hammer and the home, the black box and the mind. As I take up my sword daily I fight this battle to overcome the complacency and lethargy of the mind that afflicts our potential as an advanced society and to develop an awareness and appetite for "what next?"

Here is PART 2 of  Whitewashing of the Education Debacle:

As a teacher, I cannot think of one colleague that does not hold ethical behavior as sacred in the classroom. These teachers take full ownership of being mandated reporters and having the responsibility of protecting every one of their students’ morally, ethically, emotionally and physically which all goes well beyond classroom content instruction. This is because these teachers are descent, respectable citizens who know how to avoid harm by thinking first about what they are going to say and how they are going to say it. Being a popular media personality, like Scott Haney of Channel 3, does not carry an exception to that responsibility. Yet media has a pronounced influence on how people act and what they believe. I have a great fear that many new education design produced teachers, that are flooding in behind the disenfranchised, older, ineffective, traditional education design teachers, like myself, are deemed the best and the brightest by the media because of their perceived talents or youthful exuberance, not their experience, patience or ability to separate their personal agenda from their vocational responsibilities. The new approach to education empowerment is using budgetary issues and erroneous assessment data as a smokescreen to disinherit highly qualified, intelligent, compassionate career educators to make room for a new form of classroom instruction that is no more than a social experiment created to divert attention from the largest scam on record, defrauding the taxpayer of their hard earned money intended to be spent on quality education instruction of our youth. In the end it really seems that the main question is where did all the tax dollars that used to be teacher’s salaries actually go? It sure didn’t go to the new teachers and notice how many top education administrators leave their post before their redesigns actually produce results.    

Milestone

   Today is a special day in my life as an "Education Activist". A small regional periodical has accepted the first 300 word installment of my opening public statement on education reform. I will add it to this post. First let me ask that we all take a moment to acknowledge the people effected by the earth quake and subsequent tsunami in Japan.

Whitewashing of the Education Debacle (Part 1) 

There is something terribly wrong with how American communities are looking at education reform and why they buy into the buzzified jargon the pied pipers play. Several iconic tales of mythology, folklore and fairy tale spring to mind every time I hear the media portray our Nation’s current education dilemma. Buzz words and phrases of the architects of the new education paradigm make the former used car salesman in me blush. I am also mystified at the lack of moral and ethical compass demonstrated and encouraged through mainstream media associated with all things education. The media reports on school failure as a result of faulty instruction rather than a social problem we are all faced with. Several weeks ago I witnessed a television news personality, hosting a segment involving students from a local area school making a charitable contribution, make a statement that brought tears to my eyes. After the students presented their schools message the news person thanked them for being on the show and then commented to one female student regarding her attire. He said “Are those jeans painted on?” I was stunned at the casual familiarity assumed by the news person and heartfelt for the teen that was neither prepared for the incident nor even cognizant of its reach. I found the remark to be distasteful, sexually harassing, disrespectful and endangering to a minor. A teacher would be out of a career for that remark but a news personality can talk to your children that way? If we disrespect our selves we will let others disrespect us and loose the opportunity to regain our dignity.

   As a teacher who takes full ownership of instructional and surrogate responsibilities in the classroom I am outraged by the actions being committed against young people in the name of education reform.

The Purpose of This Blog

Greetings and Welcome!

   I have created this blog for much the same reason I became a teacher, to share my knowledge and experiences so more people might benefit and thereby contribute to the opportunity for a better future for those who will inherit it. For the past two years however I have spent much of my time sharing my experiences and telling my ideas to people who have been no more than an audience to the ruination of my career at the hands of a school system claiming redesign as a means to rescue children drownding in failure based practices of education. Those close to me hear the same things too often and too many others only catch snibbits without the necessary foundations to truly appreciate the social impact of current education reforms not realizing the destructive influence they will have on our future through our most precious asset, young minds. It is my sincerest hope that through this blog I will be able to journal my ideas and experiences as they occur and create a listening post for anyone who cares about the future of this country and the influence education has on it. So, please listen in and by all means feel free to repond.