My Response to Professor Engel

I heard from Professor Susan Engel who wrote the Op Ed in last week's NYT of which I was so critical (http://edreform.blogspot.com/2010/02/playing-to-learn.html) (by the way, she is a developmental psychologist who teaches in the Psychology Department at Williams, not an ed school prof as I incorrectly wrote).  She asked me to tell her more about myself and my views, so here is a slightly edited version of my reply:

 

Dear Prof. Engel,

 

I'm glad to hear from you.  Attached is my bio – as you can see, since joining Wendy Kopp starting Teach for America more than 20 years ago, I've spend ungodly amounts of time studying our K-12 public schools, especially those serving (or, sadly, mostly not serving) low-income, minority children (also see www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/SchoolReform). 

 

I would bet that there are not very many people in the country who have visited as many high-performing schools that are achieving nothing short of educational miracles, changing life trajectories of the most disadvantaged children, starting with 45 of the 82 KIPP schools nationwide (I've been on KIPP's board in NYC for nearly a decade).  One result of my work is the 240-slide presentation posted at www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/SchoolReform, which has been made into a documentary (modeled after An Inconvenient Truth), which will be released in early March.  More importantly, I don't just study, speak and write about this issue – I've spent far more time starting, building and supporting organizations that are actually changing what's happening on the ground, from TFA to KIPP to Democrats for Education Reform to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools to the Rewarding Achievement Scholarship Challenge (REACH).

 

I'm sorry for being so critical of your article, but articles like this do a lot of damage, especially when they're in the most influential publication in the world.  I just re-read it to make sure I hadn't missed anything.  I actually agree with much of what you write about our schools not getting the job done, and what a great school would look like.

 

Where I think you are terribly wrong, however, is the assertion (with not one shred of supporting evidence in your article) that the main problem is the curriculum and that testing is at the root of the problems.  Obviously, bad tests that encourage rote memorization and drill-and-kill teaching are bad; but are you claiming that ALL tests are bad?  Are AP exams evil?  Based on the home page of your Hayground School, which leads with "We teach to life, not the test", maybe you think so…

 

I really like schools like yours – heck, I might send my 3 girls to one – but my extensive experience is that, with very rare exceptions, they don't work with inner-city kids, who are the ones I've spent the last 20 years focused on.  Your kids and my kids are going to be fine, almost regardless of what school they go to, but that's not true of kids in the South Bronx – that's where the real crisis in American education is.  As a nation, we've spent many decades and many trillions of dollars trying to properly educate these kids and close the achievement gap – with almost nothing to show for it (see pages 28-46, especially 33-34 of my attached presentation). 

 

Yet there are an increasing number of schools (and now even a few networks of schools) that are producing off-the-charts outcomes – with the same kids (accepted by lottery), the same parents, spending the same amount of money, and often even in the same buildings as regular, failing public schools.  These so-called "no excuses" schools like KIPP are both exactly what you call for – caring teachers giving students individual attention, with a rich curriculum, etc. – yet are also the antithesis of what you wrote: EVERY ONE of these schools uses testing extensively, first to measure where students are when we get them (on average, two years below grade level coming into 5^th grade), and then to track them every step of the way, making sure that they become proficient readers and are really learning the rich curriculum we're teaching.  As an educator, you of course know that there's often a huge difference between what's being taught and what kids are learning, so without testing the kids, how can we know whether kids are learning???

We also use tests as one way (but certainly not the ONLY way) to evaluate our teachers and principals.  Given how far behind our kids are when we get them, average or even good teachers won't cut it for us – we need superstars, who can teach and inspire kids to DOUBLE their rate of learning from ¾ of a grade level each year in the years before they come to our school, to 1.5-2 years of learning while they're with us.  Of course we can evaluate teachers by observing them regularly, but even the best evaluators can be fooled by a teacher with energy and enthusiasm, but who just doesn't impart much knowledge. 

 

Your article makes it seem like there are wonderful teachers in every classroom, just waiting to be unleashed to wow students and accelerate their learning, but instead they're in a straightjacket driven by testing, and therefore if we just got rid of testing, our schools would thrive.  Maybe you don't really believe that, but I think that's what the average reader of your article would conclude.

 

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Sure, there are lousy tests and lousy schools, principals and teachers who respond to lousy tests by doing drill and kill.  But this problem doesn't make the top 10 list of the things that are most wrong with our schools.  The three biggest problems, by far, are: 1) The nature of the system, in which there are few rewards for success, few penalties for failure and, overall, almost no accountability so, not surprisingly, mediocrity (or worse) reigns; 2) The political power of the adults in the system, who fight fiercely to maintain the status quo that's working so well for them; and 3) The declining quality of those who become teachers (see pages 78-83) overall and, in particular, the dreadful quality of teachers at schools serving the kids who most need the best teachers.  To begin to address these problems, one critical element is establishing rigorous evaluation systems so one can see how each student, teacher, principal, school and school system is doing – and I don't see how this can be done without including a good system of testing, which is exactly what the Obama administration is trying to do (but which you slam in your article).

 

The reason I was so harsh in my critique of your article is that your analysis of the main problem (testing) and your solution (eliminate testing) is completely wrong and, if adopted, would set back the cause of truly improving our schools by a decade.  The real danger is that your ideas SOUND so good that the vast majority of people who don't know any better will be persuaded.  That said, my language was a bit over the top, so I modified the opening to read: "I was frustrated by this op ed in today's NYT because the author makes it seem like having rigor and accountability (yes, egads!, including testing) is incompatible with nurturing, broad-based learning…." (see http://edreform.blogspot.com/2010/02/playing-to-learn.html).

 

I invite you to come visit one of our schools on your next visit to Boston (KIPP Lynn) or NYC (6 schools) and see for yourself that wonderful, nurturing teaching and educating the whole child is NOT incompatible with testing.

 

Best regards,

 

Whitney