Steven Brill: "Class Warfare"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-08-16/steven-brill-class-warfare
American students rank 15th in the world in reading literacy, 25th in math and 17th in science. Frustrated parents in urban areas have turned to charter schools led by young, idealistic teachers. Education reformers have found an ally in President Obama, whose “Race to the Top” program rewards states that measure teacher quality and tie salaries to student test scores. But the program has met resistance from teachers’ unions, who form the backbone of the Democratic Party. Veteran journalist Steven Brill, who investigated New York's infamous "Rubber Rooms," reports on the education reform movement and the great struggle it has set off within the Democratic Party.
Guests
Steven Brill
journalist and author of "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era," and "The Teamsters"
Related Items
Read an Excerpt
Excerpted from "Class Warfare" by Steven Bill. Copyright 2011 by Steven Brill. All rights reserved. Excerpted here by kind permission of Simon & Schuster:
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What's changed? Faith/religious leaders worshiping the profit motive? hardly! The sunny side could be the exposing of the pursuit of corporate profits over human rights. Schools, if not already will become the extension of public media, molding minds for corporate welfare stability and growth, somewhat unlike Jesus and role model saints. What is the capacity of Hell? Answer---unlimited.
Maybe funding schools as opposed to BIGGER classes?
Hiring teachers instead of firing them? Excuse US, laying off, or as Congress says, temporary lateral or unupward career mitigation cyclical unanticipated growth and jobs defecit diversion experimentation.
At least we come together in desparate and desperate times to share tythes, hopes, and prayers.
Prior to waging war of course.
Just going by the excerpt from Steven Brill's book, this looks like the usual prescription pablum for privatization. Obama and the Democratic party had better figure out pretty quickly that these people are not their friends.
Someone in the business of public information needs to do some serious homework on the background of this campaign to starve public education out of existence. They do love their Madison Avenue slogans, that's for sure, but the measure of their falsity is just how much money they have to spend to make the gullible believe them. And that's a lot.
As a 62 yr old black grandmother in Cleveland, I whole heartedly agree they mean us no good. They used us to get around separation of church and state because too many religious schools were foundering. Now, here in Ohio, they are continually dystroying our schools. They have vilified our teachers with lies. here, in Cleveland, they have shut down over sixty schools on the predominately black east side, 60/1. They had cut most classes I had when i attended. Chemistry, Physics, Calculus, Trig, in east side schools and then call them non performing. NOW, this governor wants to get more charters and let white hat managements handle them with no accountability. NONE of their schools score above 2% compliance. NONE!! My 9 yr old grandson goes to the 4th grade. His IQ was 115 in the first. Last year he did accelerated fourth grade class work in the thrid grade and aced his classes. This year his class will have 60+ children in ONE class. Same for other classes. 60. Now, I know the republicans want our children back into separate and unequal. I am so angry no other black leader sees this.
In my area private schools on average educate the students K through 12 for $4500. Public schools on average do the job for $12,500. Can you imagine the economic boost if we can give parents a choice through a voucher system. Not only would we as homeowners be more secure in our houses because of greatly reduced property taxes, we would have better schools through competition.
To be fair, there are some leaders who see it.
Here's a useful resource whose name I really love —
The Black Long Island Iced Tea Party
Public schools have costs that charter schools don't. Public schools are required to accept all students. The students with special educational needs cost money and are hardly compatible with for profit business model.
From Dana Goldstein's piece in "The Nation"....
"Brill’s repeated[ly] claim[s] that the effects of poverty can be not only mitigated but completely beaten back by good teachers. 'A snowballing network of education reformers across the country…were producing data about how teaching counted more than anything else,' Brill writes in the book’s opening pages. Later, he devotes a chapter to economists Thomas Kane and Douglas Staiger, whose work on value-added teacher evaluation has powerfully influenced Bill Gates’s education philanthropy. 'It wasn’t that poverty or other factors didn’t affect student performance,' Brill summarizes. 'Rather, it was that teacher effectiveness could overcome those disadvantages.'
In fact, the work of the many researchers Brill approvingly cites—including Kane, Staiger and Stanford’s Eric Hanushek—shows that while teaching is the most important in-school factor affecting student achievement, family and neighborhood characteristics matter more. The research consensus has been clear and unchanging for more than a decade: at most, teaching accounts for about 15 percent of student achievement outcomes, while socioeconomic factors account for about 60 percent."
PLEASE ASK MR. BRILL TO CLARIFY.
"In 2009, the most authoritative study of charter schools was conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University. The report is the first detailed national assessment of charter schools. It analyzed 70% of the nation's students attending charter schools and compared the academic progress of those students with that of demographically matched students in nearby public schools. The report found that 17% of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools; 46% showed no difference from public schools; and 37% were significantly worse than their traditional public school counterparts. The authors of the report considering this a "sobering" finding about the quality of charter schools in the U.S. Charter schools showed a significantly greater variation in quality as compared with the more standardized public schools with many falling below public school performances and a few exceeding them significantly. Results vary for various demographics with Black and Hispanic children not doing as well as they would in public schools, but with children from poverty backgrounds, students learning English, and brighter students doing better; average students do poorer. While the obvious solution to the widely varying quality of charter schools would be to close those who perform below the level of public schools, this is hard to accomplish in practice as even a poor school has its supporters." - Center for Research on Education Outcome
Please mention Khan's Academy, which has over 2,000 math and other lessons for free on You Tube. Khan's Academy has received grants from Bill Gates and Google and hopes to eventually provide a quality free education to anyone in the world who has internet access.
Some public schools are using Khan Academy to give lessons to the students, which frees the teacher to tutor in class those students who need help. This eliminates lock-step teaching and allows the students to go as far as quickly as their own mastery of the material allows.
THANK YOU, Jon! Ability varies. Inherited IQ and a student's close social environment are far more indicative of high academic achievements than anything else. Don't believe me? Read anything by James Flynn or Arthur Jensen.
I don't know what the right answer is. More and more, it seems like we need a cultural shift rather than more spending....
Please mention Khan's Academy, which has over 2,000 math and other lessons for free on You Tube. Khan's Academy has received grants from Bill Gates and Google and hopes to eventually provide a quality free education to anyone in the world who has internet access.
Some public schools are using Khan Academy to give lessons to the students, which frees the teacher to tutor in class those students who need help. This eliminates lock-step teaching and allows the students to go as far as quickly as their own mastery of the material allows.
I hear you, pisces. Racial inequality in Cleveland is worse than any other city I have lived. Someone needs to call this travesty what it is. Maybe that someone is you. ;)
I don't know what area you are in but in Cleveland it is nothing like that and never has been. They spen that much in suburbia but no in the inner city where they do not even have enough or any books. Tell that right wing lie to some other dummy. Frankly, I am sick of half truths and lies and liars.
Wisconsin did not "try" to eliminate teacher unions!! they eliminated collective bargaining powers.
eliminating collective bargaining is tantamount to destroying union.
Beieve me I am mad enough to bite nails. I wish black people would realized, everything given to you is not good. they made it sound good. It usually isn't Go ask those Trojans about that wooden horse. Eventually they built Rome but what they had to do to get there. Same here.
As a mother of 2 children in a public school in MD , in one of the largest school districts in the country, I can tell you what's wrong with our public school system - it's all the standardized testing! We already have the testing mandated under "No Child Left Behind" and now will have further testing for performance under "Race to the Top." Teachers are forced to teach to the test and very little actual instruction is happening. Furthermore, these tests are meaningless (particularly given the news of how school systems have manipulated results. I say, LET THE TEACHERS TEACH.
Are you talking to me, pisces? I'm not right wing! I'm African-American and I have seen what you're talking about first hand!
I say we need less spending OVERALL but we need to re-distribute expenditures to schools that really need the money. There is no excuse for inner city schools not having enough books. That's just racism at its worst.
What can elected school board members of public school systems do to encourage academic achievement? All changes must be evolutionary due to union parameters, but kids’ academic needs are immediate. What best practice measure can be implemented to shift expectations and drive for academic achievement and global competitiveness for our students?
As a newly retired teacher I know the problem is multifaceted. The piece that most discourages me is the willingness to blame the teachers when so many other factors contribjute to the problems.
Having been a teacher in a low performing school, without neightborhood kids (parents wouldn't let them come), busing in children from rival neighborhoods, the single bigness problem were the parents. When they don't believe in education, are not encourageing their children with their time and resources and not assisting the teachers when they could (simply by checking =homework, visit and assist in the classroom, stay in contact with their children on a daily basis about school matters), then it doesn't matter how good the teacher is, the child has to bring their part to the table.
Research shows charter schools perform as well as public (bad, good and great), parents are required to participate so when their child doesn't perform it's hard to blame the teachers and our government loves not being blamed. these schools do not have to accept the many non-performing children that public teachers much accept. These schools have discipline plans with meat (kid might have to leave), while the public schools are told to keep the misbehaving students in school. These schools are not required to teach to the test, their evaluations are based on their principals' opinion (one reason we needed a union),
I think the future will have many of the highest performing students being educated at home on computer and coming to an educational setting for certain activities. This would free us up to spend time with the students who need it the most.
thanks for letting me vent.
An important issue that should be discussed is the nationwide variation in curricula and textbooks and its impact on education. Public schools in affluent suburbs and private schools have a more demanding curriculum and use far better textbooks.
Anyone with a working long-term memory knows where this agenda to “Starve Public Schools Out Of Existence” came from.
Good thing there's web search for the rest of us —
Richard DeVos Advocates “Stealth” Strategy Against Public Education
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-fTAhc4QC4
yep unions suck. unions are no longer needed within the dynamics of the current environment in which we find ourselves deployed. and steven brill is very accurate when he says that unions create environments where under performing teachers can pretty much thrive as long as they are in the union. and its not just the teachers union its pretty much all these unions out here. its a structure set up to feed itself continuously. and its gets to the point where everything becomes all about paying union dues staying in the union and helping the union to become more and more powerful instead of developing and cultivating the people in the union. there are people in the union that pretty much spend most of their time making sure they stay in the union and continue to earn more and more and the actual job of the actual teaching or the actual doing of the work goes out the door. "as long as i'm in the union i'm good." this has created mounds of inefficiencies. this is why unions are going away at some point and probably sooner than later. and its funny to watch union people trying to lobby and march and keep up a fuss pretty much just to keep a stupid union alive.
If Mr. Brill's union argument was valid we would expect schools and districts without unions and collective bargaining to be different. Yet that is not the case. ALL schools and districts are crippled and broken. Eliminating all unions will not make a dent in the problem.
This man has not reached any conclusions that will lead to improvement. Improving NYC schools may start with unions problems. They have little or nothing to do with the schools for the rest of the country.
I am signing off now this guys does not represent anything more than a narrow group of schools and students. He is not an authority on how to reform schools nationwide.
Good points, pmcclendon2. We DO need more discipline. I experienced the problems you wrote about first-hand as a student....
Also, I agree. Charter schools don't have better results on average than public schools....
Please ask Brill why it is that all of these "No Child Left Behind" rules and teaching to the test are anathema to best practices taught in teacher education programs across the country. For instance there is ample scholarly research to support that testing proves nothing but your ability to take a test and your understanding of white culture. Good assessment requires a cross section of indicators that include, writing samples, projects, tests, homework completion, and the student's commitment and effort.
Steven Brill has many inconsistencies in his argument that defy logic. He says Wisconsin went too far but without the changes in collective bargaining none of his remedies would be possible.
Brill at one point seems to dismiss the idea that we should be recruiting only our "best and brightest" to serve in our nation's classrooms. Yet Singapore, South Korea, Finland, and other countries, those whose students consistently outscore our own, require that their primary and secondary teachers be drawn only from the top third (or better) tier of their students. If Americans are well satisfied with the qualities of their doctors of medicine, this is largely because our medical schools are highly selective and only admit the best and brightest to serve in our clinics and hospitals. Conversely, Americans should not be surprised if our educational system falls behind that of other countries when we continue to recruit so many teachers from the bottom third of high school and college graduates.
Mr. Brill stated that teacher unions can give money to candidates. In the past, they have been prohibited from giving to candidates, but they do ask members for political action contributions. That money can be given to individual campaigns, the same as a personal contribution can be, because it is a personal contribution. The union money argument is an obfuscation of the truth. Mr. Brill should know better.