My colleague Susan Headden and I recently wrote a piece about extending school time for the Wallace Foundation’s report “Reimagining the School Day”
John Thompson’s response rightly praised the Wallace Foundation’s attention to expanding not just time but high-quality learning. He also suggested that Susan and I did an alright job bringing up some important points that we gleaned from the Wallace conference. Thompson agrees, for example, that more learning time requires great partners. He also agrees that schools would do well to focus more on chronic absenteeism, which undoubtedly leads to a subgroup of students, usually the most vulnerable, missing huge chunks of learning time.
But then, as though he can’t help himself, John goes on to say that Education Sector’s “rushed approach to reform” is “based on blaming individual teachers and schools, and teacher-proofing instruction, as well as democracy-proofing local school systems.” And then he thanks the Wallace Foundation for helping recruit Education Sector to the collaborative side of reform.
John, you comment on almost everything we post and publish so I’d think you’d have a more balanced sense of our work. I’ve been with Education Sector since its first year. I have not always agreed with everyone and everything here (we have different philosophies and perspectives and freely debate and disagree)–I’m sure there are pieces you could find that would make your point but it’s pretty far-fetched to say we’ve been recently recruited to the “collaborative side of reform,” whichever side you think that is. Since 2007, we’ve written about how to invest in teachers, how to design teachers’ work so it meets the needs of today’s students and teachers, about how to link teacher evaluation and support, and about the potential of union-district collaboration. And it’s not the first time I’ve written about extended time designs with the main point that it’s about quality not quantity.
You can try to lump us all into one scary camp of accountability hawk reformers who are bent on launching an educational civil war, but you can’t make it true. More importantly, I’m not sure how it helps the cause of improving public education to do so.
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And, by the way, it always interests me when sites that get very few commenters try to embarrass and chide the commenters who DO respond to them — as opposed to debating the issues, you try to shame your readers for excess commenting. Assuming that you want comments, isn’t that a little self-defeating?
My impression is that Education Sector will come out for or against whatever its funders want it to come out for or against. My independent, unpurchased opinion is that John’s view is accurate.
Canadian provinces are taking the extra time/hours/days to the logical conclusion and extending schooling downwards gradually to the early years 2-5 years old. The state will gradually push out private operators by offering a free early years education.
Dr. Thompson is being far too kind.
Education Sector is widely known as a mouthpiece for the most reactionary anti-public education ideologies. Writing for them and then disavowing allegiance with the “camp of accountability hawk reformers” is disingenuous at best.
Working with a privatization minded right-wing think, by definition, puts you precisely in the camp you claim you’re not in, even if just by being there you give cover to the Chubbs, Hesses, and Hanusheks.
Elena,
I should have written that your piece was “great,” and found another superlative for the Wallace Foundation. Before praising them so highly, I rechecked their web site and sure enough I was impressed by their efforts, from protecting the arts to rephrasing the issue of reform. The issue is data-informed accountability versus data-driven accountability.
Yes, I could not help but write that your allies, who started the educational civil war, have a “rushed approach to reform” [that] is “based on blaming individual teachers and schools, and teacher-proofing instruction, as well as democracy-proofing local school systems.” I did so to make the point that I have often made in comments that, “As long as the Ed Sector and their allies demand that high stakes be attached to data, the sharing of accurate information is unlikely.”
To be clear, I would like for the Ed Sector to be recruited to the “collaborative side of school reform.” The Ed Sector has written a series of reports where the body of your evidence documents the benefits of data-informed decision-making and the problems with policies that come from data-driven accountability. But all too often, the spin in the press release contradicts your evidence.
My conclusion, as I have often indicated in comments, is that your organization is trying to be a team player. I am still asking the same question, why can’t you heed your own evidence, and join with teachers in nailing down checks and balances in regard to data-driven policies?
We could agree to disagree on the second tier issues and even go down that risky path of using VAMs for purposes that are valid, if we could first place a trigger lock on them so that won’t be used in an invalid manner. In discussing Rhode Island, D.C., many turnaround issues, and other issues, the evidence the Ed Sector cites seems to distance you from the practices of your most extreme allies, but then you seem to lose your voice.
Before posting, I clicked your link to the P.I.E. Network, and sure enough it still is a who’s who of accountability hawks who started the war on teachers and our unions, and incentivized the narrowing of the curriculum, driving the liberal arts from schools, and nonstop test prep. The first thing that came up on the site was a reaffirmation by one of its members of using value-added to fire teachers. But the Ed Trust did reach out to the Tea Party, implying they could agree on accountability and firing teachers….
The Ed Sector does a valuable job of documenting evidence. Connect the dots, and you have more evidence that the reform “bubble” is about to burst. Another P.I.E. member, the CAP, is in the same boat. You both support reforms that I argue are dangerous. You say good things about policies, like peer review, that would make a “Grand Bargain” possible. But you are just as silent as your allies when it comes to condemning the indefensible implementations of data-driven policies.
I understand political alliances and I understand loyalty. I’m not asking for an anti-data-driven litmus test. I hoping that the Ed Sector, when it sees clear evidence that its partners are promoting policies that are existential threats to the liberal arts in schools and collective bargaining, will join with traditional reformers on the collaborative side of reform, and condemn those abuses. To paraphrase your words, you may wish that your allies did not launch a war on teachers, and you may wish that the data-driven policies that have the potential to help kids do not have an equal potential for harm, “but you can’t make it true.” And sooner or later, I bet, the evidence will make you come out against unchecked abuses, as well as uses of data-driven accountability.
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