Important Questions for Public School Teachers

We begin with a declaration that American public school teachers strive to do their absolute best to help all their students learn as much as they are able. The purpose of my questions is to understand whether teachers are satisfied that they can give their students a genuine opportunity to learn, given the education process within which they are asked to teach, and the resources allocated to them.

Many public school teachers and other educators are concerned about the future of their own schools, about the future of public education as a whole, about their own futures and of the teaching profession, and about the future of our nation’s children. These concerns are justified considering the extent to which public education is under attack by education reformers with their focus on privatization of schools, high-stakes testing, attacking teacher unions and associations, and minimizing the reliance on teachers through increased utilization of digital technology.

The following questions are posed to all teachers, but especially to those who work in public schools under scrutiny because of low test scores and/or who have students who struggle to keep up. Think of the education process as the manner in which teachers, classrooms, time, and resources are organized to allow you to teach your students.

(Please note that I am not asking you to share your answers with anyone, only that you answer each question, as honestly as you can, to the satisfaction of your own hearts and minds.)

1) Given your commitment to do your best to help every one of your students experience academic success, how well does the education process support your efforts to give struggling students the extra time and attention they need to learn?

2) How often is it necessary for you to move your class on to a new lesson when one or more of your students—often a significant percentage of your class—are unable to demonstrate subject mastery on end-of-chapter exams?

3) How many times in a grading period, semester, or school year do you find it necessary to record a “below-passing score” in your gradebook?

4) By the end of a school year, what percentage of your students meet the objectives that were established for them per state academic standards for their grade level?

5) What percentage of your students earn a below-passing score on one or both Math and ELA components of your state’s competency exams (high stakes testing), or are unable to meet the criteria required to be identified as “proficient” in these subject areas; not “approaching proficient?”

If your answers to these questions raise doubts in your mind about the viability of the education process and the adequacy of the resources at your disposal, I ask you to consider another way to organize and teach our nation’s children. Please take the time to examine my education model, which is available for your review on my website at http://bit.ly/2k53li3 along with a white paper that provides the logical foundation for the model. It is an education model that has been developed through the utilization of a “systems-thinking” process, the principles of organizational development and positive leadership, and a focus on purpose that, in education, is helping every child achieve academic success.

Please note that “systems-thinking,” the principles of organizational development and positive leadership, and a focus on purpose or mission are utilized routinely in the private sector to help organizations address the concerns of dissatisfied customers and engage in continuous improvement of products and services. Often, this requires positive leadership to take an organization and its production process back to the drawing board to reinvent a process to produce better products and services or, in many cases, create new products and services. Make no mistake, education reformers and their supporters are nothing more than dissatisfied customers of public education.

If, upon review, you believe that my education model might improve the odds of success of your students, I ask you to help me spread the word, put an end to the failure of so many children, and end the frustration of public school teachers, everywhere. Implementing an education model focused on success will also render irrelevant the education reform movement with its focus privatization, high-stakes testing, and diminishing the role of teachers.

Part 1 of the Action component of our Strategic Action Plan to Reinvent Public Education

What follows are thirty-three (33) action items, all part of a comprehensive plan to transform public education in America.  These are actions that can be implemented one school district or organization at time until it is the reality in every public school district and every private, parochial, and charter school in the United States. The action items are divided into two groups.

The first group that are presented in this post are for implementation within our schools to transform the educational process. The second group, which will be presented in a subsequent post, will be focused on soliciting the support of the community at every level and venue toward the objective of pulling parents into the educational process. We want to resell the American dream and re-instill the hope and faith of millions of American parents that this newly transformed educational process will give their children a real chance for a better life.

The plan is constructed in such a way that it can evolve as our professional educators learn what works best in their particular environment. It is a plan that is designed to be a learning and adaptive process. The only aspects of the plan that are non-negotiable are our commitment to give each child an opportunity for a quality education and to preserve and protect the relationship between our schools and the communities they exist to serve.

These thirty-three (33) action items were first presented in my book Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America. For the plan to work, each and every action item must be addressed, even if modified to fit the unique characteristics of a school or community. The deletion of any item will throw the entire plan into a state of disequilibrium and will assure its failure.

The job of professional educators is to take these action items and to add to the list of things we can do, relentlessly. When outcomes are disappointing, a solution is always there, in front of us, at the very edge of our present capability.

The reader is advised that the logical framework for these action items is discussed in detail in my book Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America. The book examines, from an historical perspective how education has evolved to its current state and makes a detailed argument for each and every one of the recommendations to follow. Because much has been learned since my book was written, the author has exercised the privilege of making a few small changes in the recommendations.

In our post of June 24th we outlined all of the things we want our newly designed system of education to accomplish and the reader is encouraged to quickly review those goals and objectives before proceeding with the actual action items. In essence, what we want to accomplish is to put teachers in a position to teach and children in position to learn. We want both teaching and learning to be fun. We want teaching and learning to be a life-affirming activity.

Below are the specific steps that we believe will lead us to a new reality in which all of our goals and objectives can be achieved within the context of the system as an integral whole. These are not a list of actions from which we can pick and choose.

 

Action Item #1 – Each state department of public education should establish a forum of their state’s most accomplished educators and challenge them to employ a “Systems thinking approach”[1] in order to challenge our fundamental assumptions about the system and then re-engineer the system to better meet the needs of Twenty-first century American children, their parents, and educators. We need to:

 

  1.       Assess each student’s unique starting point and tailor an academic plan to his or her unique requirements;
  2.      Change the reality in such a way that what matters is not how fast a child learns something, compared to his or her classmates, rather that they learn it;
  3.     Change the expectations for teachers in such a way that taking the time to make sure a child is ready to move on is the norm and not a risky, consequence-laden diversion;
  4.       Restructure our schools in a way that increases the probability that close, long-lasting relationships will develop between teachers and students and also the parents of those students;
  5.      Create an environment that fosters the special rapport many of us experienced with our favorite teachers;
  6.      Create reality in which no child is labeled and where every child succeeds because, in the final analysis, all success is relative;
  7.     Create a reality in which children never have to worry about being pushed into a situation in which they are unprepared and thus predetermined to fail; 
  8.      Create a reality in which the expectations of our children are incessantly on the rise;
  9.       Create a reality in which being somehow different does not diminish the esteem in which we are held and where our differences can be celebrated;
  10.    Create a reality that focuses entirely on success and in which the word failure does not exist;
  11.   Teach children that success is a process that all can master; and,
  12.   Rethink what Twenty-first Century children must learn in order to be successful in a new world where what we learn today may be obsolete before we know it.

 

It is imperative that we address the problems of trust and accountability. This will require that we engage parents in the process, that we make what happens in the classroom more transparent, and that teachers, their unions, and school administrators work together to find new methods and measures of accountability and enhance teacher training.

 

Action Item #2 – Individual teachers, members of teaching teams, and teacher unions must demand more accountability from their colleagues and must work hand in hand with administrators to develop peer review standards and practices to ensure that:

  1.        Substandard teachers are identified and remediated;
  2.        That exemplary teachers are recognized and rewarded;
  3.       That continued unacceptable performance leads to consequences that may include termination; and,
  4.      That competency exams have little if any role to play in the assessment of teacher or school performance.

 

 

 

Action Item #3 – Teachers associations must rise to the challenge of redefining their mission in meeting the challenges of Twenty-first Century public education with a focus on partnering with the administration in the development of teacher training in: working as members of teaching teams; accepting responsibility for responding proactively to substandard performance of colleague; developing positive, nurturing relationships with students; and, developing partnerships with parents. Unions will also play a key role in serving as a powerful advocate for their members in the adoption and implementation of the other action items we will be proposing below.

 

 

 

Action Item #4 – Create an expectation that parents will visit their child’s classroom a given number of times during a semester or school year and hold the parents accountable by prompting those that need it and by reporting whether or not the expectations were met on report cards.

 

 

 

Action Item #5 – Install digital video recording equipment:

 

  1.      In the classrooms of American public schools and place sole control of that equipment in the hands of the classroom teachers, and
  2.      In the corridors, common areas, and playgrounds with the control place in the hands of the principal.

 

 

Next we must demand a commitment of students to both the educational process and to reasonable codes of conduct. This must include a change in perspective in which getting a quality education is no longer an entitlement but rather and a responsibility of citizenship.

 

 

Action Item #6 – States shall be asked to pass new legislation that abolishes compulsory education beyond the age of fourteen (14).

 

 

 

Action Item #7 – Establish education as a responsibility of citizenship rather than as a right and create an entitlement-free code of conduct in which students have the right to be safe, to be treated with dignity, and to an opportunity for a quality education, and are expected to earn rights and privileges through citizenship and scholarship.

 

 

It is vital that we shift the focus of our educational process to success, subject mastery, and accomplishment and eliminate even the idea of failure.

 

 

Action Item #8 – Shift educational focus to success and away from failure, providing ever-rising expectations: there is no failure, only varying velocities of success with students always working at the edge of their capability.

 

 

Action Item #9 – Shift our focus from protecting children from humiliation to preparing students to:

 

  1.       View success as a process, not a gift or entitlement,
  2.      View disappointing outcomes and mistakes as learning opportunities, and
  3.    Understand that the learning process prepares them to overcome adversity.

 

 

 

Action Item #10 – Convert educational standards that have been established in virtually every state, to sequential gradients of mastery from a most elementary starting point to overall subject mastery. We would want to set minimum levels of mastery that even the most challenged students can achieve with ever-higher levels of mastery that will follow, effectively allowing a student to progress as far as he or she is able.

 

 

We must create a unique academic path for each and every student so that they are judged only against their own performance.

 

 

Action Item #11 – Complete a comprehensive academic assessment on each child, prior to entering their first academic year, for utilization in the development of an educational plan tailored to his or her unique requirements.

 

 

 

Action Item #12 – Require students to demonstrate subject mastery before they are permitted to move on to new material, thus building a solid foundation for future academic success by:

 

  •        Allowing students to move forward as quickly as they are able,
  •        Allowing students who are struggling to get the special attention they require, and
  •        Document their accomplishments not their failures as part of their formal academic record.

 

 

We must put teachers in a position to teach, to engage both parents and students, and insure that they have the resources they require to do their important job.

 

Action Item #13 – Replace classroom aides with certified teachers to strengthen the team teaching capability and assuring that every dollar spent on personnel in the classroom is spent on professionals who can facilitate the learning process.

 

 

 

Action Item #14 – Introduce team teaching at all levels from elementary to secondary, where groups of three or more teachers are responsible for guiding a group of students through a given number of the stages of mastery.

 

 

 

Action Item #15 – Eliminate all reference to grade levels and replace that concept with three academic stages to be referred to as Elementary (first through the fifth academic year), Middle (sixth through the eighth academic year), and Secondary (ninth through the twelfth academic years).

 

 

 

Action Item #16 – Upon entry into their first academic year, groups of roughly forty-five students will be assigned to a team of at least three teachers who will remain with this group of students through completion of the students’ fifth academic year. As children enter their sixth academic year, they will be similarly assigned to a new team of at least three teachers who will remain with their students through academic years six to eight, at which time students and their families will have to decide whether the child will continue their formal education. These elementary and middle school academic units will allow students and teachers to establish close personal relationships that will foster the child’s academic success.

When students enter the ninth academic year, which will require a formal commitment from both the student and parent(s), the schools must be able to effectively assess a student’s progress to-date in order to determine how best to support each individual in the secondary stage of their education. Not only will that decision relate to an academic track such as college prep, technical, or vocational it must also determine the levels of intimacy and personal attention necessary for the child to perform at their optimal level.

 

 

We must create new measures of accomplishment, eliminate reliance on standardized competency examinations, and integrate the accountability process into the instructional process.

 

 

Action Item #17 – Replace current competency exams, such as the ISTEP+ in Indiana, with frequent mini-exams that allow teachers to assess subject mastery frequently throughout the year and to document these accomplishments.  Also, establish the threshold for demonstrating mastery at eighty-five percent (85%).

 

 

 

Action Item #18 – Eliminate graded homework that penalizes students for the mistakes they make and focus on practice that identifies mistakes as opportunities to learn followed by penalty-free chances to try again without any sense of failure until success is achieved.

 

 

We must take advantage of state-of-the-art technology, giving our teachers the ability to manage their time and priorities, eliminating important but time-consuming activity, and all with minimal adverse impact and the same user-friendliness we have come to expect from our smart phones.

 

 

Action Item #19 – Challenge an eclectic gathering of experts to develop a system of user friendly software and technology that converts academic standards, by subject matter, to step-by-step increments that:

 

  1.        Support teachers and students in the presentation of instructional material;
  2.       Permit students to read and study independently,
  3.        Provide multiple opportunities for students to practice applying these new skills both in the classroom and at home;
  4.       Give the teachers and students meaningful feedback as to the level of the student’s comprehension;
  5.       Directs students, automatically, to additional practice and instructional resources if appropriate;
  6.        Determines when a child appears to be ready to demonstrate their mastery in a given subject and directs them to what appears to be a practice quiz with no indication that the student must pass, but which is actually a Mastery Quiz;
  7.        If the child demonstrates mastery, will guide both student and teacher to appropriate new instructional units or modules;
  8.       When the child is unable to demonstrate mastery, will, very matter-of-factly, redirect the student and teacher to additional instruction and practice opportunities with the same material; leading to additional opportunities to practice and demonstrate mastery;
  9.        Relieve teachers of the burden of grading and recording papers whether practice assignments or quizzes thus freeing them to focus on instruction, feedback, and support;
  10.    Transmits documentation of the students successful mastery of the subject matter to the student’s permanent record for both recordkeeping and verification by appropriate authorities; and,
  11.    That periodically prompts the student to a review of previous lesson modules.


[1] Senge, 1990.

A Case for Action: Countering Misguided Reform Initiatives with a Plan to Transform Education in America!

Educational reform initiatives that have evolved since President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” Legislation have been gaining momentum and seem to be driven by the belief that public education in the U.S. is in a state of unprecedented crisis. These reformers insist that this crisis results, primarily, from of bad teachers and bad schools, all under the administrative control of local school districts that are poorly managed and unable to respond to the growing challenges for public education in Twenty-first Century America. Further, that even in school districts blessed with capable leadership, the efforts of these professionals are thwarted by teacher unions that make it difficult to respond to the performance issues of classroom teachers.

We believe that these reformers are wrong about everything except the existence of a crisis in public education, but it is a crisis of which these reformers seem to understand neither its nature nor its genesis. But still, they wield a big stick and the impact of the strategies and reforms initiated by these powerful leaders continue to reverberate throughout public-school classrooms, corridors, faculty lounges, and district board rooms; all driven by the mystifying assumption that if only we would run our schools as effectively as we run our businesses, quality education would prevail and expectations, everywhere, would rise.

What the actions of these reformers demonstrate, at least to this observer, is a minimal level of understanding of the forces that contribute to academic success and failure and a blatant lack of insight into the consequences of their actions.

On the other side of the conflict we have professional educators and administrators, men and women who have devoted their lifetimes to public education, who have responded to the legions of reformers by choosing to defend the honor of public education in America. Even the most renown and articulate spokespersons for professional educators have chosen to respond by defending the record of education in America, citing the progress that has been made over the last couple of decades. In this they are wrong, as the evidence will demonstrate.

These ardent advocates insist that the quality of education in America is better than it has ever been and that our students are learning more than they have ever learned. They argue that reformers grossly undervalue the critical role that poverty and racial segregation play in driving down the academic performance of America’s underprivileged children.

The warning that is shouted out by these advocates, is that the actions of the reformers threaten to destroy the very systems of education they have vowed to transform. The strategy of choice of the advocates of education in the U.S. is to complain loudly, voicing their predictions of the havoc being wreaked on our nation’s most vulnerable students and their schools.

 

Analysis and Recommendations

 

The reform initiatives of the government and corporate reformers of education are a runaway train that does, indeed, threaten to destroy our system of public education and our schools in communities all over the nation, to the great disadvantage of American children.

The reformers are correct, however, that public education in the U.S. is in a state of crisis that has ominous implications for the future of our nation.

It is the conclusion of this observer that the combined impact of this unprecedented crisis in public education in America and the misguided actions of the self-ordained reformers of education will be catastrophic for our children and for the American way of life, the future of which will soon rest upon the shoulders of these same children. We also suggest that the progression of this catastrophe is aided and abetted by the intransigence of our professional educators.

It is this author’s belief that our only hope for viable future for the United States of America, the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world, is for the professional educators throughout these United States to stop complaining and take action. Complaints are the useless weapons of the weak and the unimaginative. The principles of positive leadership suggest that, rather than complain, powerful leaders offer constructive alternatives.

It is imperative that professional educators unite behind an alternate plan of action designed to fix the real problems with public education and work relentlessly to sell it to the American people.

Our next post will be focused on three objectives;

1)      We will examine evidence proving that the crisis in education is real;

2)      We will demonstrate how the professional educators working in our public schools are as much victims of a dysfunctional system as are the children whom they teach; and,

3)      We will identify the specific components of our systems of public education, and the educational process that works within the system, that compel us to action.

In subsequent posts we will begin, item by item, to outline the specific action strategies that, if implemented and properly executed, will transform public education in the U.S. These action strategies were first introduced in my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America. As is always the case in a dynamic environment, I have learned much since the book was published a year ago and the strategic action plan we will be presenting will benefit from the wisdom and knowledge that has been gained.

That process of learning and adapting is relentless and self-perpetuating and the plan will continue to evolve as our teachers and principals come on board and begin adding their own wisdom and knowledge to the equation. Strategic action plans are very much like organizations and human systems in that they are living, breathing entities that evolve, incessantly.

How Do We Stop the Runaway Train of Misguided Educational Reforms?

The educational reform initiatives that threaten to destroy public education in America are like a runaway train and cannot be stopped by the complaints of teachers, individually or collectively. Complaints are the useless weapons of the weak and the unimaginative. What teachers must believe is that, by banding together, they have the power to alter this untenable reality in education, but only if they open their hearts and minds to a new way of thinking about the educational process in which they have been immersed for so long.

The principles of positive leadership suggest that, rather than complain, powerful leaders offer constructive alternatives. In the case of education, that alternative cannot be a return to the status quo. We must acknowledge that the one and only thing about which corporate and government reformers have been correct is that the existing educational process is not meeting the needs of Twenty-first Century American children.

These reformers are wrong about everything else. They are wrong that teachers are to blame and that if we hold them accountable on the basis of student performance on annual competency examinations it will magically alter the outcomes. Such a strategy will not produce the outcomes we seek because teachers control only a small portion of the forces that are leading so many American children down the precipitous path to failure.

The reformers are wrong to think that privatization, financial incentives, charter schools, and removing our schools from the control of the communities they exist to serve will reverse the hopelessness and the powerlessness of a growing percentage of Americans who have lost faith in the American Dream.

These reformers are wrong to think that entrepreneurial principles and state-of-the-art technology can mitigate the value of trained and committed professionals in our classrooms. These reformers are wrong because they are pushing the wrong business principles; they are wrong because they have forgotten that, no matter how sophisticated it might be, technology will never be more than a powerful tool in the hands of people who know how to effectively and productively utilize it; and, they are wrong because they are blind to the reality that American public school teachers are victims of the same educational process that victimizes their students.

What educators must recognize is that the power that drives these reformers is a function of the public’s loss of faith in professional educators, in American public schools, and in an educational process that has left millions of American men and women bitter, resentful, and disillusioned.

It is not too late for American educators to re-establish themselves as our nation’s leaders of choice as we work to reinvent the American educational process. Time has become a commodity in short supply, however. We dare not waste another day, week, or month before we recognize the challenge before us come together to face it. If we wait a year we might as well throw in the towel because our envelope of opportunity will have re-sealed itself.

In this eleventh hour we need a comprehensive blue print for reinventing the American educational process and I offer my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-first Century America (REHAD) as a starting point.

The next couple of posts will be devoted to re-presenting the action strategies offered in the book (REHAD) into a strategic action plan that requires only a definitive decision to act. That decision to act is the responsibility of the professional men and women who preside over teacher associations and unions; over associations for principals and administrators; over the boards of entities established to promote education in the U.S., and over school districts and corporations, whether public or private.

As an author, I have no illusions that my strategic action plan, as comprehensive as it may be, will be the final iteration of a new vision for education in the U.S. but it is a place to start. What must follow is an analysis on the part of a diverse population of professional educators working diligently for ways to improve and enhance this initial blueprint.

Professional educators must harbor no illusions that they can pare this vision back until it is no more than the current reality, in disguise. Any such pretense will be quickly recognized and rejected and there will be no second chances.

Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch; the 3rd Installment of my Journaled Review

In her second chapter of this monumental work, Ravitch begins by providing an historical overview of Federal initiatives in response to what many believe to be an urgent need for massive reforms in our systems of public education,leading up to the George W. Bush administration. Under Bush’s administration the “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) legislation was introduced and it was to have a far-reaching adverse impact on our systems of education, according to Ravitch, many others in the field of education, and of this author/blogger. The NCLB declared that all students in grades 3 – 8 should be tested annually; that states were to monitor schools re: their performance; and, that “failing” schools were to be labeled and face consequences up to and including closure. She notes that, given the unreasonable standard many schools, even some of our very best, failed year after year. She also notes that schools with high proportions of poor and minority students “were the likeliest to be labeled as failing.”

Ravitch writes “Let’s be clear: 100 percent proficiency is an impossible goal.” She makes a wonderful comparison to applying this standards to an expectations that cities were to become crime free and that cities that failed to rise to such expectations would see the closing of police stations and the firing of police officers. She writes “the first to close would be the police stations in the poorest neighborhoods, where crime rates were the highest.”

As I stated in my book, Reinventing Education, Hope and the American Dream, referencing teachers, “it’s like blaming the soldiers for the war they were asked to fight.” What it shows is just how dreadful is the understanding of legislators and policy makers with the problems facing education in America.

What seems to most concern Ravitch is that NCLB demands utilization of testing to assess the performance of both schools and their teachers and also that it “opened the door to huge entrepreneurial opportunities . . . .” It also “encouraged the growth of the charter sector by proposing that charter schools were a remedy for failing schools.”

She notes that when the concept was first introduced, charter schools were envisioned as a way for teachers to find “innovative ways to ignite the . . . Interest in education” speaking specifically of “lowest performing students, the dropouts and the disengaged.” She points out that it was also envisioned that the lessons learned in charter schools were to have been applied to our most challenging public schools.

She notes that the earliest proponents of charter schools never “imagined a charter school sector that was 90 percent non-union or one that in some states presented profit-making opportunities for entrepreneurs.”

The federal government, Ravitch tells us, promoted the concept of charter schools as a way to “compete with neighborhood public schools for higher test scores. . .” absent any evidence that the concept would work.

What has resulted, she suggests, is that the “incessant” focus on testing, creative ways to incent and fund charter schools, the use of vouchers, and privatization have had and continue to have a devastating impact on our neighborhood public schools, the teachers that populate those schools and the most vulnerable population of American school children that is served by those schools and their teachers.

Ravitch argues that, just as “this unnatural focus on testing produced perverse but predictable results; it narrowed curriculum; many districts scaled back time for the arts, history, civics, physical education, science, foreign language, and whatever was not tested.” She cites the widespread cheating that we are seeing; wasting huge sums of money on test preparation and administration; and “teaching to test” by teachers who feel pressure “to save their jobs and their schools.”

As a substitute, I have seen this occur where teachers are introducing material as “these are the kind of questions or problems you are likely to find on ISTEPs (the State of Indiana’s student competency examinations).

Anyone who does not agree with Ravitch’s concerns about the fraud and mismanagement of funds as a result of the privatization of education should think for a moment about Medicare and Medicaid fraud where doctors (supposedly the most trusted professionals in all of American society) and other health professionals and institutions are being charged for manipulating the system for their own financial interests. When there are big dollars at stake it seems to bring the greed and larceny out of even the best of us, and as Ravitch shows, dollars amounts being utilized to provide incentives and grants for these reforms are enormous.

The election of President Obama, Ravitch suggests, raised hopes of new directions in federal education policy that were quickly dashed. She cites what amounts to little more than a feeding frenzy as states and others compete for huge sums as a result of Obama’s Race to the Top, Common Core, et al.

Ravitch writes, “By picking a few winners, the Race to the Top competition abandoned the traditional idea of equality of educational opportunity, where federal aid favored districts and schools that enrolled students with the highest needs.”

We have seen it in other venues where the sudden availability of incentives through federal funding has spawned spectacular growth in the number of consultants and other for-profit entities that carve out enormous chunks of scarce dollars that will never, ever be spent in the direct benefit of a single American boy or girl.

Ravitch is absolutely correct that “reformers support testing, accountability and choice.” and that this blind commitment to unproven ideas is leading to the destruction of the public school systems on which Americans have depended for generations.

She concludes this chapter by saying that “the debates about the role of schooling in a democratic society, the lives of children and families, and the relationship between schools and society were relegated to the margins as no longer relevant to the business plan to reinvent American Education.”

Her last line is an unfortunate choice of words, from the perspective of a writer who has entitled his own book about educational reform as Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream; The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America. I suspect that just the word “reinventing” has rendered my book as valueless in her mind, assuming she has even glanced at the correspondence I have sent inviting her to read the book or at the comments I have made in response to posts on her blog, as well as the posts on my own blog.

I agree with her completely that the direction of these national reform efforts is placing the very future of our nation and its children at risk. We seem to disag

The reinventing that I advocate is designed to come from inside of our schools reaching out to our community not the other way around. They are ideas that demand that the links between our schools and their teachers and the communities that they serve are strengthened rather than weakened. They are ideas that cherish the vital role that teachers play in the lives of their children and that are meant to improve the ability of those teachers to make a difference in those lives.

They are ideas that reject reliance on standardized competency assessments as a dangerous intrusion that not only distracts teachers from their purpose but puts emphasis on the “timed regurgitation of facts, figures, and formulas” rather than on sustained, meaningful mastery of subject matter that the men and women whom these children become will carry and utilize throughout their lives.

They are ideas that borrow from things we have learned, from an operational perspective, in a business environment and not from the boardrooms and their focus on financial incentives, investments, and entrepreneurialism. The lessons from which I challenge educators to learn have to do with things like problem-solving, teamwork, integrating quality assessment into the learning process, and giving the people on the production line the tools and resources they need to help them do the best job of which they are capable.

They are ideas at risk of being branded as more of the same by the real educators who are being forced to defend themselves and the important work they do when, in fact, these ideas will empower educators rather than bind and restrict them.

The author and the readers of Reign of Error are urged to have faith that not all re-inventers are out to do them harm and to give Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream a chance to open their eyes to a new way of looking at what they do.