In the mainstream media, the reporting was far less nuanced as both union meetings were cast as sharply at odds with the Obama administration and openly combative to "reform."
The different way these meetings were being reported on in the MSM, compared to the trade media, reminded me of how reporting on education in the mass media - what little of it there is - is so distorted by what I call "spokesperson laziness" and "false polarities." All too often, reporters in the MSM simply look for the easiest-to-reach representative of a "constituency" rather than digging into various points of view. And the goal always seems to be to develop a narrative of combat in which two "opposing" constituencies are pitted in a zero-sum struggle for dominance.
When it comes to education, this approach to "journalism" is probably more damaging to public awareness than on other issues. Because what's reported about education is so miniscule in the first place, people only seem to be aware that the Obama administration is pushing for "reform" and that teachers have all coalesced behind their unions in bitter "resistance to change." And this is totally false.
It is only when you start listening to educators themselves that you get the real story of what's going on in schools as the new politics of "education reform" steamrolls across the country.
Yet, as veteran educator and edublogger Walt Gardner points out here, teachers are the "potted palms" in reporting about education.
In fact, surveys of teachers have clearly shown that what they think is important to focus on in their work isn't at all aligned with what the Obama administration's policies are pursuing.
So what would we learn if we listened to educators?
OpenLeft has asked me to turn my semi-regular diary on education into a weekly feature that updates our community on what's happening with K-12 public schools -- giving Paul a bathroom break every Sunday at 4:00pm. I'm calling the feature "Left Ed" unless someone's got a better idea.
My hope is that each recurring post will use a progressive political lens to review weekly education news (veering occasionally into in-depth commentary on a specific topic), follow-up conversations from previous diaries with pertinent new events, and counter-balance the typical blather from the MSM with what real educators and people who actually know something about education are saying about the trends in public school policy.
The feedback I've gotten on this site to my previous diaries has run the gamut from effusive to frustrated to perplexed. I'm very grateful for this response and want to continue to generate conversation that can lead to a broad understanding of where the progressive community stands on public education issues, school reform, and the Obama administration's policies regarding public schools.
So why am I doing this? Mainly, as I stated in a comment to Mark Matson in my most recent diary, to "bridge what I perceive to be the gap between progressive views of education and what most liberals see as sane and responsible policy."
To kick-off Left Ed, I'd like to hear what others in this community want my weekly effort to address. What can I provide to better prepare us all to understand and, hopefully, influence the broader public dialogue about education policy? What should we track from week-to-week to keep ourselves informed of the pros and cons of the Obama administration's actions? What should we be advocating for at local, state, and federal levels? And who are the politicians that get it right and how can we support them?
Last week, President Barak Obama proclaimed that the firing of teachers at a Rhode Island school was a rational and effective solution for low test scores and high dropout rates. He said, "If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show signs of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability." The "accountability" that the President is referring to continues the drumbeat of rants against educators and schools that has been ongoing for decades. Only now, the rant has been adopted systemically as policy by the federal government in the form of Race to the Top and other incentives.
Goaded by the prospect of getting a share of the multi-billion-dollar RTT funds offered by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, state leaders, mayors, and school superintendants are implementing "turnaround models" for school improvement that rely on taking severe measures, measures that make educators primarily bear the full burden of school reform.
All four turnaround options being pushed by Mr. Duncan have profound effects on teachers and how they do their jobs, if they're lucky enough to be left with one. And all four are based on a notion that improvement will happen only through threatening educators.
This whole notion of making increased "accountability" the leverage point to push failing schools toward success is borne from the musings of free-market enthusiasts and corporate leaders like Bill Gates. The rationale, we are told, is that "our students are falling behind those in other countries." The reason for this is that schools lack the "marketplace accountability of schools competing with one another." So therefore, "accountability is sorely needed," but educators so "resist the idea" that they need to be subjected to harsher threats and incentives. Never mind that the record for turnaround approaches used in the private sector has shown no "evidence of boosting performance."
The desire to make schools "more accountable" has been so broadly accepted by politicians and the media that virtually no one outside of the education profession speaks out against it. But the finger pointing solves nothing other than continuing to give life to the notion that education is something other than a shared, community obligation - in short, that we're all accountable for educating children.
Following up on Chris's diary yesterday, "Our Cognitive Dissonance on Both Hiring, and Firing, Teachers En Masse", it seems appropriate to ask, "Is Obama buying into rightwing frames, or reflecting a broad consensus when he focuses attention on bad teachers, and the need to raise standards?" The answer appears to be the former, according to America's longest-running poll on educational issues, the 40th annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll, released last September.
Funding is the top problem cited, followed by overcrowding--a funding-based problem--among public school parents. People who don't have children in public school tend to see discipline as a much bigger problem, boosting it to the number two spot among the general public--a striking example of how media tends to amplify negative images of public schools. But even so, both public school parents and the general public rank "good teachers" and "standards" very low when it comes to top problems facing community schools:
What's more, the Bush-era educational policy is very unpopular, when asked about re-authorization:
It appears that Obama has been so caught up in the elite political debates he claims to want to end, that he's forgotten to take the pulse of the American people.
[I hope this post about the changes to No Child Left Behind proposed by Congress proves interesting. It was originally posted on Edwize and written by Edwize blogger Maisie.]
Lest you think that the debate over reauthorizing No Child Left Behind is hard-to-follow/wonkish/a tempest-in-a-teapot or anything like that, note that Jonathan Kozol today entered his 76th day of a partial hunger strike over NCLB.
In protest over that law, Kozol, the widely-published, passionate advocate of educational equality, has taken himself into the realm of serious danger.
He's sick of NCLB. Mandating math and reading tests and punishing schools and students who do not meet their targets is "turning thousands of inner-city schools into Dickensian test-preparation factories," Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page quoted Kozol as saying. It has "dumbed down" school for poor, urban kids and created "a parallel curriculum that would be rejected out-of-hand" in the suburbs.
[I hope this post about the changes to No Child Left Behind proposed by Congress proves interesting. It was originally posted on Edwize and written by Edwize blogger Jackie Bennett in response to a New York Times editorial.]
Every corner of the educational community has protested the consequences of No Child Left Behind, including that the law has narrowed the curriculum and unfairly penalized schools already making progress.
In spite of that, an editorial in the NY Times defends the status quo. Referring to proposed NCLB revisions, the Times complains that the changes will "allow schools to mask failure in teaching crucial subjects like reading and math by giving them credit for student performance in other subjects."
Yet, just one paragraph earlier the Times has this to say: "Faced with poorly educated workers at home - especially in science - American companies are increasingly looking abroad."
