Blue Commonwealth - accountability

. . . for the sake of the institution . . .

teacherken — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:03:28 GMT

It takes many forms:

The Blue Wall of Silence

We must protect the church

We clean up our own messes

You will weaken the Presidency/administration in a time of war/crisis/national emergency

An outsider cannot understand

You will take away the motivation to take risks

... and you can offer your own version . . .

It is the excuse not to public identify wrongdoers or to be subject to outside oversight or to allow criminal investigation and prosecution

The claim is that to do so will weaken the Police Force / Church / Military / Business / Organization

The claim is wrong. And failure to fully investigate and expose weakens the institution, because it inevitably leads to an arrogance and the same or similar behavior continues, or happens again. . . and again . . . and again. . .
I write in the context of the recent explosion of stories of the Roman Catholic Church's repeated cover-ups of abuse by priest and the covering up by bishops, archbishops and cardinals, one of the last of whom now serves as Pope.

I was thinking about this when I happened to glance at a rerun of Law and Order SVU perhaps inspired by the brutalization of Abner Louima in a New York City Precinct. In the episode, the Police Department brass wanted to shut down the investigation with one officer who was going to plead to a lesser included charge and not investigate further - in the episode one other policeman, the partner, was responsible for 6 homicides for hire. I remember too many other cases in big city Police departments, in New York and elsewhere, where any attempt to investigate was confronted by the Blue Wall of silence, and what happened to officers like Frank Serpico, who attempted to breach that wall.

I lived through the Vietnam period. I cannot forget My Lai. We cannot claim we did not know. Contemporaneously, helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson reported the massacre, himself and his crew having intervened to save lives, originally receiving medals up to the Distinguished Flying Cross, decorations 30 years later lessened to the Soldier's Medal. An "investigation" by the Brigade Lt. Colonel under orders from the Division Executive Officer reported relatively few casualties blamed on inadvertent killing, and the Army continued to view the incident as a great military achievement. Only a few soldiers were interviewed. Six months later a letter by a participant to the Commander in Vietnam, Creighton Abrams, provided extensive detail and was supported by other letters of complaint, which led to the most infamous investigation, that led by then 31 year old Colin Powell which essentially whitewashed the events and described the relations between the US Army and Vietnamese civilians as excellent.

It was only a full year after the incident that a soldier who had not participated in the events, joining the company later, wrote multiple letters - to President Nixon, to the Pentagon, to the Join Chiefs, to multiple members of Congress. Almost all ignored his letter. Congressman Morris Udall of Arizona did not.

It was not until Seymour Hersch broke the story, after having talked with Calley, that the press finally bore in. In a follow-up investigation by a General blame was affixed more broadly, but still mainly on four already dead officers.

Eventually there were multiple courts martial. The only one ever convicted was Lt. William Calley, and the sentence he actually served was 4 and half months in a stockade - for the deaths of something over 347 (conceivably up to 504). Captain Ernest Medina, Calley's immediate superior, was acquitted, then later admitted he had lied. That admission let to no punishment.

Yes, we investigated Richard Nixon. Many of his associates went to prison. But once he resigned the furor lessened, and even though there were outcries when he was pardoned by Ford, it seemed as if the political class - in Congress and in the DC Press - was relieved that the story was over. Then with Iran-Contra under Reagan, one could almost hear palpable sighs of relief when Admiral John Poindexter said he never informed the President, refusing to take the role of John Dean, and the investigation came to a grinding halt. The pardons by George H. W. Bush seemed to erase for many even the opprobrium or shame that should have remained affixed to those like Cap Weinberger and Eliot Abrams for the rest of their lives, and yet instead we still have Oliver North on the scene, Poindexter kept reappearing like a bad penny, and Abrams wound up in the G. W. Bush administration.

Bill Clinton's arrogance put this nation through an unnecessary crisis, and burned political capital that might have been better used on behalf of the nation. However much one may admire his achievements in his final two years of office, I cannot help but wonder if he had not had the arrogance of office to continue his reckless personal behavior how different this country might be today.

I will leave to you, dear readers, to consider the arrogance and lack of accountability of the most recently past administration.

What we saw in the Army, in several, among police forces, is unfortunately all too common in our society, in much of the world.

Perhaps I am sensitive on this because as a teacher and a member of a teachers' union, I constantly hear refrains of accountability, including for things over which I may have little control - and that often includes how students perform on the external tests that are destroying public education. I find people willing to deny due process by claiming that our unions protect bad teachers.

Then I open a newspaper or read online about abuse of deaf children in schools run by the Church. I read about those in the Roman Catholic Church who have tried to raise the issue who have suffered attacks on their reputations for trying to get the Church to live up to what should be its standards, a standard that one can find in the Gospel of John, 15:13: Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Instead we see those in authority not even lose their careers. Bernard Cardinal Law clearly broke US statutes in how he covered up abuse in Boston, yet he was rewarded with an important sinecure in Rome, outside the jurisdiction of US Authorities.

Investigations of abuse of legal position and authority by people in the Bush administration are cut short by a career functionary in the Justice department, thereby cutting short even a cursory investigation by a professional association as to whether the standards of the legal profession were violated. No criminal charges were brought in the politicization of the Justice Department. No criminal charges, no war crimes charges, not even a serious Congressional investigation, for the serious crime of lying this nation into a war of choice.

Lack of outside oversight allows cover-ups to continue. And people become arrogant. There are no consequences for improper, immoral, illegal actions, even actions to the points of crimes against humanity.

And the rationalization can always easily be reduced to a simple justification - we cannot proceed further, fix the blame, call for appropriate accountability, because it would harm something important. We do not proceed to the appropriate investigation and punishment, we do not demand the necessary accountabilityfor the sake of the institution: the Police Department, the Church, the Corporation, the Presidency, the Administration, the political party, the union, the nation. . .

I try to teach my students to accept when they have made errors, whether deliberately or by lack of knowledge or by failing to take appropriate steps. At the time of Clinton's impeachment we heard those from the other political party claim that the president had to be held to account for the poor example he set for young people. I would agree, although I am not sure his actions rose to the level of impeachment. I would have been satisfied had the President gone on television and apologized to all he had hurt, starting with his wife and daughter, then his staff, then those who had voted for him, and then to the children of the nation for whom he had set a horrible example. I only wish Republicans would apply the same standard to Larry Craig, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, Henry Hyde (of his "youthful indiscretion" affair) as they do to Democrats.

Except it is not that I want a tit for tat. That has poisoned the atmosphere to the point of a stalemate, a lack of willingness by Congressional ethics committees to fully investigate most wrong-doing by the members of the respective bodies: it is the equivalent of the Cold War nuclear stalemate with the USSR of Mutually Assured Destruction.

And the abuses continue. And there is no meaningful accountability. Not for those in power, not for those fortunate enough to be protected by a mindset that their wrongdoings are less important than protecting something larger for the sake of the institution. . .

I am not a vindictive person. I have multiple times written of my admiration for what Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu achieved in moving South Africa beyond what could have become a bloodbath by using the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I no longer believe in the death penalty, in part because of the years I spent as a serious Christian, and accepting that no person can put herself beyond the mercy of God - that would make her equal or superior to God, and for Christianity that would be a blasphemy. But mercy requires acknowledging one's wrongs. That is only the first step. It should also require one to try to make amends. And some level of punishment may well be required - loss of position might be only the first step. Elevation to a position of higher prestige and power is therefore an abomination. It leads to the likes of Gen. Miller being given the task of "Gitmoizing" Abu Ghraib.

I care for institutions. I care deeply for this nation, for what it can and should be. Which is why I hold it to the highest possible standards of behavior, and demand that those in positions of authority and responsibility, however small, be held to the highest level of behavior. No one should ever investigate themselves. No matter how serious we are about examining our consciences, we have a tendency to find justification for what we have done, for what we might want to do. That almost inevitably leads to abuse, to harm to others. And insofar as we justify shutting down outside investigations, in protecting our wrongdoers for the sake of the institution we weaken that institution, we allow it to be corrupted from within, to lose sight of its true purpose.

Unless that purpose is simply aggrandizement through the accumulation of wealth and power and therefore immunity from any accountability. Those who are not accountable are unrestrained in their actions and are a threat, at least potentially, to the rest of us. To me that is unacceptable, intolerable.

For the sake of the institution of public safety our police must be held to the highest standard - we empower them to use force on our behalf, and they must not abuse that power

or the sake of the institution of the Church its leaders must remember that they cannot preach what they do not practice, that they just model what Jesus taught as seen in those words from the Gospel of John that I have already quoted, that they cannot claim they are caring for souls when they are besmirching their own

For the sake of the institution of the military whose role is supposed to be to defend us from harm we cannot allow unnecessary harm to others, within the ranks of the military or by imposition of superior force upon those of other nations - the idea of dismissing death and destruction simply as 'collateral damage" is take the first step towards abandoning humanity and morality

For the sake of the institution of a government that is supposed to be of the people, by the people for the people must be answerable TO THE PEOPLE which cannot happen if its actions remain hidden from the people, not accountable to the people

And perhaps most difficult, it must start at a smaller level - at the family. We cannot argue for the sake of family to cover up the wrongdoings of those nearest and dearest to us. If we are going to demand accountability from our institutions and those who lead them, then we must begin by demanding it of ourselves.

. . . for the sake of the institution... to do less than required full accountability is to admit by our acquiescence and silence that we accept the abuses and the wrongdoing and the cover-ups - we diminish the value of that institution, be it police, or army, or company, or religious body, or union, or even family.

. . . for the sake of the institution. . .

Peace.

Ravitch: The Death and Life of the Great American School System

teacherken — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:32:00 GMT

My support for NCLB remained strong until November 30, 2006. I can pinpoint the date exactly because that was the day I realized that NCLB was a failure.

This is a book review. Those words appear on p.99, which however odd a starting point is critical. I learned about this event contemporaneously from the late Gerald Bracey, who informed some of us by email and many more in this Huffington Post blog. At a conference at the American Enterprise Institute called to answer the question of whether No Child Left Behind was working, we learn from Bracey

Charged with summarizing the day, former assistant secretary of education for Bush I, Diane Ravitch, declared that the answer to the conference title's question was clearly, "No!"

That began an intellectual transformation that leads to the outstanding new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. I will explore the book, the author and the implications of her transformation.
First, let me dispense with any necessary disclosures. My professional association with Diane Ravitch goes back almost a decade to when as a graduate student studying Federal educational policy I was fortunate enough to have an extended phone conversation picking her brain. Our contact has become more frequent especially in the past year, in part as a result of her transformation, a process she thoroughly explores in her first chapter, "What I Learned About School Reform." As a result of at least one of those exchanges, I am included in the acknowledgments as one who assisted Ravitch in obtaining information. I was aware of the general thrust of the book, but until I received a copy to review had no knowledge of the specific contents.

Diane Ravitch has been a major figure on educational policy for several decades. She is by training an educational historian, having done her dissertation at Columbia, beginning her association with Lawrence Cremin, perhaps the preeminent historian of education. Ravitch had first begun writing about schools in the late 1960s, during a period of turmoil in NYC public schools over the struggle between centralization and decentralization. Ravitch went back and examined the history of New York's schools to find out why they had become centralized, not only discovering relevant material but becoming thereby the most knowledgeable person about the history of NYC schools. In the process she demonstrated something that has been a characteristic of all of her scholarly work - she thoroughly examines all relevant material so that her conclusions are strongly supported by fact.

Ravitch was critical of some of the radical reformers of the period of the 1970s, some of whom were very harsh on public education. This began the process of turning her into something of a target for those on the educational and political left. Ravitch will now acknowledge that some of the viewpoints she espoused over the next few decades are things she no longer believes. She had supported some ideas because of what she saw as their promise, but as she notes in that first chapter (which is a product in part of the happenstance of cleaning out her office and thus having the opportunity to examine the work of several decades)

my views changed as I saw how those ideas were working out in reality.

She offers a possibly apocryphal remark by Keynes explaining that when the facts changed, he changed his mind.

I think in fairness to Ravitch it is important to note several things. First, she has never been a Republican, even when she served in the Bush 41 administration under Lamar Alexander at Education. She was a Democrat and is now an independent. Second, she has an absolutely consistent and strong position with respect to public schools - she wants to see them not only maintained, but thriving. Third, having grown up in Houston and seen how some of her teachers were bullied by right-wing organizations, she is a firm supporter of the due process rights unions provide teachers. Let me offer several quotes from the chapter with a title derived from a teacher influential in her own life, who would perhaps not be highly valued by some so-called "reformers" of our day, "What Would Mrs. Ratliff Do?" First,

No one, to my knowledge, has demonstrated a clear, indisputable correlation between teacher unionism and academic achievement, either negative or positive.

And if we consider the kinds of international comparisons used by "reformers" to denigrate American public schools, these words will be quite relevant:

Some of the top-performing nations in he world are highly unionized, others are not. Finland, whose students score highest on international assessments of reading, has a teacher workforce that is nearly 100 percent unionized. Most high-performing Asian nations do not have large proportions of unionized teachers (though some do). Unionization per se does not cause high student achievement, nor does it cause low achievement.

I will not fully recapitulate her entire career. You can get a sense either from the Wikipedia article or from the CV she has at her website. She worked in a Republican administration. She had an association with the Hoover Institute. She has maintained friendly relations with people who many in the more progressive educational circles in which I participate despise, whether it is educational economist Eric Hanushek or her former fellow Assistant Secretary Checker Finn. Yet rather than presume that such associations are the complete indication of her orientation, she now jointly blogs with Deborah Meier, and among those she acknowledges helping her with the book by reading are Linda Darling-Hammond, education journalist Linda Perlstein, former NY Times educational writer Richard Rothstein, and Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters (a strong opponent of things like mayoral control) - none of these would be considered favorites of those on either the political or educational right.

And yet it is precisely because of her associations with those more 'conservative" on educational matters that this book by Diane Ravitch carries the impact that it does. It may infuriate some of her former colleagues, because she is thorough, she is blunt. Were I to offer a parallel, perhaps it would be the conversion of David Brock from a henchman for the political right to one of its more visible opponents. Except Brock was never considered a major player, and in educational circles Ravitch has been a major figure for several decades.

Let me focus on the book. Let me start by saying that I cannot hope to cover all of its value even in a piece several times as long as this will be. I want to give a sense of the book - its structure, some of the key issues covered therein. That also means I want to give a sense of Ravitch. I hope thereby to persuade you that is a book of critical importance. Here I note that while the publisher had apparently requested reviews not appear until March 1, the day before the book is publicly available for sale, there are already a number of reviews, for example this, this, and this - you can see how others are approaching the book. I am sure there will be many more reviews as well.

Let me list the chapters, then offer some explanation.

1. What I Learned About School Reform
2. Hijacked! How the Standards Movement Turned Into the Testing Movement
3. The Transformation of District 2
4. Lessons from San Diego
5. The Business Model in New York City
6. NCLB: Measure and Punish
7. Choice: The Story of an Idea
8. The Trouble with Accountability
9. What Would Mrs. Ratliff Do?
10. The Billionaire Boys Club
11. Lessons Learned

Chapter 3 is a detailed study of the reform efforts in one New York City regional school district. As it happens, the person responsible for those efforts, Anthony Alvarado, then went to San Diego, which leads logically into Chapter 4. New York City is the current model of mayoral control, and re-imported some of what had happened in San Diego - despite the fact that, as Ravitch clearly demonstrates, those "reforms" in San Diego provided no better performance than most of the rest of the state.

Of course, the reform in New York is led by a billionaire, Michael Bloomberg. That provides at least some connections with Chapter 10, where Ravitch thoroughly examines the efforts of several other billionaires, individuals and families, who have been using their wealth through their foundations to shape American education in ways that have been excluding the voices of the people whose schools are being reshaped and the teachers who work in such schools. That chapter is worthy of an entirely separate posting to see up close the influence of Eli Broad, Bill and Melinda Gates, and the Walton family. Some of those names appear elsewhere in the book, especially in San Diego, and in discussing the issue of choice.

Let me offer some selections of the author's words on a couple of topics. For example, after looking at San Diego and mayoral control in New York, (both districts in which control was given to former prosecutors with no prior educational experience, Alan Bersin in San Diego and Joel Klein in New York), examining the data from what studies are available, etc., Ravitch on p. 91 offers the following conclusion:

Mayoral control is not a guaranteed pat to school improvement. On the 2007 NAEP, the cities with the highest scores were Charlotte, North Carolina, and Austin Texas, neither of which had mayoral control. And two of the three lowest performing cities - Chicago and Cleveland - had mayoral control for more than a decade. Clearly many factors affect educational performance other than the governance structure.

These words carry a powerful punch. Might I remind readers that the current administration unfortunately seems to favor mayoral control. Secretary Education Arne Duncan was CEO of Chicago public schools from 2001 until he joined the Obama administration, thus the NAEP evaluation that showed Chicago public schools in such a poor light happened on his watch.

Ravitch offers a further criticism of mayoral control on the same page. She writes of such control

It solves no problems to exclude parents and the public from important decisions about education policy or to disregard the educators who work with students daily. Public education is a vital institution in our democratic society, and its governance must be democratic, open to public discussion and public participation.

Here you see something that has been an essential part of Ravitch's approach to education throughout her career, one too often not noticed by those who criticized her positions on some issues or her associations. It is a constant theme in the book, to which she returns again and again. Thus we read in her final chapter

Schools do not exist in isolation. They are part of the larger society. Schooling requires the active participation of many, including students, families, public officials, local organizations, and the larger community.

This is why Ravitch finds it necessary to remind us that we cannot hold teachers accountable for test scores in isolation from the responsibilities of others, including the students themselves. It is why she raises real questions about any approach that excludes participation in shaping educational policy and governing schools by parents and the community. In the penultimate paragraph of her book she writes

Our public education system is a fundamental element of our democratic society. Our public schools have been the pathway to opportunity and a better life for generations of Americans, giving hem the tools to fashion their own life and to improve the commonweal. To the extend we strengthen them, we strengthen our democracy

Policies that undercut public schools, and thus weaken our democracy, are things that Ravitch opposes, and against which she now forcefully advocates.

Thus we can understand her changing position on school choice. She reminds us that charters as originally proposed were not institutions to be run by for profit entities. Ray Budde and Albert Shanker both offered proposals in 1988, the former wanting schools run within districts by groups of teachers with specific goals to be evaluated at the end of three to five years, the latter also run by teachers within regular schools in order "to pursue innovative ways of educating disaffected students." Ravitch reminds us that by 1993 Shanker had withdrawn his support of charters and become a vocal critic.

We now know that when we control for all factors there is no evidence that charters as a whole perform better than public schools. We have seen charter schools and some for choice public schools find ways of excluding the harder to educate. Close examination shows, as Ravitch reminds us, that some charters are able to obtain success

because the charters often get additional financial resources from their corporate sponsors, enabling them to offer smaller classes, after-school and enrichment activities, and laptop computers for every student. Many charter schools enforce discipline codes that would likely be challenged in court if they were adopted in regular public schools; and because charter schools are schools of choice, they find it easier to avoid, eliminate, or counsel out low-performing and disruptive students.

A recent study out of Stanford analyzed data from 2,403 charters. Ravitch quotes the principal author, economist Margaret Raymond, as saying "If this study shows anything, it show that we've got a two-tone margin of bad charters to good charters." That would seem to demonstrate a lack of data to justify large-scale expansion of charters, and yet Secretary Duncan and President Obama are insisting on just such an expansion as a requirement in Race to the Top funding. One who reads the book carefully will discover this is no anomaly. Ravitch makes clear what people should have known - there is NO research base supporting any of the provisions so-called "reformers" advocate - not for charters, not for merit pay for teachers, not for using test scores as the sole measure of the performance of teachers and schools, not for approaches such as those advocated by Teach for America for teachers nor New Leaders for New Schools for principals . . . That Ravitch makes shows this clearly will not endear her to former colleagues at places like Hoover Institute, American Enterprise Institute and Fordham Foundation (on whose board she used to serve).

Ravitch also warns that the ability of charters to exclude the harder to educate will create "a two-tier system of widening inequality." Some charters will continue to show success, and because the more motivated families will opt out, we will have a spiral where the scores of those left behind in the public schools will continue to decline. As Ravitch notes,

This would be a ominous development for public schools and for our nation.

As noted, some "success" of charter schools is a direct result of the intervention of corporate interests and foundations of wealthy people. These are issues that repeatedly come up, throughout the book. Thus in San Diego, when one school board member was opposed to what Alan Bersin was attempting to do, Frances Zimmerman found herself a target. At a time when the typical school board race cost $40,000,

leading business figures in the city contributed over $700,000 to defeat Zimmerman. Walmart heir John Walton of Arkansas, a supporter of charter schools and vouchers, and Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad each contributed more than $100,000 to the anti-Zimmerman campaign.

In this case Zimmerman survived, although she remained in the minority on a pro-Bersin board.

This kind of intervention by the wealthy should be of great concern, and Ravitch fully takes it on. In Chapter 10 she traces the history of the involvement of charitable foundations in public education, and provides close scrutiny of the major players today. This chapter alone would justify buying and reading the book. You will see in the detail the roles of the major players, including but not limited to the owners of Walmart, Bill Gates, and Eli Broad. You will see not only direct contributions but also further contributions through other foundations. Let me offer four selections, two from the portion on the Walton family, and two more general.

As one review the contributions made by the Walton family Foundation, it is obvious that the family members seek to create, sustain, and promote alternatives to public education. Their agenda is choice, competition and privatization.

But why should it be surprising that a foundation owned by one of the richest families in the United States opposes government regulation and favors private sector solutions to social problems? Why should it be surprising that a global corporation that has thrived without a unionized workforce would oppose public sector unions? Nor should it be surprising that the Walton Family Foundation has an ideological commitment to the principle of consumer choice and to an unfettered market, which by its nature has no loyalties and disregards Main Street, traditional values, long-established communities, and neighborhood schools.

After similar deconstructions of the role of the foundations of Gates and Broad, Ravitch provides a couple of succinct summaries. First,

The market is not the best way to deliver public services. Just as every neighborhood should have a good public school. Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or the police department. It is possible, but it is not wise. Our society needs a sensible balance between public and private.

After noting the power and money now arrayed against public schools and education as a profession, and reminding us of the devastation wrought by financial deregulation, Ravitch cautions us

Removing public oversight will leave the education of our children to the whim of entrepreneurs and financiers. Nor is it wise to entrust our schools to inexperienced teachers, principals, and superintendents. Education is too important to relinquish to the vagaries of the market and the good intentions of amateurs.

There is so much more of value in this book. In her final chapter Ravitch is very blunt, warning that what we are doing in educational policy "will very likely make the schools less effective and may further degrade the intellectual capacity of our citizenry." She does offer some specific suggestions which are worth considering, although I think the real power of the book comes from how she takes apart so much of what recent educational policy has been doing.

There is in the final chapter a series of statements, each of which begins the same way: Our schools. If you take nothing else from this review, the list that follows should convince you of the value of the book.

Our schools

... will not improve if we continually reorganize their structure and management without regard for their essential purpose

... will not improve if elected officials intrude into pedagogical territory and make decisions that properly should be made by professional educators

... will not improve if we value only what tests measure

... will not improve if we rely exclusively on tests as the means of deciding the fate of students, teachers, principals, and schools

... will not improve if we continue to close neighborhood schools in the name of reform

... will not improve if we entrust them to the magical powers of the market

... cannot improve if charter schools siphon away the most motivated students and their families in the poorest communities from the regular public schools

... will not improve if we expect them to act like private, profit-seeking enterprises

... will not improve if we continue to drive away experienced principals and replace them with neophytes who have taken a leadership training course but have little or no experience as teachers

... cannot be improved by blind worship of data

... cannot be improved by those who say money doesn't matter

... cannot be improved if we ignore the disadvantages associated with poverty that affect children's ability to learn

... cannot be improved if we use them as society's all-purpose punching bag, blaming them for all the ills of the economy, the burdens imposed upon children by poverty, the dysfunction of families, and the erosion of civility. Schools must work with other institutions and cannot replace them.

Given the prominence of Diane Ravitch, this book cannot be ignored. Because of her previous positions and associations, her clarion rejection of the entire "reform" agenda that is unfortunately continuing in the present administration will hopefully cause some in positions of responsibility to take several deep breaths, step back, and perhaps reconsider what they are doing.

She is likely to be attacked by those who will consider themselves former allies now being betrayed. About that I can do nothing. That they will be upset is to me a positive thing, for what they have advocated is damaging to our schools and our nation.

I hope in this review I have convinced you of the importance and the power of this book. It is yet another book about which I can say that anyone concerned about public schools should read - or in this case, devour. It is that good, that rich, that important.

Ravitch ends her book as follows:

At the present time, public education is in peril. Efforts to reform public education are, ironically, diminishing its quality and endangering its very survival. We must turn attention to improving schools, infusing them with the substance of genuine learning and reviving the conditions that make learning possible

Perhaps you think I should conclude with those words. I cannot. Even as I value them, I must remind you that I have barely scratched the surface of the riches of the book.

Rather, I want to turn back to how Ravitch concludes her introductory chapter, in which she explains her intent of the book. She acknowledges that she does not have all the answers, she offers no silver bullet or magic feather. She does claim that

we must preserve American public education, because it is so intimately connected to our concepts of citizenship and democracy and to the promise of American life. In view of the money and power now arrayed on behalf of the ideas and programs that I will criticize, I hope it is not too late.

So do I!

Dick Cheney's Daughter Admits the Real Reasons Her Dad is Ubiquitous in the Media

KathyinBlacksburg — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:06:20 GMT

As some of us here have commented, Dick Cheney has been ubiquitous in the media. So too has Cheney's daughter, Liz. By Steve Benen's (at Washington Monthly) account she's made 12 appearances in 9.5 days. There's also speculation that Liz Cheney is running for office. This is the same Liz Cheney who's ramping up aggressive talk about Iran, including talk of military action.
According to ThinkProgress, Liz Cheney:

[Liz Cheney] deplored...the Bush administration's failure to enforce "red lines" against Iranian advances in the region. Washington, she declared, must clearly state that if Iranians "don't give up diplomatically [to United Nations demands that it freeze its nuclear program], they will face military action".

The father-daughter duo aim to stir up more war while we are already fighting two. The saber-rattling, fear-mongering, and hegemony are not the kind of legacy a father ought to leave a daughter. But this is no ordinary father-daughter relationship, apparently.

It is in the video clip above that Liz makes her blatantly personal/selfish statement. In the video clip (hat-tip to thinkprogress.org), Liz actually says part of the reason for her father's constant presence is the threat of prosecution for his actions while Vice President. Strike another blow at accountability. The Cheney's just aren't that into it. And, the rest of us are supposed to just fall into line.

Eugene Robinson - Where "Those Methods" Lead

teacherken — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:53:09 GMT

Originally posted at Daily Kos

The many roads of inquiry into the Bush administration's abusive "interrogation techniques" all lead to one stubborn, inconvenient fact: Torture is not just immoral but also illegal. This means that once we learn the whole truth, the law will oblige us to act on it.

So begins Pulitzer Prize Winner Eugene Robinson's op ed today, named - as is this diary - Where "Those Methods" Lead.

the law will oblige us to act on it - the simple, plain truth. One reason perhaps that a truth commission will be insufficient.

And is so often the case with Robinson, he has an ability top speak plainly, to remind us of what should be the obvious.
Robinson is in the Village but in a sense not part of it. Despite having been a senior editor at the Post, he is not caught up in the conventional thinking of Washington. Let me see if I can demonstrate this by a comparison with a real Villager, Chris Matthews. Last night I only listened to the very beginning of Hardball. The subject he was trying to explore is whether torture worked to obtain information - and in fairness I was already thinking, "who cares?" Then I heard him say something like "If it works, then we wouldn't be having these discussion" as if the effectiveness in obtaining information might serve as a justification for violating something basic in human morality. I turned him off, immediately.

After his opening paragraph, Robinson first makes clear that torture is morally unacceptable, then after noting Eric Holder's straightforward statement rejecting waterboarding as torture, offers

This refreshing and admirable clarity stands in stark contrast to the fog of legalistic sophistry in which the Bush administration cloaked its secret prisons.

the fog of legalistic sophistry - another way of saying the Bushites were trying to baffle us with bullshit.

Robinson then explores those who would, having as did Dennis Blair said they would not have used such methods, simply want to move forward, not to prosecute those responsible. Robinson again is clear:

To state the obvious, this makes no sense at all. If Blair would not have sanctioned "those methods" -- some of which clearly meet the legal definition of torture, in my view -- then why would he give a pass to those who ordered the abuses and those who carried them out?

And again, a bit further on, Robinson puts things in the blunt fashion required:

Even if experts have differing views about torture's effectiveness, there is one point on which they cannot disagree: It violates U.S. and international law.

it violates U. S. an international law

Here let me explore a side thought. I have at times in my 6+ decades deliberately broken laws. Here I do not refer to the way we perhaps as somewhat casual about things like speed limits or, to be silly, removing labels from mattresses. Rather, I refer to the deliberate breaking of laws in order to change a law or a government policy I viewed as unjust. I did so in concert with others who felt similarly. Following examples as American as Thoreau and King and as internationally respected as Gandhi, in our breaking of the law we accepted the possibility of the consequences that would flow from our lawbreaking - we were prepared for arrest, jail, fines and the possibility of permanent criminal records. I did so primarily in support of advancing Civil Rights, although later occasionally in opposition to our efforts in Vietnam, both before and after I served in the Marines. As it happens I was, unlike others, never arrested.

I make this point because when one acts on behalf of the nation, one must always accept responsibility for one's actions when they cross legal boundaries. I believe this holds true even if offered advice that the actions could be construed as within the bounds of law, as seems to be the case with the now infamous memos. And it certainly must apply in those cases where even if something is illegal it is - or should be - patently offensive to human sensibility.

That does not mean that the power of clemency cannot extend to those put in difficult situations, but at a minimum it should require the application of the legal process to determine if the laws were in fact violated. One thing very offensive about the past administration was its unwillingness to be subject to judgment by anyone: it sought to permanently exempt itself and its minions from the sanctions of international agreement, and fought tooth and claw against Congressional oversight or accountability to the Courts. We might remember that one previous finalist for a Supreme Court nomination, Michael Luttig, was so offended by the games playing of the administration that he issued a scathing opinion and a court order that had it not been overturned by the Supreme Court perhaps could have brought the issue of treatment of those accused of terrorism to a much brighter light much more quickly.

Robinson warns us that any investigation is going to bring us to an uncomfortable position, which may be why some in the administration have argued against even these first steps of disclosure. He writes

Our system, left to its own devices, is not designed to let illegal acts be revealed and then ignored.

We have been down the road of revelation without prosecution. And we thereby established dangerous precedents. The actions of Richard Nixon while an occupant of the Oval Office were so egregious that he should have joined the many who served in that administration in being incarcerated. The many - Haldeman, Erlichman, Mitchell, Magruder, . . . I feel comfortable saying that, even though he never stood trial because of the Ford pardon. Some of his crimes were violations of income tax law to which we are all subject. Others were gross abuses of power and of his office.

Nixon escaped. We became reluctant in the following decades to explore what Reagan and his administration had done. We never did fully find out all that was done. And now we have just completed an administration many of whose key figures had served either for Nixon or for Reagan. ANd for 8 years they were able to operate without meaningful accountability, they lied us into wars killing thousands and potentially destroying the economy of this nation, and in the process, the international financial system.

All of which pale, in my opinion, to this: they violated some of the most basic principles upon which this nation is based: habeas corpus, due process of law, limited government, checks and balances, separation of powers, right to trial by jury.

And even these pale next to this: the actions they were willing to countenance that which should never be acceptable, torture, the destruction of the human personality.

There must be accountability. Robinson notes this brings us to an uncomfortable place. I disagree when he says that

No one wants to see low-ranking CIA interrogators go down for doing what their superiors told them was legal, especially if the superiors are not held to account.

If we truly believe that the actors have a legal basis for what they did, why should that not be determined not by executive action but rather by a jury of their peers? And after all, if they were found guilty we would have established that one can not casually hide behind weasel words of lawyers seeking to justify the unjustifiable. And the President would still have the power to obliterated the convictions through use of his clemency powers. Such application would be far more justifiable than what Cheney sought on behalf of Scooter Libby, for example.

It perhaps would be unprecedented to pursue criminal charges against senior officials of the previous administration. Somewhat. After all, we have had several administrations in which senior officials were prosecuted. Albert Fall was a cabinet secretary who went to prison for Teapot Dome. And of course the many minions of Nixon who were imprisoned demonstrates that the idea of trial, conviction and imprisonment is not totally unknown.

Robinson concludes with what must be said:

It will be hard to stop this train, though. The rule of law is one of this nation's founding principles. It's not optional. Our laws against torture demand to be obeyed -- and demand to be enforced.

Unless we are willing to fully enforce the appropriate sanctions, we will not have sufficiently established the unacceptability of what has happened. That includes the distortion of the legal process, the untruthfulness to the American people and most of its elected representatives. It also includes the besmirching of our national reputation and image.

All of that is important. Again, all of that pales besides this simple truth:

People were tortured. At the official determination of the government of the United States. Some died. Some were permanently damaged, physically perhaps, emotionally and psychologically to be certain.

Some things are so clearly wrong that we MUST NOT look the other way, no matter how strongly some may seek to do so. They must not ever be justified, less we cease to be a nation of laws and not a domain dominated by the most recent impulses of those who may temporarily hold the reigns of power.

Absent accountability for these offenses, we the people will bear a permanent stain - that the nation for which we are sovereign has accepted actions that should never be accepted.

As a teacher, will I have to explain to my students that some are allowed to violate our social contract with impunity, but they are to be held to the strictest standard?

As a human being, will I still be able to be proud of this nation when we have descended to the level of dictators and brutes?

People were tortured. Forget the weasel words. Remember that fact. And remember that it was our government doing the torturing. That is a crime against humanity. We have executed people who did it to our troops. How can we not prosecute our own when they do it to others?

And without a full examination, a full accounting, if we think we will be at peace morally, then have we become a nation without a conscience?

Grading Education, Getting Accountability Right

teacherken — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:19:47 GMT

Originally posted at Daily Kos

If you send two groups of students to equally high-quality schools, the group with greater socioeconomic disadvantage will necessarily have lower average achievement than the more fortunate group. . .
Low-income children often have no health insurance and therefore no routine preventive medical and dental care, so have more school absences as a result of illness. Children in low-income families are more prone to asthma, resulting in more sleeplessness, irritability, and lack of exercise. They experience lower birth weight as well as more lead poisoning and iron-deficiency anemia, each of which leads to diminished cognitive ability and more behavior problems. Their families frequently fall behind in rent and move, so children switch schools more often, losing continuity of instruction. . .

The words are of Richard Rothstein, formerly the principal education writer of The New York Times, and co-author of an important new book on educational assessment. They come from an interview he and his co-authors recently did. In this diary I will explore the interview as well as offer commentary of my own.
The title of the book is Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right. The cu-authors are Rothstein, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Tamara Wilder, and is co-published by Teacher4s College Press and the Economic Policy Institute. The interview appeared on the website of Education News, which while it is run by someone whose personal orientation towards education is quite different than my own, often provides links for important news about education.

I have not yet read the book. It is in my queue. But I know enough about Rothstein's work from previous reading, both while he was at the Times and of earlier books, to know the cogency with which he approaches our crises in education. I believe that the interview can stand on its own as an introduction to a different approach about assessment.

Let's be clear. We have to have assessment that includes some evaluation from outside the classroom or the school - given the amount of tax revenue (the authors say almost 15% of all American taxes) that goes to public education, such assessment for accountability is not only unavoidable, it should be welcomed - if done properly. Our approach under NCLB, however, is not proper, gives us a distorted picture of what is happening, narrows instruction to what is tested, and thus damages the education of the students it purports to help.

All of this has been known in educational circles for years, well before the push to NCLB in the early part of this decade. Let me offer some commentary from the three authors.

Let's start with Jacobsen:

Our current accountability systems focus narrowly on standardized test scores in reading and mathematics. This test-based accountability system has only resulted in a corruption of the goals of public education. It has created incentives to focus only on reading and math instruction at the expense of other important goals, including not only other academic subjects such as science and social studies, but also other skills which are less easily tested through a paper and pencil exam, such as students' ability work cooperatively in groups, develop a commitment to civic and community responsibility, and develop an appreciation for the arts and literature.

A concern about such narrowing is not new. Rothstein reminds us:

. . . we describe a commission led by Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger that issued a 1958 report denouncing excessive stress on tests of math and reading. The report insisted that "Our conception of excellence must embrace many kinds of achievement at many levels....There is excellence in abstract intellectual activity, in art, in music, in managerial activities, in craftsmanship, in human relations, in technical work." And the report urged that test scores not be the sole mechanism of school accountability. It said, "Decisions based on test scores must be made with the awareness of the imponderables in human behavior. We cannot measure the rare qualities of character that are a necessary ingredient of great performance. We cannot measure aspiration or purpose. We cannot measure courage, vitality or determination."

I include this snippet because of the date of the report: in October of 1957 the USSR launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. Those old enough to remember will recall the panic it caused, that we were falling behind a rival (at that time a military rival) and we had to respond. This lead to a heavy emphasis on science at math. The report presented cautions that unfortunately were not taken seriously. If one sees parallels with, say, A Nation at Risk in 1983, with fears of falling behind economically, or current pushes seemingly demanding more emphasis on math and science, you are not alone.

The authors do not totally reject the idea that one important function of public education is to prepare people to be productive in the workforce - after all, remember that one co-publisher is the Economic Policy Institute. But that goal cannot be seen in isolation, and we need to be very careful about making major changes in our schools based on economic projections that are tenuous as best. In the paragraph immediately following the one just quoted, Rothstein notes

the work-related skills now required of school graduates are different from those of the 1950s, but also not as different as many people think. In an appendix of Grading Education, we reprint an article I co-authored with Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, in which we showed that, contrary to popular belief, American schools currently produce enough high school and college graduates to fill openings in the technologically advanced jobs of the modern era. Of course, we argue, our schools have an obligation to educate every child to his or her maximum potential, and we are not presently doing so, but we should not use flawed economic projections as a basis for denouncing the performance of our public schools.

Jacobsen recites the goals that education should include:

Throughout history, American leaders have generally agreed that schools should assist students in developing knowledge and skills in a broad range of goal areas, including: 1) basic academic knowledge and skills; 2) critical thinking; 3) appreciation for the arts and literature; 4) preparation for skilled work; 5) social skills and work ethic; 6) citizenship and community responsibility; 7) physical health; 8) emotional health.

and notes when they authors surveyed a representative group of educational leaders and the public, they found that

while teaching basic academic skills is important, it is not so much more important that we should be satisfied if other goals were sacrificed. Consequently, in Grading Education, we propose an accountability system in which schools would be held accountable for student achievement in all of these eight areas. Only with such an accountability system, can we avoid the goal distortion that results from accountability only for a few basic skills. Our proposals include an expanded federal data collection system, covering both standardized tests and performance assessments.

Ironically, there is a U. S. precedent for such an approach in the early development of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP):

Unlike today's NAEP exam which is almost exclusively a paper and pencil exam, early NAEP also collected data using survey and interview questions, and observations of student behaviors. With the exception of the arts and music exam in 1997, however, such performance assessments were eliminated by the federal government in the 1970s.

The authors note that previously NAEP required things such as writing a letter of application in response to a help-wanted ad, or how they would respond if they saw a park attendant acting in a racially discriminatory fashion or evaluating the calorie consequences of food choices - think how important a real world skill the last is at a time when our childhood obesity is exploding, with concomitant pressures on health and medical costs, as well as time lost from school and from work.

Currently NAEP, which is still the best standard by which to compare the results among NAEP, has the unfortunate result of downgrading US performance because of how it sets its proficiency levels. As Wilder notes of the Lake Wobegon demand that all children be proficient as measured by some state established standard and cross-checked by NAEP),

the law does demand that all students in each state pass a single challenging standard. This guideline comes from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) definition of proficiency as "demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter." However, there are no countries in the world, even the highest performing countries, in which all students are able to reach a challenging standard. In Grading Education we demonstrate this fact by predicting how students in Korea and Singapore-the top scoring countries on international math assessments- would score on the United States' NAEP. We found that over 25 percent of students in Singapore and Korea would score below the 8th grade NAEP proficiency cut score in math.
It is impossible for all U.S. students to reach a challenging level of proficiency by 2014 or by any year.One standard cannot be challenging to most and achievable by all.

The authors recommend an assessment program that, while still including tests and other quantitative measures, would also include the qualitative data that comes from expert evaluation

...expert evaluations of schools and student work, conducted on a regular cycle. Even the most sophisticated test questions are not fully adequate to reveal students' abilities. Therefore, mandatory school evaluations should be conducted by professional inspectors to inform the public about how well schools are progressing towards the eight goals described above. Inspectors should observe lessons in every classroom, meet with members of the school community, shadow students selected at random and observe daily school and classroom practices. Observations would enable inspectors to make concrete recommendations based on their expert knowledge, and subsequent inspections could evaluate a school's progress in addressing areas identified as in need of improvement. Schools deemed in need of great improvement should be visited more frequently and schools meeting or exceeding standards could be visited less often. The reports of inspectors should be made available to the public, and if schools repeatedly fail to make the necessary changes to ensure student progress towards the multiple goals of public education, states should intervene and replace inadequate administrators and faculty.

Here I can speak from some experience. Maryland schools get reaccredited by a process of evaluation that includes visits from teams of educators sent out by our region, Middle States. Every teacher is observed at least twice, by two different educators with some degree of experience in the content. The building is evaluated physically, the school climate is assessed. Non-teachers are interviewed. But all of this takes place AFTER the school has engaged in a year-long process of self-evaluation, a process that includes defining a clear philosophy and set of goals, and evaluating the relationship between school and the larger community, recognizing that the education of students is not limited to what happens within the walls of our classrooms and schools. I have in the past serve as chairman of the committee that dealt with our school's philosophy and goals and am slated to do so as we begin the process again this coming fall. Like the process of National Board Certification, where the candidate is required to examine in detail his/her teaching in light of primary goal of serving the needs of the students, this process requires a great deal of honest self-reflection. High and/or improving scores on external tests is considered insufficient. As Wilder notes, such an approach is already used elsewhere in the world:

Other countries have long known of the goal distortion that occurs when educational institutions are held accountable for only some of their many goals. Employing this knowledge in their accountability policies, many countries including England, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and France depend upon a system of school inspections that includes student test scores as only one indicator of performance for holding schools accountable. Although the specifics of school inspections differ from country to country, the principles are the same: employ trained professionals to visit schools to assess if their practices-curriculum, instruction, facilities, leadership, materials, etc.-are likely to graduate students who will become successful, productive citizens. In cases where inspection demonstrates deficiencies in a school's practices, the responsible national or local agencies intervene to improve the school's methods.

The entire interview is worth reading. What the authors offer is something far more useful than the kind of narrow focus on tests that has been consuming our educational policy for the past 8 years. The detrimental affects of such an approach should have been anticipated, given what we know about fields other than education :

For example, police commanders have sometimes given police officers ticket quotas in an attempt to ensure that policemen work effectively. Policemen respond to such quotas by issuing more traffic tickets, but this has resulted in police ignoring other important responsibilities that are more difficult to measure, such as prevention of crime by community policing. When medical services have been held accountable, for example, for easily measured reductions in infant mortality, these services may achieve such reductions by shifting resources to hospital obstetric services and away from prenatal care for pregnant women. The services reduce mortality but then have higher proportions of low birthweight and seriously disabled births, because prenatal care was de-emphasized.

I urge you to read and ponder the entire interview. Even before you read the book, you will begin to be prepared to respond to those people who insist a test-based approach to accountability is the only possible solution. We do need to make changes to our system of public education, but the path we have been following not only has not achieved the goals it ostensibly seeks, it cannot, any more than all children will be proficient by 2014. The authors will help you understand why a different approach is needed. They go further in proposing a path that would be far more effective, if only we could get policy makers to step back and look honestly at ALL of what we know about schools, assessment and evaluation.

Peace