Reprinted fromThe New York Times, January 2, 2009
While their friends played video games in pajamas or vacationed in the tropics, a dozen sixth graders spent winter break at Elite Academy in Flushing, Queens, memorizing word roots. Time was ticking as they prepared to face the thing they had talked about, dreamed about and lost sleep over for much of the past year: the Hunter College High School admissions exam, a strenuous three-hour test that weeds out about 90 percent of those who take it.
On Wednesday, the final day of test-prep boot camp before the Jan. 9 exam, there seemed to be nothing more terrifying to these 11-year-olds than the risk of failure.
Some had taken up coffee; others, crossword puzzles and cable news shows to glean vocabulary words. A few of their parents had hired private tutors and imposed strict study hours, and several had paid up to $3,000 for a few months of English and math classes at Elite, a regimen modeled on the cram schools of South Korea, China and Japan.
The five girls and seven boys at Elite on Wednesday seemed to delight in their onerous routine, unwilling or unable to imagine life any other way.
“My friends think it’s wacko to do so much preparation,” said Akira Taniguchi, an aspiring F.B.I. agent who attends the honors program at Junior High School 54 on the Upper West Side. “But now I feel I’m really focused, thanks to this academy, and way more confident than I was when I first came here.”
Patryk Wadolowski, the brown-haired, blue-eyed president of his sixth-grade class at Public School 58, chimed in: “It just prepares us for life. Any obstacle we face we’ll be able to conquer.”
In a classroom decorated with maps and illustrations of vocabulary words (a string of z’s for “dormant,” a serene plateau for “salubrious”), the squad of high-achievers spent 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. dissecting English and math questions. As they progressed from sentence completion to reading comprehension, nearly every question posed by the teacher, Elisabeth Stuveras, elicited a garden of eager hands.
The puzzle of the moment was the word “resentment.” Some students had been stumped by it on the practice test, and Ms. Stuveras asked if anyone could offer a definition.
“Like, you resent having a fight with people?” Patryk hypothesized.
No, that was “regret,” Ms. Stuveras explained. She searched for an example that might ring true for the students.
“Pretend your friends are applying to Hunter,” she said. “There’s a chance that the person who didn’t get in might feel a little resentment they didn’t get in. They are upset the other people got in, with a little jealousy.”
“ ‘Resent’ is a good word to add to your vocabulary,” Ms. Stuveras concluded. The students nodded in understanding, highlighting the word in unison.
At 1:15, they took a break, throwing aside lofty vocabulary to chat around the vending machines about their favorite rappers (Jay-Z and Kanye West) and coming school dances.
When prompted, they took a moment to reflect on why they wanted to get into Hunter. Some said it was an urge to become better students and be surrounded by bright peers; others said they had been told Hunter was a vital steppingstone to elite colleges and a successful career.
“Ever since I was in second grade, I always wanted to go to Hunter,” Patryk said. “I’ve always strived to achieve everything in every test.”
Most of the students came to the five-day winter break program at Elite after attending Saturday prep classes at the academy through the fall. Elite, which opened in 1986, is one of several cram schools in New York that has imported the year-round enrichment programs of the Far East, giving students the chance to forfeit evenings, weekends, summer break and winter vacation for test preparation.
While Elite limits advertising to Asian-language newspapers, about 50 percent of its students are non-Asian. (Asian students still predominate in the city’s top public high schools, including Hunter.)
Many of the students in the winter break program were children of immigrants — from South Korea, Japan, Poland — and most attend city schools. Few things are kept private. Scores on practice tests are posted in the front lobby, and students freely share their homework scores and edit each other’s essays. It is the first time many of them have received letter grades on assignments.
When it was time to hand back essays, Ms. Stuveras announced that four students had earned high-passes. “Ah, yes!” Patryk exclaimed.
Did anyone fail? “Well, yes,” Ms. Stuveras explained. “You guys did pretty well, though; there were a lot of high-fails.”
Joanna Cohen, a student at the School at Columbia University who peppers her sentences with words like “amiable” and “headway” and spits out math formulas faster than the teacher can write on the board, sipped on mint tea at her desk (most of her classmates preferred Pepsi or Mountain Dew). She smiled as she looked at her high score on the practice exam.
After class, she passed around her blue grammar book and asked some classmates to write their phone numbers in the front.
Outside, in the lobby, the students exchanged study tactics and traded recommendations on dictionaries and vocabulary books. (Joanna recommends “Webster’s.”)
A few said they were going to devote their free time to the thesaurus, looking for ways to spruce up ho-hum sentences. (“Our teacher said using high-level vocab will increase your chance of passing,” Akira explained.)
And what if they were not among the fewer than 200 students who gain seats out of a pool of up to 2,000 test-takers?
“I’ll be sad,” said James Lee, a student at Intermediate School 119 in Glendale, Queens, “but there’s still Stuyvesant.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Sunday, January 04, 2009
ROLAND BURRIS: THE POST-CIVIL RIGHTS BLACK MAN BLUES
Burris is no idiot. In fact, he's crazy like a fox.
Roland Burris is right in line with the other "grabbers" in Chicago and Illinois politics. Burris sees an opportunity and he's going for it. What else would a 71 year old man want from a political career that was the envy of many but also dull, dull, dull.
Roland Burris is acting out a REVENGE OF THE NERDS psychology that will have people talking about him long after this end game has played out. Burris never had that as Illinois Attorney General or as Illinois Comptroller. This is his moment in the national spotlight, his fifteen minutes of fame in DC. It must have burned his hide to see an uppity upstart like Barack Obama become a US Senator and then President-elect of the United States.
Like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights era Black men, Burris sees what was denied him rather than what he effectively laid the groundwork for by being the first African American elected to statewide office.
Burris is through with playing the good Negro and now is going after what is "rightfully" his.
Is he deluded in accepting Blagojevich's offer? Absolutely!
Will he back down now that he has the national spotlight? Hell No!
Get the popcorn ready, Marge. This week is going to be good watching.
Roland Burris is right in line with the other "grabbers" in Chicago and Illinois politics. Burris sees an opportunity and he's going for it. What else would a 71 year old man want from a political career that was the envy of many but also dull, dull, dull.
Roland Burris is acting out a REVENGE OF THE NERDS psychology that will have people talking about him long after this end game has played out. Burris never had that as Illinois Attorney General or as Illinois Comptroller. This is his moment in the national spotlight, his fifteen minutes of fame in DC. It must have burned his hide to see an uppity upstart like Barack Obama become a US Senator and then President-elect of the United States.
Like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights era Black men, Burris sees what was denied him rather than what he effectively laid the groundwork for by being the first African American elected to statewide office.
Burris is through with playing the good Negro and now is going after what is "rightfully" his.
Is he deluded in accepting Blagojevich's offer? Absolutely!
Will he back down now that he has the national spotlight? Hell No!
Get the popcorn ready, Marge. This week is going to be good watching.
Friday, January 02, 2009
BLAGOJEVICH AND BURRIS: WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN?
This past week I tuned into the press conference given by Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois when he named Roland Burris to be his choice to fill President-elect Barack Obama's recently vacated U.S. Senate seat.
The scene played out like a comic opera. Blagojevich looked shifty and like the canary who ate the catbird. Yep, that odd.
Even though it seems like everybody except the Pope has asked Blago to re-sign for trying to sell that very same senate seat in question, the Illinois Governor is within his right to appoint a successor to Obama before next Tuesday when the other U.S. Senators are seated--representative Bobby Rush's feeble race politics comments aside.
I have one word: Unbelievable.
I must admit, I miss watching the drama that is Chicago and Illinois politics. This is proving to be a tremendous boon for bystanders, Republicans, and people who love politics as theater. It shows how broken our political system is.
The long and short of it is: Roland Burris should be seated. Not because he is Black. That would be ridiculous, like seating someone because they are white or male or have a pulse (anybody seen Dick Cheney lately?).
Roland Burris should be allowed to take the seat that Governor Rod Balgojevich is appointing him to because Blagojevich is a sitting governor of the state within the fifty United States of America (that would be Illinois) and it is in his US Constitutional rights to be able to appoint a person of his choice to the vacated seat. He has not been convicted or impeached of anything.
Now, I'm no Blago fan nor do I fault Burris' for accepting the nomination from the disgraced governor; however, the rule of law is the most important part of this scenario.
Therefore, it does not matter what the fifty senators want that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid claims will be against any choice of Governor Blagojevich or even what a popular President-elect wants. Actually, it doesn't actually matter what the people or legislature from the State of Illinois wants. The legislature should have moved to impeach Blagojevich before they left for their Christmas Break. Now they must deal with the consequences of their hesitation.
Governor Rod Blagojevich is in his right to appoint and the Illinois Secretary of State, who is against the appointment, must certify Burris's nomination. Ironically, the Secretary of State is also another well-respected African American politician.
It's a brilliant in your face, F**K YOU to the people of Illinois from their governor, but it is legal and perfectly Illinois. It's Chicago politics at its theatrical best. Happy New Year, Land of Lincoln!
So, what are we teaching our children?
The rule of law and process.
The scene played out like a comic opera. Blagojevich looked shifty and like the canary who ate the catbird. Yep, that odd.
Even though it seems like everybody except the Pope has asked Blago to re-sign for trying to sell that very same senate seat in question, the Illinois Governor is within his right to appoint a successor to Obama before next Tuesday when the other U.S. Senators are seated--representative Bobby Rush's feeble race politics comments aside.
I have one word: Unbelievable.
I must admit, I miss watching the drama that is Chicago and Illinois politics. This is proving to be a tremendous boon for bystanders, Republicans, and people who love politics as theater. It shows how broken our political system is.
The long and short of it is: Roland Burris should be seated. Not because he is Black. That would be ridiculous, like seating someone because they are white or male or have a pulse (anybody seen Dick Cheney lately?).
Roland Burris should be allowed to take the seat that Governor Rod Balgojevich is appointing him to because Blagojevich is a sitting governor of the state within the fifty United States of America (that would be Illinois) and it is in his US Constitutional rights to be able to appoint a person of his choice to the vacated seat. He has not been convicted or impeached of anything.
Now, I'm no Blago fan nor do I fault Burris' for accepting the nomination from the disgraced governor; however, the rule of law is the most important part of this scenario.
Therefore, it does not matter what the fifty senators want that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid claims will be against any choice of Governor Blagojevich or even what a popular President-elect wants. Actually, it doesn't actually matter what the people or legislature from the State of Illinois wants. The legislature should have moved to impeach Blagojevich before they left for their Christmas Break. Now they must deal with the consequences of their hesitation.
Governor Rod Blagojevich is in his right to appoint and the Illinois Secretary of State, who is against the appointment, must certify Burris's nomination. Ironically, the Secretary of State is also another well-respected African American politician.
It's a brilliant in your face, F**K YOU to the people of Illinois from their governor, but it is legal and perfectly Illinois. It's Chicago politics at its theatrical best. Happy New Year, Land of Lincoln!
So, what are we teaching our children?
The rule of law and process.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
How long will the recession last?
The recession is effecting everyone and everything from the banking and credit industry to auto and manufacturing concerns. The gloom and doom is thick in the streets like one of those fogs in the Central Valley that rear ends semis, jack knifes fifth wheels, and upends mini-vans and cars alike. We're in for quite a dense and protracted foggy economic picture.
This current economic debacle has more to do with the lack of trust in the entire global system and the collapse in confidence that people and institutions are basically good and trustworthy. As a wise man once told me, it's like turbulence in an airplane. Turbulence just is. When you're sitting in your over-priced row 12, seat F and the plane hits a pocket of air that makes it dip and buck as if you're on a cheap carnival ride, most people who have flown don't start swearing at their pilot or flight attendants. They know that it is just turbulence. The bucking dip is neither good nor bad; it just is. That's where we are now. Billions of people around the world are fearing a calamitous airplane ride like people sealed in a financial flying tube. Now the pilot could make it worse by continuing to fly at the same altitude, neither asking for permission to go higher or lower, but staunchly staying the course. Those are our current pilots in Washington, New York, Detroit, Beijing, Mumbai, Islamabad, etc.
Getting back to my question: Just how long will this recession be?
Most experts agree, we haven't hit bottom yet. That's something we know for certain. In fact, most economists now believe that we began our turbulent recession starting in December of 2007, although most of these experts announced this month what the rest of us knew last year. That's some lag time.
What we know for sure is that people are still losing their jobs at an alarming rate; some analysts put the jobs lost at a half a million every month.
Also, retailers are just counting their receipts from the holidays. I visited a Northern California Target Store three days before Christmas of 2008 and a Costco the day before that. There was so much inventory on the shelves that you would have thought that we were at the beginning of the shopping season rather than at its end.
This signals that we won't be able to buy our way out of this crisis. When President George W. Bush urged people to "buy and shop" after September 11, 2001, we should have known our own misguided patriotism brought us to this place.
We'll be in it for the better part of the next eighteen months before we see the glimpses of some sort of recovery. That's June of 2010. What has to happen is we'll need to restore some trust in the system that has been badly damaged. If anyone did not believe in Chaos Theory, these last eight to twelve years should be proof that it does exist. That goes for global warming, too.
Not only should we be cleaning up toxic assets, we should also have the faith that the whole of our government and economy are out to help us rather than throwing us to the wolves. Unions, business people, government officials, bureaucrats, and NGOs must work together to restore and build our confidence and savings back up. I'm not talking about the halcyon Clinton or Reagan years but to a place that has never existed in American society. We all must come together, red states and blue states, Democrats and Republicans, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, Blacks and Whites. It's not "Kumbaya" that we should be holding hands and singing but "how can I help you because I can't do this without you."
People must save money and spend realistically rather than create a system (the economy, the environment, schools, etc.) that is leveraged to the hilt. It's not just financial literacy, but financial reality.
The reason why it will take 18 months to get ourselves out of this mess is because we need to have the courage to save and save ourselves rather than just spend ourselves silly--downsize rather than super-size--making sure that the courage of our convictions leads to a better and more hopeful world.
It's not just Barack Obama that believes in hope. We all must be a part of this solution. This IS our time.
Now comes gravity and our own brand new reality.
This current economic debacle has more to do with the lack of trust in the entire global system and the collapse in confidence that people and institutions are basically good and trustworthy. As a wise man once told me, it's like turbulence in an airplane. Turbulence just is. When you're sitting in your over-priced row 12, seat F and the plane hits a pocket of air that makes it dip and buck as if you're on a cheap carnival ride, most people who have flown don't start swearing at their pilot or flight attendants. They know that it is just turbulence. The bucking dip is neither good nor bad; it just is. That's where we are now. Billions of people around the world are fearing a calamitous airplane ride like people sealed in a financial flying tube. Now the pilot could make it worse by continuing to fly at the same altitude, neither asking for permission to go higher or lower, but staunchly staying the course. Those are our current pilots in Washington, New York, Detroit, Beijing, Mumbai, Islamabad, etc.
Getting back to my question: Just how long will this recession be?
Most experts agree, we haven't hit bottom yet. That's something we know for certain. In fact, most economists now believe that we began our turbulent recession starting in December of 2007, although most of these experts announced this month what the rest of us knew last year. That's some lag time.
What we know for sure is that people are still losing their jobs at an alarming rate; some analysts put the jobs lost at a half a million every month.
Also, retailers are just counting their receipts from the holidays. I visited a Northern California Target Store three days before Christmas of 2008 and a Costco the day before that. There was so much inventory on the shelves that you would have thought that we were at the beginning of the shopping season rather than at its end.
This signals that we won't be able to buy our way out of this crisis. When President George W. Bush urged people to "buy and shop" after September 11, 2001, we should have known our own misguided patriotism brought us to this place.
The healing process of a deeply wounded banking system, that has already led to nearly $1 trillion of write-downs, will act as a weight around the neck of any economic recovery in the latter part of 2009. Banks will likely continue the slow process of recapitalization and cleaning up the mountains of toxic assets on their balance sheets for a period longer than just the next few quarters. CNN-Money.com.
We'll be in it for the better part of the next eighteen months before we see the glimpses of some sort of recovery. That's June of 2010. What has to happen is we'll need to restore some trust in the system that has been badly damaged. If anyone did not believe in Chaos Theory, these last eight to twelve years should be proof that it does exist. That goes for global warming, too.
Not only should we be cleaning up toxic assets, we should also have the faith that the whole of our government and economy are out to help us rather than throwing us to the wolves. Unions, business people, government officials, bureaucrats, and NGOs must work together to restore and build our confidence and savings back up. I'm not talking about the halcyon Clinton or Reagan years but to a place that has never existed in American society. We all must come together, red states and blue states, Democrats and Republicans, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, Blacks and Whites. It's not "Kumbaya" that we should be holding hands and singing but "how can I help you because I can't do this without you."
People must save money and spend realistically rather than create a system (the economy, the environment, schools, etc.) that is leveraged to the hilt. It's not just financial literacy, but financial reality.
The reason why it will take 18 months to get ourselves out of this mess is because we need to have the courage to save and save ourselves rather than just spend ourselves silly--downsize rather than super-size--making sure that the courage of our convictions leads to a better and more hopeful world.
It's not just Barack Obama that believes in hope. We all must be a part of this solution. This IS our time.
Now comes gravity and our own brand new reality.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
INTO THE WILD: AT THE EDGE OF THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS
What's the most revealing movie of the past two years? It's not about high flying special effects, Brad Pit getting old, or Sean Penn playing a gay rights hero. It's not any of these, however, Penn is a part of what I found affecting about movies over the last two years. One movie in particular I dug, which represents the Thoreauvian dystopia that is America now. Into the Wild is Penn's take on John Krakauer's non-fiction book recounting the tale of Christopher McCandless. McCandless leaves his comfortable life and heads off to find himself in the wilds of Alaska. Just like Thoreau did around Walden Pond for two years, two months, and two days, McCandless discovers the essence of an uniquely American philosophy: one's self versus community.
The trailer from "Into the Wild" reveals this most distinct of national traits--Horatio Alger, Abraham Lincoln, George Bailey, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, et. al. The American mythos is about humble beginnings, big visions, and open hearts. It's about crackpots and loopy, devoted followers: Log Cabin Republicans, Reagan Democrats, Mr. Martini, Obama Mamas, etc. Who will be following Christopher McCandless into the wild?
Along with his role in the movie "Milk," Sean Penn creates two memorable characters on the edge of society, much in the same way that Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese did in the '70s and '80s.
The trailer from "Into the Wild" reveals this most distinct of national traits--Horatio Alger, Abraham Lincoln, George Bailey, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, et. al. The American mythos is about humble beginnings, big visions, and open hearts. It's about crackpots and loopy, devoted followers: Log Cabin Republicans, Reagan Democrats, Mr. Martini, Obama Mamas, etc. Who will be following Christopher McCandless into the wild?
Along with his role in the movie "Milk," Sean Penn creates two memorable characters on the edge of society, much in the same way that Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese did in the '70s and '80s.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Teacher sorry for binding girls in slavery lesson: White teacher taped hands and feet of two black girls to enliven discussion
From the AP Wire: updated 4:34 p.m. PT, Mon., Dec. 8, 2008
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - A white social studies teacher attempted to enliven a seventh-grade discussion of slavery by binding the hands and feet of two black girls, prompting outrage from one girl's mother and the local chapter of the NAACP.
After the mother complained to Haverstraw Middle School, the superintendent said he was having "conversations with our staff on how to deliver effective lessons."
"If a student was upset, then it was a bad idea," said Superintendent Brian Monahan of the North Rockland School District in New York City's northern suburbs.
The teacher apologized to the mother who complained and her 13-year-old daughter during a meeting Thursday that also included a representative of the local NAACP. But the mother, Christine Shand of Haverstraw, said Friday she thinks the teacher should be removed from the class.
"I think the teacher should have gotten some discipline," Shand said. "I know if that was me, I would be uncomfortable going back to that class. Why should my daughter have to switch?"
Monahan refused to say what, if any, measures were taken against the teacher, Eileen Bernstein, who was still working on Friday. The school district said she was not available for comment.
"We encourage our teachers to deliver the curriculum in a variety of ways, to go beyond just reading the textbook," the superintendent said. "We don't want to discourage creativity. But this obviously went wrong because the student was upset."
On Nov. 18, Bernstein was discussing the conditions under which African captives were taken to America in slave ships. She bound the two students' hands and feet with tape and had them crawl under a desk to simulate the experience, Monahan and Shand said. Monahan said the girls were not the only blacks in the class.
Gabrielle Shand burst into tears at home, her mother said.
"There are other ways to demonstrate slavery," Christine Shand said Friday. "It doesn't matter the color of the kids, it's just not right to tie them up. My daughter is still upset, still embarrassed. She didn't go to school today."
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - A white social studies teacher attempted to enliven a seventh-grade discussion of slavery by binding the hands and feet of two black girls, prompting outrage from one girl's mother and the local chapter of the NAACP.
After the mother complained to Haverstraw Middle School, the superintendent said he was having "conversations with our staff on how to deliver effective lessons."
"If a student was upset, then it was a bad idea," said Superintendent Brian Monahan of the North Rockland School District in New York City's northern suburbs.
The teacher apologized to the mother who complained and her 13-year-old daughter during a meeting Thursday that also included a representative of the local NAACP. But the mother, Christine Shand of Haverstraw, said Friday she thinks the teacher should be removed from the class.
"I think the teacher should have gotten some discipline," Shand said. "I know if that was me, I would be uncomfortable going back to that class. Why should my daughter have to switch?"
Monahan refused to say what, if any, measures were taken against the teacher, Eileen Bernstein, who was still working on Friday. The school district said she was not available for comment.
"We encourage our teachers to deliver the curriculum in a variety of ways, to go beyond just reading the textbook," the superintendent said. "We don't want to discourage creativity. But this obviously went wrong because the student was upset."
On Nov. 18, Bernstein was discussing the conditions under which African captives were taken to America in slave ships. She bound the two students' hands and feet with tape and had them crawl under a desk to simulate the experience, Monahan and Shand said. Monahan said the girls were not the only blacks in the class.
Gabrielle Shand burst into tears at home, her mother said.
"There are other ways to demonstrate slavery," Christine Shand said Friday. "It doesn't matter the color of the kids, it's just not right to tie them up. My daughter is still upset, still embarrassed. She didn't go to school today."
Monday, December 22, 2008
CHARITIES WE RECOMMEND: THE HUMANE SOCIETY
It's Day III: What's more humane than the National Humane Society. With YouTube's Project for Awesome to reduce the world suck, you can get involved at the local level.
You can view and later donate to your local humane society or animal rescue agency:
Sunday, December 21, 2008
CHARITIES WE RECOMMEND: THE LUPUS FOUNDATION
Day II: It's one of those diseases that gets the spit end of the stick--lupus. Let's wipe it out!
Saturday, December 20, 2008
CHARITIES WE RECOMMEND: THE HEIFER PROJECT
'Tis the Season: We want to recommend some charities to our readers so that you might share the gift of life and love during this season of giving.
The Heifer Project is number one on our list.
Friday, December 19, 2008
WILL THE REAL SECRETARY OF EDUCATION PLEASE STAND-UP?
So, what will Arne Duncan do as President-elect Barack Obama's Secretary of Education? Like Obama, Duncan has been known to straddle the middle of the road.
George Lucas's Edutopia proclaims::
Arne Duncan has a type of personality that Obama seems to prefer, which is a pragmatist who will bring about change, but he'll do it in a way that will minimize confrontation in conflict," says Jack Jennings, president of the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy. "He's brought about change in Chicago, but it hasn't been a head-on clash with the teachers' union. He's done it in a way that they all walk away from the table congratulating each other."
Even though the Progressives have claimed Obama as their own, Obama's true colors are beginning to slowly seep out. In actuality, Obama is as a hard driving pragmatist. I'm not sure what others will say about him, but the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. said, "He's (Obama) a politician and I'm a minister. He is anaswerable to the people while I am answerable to God." Perhaps the real world needs a realist these days. In fact, it would be great to have access to Obama as he shifts and changes into Bill Clinton--with or without the libido--who needs to stay firmly left of center, rather than far left, to get his policies past.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Lost in the Crowd--By David Brooks
from the New York Times--December 16, 2008--http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/opinion/16brooks.html
All day long, you are affected by large forces. Genes influence your intelligence and willingness to take risks. Social dynamics unconsciously shape your choices. Instantaneous perceptions set off neural reactions in your head without you even being aware of them.
Over the past few years, scientists have made a series of exciting discoveries about how these deep patterns influence daily life. Nobody has done more to bring these discoveries to public attention than Malcolm Gladwell.
Gladwell’s important new book, “Outliers,” seems at first glance to be a description of exceptionally talented individuals. But in fact, it’s another book about deep patterns. Exceptionally successful people are not lone pioneers who created their own success, he argues. They are the lucky beneficiaries of social arrangements.
As Gladwell told Jason Zengerle of New York magazine: “The book’s saying, ‘Great people aren’t so great. Their own greatness is not the salient fact about them. It’s the kind of fortunate mix of opportunities they’ve been given.’ ”
Gladwell’s noncontroversial claim is that some people have more opportunities than other people. Bill Gates was lucky to go to a great private school with its own computer at the dawn of the information revolution. Gladwell’s more interesting claim is that social forces largely explain why some people work harder when presented with those opportunities.
Chinese people work hard because they grew up in a culture built around rice farming. Tending a rice paddy required working up to 3,000 hours a year, and it left a cultural legacy that prizes industriousness. Many upper-middle-class American kids are raised in an atmosphere of “concerted cultivation,” which inculcates a fanatical devotion to meritocratic striving.
In Gladwell’s account, individual traits play a smaller role in explaining success while social circumstances play a larger one. As he told Zengerle, “I am explicitly turning my back on, I think, these kind of empty models that say, you know, you can be whatever you want to be. Well, actually, you can’t be whatever you want to be. The world decides what you can and can’t be.”
As usual, Gladwell intelligently captures a larger tendency of thought — the growing appreciation of the power of cultural patterns, social contagions, memes. His book is being received by reviewers as a call to action for the Obama age. It could lead policy makers to finally reject policies built on the assumption that people are coldly rational utility-maximizing individuals. It could cause them to focus more on policies that foster relationships, social bonds and cultures of achievement.
Yet, I can’t help but feel that Gladwell and others who share his emphasis are getting swept away by the coolness of the new discoveries. They’ve lost sight of the point at which the influence of social forces ends and the influence of the self-initiating individual begins.
Most successful people begin with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so. They were often showered by good fortune, but relied at crucial moments upon achievements of individual will.
Most successful people also have a phenomenal ability to consciously focus their attention. We know from experiments with subjects as diverse as obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers and Buddhist monks that people who can self-consciously focus attention have the power to rewire their brains.
Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. If forced to choose, we would all rather our children be poor with self-control than rich without it.
It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can’t be done. A common story among entrepreneurs is that people told them they were too stupid to do something, and they set out to prove the jerks wrong.
It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew.
Gladwell’s social determinism is a useful corrective to the Homo economicus view of human nature. It’s also pleasantly egalitarian. The less successful are not less worthy, they’re just less lucky. But it slights the centrality of individual character and individual creativity. And it doesn’t fully explain the genuine greatness of humanity’s outliers. As the classical philosophers understood, examples of individual greatness inspire achievement more reliably than any other form of education. If Gladwell can reduce William Shakespeare to a mere product of social forces, I’ll buy 25 more copies of “Outliers” and give them away in Times Square.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
All day long, you are affected by large forces. Genes influence your intelligence and willingness to take risks. Social dynamics unconsciously shape your choices. Instantaneous perceptions set off neural reactions in your head without you even being aware of them.
Over the past few years, scientists have made a series of exciting discoveries about how these deep patterns influence daily life. Nobody has done more to bring these discoveries to public attention than Malcolm Gladwell.
Gladwell’s important new book, “Outliers,” seems at first glance to be a description of exceptionally talented individuals. But in fact, it’s another book about deep patterns. Exceptionally successful people are not lone pioneers who created their own success, he argues. They are the lucky beneficiaries of social arrangements.
As Gladwell told Jason Zengerle of New York magazine: “The book’s saying, ‘Great people aren’t so great. Their own greatness is not the salient fact about them. It’s the kind of fortunate mix of opportunities they’ve been given.’ ”
Gladwell’s noncontroversial claim is that some people have more opportunities than other people. Bill Gates was lucky to go to a great private school with its own computer at the dawn of the information revolution. Gladwell’s more interesting claim is that social forces largely explain why some people work harder when presented with those opportunities.
Chinese people work hard because they grew up in a culture built around rice farming. Tending a rice paddy required working up to 3,000 hours a year, and it left a cultural legacy that prizes industriousness. Many upper-middle-class American kids are raised in an atmosphere of “concerted cultivation,” which inculcates a fanatical devotion to meritocratic striving.
In Gladwell’s account, individual traits play a smaller role in explaining success while social circumstances play a larger one. As he told Zengerle, “I am explicitly turning my back on, I think, these kind of empty models that say, you know, you can be whatever you want to be. Well, actually, you can’t be whatever you want to be. The world decides what you can and can’t be.”
As usual, Gladwell intelligently captures a larger tendency of thought — the growing appreciation of the power of cultural patterns, social contagions, memes. His book is being received by reviewers as a call to action for the Obama age. It could lead policy makers to finally reject policies built on the assumption that people are coldly rational utility-maximizing individuals. It could cause them to focus more on policies that foster relationships, social bonds and cultures of achievement.
Yet, I can’t help but feel that Gladwell and others who share his emphasis are getting swept away by the coolness of the new discoveries. They’ve lost sight of the point at which the influence of social forces ends and the influence of the self-initiating individual begins.
Most successful people begin with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so. They were often showered by good fortune, but relied at crucial moments upon achievements of individual will.
Most successful people also have a phenomenal ability to consciously focus their attention. We know from experiments with subjects as diverse as obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers and Buddhist monks that people who can self-consciously focus attention have the power to rewire their brains.
Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. If forced to choose, we would all rather our children be poor with self-control than rich without it.
It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can’t be done. A common story among entrepreneurs is that people told them they were too stupid to do something, and they set out to prove the jerks wrong.
It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew.
Gladwell’s social determinism is a useful corrective to the Homo economicus view of human nature. It’s also pleasantly egalitarian. The less successful are not less worthy, they’re just less lucky. But it slights the centrality of individual character and individual creativity. And it doesn’t fully explain the genuine greatness of humanity’s outliers. As the classical philosophers understood, examples of individual greatness inspire achievement more reliably than any other form of education. If Gladwell can reduce William Shakespeare to a mere product of social forces, I’ll buy 25 more copies of “Outliers” and give them away in Times Square.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Improving Public Schools Hearing: Arne Duncan Part 1
Arne Duncan, unvarnished, talking about improving public schools in the City of Chicago, known as the city that works.
Chicago Schools Chief Is Obama’s Education Pick--By SAM DILLON
December 16, 2008--from the New York Times--http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/us/politics/16educ.html?_r=1&hp
Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools superintendent known for taking tough steps to improve schools while maintaining respectful relations with teachers and their unions, is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice as secretary of education, Democratic officials said Monday.
Mr. Duncan, a 44-year-old Harvard graduate, has raised achievement in the nation’s third-largest school district and often faced the ticklish challenge of shuttering failing schools and replacing ineffective teachers, usually with improved results.
He represents a compromise choice in the debate that has divided Democrats in recent months over the proper course for public-school policy after the Bush years.
In June, rival nationwide groups of educators circulated competing educational manifestos, with one group espousing a get-tough policy based on pushing teachers and administrators harder to raise achievement, and another arguing that schools alone could not close the racial achievement gap and urging new investments in school-based health clinics and other social programs to help poor students learn.
Mr. Duncan was the only big-city superintendent to sign both manifestos.
He argued that the nation’s schools needed to be held accountable for student progress, but also needed major new investments, new talent and new teacher-training efforts.
In straddling the two camps, Mr. Duncan seemed to reflect Mr. Obama’s own impatience with what he has called “tired educational debates.”
In his last major educational speech of the campaign, Mr. Obama said: “It’s been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform. There’s partisanship and there’s bickering, but no understanding that both sides have good ideas.”
The rival educational camps swamped the Obama transition in recent weeks with recommendations for the post. The National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union, pressed for several current and former governors who had made schools a priority in their states.
Many former members of Teach for America, the program that sends elite-college graduates to teach in low-income schools, weighed in on behalf of Joel I. Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, and Michelle Rhee, the Washington schools chancellor, both of whom have clashed with the teachers’ unions.
“Obama found the sweet spot with Arne Duncan,” said Susan Traiman, director of educational policy at the Business Roundtable. “Both camps will be O.K. with the pick!”
Mr. Duncan’s acquaintance with Mr. Obama began on the basketball court nearly two decades ago but has flowered since he became the chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools in 2001, and Mr. Obama has used him as a frequent sounding board in discussions of education policy.
The two men have visited a number of Chicago schools together. In October 2005, they visited the Dodge Renaissance Academy, a once-failing elementary school that Mr. Duncan closed and reopened, with a new staff, as a working public school and a teacher training academy.
During the visit, Mr. Obama sat down with school staff members in the library for more than an hour and questioned them at length about arcane instructional issues, Mr. Duncan said in an interview.
“I’ve taken lots of political leaders on school visits, and nobody spends the amount of time, asks the depth of questions, or is more engaged and curious than Barack,” Mr. Duncan said in an August interview.
The Obama transition team has scheduled a news conference for Tuesday at the Dodge Renaissance school.
Mr. Duncan’s background includes playing professional basketball in Australia and intermittently tutoring urban youth, but no formal teaching experience. He helped draft Mr. Obama’s extensive education platform, which called for recruiting thousands of new teachers, encouraging local school districts to adopt performance-based teacher pay initiatives, recruiting and training effective principals, and placing new emphasis on science and mathematics education.
The platform also calls for making major federal investments in early childhood education, which Mr. Obama believes is a more effective use of educational dollars than spending them on remedial programs later.
Mr. Duncan has been working for several years to expand the early childhood opportunities in the Chicago Public Schools, increasing enrollment opportunities for 3- and 4-year-olds by 1,000 places or more each year. Mr. Duncan has worked closely in that effort with Barbara T. Bowman, the Chicago Public Schools’ chief officer for early childhood education, who is the mother of Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett.
Allan R. Odden, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin, heads a project that is studying how school districts recruit, assign and train their principals and teachers. He said Chicago had made considerable progress under Mr. Duncan.
“He’s gotten the job done in Chicago,” Dr. Odden said. “There’s more to be done, but he’s done a great job of reaching out and recruiting and improving the talent of both teachers and principals.”
During Mr. Duncan’s tenure, the Chicago schools, which in the 1970s and 1980s experienced nine teachers’ strikes in 17 years, has had labor stability, and last week, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, praised Mr. Duncan.
As secretary of education, one of Mr. Duncan’s major challenges will be to rebuild the bipartisan consensus that helped President Bush win passage of his No Child Left Behind law in 2001.
An effort to rewrite the law, the most important statement of federal policy toward public schools, collapsed last year in the face of opposition from conservative Republicans angered over the law’s intrusion onto states’ educational prerogatives and Democrats upset with the law’s emphasis on standardized testing.
Mr. Obama has called for a thorough rewrite, but has pledged to defend the accountability provisions in the law that require schools to improve.
Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, said last week that his group would be delighted to see Mr. Klein or Ms. Rhee appointed, but had sent to the transition team a memorandum recommending Mr. Duncan.
“He is the kind of guy who can work with all sorts of people with different viewpoints, and we like his work in Chicago with charter schools,” Mr. Williams said.
Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who as the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee will lead any reauthorization effort, called Mr. Duncan “a good choice for school reform and our schoolchildren.”
“He is an experienced and accomplished leader who is open to new ideas for improving our schools,” Mr. Miller said.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools superintendent known for taking tough steps to improve schools while maintaining respectful relations with teachers and their unions, is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice as secretary of education, Democratic officials said Monday.
Mr. Duncan, a 44-year-old Harvard graduate, has raised achievement in the nation’s third-largest school district and often faced the ticklish challenge of shuttering failing schools and replacing ineffective teachers, usually with improved results.
He represents a compromise choice in the debate that has divided Democrats in recent months over the proper course for public-school policy after the Bush years.
In June, rival nationwide groups of educators circulated competing educational manifestos, with one group espousing a get-tough policy based on pushing teachers and administrators harder to raise achievement, and another arguing that schools alone could not close the racial achievement gap and urging new investments in school-based health clinics and other social programs to help poor students learn.
Mr. Duncan was the only big-city superintendent to sign both manifestos.
He argued that the nation’s schools needed to be held accountable for student progress, but also needed major new investments, new talent and new teacher-training efforts.
In straddling the two camps, Mr. Duncan seemed to reflect Mr. Obama’s own impatience with what he has called “tired educational debates.”
In his last major educational speech of the campaign, Mr. Obama said: “It’s been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform. There’s partisanship and there’s bickering, but no understanding that both sides have good ideas.”
The rival educational camps swamped the Obama transition in recent weeks with recommendations for the post. The National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union, pressed for several current and former governors who had made schools a priority in their states.
Many former members of Teach for America, the program that sends elite-college graduates to teach in low-income schools, weighed in on behalf of Joel I. Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, and Michelle Rhee, the Washington schools chancellor, both of whom have clashed with the teachers’ unions.
“Obama found the sweet spot with Arne Duncan,” said Susan Traiman, director of educational policy at the Business Roundtable. “Both camps will be O.K. with the pick!”
Mr. Duncan’s acquaintance with Mr. Obama began on the basketball court nearly two decades ago but has flowered since he became the chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools in 2001, and Mr. Obama has used him as a frequent sounding board in discussions of education policy.
The two men have visited a number of Chicago schools together. In October 2005, they visited the Dodge Renaissance Academy, a once-failing elementary school that Mr. Duncan closed and reopened, with a new staff, as a working public school and a teacher training academy.
During the visit, Mr. Obama sat down with school staff members in the library for more than an hour and questioned them at length about arcane instructional issues, Mr. Duncan said in an interview.
“I’ve taken lots of political leaders on school visits, and nobody spends the amount of time, asks the depth of questions, or is more engaged and curious than Barack,” Mr. Duncan said in an August interview.
The Obama transition team has scheduled a news conference for Tuesday at the Dodge Renaissance school.
Mr. Duncan’s background includes playing professional basketball in Australia and intermittently tutoring urban youth, but no formal teaching experience. He helped draft Mr. Obama’s extensive education platform, which called for recruiting thousands of new teachers, encouraging local school districts to adopt performance-based teacher pay initiatives, recruiting and training effective principals, and placing new emphasis on science and mathematics education.
The platform also calls for making major federal investments in early childhood education, which Mr. Obama believes is a more effective use of educational dollars than spending them on remedial programs later.
Mr. Duncan has been working for several years to expand the early childhood opportunities in the Chicago Public Schools, increasing enrollment opportunities for 3- and 4-year-olds by 1,000 places or more each year. Mr. Duncan has worked closely in that effort with Barbara T. Bowman, the Chicago Public Schools’ chief officer for early childhood education, who is the mother of Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett.
Allan R. Odden, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin, heads a project that is studying how school districts recruit, assign and train their principals and teachers. He said Chicago had made considerable progress under Mr. Duncan.
“He’s gotten the job done in Chicago,” Dr. Odden said. “There’s more to be done, but he’s done a great job of reaching out and recruiting and improving the talent of both teachers and principals.”
During Mr. Duncan’s tenure, the Chicago schools, which in the 1970s and 1980s experienced nine teachers’ strikes in 17 years, has had labor stability, and last week, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, praised Mr. Duncan.
As secretary of education, one of Mr. Duncan’s major challenges will be to rebuild the bipartisan consensus that helped President Bush win passage of his No Child Left Behind law in 2001.
An effort to rewrite the law, the most important statement of federal policy toward public schools, collapsed last year in the face of opposition from conservative Republicans angered over the law’s intrusion onto states’ educational prerogatives and Democrats upset with the law’s emphasis on standardized testing.
Mr. Obama has called for a thorough rewrite, but has pledged to defend the accountability provisions in the law that require schools to improve.
Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, said last week that his group would be delighted to see Mr. Klein or Ms. Rhee appointed, but had sent to the transition team a memorandum recommending Mr. Duncan.
“He is the kind of guy who can work with all sorts of people with different viewpoints, and we like his work in Chicago with charter schools,” Mr. Williams said.
Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who as the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee will lead any reauthorization effort, called Mr. Duncan “a good choice for school reform and our schoolchildren.”
“He is an experienced and accomplished leader who is open to new ideas for improving our schools,” Mr. Miller said.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Sunday, December 14, 2008
NO PROCESS, NO PEACE: Michelle Rhee and the DC Public Schools
One person's name that has been floated as a possible Secretary of Education is Michelle A. Rhee, the Chancellor of the District of Columbia's Public Schools. Take a look at the News Hour's John Merrow's initial report on Rhee and her "gutsy" moves to shake things up in our nation's capital.
Is Rhee a reformer or just foolish? You be the judge.
Is Rhee a reformer or just foolish? You be the judge.
Why All the Fuss (About the New Secretary of Education)
As the last article that we posted around the selection of the new secretary of education, Barack Obama's choice in a chief of America's educational system will be hotly scrutinized. Obama is playing his true intentions close to the vest largely to see how the media may play out the possible choices.
You can probably rule out all of the front runners, including Linda Darling-Hammond, the Stanford University Professor, Arne Duncan, the City of Chicago's school chief, and Joel I. Klein, who is the Chancellor of New York City public schools. Why would these folks not be considered in the running for this much contested role? Since Barack Obama does not like being second guessed or figured out when it comes to education, he and his team of rivals will pick a relative unknown for the seat.
Picking an unknown for the Secretary of Education would indicate that President-elect Obama wants to break away from the expectations that come with this crucial hire. While Senator Ted Kennedy is still alive, Obama would be unlikely to whole-sale dismantle No Child Left Behind. Kennedy was one of the movers and shakers behind the first NCLB law.
Obama is no idiot. He knows that the law is badly damaged. With all of the talk of accountability, the law is not having the intended effects that people wanted, which was to have all students working at grade level within the next four to five years or else risk having nearly all the nation's schools on the dreaded "watch lists," and eventually taken over by the state governments, which would be worse.
Because lawmakers make laws--rather than educate children--the unintended consequences of having so many of the nation's children in failing schools looms large.
This is why the next education czar will have her hands full. Oops! Did I give it away?
Obama will pick an unknown to lead the nation's K-16 schools because that person can wield her power outside of the glaring eye of the critics in and out of the educational reform movement. The person selected will have a great deal to do with little to no money in which to do it, which makes this position like the Wizard of Oz.
Hey, now that's not a bad idea. Perhaps Rod Blagojevich can pull some strings.
You can probably rule out all of the front runners, including Linda Darling-Hammond, the Stanford University Professor, Arne Duncan, the City of Chicago's school chief, and Joel I. Klein, who is the Chancellor of New York City public schools. Why would these folks not be considered in the running for this much contested role? Since Barack Obama does not like being second guessed or figured out when it comes to education, he and his team of rivals will pick a relative unknown for the seat.
Picking an unknown for the Secretary of Education would indicate that President-elect Obama wants to break away from the expectations that come with this crucial hire. While Senator Ted Kennedy is still alive, Obama would be unlikely to whole-sale dismantle No Child Left Behind. Kennedy was one of the movers and shakers behind the first NCLB law.
Obama is no idiot. He knows that the law is badly damaged. With all of the talk of accountability, the law is not having the intended effects that people wanted, which was to have all students working at grade level within the next four to five years or else risk having nearly all the nation's schools on the dreaded "watch lists," and eventually taken over by the state governments, which would be worse.
Because lawmakers make laws--rather than educate children--the unintended consequences of having so many of the nation's children in failing schools looms large.
This is why the next education czar will have her hands full. Oops! Did I give it away?
Obama will pick an unknown to lead the nation's K-16 schools because that person can wield her power outside of the glaring eye of the critics in and out of the educational reform movement. The person selected will have a great deal to do with little to no money in which to do it, which makes this position like the Wizard of Oz.
Hey, now that's not a bad idea. Perhaps Rod Blagojevich can pull some strings.
Uncertainty on Obama Education Plans--By Sam Dillion
(from The New York Times, Sunday, December 14, 2008)
As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to announce his choice for education secretary, there is mystery not only about the person he will choose, but also about the approach to overhauling the nation’s schools that his selection will reflect.
Despite an 18-month campaign for president and many debates, there remains uncertainty about what Mr. Obama believes is the best way to improve education.
Will he side with those who want to abolish teacher tenure and otherwise curb the power of teachers’ unions? Or with those who want to rewrite the main federal law on elementary and secondary education, the No Child Left Behind Act, and who say the best strategy is to help teachers become more qualified?
The debate has sometimes been nasty.
“People are saying things now that they may regret saying in a couple of months,” said Jack Jennings, a Democrat who is president and chief executive of the Center on Education Policy in Washington. “Unfortunately, they’re all friends of mine, which makes it awkward.”
Some of the toughest criticism has been aimed at the person Mr. Obama appointed to lead his education policy working group, the most important education post of the transition: Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University.
Dr. Darling-Hammond is liked by the teachers’ unions, and partly for that reason has been portrayed as an enemy of school reform by detractors. These have included people who have urged Mr. Obama to appoint Joel I. Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, or Michelle Rhee, the schools chancellor in Washington, as education secretary. Both of them have clashed with teachers’ unions.
Editorials and opinion articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have described the debate as pitting education reformers against those representing the educational establishment or the status quo. But who the reformers are depends on who is talking.
Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, used different terms in discussing the debate.
Dr. Fuller said it pitted “professionalization advocates such as Darling-Hammond,” who believe the policy emphasis should be on raising student achievement by helping teachers improve their instruction, against “efficiency hawks like Klein and Rhee.” The efficiency hawks, he said, emphasize standardized testing, cracking down on poor school management and purging bad teachers.
“It’s tough love without any love,” he said.
Dr. Darling-Hammond has become a controversial figure partly because of her longtime criticism of Teach for America, the nonprofit group that recruits college graduates to teach for two years in hard-to-staff schools. She says the group loses too many recruits at the end of their two-year commitments, just when they are learning to teach.
Teach for America has no official preference for or opposition to any candidate, said Kevin Huffman, a spokesman for the group.
But an organization called Leadership for Educational Equity, which was founded to help former members of the Teach for America corps become involved in politics, has photographs of Dr. Darling-Hammond, Mr. Obama and Mr. Klein alongside an article on its Web site with the headline, “Education Secretary Fight Could Affect Teach for America’s Mission.”
The article notes that Dr. Darling-Hammond “has long been a vocal critic of Teach For America,” and it urges the group’s alumni to make their views on the candidates known.
Mr. Obama has given no hint of his own leanings.
Arne Duncan, the chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, may have an edge. Mr. Duncan is a longtime friend of the president-elect and has closed failing schools and improved achievement without alienating the teachers’ union. The superintendent of Denver Public Schools, Michael Bennet, who has enacted a plan to reward effective teachers with higher pay, has also attracted the transition team’s interest.
Mr. Klein and Ms. Rhee, as well as former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and several current and former governors, have also been considered, a member of the transition team said. Mr. Powell has said publicly that he is not interested.
One former Teach for America official who has been outspoken is Whitney Tilson, a New York mutual fund manager.
In a recent blog entry, Mr. Tilson said of Dr. Darling-Hammond, “She’s influential, clever and (while she does her best to hide it) an enemy of genuine reform.”
Mr. Tilson is on the board of Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee based in New York.
The group sent the Obama transition team a 43-page memorandum shortly after the election with policy advice and a “wish list” of candidates for secretary that included Mr. Duncan; Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America; and Jon Schnur, who started a nonprofit group, New Leaders for New Schools, that trains principals for urban schools, said Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform.
Mr. Williams said his group also liked Mr. Klein and Ms. Rhee. “We’d be thrilled,” he said, “if either one were named secretary.”
The two national teachers unions have also been active. The National Education Association has not formally endorsed anyone but has discussed candidates with the Obama transition team, indicating some candidates who would have the union’s support, said John Wilson, the executive director.
The American Federation of Teachers presented the Obama team with written evaluations of a string of candidates without endorsing any of them, said Randi Weingarten, the union’s president. “We have no candidate in the race,” Ms. Weingarten said.
But last week she publicly praised Mr. Duncan in an interview with The Associated Press. “Arne Duncan,” she said, “actually reaches out and tries to do things in a collaborative way.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to announce his choice for education secretary, there is mystery not only about the person he will choose, but also about the approach to overhauling the nation’s schools that his selection will reflect.
Despite an 18-month campaign for president and many debates, there remains uncertainty about what Mr. Obama believes is the best way to improve education.
Will he side with those who want to abolish teacher tenure and otherwise curb the power of teachers’ unions? Or with those who want to rewrite the main federal law on elementary and secondary education, the No Child Left Behind Act, and who say the best strategy is to help teachers become more qualified?
The debate has sometimes been nasty.
“People are saying things now that they may regret saying in a couple of months,” said Jack Jennings, a Democrat who is president and chief executive of the Center on Education Policy in Washington. “Unfortunately, they’re all friends of mine, which makes it awkward.”
Some of the toughest criticism has been aimed at the person Mr. Obama appointed to lead his education policy working group, the most important education post of the transition: Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University.
Dr. Darling-Hammond is liked by the teachers’ unions, and partly for that reason has been portrayed as an enemy of school reform by detractors. These have included people who have urged Mr. Obama to appoint Joel I. Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, or Michelle Rhee, the schools chancellor in Washington, as education secretary. Both of them have clashed with teachers’ unions.
Editorials and opinion articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have described the debate as pitting education reformers against those representing the educational establishment or the status quo. But who the reformers are depends on who is talking.
Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, used different terms in discussing the debate.
Dr. Fuller said it pitted “professionalization advocates such as Darling-Hammond,” who believe the policy emphasis should be on raising student achievement by helping teachers improve their instruction, against “efficiency hawks like Klein and Rhee.” The efficiency hawks, he said, emphasize standardized testing, cracking down on poor school management and purging bad teachers.
“It’s tough love without any love,” he said.
Dr. Darling-Hammond has become a controversial figure partly because of her longtime criticism of Teach for America, the nonprofit group that recruits college graduates to teach for two years in hard-to-staff schools. She says the group loses too many recruits at the end of their two-year commitments, just when they are learning to teach.
Teach for America has no official preference for or opposition to any candidate, said Kevin Huffman, a spokesman for the group.
But an organization called Leadership for Educational Equity, which was founded to help former members of the Teach for America corps become involved in politics, has photographs of Dr. Darling-Hammond, Mr. Obama and Mr. Klein alongside an article on its Web site with the headline, “Education Secretary Fight Could Affect Teach for America’s Mission.”
The article notes that Dr. Darling-Hammond “has long been a vocal critic of Teach For America,” and it urges the group’s alumni to make their views on the candidates known.
Mr. Obama has given no hint of his own leanings.
Arne Duncan, the chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, may have an edge. Mr. Duncan is a longtime friend of the president-elect and has closed failing schools and improved achievement without alienating the teachers’ union. The superintendent of Denver Public Schools, Michael Bennet, who has enacted a plan to reward effective teachers with higher pay, has also attracted the transition team’s interest.
Mr. Klein and Ms. Rhee, as well as former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and several current and former governors, have also been considered, a member of the transition team said. Mr. Powell has said publicly that he is not interested.
One former Teach for America official who has been outspoken is Whitney Tilson, a New York mutual fund manager.
In a recent blog entry, Mr. Tilson said of Dr. Darling-Hammond, “She’s influential, clever and (while she does her best to hide it) an enemy of genuine reform.”
Mr. Tilson is on the board of Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee based in New York.
The group sent the Obama transition team a 43-page memorandum shortly after the election with policy advice and a “wish list” of candidates for secretary that included Mr. Duncan; Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America; and Jon Schnur, who started a nonprofit group, New Leaders for New Schools, that trains principals for urban schools, said Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform.
Mr. Williams said his group also liked Mr. Klein and Ms. Rhee. “We’d be thrilled,” he said, “if either one were named secretary.”
The two national teachers unions have also been active. The National Education Association has not formally endorsed anyone but has discussed candidates with the Obama transition team, indicating some candidates who would have the union’s support, said John Wilson, the executive director.
The American Federation of Teachers presented the Obama team with written evaluations of a string of candidates without endorsing any of them, said Randi Weingarten, the union’s president. “We have no candidate in the race,” Ms. Weingarten said.
But last week she publicly praised Mr. Duncan in an interview with The Associated Press. “Arne Duncan,” she said, “actually reaches out and tries to do things in a collaborative way.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Who Will He Choose?--By DAVID BROOKS
As in many other areas, the biggest education debates are happening within the Democratic Party. On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.
During the presidential race, Barack Obama straddled the two camps. One campaign adviser, John Schnur, represented the reform view in the internal discussions. Another, Linda Darling-Hammond, was more likely to represent the establishment view. Their disagreements were collegial (this is Obamaland after all), but substantive.
In public, Obama shifted nimbly from camp to camp while education experts studied his intonations with the intensity of Kremlinologists. Sometimes, he flirted with the union positions. At other times, he practiced dog-whistle politics, sending out reassuring signals that only the reformers could hear.
Each camp was secretly convinced that at the end of the day, Obama would come down on their side. The reformers were cheered when Obama praised a Denver performance pay initiative. The unions could take succor from the fact that though Obama would occasionally talk about merit pay, none of his actual proposals contradicted their positions.
Obama never had to pick a side. That is, until now. There is only one education secretary, and if you hang around these circles, the air is thick with speculation, anticipation, anxiety, hope and misinformation. Every day, new rumors are circulated and new front-runners declared. It’s kind of like being in a Trollope novel as Lord So-and-So figures out to whom he’s going to propose.
You can measure the anxiety in the reformist camp by the level of nervous phone chatter each morning. Weeks ago, Obama announced that Darling-Hammond would lead his transition team and reformist cellphones around the country lit up. Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford, is a sharp critic of Teach for America and promotes weaker reforms.
Anxieties cooled, but then one morning a few weeks ago, I got a flurry of phone calls from reform leaders nervous that Obama was about to side against them. I interviewed people in the president-elect’s inner circle and was reassured that the reformers had nothing to worry about. Obama had not gone native.
Obama’s aides point to his long record on merit pay, his sympathy for charter schools and his tendency to highlight his commitment to serious education reform.
But the union lobbying efforts are relentless and in the past week prospects for a reforming education secretary are thought to have dimmed. The candidates before Obama apparently include: Joel Klein, the highly successful New York chancellor who has, nonetheless, been blackballed by the unions; Arne Duncan, the reforming Chicago head who is less controversial; Darling-Hammond herself; and some former governor to be named later, with Darling-Hammond as the deputy secretary.
In some sense, the final option would be the biggest setback for reform. Education is one of those areas where implementation and the details are more important than grand pronouncements. If the deputies and assistants in the secretary’s office are not true reformers, nothing will get done.
The stakes are huge. For the first time in decades, there is real momentum for reform. It’s not only Rhee and Klein — the celebrities — but also superintendents in cities across America who are getting better teachers into the classrooms and producing measurable results. There is an unprecedented political coalition building, among liberals as well as conservatives, for radical reform.
No Child Left Behind is about to be reauthorized. Everyone has reservations about that law, but it is the glaring spotlight that reveals and pierces the complacency at mediocre schools. If accountability standards are watered down, as the establishment wants, then real reform will fade.
This will be a tough call for Obama, because it will mean offending people, but he can either galvanize the cause of reform or demoralize it. It’ll be one of the biggest choices of his presidency.
Many of the reformist hopes now hang on Obama’s friend, Arne Duncan. In Chicago, he’s a successful reformer who has produced impressive results in a huge and historically troubled system. He has the political skills necessary to build a coalition on behalf of No Child Left Behind reauthorization. Because he is close to both Obamas, he will ensure that education doesn’t fall, as it usually does, into the ranks of the second-tier issues.
If Obama picks a reformer like Duncan, Klein or one of the others, he will be picking a fight with the status quo. But there’s never been a better time to have that fight than right now.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
During the presidential race, Barack Obama straddled the two camps. One campaign adviser, John Schnur, represented the reform view in the internal discussions. Another, Linda Darling-Hammond, was more likely to represent the establishment view. Their disagreements were collegial (this is Obamaland after all), but substantive.
In public, Obama shifted nimbly from camp to camp while education experts studied his intonations with the intensity of Kremlinologists. Sometimes, he flirted with the union positions. At other times, he practiced dog-whistle politics, sending out reassuring signals that only the reformers could hear.
Each camp was secretly convinced that at the end of the day, Obama would come down on their side. The reformers were cheered when Obama praised a Denver performance pay initiative. The unions could take succor from the fact that though Obama would occasionally talk about merit pay, none of his actual proposals contradicted their positions.
Obama never had to pick a side. That is, until now. There is only one education secretary, and if you hang around these circles, the air is thick with speculation, anticipation, anxiety, hope and misinformation. Every day, new rumors are circulated and new front-runners declared. It’s kind of like being in a Trollope novel as Lord So-and-So figures out to whom he’s going to propose.
You can measure the anxiety in the reformist camp by the level of nervous phone chatter each morning. Weeks ago, Obama announced that Darling-Hammond would lead his transition team and reformist cellphones around the country lit up. Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford, is a sharp critic of Teach for America and promotes weaker reforms.
Anxieties cooled, but then one morning a few weeks ago, I got a flurry of phone calls from reform leaders nervous that Obama was about to side against them. I interviewed people in the president-elect’s inner circle and was reassured that the reformers had nothing to worry about. Obama had not gone native.
Obama’s aides point to his long record on merit pay, his sympathy for charter schools and his tendency to highlight his commitment to serious education reform.
But the union lobbying efforts are relentless and in the past week prospects for a reforming education secretary are thought to have dimmed. The candidates before Obama apparently include: Joel Klein, the highly successful New York chancellor who has, nonetheless, been blackballed by the unions; Arne Duncan, the reforming Chicago head who is less controversial; Darling-Hammond herself; and some former governor to be named later, with Darling-Hammond as the deputy secretary.
In some sense, the final option would be the biggest setback for reform. Education is one of those areas where implementation and the details are more important than grand pronouncements. If the deputies and assistants in the secretary’s office are not true reformers, nothing will get done.
The stakes are huge. For the first time in decades, there is real momentum for reform. It’s not only Rhee and Klein — the celebrities — but also superintendents in cities across America who are getting better teachers into the classrooms and producing measurable results. There is an unprecedented political coalition building, among liberals as well as conservatives, for radical reform.
No Child Left Behind is about to be reauthorized. Everyone has reservations about that law, but it is the glaring spotlight that reveals and pierces the complacency at mediocre schools. If accountability standards are watered down, as the establishment wants, then real reform will fade.
This will be a tough call for Obama, because it will mean offending people, but he can either galvanize the cause of reform or demoralize it. It’ll be one of the biggest choices of his presidency.
Many of the reformist hopes now hang on Obama’s friend, Arne Duncan. In Chicago, he’s a successful reformer who has produced impressive results in a huge and historically troubled system. He has the political skills necessary to build a coalition on behalf of No Child Left Behind reauthorization. Because he is close to both Obamas, he will ensure that education doesn’t fall, as it usually does, into the ranks of the second-tier issues.
If Obama picks a reformer like Duncan, Klein or one of the others, he will be picking a fight with the status quo. But there’s never been a better time to have that fight than right now.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Monday, December 08, 2008
RE-DEFINING SUCCESS: MALCOLM GLADWELL'S NEW BOOK, OUTLIERS
I just had a great discussion this evening with my friend Emily who is the Head of a school in Vermont. We were talking about the nature of success in our industry, education, and generally what it takes to be successful at anything.
Although I haven't read Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers, I am intrigued by the book's premise about what makes people in different endeavors successful. I have been thinking a great deal about this subject since Barack Obama's election and before, really. The premise, or 10,000 hour rule, certainly applies to Obama. Think about it.
Take a look at the video from the London Economic Forum and let me know in the comment section below whether or not you agree with Gladwell's premise. Also, if you're interested in getting the book, go to your nearest library, book store, or just click on the link to your right to order Outliers from Amazon.com.
Finally, check out the video on the Amazon site where Gladwell also talks briefly about success in terms of cultural differences and expectations.
Although I haven't read Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers, I am intrigued by the book's premise about what makes people in different endeavors successful. I have been thinking a great deal about this subject since Barack Obama's election and before, really. The premise, or 10,000 hour rule, certainly applies to Obama. Think about it.
Take a look at the video from the London Economic Forum and let me know in the comment section below whether or not you agree with Gladwell's premise. Also, if you're interested in getting the book, go to your nearest library, book store, or just click on the link to your right to order Outliers from Amazon.com.
Finally, check out the video on the Amazon site where Gladwell also talks briefly about success in terms of cultural differences and expectations.
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