September 29, 2010--Less Is Not More
During the 1990s and well into the new century, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spend many hundreds of million dollars on a nationwide crusade to convince public school educators that the problem with inner-city high schools--why so many of their students were not graduating or going on to college--was because they were too big and impersonal and thus not conducive to learning.
The money they so generously ladled out to school districts was to enable the lowest-performing big-city high schools to "blow themselves up" (the is the literal metaphor Tom Vander Ark used when he traveled the country as the Gates' point person for this) and in their place create small high schools of 250 to 500 students each.
This made good common sense.
There was, however, one problem with this approach to school reform--it was based on belief , not evidence.
And so, after squandering a veritable fortune, the Gates Foundation abandoned the small-schools approach (their evaluation revealed that there was no long-term benefit from breaking big high schools apart--in fact there were a number of unanticipated negative consequences) and they decided to spend their school-reform money on improving the way academics are actually taught in public schools.
Thus, their original assumption that the key to fixing schools was structural (big schools by definition are bad) and social (small schools are by definition good because they are caring schools and this all that's required to reform them and for students to thrive), this small-school assumption was proven as wrong as many of us in the education reform business at the time said to Vander Ark and Gates. That the key to reform is the improvement of instruction--teachers using methods that have a track record of working effectively with low-income students.
They didn't want to hear this. They had both the answers and the money and so off they marched, having no difficulty at all getting school districts around the country to go along with the small-school approach.
Big money was and is a great lubricant.
The good news is that some large high schools rejected the Gates mantra and focused instead on the heavy lifting required to get teachers and their unions to agree to retooling their approach to instruction.
Case in point, the huge, 4,100-student Brockton High School in Massachusetts. On the front page of yesterday's New York Times their reform efforts were showcased. As were the positive results.
A decade ago, prior to massive efforts to retrain teachers in proven mehtods of instruction, only a quarter of Brokton's students passed statewide proficiency exams. After just two years of implementing new methods, in 2001, more students passed the state tests after failing the year before than at any other school in Massachusetts. And the gains have continued. This year and last, Brockton outperformed 90 percent of Massachusetts high schools. (Article linked below.)
Meanwhile, southwest of Brockton, in Newark, New Jersey, there is excitement about Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million pledge to bring relief to Newark's long benighted schools. Though no one has as yet says what Mark's 100 mil will buy in Newark, there is some evidence that it will be spent on the schools-of-choice approach to reform, with an emphasis on the creation of charter schools--small schools that will try to attract enrollments by appealing to parents to send their kids to them.
Makes sense, right? Create a market economy for public schools and the same invisible kind of hand that guides our national economy will direct Newark's school reform efforts. As effectively, it is claimed, as that hand which has steered our nation's economy. Including into Great Depressions and Recessions.
Again, we are seeing belief trump evidence because the data show that this approach is no better than the same-old-same-old.
But since young multibillionaire Zuckerberg is involved his Silicone Valley amigos have already kicked in an additional $40 million in matching pledges. Once more to an amorphous, questionable approach.
The children again will be the subject of rich people's social engineering schemes. And it is not difficult to predict the results. I wouldn't be surprised to see old Tom Vander Ark slouching toward Newark.
The money they so generously ladled out to school districts was to enable the lowest-performing big-city high schools to "blow themselves up" (the is the literal metaphor Tom Vander Ark used when he traveled the country as the Gates' point person for this) and in their place create small high schools of 250 to 500 students each.
This made good common sense.
There was, however, one problem with this approach to school reform--it was based on belief , not evidence.
And so, after squandering a veritable fortune, the Gates Foundation abandoned the small-schools approach (their evaluation revealed that there was no long-term benefit from breaking big high schools apart--in fact there were a number of unanticipated negative consequences) and they decided to spend their school-reform money on improving the way academics are actually taught in public schools.
Thus, their original assumption that the key to fixing schools was structural (big schools by definition are bad) and social (small schools are by definition good because they are caring schools and this all that's required to reform them and for students to thrive), this small-school assumption was proven as wrong as many of us in the education reform business at the time said to Vander Ark and Gates. That the key to reform is the improvement of instruction--teachers using methods that have a track record of working effectively with low-income students.
They didn't want to hear this. They had both the answers and the money and so off they marched, having no difficulty at all getting school districts around the country to go along with the small-school approach.
Big money was and is a great lubricant.
The good news is that some large high schools rejected the Gates mantra and focused instead on the heavy lifting required to get teachers and their unions to agree to retooling their approach to instruction.
Case in point, the huge, 4,100-student Brockton High School in Massachusetts. On the front page of yesterday's New York Times their reform efforts were showcased. As were the positive results.
A decade ago, prior to massive efforts to retrain teachers in proven mehtods of instruction, only a quarter of Brokton's students passed statewide proficiency exams. After just two years of implementing new methods, in 2001, more students passed the state tests after failing the year before than at any other school in Massachusetts. And the gains have continued. This year and last, Brockton outperformed 90 percent of Massachusetts high schools. (Article linked below.)
Meanwhile, southwest of Brockton, in Newark, New Jersey, there is excitement about Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million pledge to bring relief to Newark's long benighted schools. Though no one has as yet says what Mark's 100 mil will buy in Newark, there is some evidence that it will be spent on the schools-of-choice approach to reform, with an emphasis on the creation of charter schools--small schools that will try to attract enrollments by appealing to parents to send their kids to them.
Makes sense, right? Create a market economy for public schools and the same invisible kind of hand that guides our national economy will direct Newark's school reform efforts. As effectively, it is claimed, as that hand which has steered our nation's economy. Including into Great Depressions and Recessions.
Again, we are seeing belief trump evidence because the data show that this approach is no better than the same-old-same-old.
But since young multibillionaire Zuckerberg is involved his Silicone Valley amigos have already kicked in an additional $40 million in matching pledges. Once more to an amorphous, questionable approach.
The children again will be the subject of rich people's social engineering schemes. And it is not difficult to predict the results. I wouldn't be surprised to see old Tom Vander Ark slouching toward Newark.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:32 AM
2 Comments:
"The children again will be the subject of rich people's social engineering schemes. And it is not difficult to predict the results. I wouldn't be surprised to see old Tom Vander Ark slouching toward Newark."
Yes, but the thing is, social media completely operates in this way and children are already exposed to it. Isn't this an iteration of how humans think? Isn't education in itself an experiment? Am I to puzzle over whether my father or myself got a better education? We were taught different ways. I don't think the failure hitting our kids is attempts to help them, it's rather the policy barriers that prevent a student-centric approach to learning. Again, in the kind of media environment kids operate in now, it's already all about experimentation. Are you prepared to believe that social media also ruins minds? I don't know that it does. Right now, less than one percent of children communicate with their global peers, in school. Education needs to get with a global program.
Thank you for your comment, but what does any of this have to do with "social media"? You can believe all you want that they are playing and important role in children's interaction (they are), but in the meantime many too many kids in high school in Newark can't read in part because of thinking, such as yours, that "education is an experiment." That may be, but schooling (as different from education) isn't an experiment. We know a lot about what actually works and can work in schools and the Zuckerbergs of the world, and those leading him on, haven't a clue.
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