Ugh

The NY Times comes out with an editorial today in support of the regs on Duncan's Race to the Trough fund. Such a nasty piece of work.

"Education Secretary Arne Duncan will need to hold firm against the likes of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, and others who are predictably clinging to the status quo."

So, anyone who opposes the federal government's imposition of very specific set of controversial, untested policies gets tagged as "clinging to the status quo."

• Concerned about potentially harmful unintended consequences? Clinging to the status quo.
• Concerned about the capacity of state and local departments of education to implement statistically complicated and data intensive teacher value-added measurement models in a "fair and sensible" manner? Clinging to the status quo.
• Concerned about intensification of the already-awful standardized testing regime of young children? Clinging to the status quo.
• Concerned about your tax dollars getting pissed away (again) on the latest educational boondoggle? Yep, clinging to the status quo.

For what it's worth, NY Times, the history of urban school systems over the past 30 years or so has been one of too much (mostly stupid, top-down) reform, not too little. For one reference, "Spinning Wheels" by Frederick Hess -- not exactly an avid supporter of teacher's unions or the status quo -- comes to mind.

Please consider the possibility that some of us opposed to the Race to the Trough regs would, in fact, love to see some change, but this is not change we can believe in.

No respect

Apology (in the classical sense) in the Washington Post today by Sarah Fine, a TFA teacher leaving the profession. She starts out tugging our heartstrings a bit ("Somebody else will cover the holes in the classroom's walls with posters.") before getting down to business. Her reasons for leaving are pretty much the usual suspects: overwork, lack of appreciation, stupid administrators, the low esteem in which teachers are held.

The kicker to me is this: "[High achieving young people like me] are not used to feeling consistently defeated and systemically undervalued." That pretty much sums up what's wrong with most urban schools systems. Until that is fixed, eager young people like Ms. Fine are going to keep walking through the revolving door.

EdNotesOnline and SchoolsMatter offer their perspectives, but I would take it in a different way.

What's interesting to me about this article is how it lobs a very soft warning shot over Obama's ed reform bow. It's like Fine is saying: "Look at me, young, talented, committed, bright, just the kind of person you want going into teaching, working at a charter school, just the kind of school you are promoting, under a chancellor who you think is doing a great job, and the system beat me."

What she didn't say, but should have, is that nothing in Obama's ed reform package offers her any hope. I suspect if it did, she would have stuck around. But the Obama's Race to the Trough package merely intensifies the treatment of teachers as 2nd class workers.

So the OpEd didn't go quite far enough, but it is still interesting that the Post published it.

Water that seed

Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute is quoted here saying, with respect to Arne Duncan:

“The jury is still out on his tenure in Chicago. But he did put in place a lot of important reforms that there’s reason to believe are going to bear fruit over time.”

Well, we won't ask exactly what Petrilli thinks is so important. I haven't heard anything about how Duncan did anything about delivery of classroom instruction, gang or discipline issues, or other stuff like that which seem kind of important to me.

But one interesting thing here is that big-city "reform" superintendants of Duncan's ilk habitually rely on one of two justifications for their hasty, ill-considered policies: (1) We don't have time to wait and (2) Things can't possibly get any worse. Typically, they also promise great things to come of their plans. After 7 years of unfettered control over the third largest system in the country, it seems like Dunc'd have something to show for it by now.