A Novel Approach to Education Reform

This week Newsweek Magazine includes an article by Dianne Ravitch titled Obama's War on Education. Dr Ravitch, the acclaimed education historian and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, explains how the Obama administration has continued mindless attacks on our public school system. She points out that the present administration seems just as oblivious to the real problems in public education as the Bush administration, and continues to promote many reform programs that have no validity and are often more destructive than helpful to our educational system.

Louisiana's governor Jindal seems to be doing his part in supporting efforts to privatize our public school system. On Tuesday, Jindal and Superintendent Pastorek presided over the showing of the anti-public education film, Waiting For Superman, (click here for a report on how this film distorts the record relative to charter schools) to a group of education officials and opinion makers in the Baton Rouge area. The idea seems to be to recommend almost any substitute for public education. It seems to make no difference that the evidence is of mainly poor performance and major setbacks in many Louisiana charter schools and voucher options. Maybe because the public today is looking for simple solutions to complex problems, it seems that propaganda is preferable to real performance.

Public schools in the U. S. are certainly not doing as well as we would like. (It really turns out that the under-performance centers primarily on certain groups of students, yet critics are condemning the entire system. . . . More about this later.) So what would be the best approach to reforming and improving our public schools? What about learning from the reform approach of a country that has been extremely successful in improving its schools? That would be a novel approach compared to vicious attacks on our schools and knee jerk reactions that have sprung up throughout the country in recent years.

Sam Abrams, a visiting scholar from Teachers College of Columbia University who has spent several years studying the public education system of Finland was recently interviewed by Dr. Raynard Sanders for the radio program The New Orleans Imperative. Mr Abrams believes that education reformers in this country have mostly ignored the lessons about what really works in education from the country that is considered to have the most successful public education system in the world! While our politicians have turned to trashing schools and efforts to privatize public education, Finland has really transformed its educational system into a highly successful experience for both teachers and students. The rebirth of public schools in Finland began after a special study report in 1971 recommended that considering its few natural resources, Finland should improve the public educational system if it was to become more competitive in the world. Changes instituted over the past 40 years transformed the education system in Finland into a model for the world. Students there now excel in all subjects including science and math, in addition to arts and vocational courses, and they graduate from high school at an extremely high rate. The schools in Finland are producing exactly the type of educated students our reformers claim to want, all without the standardized testing, test rehearsing, grade retention, dropouts, school privatization, and teacher bashing.

Here are the main points made by Mr Abrams in the interview:

• Finland makes very little use of standardized testing in the measurement of student and teacher success.
• Teacher candidates are carefully selected from upper 1/4th of college scholars. To get a teaching certificate, candidates must attain a Masters degree in their teaching field.
• In return, teachers are well paid compared to other comparable careers.
• In Finland teachers are given much autonomy and latitude for teaching methods.
• In summary, teachers in Finland are respected and treated like professionals.

The U. S. on the other hand has made standardized testing the primary measure of school success. State testing has been used in Louisiana and other states to determine promotion and retention of students and will soon be used as a measure of teacher effectiveness. Finland fails no students, and continues students with their age group throughout their elementary/secondary enrollment regardless of their academic performance. Mr Abrams points out that students who fall behind in basic skills are simply pulled out for extra help in those skills. Louisiana and many other states have implemented high stakes testing based on state tests and have systematically held back thousands of students because they have not met arbitrary lock step expectations. In Louisiana, our state leaders proudly claim that students are not allowed to receive high school diplomas without passing the state graduation exit exam. Our State
Superintendent repeatedly announces that "failure is not an option" for our students, while thousands of students are pushed out of school with no credentials and little chance of a good job!

Recently however, BESE (at the urging of the State Department of Education) allowed students to be promoted after two years at the 4th grade level even without passing the high stakes test. The Department finally admitted that retention of students was not producing results.

New national subject matter standards are in the process of being developed and adopted that are intended to prepare all students for college and careers. This curriculum, most experts tell us ends up being almost exclusively college preparatory, with almost no emphasis on development of vocational skills. The theory is that if we just prepare everyone for college, those students that prefer to train for vocational careers will still have a good foundation. Finland on the other hand, allows approximately 45% of its students to begin vocational training at the high school level and prepares them for high skills careers within 3 years after high school. Mr Abrams stresses that in Finland there is no stigmatizing of students who choose the vocational or career route. The skills trades are highly valued and well paid in Finland. In Louisiana, students are led to believe that college is the only worthwhile goal of education. State education leaders constantly drive home the message of the need for students to be college and career ready rather than college or career ready. Meanwhile, there has developed a shortage of local skilled workers, craftsmen, and health care workers while Louisiana college graduates often move to other states in search of jobs where they can utilize their credentials.

Mr Abrams pointed out in the interview that skilled, construction and maintenance jobs are the very jobs that cannot be exported to other countries with cheap labor because these jobs must be done on site. Some highly trained software engineers on the other hand have had seen their jobs exported to India.

Are Our Public Schools Really That Bad?
As explained in one of my previous posts, our public schools work just fine for the middle class and for Asian origin students. American students of Asian origin do just as well as their counterparts in the top performing education systems that have Asian population students. Middle class or white students perform very close to the highest performing students in the world (5th in the world as measured by the PISA assessment). The problem is with the relatively large population of high poverty minority students and with English language learners who have a large negative impact on our national average scores on standardized tests. This is where the demographics of the American education system differs significantly from other industrialized countries. Our high poverty population is approximately 20% while Finland has an underprivileged student population of only 5%.

I believe the most serious and unfair misconception about our schools is that somehow most bad schools are serving underprivileged students. Those schools are often labeled as “failing” schools when it would be more accurate to conclude that they are really just schools that happen to be serving low-performing students. In our society it is more popular to blame the schools and the teachers for poor student performance, when often its the negative influence of the out-of-school environment that adversely affects school performance. Many inner city and even some rural schools serve students who are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty, neglect, crime, drugs and lack of positive role models for children.

It may be a novel approach to simply focus extra efforts and resources on the students who need more help. The Federal governement and states could provide financial incentives for strong teachers who are willing to put in more time in schools serving high poverty communities. There should be solid programs promoting positive parental involvement, along with extended school days or years without sacrificing PE, arts and vocational programs.

Unfortunately some of the popular education reform efforts today in the U.S. make scapegoats out of many dedicated teachers and school administrators who happen to work in schools serving impoverished communities. The people in Singapore and Finland would be appalled at the finger pointing at professional educators that has characterized much of recent American reform efforts. Most experts estimate that there are very few bad teachers in our schools, so it makes no sense to assume that mass firings or replacement of teachers will somehow produce dramatic improvements. Wouldn't it be sad if we fired and replaced half of our American teachers based on student performance and we found that it made no real difference? Not only is such a scheme impractical (Not many qualified persons want to teach in inner city schools), but it would surely be demoralizing to many teachers. Finland, in contrast chose to support teachers and enhance the profession. It paid off for their children!

The Need to Educate Our Legislators

It is absolutely urgent that school board members, superintendents and education leaders meet with their legislators now to discuss the needs of public education. Do not underestimate the potential influence that a unified education community can have on the legislature. Remember also that the Louisiana Constitution gives the Legislature overriding authority for the operation of our public school system. That's why educators, voters and parents should seek the Legislature's help to mitigate the effects of current budget cuts and unworkable edicts coming from the State Department of Education and BESE. This link to a Baton Rouge Advocate article explains how school board members and education leaders in south Louisiana recently met with their legislators in an effort to restore sanity to state governance of public education. The big issue discussed was the need for a moratorium on unfunded mandates. Educators pointed out that the three year freeze on state MFP funding, loss of federal stimulus dollars, diversion of Edu/Jobs funding by the Governor, and increased mandated costs, could have a major impact on vital services to children. Cost mandates include increased contributions to school employee retirement systems, and new programs such as the so called "value added" teacher evaluation program. Some state mandated programs such as student remediation are expensive but may not be cost effective. A local school system may spend big bucks on summer remediation which many students do not bother to attend. Yet the new school evaluation system may label a school as a “D” or an “F” for the poor performance of students who have not taken advantage of remediation opportunities. Since school systems are no longer provided specific funding for remediation, local school systems should be allowed maximum flexibility in providing remediation and curtailing programs that are not producing results. Local school leaders know best what works and what does not work and will design better programs without State Department interference.

Superintendents' Association president, John Sartin attended the Lafayette meeting with the 10 area legislators discussed in the Advocate article, and has other meetings planned for other parts of the state. From all accounts, the power point presentation and accompanying discussion were effective in gaining support of area legislators.

Recently A coalition has been formed that includes the School Boards Association, LAE, LFT, LASE, and others to pursue a unified program for the support of public education. The group is developing a list of legislative priorities.

In addition to the proposed moratorium on unfunded mandates, I believe educators should request a moratorium on new school takeovers by the State Department of Education. Student performance data presented in this blog demonstrates that students do better under the direction of local school boards than under the direction of the Recovery District. Just review the data presented in my Feb. 19th post. Such takeovers and the loss of per pupil revenue from local systems will eventually limit the ability of local school systems to provide top quality services. In addition, every state approved (type 2) charter fragments the support for local schools and creates a growing special interest group for privatization of public education without accountability to taxpayers. It is time the public hear the truth about school takeover and charter conversions.

I have written to both my legislators asking them to approve legislation that would at least temporarily halt the takeover of schools from local school systems until it can be shown that such takeovers are in the best interests of the children. I am attending a community meeting with my senator today, (March 17) to continue making this case and to present her with data as to why the present plan is not working. I believe if all educators and parents who are informed about this issue would make a similar case to their legislators, much could be accomplished. Now is the time for all of us who care about public education to speak to our elected representatives!

Fact Checking School Reform

The March-April issue of NEA Today magazine has an excellent article on current school reform issues. I urge my readers to click on this link to access the article. It examines the actual results of 5 major components of today's education reform: (1) High Stakes Testing, (2) Value Added Measures, (3) Pay for Test Scores, (4) Charter Schools, (5) Teacher Tenure (removing or modifying it). This analysis is the most concise and enlightening discussion I've seen of these current fads in education. It makes you wonder why the president of the United States and many other influential people would throw their support behind such half-baked schemes and subject our children and so many dedicated educators to the unintended consequences of such policies.

More Half-baked Policies
Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, according to an Education Week article is warning the Congress that the Elementary Secondary Education Act should be revised and reauthorized to prevent up to 80% of US schools from being labeled as “failing schools”. This is the probable result according to Duncan of continuing the present federal policy that all American students must achieve proficiency in Reading and Math by the year 2014. My question about this is the following: “How could the Congress and the Bush administration have passed such a stupid, impractical law in the first place?” Every reputable expert in the field of tests and measurements could have informed president Bush and the Congress that such a mandate violated everything we know about student testing and performance. It was like the government decreeing that all children would somehow become average or above within a few years, (The Lake Wobegon effect), even though the schools are dealing with a constantly changing student body. The sad thing is that the Obama/Duncan plan for improving our schools is almost equally impractical as the one they want to replace. (see the above article in NEA Today)