Education Policy

Saturday's print version of the Oregonian featured a front page article on improving low-performing schools. The article is about average for educational writing; as such, it provides a useful opportunity to examine some of the flaws in educational coverage as practiced by the main stream media.

The Oregonian article stays on the familiar ground of mediocre education coverage by hewing closely to the narrative that Change = Good and No Change = Bad. It's a stretch to call this kind of writing an intentional lie of omission, but the article certainly oversimplifies a complex topic by omitting many details that could be relevant. For example, any of the following details could have created a more complete picture:

• Duncan's reforms -- which are at the core of the current transition/transformation strategy -- didn't work in Chicago (The original article is behind a paywall, but a mobile-formatted version is available here);
• Other reforms promising accountability and measurement have been marred by fraudulent record keeping, including the Houston Miracle that helped inform NCLB;
• Charter schools might not be able to meet the needs of Duncan's proposed school closures and transformations;
• There are already charges of cronyism around the Duncan DOE;
• Closing schools and/or firing large numbers of faculty have an incredibly destructive effect on a community.

It's not like every article needs to include in depth coverage around every detail, but it would be nice if an article even included something that resembled nuance. For example, the Oregonian article reads:

Districts can avoid making the changes if they don't apply for the money. But if they decide not to seek the turnaround funds, they must explain in detail why they lack the capacity to do so.

A couple issues here:

First, calling the money "turnaround funds" misrepresents what is happening. In some cases, the schools will not be turned around, they will be closed, and handed over to charter companies. Journalists should do more than parrot the language of government press releases.

Second, the above quotation says school districts "must must explain in detail why they lack the capacity" to apply for funding. This would have been an excellent place to point out that the changes being advocated here haven't been proven to work, and, as noted above, in Chicago they didn't work. So, district time could be chewed up explaining why they don't want to spend time doing something that hasn't been proven to work. This has nothing to do with a lack of capacity, and more to do with not wanting to waste time on something that might not actually fix anything.

I'm not disputing - at all - that schools and districts can become more effective. The issues around educational reform are complex and nuanced. Unfortunately, the discussions of them are not.

The press could perform a useful function by presenting a more complete picture. For education coverage, this could start by acknowledging that the problems within schools do not have a single solution, and that the best solution to improving schools will likely vary based on the conditions within and around the school. Moreover, improvements will be incremental, and strategies for these improvements will incorporate ideas from a variety of sources.

This is a more difficult story to write, as it doesn't fit into any pre-made narrative. But, it has one tangible benefit: it's a lot closer to the truth.

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Credits: Home Page photo from The Newseum.

In a recent listserv conversation, a participant asked about the steps schools are taking to monitor student computer use. One question dealt with the frequency with which browser histories on student machines were parsed, not as part of any examination into any suspected incidents, but as part of routine supervision and oversight of students.

I've seen more threads like this than I can count. Much of the impetus behind the more intrusive forms of supervision comes from a good motive: the desire to keep kids safe. High profile cases power calls for more supervision, as do "consultants" who conduct seminars tailored for the fears of parents and administrators (as an aside, if I remember the research correctly, scare tactics have been shown to have limited effectiveness for a short time period with students at or around middle school age. Scare tactics don't do much for older students. If any of my three readers knows better info on this, please share it in the comments).

But -- as people who work in and with schools, as people who help kids develop the skills to make rational, meaningful decisions about the world in which they live -- when do we have a responsibility to push back against well-intentioned but misguided efforts that conflate security with supervision?

Within the last two weeks, there have been news stories about the FBI wanting access to geolocation data obtained from cell phones, and the FBI wanting to require ISP's to retain web browsing records for two years. As we have seen before, even access to anonymized search records show an incredible amount of information about an individual. In the recent past, there was some outcry against the government requesting borrowing records from public libraries, and the entire question of warrantless wiretapping raised some hackles.

But the outcry against intrusions on privacy takes place against a backdrop where it's normal to share a steady stream of details about your life. My concern is that, if we make our schools into places where "normal" means having your browsing history tracked daily, people will take that level of supervision for granted. For a child born in 2002, a government that uses warrantless wiretapping is part of the fabric of their lives.

As teachers, as parents, as people who run schools, as people who care about kids: how are we empowering kids to develop their distinct interests, to take informed risks, to explore freely, and to know that it's okay to have hopes, fears, and dreams that are private, and intrinsically theirs until they choose to share?

I was at Educon 2.2 a little while back, and at that meetup we spent a lot of time talking about what school can and should be. I have been working on a follow-up post about the session, but I sense that as I try to make some sense about what learning can be within a context where there is a growing tension between constructive guidance and overbearing observation, part of what we all need to learn is how to deconstruct the myth that being observed and tracked makes us safer.

Much discussion on the internet concerning the AP's new Pay By The Word policy. Gary Stager had this comment on Will Richardson's blog:

Why shouldn't journalists and publishers get paid for their work?

Here's a suggestion for edubloggers who believe that all intellectual property should be free - let's stop paying teachers.

From an Op-Ed in the June 1 online edition of the NY Times by Brian Greene: Put a Little Science in Your Life

Note: this is a comment that is currently in the moderation queue of the original blog.

Hello, Ken,