Ravitch receives NEA's "2010 Friend of Education Award"
The NEA is having its annual confab, which gives clear illumination of how it has degenerated from a professional association to the longshoreman's union. Diane Ravitch received the "2010 Friend of Education Award", which when it was announced in May, I wrote:
The NEA just named Diane Ravitch its "2010 Friend of Education". I truly cannot think of anyone more deserving of the award, but have a minor quibble with its name – it should be: "2010 Friend of Union Bosses (Not Children)".
Below is the transcript of her acceptance speech yesterday. As with her book, there is not a SINGLE WORD that Randi couldn't have written, no acknowledgement that there is even ONE crappy teacher or school in the country, and not a single idea for how to improve the system: in short, nothing but biased attacks on every type of reform. While it makes my blood boil to read her speech, I recommend that you do so because it's critically important to understand the enemies of reform and what their lines of attack are. Here is an excerpt:
Since my book appeared in early March, I have taken a remarkable journey, one that turned into a cross-country tour. I have given 40 lectures so far, and will give another 40 starting in September. I have talked to union members, to school board members, to administrators, to leftwing think tanks and to rightwing think tanks. I have met with high-level White House staff and with about 40 members of Congress.
I met thousands of teachers-possibly some 20,000.
I did not meet a single one who likes what is happening; not one who thinks that NCLB improved education, not one who likes RTTT.
Not one who was unaware of the rising tide of hostility towards teachers and their unions, which teachers see in the national media on a near daily basis.
The same questions came up again and again: What can we do? How can we stop the attacks on teachers and the teaching profession. Why is the media demonizing unions? Why does the media constantly criticize public schools and lionize charter schools?
Why is Arne Duncan campaigning with Newt Gingrich? Why has the Obama administration built its education agenda on the punitive strategies of No Child Left Behind?
Who will stand up for public schools and their teachers?
Again and again, teachers came up to me and said: Be our voice.
Speak up for us.
And I promised I would. And I have.
I promised to speak out against NCLB: It's a disaster. It has turned schools into testing factories.
Diane Ravitch remarks
As Prepared for Delivery
NEA Annual Meeting & Representative Assembly New Orleans, July 6, 2010
First, I want to express my sincere appreciation for this honor.
I accept with gratitude, humility, and respect for the more than 3 million educators in whose name it is offered.
Next, I would like to thank Camille Zombro of San Diego, who did so much to help me write my book from the teachers' perspective.
Since my book appeared in early March, I have taken a remarkable journey, one that turned into a cross-country tour. I have given 40 lectures so far, and will give another 40 starting in September. I have talked to union members, to school board members, to administrators, to leftwing think tanks and to rightwing think tanks. I have met with high-level White House staff and with about 40 members of Congress.
I met thousands of teachers-possibly some 20,000.
I did not meet a single one who likes what is happening; not one who thinks that NCLB improved education, not one who likes RTTT.
Not one who was unaware of the rising tide of hostility towards teachers and their unions, which teachers see in the national media on a near daily basis.
The same questions came up again and again: What can we do? How can we stop the attacks on teachers and the teaching profession. Why is the media demonizing unions? Why does the media constantly criticize public schools and lionize charter schools?
Why is Arne Duncan campaigning with Newt Gingrich? Why has the Obama administration built its education agenda on the punitive strategies of No Child Left Behind?
Who will stand up for public schools and their teachers?
Again and again, teachers came up to me and said: Be our voice.
Speak up for us.
And I promised I would. And I have.
I promised to speak out against NCLB: It's a disaster. It has turned schools into testing factories. Its requirement that 100% of students will be proficient by 2014 was totally unrealistic. Any teacher could have told them that. Thousands of schools have been stigmatized as failing because they could not reach a goal that no nation or state or district has ever reached. By setting an impossible goal, NCLB delegitimated public education and created a rhetoric of failure and crisis, paving the way for privatization.
I will continue to speak out against high stakes testing: It undermines education. It leads to cheating, gaming the system, teaching to bad tests, narrowing the curriculum. High-stakes testing means less time to teach history, geography, civics, the arts, sciences, literature, physical education, anything that is not tested. This is not good education.
Some in the administration believe that the way to stop the narrowing of the curriculum is to test everything! But that would mean even less time for instruction and even worse education!
I have warned about the riskiness of choice: Its benefits are vastly overstated, and it undercuts public education by enabling charter schools to skim the best students in poor communities. As our society follows such policies, we develop a bifurcated system: one for the haves, another for the have-nots. And politicians have the nerve to boast about such an undesirable outcome.
Public schools are a cornerstone of our democracy; if we chip away at support for them, we erode communal responsibility for a vital public institution.
Teachers are worried about the Race to the Top. I pledged to keep asking why a "race to the top" replaced the ideal of equal educational opportunity.
RTTT has encouraged states to increase the number of charters, to pass laws to evaluate teachers by scores, to promote merit pay, and to agree to close or privatize low performing schools or fire all or part
of their staff. All of this is wrong. Why promote charters when
research shows that on average they don't get better results than regular public schools? CREDO (2009), Mathematica (2010), NAEP: Their
method: long hours, long days, 95% non-union. Teachers who are hired and fired at will; teachers who work 50-60-70 hours and burn out after 2-3 years. This is not a template for American education.
To those who tout the benefits of vouchers and charters: Consider Milwaukee, which has had both for nearly 20 years. Today, black students in Milwaukee score below black students in Mississippi and Louisiana.
The RTTT plan to use test scores to evaluate teachers is a bad idea, badly implemented. Legislatures should not decide how to evaluate teachers. SB6 was wrong in Florida; 191 is wrong in Colorado. Teachers should be judged by professional standards, not by a political process.
Research does not support evaluating teachers by test scores.
Students are not randomly assigned to classes; teacher effectiveness fluctuates depending on which students are in a teacher's class. The single most reliable predictor of scores is poverty, which in turn is correlated to student attendance, family support, and the school's resources.
Like NCLB, the RTTT pressures districts to close low-scoring schools. The overwhelming majority of low-performing schools enroll students in poverty and students who don't speak English or who are homeless and transient. Very often, their staff is heroic, working with society's neediest kids; they deserve praise, not pink slips. Closing schools weakens communities. No school was ever improved by closing it.
Merit pay is another of the useless fads of our day. It has nothing to do with education. It destroys teamwork. It incentivizes teachers to compete with one other for money, instead of collaborating for the benefit of children. Teachers need to share what they know and work towards one common goal: helping children and young people grow and develop. Merit pay will promote teaching to not very good tests; it may or may not improve scores, but it won't improve education.
I have spoken out to defend the right of teachers to join unions for their protection and the protection of their profession. Teachers have a right to a collective voice in the political process. It's the American way. I don't see the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post or the pundits complaining about the charter school lobby, the investment bankers lobby, or any other group that speaks on behalf of its members. Only teachers' unions are demonized.
Currently there is a campaign to eliminate tenure and seniority.
To remove job protections from senior teachers would destroy the profession. Supervisors will save money by firing the most expensive teachers. Imagine a hospital staffed by interns and residents, with few or no senior doctors.
Instead of the current wave of destructive reforms, we should ask ourselves how to deliver on our belief that every student in this nation should learn not only basic skills, but should have a curriculum that includes the arts, history, geography, civics, foreign languages, mathematics, science, physical education and health. Instead, all they are getting is a heavy dose of high-stakes testing and endless test preparation.
Policymakers have been far too silent about the role of the family.
Teachers know that education begins at home; and that when families take responsibility, students are likely to arrive in school ready to learn.
Again and again, I have heard about the need to provide greater resources to the neediest schools. Schools and districts continue to vary dramatically in their access to resources. The role of the federal government in education is to level the playing field, not to set off a competition for funding, nor to tell states and districts what to do.
Around the world, successful nations recognize that the best way to improve schools is to improve the education profession. We need expert teachers, not a steady influx of novices; we need experienced principals who are themselves master teachers, not a wave of newcomers who took a course called "how to be a principal"; we need superintendents who are educators, not lawyers and businessmen.
The current "education reform" movement is pushing for ideas that might turn out to be incredibly destructive. It wants to end tenure and seniority; to weaken the teaching profession; to silence teachers'
unions; to privatize large sectors of public education. Please don't let it happen!
Here's a thought for NEA: Print 4 million bumper stickers: I am a public school teacher and I vote--and so does my family.
Stand up to the attacks on public education. Don't give them half a loaf because they will come back for another slice the next day, and another the day after that! Don't compromise! Stand up for teachers!
Stand up for public education! No mas!
posted by Whitney Tilson at 11:29 PM
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