eduskeptic

On Saturday, February 6, NPR interviewed Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education. Coincidentally, or not, the New Yorker magazine ran an article about Duncan in the January 4 edition. Both are illuminating.

This column has written about Secretary Duncan and his complete lack of teaching experience or credentials on more than one occasion. I have opined that perhaps having a background in education isn’t the primary requirement for someone to run the Department of Education. The Secretary doesn’t actually teach anyone anything, and I rather doubt that it’s part of the job description. Secretary Duncan oversees a bureaucracy of several thousand and a budget that is, as he has said,  bigger by a function of a lot than anyone else in his position has had. This is especially true of the discretionary funds that President Obama has allocated to him.

In an earlier article on this forum (Oct. 31, 2009), Secretary Duncan’s staff and their credentials were researched. There weren’t any teaching credentials to be found. This is what was found: of the 31 people listed as assistants to Mr. Duncan, 1 has direct experience with k-12 education, 1 has an MA in Education, and 2 are listed as having taught at the University level, which requires no credential, but may require an MA or Phd. The thought that he was being advised by people with actual experience in the education field, at more than the rookie level, went right out the window. The reality of running the United States Department of Education is related more to that of a large conglomerate than any school, especially any elementary or secondary school.

Which brings us back to the article in the New Yorker Magazine. Duncan has been allotted over 70 billion dollars in economic stimulus funds. He says that this amount is greater by a “factor of a lot” than any other Secretary of Education has ever had. His mandate is probably greater by the same factor than his predecessors also. This column has been openly skeptical of quite a few of the policies and claims of the Washington education bureaucrats.

This writer has also been very open to the idea that something should change in order to improve the delivery of education to students in our schools. The job of Duncan and his managers is to guide the process along, to identify things that, on a national level, don’t seem to be doing any good, and to assist in the business of changing them, and to identify those things that are working, figure out the reasons they are working, and duplicate and improve on them. For people who haven’t any in-depth classroom experience it seems an exercise in pure experimentation and lobbying for career points, especially to those of us who have been in the classroom for many years. What other profession regularly has non-professionals in their field telling them how to do their jobs?

What is important in this entire spectrum is that the need for change is constant. Change doesn’t always come from within. It is just as possible that the impetus for change, the mechanism that will move things forward, will come from just about anywhere. Arne Duncan, while not having any teaching experience, with a deep group of advisor’s who don’t have teaching experience, has said what those of us in the classroom have been waiting for. This is from the NPR interview:

“And I would argue quite frankly that this department has been part of the problem. We have been this big, compliance-driven bureaucracy. I’ve said repeatedly that the best ideas are never going to come from me or from Washington. They’re always going to come from great educators at the local level.”

In the midst of running the Department of Education, perhaps Secretary Duncan could take some time, without the press and photo op corps, to spend some time with those of us who actually teach. It’s just as possible that one of us will demonstrate or say something that will move education forward, a direction that it always needs to aspire to.

Ever wonder who is running the education debate in the U.S.? We hear quite a lot from Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, about the need for changing how we educate children in this country. It seems as though that is one of the key phrases for most politicians. Oddly enough, it’s a good thought. Education cannot stand still and be successful. If it doesn’t evolve, it most surely will  become less and less relevant and successful as time goes on. I doubt that there will ever be a time when we as educators, or as a nation, can quit insisting that our educational systems get better.

Who, however, is in charge of this thrust? Arne Duncan, as has been pointed out many times before, is not and never has been, a credentialed teacher. He does have a senior staff though. I have taken the time to read all of their online bios. I am very curious as to who is advising Mr. Duncan. There are 32 Senior Staff listed, Mr. Duncan included. Of those, 21 have a link to their bios. Twenty-six have links to their home pages. My theory was that, among Mr. Duncan’s advisor’s, there must surely be a solid mix of professionals, with educators well represented. It is after all, the national Department of Education. I read all the online biographies. This is what I found:

Of the 31 listed Assistants to Mr. Duncan, 1 has direct experience with k-12 education, 1 has an MA in Education, and 2 are listed as having been a teacher at the University level.

Russlyn Ali is the Assistant Secretary, Office of Civil Rights. Her bio states that she was a teacher. She has taught at USC, and UC Davis. There is no indication that she has k-12 experience, nor does it indicate what she taught and for how long.

Gabriella Gomez, is the Assistant Secretary for Legislation and Congressional Affairs. She has a Masters in Education from Harvard. There is no indication that she has taught anywhere.

Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, is the Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education. She served as an assistant and deputy superintendent and chief academic officer at Pomona Unified School District, Pomona California. She also served as Superintendent of the district. Her bio states that she was an educator, for 5 years, in the Montebello and Pasadena Unified School districts, where she held various positions, including being a teacher. There is no indication of how long she was an actual teacher in a classroom.

John Wilson is the Executive Director White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He held a position as an associate professor of education in the Graduate School of Education at George Washington University. There is no indication that he has any k-12 teaching experience.

That’s it. Four out of 32 (12.5%) has some direct connection to education, and out of that group, only one (1.3%) is listed as an actual teacher in the k-12 arena. The rest of the Assistants are predominantly lawyers, with a good showing of CEO’s, membership on various boards, trusts, and educational think tanks.

Perhaps it is because I have spent the last 34 years teaching that I think that there should be a solid core of actual teachers advising Mr. Duncan. After all, I would prefer that the person who performs a medical operation on me be a board certified surgeon, not the CFO or CEO of the hospital. I hope that the person sitting in the pilots seat of the airplane I’m riding in is a qualified pilot, and not the president of the airline company.

Maybe that’s the point here though. Perhaps the business of running the nations schools is best left to lawyers and business people. It just could be, that in the minds of the national and state “education secretary” Gliteratti, that teachers are simply irrelevant to the process of better education.

My theory, as stated at the beginning of this piece, has been proved wrong. Apparently there is no solid core of educators advising anyone. The lawyers and business people are the advisors. I don’t know if this is good or bad, as these people all have advanced degrees. That is, fundamentally, very different than being an experienced teacher. I hope that at some time, some of these people talk to actual teachers about the realities of the k-12 classroom experience. It might be helpful in the discussion of what needs to be done. Maybe.

In a recent Harpers magazine article, the thinking of several speakers and writers about education and national policy has been explored. In short, according to the article, there exists among some the stance that we educate simply for return on investment (ROI). The author, Mark Slouka, makes the point that by dehumanizing the educational process, we short change ourselves, and manage, in the process of doing so, to provide a vast disservice to the children we are educating.

Slouka makes a strong case that the business of education has become the business of business. If you have a child in school, regardless of the grade, you will by now have heard that what we have to do in the classroom is get these children ready to be productive once they leave school. The unspoken, and sometimes spoken, part of that statement about productivity is that they will be productive in the workplace. If one listens well to the news regarding the state of education in America, one could easily believe that that is the point of education: get them ready to compete in the global, national, or regional marketplace.

Consider this statement by District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee: “This is exactly what life is about. You get a paycheck every two weeks. We’re preparing children for life.” Really? That’s what education is all about? There’s more. Brent Staples, a New York Times editorialist wrote that the the system is failing “to produce the fluent writers required by the new economy.” It just may be that good writing has more value than that. Slouka goes on to quote Thomas Friedman, who wrote about a speech given by Bill Gates, in which Gates says that our high schools are obsolete, that even when doing what they are designed to do, they “cannot teach our kids what they need to know today”. Friedman goes on to further quote Gates, “If we don’t fix American education, I won’t be able to hire your kids.” Slouka has an entire article full of this kind of corporate view of what American education is doing, or not doing.

What are these people thinking? This writer teaches with the idea that his Kindergartners will leave his classroom at the end of the year with a better understanding of the world around them. This writer, a Kindergarten teacher for the last 23 of 34 years teaching, isn’t, by any stretch of the corporate imagination, preparing his students to be pay-check-every-two-weeks robots. With such an outlook on education, why is Michelle Rhee still employed by the District of Columbia School District? Has Bill Gates lost his billions of marbles? Thomas Friedman, whose writing I admire, seems to have adopted the company line as well. Evidently, so has President Obama. Arne Duncan is not an educator, never has been, and probably has no plans to become one. He played a bit of professional basketball in Australia, and is a business man. These are probably the skills he needs to be the Secretary of Education. Would a deep background in education, in the classroom, make a difference in his outlook? It couldn’t hurt.

The purpose of education must be much more broad than this twisted corporate view. If our children are to be leaders and innovators, now and in the completely unknown future, they have to be able to work together, understand history (let’s see–Viet Nam/Afgahnistan/Russia, hmmm), create things that don’t yet exist, engage in civil discourse, and be ready and able to stand up for their reasoned, researched positions. Democracy isn’t an easy road to be on. One can only hope that a well rounded education, strenuously applied, will keep it alive. Narrowing the focus to a paycheck every two weeks ignores the care that a functioning democracy demands. What are these people thinking about?

It is a magical time of year for everyone in school. It doesn’t matter where you are in the system: head start, pre-school, all the way up to grad school. It’s magical. All of the work that students have done finally pays off. Another crop of grads is on the way to the next step. For the younger grads, the next step is a nice summer break, followed by the next grade level and the new experiences that go along with it. For the University level grads, the next step is into the unknown. About the only thing known for sure is the amount of debt that they are carrying. Perhaps the biggest question is whether the grads are ready for the profession that they have chosen. The hue and cry from the business world, at least according to the yearly outpouring of words in the national press, is that the grads aren’t ready. Oddly though, business hires new grads all the time. Ready or not. It is difficult in the extreme for any educational enterprise to provide educational experiences that are specific enough for any business block, or public sector group, to use without further work. It is a ridiculous demand to make. There is always further learning and education about the work to be done in any job situation.

The System

The main job of the educational system is to build a solid base of some skills: reading, writing, math, art, science. Depending on the chosen field, one of those five will have greater focus. More importantly, the educational system, at least here in the United States, teaches exploration, critical thought, the importance of continuing to learn, and how to continue to learn. Learning doesn’t stop with the cap and gown experience. Graduation from University, Trade School, or Tech School, is the beginning. Stepping into a new job with the confidence that comes from a solid background is always a plus. It is, still, a beginning. Employers actually expect employees to show up and work and to do what is required. The halcyon days of school, the protected bubble of the campus, are over at this point. If the educational establishment has done its job, over the span of the last18 to 20 years, the transition to the work force, in whatever form it takes, will work well.

Into the Wild

As the graduations continue throughout June, the excitement of grads and parents, and all those connected to the grads, is replayed from town to town, across the nation. It is well earned excitement. Eduskeptic sends out congratulations to all who have persevered and made it to the end. Good for you all. You did it, and should be proud that you did. Take a moment and savor the people who helped you get here, the friends you made along the way, and the brief moment that exists before reality kicks in. Best of luck to all of you!