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Re:Teaching, EP 1: A Progressive Response to “Ed. Reform's Lost Decade”
14 Plays4 years ago
Long time listeners may recognize the title to this podcast: Re:Teaching. Last year, Nick released a series of short podcasts on a separate channel, focused on current events and short-form highlights of writing. We soon realized that by splitting our podcast into two segments, most folks didn't hear any of this series! Therefore, after much delay - and many reminders by Nick - we'll be releasing Re:Teaching over the next few weeks on this channel. Enjoy, and there will be even more new Re:Teaching episodes on the way.
This episode is a feature read of A Progressive Response to “Ed. Reform’s Lost Decade” by Nick Covington, published in January 2020. Learn more about Human Restoration Project and find a wealth of free resources to create human-centered classrooms at humanrestorationproject.org, and follow us on social media, @HumResPro.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Reteaching' Series
00:00:04
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Human Restoration Projects podcast.
00:00:08
Speaker
Longtime listeners may recognize the title to this one, Reteaching.
00:00:12
Speaker
Last year, Nick released a series of short podcasts on a separate channel focused on current events and short form highlights of writing.
00:00:18
Speaker
And we soon realized that by splitting our podcast into two segments, most folks didn't hear any of the series.
00:00:23
Speaker
Therefore, after much delay and many reminders by Nick, we'll be releasing Reteaching over the next few weeks on this channel.
00:00:30
Speaker
Enjoy, and there will be even more new Reteaching episodes on the way.
Critique of Education Reforms
00:00:43
Speaker
It's fitting that the Fordham Institute's Robert Pondicio begins his December 2019 piece, Ed Reform's Lost Decade, Twilight of the Technocrats, with what could have been the epitaph of this generation of education reform, from Jonathan Alter in the 2010 film Waiting for Superman.
00:01:02
Speaker
25 years ago, there was no proof that something else worked.
00:01:05
Speaker
Well, now we know what works.
00:01:07
Speaker
We know that it's just a lie that disadvantaged kids can't learn.
00:01:11
Speaker
We know that if you apply the right accountability standards, you can get fabulous results.
00:01:15
Speaker
So why would we do something else?
00:01:19
Speaker
So why would we do something else?
00:01:21
Speaker
For those who believe the measure of a quality education can be distilled into an assessment score, the last 20 years of data must be intensely disappointing.
00:01:30
Speaker
2019 NAEP scores for both 4th and 8th graders were up marginally compared to 1992, while down marginally compared to 2017.
00:01:39
Speaker
According to recently released 2018 PISA results, while there have been some science gains in recent years, especially among students in the lowest scoring percentiles, 15-year-olds scoring below average in math and reading had even lower scores in 2018 than their counterparts in 2000 and 2003, respectively.
Failures and Inequality in Reforms
00:01:58
Speaker
Meanwhile, we have the largest wealth gap since the Roaring Twenties, poor kids are more likely to remain poor, we are approaching a nearly $2 trillion student loan debt bubble, we face a broken political system following a global trend of democratic backsliding into authoritarianism,
00:02:14
Speaker
A drug and mental health crisis combined with a broken health care system has seen U.S. life expectancy decrease three years in a row.
00:02:23
Speaker
And in 2018, the U.S. had 57 times as many school shootings as other major nations combined, among so many other poor outcomes unique to Americans.
00:02:34
Speaker
All while we sit on the precipice of a planetary environmental disaster.
00:02:39
Speaker
Traditional, standardized education reform has done nothing to alleviate any of these systemic social, political, economic, or environmental ills, nor has it created any kind of widespread positive social transformation, though it certainly has contributed to socioeconomic sorting and perpetuated the severe inequality we see today.
Is Education the Key to Reducing Poverty?
00:03:01
Speaker
Pondicio, it seems, concedes this point.
00:03:04
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One lesson of the past decade may be that if reducing poverty is your public policy goal, education might not be your primary strategy.
00:03:13
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So if the last 20 years of top-down school reform, through No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core, etc., haven't improved our overall social, political, and economic, let alone educational health, however, they have cost trillions of dollars to implement over time.
Impact of the Common Core
00:03:31
Speaker
Between 1997 and 2011, the Department of Education budget nearly doubled from $33.52 billion to $63 billion a year, reaching a high of $138 billion in 2009, with funding from the Recovery Act.
00:03:47
Speaker
While Race to the Top dispersed money through a one-time $4.35 billion grant to states, based on a complicated application formula,
00:03:57
Speaker
And though it may be impossible to nail down a total cost in the push for national standards, the Common Core has had a price tag estimated as high as $80 billion.
00:04:08
Speaker
Regarding the distribution of the benefits of Common Core spending, the authors of a paper published in the Educational Policy Analysis Archives concluded, In essence, those who set directions for the Common Core and those who provided resources for its implementation have benefited.
00:04:25
Speaker
even as potential benefits to schools, educators, and students are elusive, and the entire claim may ultimately be empty.
00:04:34
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They continue.
00:04:35
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For-profit grantees that provided Common Core tests, aligned curriculum, or other resources benefited through increased sales and revenue.
00:04:43
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A survey of vendors of educational software and digital content indicated that their market grew by 57% between the 2010-2011 and 2012-2013 school years due to the common core and related demands for new assessments.
00:04:59
Speaker
This growth occurred even though it is not evident that such products improve teaching and learning or reduce achievement gaps.
Prioritizing Metrics Over Development
00:05:08
Speaker
Even as, the authors conclude, quote, implementation has driven attention to metrics and measurable growth at the expense of attention to non-tested content or students' social, emotional, and civic development.
Blame on Vested Interests
00:05:22
Speaker
But what explanation is there for knowing more today about what works than at the outset of reform while the benefits of what works have failed to materialize?
00:05:32
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Of course, Pondicio blames, quote, "...intransigent vested interests, including teachers' unions, school boards, superintendents, and administrators, who have no incentive to reform and reliably block it at every turn."
00:05:46
Speaker
End quote.
00:05:47
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and claims that, quote, "...institutional racism, segregation, and the broad array of social ills that have diverted education reform's attention from its core business of teaching and learning."
00:05:58
Speaker
End quote.
Devaluation of Teacher Voice and Mental Health Crisis
00:05:59
Speaker
Aside from the fundamental issues of the de facto segregation of schools, chronic underfunding, and the fact that states vary wildly in their spending on elementary and secondary education as a percentage of GDP,
00:06:13
Speaker
Blaming teachers and their unions as intransigent vested interests misses the point that while those doing the very labor of teaching bore the consequences, the incentives of accountability-driven reform went to markets adjacent to schools.
00:06:28
Speaker
While the market grew for for-profit vendors, testing companies, and distributors, the period of 2009 to 2018 also saw public sector union membership decline by 3.5% and teacher pay fall by 4.5%.
00:06:45
Speaker
At the same time our national attention was shifted away from the social and emotional well-being of our students, teacher voice was being devalued and teaching was deprofessionalized for anything other than its relationship to the testing and standards machine.
00:06:59
Speaker
This essential shift in our attention and the work of teachers from cultivating social, emotional, and civic development to micromanaging measurable growth for students and value-added performance for teachers should be a metaphor for the reform movement broadly.
00:07:15
Speaker
As we stand now before a decade of flat test scores yet have acquired a profound mental health crisis in which suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth age 15 to 24.
00:07:27
Speaker
Again, as Pondicio reaffirms in his piece, so much reform, so little to show for it.