Robert Cooper in the Preface to his book The Breaking of Nations, says this:
"The worst times in European history were in the fourteenth century, during and after the Hundred Years War, in the seventeenth century at the time of the Thirty Years War, and in the first half of the twentieth century. The twenty-first century may be worse than any of these."
Daily we read things in the news that would support Cooper’s statement that our century, the only century that my grandson will ever know directly, may turn out to be worst of all.
For example, I take these three items from today's news from the Middle East, and South Asia, and I haven't even delved into the African continent where perhaps the greatest slaughter of innocents is still going on. First, Baghdad bodies. Hardly a day goes by without our hearing about them. On September 12th at least 60 bodies were found throughout the city. All had been shot in the head, had clear signs of torture, were blindfolded, bound, or gagged. This number is above last month's average body count of 50 or more a day, but not as high as the national average of 100 a day year to date. The second item concerns what I will call Muslim rage, recalling the similar Muslim anger just one year ago over the Danish cartoons. On the same day, September 12th, Muslim leaders in Britain, France, and Germany, in Morocco, Pakistan, and Kuwait, in Gaza, Iraq, Syria, and Indonesia, to mention just the first ones recognized by the ever present scandal thirsty media, registered their protest at the Pope's words while speaking at Regensburg University in Bavaria. On that occasion the Pope quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor as saying, "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The third item concerns the country, Pakistan, perhaps the most ungovernable land in the world today, a country held together by not much more than the name (and perhaps the cricket team). The Pakistan government put a women’s rights bill on hold, thereby caving in to the Islamists. Under Islamist law all sex outside of marriage is criminalized. Furthermore if a rape victim fails to present four male witnesses to the rape, she herself may face punishment. According to a Pakistanian Human Rights Commission a woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours in Pakistan, and we’re told that these figures are probably an under-estimation. Now we learn that a government reform measure that would end these practices has been stopped.
I don’t mean to single out the Muslims by my comments. There is certainly ample evidence of man’s cruelty to man among other peoples and religions. But what I find abhorrent is that while the bodies are piling up in Iraq, a Muslim country, and while in Pakistan also a Muslim country, men are raping women with impunity, the Muslim leaders’ rage is directed only at the words of a Pope, words that have hurt no one (and would probably have passed unnoticed if the “leaders” had kept silent), words that left no bodies, no rape victims. Why is this so? Would these “leaders” perhaps be seeking to distract the world’s attention from the horrors that their co-religionists, in the name of their Prophet and their religion, are raining down on their probably countless innocent victims?
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Condemned to Repeat It
Why is it that in spite of Darwin, in spite of the common cellular origin of all life on our planet, we go on thinking of "history" as that of man's brief time on the earth, a mere 50,000 years or so? Why hasn't "history" become the history of life on the earth and taken its rightful place in our schools? Are we better off, more civilized, more capable of furthering our civilization if we can recount the battles, say, of the American Civil War, and know nothing about, the Miocene period when large numbers of apes, including probably our own blood relatives, roamed the plains of eastern Europe and the near East? Who is more apt to respect human life, the one who can recount what happened at Shiloh, Tennessee, during the first week of April, 1862, or the one who knows that during the Miocene Epoch, roughly 15 million years ago, as many as 100 species of apes roamed throughout the Old World, including not unlikely human ancestors such as Dryopithecus in Europe and Sivapithecus in Asia?
Furthermore we're told (A Lesson About History's Lessons) that kids now a days are not even learning man's recent history in the schools. "Each of us who teaches history has been reminded repeatedly in recent years about the "historical illiteracy" of our nation's youth. The Bradley Commission, Diane Ravitch, the evening news, even chance acquaintances tell us that the ‘typical’ American teenager cannot place the Civil War in the correct decade (or perhaps even the correct half century). That same generic seventeen-year-old, we are told, does not know the purpose of Jim Crow legislation, nor recognize the contribution of the Supreme Court's Brown decision in ending that chapter in our history. He or she does not know that England colonized North America's Atlantic coast, and is unaware that Spain's imperial arm extended into the American Southwest."
But these corrective comments, of which there are no end, never include mention of the much greater "hole" in kids' knowledge of the history of life on earth. Of that much earlier history, which most certainly tells us much more about ourselves than, say, the Battle of Shiloh, by in large nothing is known by our school children, with only one exception, the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods hundreds of millions of years ago when the dinosaurs, then terrible lizards, but now children’s playthings, ruled. So instead of teaching our children the history of life, the life that we share with all living creatures, we teach a few favored periods of history, for young children times of the ancient Egyptians and, the American West, for older children, perhaps, the times of the Greeks and the Romans, a bit of the so-called Middle Ages, the founding of our country, and then in great detail the modern period, which is primarily one of battles and wars, of men killing one another and in most instances for no good reason. Wouldn't our children be better served to learn the history, say, of the movement of the earth's crust, and the creation of the Himmalayas as the plates crashed together, the first appearance of homo sapiens in Afirca and how he came to people the earth?
It was George Santayana philosopher, essayist, poet, novelist, and lifelong Spanish citizen, who said that, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Now this statement is often used by history teachers, and even more often perhaps by politicians, to stress the importance of the knowledge of history. But here also they are only talking about man's most recent history, again that of a few thousand years at most. Furthermore does knowing the past enable us to avoid repeating it? Shouldn't the knowledge of Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" policy have prevented the subsequent Yalta give-away of Eastern Europe? It didn't of course. Nor did knowledge of the Vietnamese War prevent our current war in Iraq from taking place. So that one might just as well say that those who remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
But if by "past" we mean the history of past life on the earth the statement then becomes nonsense. Whether we "remember" it or not that life will not be repeated. The dinosaurs are gone forever, as is Pangaea, as is the wooly mammoth. Rather to remember this past is to realize how precious life is. And that's why this past ought to be taught in the schools. Too often remembering our most recent past, which has been one of wars and the slaughter of millions, seems to make us perpetrators of more of the same. Witness the predominance in our lives of Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda-like groups, and the ascendancy of the military industrial complexes within our most developed nations. Knowledge of our recent, tragic past has done nothing to prevent all this from coming about, whereas knowledge and understanding of life’s history, of the relatedness of all life's forms, might have.
Furthermore we're told (A Lesson About History's Lessons) that kids now a days are not even learning man's recent history in the schools. "Each of us who teaches history has been reminded repeatedly in recent years about the "historical illiteracy" of our nation's youth. The Bradley Commission, Diane Ravitch, the evening news, even chance acquaintances tell us that the ‘typical’ American teenager cannot place the Civil War in the correct decade (or perhaps even the correct half century). That same generic seventeen-year-old, we are told, does not know the purpose of Jim Crow legislation, nor recognize the contribution of the Supreme Court's Brown decision in ending that chapter in our history. He or she does not know that England colonized North America's Atlantic coast, and is unaware that Spain's imperial arm extended into the American Southwest."
But these corrective comments, of which there are no end, never include mention of the much greater "hole" in kids' knowledge of the history of life on earth. Of that much earlier history, which most certainly tells us much more about ourselves than, say, the Battle of Shiloh, by in large nothing is known by our school children, with only one exception, the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods hundreds of millions of years ago when the dinosaurs, then terrible lizards, but now children’s playthings, ruled. So instead of teaching our children the history of life, the life that we share with all living creatures, we teach a few favored periods of history, for young children times of the ancient Egyptians and, the American West, for older children, perhaps, the times of the Greeks and the Romans, a bit of the so-called Middle Ages, the founding of our country, and then in great detail the modern period, which is primarily one of battles and wars, of men killing one another and in most instances for no good reason. Wouldn't our children be better served to learn the history, say, of the movement of the earth's crust, and the creation of the Himmalayas as the plates crashed together, the first appearance of homo sapiens in Afirca and how he came to people the earth?
It was George Santayana philosopher, essayist, poet, novelist, and lifelong Spanish citizen, who said that, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Now this statement is often used by history teachers, and even more often perhaps by politicians, to stress the importance of the knowledge of history. But here also they are only talking about man's most recent history, again that of a few thousand years at most. Furthermore does knowing the past enable us to avoid repeating it? Shouldn't the knowledge of Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" policy have prevented the subsequent Yalta give-away of Eastern Europe? It didn't of course. Nor did knowledge of the Vietnamese War prevent our current war in Iraq from taking place. So that one might just as well say that those who remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
But if by "past" we mean the history of past life on the earth the statement then becomes nonsense. Whether we "remember" it or not that life will not be repeated. The dinosaurs are gone forever, as is Pangaea, as is the wooly mammoth. Rather to remember this past is to realize how precious life is. And that's why this past ought to be taught in the schools. Too often remembering our most recent past, which has been one of wars and the slaughter of millions, seems to make us perpetrators of more of the same. Witness the predominance in our lives of Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda-like groups, and the ascendancy of the military industrial complexes within our most developed nations. Knowledge of our recent, tragic past has done nothing to prevent all this from coming about, whereas knowledge and understanding of life’s history, of the relatedness of all life's forms, might have.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Government, Mankind's Greatest Invention.
James Buchanan says that "the loss of faith in the socialist dream has not, and probably will not, restore faith in laissez-faire. But what are the effective alternatives?"
That gets you thinking. James Buchanan was a Nobelprize winning economist, and economists, I know, love to talk about the "prisoner's dilemma." I've never really understood the significance of this tale. For don't we always know what the prisoner will do? For whom is it a dilemma? In fact why do the economists make so much of this? Very few in the situation described would be facing a dilemma. Most would simply "defect," or betray the other, knowing that from that action they had the most to gain. In any case that explains the "loss of faith in the socialist dream," that's why socialism didn't work, and will never work. For self-interest is still the single greatest motivating force in the world. And that's why, in spite of its obvious imperfections, the free market does work, more or less, because it depends on that self-interest. And the "more or less" explains why the failure of socialism doesn't completely restore our faith in laissea-faire. Self-interest alone is not good enough.
Wouldn't the situation where there is some government, that is our own situation, be an "effective alternative?" For isn't the proper role of government to tame and temper people's self-interest, still the dominant motivating force in the lives of human beings, and thereby make up for the imperfections of the free market by doing so? Why would anyone, having experienced his or her own excesses, and weaknesses, ever think that we could live productively and profitably with our neighbors without a government "regulator" of some sort?
Why, it now seems to me that government may very well be the single greatest creation of mankind. If you don't believe that you need only to look back at man when there wasn't any government, although that's not an easy thing to do, given that early man left almost no traces of his passage on earth other than his bones and some paintings on the walls of caves. But is there anyone among us, even any diehard anti-government libertarian/anarchist who would want to turn the clock back 10,000 years or more ago, before the first bits of our history, before the first governments? I don't think so.
And today, what we see happening in Iraq is no government, and that's why even a bad government, such as that of Mao, Stalin, or Saddam, did and still does have its adherents and defenders. Why can't our leaders understand this, and not be so quick to overthrow a bad government without having a good one waiting in the wings to take its place?
That gets you thinking. James Buchanan was a Nobelprize winning economist, and economists, I know, love to talk about the "prisoner's dilemma." I've never really understood the significance of this tale. For don't we always know what the prisoner will do? For whom is it a dilemma? In fact why do the economists make so much of this? Very few in the situation described would be facing a dilemma. Most would simply "defect," or betray the other, knowing that from that action they had the most to gain. In any case that explains the "loss of faith in the socialist dream," that's why socialism didn't work, and will never work. For self-interest is still the single greatest motivating force in the world. And that's why, in spite of its obvious imperfections, the free market does work, more or less, because it depends on that self-interest. And the "more or less" explains why the failure of socialism doesn't completely restore our faith in laissea-faire. Self-interest alone is not good enough.
Wouldn't the situation where there is some government, that is our own situation, be an "effective alternative?" For isn't the proper role of government to tame and temper people's self-interest, still the dominant motivating force in the lives of human beings, and thereby make up for the imperfections of the free market by doing so? Why would anyone, having experienced his or her own excesses, and weaknesses, ever think that we could live productively and profitably with our neighbors without a government "regulator" of some sort?
Why, it now seems to me that government may very well be the single greatest creation of mankind. If you don't believe that you need only to look back at man when there wasn't any government, although that's not an easy thing to do, given that early man left almost no traces of his passage on earth other than his bones and some paintings on the walls of caves. But is there anyone among us, even any diehard anti-government libertarian/anarchist who would want to turn the clock back 10,000 years or more ago, before the first bits of our history, before the first governments? I don't think so.
And today, what we see happening in Iraq is no government, and that's why even a bad government, such as that of Mao, Stalin, or Saddam, did and still does have its adherents and defenders. Why can't our leaders understand this, and not be so quick to overthrow a bad government without having a good one waiting in the wings to take its place?
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Note to Michael Goldstein
Michael Goldstein is the founder and CEO of the MATCH Commonwealth Charter School in Boston. I wrote this note in response to his comment about my Rothstein comment in an earlier post:
Dear Michael,
Well yes, Kevin did say, in a lot fewer words, what I was trying to say.
Oh well... Do you find that to be true, also, Michael, that most of what you are thinking and perhaps finally geting around to writing, has already been thought, said and written, and probably a good many times?
This weekend I read an excellent article, from the Public Interest, from Winter, 1966, by Christopher Jencks, Is the Public School Obsolete? ( a question he would never phrase in that manner today, decidedly incorrect).
I've also been reading (again) Diane Ravitch on the history of the "public" school and on education and democracy. I find she agrees with me (or rather I agree with her on a lot of subjects). In particular when she says this about Dewey, OK, not new, but it's what I've always thought, and has been my problem with the man each time I've sat down to read him, especially his Democracy and Education, "Dewey left problems in hls wake, caused in no small part by the obscurity of his prose."
Let me steer you to these observations by Ravitch, taken from her: American Traditions of Schooling. What follows is the last page or two of that essay. I agree with her statement: "What does seem likely is that the public will not indefinitely support schools in which children do not learn the skills and knowledge that they require for participation in our society." How do you read this? A radical change in the structure of our public schooling is almost upon us? With the advent of the charter schools some 15 years ago it did seem so. I'm less hopeful in that respect today.
What do you think?
Finally this weekend I learned for the first time that Ravitch is a great admirer of Robert Hutchins, and I was too, especially before I took a teaching job at St. Johns College in Annapolis in 1963, a decision based in some part on what Hutchins had said. And what was that? Well, this sort of thing:
"Perhaps the greatest idea that America has given the world," said Hutchins, "is the idea of education for all. The world is entitled to know whether this idea means that everybody can be educated, or only that everybody must go to school." At St. Johns we believed that we knew what it meant to be an educated man or woman.
And Michael, aren't we still grappling with this idea of education for all? You at MATCH, and I with my Foundation work? It seems to me that we haven't yet convinced ourselves that "everyone can be educated," meaning by that, benefit from the liberal education of which Hutchins is speaking... although for a long time now we have legislated that everyone must go to school. So the meaning of "education for all" is still in need of clarification. How about taking a stab at it?
Dear Michael,
Well yes, Kevin did say, in a lot fewer words, what I was trying to say.
Oh well... Do you find that to be true, also, Michael, that most of what you are thinking and perhaps finally geting around to writing, has already been thought, said and written, and probably a good many times?
This weekend I read an excellent article, from the Public Interest, from Winter, 1966, by Christopher Jencks, Is the Public School Obsolete? ( a question he would never phrase in that manner today, decidedly incorrect).
I've also been reading (again) Diane Ravitch on the history of the "public" school and on education and democracy. I find she agrees with me (or rather I agree with her on a lot of subjects). In particular when she says this about Dewey, OK, not new, but it's what I've always thought, and has been my problem with the man each time I've sat down to read him, especially his Democracy and Education, "Dewey left problems in hls wake, caused in no small part by the obscurity of his prose."
Let me steer you to these observations by Ravitch, taken from her: American Traditions of Schooling. What follows is the last page or two of that essay. I agree with her statement: "What does seem likely is that the public will not indefinitely support schools in which children do not learn the skills and knowledge that they require for participation in our society." How do you read this? A radical change in the structure of our public schooling is almost upon us? With the advent of the charter schools some 15 years ago it did seem so. I'm less hopeful in that respect today.
What do you think?
Finally this weekend I learned for the first time that Ravitch is a great admirer of Robert Hutchins, and I was too, especially before I took a teaching job at St. Johns College in Annapolis in 1963, a decision based in some part on what Hutchins had said. And what was that? Well, this sort of thing:
"Perhaps the greatest idea that America has given the world," said Hutchins, "is the idea of education for all. The world is entitled to know whether this idea means that everybody can be educated, or only that everybody must go to school." At St. Johns we believed that we knew what it meant to be an educated man or woman.
And Michael, aren't we still grappling with this idea of education for all? You at MATCH, and I with my Foundation work? It seems to me that we haven't yet convinced ourselves that "everyone can be educated," meaning by that, benefit from the liberal education of which Hutchins is speaking... although for a long time now we have legislated that everyone must go to school. So the meaning of "education for all" is still in need of clarification. How about taking a stab at it?
Friday, September 08, 2006
Reality denial and Jerry Bracey
On Sep 7, 2006, at 2:46 PM, gbracey1@verizon.net wrote:
"This is one of the most amazing reality denials I've seen in a long time. Roy Romer tells Clint Bolick (see Four Million Children Left Behind) something simple and compelling and Clint rolls right over it as if it weren't there.
"Not to mention that he accepts unquestioning that every school that NCLB says is a "failing school" is failing. Recall that if any subgroup fails for two years the entire school fails. Most schools have 37 subgroups, California 40-something.
"If Clint had show the same analytic acumen arguing the Cleveland voucher case, it would never have gotten to the Supreme Court, much less been rule in Clint's favor."
JB
Jerry,
As much as I recognize your acumen in dealing with many instances of disinformation regarding the schools, most often numbers that lie, in this particular instance you do exactly what you accuse Clint Bolick of doing. You turn a deaf ear to what you are being told. Clint is saying that under NCLB kids in failing Los Angeles schools are to have additional school choices, other better schools out there that they may choose to attend. Now of course, as you point out and as Roy Romer makes clear, there are few "better schools" out there, certainly not enough to meet the need, in a generally failing Los Angeles public school system. As a result doesn't that mean, as Clint Bolick is implying, that we should allow other schools and therefore other choices into the mix, additional charter schools, pilot and magnet schools, but most of all private schools? Clint Bolick is not denying what Roy Romer is saying, but is simply drawing the obvious conclusions from the situation that Romer describes. Now why don't you see that? Might one not say that your refusal to see this is "one of the most amazing reality denials ... seen in a long time."
Brooks
"This is one of the most amazing reality denials I've seen in a long time. Roy Romer tells Clint Bolick (see Four Million Children Left Behind) something simple and compelling and Clint rolls right over it as if it weren't there.
"Not to mention that he accepts unquestioning that every school that NCLB says is a "failing school" is failing. Recall that if any subgroup fails for two years the entire school fails. Most schools have 37 subgroups, California 40-something.
"If Clint had show the same analytic acumen arguing the Cleveland voucher case, it would never have gotten to the Supreme Court, much less been rule in Clint's favor."
JB
Jerry,
As much as I recognize your acumen in dealing with many instances of disinformation regarding the schools, most often numbers that lie, in this particular instance you do exactly what you accuse Clint Bolick of doing. You turn a deaf ear to what you are being told. Clint is saying that under NCLB kids in failing Los Angeles schools are to have additional school choices, other better schools out there that they may choose to attend. Now of course, as you point out and as Roy Romer makes clear, there are few "better schools" out there, certainly not enough to meet the need, in a generally failing Los Angeles public school system. As a result doesn't that mean, as Clint Bolick is implying, that we should allow other schools and therefore other choices into the mix, additional charter schools, pilot and magnet schools, but most of all private schools? Clint Bolick is not denying what Roy Romer is saying, but is simply drawing the obvious conclusions from the situation that Romer describes. Now why don't you see that? Might one not say that your refusal to see this is "one of the most amazing reality denials ... seen in a long time."
Brooks
Sunday, September 03, 2006
On Rothstein's Response to Finn
[Richard Rothstein has written a response to Chester Finn’s August 17 posting in the Gadfly, "March of the Pessimists."
Here follows directly the first portion of Rothstein’s response (a second portion to follow), interspersed in italics with my own running commentary on his text. For the complete text of his response, go to Rothstein.]
Chester Finn, in his August 17 "Gadfly" posting, responding to a New York Times article by Diana Jean Schemo and a Wall Street Journal essay by Charles Murray, expresses puzzlement that "the likes of Schemo and Murray" can't see that good schools can overcome the disadvantages of poverty, racism, troubled families, crime-infested neighborhoods, and harmful peer influences.
These are complex issues, not elucidated by labeling these writers, as Mr. Finn does, 'liberal,' 'conservative,' 'pessimist,' or 'defeatist.' But I take Mr. Finn at his word that he genuinely does not understand why Schemo, Murray and others do not share his belief in the power of good schools to offset all other social and economic influences. I will attempt, as respectfully as I can, to explain why, for my part, I do not share his belief.
[The first, and perhaps most interesting, question that Rothstein raises is whether or not schools, good schools, have the power to “offset” all other social and economic influences. “Offset” may be a poor choice of words, as it’s not clear what the word means. Or what Rothstein may have meant in using that word. If it means “do away with” well the schools probably don’t have that power. But if it means “set off to the side,” that seems exactly what is in the power, and the mission of good schools. A good school will set aside one’s ignorance, one’s coarseness, one’s inarticulateness, and replace them in the foreground with articulateness, new found sensitivity, knowledge and other such positive attainments.
What Finn actually said was this: "Backward reeled my mind upon discovering that the New York Times's liberal education writer Diana Jean Schemo and conservative icon Charles Murray share essentially the same defeatist view of education: that schools aren't powerful enough instruments to boost poor kids' achievement to an appreciably higher academic plane due to the many other forces (family, neighborhood, poverty, heredity, etc.) tugging them downward." All he is saying, or implying, here is that schools can “boost achievement,” not that they can entirely offset "all other social and economic influences."]
In short, given that, as Mr. Finn asserts, children's time influenced by families and communities exceeds the time they are influenced by schools "by a multiple of four or five," I am puzzled that he fails to agree that serious and successful efforts to substantially narrow the achievement gap must include social and economic policies to improve the circumstances of family and community life, as well as policies to improve the quality of schooling.
[Nowhere does Finn say that reform efforts may not include "social and economic policies to improve the circumstances of family and community life...". In fact he clearly states that, “It's obvious that schools can do lots more when the 91 percent—the time not in school--cooperates, when non-school influences (family, peer group, neighborhood, church, you name it) tug in the same direction as school."
Also what Rothstein implies doesn’t necessarily follow from the fact that children spend much less time in school than without. One can speak Chinese during most of one’s waking hours, but in just a few hours a day given to an excellent English immersion program one can also become a fluent English speaker. It’s less the number of hours that one spends in school (although with improved student motivation and work habits and better teachers more time in school will prove valuable and profitable) than what the teacher and the student are doing with the time they have. Improvement in the student’s social (the removal of abusive, bullying, and coarse individuals in one’s environment) and the bettering of one’s economic condition (a good paying job, the arrival of a wealthy uncle, more government handouts) do not necessarily contribute to stronger achievement in the school. The latter will still depend primarily on the student himself, what he or she does with her time in class or without, and on the teacher, and also on classroom peers. How many children of the rich, how many children of kings and queens, have failed to learn even while experiencing the "best" of social and economic environments?]
First, let's clarify some common imprecisions in the discussion. Mr. Finn asserts that good schools are "powerful enough instruments to boost poor kids' achievement to an appreciably higher academic plane." Nobody - not I, nor anyone with whom I am familiar - disagrees with this assertion. But what is commonly argued (and the notion that I dispute) is not that good schools can boost the achievement of disadvantaged children to "an appreciably higher plane" but rather that such schools can "close the achievement gap;" i.e., produce achievement from lower class children that is approximately equal to the achievement of middle class children.
[It may be “commonly argued,” but not by Finn in this piece, that good schools can “close the achievement gap.” In his piece Finn doesn’t even mention the “gap.” Whereas Rothstein in his rebuttal mentions the achievement gap a total of 9 times! He is at pains to point out that these schools cannot close the gap for all their students. But the proponents of so-called “no excuses” schools are not saying this, rather something much more restrained and modest, that good schools, and good teachers, and hard working students, can significantly raise achievement, if not closing the achievement gap in every case. Why isn’t this in itself remarkable enough? Why should these schools that achieve so much with their students be put down for not achieving more? Why isn’t it enough that these schools are doing much more than the schools from which their students have come? One wonders what’s really on Rothstein’s mind. Is it the biais of a point of view he brings with him from the Economic Policy Institute? that only government funded anti-poverty programs can ever significantly lessen and eventually close the achievement gap?]
More specifically, the claim is that if all disadvantaged children could attend such schools, their average achievement would not be appreciably different from the average achievement of middle class children – they would be as likely to attend good colleges, be no more likely to end up in prison or as teen parents, be as qualified for good-paying jobs, etc. Another way of thinking about the claim that good schools can "close the achievement gap" is that if all disadvantaged children attended good schools, and graduated, on average, with average middle class levels of achievement, the vast social inequalities that now pervade American society would disappear. Or, as New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg put it, if his New York City school reform program succeeded, "a lot of what Dr. Martin Luther King wanted to accomplish in our society will take care of itself."
[It almost seems that Rothstein is here saying that children by themselves cannot change the world. I would say rather that it's only by means of the children, stepping out of and over what ever it was they were born into, overcoming whatever obstacles they've had to face, that real progress can ever come about. But here again Rothstein is belaboring his point. For he would still speak of “all disadvantaged children.” And again, need I say it, Finn is not talking about all disadvantaged children. He is talking about what can be achieved by some disadvantaged children in the right school environment. Why fault him for not proving that all disadvantaged children will join the ranks of the "advantaged," no more than all those who lose their welfare payments will eventually get a job and buy a home, pay income taxes. Should we not have done our welfare reform for those who could when there were those who couldn't?
It seems to me that Rothstein's argument is faulty. If I knew more about faulty arguments I'm sure I'd find the right name for his. Finn is most of all talking about what these “no excuses” schools have achieved, and about the validity and legitimacy of this achievement. He is not, certainly not in the brief commentary below which is the object of Rothstein’s response, trying to say that nothing more is needed, that even if battles have been won that the war is over. I'ts not. Again, why does Rothstein not stay with the principal question, which is can these schools of which Finn is speaking significantly improve the life chances of disadvantaged children. Rothstein concentrates on the relatively trivial point that these schools don't do it for "all," rather than giving them well deserved credit for their successess and then using his own persuasive powers to extend the model to other inner city schools that are failing, and failing their students.]
A puzzling aspect of Mr. Finn's confidence that good schools can overcome all or most of the negative influences of deprived social and economic environments is that he himself, in other contexts, wisely endorses "value-added" as a preferred way to evaluate school quality, and as the appropriate way to compare average school-type (charter/non-charter, private/public) performance. Examining value-added trends makes sense only if you understand that social class greatly influences the level of student achievement. Granting that, on average, disadvantaged children (for example, those living in poverty) cannot reasonably be expected to achieve at the same level as middle class children (also, on average), a school serving disadvantaged children can be considered successful if it raises their achievement to levels significantly higher than it was previously, even if these higher levels remain, on average, considerably below those of typical middle class children. Advocacy of value-added comparisons as a preferred alternative to comparing raw achievement levels for accountability purposes makes sense because it recognizes that most children from poor families start their educations at a significant educational disadvantage to most middle class children, and that during their schooling, middle class children continue to enjoy extra-school educational benefits that children living in poverty do not possess. Advocacy of value-added comparisons makes no sense if you believe that good schools can fully overcome the social and economic influences that depress low-income children's achievement.
[More of the same. Rothstein hammers away at the same point. “Overcome all of the negative influences…fully ovecome the social and economic influences…” Once again not the issue. Why doesn’t he talk about the main point that Finn is making, that schools, even given the negative social and economic influences, can make a significant difference in the lives of disadvantaged kids, differences that were not being made in the failing inner city schools from which these kids have come. Rothstein seems to have his “mantra,” that no single educational institution can overcome all the negative influences in the lives of the children attending that institution. Does that mean that one does nothing much while waiting for the government to change the social and economic conditions of the kids’ lives? Well, that’s what seems to be the rule within the inner city schools at the present time. Waiting for what? A new war on poverty? That is not going to come. And in any case we know the results of the last one. Does Rothstein?
Now a few comments about “value-added comparisons.” Why don’t value added trends make sense period? Why in order to make sense of them do you have to understand that social class greatly influences the level of student achievement”? Won’t everything about the student will more or less greatly influence the level of his achievement? Why is it, according to Rothstein, that “advocacy of value-added comparisons makes no sense if you believe that good schools can fully overcome the social and economic influences that depress low-income children's achievement?” How does one’s belief about the relative effectiveness of good schools in impoverished inner cities at all affect the validity of our using value added comparisons? Am I missing something here?....]
To be continued.
Here follows directly the first portion of Rothstein’s response (a second portion to follow), interspersed in italics with my own running commentary on his text. For the complete text of his response, go to Rothstein.]
Chester Finn, in his August 17 "Gadfly" posting, responding to a New York Times article by Diana Jean Schemo and a Wall Street Journal essay by Charles Murray, expresses puzzlement that "the likes of Schemo and Murray" can't see that good schools can overcome the disadvantages of poverty, racism, troubled families, crime-infested neighborhoods, and harmful peer influences.
These are complex issues, not elucidated by labeling these writers, as Mr. Finn does, 'liberal,' 'conservative,' 'pessimist,' or 'defeatist.' But I take Mr. Finn at his word that he genuinely does not understand why Schemo, Murray and others do not share his belief in the power of good schools to offset all other social and economic influences. I will attempt, as respectfully as I can, to explain why, for my part, I do not share his belief.
[The first, and perhaps most interesting, question that Rothstein raises is whether or not schools, good schools, have the power to “offset” all other social and economic influences. “Offset” may be a poor choice of words, as it’s not clear what the word means. Or what Rothstein may have meant in using that word. If it means “do away with” well the schools probably don’t have that power. But if it means “set off to the side,” that seems exactly what is in the power, and the mission of good schools. A good school will set aside one’s ignorance, one’s coarseness, one’s inarticulateness, and replace them in the foreground with articulateness, new found sensitivity, knowledge and other such positive attainments.
What Finn actually said was this: "Backward reeled my mind upon discovering that the New York Times's liberal education writer Diana Jean Schemo and conservative icon Charles Murray share essentially the same defeatist view of education: that schools aren't powerful enough instruments to boost poor kids' achievement to an appreciably higher academic plane due to the many other forces (family, neighborhood, poverty, heredity, etc.) tugging them downward." All he is saying, or implying, here is that schools can “boost achievement,” not that they can entirely offset "all other social and economic influences."]
In short, given that, as Mr. Finn asserts, children's time influenced by families and communities exceeds the time they are influenced by schools "by a multiple of four or five," I am puzzled that he fails to agree that serious and successful efforts to substantially narrow the achievement gap must include social and economic policies to improve the circumstances of family and community life, as well as policies to improve the quality of schooling.
[Nowhere does Finn say that reform efforts may not include "social and economic policies to improve the circumstances of family and community life...". In fact he clearly states that, “It's obvious that schools can do lots more when the 91 percent—the time not in school--cooperates, when non-school influences (family, peer group, neighborhood, church, you name it) tug in the same direction as school."
Also what Rothstein implies doesn’t necessarily follow from the fact that children spend much less time in school than without. One can speak Chinese during most of one’s waking hours, but in just a few hours a day given to an excellent English immersion program one can also become a fluent English speaker. It’s less the number of hours that one spends in school (although with improved student motivation and work habits and better teachers more time in school will prove valuable and profitable) than what the teacher and the student are doing with the time they have. Improvement in the student’s social (the removal of abusive, bullying, and coarse individuals in one’s environment) and the bettering of one’s economic condition (a good paying job, the arrival of a wealthy uncle, more government handouts) do not necessarily contribute to stronger achievement in the school. The latter will still depend primarily on the student himself, what he or she does with her time in class or without, and on the teacher, and also on classroom peers. How many children of the rich, how many children of kings and queens, have failed to learn even while experiencing the "best" of social and economic environments?]
First, let's clarify some common imprecisions in the discussion. Mr. Finn asserts that good schools are "powerful enough instruments to boost poor kids' achievement to an appreciably higher academic plane." Nobody - not I, nor anyone with whom I am familiar - disagrees with this assertion. But what is commonly argued (and the notion that I dispute) is not that good schools can boost the achievement of disadvantaged children to "an appreciably higher plane" but rather that such schools can "close the achievement gap;" i.e., produce achievement from lower class children that is approximately equal to the achievement of middle class children.
[It may be “commonly argued,” but not by Finn in this piece, that good schools can “close the achievement gap.” In his piece Finn doesn’t even mention the “gap.” Whereas Rothstein in his rebuttal mentions the achievement gap a total of 9 times! He is at pains to point out that these schools cannot close the gap for all their students. But the proponents of so-called “no excuses” schools are not saying this, rather something much more restrained and modest, that good schools, and good teachers, and hard working students, can significantly raise achievement, if not closing the achievement gap in every case. Why isn’t this in itself remarkable enough? Why should these schools that achieve so much with their students be put down for not achieving more? Why isn’t it enough that these schools are doing much more than the schools from which their students have come? One wonders what’s really on Rothstein’s mind. Is it the biais of a point of view he brings with him from the Economic Policy Institute? that only government funded anti-poverty programs can ever significantly lessen and eventually close the achievement gap?]
More specifically, the claim is that if all disadvantaged children could attend such schools, their average achievement would not be appreciably different from the average achievement of middle class children – they would be as likely to attend good colleges, be no more likely to end up in prison or as teen parents, be as qualified for good-paying jobs, etc. Another way of thinking about the claim that good schools can "close the achievement gap" is that if all disadvantaged children attended good schools, and graduated, on average, with average middle class levels of achievement, the vast social inequalities that now pervade American society would disappear. Or, as New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg put it, if his New York City school reform program succeeded, "a lot of what Dr. Martin Luther King wanted to accomplish in our society will take care of itself."
[It almost seems that Rothstein is here saying that children by themselves cannot change the world. I would say rather that it's only by means of the children, stepping out of and over what ever it was they were born into, overcoming whatever obstacles they've had to face, that real progress can ever come about. But here again Rothstein is belaboring his point. For he would still speak of “all disadvantaged children.” And again, need I say it, Finn is not talking about all disadvantaged children. He is talking about what can be achieved by some disadvantaged children in the right school environment. Why fault him for not proving that all disadvantaged children will join the ranks of the "advantaged," no more than all those who lose their welfare payments will eventually get a job and buy a home, pay income taxes. Should we not have done our welfare reform for those who could when there were those who couldn't?
It seems to me that Rothstein's argument is faulty. If I knew more about faulty arguments I'm sure I'd find the right name for his. Finn is most of all talking about what these “no excuses” schools have achieved, and about the validity and legitimacy of this achievement. He is not, certainly not in the brief commentary below which is the object of Rothstein’s response, trying to say that nothing more is needed, that even if battles have been won that the war is over. I'ts not. Again, why does Rothstein not stay with the principal question, which is can these schools of which Finn is speaking significantly improve the life chances of disadvantaged children. Rothstein concentrates on the relatively trivial point that these schools don't do it for "all," rather than giving them well deserved credit for their successess and then using his own persuasive powers to extend the model to other inner city schools that are failing, and failing their students.]
A puzzling aspect of Mr. Finn's confidence that good schools can overcome all or most of the negative influences of deprived social and economic environments is that he himself, in other contexts, wisely endorses "value-added" as a preferred way to evaluate school quality, and as the appropriate way to compare average school-type (charter/non-charter, private/public) performance. Examining value-added trends makes sense only if you understand that social class greatly influences the level of student achievement. Granting that, on average, disadvantaged children (for example, those living in poverty) cannot reasonably be expected to achieve at the same level as middle class children (also, on average), a school serving disadvantaged children can be considered successful if it raises their achievement to levels significantly higher than it was previously, even if these higher levels remain, on average, considerably below those of typical middle class children. Advocacy of value-added comparisons as a preferred alternative to comparing raw achievement levels for accountability purposes makes sense because it recognizes that most children from poor families start their educations at a significant educational disadvantage to most middle class children, and that during their schooling, middle class children continue to enjoy extra-school educational benefits that children living in poverty do not possess. Advocacy of value-added comparisons makes no sense if you believe that good schools can fully overcome the social and economic influences that depress low-income children's achievement.
[More of the same. Rothstein hammers away at the same point. “Overcome all of the negative influences…fully ovecome the social and economic influences…” Once again not the issue. Why doesn’t he talk about the main point that Finn is making, that schools, even given the negative social and economic influences, can make a significant difference in the lives of disadvantaged kids, differences that were not being made in the failing inner city schools from which these kids have come. Rothstein seems to have his “mantra,” that no single educational institution can overcome all the negative influences in the lives of the children attending that institution. Does that mean that one does nothing much while waiting for the government to change the social and economic conditions of the kids’ lives? Well, that’s what seems to be the rule within the inner city schools at the present time. Waiting for what? A new war on poverty? That is not going to come. And in any case we know the results of the last one. Does Rothstein?
Now a few comments about “value-added comparisons.” Why don’t value added trends make sense period? Why in order to make sense of them do you have to understand that social class greatly influences the level of student achievement”? Won’t everything about the student will more or less greatly influence the level of his achievement? Why is it, according to Rothstein, that “advocacy of value-added comparisons makes no sense if you believe that good schools can fully overcome the social and economic influences that depress low-income children's achievement?” How does one’s belief about the relative effectiveness of good schools in impoverished inner cities at all affect the validity of our using value added comparisons? Am I missing something here?....]
To be continued.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
KIPP, or the Kowledge Is Power Program
The most common criticism leveled against the successful charter schools, including the Massachusetts network of "no excuses" schools, KIPP, and Achievement First schools, as well as a number of others, is that their impoverished, minority students at the start of their new school careers test out a bit higher than their peers remaining in the district schools, and even more significant they are said to have parents who are motivated to seek out the best possible school experience for their children. And that's not fair! These critics pretend that the success of these charters is not meaningful because it simply follows from having found (selected) better students and more motivated parents to begin with. Who couldn't do as well, they imply, given this above average student body?
This is the criticism that Richard Rothstein levels against the KIPP Schools in the book, The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement. Rothstein, a lecturer at Columbia University and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, writes extensively about education and his writings most often, while admitting the existence of failed inner city schools, do not so much fault the schools themselves as the societal problems (poverty, inadequate health care, abusive family situations etc.) that the kids bring with them into the schools. The fault, dear Reader, lies not so much in the schools and students as in the communities where the kids live and where these "essential services" are sorely lacking. Now when the KIPP School takes these kids without essential services and brings their reading, writing, and math skills up to grade level or above, and the district school serving the very same population fails to do so, who is to blame and who is to be praised? Well we have already learned from reading Rothstein that the schools are not to be blamed when they fail, and when they succeed, as in the case of KIPP, are not to be praised because these kids were not, in spite of appearances, enough like the kids they left behind in order to justify the comparison. Their overall test scores were higher and their parents were, what, better parents? You don't praise the schools whose kids have better parents.
So, what are we to make of all this? There are those, many of those at the Economic Policy Institute, who cry foul whenever people succeed without having begun the race from a level playing field. First make everybody the same, equal, and only then take the next step. In the instance of charter and district schools first make sure that the student bodies are exactly the same and only then arrive at any conclusions regarding the outcomes.
Well this will never happen. To change the outcomes the students, as well as the teachers, parents and the schools themselves, must also change. So it's true as Rothstein et al. say. At the very beginning the charter school students are different. But the charter school requirements, what the charter school is, make them different. And if you want different outcomes this always has to be the case. You cannot take the students and the parents as they are, and leave them as they are and expect to make important changes in their lives. Inner city schools have been doing just this for generations and they have failed to raise the achievement levels of their students. Tell the students they have to work harder, and tell the parents they have to care about their children's education, and do that from the very beginning. That's what the KIPP Schools do, and that's why their students are different. For that Richard Rothstein ought not to have blamed, but to have praised the founders and leaders of these schools.
This is the criticism that Richard Rothstein levels against the KIPP Schools in the book, The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement. Rothstein, a lecturer at Columbia University and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, writes extensively about education and his writings most often, while admitting the existence of failed inner city schools, do not so much fault the schools themselves as the societal problems (poverty, inadequate health care, abusive family situations etc.) that the kids bring with them into the schools. The fault, dear Reader, lies not so much in the schools and students as in the communities where the kids live and where these "essential services" are sorely lacking. Now when the KIPP School takes these kids without essential services and brings their reading, writing, and math skills up to grade level or above, and the district school serving the very same population fails to do so, who is to blame and who is to be praised? Well we have already learned from reading Rothstein that the schools are not to be blamed when they fail, and when they succeed, as in the case of KIPP, are not to be praised because these kids were not, in spite of appearances, enough like the kids they left behind in order to justify the comparison. Their overall test scores were higher and their parents were, what, better parents? You don't praise the schools whose kids have better parents.
So, what are we to make of all this? There are those, many of those at the Economic Policy Institute, who cry foul whenever people succeed without having begun the race from a level playing field. First make everybody the same, equal, and only then take the next step. In the instance of charter and district schools first make sure that the student bodies are exactly the same and only then arrive at any conclusions regarding the outcomes.
Well this will never happen. To change the outcomes the students, as well as the teachers, parents and the schools themselves, must also change. So it's true as Rothstein et al. say. At the very beginning the charter school students are different. But the charter school requirements, what the charter school is, make them different. And if you want different outcomes this always has to be the case. You cannot take the students and the parents as they are, and leave them as they are and expect to make important changes in their lives. Inner city schools have been doing just this for generations and they have failed to raise the achievement levels of their students. Tell the students they have to work harder, and tell the parents they have to care about their children's education, and do that from the very beginning. That's what the KIPP Schools do, and that's why their students are different. For that Richard Rothstein ought not to have blamed, but to have praised the founders and leaders of these schools.
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