"Darling-Hammond knows how all the talk of "rigor" and "raising the bar" has produced sterile, scripted curriculums that have been imposed disproportionately on children of color. Her viewpoint is that of an educator, not a corporate manager."

Some of us call "rigor" as it is currently practiced "rigor mortis".

Joe

You know what OUR children deserve? Better parents.

Quit watching T.V. Quit eating and feeding your children garbage. Read to your children, and encourage them to read on their own. KNOW their teachers.

You had them. It is your job to raise them.

What is this nonsense about not 'teaching from the left or the right'? ... What the hell are you guys talking about?!

Call it whatever the hell you want, but if we don't start teaching children to care about the Planet, we won't need to worry about the education system.

Teach them sustainablity (universal concept). Teach them responsibilty (universal concept)-- for the Earth, for the consequences of their actions (yes, if you are a deep thinker, you know damn well that many values of the right do not jive with sustainability i.e. everyone-has-babies-and-purchases-useless-shit-because-it-is-good-for-the-global-economy).

Teach them that human beings have, so far, gotten things pretty fucked up- see War, Religion, Greed, Apathy, etc. BUT THEY HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE IT.

Sound 'leftist'? Too fucking bad--- look at what the alternative is. Look out your window. Accept reality and react accordingly.

This is the lamest thread I have ever read on Common Dreams. Seriously.

Boy, this thread has gone all over the place. Quite an interesting discussion I must say. I suppose now it's all a moot point though. Obama has nominated yet another Chicago sleezeball for Sec. of Education. We can look forward to more and more school systems run by corporate crooks for corporate crooks. I'm starting to feel sorry for the citizens of Chicago. These fuckers are giving their city a bad name in a huge way.

If public schools were actually any good, Obama would have sent his daughters to one. Vouchers would give poor families who care as much as Obama;s about their children's education the same opportunity that Obama has.

There is a foolproof way of ensuring quality education for our children. A test should be administered to each and every teacher and administrator that reveals their love (or lack thereof) of learning. That should be the only way to gauge how effective an educator will be in nurturing love of learning for all children.
The aspiring teacher would be evaluated upon his/her modeling the kind of adult that we want our schools to turn out.

We are competing in a playing field made up of the entire world, and innovative ideas, and love of the work it takes to see these ideas into fruition is one of the most valuable traits that a young person going out into the world needs today.

michyh

First off, at last an EDUCATOR who is writing for real reasons and not his own journalistic egotistical glory.
ANd second, now that Obama has ended all the endless speculating about nothing, we have a real reason to discuss educational needs in the country. DO people not have anything to do? stop writing and DO something.If you need something to DO about education in your community, take all the time you spend blah blah blah on this website about how badly obama is going to do, such as palast speculated, what a waste, and go to a school and VOLUNTEER. we teachers would love some HELP< not endless speculating.

Thomas More - I'm astonished to see so many comments on a subject that usually elicits only a few. And I'm more than happy to consider alternative opinions - it's how we all learn, from trial and error and careful observation. So if you disagree with me, please challenge my opinion - it's the only way I can expand my perspective.

One of the biggest problems I see today, in the field of education, is that it too, has been commodified (and politicized) to the extent that money influences too many decisions - not the lack of money for quality education, but the corporate sponsors who pull the strings. We need to question motives - why are certain programs being promoted, and who is behind the big push? Charter schools already have a bad track-record, and corporate advertising in schools is another problem. We also have a serious problem at the university level - ultra-right-wing loud-mouths, persecution of alternative views, and of course, the power of AIPAC to crush all dissent against their agenda. That is frightening - good professors are losing their jobs, or being forced to clam-up. I wonder if this is also going on in regard to corporate sponsors - I know it is a problem in medical research already. We really need to examine the fascist tendencies at all levels of education.

Montessori schools have been around now for long enough to determine whether that approach has proven valuable in terms of providing real, useful education and well rounded people. Does anyone have any info on that? I suppose I could go Google it.

-- EKATON --

Thank you, Alfie, for hitting the issues squarely on the head, as always. It's time to implement the real changes in our ossified public ed system that researchers have been telling us about for the past 40 years!

Human-friendly schools, not factories.
Critical and creative thinking, not testing.
Collaboration and synergy, not politics.

Those are my soundbites for this fight, and it's definitely going to be one, for just the reasons that Alfie put forth. We're dealing with an industrial system built for another age, and the alleged "reformers," those corporate lackeys who believe in "union-busting" and "quality controls" (Klein, Rhee, et al.) are completely clueless about what makes schools work: Smaller, more personalized environments; more intelligent curriculum requiring higher order thinking skills; new governance structures that include parents and teachers; a stimulating and interactive classroom for every child! And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

EXPLODING the PARADIGM is what our 21st century change needs to be about, and that does NOT mean blaming the teachers for a system in which they are the captives, not the initiators. Top-down has never worked in schools and never will; schools are organic entities, a little like families, not assembly lines where we're all cranking out that same old model, year after year. So, let's take the power politics and the huge testing industry OUT of the mix and use the power of the federal government to mandate large-scale change. Linda Darling-Hammond is the only contender for Secretary of Education who can even articulate the complexities of the issues involved and who may even have a chance of making a dent in the rigid hierarchy that time, politics, cluelessness, and corruption have built.

If you want more info on what progress in public ed really means, please check out my website, www.ChangeTheSchools.com, and if you want to understand and feel the forces that are holding all of us back, please read my novel about the dire situation of school, ANGEL PARK. It will open your eyes in an entertaining way.

The improvements we need to move our entire country forward are waiting to be made, but first we have to CHANGE OUR MINDS about what school can be.

I apologize to you all for commenting as much as I have, but this is an important subject to me, hence my unwavering interest.

Clemsy - I'll put my '50's education' up against anything in the US today. At least they taught us how to learn - and to question 'authority' - propaganda. Diagramming sentences was fun - how many commentators today can use proper English? Language is important - it's how we communicate!!! History is important - we could learn from our mistakes, and those of others. Art and literature are important - we learn to get our priorities straight about what is meaningful in life. Music is important - it's not a frill, like organized sports - because it's a language common to all mankind. (Music flourished during the Nazi occupation - it raises the spirit and gives people a kind of hope that can be expressed no other way.) Schools today are producing automatons and 'consumers' - not educated people with inquiring minds. That's the way Dewey wanted it - and he sure got his wish fulfilled. Unfortunately.

"Imagine--an educator running the Education Department."

Ahem. THIS is the root of the problem. There are far too many "educators" in "the system" and far too few teachers. Beyond that, the core problem is students deficient in reading skills. This is because, PHONICS, the tried and true method that makes learning to read EASY and even FUN, was discarded decades ago to make way for much more "sophisticated" methods thought up by "educators". Concentrate on teaching reading using phonics in the early grades, and upon reading comprehension in earlier and later grades, and LEARNING will increase dramatically. This requires TEACHERS, not EDUCATORS.

(How many of you even recognize the term "phonics"? I'll bet very few, as most of you are probably much younger than this 59-year-old curmudgeon. Go look it up. Teaching of RESEARCH METHODS is also in short supply in todays "education" system.)

A truly educated and LITERATE public is exactly what the political and ruling elites do NOT want in this country. Very few people in America read for enjoyment or for simple pleasure, let alone for the purpose of becoming aware of what is being done to us by those elites, because they find reading to be such an uncomfortable chore. A truly enlightened public would be very dangerous to the established political order.
__________________________________
odoco December 14th, 2008 7:44 pm
"Beyond that - the 'system' took over - and by that I mean the implanted, conservative economic system that does indeed want to produce non-thinking workers who won't upset the apple cart." ... "Then ask, why not a true study of history? Because if we objectively studied our history the inherent class conflict would become obvious - and the big boys on Wall Street that just got YOUR bailout money wouldn't like that!" ... "The social sciences, if properly taught, may induce students to question the system, consequently, it is given short shrift in most public schools."

Exactly! Well stated.

-- EKATON --

Those who PRETEND to be progressive reformers often ignore the real problems in today's 'education' system - motives and incentives. Then there is the atmosphere prevalent in schools today - militarized, punitive, condescending, and chaotic.

Maybe when I went to school, Dewey's plan still hadn't been completely adopted - the one of 'training' future serfs to competently produce corporate goods. I did get a decent education - back when Latin was a REQUIRED course in both private and public schools. Maybe that's because so many of us Baby Boomers learned English from a book - or our parents did, anyway. (Neither of my grandmothers spoke English - and that was the case for both the parents and grandparents of most of my classmates. My mother was a translator, so spoke English quite well - without the slang and local idioms, of course.) The fear of being called a 'stupid foreigner' made learning English - including popular slang - a necessity. My father forbade anything but English be spoken at home - but do you really think my mother used English when he was at work??? Or sang in English? Try translating a song sometime, and you'll see what I mean.

The other mainstay - outside of large cities - was combined grades. I'd never heard of a school where only ONE grade sat together in class with the same teacher. Older kids helped teach the younger ones - a decisive 'plus' when families didn't speak English at home. (And didn't know the local jargon.)

Another pet peeve of mine - instigated by those dastardly 'liberals' - was parents challenging dress codes. That led to all kinds of class-conscious competition, including 'fashion statements' that included brand names. I'll bet the corporate whores funded those 'civil rights' activists who brought us such nonsense. School is an institution of learning - not a runway for fshion models.

The 'unification' - consolidation - of schools brought a horde of problems - such as 'social promotion' which was unheard of, in my day. It really doesn't matter which grade you're in if two or three are all together - you learn according to your abilities, at least until high school. Kids aren't uniform commodities, like graded eggs, and they all learn and develop at different rates - not to mention having different and ever-changing interests. And while it was true that private schools offered better teachers, there were also great public schools - whenever the tax base allowed sufficient spending. Funding schools according to how much money your parents make is blatantly unfair - we had the newest microscopes, electric typewriters (rare in those days) and fully-stocked chemistry, physics, and biology departments. Group projects - with kids of different ages, experiences, and family situations - made learning an exciting adventure, instead of a tedious bore. And we rarely took home any homework - most of us had to work in our parents' business after school anyway.

Sometimes 'progress' means going back to what worked best - small local schools, mixed classes, multilingual immersion, and well-funded labs. Our teachers could point out the lapses in text books - at least the good ones could... and some of my best teachers were in the arts and literature. Show me an American-made history book that is anything but propaganda. Back then, teachers were expected to have non-teaching experience. My English teacher was a jet pilot. My civics teacher fled Nazi Germany. My business teacher coached basketball... you get the drift. No full-time student - with no real-life experience - could ever make the grade. Teachers without life-experience have little to offer, especially if all they've ever known is academia. But you have to pay those people more money - after all, they could get a REAL job is they wanted to...

Finland has great schools - at least their students test high. Maybe we could learn from them. And maybe part of our current problem is that so many students come from families that are functionally illiterate in ANY language.

Another plus from my day - we had REAL LIVE COOKS who prepared our favorite meals (from scratch) - and every student took turns working in the kitchens. Talk about experience!

Maybe that's why education was more fun than is was punishment, even if we had strict dress rules. It was a life experience - not an internment in a prison.

The irony of the political school reform movement is that it's trying to 'improve' education by by stressing the model of the 1950's classroom.

It's the classic classroom, a model that we're still pretty much stuck with, that is the problem. We need a brand new, 21st century, model.

In the meantime, teachers get blamed, the republicans use education as a means of doing further damge to organized labor and no one is looking at the larger community as a factor in student performance.

I love almost every minute in the classroom with my students. Those I don't are the ones wasting time drilling essay formulas and multipel choice test strategies into their heads.

Someone, please gt the politicians off our backs.

>>you must study or you will fall between the cracks, live a life of penury and die wretchedly.<<

Has it ever been otherwise? I didn't do as well as some classmates and they are doing better than I am now. I did better than some and they are doing worse than I am. I can't think of one better indicator of how one does in the world than how they did in school before hand. There are famous exceptions, but the numbers don't lie although some wish they would. If you get a college degree, you are going to make twice as much money in your lifetime than those that don't.

Why would I give one fig for people that don't study and apply themselves? Are we at a state now that we believe that those that don't or can't apply themselves deserve what those who can apply themselves earn?

I write curriculum every week, and the questions raised by Chessgames56, though entirely reasonable, are part of the problem teaching is up against. Education doesn't happen in a vacuum. Obviously we'd like to be able to raise the skill levels of all our students as readers, writers, people who know how to reason, people who are in touch with nature, who have basic adult skills, etc.

The problem, however, is that most of the students we deal with as teachers- particularly in alternative schools, where there is the most "wiggle room" to write and adjust curriculum- is that our students come to us with heads and hearts full of the crap that drives the dominant culture. They and their families exist in a service economy, which means most of them are economically displaced where not completely deskilled. Half of them are immigrants, which means that English is a second language, and resource for ESL is in rapid decay.

Thanks to test culture and education "reform", many young people now view education as a punitive exercise, that is to say, you must study or you will fall between the cracks, live a life of penury and die wretchedly. How's that for incentive to lifelong learning or problem solving? And don't forget popular culture, which even now is suggesting that advertising be allowed into test prep booklets, so kids can be distracted by the hype for the latest gadgets when they need to be thinking about algorhythms.

MOst of the teachers I know are doing the very best they can to create academic rigor in this ridiculous set-up, and all a good many of them are getting is a ration of shit from the corporate media.

So I'm grateful to Alfie Kohn, who as usual, is on the button. He's come forward and confirmed that our "change we can believe in" president is seriously considering the appointment of two more corporate shills over a qualified classroom specialist for Secretary of Education. If Obama picks either Klein or that little basketball birdie from Chicago, may he burn in hell. I mean it.

Hell, he could appoint Alfie Kohn, for that matter, who uttered one of the more sentient observations I've ever heard anyone make of education practice at a teacher's conference in Manhattan a few years ago: "People aren't afraid of change. People don't object to change. What they object to is BEING changed.". There is the problem of education in a nutshell. Get someone who can get other people who understand this together, sick them on public education, and we'll have the public schools we want.

Why not teach children HOW to think, rather than program them with propaganda, either from the left or right? What I mean, is teach them how to read, write, and think logically. Encourage them to question and reach their own conclusions. Let's do away with the 'Pledge of Allegiance' as well, which only promotes nationalism (a form of division). Additionally, let's also teach them some of the practical things they need to know to manage their lives, like how to handle their finances, balance a check book, use credit wisely, etc.

And above all, how to appreciate the beauty of nature. Help them become aware of the qualities of light, warmth, and color; take the whole class on a hike in the wilderness, and have a picnic outside on a beautiful spring day, pointing to the blooms on the trees. Education to me has seems to lack dimension; learning is reduced to something flat and prosaic. It's no mystery why most of us are so fragmented when we grow up, so devoid of wonder and, especially, fail to reach our full potential while feeling complete and whole within ourselves.

There is another statement being circulated in an effort to get Darling-Hammond appointed. Find it and sign it here:

http://www.teacheractivistgroups.org/

PaulK - excellent points. I liken the educational testing industry to the privatization of our military - obviously beneificial for one, but not for the other. It is a profit-driven foray into an area that should be the domain of nuance, usable intelligence and multi-directional thinking. Standardized testing is anathema to all these. Having said that, we cannot expect teachers to be creative, enthusiastic and dedicated to their students when the system demands that so many of them accept multiple extra-curricular assignments that consume at least as much of their time as do their actual classroom preparations. A teacher should be both an expert in their area of study and an expert in the methodology that allows them to effectively deliver said expertise to the students -i.e. "A master teacher." Think back all you CD folks - how many 'master teachers' did you really have in your public school careers? The system - like all systems - does not often reward the gifted - it simply demands more and more of them, and less and less of the mediocre, until the gifted has left, and the mediocre stays. Sound familiar in your school?????

Teaching to the test has spawned a booming test prep business. You too can boost your kid's scores and get her or him into a good school with a book, a course or a tutor, depending on your cash on hand.

The SAT people basically ask the same 50 trick questions over and over and over again on the math portion. For example, there's two or three negative signs in a row on a problem, and there's the attractor answer which is wrong. I liked the ten less than, greater than, equal questions because they bamboozled the untrained but they were an easy ace for the well-trained dullard. The SAT people cut that category a few years ago, sorry!

The states jumped in to the testing frenzy. Some of the state questions were actually intelligent, as opposed to SAT questions. Other questions were really geometry trivia questions, only useful in real life to geometry teachers, to an ace reporter who wanted to embarrass a certain lieutenant governor, and of course to the lieutenant governor who flubbed it.

Next, school districts learned how to cheat. Texas school districts simply held back tenth graders in the ninth grade, sometimes three years in a row, so the morons wouldn't take the tenth grade tests. Problem solved!! Pay those teachers bonuses for the state's highest percentage of competent tenth graders!

There may actually be school reform somewhere, but right now I'm busy throwing my shoe.

The 'liberal' charge against public education is gargage. There may have been a brief span from the early sixties through the mid 70's where true classroom innovations were attempted on a broad scale, improved teaching methodology, meaningful curriculum, and critical thinking skills, but it was never effectively established nationwide. A minority of public schools still attempt to achieve those critical elements, but few actually do. Beyond that - the 'system' took over - and by that I mean the implanted, conservative economic system that does indeed want to produce non-thinking workers who won't upset the apple cart. Instead, the business interests have consistently pushed math and science down the throats of all, forever raising the number of classes that must be taken by the general student population without regard for individual differences. Then ask, why not a true study of history? Because if we objectively studied our history the inherent class conflict would become obvious - and the big boys on Wall Street that just got YOUR bailout money wouldn't like that! Math and science have a direct economic connection to big business. The social sciences, if properly taught, may induce students to question the system, consequently, it is given short shrift in most public schools. I spent 27 years in the business, fighting the insanity till the very day I retired. But vouchers and charter schools are not the answer - making public schools work is the answer, and the only answer that will equitably serve all the children of the nation, rich and poor alike.

"It is also crazy to put all children on the same basic track when they all have different strengths and talents. If I am mechanically inclined, and would make a great IT technician, for what stupid reason am I learning English literature?"

I'd say so you won't be embarrassed if you find yourself in a setting where thats what people are talking about. Its part of a sound basic education.

But you make a great point about our educational track's. Why insist all kids go to college? Many would be better served in REAL trade schools, apprentice situations or techinical training. The German apprentice program is terrific.