The Ugly Underside of School Closings: A Telling Incident
Dr Mark Naison
Fordham University
If you think closing schools for low test scores doesn't hurt children, listen carefully. This morning, at 8 :30 AM I got a panicked call from a dear friend and colleague whose daughter, a special needs child, was auditioning for an arts junior high school in the Bronx. The teacher in charge of auditions told her ( something that the principal later confirmed) that the school didn't take special needs children, no matter how talented, and used reading scores as their primary criteria for admission. They let my friends daughter audition, so as not to hurt her feelings, but made it clear that she had
no chance of getting into the school.
This kind of educational triage, which we already know is widespread at charter schools, is now spreading to schools throughout the system,as the NYC DOE
makes it clear that low test schools will lead to school closings and firings of teachers and principals. If you are a principal, it is simply not in your interest
to take children, who because of developmental issues ( or in some cases poverty and stress) do not score well on standardized tests
So what happens to children like my friend's daughter who is bright, beautiful and talented, but doesn't test well? Is she systematically excluded
from the schools with the most resources, and the best programs and services and shunted to schools that the DOE has marked for closing?
School reformers who enthusiastically endorse school closings, like Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee, say they are doing so because they represent "the children."
But which children are they talking about? Certainly not my friends wonderful daughter, and the millions of childrens like her, who mark my words, are
going to be casualties of this misguided movement
Mark Naison
February 12, 2011
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Saturday, February 12, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
PRACTICAL WISDOM AND TEACHING
Barry Schwartz, of Swarthmore College writes and talks about “Practical Wisdom.” It seems that with all the hoopla about education reform and who is right about what it should look like, the powers that be simply keep overlooking practical wisdom – do the right thing the right way for the right reason. It seems they are only concerned with who is right about deciding the right way. And, it seems, once getting the power to decide their way is right they set up iron clad rules to exclude other ways. This systemic approach also appeals to reformers because it is supposedly “fool-proof”. So any teacher who can follow the model can do it. No tinkering, thinking, or practical wisdom required.
In a talk Schwartz did for TED.com, entitled Using Our Practical Wisdom, he tells a story about Aristotle.
“Aristotle was very interested in watching how the craftsmen around him worked. And he was impressed at how they would improvise novel solutions to novel problems -- problems that they hadn't anticipated. So one example is he sees these stonemasons working on the Isle of Lesbos, and they need to measure out round columns. Well if you think about it, it's really hard to measure out round columns using a ruler. So what do they do? They fashion a novel solution to the problem. They created a ruler that bends, what we would call these days a tape measure -- a flexible rule, a rule that bends. And Aristotle said, hah, they appreciated that sometimes to design rounded columns, you need to bend the rule. And Aristotle said often in dealing with other people, we need to bend the rules.”
Weren’t your best teachers those who had this practical wisdom? Weren’t they the ones who had character, along with certain principals and virtues that you may have not appreciated at the time? Weren’t they the ones who obviously loved their work and you as a result? Weren't they the ones who almost always seemed to do the right things for the right reasons, the right way? And weren't they usually different from everyone else.
Scripts and rules and models strictly followed cannot replace what the best teachers have most…practical wisdom. There is no substitute for it.
What’s Love Got to Do With It? Is Test Driven Educational Reform Driving the Joy in Learning from the Nation’s Classrooms.
Dr Mark Naison
Fordham University
Sometime during my childhood, probably before the age of eight, I fell in love with learning new things. Maybe it was the trips to the Bronx Zoo and the Museum of Natural History I took with my parents, maybe it was the explosions I made with my chemistry set ( which today would mark me off as a future terrorist!) maybe it the wonder of reading about dinosaurs and how humans evolved from apes; maybe it was the excitement of memorizing the capitals of every state and the batting averages of major league players, but I became a person to whom the joy of acquiring and make sense of new information was as powerful as my love of food sports and music.
The public schools I went to, though students sat in rows and did more than their share of memorization, did much to encourage the intellectual curiosity of kids like me! There were science fairs and spelling bees, regular trips to zoos and museums, science labs and arts projects and an audio visual squad that allowed its student members, once they were properly trained, show films for the entire school. There were assemblies where we sang and put on plays, regular recess where we played punch ball and Johnny on the Pony, and gym classes where we did calisthenics and played dodge ball. Sure, there were fights with tough kids and bad moments with mean teachers- and I had my share of both- but I loved going to school. So much so that I became a teacher myself, figuring that the best way to keep the joy of learning alive was to share it with future generations of students.
Today, with all the pressure on students to pass standardized tests, and the public humiliation, and possible loss of jobs, that awaits teachers and principals if their students don’t “perform,” I wonder if students who grew up in working class neighborhoods like mine ( Crown Heights Brookyln) are having the love of learning smothered and driven out of them in the schools they are attending? The feedback I am getting from my former students who teach in such schools is not encouraging. Huge amounts of their teaching time is devoted to test preparation, and they are under close and constant scrutiny by school administrators whose own careers are now entirely dependent on student performance. More and more, the principal becomes like a high level college coach whose future employment depends on their won loss percentage, and they pass that pressure on to their teachers and students as surely as those coaches do to their players. What disappears in that situation is joy- joy in playing, joy in learning. Young people who should be experiencing the wonder of discovery are being told, in ways indirect and direct, that the jobs of the teachers and administrators who work with them are dependent on their performance on the tests they are taking. No young person should be subjected to that kind of pressure at age 18, much less at age 8! What you have is a situation where the time and space for creative playful thinking, and experiential learning is being squeezed out of the school culture. School is no longer a place for dreamers, for adventurers, for people who live in a world of the imagination; it is a place for people who dutifully follow orders, and respond to a fear of failure.
Unfortunately, things have gotten much worse since Barack Obama took office and launched “Race to the Top.” Seven years ago, I was invited by a visionary school leader, Julia Swann, into thirteen Bronx elementary schools and middle schools to train teachers to do Oral and Community history projects with their students. Ms Swann had located a two month window of opportunity in the school year where teachers were no longer under pressure to do “test prep” and she thought that community history projects would be something that would energize school communities and get parents more involved in the schools
Ms Swann’s vision proved prophetic! The teachers leaped on the opportunity to bring the history of Bronx neighborhoods to life in the classroom. Students interviewed their parents and grandparents, their teachers, neighborhood merchants and created amazing visual as well as literary records of what they had learned. Some schools had day long oral history festivals, to which the entire neighborhood was invited, which included poster boards, exhibits ( some of near museum quality) journals and newspapers, performances, student made documentary films and food fairs highlighting the cuisines of the different cultural groups represented in the school. One school, PS 140 in Morrisania, created an “old school museum” honoring the cultural and musical traditions of the neighborhood and decided to make community history an integral part of the school culture. Everywhere I went (and I attended events at all 13 schools!) I saw incredible joy on the faces of teachers, students, parents, administrators when they showcased what they had done. There was no pressure to meet an external standard or pass muster with an outside reviewer. Rather, there was the joy of discovering that history lived right among them, in the stories told by the people closest to them, and in the material objects (immigration records, birth certificates, articles of clothing, recipes, records and tapes) that they had preserved. I even wrote a little rap, which I performed at all 13 schools, to honor what had taken place
Region 2 and Network 3
Are Rocking Oral History
Our 13 schools, in the BX
Are using daily life as text
We do food, music and immigration
To show how the Bronx leads the Nation’
With hip hop, salsa and R and B
The Mixing of Cultures is Our Family Tree
Working on this Project, with these remarkable Bronx students, teachers, and administrators, may have been the best single experience in my forty years as a college teachers
Unfortunately, it could never be done today? Why, because there is no longer a two month period in the school year where teachers are free of the pressure of test prep! Now, you are lucky if you could find a WEEK in which classroom learning is not dominated by the pressure of student, teacher and school evaluation.
This, to me is a crime . Not to the children of the wealthy, who go to private schools, or suburban public schools, where the arts and science and creative learning are still integral to the school experience, but to working class kids like I once was who are filled with intellectual curiosity and are having the joy in learning replaced by pressure and stress that is being passed down relentlessly from school administrators to teachers to students.
Make no mistake about it, when we destroy the joy of learning in a large portion of our youth, most of whom are from racial minorities and immigrant backgrounds, we are doing our nation irreparable harm
Will people please wake up and stop this travesty against the young people of our nation. Let students learn, let teachers teach, let the joy return to our schools
Mark Naison
February 5, 2011
Dr Mark Naison
Fordham University
Sometime during my childhood, probably before the age of eight, I fell in love with learning new things. Maybe it was the trips to the Bronx Zoo and the Museum of Natural History I took with my parents, maybe it was the explosions I made with my chemistry set ( which today would mark me off as a future terrorist!) maybe it the wonder of reading about dinosaurs and how humans evolved from apes; maybe it was the excitement of memorizing the capitals of every state and the batting averages of major league players, but I became a person to whom the joy of acquiring and make sense of new information was as powerful as my love of food sports and music.
The public schools I went to, though students sat in rows and did more than their share of memorization, did much to encourage the intellectual curiosity of kids like me! There were science fairs and spelling bees, regular trips to zoos and museums, science labs and arts projects and an audio visual squad that allowed its student members, once they were properly trained, show films for the entire school. There were assemblies where we sang and put on plays, regular recess where we played punch ball and Johnny on the Pony, and gym classes where we did calisthenics and played dodge ball. Sure, there were fights with tough kids and bad moments with mean teachers- and I had my share of both- but I loved going to school. So much so that I became a teacher myself, figuring that the best way to keep the joy of learning alive was to share it with future generations of students.
Today, with all the pressure on students to pass standardized tests, and the public humiliation, and possible loss of jobs, that awaits teachers and principals if their students don’t “perform,” I wonder if students who grew up in working class neighborhoods like mine ( Crown Heights Brookyln) are having the love of learning smothered and driven out of them in the schools they are attending? The feedback I am getting from my former students who teach in such schools is not encouraging. Huge amounts of their teaching time is devoted to test preparation, and they are under close and constant scrutiny by school administrators whose own careers are now entirely dependent on student performance. More and more, the principal becomes like a high level college coach whose future employment depends on their won loss percentage, and they pass that pressure on to their teachers and students as surely as those coaches do to their players. What disappears in that situation is joy- joy in playing, joy in learning. Young people who should be experiencing the wonder of discovery are being told, in ways indirect and direct, that the jobs of the teachers and administrators who work with them are dependent on their performance on the tests they are taking. No young person should be subjected to that kind of pressure at age 18, much less at age 8! What you have is a situation where the time and space for creative playful thinking, and experiential learning is being squeezed out of the school culture. School is no longer a place for dreamers, for adventurers, for people who live in a world of the imagination; it is a place for people who dutifully follow orders, and respond to a fear of failure.
Unfortunately, things have gotten much worse since Barack Obama took office and launched “Race to the Top.” Seven years ago, I was invited by a visionary school leader, Julia Swann, into thirteen Bronx elementary schools and middle schools to train teachers to do Oral and Community history projects with their students. Ms Swann had located a two month window of opportunity in the school year where teachers were no longer under pressure to do “test prep” and she thought that community history projects would be something that would energize school communities and get parents more involved in the schools
Ms Swann’s vision proved prophetic! The teachers leaped on the opportunity to bring the history of Bronx neighborhoods to life in the classroom. Students interviewed their parents and grandparents, their teachers, neighborhood merchants and created amazing visual as well as literary records of what they had learned. Some schools had day long oral history festivals, to which the entire neighborhood was invited, which included poster boards, exhibits ( some of near museum quality) journals and newspapers, performances, student made documentary films and food fairs highlighting the cuisines of the different cultural groups represented in the school. One school, PS 140 in Morrisania, created an “old school museum” honoring the cultural and musical traditions of the neighborhood and decided to make community history an integral part of the school culture. Everywhere I went (and I attended events at all 13 schools!) I saw incredible joy on the faces of teachers, students, parents, administrators when they showcased what they had done. There was no pressure to meet an external standard or pass muster with an outside reviewer. Rather, there was the joy of discovering that history lived right among them, in the stories told by the people closest to them, and in the material objects (immigration records, birth certificates, articles of clothing, recipes, records and tapes) that they had preserved. I even wrote a little rap, which I performed at all 13 schools, to honor what had taken place
Region 2 and Network 3
Are Rocking Oral History
Our 13 schools, in the BX
Are using daily life as text
We do food, music and immigration
To show how the Bronx leads the Nation’
With hip hop, salsa and R and B
The Mixing of Cultures is Our Family Tree
Working on this Project, with these remarkable Bronx students, teachers, and administrators, may have been the best single experience in my forty years as a college teachers
Unfortunately, it could never be done today? Why, because there is no longer a two month period in the school year where teachers are free of the pressure of test prep! Now, you are lucky if you could find a WEEK in which classroom learning is not dominated by the pressure of student, teacher and school evaluation.
This, to me is a crime . Not to the children of the wealthy, who go to private schools, or suburban public schools, where the arts and science and creative learning are still integral to the school experience, but to working class kids like I once was who are filled with intellectual curiosity and are having the joy in learning replaced by pressure and stress that is being passed down relentlessly from school administrators to teachers to students.
Make no mistake about it, when we destroy the joy of learning in a large portion of our youth, most of whom are from racial minorities and immigrant backgrounds, we are doing our nation irreparable harm
Will people please wake up and stop this travesty against the young people of our nation. Let students learn, let teachers teach, let the joy return to our schools
Mark Naison
February 5, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Consistency
On the way to challenging and breaking Lou Gehrig’s record for hits as a Yankee, Derek Jeter said, “If you play long enough, and you are consistent enough, good things are going to happen.” You know something? Jeter’s statement is not only true in the confines of an athletic career, it is true and appropriate in other areas as well. For me, one of those other areas is education. Nothing, and I mean nothing that happens successfully, just happens or occurs quickly. Success, or becoming good at something, takes time. Proponents for change in education, who demand to see an 80 or 90% improvement immediately simply because they said, “Let’s change the way we do this”, or because there are students who believe simply because they can do a thing successfully once, they can have continued success, do not understand the first part of Jeter’s statement.
The first part of Jeter’s statement shows us that things take time. All too often we see a finished product and that product is polished and shiny and looks like it was easy to make. Instead product, we really need to ask ourselves, “How did this product come to be what we see?” I’ll bet you any amount of money that if you are looking at anyone or anything you consider to be successful, you will discover that it took time, it required work and it required consistency.
Whenever you think of great teams and organizations, one of the most important pieces or components of that team or organization’s success is tradition- a way of being, a way of doing something, an expectation that is handed down from player to player or generation to generation. I’ve heard principals at new, small schools demanding that their schools have tradition. Tradition has to be developed
And it has to be developed over time. You cannot order it into existence. Aristotle said. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, it is a habit.” This means that excellence is borne out of consistency- that which “we repeatedly do.”
One of the most important traits of successful teams, businesses on Wall Street, schools, players, teachers, students or parents is consistency. In New York City, the Department of Education doesn’t quite get this idea. For example, instead of using the wealth of knowledge and experience readily available in teachers who have taught for twenty or thirty years, they pursue brand new teachers, who may have been in the system one or two years. Just think what would happen if Wall Street firms or teams changed completely every two or three years, or didn’t use the knowledge of their more senior staff. Imagine if Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola or Budweiser changed their formulas every two to three years. Do you think they would have had the success they have enjoyed for so many years?
Departments of education that change their systems or instructors every two or three years simply cannot be successful. Period. To succeed, they MUST develop or use symbols or ideas that make sense, that work consistently, that incorporate the responsibility for students to fulfill their duties as students and create expectations that can be handed down form one student to another, year after year after year, as opposed to using things that work once in awhile or that work only with one or two groups of people.
For all the money and the new philosophies and the theories and technology, departments of education are adding to their systems, there will be no change or success without time, effort and consistency. Whether you are talking about sports, business, education, medicine, research, parenting, teaching or learning, the very simple fact is that you just cannot have success without time, effort and consistency. Period.
- Bernard Keller
Sunday, January 2, 2011
A Book Coming Out This Spring that Should Be Required Reading for Anyone Who Cares About Schools and Teaching
As Bad as They Say?Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx
Janet Grossbach Mayer
$16.95
ISBN: 9780823234172Book (Paperback)Fordham University Press, Empire State Editions5 1/2 x 8 1/2150 pagesApril 2011
Quantity:
"Janet Mayer's book is a page-turner about real life in urban classrooms today."—Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
"Janet Mayer's As Bad As They Say is a brilliant and badly need answer to business minded 'educational reformers' who think that nothing good happened in American education before they took over. The story of a teacher who spent forty years of her life in Bronx public schools, it shows that the love of teachers for their students is the true transformative force in American education, not mindless imposition of standardized tests. Mayer turns her Bronx students, who learn under the most daunting conditions, into heroes, but in the process reminds us that great teachers are motivated by compassion as well as a love of learning. Signficantly, the book ends with a powerful, carefully documented attack on 'No Child Left Behind' a piece of legislation that seeks to render great teachers like Mayer irrelevant and invisible."—Mark Naison, author of White Boy: A Memoir
Rundown, vermin-infested buildings. rigid, slow-to-react bureaucratic systems. Children from broken homes and declining communities. How can a teacher succeed? How does a student not only survive but also come to thrive? It can happen, and As Bad as They Say? tells the heroic stories of Janet Mayer’s students during her 33-year tenure as a Bronx high school teacher.
In 1995, Janet Mayer’s students began a pen-pal exchange with South African teenagers who, under apartheid, had been denied an education; almost uniformly, the South Africans asked, “Is the Bronx as bad as they say?” This dedicated teacher promised those students and all future ones that she would write a book to help change the stereotypical image of Bronx students and show that, in spite of overwhelming obstacles, they are outstanding young people, capable of the highest achievements.
She walks the reader through the decrepit school building, describing in graphic detail the deplorable physical conditions that students and faculty navigate daily. Then, in eight chapters we meet eight amazing young people, a small sample of the more than 14,000 students the writer has felt honored to teach.
She describes her own Bronx roots and the powerful influences that made her such a determined teacher. Finally, the veteran teacher sounds the alarm to stop the corruption and degradation of public education in the guise of what are euphemistically labeled “reforms” (No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top). She also expresses optimism that public education and our democracy can still be saved, urgently calling on all to become involved and help save our schools.
Janet Grossbach Mayer has just completed her 50th year as an award-winning high school teacher of English and reading. For 45 years, she taught in NYC schools, 33 of them in the Bronx, and for the past 5 years she has been a home instructor for Port Jervis, N.Y., schools.She has no plans to retire.
Janet Grossbach Mayer
$16.95
ISBN: 9780823234172Book (Paperback)Fordham University Press, Empire State Editions5 1/2 x 8 1/2150 pagesApril 2011
Quantity:
"Janet Mayer's book is a page-turner about real life in urban classrooms today."—Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
"Janet Mayer's As Bad As They Say is a brilliant and badly need answer to business minded 'educational reformers' who think that nothing good happened in American education before they took over. The story of a teacher who spent forty years of her life in Bronx public schools, it shows that the love of teachers for their students is the true transformative force in American education, not mindless imposition of standardized tests. Mayer turns her Bronx students, who learn under the most daunting conditions, into heroes, but in the process reminds us that great teachers are motivated by compassion as well as a love of learning. Signficantly, the book ends with a powerful, carefully documented attack on 'No Child Left Behind' a piece of legislation that seeks to render great teachers like Mayer irrelevant and invisible."—Mark Naison, author of White Boy: A Memoir
Rundown, vermin-infested buildings. rigid, slow-to-react bureaucratic systems. Children from broken homes and declining communities. How can a teacher succeed? How does a student not only survive but also come to thrive? It can happen, and As Bad as They Say? tells the heroic stories of Janet Mayer’s students during her 33-year tenure as a Bronx high school teacher.
In 1995, Janet Mayer’s students began a pen-pal exchange with South African teenagers who, under apartheid, had been denied an education; almost uniformly, the South Africans asked, “Is the Bronx as bad as they say?” This dedicated teacher promised those students and all future ones that she would write a book to help change the stereotypical image of Bronx students and show that, in spite of overwhelming obstacles, they are outstanding young people, capable of the highest achievements.
She walks the reader through the decrepit school building, describing in graphic detail the deplorable physical conditions that students and faculty navigate daily. Then, in eight chapters we meet eight amazing young people, a small sample of the more than 14,000 students the writer has felt honored to teach.
She describes her own Bronx roots and the powerful influences that made her such a determined teacher. Finally, the veteran teacher sounds the alarm to stop the corruption and degradation of public education in the guise of what are euphemistically labeled “reforms” (No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top). She also expresses optimism that public education and our democracy can still be saved, urgently calling on all to become involved and help save our schools.
Janet Grossbach Mayer has just completed her 50th year as an award-winning high school teacher of English and reading. For 45 years, she taught in NYC schools, 33 of them in the Bronx, and for the past 5 years she has been a home instructor for Port Jervis, N.Y., schools.She has no plans to retire.
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