David Brooks's facile, distorted representation of the state of education reform in The New York Times made me wring my hands. In his first paragraph, he speciously outlines two distinct camps of education interests:
On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers' unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.
Problems abound. Let's start with the idea that teachers are villains:
Newt Gingrich made a similar pitch about the "Ed School establishment" when I saw him speak earlier this year, castigating schools of education, departments of education, and teachers' unions as an unequivocally worthless three-headed monster who will stop at nothing to defend their failed schools. Under this Brooks/Gingrich ideology, just about everyone who actually spends time in classrooms is contaminated, reflexively anti-reform, and ought to be thrown overboard, paving the way for a free-market model where teachers and students are paid for higher test scores, and collective bargaining for teachers is a farce of the past. That's a dangerous road.
Also, what's up with Brooks's bizarre conflation of greater funding and smaller class sizes with superficial reforms? Last year at a Bronx public school I taught high school English classes of 33 students. This year at a Washington DC charter school, my classes range between 7 and 20 students. The difference in the attention I'm able to give my students is profound, and it's reflected in their learning. Education is a person-to-person endeavor. Smaller, more personal learning spaces are essential; implicitly labeling a campaign for them as "superficial" holds no water.
And Joel Klein as the reformer hero? Under his tenure, New York City has experienced runaway standardized testing and schizophrenic, punitive assessments for schools , and all under the co-opted banner of "accountability." Teachers and parents are demoralized, and the test scores are stagnant. Handing him the reins of American public school is not the answer.
Michelle Rhee, receiving props from the left and right for her hard-charging methods, is the other "reformer" hero of the moment, currently gracing the cover of Time Magazine with a broom and a frown. I am rooting for DC schools to improve, but Rhee's nuclear approach to administering a catastrophically plagued system in the nation's capital is not at all what the doctor ordered for most of America.
Brooks champions Rhee and Klein as sunny "reformers," but that's code for scorched earth ideologues. He takes a shot at Barack Obama's chief education adviser, Linda Darling-Hammond as their ostensibly gutless, obstructionist rival.
He writes:
Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford, is a sharp critic of Teach for America and promotes weaker reforms.
Many are still steamed at Darling-Hammond, a teacher quality expert, for her 2005 study "Does Teacher Preparation Matter?" which pointed out that Teach For America corps members leave the teaching profession more quickly than other teachers. Actually, Darling-Hammond has a great deal to offer as a reformer, not a smasher, of the American school system.
In the conclusion of her essay "From Separate but Equal" to "No Child Left Behind", she writes:
...Although there is a strong privatization instinct in Washington at the moment, the American people reiterate in poll after poll that they support public education, are willing to invest in it, and expect it to be a leavening agent for society-- in fact, some might argue, the only one left in America. While there are improvements to be made in schools, schools... will meet the aspirations Americans hold for them only if they are given intelligent guidance and the critical supports they need, while children are assured the health and family supports that allow them to be ready to learn.
Darling-Hammond sees value in nurturing and supporting teachers, not running them out on a rail based on high-stakes test scores. She sees collective bargaining for teachers as fundamentally fair. She understands that while our situation is urgent, we don't need to resort to shock doctrine-caliber panic and blow up our whole system. President-Elect Obama made an excellent choice in bringing her on his team.
David Brooks offered Americans a false choice. Here's hoping our new president will sweep aside that brand of discourse.
Dan Brown is a teacher in Washington, DC, and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle. He is not a member of any teachers' union.
Comments
Dan,
Your discussion is intriguing inasmuch as you seem to fit the TFA mold judging by your background.
So how is it that in the schools in which you have taught, you have not found there to be the legacy of decades of adult protections fought for at the great expense of the children? How do you think the culture of failure which permeates many of the schools came into being?
Do you not think that drilling, and memorizing fundamentals and then testing children, who at age 12 have difficulty reading a paragraph or adding two three-digit numbers together, is worthwhile? At a basic level, we all were rote learners. It just happened in K-3 for the fortunate ones, not 5-8.
What kind of investment in teachers would you prescribe? How much more money would ask for, and how would you spend it? What is your view of the Abbott schools results in New Jersey? Amazingly high financial investment and disappointing results.
Perhaps your book has some of the answers.
Similarly to Jeff, I wonder how you manage to avoid coming to the conclusion that teachers' unions obstruct every worthwhile reform effort.
How could the Washington Teacher's Union have possibly rejected Rhee's salary proposal if it were confident of the quality of work of its members?
And why does virtually every high-profile outsider who becomes interested in public education from Joanne Jacobs to Bill Gates, come to view unions as the problem?
cf Alter: www newsweek com/id/172572
Great post!
Hi David.
It seems that when one works in the schools that are the target of 'reforms', one has a very different picture because we have seen first-hand what truly needs to be done in order to help children.
Other than Darling Hammond, I have not witnessed any attempts on the part of the so called 'reformers' to address any of the real problems that face our children such as over crowding, access to basic health care, a decrease in head start programs, lack of basic resources in schools, horrible conditions in school buildings, and a general educational neglect which is constantly brushed over by individuals who have more desire to obtain educational contracts and create deals for their corporate friends than to help children.
Dorry Dan! I think I had David Brooks on the brain.
"sorry"
"why does virtually every high-profile outsider who becomes interested in public education from Joanne Jacobs to Bill Gates, come to view unions as the problem?"
Because they want to privatize the schools and can't do it until the unions are gone?
"How could the Washington Teacher's Union have possibly rejected Rhee's salary proposal if it were confident of the quality of work of its members?"
1. Because they'd already seen her dismiss GOOD teachers, principals and central office staff (because they knew where the bodies were buried?)
2. Because they know she's ruthless.
3. because she calls herself a benevolent dictator and everyone knows she's not benevolent, but she is a dictator.
4. because she has repeated stated that teachers are completely responsible for students ability to learn. She simply doesn't "agree" that outside forces have an effect.
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