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Light at the End of the Tunnel

12/1/2020

 
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For the past 25 years there has been a national war between so-called education reformers and public schools.  Education historian and indefatigable blogger on the topic, Diane Ravitch, has been chronicling the attacks, losses and now, finally, victories through her blog, where she posts up to ten times a day, every day, since April of 2012. In her new book Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools, she pulls the disparate threads together and writes a brilliant,  page-turner story of this war against public schools for a period that included my 5 grandchildren.

Who are the bad guys?  Millionaires and billionaires who come from a business background where forces of free-market choices,  competition, and new standards create disruption in the market place allowing the best products to rise to the surface.  Ravitch names names.  We know who they are and they include Bill Gates, Betsy De Vos, and the Walton (Wallmart) families.
Ravitch aptly changes their names from education "Reformers" to education "Disrupters." Measurement is key to determining educational success in the form of high stakes testing that occurs every school year for grades k-12.  Right out of the starting gate the Disrupters' premise was wrong-headed and untested. 

The methods of this warfare included slamming public schools as "failing" and demonizing teachers while supporting the creation of brand-new charter schools and vouchers to pay religious schools using  tax payer money and selling the concept that now parents have "choice."  If you knew what it takes to create and sustain a good school, you would know that non-educators with dough  are not the people who should be starting one no matter how pure their motives. (I served 18 months on the board of a charter school that is now shuttered.) Politicians from presidents, G.W. Bush and Barack Obama, to local school board members jumped onto the shiny new Disrupter bandwagons.  It never occurred to them that America's children were  Guinea pigs.  Disruption is not healthy for children. Using children to experiment with the profit-motive in education is an insane idea.  Where can the profits for investors come from?  Real estate (the new schools need space to rent, build or buy), using cheap, young and untrained teachers from Teach for America, and the selling of technology.  Education doesn't produce a product that you can sell for a profit.  You can't garnish the wages of a state-educated worker.  But every time money changes hands, someone's pockets are lined, often illegally, since there is no mandated oversight for charter schools and many opportunities for corruption. Less that 40% of the funding for these new ventures are used for what happens in classrooms. And the Disrupters did not like to discuss that the funding not only came from the wealthiest Americans but also from the local public school budgets, thus short-changing  resources for more than 85% of American students.   

The collateral damage of this policy of disruption was the destruction of teacher morale and the anxiety that the high-stakes testing put on children.  Test prep robbed children of the joy of learning. It made them fearful that if they did not do well on the test, their teachers would be fired.  Ravitch's book meticulously cites the damage done in cities and states over the years.  It's enough to make your blood boil!  About ten years ago, I was invited to speak at Southern Florida University's Education Department.  The faculty were steeling themselves to greet the first entering class of FCAT babies, who had taken assessment exams at the end of every one of their 12 years of schooling.   Now they were to be trained as teachers. Their professors found them to be  passive, docile, and answer-driven, fearful of questions for which they had no answers and tied to using boring texts and worksheets as their main pedagogical tools. 

Another example:  My grandson, Jonny, who was a very serious student didn't do well on tests.  (Currently he is the top student in his electrical engineering class at Buffalo University but still worried about the Graduate Record Exam).  He attended a small public school in Western NY state which was not overly scrutinized by the powers-that-be and had a staff that cared about their students. But still they had to adhere to the standards and the testing.  When Jonny was in seventh grade I asked him how many of his teachers were having "fun" teaching him. By "fun" I meant that they enjoyed being in the classroom and were present for their students. He thought for a long time before he came up with his sixth grade Language Arts teacher.  I concluded that none of his seventh grade teachers were having any fun and I had a follow up question:  How did he know they weren't having fun?"Because," he responded, "I'm not learning very much."  

Ravitch is very careful to let doubters know how she  knows every fact in the book with 30 pages of citations in very small type at the back of the book.  In her final chapter, "Goliath Stumbles," she cuts loose with a passionate summation of how the tides are finally turning due to the grass-root rebellions of teachers and parent activists who defeated referendums, politicians, and lobbyists with their strikes, protests, social media organizations and most importantly, their votes.  I can imagine how fast and hard she hit those computer keys as she wrote these first glimmers that the tide is turning and humanity and sanity are finally returning to American public schools.  

​Thanks for the lesson, Diane Ravitch.  Many still need it.    








Why Education Should Always Be Nonprofit

21/9/2019

 
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On a beautiful, early fall afternoon, I took some Dutch friends on a tour of a local attraction, the Rockefeller estate, call Kykuit (meaning "lookout" in Dutch) for its spectacular vistas of the Hudson River Valley.  Now a National Trust attraction, this magnificent edifice, built in 1906, pioneered creature comforts that rival the way we live today ( e.g. it was fully electrified) and houses exquisite art at every turn.  As our guide pointed out priceless furnishings, sculptures and paintings, he also kept emphasizing the philanthropy of the Rockefeller family, particularly in medicine and art. 

The three generations of Rockefeller families who lived at Kykuit  staffed the house with 10 servants and minions of grounds keepers.  Everywhere you look in this magnificent estate you experience the product of loving care,  artistry and comfort.  The service staff brought the human touch to the daily activities that the family engaged in.  Family members used their money to pay creative people.  A highlight is the below ground art galleries of Nelson Rockefeller with their  extraordinary Picasso tapestries.  But the Rockefellers also paid  their staff a living wage--Pocantico Village is where you'll find the modest but comfortable homes built for their employees.  The wife of one of their gardeners worked for my parents for years as a housekeeper and later as a caregiver.  She had nothing but good things to say about her husband's employer. She was an Irish immigrant who believed that there was dignity in service to others. We called her Mrs. Furphy. 

Near the end of our tour, as we walked through the carriage house featuring their collection of horse-drawn and motor vehicles of the early 20th century, I couldn't resist from asking our guide a politically incorrect question:  "It has been said that behind every great fortune there is a crime.  What is your response to that?"  Our guide was quick to answer: "John D. Rockefeller Senior committed no crimes because there were no laws restricting the ways he amassed his fortune basically by refining oil into kerosene for lighting homes.  He called his company Standard Oil [ESSO became the company's  brand by spelling out the initials] because of the reliably high quality of his product.  However, many have said that his behavior could be considered unethical at times."  Then he segued back to talking about the truly formidable force for good that the Rockefeller philanthropies have been for generations.

A brilliant economist and venture-capital friend of mine once told me, "If you create something of value, you should be able to make money from it."  That is the capitalist system.  J.D. Rockefeller refined oil to make the best kerosene on the market and bought out all his competitors offering cash or stocks in his company.  And if that didn't work, he just lowered his prices and ran them out of business. (Those who took the stock all became multimillionaires.)  Laws that stopped the practice of building a monopoly for a commodity were enacted after J.D. Rockefeller and his "robber baron" contemporaries, who shaped the beginning of the industrial revolution, had had their way.   

But lately I've been thinking, no!  Not everything of value should feed the profit motive. Certainly not education. There should be funding available to pay for high quality public education for the public good but its financial health should not include ways to amass fortunes for the "owners."  Who are the money-makers in charter schools and vouchers?  The realtors who provide the buildings and the top executives who siphon off exorbitant salaries while paying young, inexperience teachers the least they can get away with while pressing them into services (sometimes custodial) that are not part of their high intensity, exhausting, and sometime profoundly rewarding profession. For-profit charter schools fight against teachers' unions that collectively bargain for a decent wages and working conditions for their members. Excellent teachers work for the love of teaching.  That's why merit pay for teachers doesn't make them better teachers.  The budget items for a rich educational experience for the students are what usually get cut by for-profit schools in exchange for computers that could bring a virtual tour of, say, Kykuit. Why do private schools command exorbitant tuition?  Because they are, for the most part, prepared to create meaningful, non-virtual educational experiences for every student.  This means that teachers have the support, both financially and professionally that  they need to do their jobs successfully.  And that's why excellent teachers will take jobs in private schools although they usually pay lower salaries than public schools.  

Most people, who love their work, do not aspire to live like the Rockefellers.  We need a middle class who has  sufficient income for decent homes and food, health care, education for their children and yes, enough for  vacations and recreation.  I looked around Kykuit and  imagined how  much time  must have been spent purchasing stuff with status, constantly adding to the collections in their home, changing clothes for every meal, calling a servant to serve tea or to perform some other menial task. Even the recreational facilities were on site. A private "Playhouse" housed a bowling alley and indoor swimming pool. And, of course, there were  several outdoor swimming pools, a golf course and tennis courts on the property amidst the formal gardens. 

 Kykuit is a museum now.  I am grateful that I have the education to appreciate its beauty and its history.  As a National Trust, it is now a nonprofit for the public good. What do you think might be the take-away of public school students who took a  field trip to this family home of obsolete grandeur, art, and splendid self-contained isolation? 

 I'll bet that they wouldn't trade it for their phones!



     Vicki Cobb

    *Award-winning author of more than 90 nonfiction books for children, mostly in science.
    *Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
    *Founder/President of iNK Think Tank, Inc.
    *Passionate advocate for the joy of learning for every child and teacher.


    Disclaimer: All opinions, typos, and grammatical errors are my own,  especially small word omissions which I often don't notice in my fervor.  

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