Anyone who professes an interest in K-12 education must come to understand that termination of the system of testing known as the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) became the predictable outcome when voters decided to give control of the gubernatorial office and both legislative chambers to the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party. My fellow liberal Democrats should take particular note.
In the spring of 2003, I served on the committee that generated new academic standards for language arts at grades 9-12. I worked closely with then-Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke and other committee members who were generating language arts and math standards for all grade levels. Many members of the DFL-controlled Senate opposed the new standards, while the reception in the Republican-controlled House was generally favorable. There was a great exigency to meet No Child Left Behind guidelines for establishing standards that could be objectively assessed, so after adjustments and compromises the two legislative chambers approved the standards.
There was immediate political fallout, though. Senate education committee chair Steve Kelly resented the work of Yecke and her committees in generating the standards. The teachers union, Education Minnesota, opposed the standards and the idea of testing based on them from the very moment of the new system’s inception.
This opposition could be seen, too, in key blocks of an education establishment that is far more unified than most people realize. Key political actors among university education professors, the Minnesota Association of School Administrators, and central school system bureaucracies certainly have their own agendas, but they all serve as apologists for a K-12 public education system that fails so many of our students. None of these key figures in the education establishment liked the new standards, and they were full of enmity for Yecke. Kelly took the lead in engineering her dismissal.
Alice Seagren gained the appointment from then-governor Tim Pawlenty to be the new education commissioner.
Under Seagren’s less controversial leadership, the new academic standards and MCAs based on them went into effect. Students in grades 3-8 have taken math and reading MCAs every April since spring 2005.
But teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools, to cite the teacher population that affects most of my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, widely ignore the standards for social studies and science and they do not competently train students to master the skills necessary to do well on the MCAs. I know this, because I spend seven days a week training the students in my beyond-school-hours program in the skills necessary to record grade level performance in writing, math, and reading. My students regularly report that they have never had to demonstrate the skills necessary on most questions given on the MCA Item Samplers easily accessed on the Minnesota Department of Education website.
Over the years since the inception of the current academic standards, teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools have variously sabotaged student performance because of disdain for the MCAs, or they have revealed pedagogic incompetence in imparting the necessary skills for student mastery. If you look at the Item Samplers, you will find that the items presented make sense for grade levels 3-6. Mathematics items for grades 7-8 would be fine for students trained to begin pre-algebra and algebra in those years, but none of my students at those grade levels has been properly trained in her or his regular classes at anywhere near the level of competence necessary to record grade level performance on those tests. They can meet the challenges upon receiving my explanations, but we have to go over so many concepts in our two hours together per week that we have to work very hard to master all the required skills.
My relationship with my students is permanent. Even when they enter my program performing far below grade level, they sequentially acquire the skills necessary to succeed in high school. During their grade 9 year, we focus on the skills necessary to do well on the GRAD writing test, and in grade 10 we focus on the GRAD reading MCA. Any properly instructed student can pass the writing test. With the weight and ballast that comes with participation in an academically intense program of skill acquisition, my students are ready with the kind of vocabulary and comprehension skills needed to demonstrate grade level performance on the reading MCA at grade 10.
But the education establishment has actively opposed the standards and the MCAs since their inception. Tom Dooher and his Education Minnesota constitute one of the most powerful political forces in the state. Mark Dayton and the DFL will always do anything that Education Minnesota and others in the education establishment pressure them to do. Under Dayton and Cassellius, we have seen waivers, a new system measuring school performance, and a succession of statements meant to undermine the MCAs as the essential measurement of school performance.
This year, teachers had less incentive than ever to train students aggressively for the MCAs. Don’t believe that stuff about too much teaching to the test and students feeling so much pressure that third graders go home crying. Teachers should in fact but do not adequately teach to the test. Students feel very little pressure to do well until they get to high school, when they know that the tests start to affect their ability to graduate.
Go on that Minnesota Department of Education website and read the grade 10 reading MCA Item Sampler that is a perfectly good representation of the reading level that a high school student should have to demonstrate before collecting a diploma. Understand that this year’s writing prompt for the grade 9 writing test called upon students to define courage and how the demonstration of courage affects a person--- and that all students had to do was to organize an cogent essay around that topic. Know that these are tests that students can easily pass with proper training, but that many teachers cannot muster the pedagogic mettle to prepare students properly in the necessary skills.
Meanwhile, their union succeeded in helping to elect mark Dayton and a DFL-controlled legislature. Education Minnesota called in its chips immediately. Dayton and his appointee Cassellius went to work undermining the system by which schools have been under pressure to improve. These political actors will succeed in tearing down a system that was properly pressuring schools for better performance. But students will continue to fail because politics is more a priority for these politicos than is the education of our students.
When the MCAs are terminated, know that they will no longer be required because of political lobbying and educator incompetence, not because the assessments are too difficult for students when those deserving young people are properly trained.
Apr 19, 2013
Apr 17, 2013
Preparing to Pick a Fight with Steve Perry at the First RESET Talk
I’m planning to pick a fight with Steve Perry. He told me to, if it means striving for excellence in education. Perry will deliver a message, over which I am planning to pick the fight, on April 22 as the first of three speakers invited by the Minneapolis Foundation in its RESET campaign to improve K-12 education.
Understand this, and be deciding what you think: Perry’s fundamental argument is that the public school systems of the United States are beyond repair. He would replace school systems such as the Minneapolis Public Schools with independently run public charter schools and private schools funded through vouchers. Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and others in central school district offices would be relegated to roles monitoring the progress of charter and private schools in doing what they are designed to do.
As we anticipate this fundamental message that Steve Perry is likely to deliver, you should consider my reason for picking this fight: Perry’s ideas as expressed to date (especially in his book, Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve- Even If It Means Picking a Fight) are incisive as pertaining to the failings of the education establishment, but they are misguided as relating to the replacement of the current K-12 system.
Steve Perry is the principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut. As a magnet school, Capital Preparatory is a public school. Perry incisively identifies public school bureaucracy impediments to firing incompetent teachers. He correctly censures teachers unions, school boards, and central district bureaucrats for opposing innovations such as alternative teacher certification, thoroughgoing teacher evaluation, and merit pay. Perry also argues persuasively that many suburban schools will stellar reputations are mediocre at best by the highest international standards.
Perry and his staff at Capital Preparatory Magnet School have had substantial success, with 100% of graduating seniors enrolling in four-year colleges. But the school’s primarily African American and Latino student body is small (now about 540 students with the addition of a “lower [elementary] school” but through most of its existence rising to only 360 students or so, with a graduating class generally of about 25 students). And in most years, at least 40% of the school’s students have not come from families economically poor enough to qualify for free or reduced price lunch. The status of the institution as a model for systems dealing with thousands of young people from impoverished or dysfunctional families is very much open for investigation.
More importantly, Perry’s vision for a revamped K-12 education system is errant. His great faith in a market-oriented approach of charter schools and voucher support for private school attendance contravenes his expressed admiration for the school systems of Finland and South Korea, wherein students thrive on the basis of well-conceived national curricula and centralized governmental control over educational processes pertaining to the pre-K through high school years.
Rather than give up on the notion of centralized school districts, we need to revolutionize the approaches of those school districts in order to realize the ideal of a shared and coherent educational experience for all children. In Minneapolis, we should with great persistence and clarity urge Bernadeia Johnson to recognize the following principles:
1) An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a rich liberal arts curriculum to all students.
2) An excellent teacher is that professional who possesses deep and broad subject area knowledge and the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
To fulfill the requirements for excellent education and excellent teachers, we should persistently press Superintendent Johnson to do four things:
1) Define a strong liberal arts curriculum to be mastered by all students, logically conceived for impartation in grade-by-grade sequence from kindergarten through grade 12.
2) Retrain teachers so that they have the knowledge base and classroom presence to impart this knowledge-heavy curriculum. (Note: This is the expedient for the long-range goal of completely revamping university teacher training programs.)
3) Train highly skilled teacher’s aides in sufficient quantity to assist teachers in meeting the needs of every student.
4) Establish and properly train a skilled and sensitive contingent of outreach workers to connect with students and their families right where they live.
This is what we need to do as we overhaul our system of K-12 public education and achieve excellence. The “education our children deserve” is of a type very different from that touted by Steve Perry, so I’ll be “picking a fight” with him at that first RESET talk. But, more to his liking, I’ll also continue to pick a fight with the education establishment in order to overcome the vested interests that maintain the current wretched system. And I’ll be encouraging more of you to do the same.
Understand this, and be deciding what you think: Perry’s fundamental argument is that the public school systems of the United States are beyond repair. He would replace school systems such as the Minneapolis Public Schools with independently run public charter schools and private schools funded through vouchers. Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and others in central school district offices would be relegated to roles monitoring the progress of charter and private schools in doing what they are designed to do.
As we anticipate this fundamental message that Steve Perry is likely to deliver, you should consider my reason for picking this fight: Perry’s ideas as expressed to date (especially in his book, Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve- Even If It Means Picking a Fight) are incisive as pertaining to the failings of the education establishment, but they are misguided as relating to the replacement of the current K-12 system.
Steve Perry is the principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut. As a magnet school, Capital Preparatory is a public school. Perry incisively identifies public school bureaucracy impediments to firing incompetent teachers. He correctly censures teachers unions, school boards, and central district bureaucrats for opposing innovations such as alternative teacher certification, thoroughgoing teacher evaluation, and merit pay. Perry also argues persuasively that many suburban schools will stellar reputations are mediocre at best by the highest international standards.
Perry and his staff at Capital Preparatory Magnet School have had substantial success, with 100% of graduating seniors enrolling in four-year colleges. But the school’s primarily African American and Latino student body is small (now about 540 students with the addition of a “lower [elementary] school” but through most of its existence rising to only 360 students or so, with a graduating class generally of about 25 students). And in most years, at least 40% of the school’s students have not come from families economically poor enough to qualify for free or reduced price lunch. The status of the institution as a model for systems dealing with thousands of young people from impoverished or dysfunctional families is very much open for investigation.
More importantly, Perry’s vision for a revamped K-12 education system is errant. His great faith in a market-oriented approach of charter schools and voucher support for private school attendance contravenes his expressed admiration for the school systems of Finland and South Korea, wherein students thrive on the basis of well-conceived national curricula and centralized governmental control over educational processes pertaining to the pre-K through high school years.
Rather than give up on the notion of centralized school districts, we need to revolutionize the approaches of those school districts in order to realize the ideal of a shared and coherent educational experience for all children. In Minneapolis, we should with great persistence and clarity urge Bernadeia Johnson to recognize the following principles:
1) An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a rich liberal arts curriculum to all students.
2) An excellent teacher is that professional who possesses deep and broad subject area knowledge and the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
To fulfill the requirements for excellent education and excellent teachers, we should persistently press Superintendent Johnson to do four things:
1) Define a strong liberal arts curriculum to be mastered by all students, logically conceived for impartation in grade-by-grade sequence from kindergarten through grade 12.
2) Retrain teachers so that they have the knowledge base and classroom presence to impart this knowledge-heavy curriculum. (Note: This is the expedient for the long-range goal of completely revamping university teacher training programs.)
3) Train highly skilled teacher’s aides in sufficient quantity to assist teachers in meeting the needs of every student.
4) Establish and properly train a skilled and sensitive contingent of outreach workers to connect with students and their families right where they live.
This is what we need to do as we overhaul our system of K-12 public education and achieve excellence. The “education our children deserve” is of a type very different from that touted by Steve Perry, so I’ll be “picking a fight” with him at that first RESET talk. But, more to his liking, I’ll also continue to pick a fight with the education establishment in order to overcome the vested interests that maintain the current wretched system. And I’ll be encouraging more of you to do the same.
Apr 11, 2013
The Importance of Seeking Common Knowledge Through the Public Schools: a Rejection of Charter and Voucher-Supported Private Schools
For anyone who is seriously interested in upgrading K-12 education so that students in the United States can aspire to the accomplishments of those in Finland and South Korea, a rejection of reform through charter and voucher-subsidized schools must be clear and forceful.
Clarity is a rarity in writing concerning the overhaul of K-12 education. Michelle Rhee (Radical: Fighting to Put Students First [New York: HarperCollins, 2013]) and Steve Perry (Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve--- Even If I Means Picking a Fight [New York: Broadway Paperbacks/ Random House, 2011]) are two high-profile education reformers who in the indicated works ultimately do not demonstrate clarity as to how we are to achieve excellence in education. The vexing omission that one notes in these and many other articles, books, and statements on achieving excellence in education is any definition of “excellent education.” Many such prominent advocates for change in K-12 education offer little logical rigor as they attempt to point the way toward educational excellence. And the great majority of people in the general public, including many of those who imagine themselves to care about and to know something about education, can be persuaded to approve of radically different approaches to K-12 education within seconds of hearing statements articulating those divergent approaches.
Consider these two statements, for example:
1) Excellent education is a matter of students and teachers pursuing their own passionate interests in designating and exploring subjects that will determine the curriculum.
2) Excellent education is a matter of knowledgeable teachers of high pedagogical ability imparting a rigorous liberal arts education in core subject areas to all students.
I can generally set heads to wagging up and down in affirmation with stout assertions of either of these two statements in the same conversation, which is good for my ego as an articulator of ideas but terrible for my desire to encourage people to take a clear view on matters pertinent to K-12 education.
The two statements offer very different visions for attaining excellence in education. The first statement flows from a so-called “progressive” notion of education, implying opposition to a specified curriculum in favor of an open-ended exploration of individual interests. The second statement embraces specificity in a challenging core liberal arts curriculum taught by teachers with firm mastery of content and high ability to transmit their knowledge to students. The latter conception of excellence in education is consistent with the notion of “common schools” advanced by people such as Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann, who viewed a shared liberal arts education as vital to democracy, the means by which people of all economic and general life circumstances would gain an equitable chance to seek their dreams. The former conception is the misguided notion that has dominated university teacher training programs and undermined educational excellence in the United States for at least four decades.
Michelle Rhee offers much to admire in her tale of courage in confronting the education establishment in Washington, D. C. Similarly, Steve Perry has admirably found ways to circumvent the education establishment as principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut. Their accounts indicate that they understand the systemic impediments found in teachers unions, school boards, and central school district bureaucracies that prevent favorable initiatives such as accurate teacher evaluations, merit pay, and the jettisoning of incompetent teachers. They also give evidence of having articulated programs that have produced student gains in math and reading. But neither of these high profile advocates for change in public education ever gets around to defining what we mean by an excellent education. We cannot be certain that Michelle Rhee embraces a rigorous core liberal arts curriculum. Steve Perry issues a flurry of conflicting statements on the matter of a core knowledge base and ultimately seeks to leave education up to parents, students, and community members who would construct their own schools to replace those now run by public school systems.
And both Rhee and Perry are misguided in their sanguine approval of charter schools and even voucher-supported private schools. Neither of these types of schools can ever lead us as a whole nation toward the “common school” ideal in which all students master a rigorous liberal arts curriculum productive of a knowledge base shared by all. Most charter schools are worse than the regular public schools. There are not enough good private schools to accommodate millions of students throughout the nation. And either approach ultimately leaves curriculum to the whim of those who start the individual charter or private schools.
Rather than engage in the fancy of many different actors finding their own ways to educational excellence, we need to embrace the difficult task of defining a common curriculum, in the manner of those responsible for the excellent systems of Finland and South Korea. We would best do this at the national level, as have the Finns and South Koreans. But for now, in a nation that is fixated on “local control,” we should do this at the central school district level.
People acting at that level should agree on common knowledge sets in mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts to be mastered by all students in grade-by-grade sequence during the K-12 years. Much as Core Knowledge advocate E. D. Hirsch has done through his advisory board of subject area specialists of many different ethnicities, we can with attention to such an approach do this at the level of the local school district. Those of us who truly care about the education of all of our children must take responsibility for overhauling rather than replacing centralized public school districts. And we must with great clarity and vigor oppose notions that promote an unwieldy growth of charter and private schools that offer no commonality of educational excellence on which democracy depends.
Clarity is a rarity in writing concerning the overhaul of K-12 education. Michelle Rhee (Radical: Fighting to Put Students First [New York: HarperCollins, 2013]) and Steve Perry (Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve--- Even If I Means Picking a Fight [New York: Broadway Paperbacks/ Random House, 2011]) are two high-profile education reformers who in the indicated works ultimately do not demonstrate clarity as to how we are to achieve excellence in education. The vexing omission that one notes in these and many other articles, books, and statements on achieving excellence in education is any definition of “excellent education.” Many such prominent advocates for change in K-12 education offer little logical rigor as they attempt to point the way toward educational excellence. And the great majority of people in the general public, including many of those who imagine themselves to care about and to know something about education, can be persuaded to approve of radically different approaches to K-12 education within seconds of hearing statements articulating those divergent approaches.
Consider these two statements, for example:
1) Excellent education is a matter of students and teachers pursuing their own passionate interests in designating and exploring subjects that will determine the curriculum.
2) Excellent education is a matter of knowledgeable teachers of high pedagogical ability imparting a rigorous liberal arts education in core subject areas to all students.
I can generally set heads to wagging up and down in affirmation with stout assertions of either of these two statements in the same conversation, which is good for my ego as an articulator of ideas but terrible for my desire to encourage people to take a clear view on matters pertinent to K-12 education.
The two statements offer very different visions for attaining excellence in education. The first statement flows from a so-called “progressive” notion of education, implying opposition to a specified curriculum in favor of an open-ended exploration of individual interests. The second statement embraces specificity in a challenging core liberal arts curriculum taught by teachers with firm mastery of content and high ability to transmit their knowledge to students. The latter conception of excellence in education is consistent with the notion of “common schools” advanced by people such as Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann, who viewed a shared liberal arts education as vital to democracy, the means by which people of all economic and general life circumstances would gain an equitable chance to seek their dreams. The former conception is the misguided notion that has dominated university teacher training programs and undermined educational excellence in the United States for at least four decades.
Michelle Rhee offers much to admire in her tale of courage in confronting the education establishment in Washington, D. C. Similarly, Steve Perry has admirably found ways to circumvent the education establishment as principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut. Their accounts indicate that they understand the systemic impediments found in teachers unions, school boards, and central school district bureaucracies that prevent favorable initiatives such as accurate teacher evaluations, merit pay, and the jettisoning of incompetent teachers. They also give evidence of having articulated programs that have produced student gains in math and reading. But neither of these high profile advocates for change in public education ever gets around to defining what we mean by an excellent education. We cannot be certain that Michelle Rhee embraces a rigorous core liberal arts curriculum. Steve Perry issues a flurry of conflicting statements on the matter of a core knowledge base and ultimately seeks to leave education up to parents, students, and community members who would construct their own schools to replace those now run by public school systems.
And both Rhee and Perry are misguided in their sanguine approval of charter schools and even voucher-supported private schools. Neither of these types of schools can ever lead us as a whole nation toward the “common school” ideal in which all students master a rigorous liberal arts curriculum productive of a knowledge base shared by all. Most charter schools are worse than the regular public schools. There are not enough good private schools to accommodate millions of students throughout the nation. And either approach ultimately leaves curriculum to the whim of those who start the individual charter or private schools.
Rather than engage in the fancy of many different actors finding their own ways to educational excellence, we need to embrace the difficult task of defining a common curriculum, in the manner of those responsible for the excellent systems of Finland and South Korea. We would best do this at the national level, as have the Finns and South Koreans. But for now, in a nation that is fixated on “local control,” we should do this at the central school district level.
People acting at that level should agree on common knowledge sets in mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts to be mastered by all students in grade-by-grade sequence during the K-12 years. Much as Core Knowledge advocate E. D. Hirsch has done through his advisory board of subject area specialists of many different ethnicities, we can with attention to such an approach do this at the level of the local school district. Those of us who truly care about the education of all of our children must take responsibility for overhauling rather than replacing centralized public school districts. And we must with great clarity and vigor oppose notions that promote an unwieldy growth of charter and private schools that offer no commonality of educational excellence on which democracy depends.
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