EDUCATION POLITICS-Arne Duncan, I know you're a man who cares about children and their education.
I know you've been working hard, doing your level best to fix all the problems facing our schools.
You have a whole array of tools you've been hammering away with: the Common Core State Standards, data-driven decisions and evaluations, technology innovations, applying ideas from the corporate world, seeking private money to help out, and cutting the dead wood out of America's teaching staff.
You feel that with the changes wrought by your efforts, 100% of America's children will turn out to be college bound and college ready.
I applaud you for your hard work and your vision. It's a nice vision.
But it's time for a reality check.
It's time to let you in on what your reforms look like down at the level of the schools. Down at the level of the neighborhood schools in your old city. Down below the level of the heady rhetoric that we hear you use a lot about the civil rights issue of our time, or excellence for all. Down below all that.
Let's take a couple of schools on Chicago's south side.
One school principal whose enthusiasm for your kind of reforms knows no bounds made some big changes at her school. She's worried about test scores, see, and since you came up with Race To The Top, test scores matter like never before. Her school used to be Level 1, which means it was marvelous and perfect and deserving of laudation. And cash. But the scores have tumbled as a result of several years of principal chaos and challenges to the school culture as new grades have been added. (New kids from different neighborhoods have arrived because their own extremely successful school was closed. That one really was too bad because it was one of those schools that you started, back when small schools were the thing.)
It's all a transitional mess at the moment, but as I said this school's scores have them hanging on to Level 2 just by the skin of their teeth. What will happen if they fall off the cliff into the muddy, drying up watering hole of Level 3? No one wants to be there! Plus they'll lose needed funding and all respect!
They might even be subject to a turnaround, or even closure!
The principal is handling this problem very logically. She's going for the youngest kids, ensuring quality and establishing standards there. So she went through all the Kindergarten classrooms this year and removed all the toys--you know, the kitchens, trains, blocks, dolls, paints--all that stuff. Because--and I've bet you've heard this before, you might have even said it!--Kindergarten is the new first grade.
It certainly seems logical. Make the standards higher for everyone. No more babying. Wake up and grow up and smell the coffee and face the music. (Well, scratch that music thing--no time or money for that.)
Only trouble is, not one single educator or educational philosopher or educational institution that has anything whatsoever to do with our youngest children has ever shared this thought. Ever. Not Montessori, not Steiner, not Freire, not Freibel, not Dewey, not Erikson. Closer to home, not Vivian Paley, not Barbara Bowman, not the Erikson Institute. Not one. Ever. Has advocated this.
"Kindergarten is the new first grade" suggests that 5 is the new 6. Which we know isn't true, can't be true, and frankly, isn't even logical.
I know you like to track starting then, or even before, so you can tell if 4 or 5 year olds are on track for college. But I bet even with your own kids you've noticed that they've surprised you since that age.
A friend and I were comparing notes about our children and their reading acquisition. Her autistic boy figured out how to read on his own at age 3, but he still has trouble with comprehending what he is seeing, and he's in high school.
Her daughter who attends a highly competitive college couldn't nail the reading thing until nearly second grade.
My own kids were late readers. I cannot imagine what would have become of them if they were prohibited from play at age 5. They both track as gifted now, but they certainly weren't ready for an academic school experience in Kindergarten--these two children of middle class overeducated white people. My son could barely hold a pencil. My daughter, who is deaf, was working harder on basic communication and social interaction than on mastering foreign language or reading.
A Kindergarten teacher at a different school was recently told by her principal that "her scores were too low" and she needed to "ditch the crayons."
Maybe you don't know this, but arbitrarily lowering the level at which children "should" master reading--and testing--really won't work as a long term strategy because the typical age range of learning to read can last until about age 8.
Do you think ignoring this fact is good pedagogy? Do you think ditching the crayons is good pedagogy? Do you know that at age 5, children learn primarily through play? Do you feel that your position as head of the Department of Education qualifies you to fly in the face of every education expert of the past 200 years and claim 5 year olds for a strictly "academic" learning experience, devoid of play? If you don't, are you aware that this is happening in many, many schools on account of your policies?
I was just wondering.
But this reality check is not done yet.
Do you know how much schools live in fear of poor test scores? Again, because of your policies. It leads them to do the wackiest things.
I know one southwest side school where not only are the children's names and test scores posted on a prominent bulletin board in a three layer arrangement with the awesome kids on top and the IEP kids on the bottom. Not only are the children ridiculed by the administration for somehow getting "even dumber" than they were last year. Not only were the children who were expected to get low test scores on the upcoming high-stakes MAP pressured to attend a spring break "testing camp."
Not only have the teachers been told to jettison all subjects but reading and math going forward, presumably through testing time. But also. Also. Children at this school do not enjoy learning, live in fear of poor test scores, and wrestle with an anxiety whose weight far outstrips the ability of their slender shoulders to bear it.
This is what Race To The Top looks like at the school level. This is what data-driven instruction and evaluation look like. This is how grade schools must contort themselves to perform according to your standards, your tools for fixing everything.
Your ridiculous, terrible standards and tools that are not based on research, history, the opinion of centuries of pedagogy experts, or even the leaders of your alma mater, the school that you love.
Arne Duncan, despite your vision and your hard work and all your hopes, what you are creating is considerably uglier than you are aware.
In fact, things down here are starting to look downright anti-child, and I think that's a crime.
• You may also like: “Something In Me Snapped Today: No More ‘Education Reform’”
(Julie Vassilatos blogs as South Side CPS Mom in Chicago. She provides a valuable and important perspective on education everywhere … and an occasional column for CityWatch. Julie can be reached at www.chicagonow.com/chicago-public-fools.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 34
Pub: Apr 25, 2014