Rubbish Piles of #Blueberries and #EdReform Efforts

Thomas Jefferson had a pretty clear reason for establishing public education. Take a moment to read Raking Geniuses from the Rubbish by Bhaskar Krishnamachari.  For real reform to happen, we must do many things differently. Some of us who have been flirting with this idea, how it may look, what the environment may look like for learning to flourish.  

• Is Jefferson's vision what we continue to see as necessary in our country for our public schools? 
• Or, do we want a democracy of productive, peaceful, well-educated people? 

Really, think about it for a while. If you're not sure, find a school age child, yours or another, and ask him/her the purpose of school. 


If you lean toward the later question, we must implement a system where students are honored and learning is honored.  

And we must  challenge the current purpose for public education  established by Jefferson.

• Do you want a system designed to encourage innovation, creativity and beyond?
• Is our current system acceptable for a society going into the 21st century?

I can promise you this.  The greatest potential innovators are not necessarily the students who are easily identifying as gifted, who receive A's for breakfast, lunch and dinner, who are labeling proficient or advanced by a publishing company or who have badges electronically pinned to their lapels. We are sending a generation of great innovators onto the streets. They are dropping out of high school, running the streets.  And for those who are currently running Wall Street, they aren't doing any better.  


Our current system of public schools ranks and sorts students, throwing some out into the rubbish pile, like #blueberries.  I've been collecting blueberry stories.  If you aren't sure what I'm talking about, read Jamie Vollmer's ah-ha moment. Also, read Steve Denning's article identifying the biggest problem reform faces, the Root Cause: Factory Model of Management . I agree with his conclusion but I will take it a step further and say our schools have a Factory Model of Production, in Jeffersonian tradition, plumping up the "best blueberries" and discarding the rest.


-------BLUEBERRIES
Kid O Talks Back, Eventually "One of the ongoing problems and frustrations that I have faced in advocating for Kid O, has been in getting her an effective and more portable communication device. For years all she had was a two panel talker. A choice between Choice One and Choice Two. I was there at School Number Two when they came to re-evaluate her. They were again recommending a two panel talker."
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Ms. Katie marched for students turned away from a turnaround school in Chicago. 
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"Right now, in Detroit Public Schools class sizes are bulging at the seams. This is the situation at our DPS school: A____ now has 52 fifth grade students in her class. They are crammed wall to wall. B____ has 45 fourth graders, and there are 30 kindergartners in each class. All our other classes are at the limit or 5-10 kids over. The 7th and 8th grade classes are at 50 each." -revealed in an article by Nancy Flanagan
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"When talk-show host Oprah Winfrey handed a $1 million check last September to the principal of New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy, 200 students watched the broadcast from a church and celebrated with a brass band.
Lawrence Melrose, a ninth-grader with learning and emotional disabilities, sat next door in a school office. The staff was concerned his fighting and cursing could be an embarrassment..."- from Oprah-Backed Charter School Denying Disabled Collides With Law
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"It should be noted—and Guggenheim didn’t note it—that Canada (Waiting for Superman) kicked out his entire first class of middle school students when they didn’t get good enough test scores to satisfy his board of trustees. This sad event was documented by Paul Tough in his laudatory account of Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, Whatever It Takes (2009)." -Diane Ravitch
------BLUEBERRIES
If you run across a blueberry story, a story of students unjustly sorted or tossed out of our public schools, send it my way @dellaccs. I'll include it here.

When is enough, enough?

Who is picking and sorting the blueberries? Due to standards-based reform efforts, big business is picking and sorting our students, our blueberries. Standards-based reform efforts are slowly but surely removing assessment from the hands of teachers and placing reporting power into the hands of publishers.    What does this result in? High stakes assessments scored in 60 seconds! 


I ask  MacGraw Hill and Pearson...

• What happens if reform efforts are not profitable for  your shareholders? 
• Are you willing to support a vision of our country, our world, being a better place for all students? 
• Are your shareholders willing to delay gratification of immediate profits in exchange for authentic students learning, growing into a nation of productivity? 

Will we allow money and politicians who have no educational training grounding them in learning theory, continue reform efforts down this very dismal road?  We are holding students accountable, teachers accountable. Why is no one holding these publishers and politicians accountable for the consequences of these dire reform efforts?


"Let’s pose a question.  If you wanted to “sell” something that a number of people did not need, how would you do it?  You might try setting up a contest where everyone competes for a significant financial prize.  After all, Americans love to compete, especially when money goes to the winner." - taken from Let's Get off the National Standards Train


"I have become increasingly concerned with the trend in education of privatizing services and for-profit companies entering education with the sole purpose of making a profit. Profits by themselves are not bad, but often the goal of the company or organization is to maximize profits rather than to do what is best for the “customer”–in this case, students, parents, teachers, and administrators."Dr. Fuller explains further his concerns in an opinion piece concerns regarding the trend of privatization. 


If we want to work our way up Bloom's Taxonomy (updated for the 21st century) in the area of education reform, let's start with understanding.  Pay attention to each new method a school is using to rank and sort students. We are a nation positively obsessed with contests races, winning and losing.

Currently, my awareness is quite high as the #dmlbadges competition is under way and Common Core Standards are being adopted by most of the nation.  I appreciate Justen Eason's blog We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges on this topic.  Also, a few excellent resources on the topic are Punished by Rewards? and the video on the Science of Motivation. 


Be aware that we have invested $330 million into assessments while we have an epidemic of children in poverty!  Why don't you #askarne why!? Better yet, ask your representative, your governor, President Obama.