“It’s hard to watch Robert Griffin III play football and not think about education policy.” Education “reformers” Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein begin an op-ed (CNN.com, 1/7/13) with this dubious claim, then go on to flesh out their absurd football/education analogy:
Robert Griffin III: He’s kind of like an elementary school teacher, right? (Photo: Keith Allison)
RG3, as fans call him, is a rookie who has been playing in the National Football League for all of 18 weeks, but led the Washington Redskins to twice as many victories as they had last year, their first winning season since 2007 and their first divisional championship in 13 years. Now imagine if the Redskins had a little less money to pay salaries next year and cut Griffin from the team, keeping instead a handful of bench-warmers. It sounds ridiculous, but that practice is exactly what happens in most school districts where policies require teachers to be laid off based on seniority, not talent.
If school districts succeeded on the strength of a few highly paid superstar teachers, the analogy might begin to make some kind of sense, but school districts actually depend on large numbers of well-trained but historically low-paid teachers–none of whom is a “bench-warmer.”
One might have thought that Rhee and Klein, who have worked very hard to weaken teachers’ bargaining power and unions, might hesitate to compare them to football players who, in addition to their huge salaries, are protected by a robust union. As it is, Rhee and Klein are engaging in unintentional truth-in-labeling when they follow this analogy with “here’s another nonsensical example.”
The occasion of the column was the release of a state-by-state “report card” by Rhee’s group, StudentsFirst, where Klein is a board member. StudentsFirst judges states on how thoroughly they have adopted corporate reforms of the sort preferred by Rhee and Klein: merit pay for teachers, standardized tests to evaluate students and teachers, the expansion of charter schools and voucher programs, and policies weakening teachers’ unions.
The StudentsFirst report card did not determine grades based on the testing metrics it pushes on schools; the StudentsFirst report card was uninterested in how students were doing, but only graded the states on how thoroughly they were enacting the group’s prescribed corporate reforms. Under its strange assessment method, 11 states received failing grades and nearly 90 percent were graded at less than a “C.”
And the states that got the highest grades–Louisiana and Florida each got a B minus–are surprising unless you remember that the measure doesn’t take into account how students are doing, or the quality of the education their state is providing for them. As Valerie Strauss, writer at the Washington Post‘s education blog, the Answer Sheet (1/7/13), observed:
Florida’s reform efforts were spearheaded more than a decade ago by then-Gov. Jeb Bush, who was the national leader in these kinds of reforms. The school accountability system that Bush set up, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, is scandal-ridden, but he still travels the country promoting his test-based reform model.
Louisiana is the state where Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal instituted a statewide voucher program that gave public money to scores of Christian schools that teach Young Earth Creationism, the belief that the Earth and the universe were created by God no more than 10,000 years ago. Kids learn that dinosaurs co-existed with humans. That’s the state that got Rhee’s top grade.
In their op-ed, Rhee and Klein lament the nonsensical opposition to charter schools, writing:
There’s overwhelming evidence that quality public charter schools provide a viable education option, particularly for students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.
Back on Earth, where dinosaurs died out tens of millions of years before humans appeared, Diane Ravitch has been debunking the charter school hype for years. In the New York Review of Books (11/11/10), the NYU researcher and former undersecretary of Education consulted the evidence on charter schools versus public schools, citing a well-known Stanford University study:
Known as the CREDO study, it evaluated student progress on math tests in half the nation’s five thousand charter schools and concluded that 17 percent were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than the public school; and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school.
Not exactly the reality portrayed by Rhee and Klein, but then apparently CNN.com doesn’t do factchecking, which might be especially important before publishing a column that begins by finding uncanny parallels between a superstar athletic performances and education policy.
A true “quality public charter school” will provide a good education.
So will a quality plain ol’ public school.
If you give them the resources that will let them attain and maintain that quality, there’s no reason for a “viable eduction option”, is there?
Unless, of course, you’re trying to destroy public education, in order to institute a privatized system that will manufacture “bricks in the wall” to suit the needs of corporations.
In which case, the term “viable” is utterly out of place, wouldn’t you say?
It’s interesting to note where the arguments for a “young earth” used by creationists originate. They usually prescribe an age of 6000 years, but I guess extending it to 10,000 is a nod to the fact that the pyramids are 5500 years old and clearly human remains are older than that. It’s hard to argue with Carbon-14 dating which can date things to about 10 half lives ago or 50,000 years. So where does the 6000 years come from? Well, from one passage in the Bible that states to the Lord, one day is as a 1000 years. So give Creation took 6 days, 6000 years would be the time from creation to the Second Coming. Or if you prefer the mystic Elias: he claimed the Void lasted 2000 years, the age of the Jews lasted 2000 years, and therefore the Age of Christ would last 2000. Either way, it adds up to 6000 years. So theologian like Eusebius and Martin Luther (of 95 Theses fame) tried to estimate the age of the earth in order to figure out when Creation ocurred so that they could estimate how many years remained before the Second Coming. Martin Luther put it at about 500 years ahead of his time or around the year 2004, which of course has come and gone. And no Second Coming, at least none that I’ve noticed. Well, in any case, they were not trying to determine the age of the earth as geologists do, but predict (based upon some questionable numerology) when the Second Coming would transpire. I rather doubt that creationists who argue for a young earth know the origins of their own beliefs. A little off topic, but those schools that teach creationism and put dinosaurs next to homo sapiens should examine the origins of their own teachings.
Joe Klein is a contributor for Time Magazine. Thanks for reminding me what a good decision it was to cancel my subscription.
No, this is Joel Klein, the Bloomberg and Murdoch flunky.
Well apparently Rhee and Klein have the “quality” education they want to foist on everyone, that is “none”.
What’s the old line about make-believe cowboys? “All hat, no saddle”? When it comes to serious reform of public education, Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein are all hat, no saddle! And “grading” states by how slavishly they’ve adopted Rhee and Klein’s corporate agenda for destroying the public school system is about as sensible as “grading” NFL players by whether they share your religious beliefs!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/21/985501/-Charter-Schools-and-the-CREDO-Report
Steve Rendall and FAIR are really reaching with this piece.
Rhee is a strange person, and the ongoing issue I have with her is whether she manipulated her own students’ tests before submitting them (and thus achieving noteriety by showing near-100% improvements). What exactly is flawed about the scoring system though? I’m not clear about what is necessarily “corporate” about the reforms prescribed. When populists (like me) improperly conflate unionization at the factory with unionization of public sector employees, politics is neglected. (Politics is typically neglected all the way around, but the problem is espcially severe in the case of the public sector.)
Here are the facts: public sector employees – especially teachers – receive in recent years pay increases well above growth and inflation rates, and this is a function of threats to elected officials. Merit pay has real positive effects on student learning, and I can’t understand why any teacher wouldn’t want to receive compensation for doing better work than his/her peers. (If everyone is doing well, the merit pay is divided evenly.) Charter schools work but principally when the local government’s institutions are in place to provide oversight of funding. And, charter schools exceed the public schools by providing much more guidance to teachers (e.g., full-time mentor teachers and coaches). These are based on findings much more recent than the CREDO study.
Again, this was a very disappointing article to read from FAIR. I suggest you focus on the language of CNN’s, FOX’s, etc. reporting; compare what Rhee said in period 1 with period 2, etc. Don’t try to engage in this sort of untrained analysis.
Watch my hand. No, not that one, the other one… No, not that one, the OTHER one (didn’t know I had three hands? Neither did my mom — I got it from Ayn Rand, when I was a pustulating adolescent).
Now, pull on my finger…
The message I get from reading between the lines of Rhee and Klein’s argument is that teachers need stronger unions and better pay and that they should not be laid off…
Only on fair- would an education discussion return to evolution vs creationism.As if that has ANYTHING to do with our ever dropping performance in the education system.It is nothing more than a burr in the saddle to those who like to argue such tripe.Why we are dropping is also not a money problem(contrary to what libs believe).There are tons of schools that have had money dumped on them by the truckload- to little effect.And yes we have a teachers union problem(in my “area” alone there are 1500 teachers tenured- only one was fired last year)but that is not the cause either.I truly believe this is a problem that begins and ends at home.The changing interplay between parental involvement in their child’s education.Obama who is a pretty busy guy has talked about he and his wife’s daily involvement in his girls education.Bill Clinton did the same.There is no substitute for that.Or at least everything else is a poor substitute.I am also a believer in anything that gives people the freedom to make choices.That allows those who have accepted the American way of claiming personal responsibility for their lives(and the lives of their families)a chance to slip off the governmental yoke that pins them ….yes with those who have passed responsibility to a government ill suited to take on the task.I heard a liberal commentator say today that “Obamas children ARE in the greater scheme of things more important than the reg joe’s kids.Yes they are in a top school.Yes they have armed guards that make them very safe,he says”.Well I understand his point in a general sense.The importance of protecting our leaders kids and so on…..But you must understand that his children will someday earn huge salaries and live in fine homes.And their children after them.Their will be little “swimming with the other fishes” for this lot.And thats fine.They have that freedom.And there is that word again.FREEDOM!That word that happily allows those willing to set their own path, a chance to reach the brass ring(or fail).And sadly allows those willing to let the government to become a caretaker over them and their families the much more commonplace outcome of falling short of their dreams.We need good public schools.AND the freedom to send your child anywhere you damn well please.We can get both done.
Sheeeeeeeeeeee’s Back; in the news this week.
Sacramento is going to be so screwed.