I was having a great Obama day on Tuesday. The family was out with the dog, I felt so happy and proud to see our first Black first family in the limelight. And then I read Sam Dillon's NYT article about education : "Education Standards Likely to See Toughening"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/education/15educ.html
And I wanted to cry. I began to ask myself why I had spent all those hours during election weekend canvassing, calling, hoping, asking the electoral college gods to spur fortune, "that strumpet", to our favor. Why, as an educator, should I vociferously fight for Mr. Obama, if this is what we get:
Arne Duncan saying he wants to be "a catalyst for the development of national academic standards."
What happened to local control, community involvement, and autonomy?
What comes out of this article is that Arne and the Obama administration are pursuing "more of the same failed bush administration policies" to fix education. By the way does my quoted rhetoric sound familiar to you? If it does, it's because that's the rhetoric Obama used to call McCain the same as Bush in the election. Irony.
What's really dissapointing is the cheer-leading sils on the so-called progressive left that just love president Obama's plan.
The Center for American Progress: " 'They’re putting money and ideas behind what they think are the changes needed in public education,” Ms. Brown said. 'That signals their seriousness about major reform.' "
Randi Weingarten, of the so-called stick in the mud unions said she would "give the new administration the benefit of the doubt". The unions rocked it for Obama in the campaign! They should be all over his ass, making sure his education plan is bold, new, and progressive, instead of boring, old, ineffective, and not good for students! Sheesh.
Congressman Sestak was on campus on Monday and he loved Obama's education plan to death.
Listen, I love Obama as much as the next guy, but we need some people to stick up to him and tell him what is what. I thought the benefit of having a moderate democrat in office was so that we could push him to the left.
Obama Makes Me Cry
The Arrogance of our Educational Leaders
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/education/04educ.html
"Mr. Fenty said he made the trip to New York to observe the “endgame” of mayoral control of public schools, a controversial governance model that New York adopted seven years ago and that Washington turned to in 2007."
As if all big cities must inevitably succumb to mayoral control.
"In another classroom, students for whom English is not a first language studied a drawing and tried to name the objects they saw — cows, birds, trees. Mr. Klein expressed approval when he noticed the children were dressed in white uniforms. “Muchas gracias,” Mr. Klein offered. “You look so beautiful! Does everyone like their uniform? So do I!”"
This sounds like some totalitarian dictator at an educational brainwashing session.
It just shocks me the way these men in charge run around town dictating the terms of the game to everybody else, as if they, and only they have the right answers. We really need to take back control from these people.
Mapping Experience
A current dilemma:
A student I tutor asked me to help her with maps. I quickly realized that her schools had dismally failed her. As a freshman in high school, she had practically no fluency with maps, georgraphy, history, or political science. She didn't know the difference between the US and the rest of the world on a map, what or where Europe really was, how many languages people spoke in different countries, etc... It seemed more like she didn't have "map language" than that she didn't know anything about these issues, but I knew that she needed to know this stuff in order to succeed in school. I quickly pulled up a world map on a computer and launched into a 90 minute survey of all of world geography in history, including the 7 continents, basic introduction to government and economics, a brief brief brief idea of colonialism, and any other pertinent interesting information I could think of.
You can imagine how problematic this was. I'm stuck. I want her to succeed in school, but I don't want to fall in to the trap of enslaving her within the dominant discourse without any sense of critical thought. I tried to show some of the ways that the "map" of the world is unjust, but with 90 minutes, I was racing to tell everything I knew about the map. I am going to keep working with her on this stuff, and any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated!
Major Props
I want to give major props to a blog I LOVE. A fellow swarthmore alum and current teacher, Scott Storm's Pedagogy With Class is an amaaaaaazing blog on pedagogy radicalism and just good teaching. Please check it out!
http://pedagogywithclass.wordpress.com/
Data for Duncan
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/education/02educ.html
Arne Duncan has said that to qualify for a second round of educational stimulus funding, schools are going to have to submit data on performance, teacher assessment, and data on student success in terms of graduation and college.
Yall are expecting a rant from me, right?
Well, actually I think this is a good thing. Of course we should be tracking and monitoring the performance of our schools and the success of our students. The thing to be worried about is what data is collecting and how is it being used. If data on struggling schools is used to shut them down, shuttle their students to privates, and take their funding away, that is B.A.D., BAD. But there is no reason why the government should throw away taxpayer's money without seeing any critical reflection on the part of administrators, politicians, and stakeholders on the ground.
