newoldschoolteacher blog; Ed School Follies

I've never actually set foot in one of our nation's ed schools, but from everything I read and hear, ranging from anecdotes like the blog below to formal studies and reports, leads me to believe that the current system is so bad that it does more harm than good and needs to be RADICALLY restructured.

1) An acquaintance of mine, who is a student at a top ed school, has a blog at http://schoolnerdblog.blogspot.com, which is basically a DEVASTATING (and spot-on) critique of our nation's ed schools (as you read about this Mad Hatter's Tea Party, keep in mind that she's at one of the "best" schools). I laugh out loud at many of her posts (below), which have gems like this (from her post on the required Social Justice Action Project; http://schoolnerdblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/social-freaking-justice.html):

Crazy, right? My personal favorite idea is to develop a social justice professional development for the teachers at my school. I can only imagine how they would react to something like that. I would probably be skinned alive. Another thing that I like is the reflective journal. Don't we all love reflective journals? I know I do. No one asks us to keep reflective journals on our teaching, or whether our kids are actually learning a goddam thing, but we have to keep a reflective journal on the process of a social justice action project that is ill-defined and which no one seems to be able to explain the purpose of? GREAT. THANK YOU, ED SCHOOL. I'm sure this is going to be so helpful to me in the future. Especially if I am on a game show called "Name That Ridiculous Ideological Nightmare" or "Things I Am Ashamed of" or "Something that Will Never, Ever Help a Student; Not Ever." Although I guess I haven't heard of a game show title with a semi-colon in it. But hey, I also had never heard of a social justice action project, and yet here it is.

2) After catching some flak for appearing to criticize the importance of social justice, newoldschoolteacher elaborated in this post (http://schoolnerdblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/apologies-to-social-justice-project.html), which concludes with an all-time-great rant:

So, IF we can agree that tests show SOMETHING about how a school's children are being educated, THEN we can find the urban schools that are succeeding. It's an imperfect measure, but what else do we have? People argue that tests don't assess "creativity," "critical thinking," "passion," etc. But these things are essentially un-measurable. We can hide behind them, and say they are the only things that matter, but then we are back to the problem we started with: if we aren't willing to measure change, then we will never know if we have achieved social justice. And ignorance is the same as failure. Or we can accept these tests as imperfect but revealing.

Maybe I have lost some of you with the testing. If you can explain to me a better way to measure how students are doing on a large scale (social justice is nothing if not large scale), then please do so.

So now, the urban school systems that are succeeding at social justice as we have defined it here: KIPP, Achievement First, Yes Prep, Uncommon Schools. Individual schools: Roxbury Prep, North Star Academy, Amistad Academy, MATCH School, Excellence Charter School of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Academy of the Pacific Rim, Bronx Prep, Boston Collegiate, and on and on. I encourage you to look up any and all information you can on these schools. Look at their scores, look at their student populations, look at their gains, look at how many of their kids are going to college. It's astounding.

What do all these schools have in common? Dreaded things. Traditional curricula, long school days, long school years, excellent teachers on call 24/7, administrators dedicated, obsessed with, student achievement, discipline, uniforms, insistence upon doing homework, insistence on parental involvement, rewards, character development. No bullshit. Hard work. Year after year. KIPP Academy has been the top-scoring middle school in math and reading for 11 years. It just works.

These schools focus on academics, whole-heartedly. They give their students perspectives, but first and foremost they expect students to work their hearts out and learn and learn. It's brutal sometimes, but these schools are communities, the kids love them. They help one another, they participate, they want to do well, they have community meetings where they sing and dance and cheer. Go visit one of these schools sometime. It makes you cry.

The teachers in these schools are experienced. They are the best and the brightest. They come from often disastrous public school environments where they had to figure everything out on their own. My question is: why can't ed schools learn from these schools? Why can't they take what those teachers have learned (and what has been proven to work) and show it to us? Why do we have to do social justice projects when nobody cares about how effective we are at teaching children what they need to know???? I swear, literacy should be the first item on any list devoted to social justice, and yet it is like a ghost in the hallways at ed school.

I complain and whine because I am angry. I am angry because I want to be like the teachers in these schools, but no one at my school will tell me how. They are against charter schools, against long school days, against traditional education. Even when they know these things work. One of my instructors told me that KIPP was bad because it "makes kids go to school too much." But what if that's just what it takes to achieve true social justice? How can you be so hypocritical?

The anger heaped upon the social justice project is disproportionate because it represents the anger I feel all the time, with everything. With wanting to learn how to make a difference and being shot down at every turn. With caring about urban kids and being told that I really actually don't. With seeing students thrive and being told I am seeing wrong. I'm sorry this was so long. It's been exhausting to write and I should have left it for another time. I have to go to sleep; I have another day of mucking through my own mistakes, trying desperately, and failing, to be good.

3) Below is the most recent post (http://schoolnerdblog.blogspot.com/) on the latest assignment, a "portfolio project". Here's my favorite excerpt:

I think the program knows how silly it is too, because some of the language they use to describe the project requirements just sound like fancy language trying to cover up for intellectual bankruptcy. Witness:...

• Student teaching reflective papers: "What are the norms, practices, rituals, customs, values, power structures, group affiliations, and status systems that define and shape your classroom setting?

• Well, let's see. We usually start off by sacrificing a goat on the altar of Mammon, cuz he's our favorite god. Then Raquita, who is the Queen Bee of the Nest, leads us through a little blood-letting and some chanting while Michael, affiliated with the school's most elite acapella group, tends the burning incense. Everyone gives a tithe to me, the Dragon Mother, and after that we start the Do Now.

4) Here is what someone posted on the blog, in response:

Well said. Ed schools should be abolished now before they hurt anyone else. I know--I've taught in one for 26 years. But, it's ok, I would survive quite well in a psychology or linguistics department. I only survive now because I do so much outside consulting and have to spend little time around the nonsense and the nonsensical people.

By the way, I assume you have read Rita Kramer's book, Ed School Follies. If not, get it--fine examples similar to the one you have here. For added reinforcement, read Sandra Stotsky's new article about ed schools ("The shame of the nation") in the most recent issue of the journal, Academic Questions.

5) I was unable to find the Stotsky article (please email or fax -- 240-368-0299 -- it to me if you have it), but did order Ed School Follies (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595153240/tilsoncapitalpar), which looks GREAT. Thought it's quite dated, I have no doubt that things are just as bad or worse today... Below are a couple of reader reviews of the book from Amazon.com -- here's an excerpt:

Rather than being a model of scholarship, today's ed schools waste away time with endless prattle about theories and philosophies...Kramer reports on everything she saw: vapid looks of the students, meaningless classroom activities, faculty members who loathe the very same goals that most people expect from schools, and grades, assessments and final degress devoid of any substantive value.

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Portfolio education

So I have my big portfolio project due for school tomorrow. I'm mostly done. Phoning something in doesn't take that long. The project is basically a compilation of a number of different assignments we had over the course of the year in different classes: a statement of our "philosophy" of social studies education, a resume, some units on history or economics, the social justice action project and a social justice "inquiry brief," the usual suspects. We also have to organize it around a quirky/peppy theme. For example, one person did a wedding theme, with her assignments grouped under subthemes like "dating," "proposing," "wedding planning," etc. Another one from a past year was about an ordinary boy transforming into a popular superhero. One girl in my class did something akin to "Riding the equity bus to the state capitol." (Equity is a really big word these days. I don't know what happened to "equality," but it's out.) Anyway, the portfolio is supposed to signify the changes you go through in the master's program. But it's just so silly. I think back to my undergraduate days and I simply cannot imagine a professor giving such a childish assignment. Can you imagine turning in an academic paper with the title "Peter Parker transforms into Superman"? It's almost insulting. And we get a master's degree for this? I think the program knows how silly it is too, because some of the language they use to describe the project requirements just sound like fancy language trying to cover up for intellectual bankruptcy. Witness:

• "The portfolio should be integrative, synthetic, and evaluative.

• Translation: The portfolio should be big word to make me look smart, big word to confirm smartness, big word to blow their minds with the smartness.
  

• "The portfolio is not a scrapbook, although it may resemble one, but a new creation which assimilates the diverse aspects of the candidate's experiences during the master's program."
  

• Translation: The portfolio is a scrapbook. Get over it.
  

• "The portfolio should be organized around a theme which will be set out in an introductory essay explicating and organizing the choice of materials."

• Translation: Choose a theme. Write an essay on why you chose your theme. Explain the materials you included.
  

• Introductory essay: "This essay should indicate the organizing schema governing the selection of the 'artifacts' of the student's teaching 'journey' contained within the portfolio.

• Translation: Write an essay on why you chose your theme. Explain the materials you included.

• Curriculum Units: "Please make sure to include content goals and skill goals. For these goals, state concisely why you have chosen to include them in your unit as well as insuring your instructional objectives derive from your unit goals."

• Here's what JLo would say to this: "Girl, please. You would not know concise if it hit you with a wood cutout of the word 'explicate.'"

• I called JLo and asked her. She said that's what she would say.
  

• Social justice paper: "What role has any of the following played in social studies over the last several decades and how, if at all, do these topics relate to social justice?

--technology
--patriotism
--cognitive pluralism
--notions of self-actualization
--current events
--Supreme Court cases
--Economic opportunity
--Global education
--religion"

Does the inclusion of "self-actualization" mean we can use the book "I'm Ok, You're Ok" as a source? What if using that book would help me realize my full potential?

• Social justice paper: "Your paper will be a reflection of your shared knowledge, acknowledged here as tentative and embryonic, of these signficant questions around social justice and social studies education."

• Translation: Your paper will be about what you know and what your classmates know, which is not a lot. Your knowledge is, in fact, similar to a hesitant fetus.
  

• Student teaching reflective papers: "What are the norms, practices, rituals, customs, values, power structures, group affiliations, and status systems that define and shape your classroom setting?

• Well, let's see. We usually start off by sacrificing a goat on the altar of Mammon, cuz he's our favorite god. Then Raquita, who is the Queen Bee of the Nest, leads us through a little blood-letting and some chanting while Michael, affiliated with the school's most elite acapella group, tends the burning incense. Everyone gives a tithe to me, the Dragon Mother, and after that we start the Do Now.
  

That's all for today. I have to go finish my portfolio.

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Reviews of Ed School Follies

A Look Inside a Medeival Torture Chamber, August 21, 2000

Reviewer:

Thomas Dickerson (Grand Rapids, MI) - See all my reviews

Welcome to the place where torturers are trained and weeded out!This book is first step in finding an answer to the pathetic state of today's educational system. What are teachers taught? What is the criteria for determining a good teacher from a bad teacher? Or do they even try? Who decides this, and how? Ms. Kramer gives you the raw data to answer these questions yourself. The reader sits in on Teacher Ed classrooms with Ms. Kramer from the east coast to the west coast. You stop at the elite and exclusive schools, such as Columbia University's Teacher's School and Vanderbilt University's Peabody College, as well as the schools that simply churn out teachers in mass, such as Eastern Michigan University. The book gives readers a general survey of what happens in Ed Schools in the U.S. It is an initial look at the crime scene. Many other questions will arise pertaining to the causes of the observed corruptions, but these would be material for other books. Although Ms. Kramer does let her disapproval be known throughout the book, so did she when she chose a title. She would be an accessory to the crime if she didn't voice her disapproval. Thus, contrary to some other reviewer's opinions, I applaud Ms. Kramer for letting her evaluation of the facts be known -- its high time!On a personal note: As one who has been through a Teacher Ed program, this reviewer does not believe that the events have been exagerated in any way. My school was NOT one of those surveyed, but reading this was like a deja vu experience for me. This actually happens!

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Every teacher or teacher-to-be will love this book!, February 7, 2001

Reviewer:

Kevin Killion (Illinois, United States) - See all my reviews

Other books tell about the bizarre premises, concepts and methods in schools today. But where on earth do these ideas come from? And why do administrators and teachers believe this stuff? The short answer is: ed schools. Rather than being a model of scholarship, today's ed schools waste away time with endless prattle about theories and philosophies. Rita Kramer toured the country, spending a good deal of time at each of a number of ed schools. She visited prestigious eastern schools, mainstream schools, and everything in between. Kramer reports on everything she saw: vapid looks of the students, meaningless classroom activities, faculty members who loathe the very same goals that most people expect from schools, and grades, assessments and final degress devoid of any substantive value. This book tells a vital part of the story in understanding what's wrong with our schools. I can't think of a better book recommendation for a young person considering ed school, a student in ed school, or a teacher who is trying to figure out why the time spent in ed school has so little to do with his or her classroom success.