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A couple of days ago, I wrote that I was uneasy with the growing criticism of our push to get many more US students into college. I worry that, without such a push, we'll give in to a system where family income remains the major gatekeeper for higher ed.
Several people pushed back in the comments section. They shared my unease with our current inequities, but they felt the college for all approach might make things worse for kids of all income levels. I still can't back away from my support for the college push, but thought I should share their very thoughtful and spirited comments. Here are a few excerpts:
First, from Keishla Caesar-Jones:
I don't think the answer is to make education a revolving door. Because we think everyone SHOULD go to college instead of everyone should have the chance to CHOOSE to go to college.
We have created a one-size fits all approach to education that puts everyone on the same track...come hell or high water. I live in Texas, and for the past few decades, all vocational programs were eliminated from public schools. The only ones to remain were mostly automotive in some places and cosmetology. What is wrong with being an auto ...
I just can't shake the queasy feeling I got when I read yesterday's New York Times piece portraying college as a bad risk for poor kids. In large part, I worry that a retreat from our focus on college signals a retreat from our commitment to equity. But there's something else at work, something I couldn't quite put my finger on yesterday.
Blogger Corey Bunje Bower helped me put a name to it. Some college critics seem to prize training over education.
Here's how Bower puts it:
College does not only exist to train students for future employment. Students might benefit from attending college in myriad ways regardless of whether or not it directly relates to their future career. Similarly, society may benefit in many ways other than a more skilled labor force if more people attend college.
In the college skeptics' defense, $100K or even $200K is an awful lot to shell out for that certain je ne sais quoi. Every family has to consider the return on its investment in higher ed. And we can surely question the wisdom of colleges that race to outspend each other on swanky rec centers and freshman suites while tuition skyrockets.
But we have to be careful not to hearken back to granddad's vocational ed. There's more to school than workforce preparation, but so much of the ...
The dream of college for all is one of the first casualties when jobs dry up and the future looks bleak. More and more people are questioning the wisdom of paying big tuition for what could be a small return. Technical school may be a better bet, they say, especially for poor youth who can't afford to get into debt.
They may have a point. But I think it's a very bad idea to retreat from our commitment to get many, many more poor students through college. At the same time, it's unwise to assume that education alone will solve our economic woes.
The "college for all" argument is important, because it offers a vision for overcoming stubborn class inequities. Let's face it, the vast majority of wealthy parents expect their kids to go to college. Even some of those pundits who pooh pooh college in the pages of the Times or The Wall Street Journal would likely pitch a fit if their own children decided to go the voc-ed route. Poor children face a very different reality.
It may be true that college isn't for everyone. But until student inclination--and not income--becomes the major sorting mechanism for college, I'm not ready to abandon the focus on college. After all, those who never went to college are ...
Hallelujah! A recent study shows that an improvement strategy may actually work at scale. And it may even work well. What a relief after a spate of studies suggesting that nothing ever really works for anyone anywhere. But control your enthusiasm. Even this promising strategy has fallen under the budget axe.
According to Deb Viadero in EdWeek, a Stanford study "suggests that putting literacy coaches in schools can help boost students' reading skills by as much as 32 percent over three years." (The program focuses on K-2 classrooms.) And the more coaching, the better:
Teachers and schools that experienced more coaching sessions tended to spur bigger learning gains in their students. Some teachers recieved no coaching over the course of the study, while others had as many as 43 sessions.
The program seemed to work best in schools where teachers have real authority and strong relationships with their peers:
The schools where the most coaching took place were...places where teachers felt they had a voice in what went on in their building and where professional networks among teachers were already strong. (Those ...
Jay Mathews of The Washington Post clearly wants to get a rise out of his readers. He just published a short column titled "Why waste time on a foreign language?" I suspect (or rather, hope) he's playing devil's advocate. Because now is not the time to grease the rails for more cuts to foreign language programs.
Mathews trots out the rather shopworn argument that the rest of the world speaks English and that we can easily import the foreign speakers we need. C'mon, Jay. There's no need to celebrate American parochialism. We can't be so sure that the American century will become the American millennium. And even if we do stay on top of the cultural heap, wouldn't it be nice to expose our children to some other languages and cultures in a diverse and shrinking world?
Mathews's other argument is a bit jarring. High school students don't learn anything in language classes anyway, he argues, so why bother?
Well, how about improving language instruction? How about starting it much earlier, in the primary grades perhaps, when children are more likely to take to a new language? The Center for Applied Linguistics has found that the share of public ...
Education historian Diane Ravitch has just published a new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. The book has been a runaway success. It currently ranks among the top 60 best-selling books on Amazon.com, where it sold out within a week of its release.
Public School Insights: I’ve heard your book characterized as a “u-turn,” an “about-face,” a sudden shift from “conservative” to “liberal” views on education reform. Are those characterizations accurate? What are some of the fundamental beliefs that unite your efforts over the past four decades?
Ravitch: I did not do a "U-turn" or an abrupt "about-face," nor (as one story said) did I "recant" almost everything I ever believed or wrote. I certainly did change my mind about things I had advocated in the past, but the change was more gradual than it appeared to those who have not read what I have been writing for the past three years. As I write in the book, I concluded that NCLB was failing when I attended a conference at a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, on November 30, 2006. I was given the assignment of summing up the day's proceedings; paper after paper demonstrated that NCLB's remedies were not working. Very small proportions of students were choosing to leave their school or to get tutoring. In my remarks at the end of the day, I said that NCLB was failing. The next fall, in 2007, when NAEP scores were released and showed meager improvements, I wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times titled, "Get Congress Out of the Classroom." Since then, I have written several articles in opposition to NCLB. So my turn-about on NCLB was very public and not ...
We're told we have to hold teachers and students to high expectations, but somehow it's OK to have low expectations of policy makers. Teachers and other school staff have learned by now that they must never say never. But policy makers? Don't expect too much from them.
Jay Mathews is just the latest to accept this double standard. "It is politically impossible to pass a plan that doesn't make teachers accountable for student performance," he writes.
We will never return to the good old days (in the minds of some) when we ignored that factor. I agree...that there are better measures of schools, but for the moment they are way too expensive (like regular inspections) and way too complicated for voters to understand and trust."
I admire Mathews very much, but he's way off base here. If we expect schools to move every mountain--"do whatever it takes"--to make every child successful, then why should we let policy makers off the hook in demanding--and paying for ...
When it comes to schools, does the business community suffer from split personality?
We hear a lot about the influence of business on school reform. But I'm not sure there's a monolithic "business" perspective on schools. Instead, I've seen at least two major thrusts in what business leaders have said about school reform. First, there are those who championed No Child Left Behind. Then there are those who urge hands-on learning, higher-order thinking skills, and rich opportunities to learn outside school walls. Needless to say, the two approaches don't always mingle happily.
Maybe that's why a new set of business recommendations on ESEA seemed almost at war with itself. The Business Coalition for Student Achievement's (BCSA) "Principles for the Reauthorization of ESEA" combine many of NCLB's greatest hits with more muted appeals for a broader vision of schooling. In these very lean years, I worry that NCLB's narrow vision will prevail as the broader vision falls by the wayside.
First, the Blast from the Past. BCSA wants to retain the major hallmarks of NCLB: Annual testing in math and reading, full proficiency, and sanctions for struggling schools. They even want to keep the SES provisions. (Because they were such a smashing success?) What's more, they want to add merit pay to this mix, a move that might actually ratchet up the pressure to teach to tests and dump all but math, reading and science out of the curriculum.
Now the Kinder, Gentler Vision of the Future. But then BCSA includes a kinder, gentler vision of schooling. They call for ESEA to support "inquiry ...
A draft of the the Common Core State Standards in K12 appeared yesterday, and the media have taken notice. As far as I can tell so far, response to the draft has been pretty positive. (The public comment period is now open.) I just hope the public and policymakers don't lose interest before we do the hard work of giving people in schools the time and support they need to use the standards well in the classroom.
The English Language Arts standards in particular have gone over very well with some groups that were skeptical at the outset. Core Knowledge, Common Core, and Fordham all like what they see. I've had some time to page through the ELA standards myself and am impressed. The suggested reading list is especially substantive and diverse: Homer, Euclid, Donne, de Tocqueville, MLK, Lahiri, Morrison, and even Enzensberger!
Of course, not everyone is on board. Officials from the only two states that declined to take part in the Common Core standards initiative--Texas and Alaska--were quick to declare their own standards equal or superior to the Common Core. (Groups that review state standards, like Fordham and the AFT, might well disagree.)
Then there's of course the Cato Institute's Neal McClusky, who sees the whole effort as a dangerous diversion from the boundless promise of the free ...
If you have any doubts about the need for good civics education, then read this. David Barstow's account of troubling undercurrents in the Tea Party movement shows us just how precarious the fate of our civil society can be.
And lest people think I'm singling out certain Tea Partiers unfairly, I'll extend the critique to anyone on the left or right who flings about words like tyranny or fascism any time they encounter an opposing political view. It's all too easy to paint those we disagree with as traitors to the American cause.
It's not enough to swear fealty to the Constitution. We have to sustain and build institutions where people with different views work together to tackle common problems. And we have to nourish better civic habits in our young people. We shouldn't leave people to discover the nation's founding documents for the first time when they feel a grievance or sense that the world is changing around them. We have much to worry about if Americans get their first taste of civic action in a climate of fear and anger.
Tell me--Am I right to worry? ...
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