Bridging Differences

Problem vs. Solution: A Response

2013-05-16T13:20:00Z

Dear Mike,

Let me begin by addressing your underlying question as to whether what you and I are proposing is part of the cure or the disease. The belief that the most promising way to tackle poverty requires frequent standardized tests for all students, breaking up the public school monopoly, imposing accountability measures on teachers, and more "efficient" delivery systems is, in my view, "part of the disease." But let's lower the tone by changing the dichotomy to a contrast between being "part of the solution" or "part of the problem."

Thus, the first series of my responses below are an attempt to answer your question about how your views (and mine) stack up on the "problem/solution" continuum. The second part of my response goes a wee bit deeper into some underlying issues that divide us.

Thus:

To the extent that we both want schools to improve—above all for poor and minority children, we are inclined to be "a part of the solution"—provided we do something useful to schools and do no great harm in the process. Hard to measure.
To the extent that we both believe that good teachers can make a significant difference in the lives of all children, and especially poor children, and that helping teachers become better able to do this, we are "a part of the solution." Except that ...
To the extent that you see focusing heavily and frequently on high-stakes testing to improve learning and teaching I see you as part of the problem—just as you suggest the reverse.
To the extent that I appear to expect that improving the conditions of poverty will make schools places of productive learning, I would add myself to those who are "part of the problem." Schools need to get a lot better at educating all children; communities need to get better at providing a basic foundation of support; but neither approach, exclusive of the other, will do the job. And none has. It's well to remember that when I was born a minority of children even dropped into high school.
To the extent that you think it's acceptable for intelligent representatives of America's comfortable classes to point a finger at our public schools in the war of the 1 percent against everyone else makes you "part of the problem." But maybe you don't think it's acceptable. The 1 percent know what children need for a good education, but apply these criteria only to their own.

Jonathan Kozol made this point in an address to a group of socially conscious, wealthy New Yorkers, shortly after publication of Savage Inequalities. His audience, much moved by his words, began reaching for their checkbooks (it was, after all, what they had anticipated he might be looking for). He said to them, "Put away your wallets. I don't want your money. What I want is for you to put your own children in the public schools of this city. I can guarantee that those schools will change dramatically for the better within a year."

To the extent that I, along with other reformers right and left, insist there's only one best practice we are "part of the problem." We need a diversity of attempted solutions—mistakes must be honored, not attacked. We need the patience it takes to turn a "draft" into a final product.

You are incorrect to assume that my basic position is that, as you put it, "test-based reform is reducing opportunity for America's neediest children." While I believe this to be true, my most critical point is that it's a distraction. To ignore the widening gap in wealth alongside of the increasing abandonment of the most basic services for the poor is appalling.

To claim that to be poor is due to genetic weakness, bad parenting, bad teaching, or bad choices is shameful. William Ryan, in his 1971 book Blaming the Victim, calls that "the art of savage discovery."

Restoring the more equitable sharing of wealth and opportunity that America enjoyed in the post-WWII years—and not just for white working- and middle-class men—is our challenge. And to argue (as many do) that the realities of a world economy oblige us to compete for jobs that offer a continuously declining package of wages and benefits is akin to declaring the end of democracy, which depends on a relatively large middle class.

If we can agree that improving schools is one important way to beat the stacked deck 22 percent of our children face daily, then let's not pretend it can overcome all the other vast differences (e.g., good healthcare). But let's not cheat them of the "real thing." Let us aspire to a lofty view of what being well-educated means for all our children.

If the leaders of our nation—who are alas mostly rich—send their children and grandchildren to schools with class sizes of 10-15, where the intellectual fare is rich and varied and includes the arts and never stints on first-hand experience, then let it be that all children might go to such schools, be they public, private, charter, or magnet.

Some other quick points; since you raise so many I'll have to be choosy.

"Undergirding much of the reform movement" you suggest is improving math and reading skills "as measured by standardized attests." I disagree. Such tests are the poorest of possible measures of the kind of skills needed in math and reading to "make it" in yesterday's world, not to mention tomorrow's. (Get hold of Part II of In Schools We Trust, in which I present the evidence.)

You underestimate the richness of the vocabulary and cognitive skills that children bring with them, including the poorest of the poor. The first discovery I made when I became a kindergarten and then Head Start teacher in the early 1960s was that "these children" were not "without language." Some lack the same vocabulary as their more middle-class peers, but the reason is not because their families don't talk to them with words—but because they do.

There's a reason they don't talk like the radio, TV, and Internet speakers do, but instead like their parents and relatives and neighbors. We grow up to be more like those we admire, love, and imagine we could become. Schools don't offer such settings. Thus the young often appear speechless to strangers—until they reach adolescence when we complain that they talk too much. Did rap arise from communities that "lacked vocabulary"? More vocabulary tests will do precisely what my "pass-the-test course" in French at the U of Chicago did for my French vocabulary. It got me through the required test.

If we focused not on something arbitrarily called "8th grade reading," but on engaged readers, we might have a better chance at turning nonreaders into voracious readers. There are enough great adult books written on an 8th grade level to expand their written and oral language! Keep in mind—in addition—that the idea of "8th grade level" is either a construct of the testing industry or an arbitrary mark set by "experts" who think it's what they "should" be reading (norm-based vs. criterion-based tests.)

Reminder: High school graduates are never tested on the same instrument used to test 8th graders—it was a term invented to mark a statistical point on the scale of reading test scores with grade level the mid-point. Ditto for 4th graders who score on a 12th grade level: They are not therefore "college ready."

There is sufficient evidence that, in our focus on improving test scores, we have—whether necessary or not—decreased the already under teaching of topics that have the best shot of engaging young people's minds, that stimulate the thirst for "more, more, more teacher!"

It's that hunger for more that is such a pleasure at the end of a good staff meeting, where we acknowledge that it's time to go home, but hate to leave each other's company because it has been so satisfying and stimulating to work out our ideas together. So it is when you and your students have had a good day—no one is rushing out, and most are lingering, hating to break the spell. It's dealing with how to increase this phenomenon after kids leave kindergarten that I've spent 50 years working on. Instead we've removed it from too many kindergartens!

Also troubling to me is the realization that we are claiming that being "college ready" will bring the poor into a middle class that is itself disappearing. Yes, higher test scores correlate with more years of schooling and more credentials, and more credentials correlate with more pay. But it takes longer and longer years of increasingly expensive schooling to get you into the middle class—if ever. For most, the pay scale won't be what we once thought of as "middle class," meaning having enough to feel you and your family are "safe." For the families who just made it into the middle class in the past 50 years, most of their safety net was shattered in the last financial collapse. False promises are shaky motivators.

Yes, it's "the system" that's at fault. But we disagree about what aspects of the "system" and what we'd replace it with. We might agree that the absence of much-needed time and autonomy at the local level to work on, think about, and build better practice is a systemic fault.

Where we may disagree is on the need for more competition, more small stores (schools) opening and closing under the pressure of "competitors." It's a marketplace solution, based on a view that democracy is mostly about being able to vote with your feet and your money. Not mine. I still think we need a society that acknowledges that we aren't in a "fair" competition and is prepared to systematically work at removing the obstacles—one by one.

Since a better world will not happen overnight, there is nothing we can do that's more likely to be part of the cure than to work on all fronts together, and nothing more likely to spread more disease than accepting the myth that this is a "crisis" of bad teaching rather than a broader crisis of democracy.

Could Central Park East et al have "paved the way" rather than being an "exception"? Between 1974 and 1990 the number of small and outstanding K-8 schools increased about 50-fold in New York City. Choice became the norm. Superintendent Anthony Alvarado turned a sub-city of 20,000 K-8 students in East Harlem into a system of public choice that attracted thousands of wealthier families and useful attention.

But if he had had the support that charters now have amongst the rich and powerful and if the system had had the courage it needed in the early 1990s to accept Annenberg's challenge (see In Schools We Trust on this too), we might have thousands today. Without more tests. Without privatizing. They wouldn't all look or act like Central Park East or Mission Hill, but they'd offer a way to move forward that we could all join hands over.

We were never perfect, nor were we aspiring for perfection. Our goals were pretty "mundane" and down-to-earth, and we even accepted severe financial limitations. But they moved us in directions that we wanted for our own children and grandchildren.

One other point: Like most teachers, I didn't join up to save the world. In fact, I had largely given up on spending all my time "saving the world"—at least until my kids grew up. I became a teacher because, to my surprise, it offered me an exciting, fulfilling, and joyful education—for pay. I loved that feeling that we all had after a good day of schooling. So I put up with the not-infrequent "bad days." And since our good and bad days as teachers didn't all fall on the same day, I counted on the affection and support of a community I was a part of—making the odds better that tomorrow would be a better day.

That's what we need for all teachers, schools, and above all our students, and their families: good reasons to keep hope alive. Is that being part of the solution or of the problem, Michael?

Deborah

- Deborah Meier

Am I a Part of the Cure ... or the Disease?

2013-05-14T12:51:00Z

Michael J. Petrilli posts his second entry in Bridging Differences today.

"Confusion never stops
Closing walls and ticking clocks
Gonna come back and take you home
I could not stop that you now know, singing

Come out upon my seas
Cursed missed opportunities
Am I a part of the cure?
Or am I part of the disease?"
-Coldplay, "Clocks," A Rush of Blood to the Head, 2002

Dear Deborah,

I am haunted by the title of your post:
"The Testing Obsession Widens the Gap" Could this possibly be true? Is test-based school reform reducing opportunity for America's neediest children? Is everything for which we school reformers fight actually making things worse? Am I a part of the cure, or am I part of the disease?

###

"It's OK to ask: 'What if I'm wrong?'" you wrote last week. So let me ask it. It wouldn't be the first time. A year ago, for example, I explored the "test score hypothesis"—a line of reasoning, undergirding much of the reform movement, that says that if we can significantly improve low-income students' math and reading skills, as measured by standardized tests, we can significantly increase their chances of escaping poverty.

Let's unpack this hypothesis a bit.

As it stands now, children born into poverty come into kindergarten with massive deficits—in terms of vocabulary, content knowledge, and non-cognitive skills. And if they make it to high school graduation 13 years later (and many will not), they will leave, on average, reading and doing math at an 8th-grade level. Of the low-income teens that give higher education a shot, the vast majority of will end up in remedial education and then wash out. More than half of poor children will become poor adults, with poor children of their own. The cycle will repeat. Our hope is that by improving our schools (and, yes, other things too), we can change this narrative.

Let's imagine that our schools can help the average child born into poverty do somewhat better. Let's say that with a combination of talented and well-trained teachers, a rich and rigorous curriculum, lots of supports, and strong leadership, we're able to get poor students, on average, to a 10th-grade level by the time they graduate high school. Suddenly they can attend a community college, or even a four-year university, without starting in remedial education. They are much more likely to graduate, at least with an associate's degree or a technical credential. Rather than making minimum wage, they will make a living wage.

They are less likely to get pregnant as teens, or end up in prison, or drop out of the workforce. Their children wouldn't be born poor—they would be born middle class. This would be transformative.

Notice the key assumption built into this "theory of action": reading and math matter a lot. Getting to the 10th-grade level instead of the 8th-grade level (even as measured by rinky-dinky standardized tests) would make a meaningful difference in real lives. With that assumption in place, it's not crazy—in fact, it's perfectly rational—to hold schools accountable for helping their students make progress every year with their reading and math skills. It's smart to put in place clear, high standards—let's call them common-core standards—that will delineate the path from poverty to prosperity, that will help schools and teachers focus on the knowledge and skills that matter most, and will get students to true readiness for college and career by the age of 18.

So Deborah, are you ready for the big question, the kicker, the heart of the matter?

How sure are we that it's literacy and numeracy, and related academic knowledge and skills, that are the most important precursors to success in college, career, and life? What if something else is just as important, or even more important, like "non-cognitive skills" or personal relationships? (Or perhaps the habit of "serious intellectual inquiry," as you put it?)

And what if our "testing obsession" is crowding these other things out?

These are critical questions, but here's what gives me solace.

First, the evidence is quite strong that reading and math achievement are critical tickets to the middle class. Look, for example, at the blockbuster study from Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff that examined the impact of teachers on students' long-term outcomes. As Kevin Carey explained at the time,

If you believe standardized tests are worthless or highly flawed or deeply inadequate or even troublingly limited in accuracy and scope-and many reasonable people believe these things-then you could dismiss or downplay value-added measures of teacher effectiveness, by definition. ... But now the CFR study says that teachers who are unusually good at helping students score high on standardized tests today aren't just unusually good at helping students score high on standardized tests tomorrow. They also have an unusual effect on the likelihood of students going to college, going to a good college, earning a good living, living in a nice place, and saving for retirement. In other words, whatever the limitations of standardized tests may be, test-based value-added scores do, in fact, provide valuable information about the things most people care most about.

Or look at the evidence that E.D. Hirsch cites about the impact of teenagers' vocabulary on their long-term prospects, such as a 1999 study that shows that "a gain of one standard deviation on the Armed Forces Qualification Test raises one's annual income by nearly $10,000 (in 2012 dollars)."

Or a brand-new study from the United Kingdom (flagged by Joanne Jacobs ) that finds that "math skills at 7 predict earnings at 42."

Surely reading and math aren't all that matters. Paul Tough makes a good case for non-cognitive skills. Others, yourself included, point to the importance of strong personal relationships with mentors. We could name more. But reading and math skills are at least necessary, if not sufficient.

On the other hand, there's little evidence that the "testing obsession" is systematically getting in the way of good teaching and learning in high-poverty schools. That's not because an obsession with testing isn't a problem. It surely is, with its temptations of cheating, narrowing of the curriculum, and the culture of fear that it often perpetuates.

But here's the rub, Deborah: Studies of high-poverty schools in America have demonstrated for decades that great teaching and learning have always been the exception, not the norm. To believe that testing is making these schools worse, you have to believe that they were once pretty good, or at least better than they are now. I just don't see it. Do you? Where's the evidence of that?

Furthermore, think back to Kevin Carey's comments on the Chetty study. If an obsession with reading and math was crowding out more important tasks, why would students with stronger reading and math gains do better long-term than their peers?

Here's what your readers need to remember: The choice today is not between 100,000 Central Park Easts or Mission Hills and 100,000 test-prep factories. If it were, I'd pick the Deborah Meier schools in a heartbeat. But let's face it: There aren't more than a handful of Deborah Meier schools out there. (The same goes with Don Hirsch schools or Mike Feinberg/Dave Levin schools, or any other brand you want to name.)

The typical high-poverty school is, and has always been, pretty mediocre. That's not an indictment of the people who work in these schools; the problem is the system. And it's not unique to education. Any big, bureaucratic government agency is going to struggle to achieve effectiveness, much less excellence. (Think the DMV.) Heck, even most large, private-sector companies are pretty lame, especially ones that don't face much competition. (Think the electric company.) Layer on top of that all of the distracting demands placed upon schools, the fragmented nature of education governance, and, in some places at least, too few resources, and it would be a miracle if the typical high-poverty public school were good, much less great.

###

So do I think testing and accountability make matters worse? No. In fact, based on the studies cited above, I think they will make matters marginally better. I also think stronger standards and tests (a la common core) will make things better still.

What about you, Deborah? Are you willing to ask "What if I'm wrong?" What if it's true that reading and math skills are hugely related to opportunities in life, and indeed are malleable? What if "direct instruction," which you say isn't needed, really is the most effective method for helping children in poverty develop those skills? What if it's patently untrue that children learn "vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and spelling ... the same way we learn everything else that matters," as you stated last week, but instead have to be taught systematically? What if the perfect for which you have spent decades championing really is the enemy of the good—and the greater good, for millions of boys and girls throughout America?

Deborah, with all due respect, I ask you to ask yourself: Am I a part of the cure, or am I part of the disease?

Mike

Michael J. Petrilli is executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education policy think tank based in Washington, where he writes for the award-winning Flypaper blog. He is also an executive editor of Education Next and research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Follow him on Twitter @MichaelPetrilli.

- Deborah Meier

The Testing Obsession Widens the Gap

2013-05-09T14:12:00Z

Deborah Meier responds to Fordham Institute's Michael J. Petrilli today.

Dear Mike,

The data you present re. the "achievement gap" is consistent with an argument I made against using standardized testing as a barometer 50 years ago. I said (and wrote) that as long as our testing system requires us to rank order we will be tracking income (and wealth), not education. As one becomes less equal, so will the other. Anything else would not meet psychometric standards! The tests are designed by test publishers who, by pre-testing items, can be sure that they've got the "right"—reliable and credible—rank order.

Once one concludes, as I did through 50 years of close observation, that the tests are measuring something other than "reading" skill—decoding and restating—our problem looks different. Yes, E.D. Hirsch is right: You can't measure reading qua reading. I not merely observed but ran little mini-focus groups to understand why some kids got "right" answers and others "wrong" ones. It had little to do with their reading skill.

Read Part 2 of In Schools We Trust and you'll learn what I discovered was happening. It's partly a question of vocabulary, but more importantly it is in their "interpretations" that the poor and rich (and probably black and white) differ in significant ways. The same "experience" (whether in the text or life itself) is not "read" the same way. It's easier to guess the right answer if your perspective is similar to what the test-makers expect it to be, just as their forebears did when they invented IQ tests a century ago. We don't all have the same "common experience" upon which the tests are normed. Their "wrong" answers, in fact, were often far more logical and sensible than the "right" ones.

These facts also remind me of why teachers can be more powerful than TV or online schools if they use their time to build authentic relationships with their students—and join with rather than dictate to them. It's for the same reason that studies of how children learn their native language demonstrate that, even if kids spend far more time listening to TV than listening to the talk of adults at home, they will speak like their families. Schools must become second homes.

But where you and I perhaps most clearly differ is in our recipes for turning this situation around. Yours: Focus on vocabulary and a common curriculum that goes with it. I appreciate your emphasis on "curriculum"—subject matter, the stuff itself. But it does NOT require a common curriculum. As with our first language we need to rely on building vocabulary by: (1) having a more diverse student body (racial and class integration); (2) having a lot of adults around to interact with and smaller class sizes (like good private schools do); (3) engaging in studies that require collaboration between students and students, and students and adults—including adult-written texts; (4) encouraging reading in settings that are designed to naturally arouse interest—motivate—or that answer questions youngsters really want to know; and (5) remembering that vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and spelling are most efficiently learned the same way we learn everything else that matters. We learn to drive by driving and to cook by cooking, which means allowing 6- to 12-year-olds to read (and listen to) repetitive and engaging books which do not present too much of a "cognitive" or empathy challenge. These are the years when voracious middle-class readers read boys' and girls' adventure series (Nancy Drew?) about people they imagine they could become—and want to become. That's harder for some kids than others. Boys vs. girls, for example. It always takes a leap of empathy to imagine oneself as the "other," even more so if one is uncomfortable in the skin of the author's characters. You can begin to see what I'm getting at? If in doubt, take a look at the biweekly Internet videos of students working in Mission Hill classrooms.

Progressive preschools never rejected a rich reading culture or knowing facts as "developmentally inappropriate." They just didn't think you needed direct instruction to kick in this love of reading, of hobbies, of facts, of curiosity, of indefatigable and repetitive practice in subjects and skills they were fascinated by. The kids come to us with curiosity—and our job is to extend it. Progressives understood that the playful mindset that serious learning depends on is too often silenced in school. For example, I frequently step into classrooms where well-meaning teachers are doing as they are told: stopping at the end of every paragraph or page to ask didactic questions that turn great stories into "lessons" with "objectives" that can be "measured." That's hardly likely to whet children's appetite for "more, more."

Even "guided" discussions—another fad—at best lead the more teacher-pleasing kids to try to read what the teacher wants them to say, rather than discuss, argue, and maybe act out their own interpretations for each other. And indeed, you are also right that it was in low-poverty and "minority" schools like those I got to know so well in Chicago in the 1950s and 60s that the least "progressive" strategies have always been applied—even by educators who thought of themselves as "progressives." (Richer kids are sometimes getting some of this too now, under pressure to do well on tests.)

They've forgotten. Children are BORN experts at learning. Poor and rich. They couldn't survive a week if they weren't born intellectuals. They experiment over and over, until they find a pattern that "works." And then they find out that it's more complicated than that and start over again! In the first three years of life they are learning at a pace we never again achieve—unless we are, as you note, under so much stress and physical deprivation not typical of most of "the poor." Statistically, of course, it's more likely to impact those with the fewest resources—as you acknowledged.

But, Mike, it cannot be fixed by the common core. It can only be fixed by teachers who know how to join the "common core" of the children and the families they first meet, when children are 4 or 5, and use it wisely and creatively ever after.

We need to spend more time teasing this out. Until we tackle this, poor children will leave the best of themselves at the door until they are big enough to be less physically afraid of their teachers or parents, precisely when adults become afraid of them! Neither form of fear is healthy for teachers or kids! Too many families with the best intentions send their children to school with a message: Beware, they don't respect you or me; Be quiet, behave; Don't count on me to rescue you; and, Don't volunteer information." The message is meant well, and we too often encourage it. It takes time—which we never provide teachers or parents enough of—to build the trust needed between family, teacher, child, and school.

It's OK to ask: "What if I'm wrong?" As long as one can answer: Then I can change my mind! Ditto for all teachers and schools. Unless they can't. I want schools (and schools of education) to provide "boot camps" for the development of democratic habits of association (Dewey's term). Boot camps for adults as well as the young—where serious intellectual inquiry can become a habit. We have only a dozen years or so before these youngsters will make decisions that affect the planet, sit on the juries when I'm on trial (and innocent). We can't afford to waste time on test prep. We need efficiency, but not machine efficiency. We need to use children's and families' strengths efficiently. We need teachers who can think on their feet because they have the right to use their minds well, too. We need to be debating about the habits that underlie democracy—not mandating them. How I'd like young people to witness such debates, and over time, join in. But that can only happen if we are free to say no as well as yes, and learn from our mistakes.

It is our job to use our precious public funds to increase the odds that democracy won't have to be reinvented. If the poor were less poor, their schools less poor, and bigotry less a part of our culture—it would be easier. But still not inevitable.

Deborah

P.S. Maybe read Mike Rose's blog post on Sean Reardon's New York Times piece "No Rich Child Left Behind"; or, Closing the Opportunity Gap, edited by Prudence Carter and Kevin Welner, or the 2009 issue of Education Next where I debated with Checker Finn on a national curriculum to see where we can take this next.

- Deborah Meier

To Close the 'Opportunity Gap,' We Need to Close the Vocabulary Gap

2013-05-07T13:19:00Z

Today, Michael J. Petrilli, the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, joins Deborah Meier. He will blog with her for the next month.

Dear Deborah,

Thanks for inviting me to join you on your blog. Even though we disagree on many issues, I have great respect for you and the work you've done in your career.

As I write this, I'm returning from the Education Writers Association annual conference, held this year at Stanford. I spoke on a panel about the "opportunity gap" with professors Sean Reardon and Prudence Carter. Reardon, as you know, recently published a fascinating but sobering study about the growing income achievement gap. (ASCD's Educational Leadership has an accessible version of the study available online.) And Carter co-edited the new volume, Closing the Opportunity Gap.

What Professor Reardon's research shows is that, over the last 60 years, the achievement gap between the nation's poorest and richest students has widened dramatically. That's true of both test scores and college attainment.

This finding is not surprising for people who have been paying attention, but what is surprising is where the gap lies. It's not that poor children are falling behind the middle class—they're not. It's that the richest students are breaking away from everybody else.

Why is this happening? Here Reardon has to speculate. He considers whether it's simply the result of America's growing income inequality, and concludes that yes, that's part of the story. Rich parents have more time and money to put into their children's cognitive development because, well, they're rich. But that doesn't come close to a full explanation.

He offers a thesis that rich parents are behaving differently today—differently than they used to, and differently than middle-class and low-income parents. Rich parents are obsessed with their children's social and intellectual development. They are spending dramatically more time parenting. And they are getting and staying married. (Forty percent of U.S. children today are born to single mothers; almost none of the richest children are.)

The first question, Deborah, is whether this behavior of the most affluent parents is even a "problem." I would argue that rich parents are acting virtuously. I don't think we want to tell them, "Stop spending so much time with your kids! Stop spending so much money on their cognitive development! Stop providing them the unfair advantage of two engaged parents!"

Still, their behavior creates a conundrum, because it almost certainly will make our society even more inequitable, as their children get a lot more education than everybody else's and, thus, the best jobs and the related rewards. As Megan McCardle put it, "all the people who are really good at school are marrying the other people who are really good at school, having children who are really, really good at school." And now that "returns to education" are larger than ever, that means they're producing children who are really, really likely to be rich themselves.

The alternative approach is to help low-income and middle-class kids catch up. Carter's book offers some ideas worth trying, especially high-quality preschool for kids in urgent need of it—which, by the way, would be more doable if we stopped spreading the money so thin.

Still, the message that comes through in Professors Reardon's and Carter's work—and from others on the left, including Diane Ravitch and Richard Rothstein—is that there's not much schools can do about these gaps. They are visible before kids even enter kindergarten; they don't grow much, if at all, while children are in the K-12 system; and they are fundamentally related to our country's economic and political system. We'll never make much progress until we get serious about redistributing income, or reviving labor unions, or raising the minimum wage, etc.

And that's where I disagree. We need to stop having these extreme arguments, between "No excuses!" on one side and "It's all about poverty!" on the other. Poverty matters immensely. Schools matter immensely. Let's get on with addressing both.

So Deborah, what could schools be doing that they aren't already trying? Let me offer one idea. (In the coming month, I'll suggest others.) It's simple: Schools could help young children build their vocabularies.

Now, that doesn't sound so controversial. Who would be against that? And indeed, the early-childhood world is increasingly interested in the topic of vocabulary development, in part because of studies showing that poor students enter kindergarten with an enormous vocabulary deficit. Cities are launching new efforts to teach low-income parents to speak to their babies and toddlers more (and more effectively) in an effort to close this deficit.

But what can preschools and elementary schools do to build vocabulary? It's not sitting down with kids and making them memorize flash cards. It's teaching them content. Knowledge. Stuff! History and science, art and music, literature and geography. Yes, to little kids. (You know, the ones who are curious about EVERYTHING. Who can learn a TON just by listening to a good read-aloud story.)

E.D. Hirsch has argued for 30 years that the key to building students' vocabularies, and thus their ability to read and learn, is content knowledge. Once a child learns to decode, her "comprehension" ability mainly comes down to the store of knowledge she's got in her head. If she can sound out words but can't read a passage about dinosaurs, it's not because she hasn't been taught "comprehension skills"—it's probably because she's never been taught anything about dinosaurs.

Yet our preschools and elementary schools systematically reject this obvious approach because they deem it not "developmentally appropriate." Furthermore, they say, why teach all those "facts" when kids can just Google them?

The problem is compounded by a lamentable reaction by many high-poverty schools to testing and No Child Left Behind: They delay teaching social studies and science until 4th or 5th grade so they can focus on teaching reading in the early grades. Which is nuts—teaching content is teaching reading.

I could go on and on about this, as the folks at the Core Knowledge blog and the cognitive scientist Dan Willingham often do. Do you follow their work?

Let me end on a hopeful note: I believe that the Common Core State Standards will help fix this problem. The English/language arts standards were heavily influenced by Hirsch's thinking (which is why he's endorsed them), as they expect students to engage with rich and challenging texts—both fiction and non-fiction in subjects like history, science, and geography—as early as possible.

If schools want to do well on common-core assessments, they had better start teaching their students knowledge. (Using Hirsch's Core Knowledge Language Arts program would be an excellent place to start.)

If the common-core standards help to bring back art and music, science and history, civics and literature to our elementary school classrooms, don't you think it's worth supporting? Given that there is excellent scientific evidence for the role of vocabulary—and thus, knowledge—in academic success, and given that the knowledge gap is clearly a major contributor to the "opportunity gap," and given that you have been a long-time advocate for greater equity, won't you reconsider your position on the common core? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Mike

Michael J. Petrilli is executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education policy think tank based in Washington, where he writes for the award-winning Flypaper blog. He is also an executive editor of Education Next and research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Follow him on Twitter @MichaelPetrilli.

- Deborah Meier

Addressing the Gap Between the Rich and 'Others'

2013-05-02T13:27:19Z

Today marks Deborah Meier's final blog post with educator Elliott Witney. Next week she begins blogging with Michael J. Petrilli, the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Dear Elliott,

Let's do this again a year from now!

At the end of this brief exchange where I see much damage done, you are lucky to see hopeful signs. Maybe by next year I'll be more hopeful, too.

I see a huge setback for the idea of democracy in many of the developments you are still hopeful about in schools, and even more in what is happening outside of our schools. (We never got into the out-of-school issues.)

There was a time 15 years ago when I was puzzled by why education seemed to be still moving in a progressive direction while little else was. When I left New York City after suffering the defeat of an exciting new plan to promote a very different idea of what school accountability might look like—it was called the Networks for School Renewal, as I recall—I was discouraged. Annenberg had offered us $50 million to pretend to be a city of 50,000 pupils, and conduct an experiment in democratic accountability over the next five years. We had the written support of the mayor, chancellor, school board, union, and the state chief of education. But ... It collapsed overnight. A new chancellor came to town and said "No." So I moved to Brown University and then Boston. I got a lift out of the early success of the Pilot Program in Boston—a small scale effort to do just what we had planned on a large scale in NYC—and decided to join in. Mission Hill became one of the early Pilot schools.

Accountability is what democracy is all about—but when separated from governance democracy it's simply a businessman's term for the accounting he must give to his shareholders and board: In short, has he made them a profit?

Yes, we may have a selected number of schools with public funding that produce more technically well-educated people—maybe even with higher test scores. (Although the connection between income/wealth and test scores is on the rise, not falling.) Unlikely. But that's not my dream, Elliott. Not even close.

Yes, I borrowed some great ideas from my own private independent school history—from Ethical Culture/Fieldston through Antioch and then the University of Chicago. But no one pretended those schools were intended for "all" children. They were schools meant to produce the leaders of the nation, with broadly ethical ideals in mind. They prided themselves on their selectivity, on how many could not get in. Antioch collapsed—and is trying again with some possibly more contemporary ideas. Note how we conflate the two not-necessarily coupled traits when we brag about "the best and the brightest"—and how both terms are worded comparatively.

In a society intended to make everyone a member of the ruling class, with the leisure and knowledge and power to be a force in the life of the nation (and planet), we don't need a different kind of education for leaders. They will emerge. From birth until age 18 the ONLY purposes that matter deeply to me are two: (1) that each child shall get an education that respects and dignifies his or her own talent and humanity and (2) that every child receive an education that makes every citizen or would-be citizen equally prepared to defend his/her interests and the interests of the larger community and society to which he/she belongs.

Armed with these two aptitudes and attitudes I'm quite prepared to see one's post-18-year-old education focused on how one might make a living! Until then, the purpose of "leaving to learn," in the title of Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski's new book, describes the work of the MET not as a voc ed school, but as a school simply aimed to educate all students with an understanding of the world they are a part of: who does what, who decides what, and how do they go about doing it. Its function is to join adults and youth in useful common tasks. Indeed, it may also serve to nourish a passion that will last way beyond schooling, but more importantly, it might help the young to see themselves with a stake in the world we share.

It comes more easily at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School—because so many already have adults in their lives who belong to the "ruling class"—if not the 1 percent, the 90 percent. But that's why such schooling is even more important for the rest of us. It's not a luxury reserved for the rich. I want a more level playing field in school and out, which is what the promise of democracy is all about. It can only thrive when there is a more level field. Note that I do not speak about absolutely levelness. But we are so far from that defining equal is a quibble.

I'm willing to declare victory each and every time the bottom and the top start moving closer and closer. The gap between rich and "others" is greater in school and out than ever before in our history, ditto for black/Latino vs. white. The last recession wiped out large portions of the black and Latino middle class who are moving downhill fast a time when opportunities are fewer and democracy weaker.

Yes, yes, the slogan "knowledge is power" represents an idea that is losing its real-life strength, even as KIPP expands. That's what I hope is worrying us both.

The gift we all have is the potential to make a difference in the world and to create an America that takes itself more seriously as "a leader of the free world." After fighting one war after another—at great cost—for democracy, we shame ourselves when we let it slip through our fingers so fast.

Good luck, and let's not wait for a public exchange to keep our argument going. Arguing is at the heart of democracy—if done in the hope that both parties gain insight in the process. Along with the powerful connections we share, let's also keep talking about how we might make our schools themselves lessons in democracy—including learning the value of disagreeing, which may sometimes appear to be "making excuses."

Deborah

P.S. Definitely pick up Nel Noddings' new book Education and Democracy in the 2lst Century.

- Deborah Meier

How Do We Foster Excellence?

2013-04-30T12:55:00Z

Elliott Witney files his last entry for Bridging Differences today. Deborah will respond on Thursday, and a new co-blogger will join her next week.

Dear Deb,

As we close our exchange, I want to express gratitude for this opportunity. I've never done anything like this before, and I deeply appreciate your asking me to join this discussion. It has been particularly interesting and exciting to discover how much we agree on. I also want to thank Emily Gasoi for introducing us. When Emily and I first met in my office to discuss our respective educational philosophies, I pulled your book In Schools We Trust off my bookshelf. I feel fortunate that she made this connection.

In your last post, which I found to be particularly thought-provoking and hopeful, you took issue with what I characterized as the "great progress" we have made by growing the number of high-quality public schools that serve young people from predominantly low-income families.

When I referenced "great progress," I definitely didn't mean to imply that I think we're there yet in the world of education. We still face stubborn race and income-based achievement gaps. According the "A New Measure of Educational Success in Texas," "only one in five (about 20 percent) 8th grade students enrolled in Texas public schools completes any level of valid postsecondary credentialing (certificate or degree) within 11 years." For African-American and Hispanic students, the percentages are even lower.

While I stand by my statement that we have many more top-notch public schools educating underserved kids than existed 25 years ago, I don't believe that a successful classroom or school environment can be easily mass-produced. In a given day, teachers make thousands of large and small decisions—from what to wear to how to welcome students to how to structure their classroom lesson to what behaviors to address and which ones to ignore. The sum total of all those critical decisions helps to shape the unique identities of both classrooms and schools.

Now that we have classrooms and schools around the nation showing what's possible, we are liberated to ask different questions. We no longer need to ask, "Is it possible?" All educators have been liberated by proof that it is possible. We now can ask: "How?"

I have vivid memories of the first time that I visited a prestigious independent K-12 school—one I grew to admire and return to many times over the years. I observed 5th grade students tinkering with Lego robotics and 9th graders making musical instruments from wood during a physics class. My first reaction, to be completely honest, was "Man, these kids are so lucky." Then, I started to ask myself questions, including "How can I create this type of excellence at the school I lead?"

I returned to KIPP Academy Houston and asked our science department chairperson this question: "If money were no object, what would 'world-class science' look like at our school?" From there, we began a collaborative process of revamping our entire middle school science offerings. Five years after asking this question, KIPP Academy now has a Science & Engineering Day with 8th graders racing mousetrap cars and 7th graders competing to see whose Popsicle-stick bridges can sustain the most weight.

KIPP Academy experienced a similar transformation when our faculty studied the rigor and frequency of high-quality writing expected in elite independent schools. Once we asked ourselves, "How might we do something like this in our school," we were able to raise the bar for what we expected for student writing. Not much later, the level of thought and complexity in our average students' writing at KIPP Academy far exceeded the norm from five years ago. Although we still have a long way to go, we were able to raise the quality of student writing through changing our expectations and thinking differently about the "how."

I wanted to conclude with a response to your question about scaling models in public education. Should your Mission Hill school and the school I led be replicated? Replication is really hard work, but it is definitely possible. When I was principal of KIPP Academy, I had dozens of aspiring school founders complete one-month 'residencies' at my charter school. I have seen many of these educators go on to create public schools that are as good as, if not better than, the KIPP Academy I ran. These school principals have been able to achieve this by building strong leadership teams, hiring and nurturing talented teachers, and maintaining a culture of continuous improvement for children and adults.

I also have observed whole school districts pursue system-wide excellence. Spring Branch ISD in Houston (where I began working as an administrator last year) has adopted a single strategic goal and set of fundamental principles in the form of belief statements you will find here. Our single goal—like the report mentioned above—helps us align what we do as a system to what we ultimately want to see for our children. Our beliefs provide the underlying principles that help shape the entire system.

We believe that a great public school system: builds on the strengths and gifts of each child; provides students from poverty the same opportunities for success after high school as students from non-poverty homes; instills in every student the belief that they can achieve more than they think possible; and assures that every adult in the system is committed to the successful completion of some form of higher education for every child.

These beliefs guide everything in the system. Because we believe great school systems build on the strengths and gifts of each child, for example, we have robust extracurricular offerings in the arts and athletics. Spring Branch even offers students rich career and technical education programming through the Guthrie Center, including courses in agricultural science, forensic science, and the culinary arts.

Just like I borrowed great ideas from elite independent schools as a principal, I know your Mission Hill school has been a source of inspiration and innovation to educators all over the world—both for its programming and its philosophical underpinnings.

It is my sincere aspiration that our blog dialogue has helped open some people's minds to what's possible in public education. As awareness spreads about the proof points of excellence in our nation's public schools, I hope people will stop asking "Is it possible?" and start asking "How do we foster excellence?"

My best,
Elliott

- Deborah Meier

Teaching Students About Trade-Offs

2013-04-25T15:06:00Z

Dear Elliott,

You remind me of what always gives me hope—about myself and the world! We are insatiably inclined to learn from our experience—although too often we do less and less of it as we grow older.

Schools have the unique potential of being conscious places for thinking aloud together—across ages and different histories. They are the heart—potentially—of the answer to "how best to teach teachers." Bringing faculties, K-12 teachers, parents, and students together to genuinely reexamine their ideas, over and over—daily, weekly, annually, etc.—is the untapped resource that can change the world. And schools are where it can happen.

I overstate my case. But it was precisely this that made our mutual friend Emily excited about "comparing" Mission Hill and the KIPP school you were so long associated with in Houston: the liveliness of the staff's questioning of their own practices, sharing ideas, and even revising some. I gather the approach was more subtle than throwing things out and inventing new practices, but more tweaking, or as you note "explicitly" deemphasizing SLANT, using it "less and less" in your own teaching as a central tool.

I also agree that in the first year or two of teaching we often feel a greater need for rules that are fixed, unchangeable, etc. There are just too many decisions to make, and kids are too aware of how uncertain we are. It's what made substitute teaching for me so hard—because I wasn't able to appear confident in my own judgment! But my incurable curiosity about "excuses" didn't interfere with my success as a kindergarten teacher or, later, as a full-time teacher and principal. But it was ill-suited to being a sub!

But finding better ways doesn't happen automatically. If we're lucky, we find good mentors, live ones or in books. Or, one is lucky and starts working in a kindergarten. My curiosity about "excuses" may well have cost a little, but we pay a price for all our choices. Those are trade-offs one has to accept as part of just being alive. It was my curiosity that made me fall in love with teaching—even if it meant I learned the "tricks" a little more slowly. What's scary is how many teachers never get over the bad habits they needed to start with.

Part of the complex moral message we are teaching the young in school is being aware of the trade-offs that complicate life, and which are not always possible to predict ahead of time is a major part of it. It's the seemingly impossible paradox of learning to "accept" authority on faith while simultaneously being skeptical about even the best of authorities.

The term "no excuses" bothers me the same way "three strikes and you're out" does, and a whole host of other slogans that harden our hearts and brains to the fact that there are "excuses."

At its heart our legal system rests on the demand that defendants have a right to present their "excuses"—to be heard. I have experienced the sad fact that Some Folks learn to expect their right to be heard out—with their "excuses"—and some not. On the whole, it's partly because of their skill at making excuses and partly because of who they are—gender, race, class, etc.—that some do and some don't. Some kids have "a way" of charming you out of your immediate harsh response and some have a way of digging themselves in deeper. In examining who does which we learned a lot at Mission Hill about the kids and ourselves: their "prejudices" and ours.

I see less "great progress" than you do, Elliott, re. race and class and schooling. I perhaps question the data that you rest your claim on—that zip codes are no longer (in Los Angeles or elsewhere) a very sound predictor of school success. I also think we have unnecessarily complicated the potential for breaking the zip code prediction by using test scores and four-year graduation rates as measures of our success. Both are designed to widen the apparent gaps. Yes: designed! (It's perhaps time we re-tackled the correlation between zip codes and class/race by changing the correlation between zip codes and race/class!)

Schools alone cannot be saviors—even in the long arc of life—even as they were for so many of our students (and yours). Scaling up has its costs. But better conscious planning re. schools and much more can be the saviors. If we choose to use it for that end. But perhaps our greatest contribution—the specific schools we put so much of our lives into—will be encourage a new generation. That it isn't "in their genes" or their "bad parents' genes" and that it isn't in test scores that take their starting point in the necessity to rank order, to differentiate, etc. to believe that individual success does not run counter to collective success, that schools can contribute to building a democratic base that helps design our collective future. Maybe our students will be better able to examine the particulars of our democratic experiment for perhaps better ways to balance the power of money and the power of "the people," to reconsider some of the trade-offs that come from different forms of democracy—different compromises and trade-offs. Maybe.

Democracy is in a state of crisis—and it's not a good sign for those in the bottom half, or perhaps for those in the bottom 90 percent. The top 1 percent have been getting away with a lot of excuses to explain their often felonious behavior, the gross inequality they accept as natural, and their ability to invent explanations for why their good fortune is really good for us all. And it's eating away at one institution after another. Including our respect for the law.

I like grit, curiosity, and zest—so much better than rigor. Thanks. I've lately tended to translate rigor into vigor! It takes a zestful, curious, vigorous body of adults to create a community that kids and families can truly be members of—and I'm for virtually any school that a least starts with asking the tough questions—such as who do we mean by "us"? Which "us's" make the decisions the rest of us live uncomfortably alongside of?

Query: Do you think that "models"—such as ours and yours—can be replicated or should, beyond the first few years perhaps? What are the trade-offs involved? Did you always feel you had sufficient flexibility to use your own experiences freely in making changes within "the model"? What have you learned from this? "Scaling up" as an idea always makes me nervous, but I've seen many successful attempts, even though I suspect most involve flexibility and leeway: like Waldorf schools, Montessori, the MET schools, the International schools, etc. But I'm also aware of some of the drawbacks they have experienced in getting this "right."

Deb

- Deborah Meier

Exploring Moral Development in School

2013-04-23T14:47:00Z

Elliott Witney continues his conversation with Deborah Meier today.

Dear Deb,

I wanted to start by saying that I hope everyone you know in the Boston community through your extensive work there is safe and has been able to weather what must have been an emotional storm over the last several days. I can only imagine how challenging last week was for so many people whose lives you've touched directly or indirectly.

In addition to this thought, I wanted to acknowledge how heartening it has been to hear from readers commending our exchange as an attempt to reach depth about a complex range of topics in civilized discourse.

With that context, I want to push us even deeper. For example, is SLANT— as you've characterized it—"5 Rules for Success?" SLANT should not be contrasted, as you've done, with other techniques schools use to foster social and moral behavior. At the school where I served as principal, we used both SLANT and complex approaches to teaching moral development. After my first couple years teaching, I explicitly referenced it less and less in my own teaching. I was far more focused on how to help 7th and 8th graders both engage in the type of compelling literary analysis required of them in college and develop character strengths that would help them to be productive and happy adults.

I called Rafe Esquith—a close friend and mentor and easily one of the best teachers I have ever met—to get his perspective on SLANT. Rafe has published several excellent, helpful books about his classroom in Los Angeles and his work as a teacher that I would recommend to all educators. I first saw him teach in 1999—Rafe worked with students before and after school on various self-directed projects, such as completing Mondrian-inspired paintings, learning to play acoustic guitar and drums, and practicing lines from a Shakespeare play in the original English. I asked him: "What's your opinion about SLANT?"

Rafe's answer, as always, was straightforward. "Elliott, teaching is really hard. I've been in this profession for decades. As my teaching has evolved, I rely on some of these tactics and not others. But you better believe that when I first started teaching, I needed any help I could get!"

The teachers at my school didn't rely exclusively on the SLANT technique to help students develop their character and intellect. We started by trying to build strong, positive, nurturing relationships with every child. Then we spent time trying to help students refine their intellectual reasoning skills and wrestle with the complexities they'd face in life.

You cite Lawrence Kohlberg—presumably his work on stages of moral development. I have been inspired by Kohlberg's research since Rafe first introduced me to his work in 1999. For anyone reading who isn't familiar with this body of research, Kohlberg studied why humans make the decisions they make, categorizing their responses into one of six stages of moral development. Stage 1, he would say, shows the least moral development. In a nutshell, Stage 1 is, "I do what I do to avoid getting in trouble." Stage 6, the highest level of moral development, is this: "I do what I do because it's my code—rooted in ethical, principled conscience."

At KIPP Academy MS in Houston, we integrated Kohlberg's research into the fabric of our school. Starting in 5th grade, we introduced a series of dilemmas to our children and asked them to think about why they do what they do. We presented the following dilemma to our students: Let's say you need a pencil, and you notice eight pencils on your neighbor's desk. If nobody was around and nobody would ever know you took a pencil, would you take one? Why, or why not?" Some children might say, "No, because I wouldn't want to get in trouble" or "Yes, because I know I wouldn't get in trouble," which are Stage 1 responses. Others might say, "No, because I don't steal. That's not who I am," which falls into Stage 6. Their responses provide a context to discuss Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Regardless of the answer, our goal as educators was to develop self-awareness in our students and to challenge each child to consider more deliberately the choices they make.

By 6th grade, Kohlberg's research integrated into a multi-week, interdisciplinary unit focused on the European Holocaust and other worldwide atrocities that culminated with a trip to the Holocaust Museum Houston. Throughout that unit, we asked our students regularly to reflect on points of view of the victims, the perpetrators, and the bystanders. We took these incredibly complex history lessons and applied them to moral choices our children might face daily as students. If you are a bystander witnessing another student victimized by bullying of any sort, for example, what do you do and why?

Our hope in using this holistic approach was to develop in children their own understanding of the "Golden Rule"— their "code"— and to start to challenge them to consider how they might apply it to their own lives. Last spring, I delivered a passage on this theme as part of my address at KIPP Houston High School's graduation ceremony:

To leave a lasting imprint on the world during your lifetimes ... academic skills aren't enough. This is why we've pushed you to wrestle with moral dilemmas that helped each of you figure out for yourself who you are. Are you someone who lies or not? Steals or not? Picks up trash? Holds doors? Expresses thanks to your family and those who have helped you or not? And we've tried to open your eyes to some of history's most hideous horrors, too. Slavery, bigotry, genocide, torture. The types of social injustices that scar families, communities, nations, and continents.
You've learned who you are and what needs to be done to build a better tomorrow. ... And it doesn't have to be what we've done. Soccer players have stopped civil wars. The Innocence Project is ending wrongful imprisonment. Doctors stopped smallpox. Start an art studio, write inspiring folk music, build a soup kitchen. Or, as I've told [a couple of you], make a billion dollars and give it away. Just do something that makes you happy.

The question then naturally shifts to what, in the context of wanting each of our children to build a better tomorrow, does "no excuses" mean? You might ask yourself: "If you try your best to build strong, positive, lasting relationships with children, and if your school was committed to pushing children to wrestle with some of life's most complex moral dilemmas, how could you possibly identify in any way, shape, or form with the 'no excuses' education reform movement?"

For me, "no excuses" was never about allowing children no excuses; it always signified a movement of educators committed to social justice who believe that all children can and will learn if we the adults avoid getting mired in excuses. Clearly, poverty does have an impact on a child's school readiness. But educators should not use poverty as a reason to avoid challenging young people to achieve academically and reach their full potential.

In 20 years, we have made great progress. When Rafe Esquith started teaching in Los Angeles over 30 years ago, there were only a handful of classrooms achieving transformative results for students living in poverty. Today, there are literally hundreds of public schools—both district and charter—that are proving that zip code does not define a student's destiny.

Because of this movement, we now find ourselves at a point in which no one in our country can logically argue anymore that students from underserved communities can't achieve at high academic levels. We still have a long way to go before we see entire school systems or states achieving these types of results with students. We have proof, however, that it can be done.

While there is always room for growth, I am proud of the work teachers at KIPP Academy MS in Houston have been able to achieve both before, during, and now after my time as principal. By building strong relationships with our students, we were able to step up the academic expectations for all our children—far beyond state tests. We also focused on helping students develop the character strengths needed to be successful in life such as grit, curiosity, and zest.

Take care,
Elliott

- Mary-Ellen Phelps Deily

Questioning Assumptions About the Poor

2013-04-18T13:23:00Z

Dear Elliott,

Your explanation of SLANT seems sensible, but my problem, in a nutshell, is that it seems more like "Five rules for success" rather than a set of moral or intellectual rules. Actually, at the three colleges where I recently spoke—Bates, Wesleyan, and Brandeis—I didn't see a lot of SLANT behaviors, but their absence didn't make me feel unwanted, uncomfortable, or unheard. Still, I appreciate your concern that your students not waste opportunities through rudeness—there are better fights to pick. Indeed, kids of color are less likely to be "forgiven" for "rudeness" than rich or upper-middle-class white kids are. I recognized this in the largely black and Latino schools my own children attended.

Confusing "rules for success" with the very different kinds of "rules" implicit in the Golden Rule is an old-school habit. My kindergartners in 1963 told me the purpose of school was to learn to "be good" as in to raise your hand, stand in line, etc. In short, they came to school with a misunderstanding.

I think good social and moral behavior is best "taught" by being in the company of others—peers, older students, and adults—who display them. And even more important, by the kind of empathy experienced—in the Kohlberg sense—in family and school. The Golden Rule works also in reverse—as the inability to NOT step into the shoes of others, and thus recognize our common humanity. It requires, for example, deliberately uncovering the similarities between home and school values—which are rarely as far apart as too many imagine. The oft-repeated verbal attacks on poor people's "bad habits" has led to poor pedagogy and missed opportunities, starting at age 4 and 5. It speaks to a poverty of middle-class empathy and of becoming too accustomed to the rudeness of the rich! I suspect we are on the same page here.

The all too commonly distorted views about families of color are matched by distorted views of teachers. Reader "Labor Lawyer's" straw man teacher (in a comment), who thinks it's unfair to expect much of low socioeconomic students, no doubt exists, but he's not the norm. Similarly, it's not just occasional teachers who "yell and belittle" kids, loving middle-class white parents have been known to "yell and belittle" their own children.

I suspect we both wanted to respond to reader Amy Frost's comment. She might be surprised to discover that most of the young people I knew (including my own) went to school to socialize—and continue to after high school! It's not a unique quality of the poor (nor their families). But, while we all would hope that the love of learning would come first and that schools exist where children wake up daily eager to study, it was never the norm. If she was expecting that, it's time for her to find another job perhaps. I'm amazed instead at how many good and generally optimistic teachers I meet, as well as how generally polite most kids are in the schools I visit—including in so-called drop-out factories. My experience is more like that described by commenter PLThomas: Thanks PL.

At Mission Hill we generally avoided acronyms—possibly unwisely—because we wanted kids to get accustomed to recalling our beliefs in their own words. Actually Work Hard and Be Kind is a motto we share with KIPP. But our over-riding "rule" for behavior is: Don't do things that hurt others or that make it hard for others to learn. I do appreciate acronyms for relatively trite matters, and use them when studying for exams where I know I'll forget the day after. (I sometimes still remember the acronym, but not its content!) I'll rethink this.

At Mission Hill we use five habits of mind that underlie the school's intellectual stance. When confronting old or new ideas ask the following questions: (1) How do you know what you know, and how credible is it? (2) Is there another story, another viewpoint? (3) Do you see a pattern? (4) Could it have been different? What if? and (5) Who cares? Why does it matter? We even use these habits of mind in "discipline" cases!

Of course, any code of behavior can be misused. I saw misuses of our intended practices in my own favorite schools, too—sometimes even by me.

But Michael G. makes a different good point in suggesting another topic we could, perhaps, explore: the idea that there are no "excuses" for anyone--poor or rich--not meeting their potential. The buzz words used by many in today's reform movement suggest that poor outcomes on tests demonstrate that poor kids have less grit, less drive to succeed, etc. and that this is both their own fault and that of lazy or misguided teachers. They can ALL change themselves if we insist. I guess it's a big step forward from assuming they are genetically inferior. But I find both views dangerous and too often the former leads to the latter. I think that much of what seems like laziness is a combination of repressed anger and the "paranoia" that the expectation of prejudice produces. I've discovered that many of the kids who seem most resistant to school learning don't lack love, nor the love of learning nor perseverance—in other settings! But they enter the schoolhouse with different assumptions about how they will be received there.

There's been a long, long history of assuming poverty, like race, is genetically inherited, and that "they" are different from "us." That history still lives, and alert and sensitive children pick it up, sometimes even when it isn't there. It helps children if the adult community at school more closely resembles the one at home. But alas, "reform" today has systematically driven out most of the African-American teachers who managed to make it and went on to teach in highly segregated schools (mostly by choice). It's precisely those schools that have been closed by Rahm Emanuel and Michael Bloomberg. Having once been the victim of seniority rules, they are now the victim of weak union contracts which have been unable to enforce seniority.

One of the issues raised in the comments about our conversation is whether the current reform movement's "no excuses" line fails to acknowledge the price the poor pay for poverty or that African-Americans pay for the racism that remains? In my lifetime, I've seen improvement re. racism, but not in stereotypes about "the poor." I think it's greater than ever. My hope that integrated schools—in terms of class and race—might be a route for changing deeply embedded prejudice didn't get far off the ground. Why do so many schools who have the freedom to do otherwise seem comfortable being wholly segregated? Any theories?

Elliott, an aside. In my youth children and families risked their lives for it? ... And yet we have less today than we had then?? It's worth our concerning ourselves with why and how.

Intentions matter. However, what we are struggling with is why well-intentioned people think x will lead to y—assuming, as we both do, their often best intentions. The hope behind Bridging Differences is to better understand how this happens.

Deborah

- Deborah Meier

Check Back on Thursday

2013-04-16T16:07:00Z

Deborah Meier and Elliott Witney are taking a little extra time to prepare their posts this week. Come back to Bridging Differences on Thursday, and you'll find Deborah's newest entry.

- Mary-Ellen Phelps Deily

Explaining KIPP's 'SLANT'

2013-04-11T14:08:00Z

Elliott Witney blogs again with Deborah Meier today.

Dear Deb,

You've asked how we can reconcile our practices with the Golden Rule of "Do unto others what you would have others do unto you." Or, in other words, how aligned are our practices with our beliefs? That's a question I've been focused on since I was in college, and I deeply appreciate the chance to get into it with you.

I'll devote this second letter to discussing the educational practice you asked about, known as SLANT. This is a perfect example of how alignment between practice and beliefs is just as crucial—if not more so—than the specific practice itself.

SLANT emerged at our school in Houston as an easy way to explain to children some key elements of a stimulating learning environment. Engaged learners Sit up; they Listen; they Ask and Answer questions; they Nod when it makes sense to nod; and they Track the speaker—whether that speaker is a fellow student or the teacher. SLANT is a means to an end, not an end in itself—a distinction that is worth re-reading. The important thing here is that these elements are all in service of a greater goal: to maximize student learning time in classrooms while cultivating intellectual habits that can be useful in any learning environment. In order to understand that, let's look more closely at the five pieces of the acronym.

Sit Up. Not only does sitting up make you more energetic and engaged than slumping down in your chair, but it also conveys respect for the person or people in the room with you. This practice is as important in the classroom as it is in, say, a college interview. Sitting up might look different from student to student, or from classroom to classroom, but the important thing is that students show they're alert and engaged.

Listen. So much of classroom learning is based on processing what you hear—whether it's the teacher or a fellow student talking. When we encourage students to listen to each other, and to the teacher, their conversations become more layered and sophisticated. They can build on what was said before, instead of just relying on the basic understanding provided by notes and books.

Ask and Answer Questions. As a classroom teacher, I always encourage my students to ask questions, for my benefit as much as theirs. If a student cannot answer a question, or is too shy to ask, then the teacher is missing crucial information about what they understand and where they need support. Encouraging students to ask and answer questions is a way to get them in the habit of demonstrating their understanding themselves, rather than the teacher having to draw it out of them.

Nod. This one is really more about Non-Verbal Communication. It's the visual equivalent of asking and answering questions—we're helping students give their teachers cues about whether or not they get what's going on. It's the same as in any real-world conversation, where you let people know you understand by nodding or giving other non-verbal cues. As a teacher, nodding in the affirmative wasn't the only non-verbal cues I encouraged. Things like smiling and laughing were also great for letting me know that students were following along with me.

Track the Speaker. This is partly about showing respect for the speaker, but it's also practical: When students are looking at the person speaking, they have an easier time hearing what they're saying and processing that information. In the age of cell phones and other hand-held technology, teaching students to look at the person speaking has become even more important. A friend recently told me the story of her family reunion, where all the teenagers huddled in a dimly lit corner of the room, where the only sign of life was the glow of their smart phones—no one was talking to anyone else. In our classrooms (and probably plenty of other places) we want our classrooms to be places where students are truly present and engaged.

During my years of teaching middle school, I made sure to integrate the elements of SLANT into my lessons. For example, when my students studied To Kill a Mockingbird, I set up a college-style seminar discussion about Atticus Finch's notion of courage. Throughout the discussion, I encouraged students to sit up; to listen when others were speaking; to ask questions when they were confused (or curious); to give non-verbal cues when they understood what was going on; and to keep their eyes on the person speaking as the conversation bounced back and forth around the room. This is the kind of behavior that's expected in college-level courses, and by getting them used to it now, I aimed to deliberately set them up to succeed well into the future. It was about more than the behavior; it was about my belief that these behaviors are important for success down the line.

SLANT needs to be deliberately and carefully implemented; it takes practice and encouragement at the hand of an expert teacher. If done well, it can help build positive habits in students that persist through college and beyond.

For me—and, I'm learning, for you as well—the key to all this is intentionality. Are we making intentional decisions about what we do as educators? Are we actively trying to align our practice to what we believe? If we stay cognizant of these questions, rather than enforcing SLANT behaviors for their own sake, then we have a terrific tool for making our beliefs about education become a reality.

I want to end with a story, the kind of thing that makes all these discussions we have worthwhile. I just heard yesterday from a former student of mine, who graduated from college in Houston and moved to California. He told me that his time in my class and school helped set him up for success in college, so he is strongly considering a move back to Houston and to become a teacher himself. He is eager to give back to the community he came from, and to introduce these belief-based practices to a new generation of students. I couldn't be prouder.

Best,
Elliott

- Deborah Meier

Understanding 'No Excuses'

2013-04-09T13:48:00Z

Today, Deborah Meier continues her blog conversation with Elliott Witney.

Dear Elliott,

We're going to have to converse for more than a month to get ourselves straightened out! It would be a useful learning experience for me so I'm hoping you're willing.

I've been trying for the past few months to get into a healthy and vigorous disagreement with some other bloggers. It has been much more difficult than I anticipated it would be to get people to engage in constructive sparring. So it occurs to me that I may have jumped in too abruptly in our case. Here's another attempt to trouble the water between us a little more gingerly—pursuing the issues around discipline before moving on to other topics.

It is well known that KIPP has a discipline model called the "Porch" that has been documented in Jay Mathew's book, among many other accounts. (Do you know the history of that term: the porch? It's a term that comes up in an early Zora Neal Hurston novel, I think.) The approach includes students turning their shirts inside out, sitting separately at lunch, not being allowed to speak with peers for breaking rules. SLANT is another much-admired KIPP practice that has been widely publicized and imitated. Schools that practice similar systems are sometimes described as "no excuses" schools.

I truly don't understand the rationale behind these practices. I'm assuming that you and I agree that the goal of schooling is to prepare students for adulthood, including navigating a diversity of situations and settings, and doing so on behalf of both personal and social goals, prominent among them becoming effective citizens in a far-from-perfect democracy.

I was hoping for an insider's perspective on what lies behind these practices—the unspoken assumptions about how society now works and how we might improve it! Might we agree on the following fundamental proverb as a guide to good parenting, schooling, and social justice? "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." I'm trying to fit this into the "no excuses" response. Whether we'd end up agreeing or disagreeing, I think it would improve the discussion if we were both able to follow the reasoning behind our different choices with their different trade-offs. Hopefully my colleagues at Central Park East, Mission Hill, et al question our practices (as I know KIPP staff do also). So it would definitely help us.

We, for example, actually honor "excuses"—which we'd argue lie at the heart of our legal system. In our "progressive" approach there is ample room for adults and students to make mistakes. How, in a no-excuses school, do students appeal if they believe the penalty is unfair?

Talking with you made me think about the Responsive Classroom approach to "time out"—an approach often used by schools that would see themselves as progressive. We actually tried it, and I think I'll ask some of the Mission Hillers why we abandoned it—assuming we did!

How can we develop a language for sharing practices that seem so different, but might have similar underlying long-term rationales? Might it be beneficial if we could figure out a way to argue about these issues respectfully?

My best,
Deborah

- Deborah Meier

How KIPP Schools Define Success

2013-04-04T12:49:00Z

Today, Elliott Witney, formerly a leader in a KIPP charter school, begins blogging with Deborah Meier.

Dear Deb,

I feel incredibly grateful to be able to join you in this public discussion. I remember vividly the moments when Emily Gasoi reflected aloud how surprised she was to find such similarity between the schools you work with and the KIPP school she studied for her dissertation.

Before I respond in detail to your post, I wanted to clarify that I no longer work full-time for KIPP. I currently serve as an administrator for the Spring Branch Independent School District in Houston. Before coming to Spring Branch, I worked for KIPP starting in 1999—first as a teacher at the original middle school in Houston, and then later as the principal. I was also the girls' soccer coach for middle and high school for about a dozen years, a job I loved. I continue to teach a course on leadership to aspiring KIPP leaders, which takes me across the country to see an array of KIPP schools in action.

What's been particularly interesting in my transition from charter to traditional is how similar (I'd go so far as to say identical) the work is—in particular, the dreams we have for our children and the problems we're trying to solve. What's cool to me about the education reform space now is that traditional systems and charter organizations throughout the country are finally collaborating in meaningful ways to help more kids. The SKY Partnership between Spring Branch ISD, KIPP, and YES Prep is a wonderful example of organizations with common purpose working together. I hope we can dive into these topics soon.

That said, I wanted to address your request—that I share my thoughts on your perceptions about KIPP—based on my firsthand experience as a KIPP veteran.

The situation you describe simply does not reflect my experience with KIPP. In thousands of hours in dozens of KIPP schools throughout the United States, I can't remember ever hearing anyone in KIPP say "these kinds of kids." Ever. I've heard "our students," "my students," and more often than not, "my kids," because KIPP fosters such a strong "team and family" culture in its schools.

I've also never witnessed schoolwide discipline the way you describe it. In my experience, a healthy KIPP school does not do these things. As a KIPP principal, I made it my mission to ensure that students felt safe, supported, nurtured, and challenged at school. The KIPP schools I've visited take a similar approach. As recently as late March I visited three KIPP charter schools in Memphis, Tenn., and left blown away by the warm, inviting culture in each of their schools.

I think I'm reading in your piece that KIPP is overly focused on test scores. That is absolutely not the case. KIPP defines success by asking Six Essential Questions that test the health and sustainability of our schools and measuring progress against those questions. I have to tell you that although I'd say KIPP is doing well on numerous indicators (including state tests), I've never met a single KIPP leader who's satisfied with that. KIPP's leadership is constantly pushing for more, to do better, and to make sure that students receive a great all-around education, not just at test time.

For example, let's look at Essential Question #4: Are KIPP alumni climbing the mountain to and through college? As of this year, the four-year college graduation rate for KIPP students 25 or older from the first KIPP middle schools—including the one I led—is 40 percent. That's above the national average for all children and four times the national average for students from the bottom economic quartile. In Spring Branch ISD, we see success in places like KIPP and YES with college-completion numbers as something worth learning from and in many ways trying to emulate. But KIPP's co-founders Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg are not satisfied with this. They want to achieve a college-completion rate that is on par with the rate for young people 25 or older from high-income families, which is currently around 75 percent.

This idea of "continuous improvement" is part of the DNA at KIPP. Leaders and teachers constantly look for ways to revitalize and hone what they're doing. Because they're not satisfied, KIPP's leaders decided to tackle the problem of increasing college-completion rates by refining their focus on character. Developing character has always been part of the KIPP model, but over the past few years the work has become more deliberate, building on cutting-edge research by professors Martin Seligman and Angela Duckworth from the University of Pennsylvania. In KIPP schools around the country, as a small example of how this research is integrating into the fabric of KIPP schools, I see teachers working collaboratively with students to develop character-based growth goals so that children feel empowered to grow.

Finally, I want to address your question of whether or not KIPP leaders send their children to KIPP. The answer is yes, absolutely, they do. But KIPP's mission is not educating the children of their leaders, but educating the children of their communities. KIPP's #1 Essential Question is, Are we serving the students that need us? With hundreds of families on waiting lists at KIPP schools across the country, the focus is on making progress toward that goal.

Now that I've discussed my experiences and history as an educator, I would love to learn more about your work. I understand that you've made incredible progress building citizenship among students at Mission Hill and Central Park East. You've also written extensively on democracy in schools. What drew you to this approach? How did you implement it, and how has it worked? How have your students drawn on their democracy-oriented education as they move on to college and beyond? I'm certain your groundbreaking work can help all of us—charter or traditional—learn and grow.

My best,
Elliott

- Deborah Meier

Trying to Understand the KIPP Approach

2013-04-02T12:43:00Z

Today, Deborah Meier starts a month-long blog conversation with Elliott Witney, a former KIPP educator who now serves as the executive director of strategic initiatives and innovation in the Spring Branch independent school district in Houston, Texas. Mr. Witney was school leader at the first KIPP—Knowledge Is Power Program—charter school for 10 years.

Dear Elliott,

First, thank you for agreeing to take part with me in this public discussion. I think this is a particularly interesting and important discussion to have because we are associated with reform movements that, in many people's minds, could hardly be further apart. And, probably, I'd have agreed, until our mutual friend, Emily Gasoi (with whom I rarely disagree) studied KIPP Houston, for her dissertation research. She suggested that we might find considerable common ground.

Emily's commendations aside, however, I'm generally predisposed to a negative reaction to the KIPP model—both for its reputation for accomplishing testing "miracles" and for its approach to discipline. Some years ago I visited a KIPP school that both challenged and reaffirmed some of these preconceptions. Talking with the KIPP teachers I felt more comfortable than I expected. They said they had a lot of autonomy in directing the work of their classes—in terms of pedagogy and subject matter; that there was a high degree of adult collegiality; and that they thought its disciplinary practices were probably useful for "these kinds of kids."

And, many thoughtful education critics claim there's a connection between KIPP's discipline system and high achievement (i.e. high test scores). Whether the improved test scores many students achieve at KIPP schools are really indicative of academic or intellectual growth, they surely create opportunities for young people who might otherwise have few. But, I thought in response, if KIPP's disciplinary policy is, at least in part, intended to produce those high test scores, isn't there a point at which the sacrifices involved aren't worth the price?

So let's begin perhaps by discussing the use of what seems to me to be a military style of discipline. What I find problematic is that it asks young people to tolerate actions taken by those in authority that are aimed at humiliating them into compliance. In contrast, I want to arm kids from day one with the qualities of heart, mind, and body that dispose them to resist such treatment—ideally and above all, to resist internalizing such humiliations, while developing strategies, with our help, for coping with them! At schools I've been associated with—Mission Hill, Central Park East, and others aligned with the Coalition of Essential Schools—we hope that our "habits of mind" translate into a skeptical mind toward authority and see such habits as central to democracy.

During my visit to the KIPP school, I missed the normal back-and-forth that I was accustomed to at the schools I've most admired and which I believed were at the heart of what helped young people join the adult world. However my visit was not long enough to be sure whether my perception of these student and staff interactions was accurate—but I'd like your thoughts on this, Elliott. I was, however, acutely embarrassed by one example of the KIPP approach I witnessed. One of our adult hosts called a young girl over to our circle of visitors to demonstrate how the discipline system worked. She asked the girl how many demerit points she had accumulated, then whether she knew what she had done wrong, how she felt about it, and what the consequences would be. The young girl responded dutifully and apparently accurately to these inquiries, always looking into her teacher's eyes. I felt I had taken part in a ritual in which I didn't want to be complicit: a public shaming. But I tried my best to hide my embarrassment and the demonstration was shortly completed. I've read about other KIPP practices, such as children being "exiled" to a special table at lunch, required to wear their KIPP shirts backwards, and other forms of public embarrassment. Even if this produced higher test scores, I have a higher regard for the habit of treating others with dignity.

The ritual called SLANT (I've forgotten what each letter stands for) has the same marks of military style behavior, which again may or may not be critical for preparing men (or women) for battle. But have we reason to believe that the habits of the military help soldiers treat others with respect? No, I would argue. Possibly I'd be one of those recruits or students who, if needed, would engage in some form of inner rebellion while following the CODE (keeping my eyes always on the authority figure, nodding often, etc., etc.) As a result when "subordinates" of any age treat me that way I generally feel they are mocking me! However, that didn't seem to be the case at the school we visited; rather the children seemed to have internalized their shame. I suppose some individuals are drawn to such a hierarchical structure and others, like me, wouldn't last long in a KIPP-style environment. Even if some young people are responsive to this degree of structure, I ask, how does this kind of regimentation prepare them for active citizenship in a complex, democratic society? Not to mention its academic drawbacks?

Given all of this, some questions I have are these: Would KIPP's founders and leaders argue that it would be a good experience for all kids or only for "certain types"? And what leads them to such a conclusion—what past experience, studies, and investigations went into developing this approach? Do they wish they had been students in such a school, and do they send their own kids to KIPP? What lies behind that phrase "these kinds of kids"?

So let's start here, if we can. I apologize if the tone of the above is in any way offensive to your colleagues because what I'm trying best to do is understand what leads many smart, compassionate educators to embrace this approach. Also, feel free to hold off on this issue and respond in a different vein if that seems more appropriate.

I'm hoping we both end our blogging time feeling it was well worth it, and it led us to better understand what is going on in the current so-called Reform Movement and in each other's heads!

My best,
Deborah

- Deborah Meier

'Why Do We Teach?'

2013-03-28T12:08:00Z

Today, the blog conversation between Deborah Meier and Eric "Rick" Hanushek concludes.

Dear Rick,

Your last blog post reminded me of a childhood challenge my brother put to me. It went something like this: "Would you rather be rich or famous?" It would betray our childhood friendship to tell you what our answers were. But it has something to do with what we are arguing about.

I was intrigued by your acknowledgement that you are dissatisfied with the kind of people who become teachers. So who are you looking for? Answer? People with the highest test scores from prestigious colleges. But many of those "best" graduates went on to make billions while messing up our economy and getting bonuses (merit pay?) that are clearly undeserved and enormous severance packages when they jumped ship. (I've had students who went to jail for less harmful activity than many bankers engage in routinely.)

Is it possible that there can be something called "too much"? Was it worth the lives of so many Egyptians to build those glorious pyramids? Should it cause a twinge that some fellow Americans make $3 an hour while others make $3,000,000 per hour? And let's not quibble over exactly how accurate these figures are. You could even drop the last three zeros and still make my point. One single family—the Waltons—owns as much wealth as the bottom 40 percent of society.

So, "why do we teach?" (I assume you went into academia for other reasons than teaching? ) For me it was having summers off, which still weighed heavily when I decided to remain a teacher for life because I believe in leisure. It was, in short, the "lifestyle" and the challenge of the work that seduced me. It was the kind of work that "rewarded" one in the very act of doing it and had everlasting impact when done well. (And great pain when not done well.) The lack of collegiality and intellectual stimulus among the adults was disturbing and, I suspected, closely related to our failure to lure more students to "our side." I saw myself as an advocate for more intellectual collegiality among the adults in our school buildings. Every last one of them. The school itself had to be the locus of change—the community stronger than any single classroom.

I came into education assuming that our task was and always had been to produce a learned, thoughtful, and tenacious "ruling class." Given our near-official secular religion—democracy—that ruling class now meant "everyone." "Education for a classless society" (James Conant's phrase) that does not yet—and maybe never will—exist is the challenge. (Full disclosure: Would I have stayed if the salaries were much lower and the work day much longer, and there was no healthcare and no due process—and maybe no summer vacation? Probably not.)

Why aren't we more like the world of finance, business, entertainment, sports where winners are rewarded with cash—lots of it for the few at the top—and the fame and power that the cash gap offers? Because there are things I treasure even more. It's that simple. Even sports, for example, would rise in my esteem if it weren't so tied in with moneymaking—especially at colleges devoted to learning!

Actually, it's a sad fact that the challenge my brother posed between wealth and fame is absurd now. Wealth buys fame, and fame buys wealth, and both buy power over others. Do you think that's an OK solution, or just the nature of the world we live in ... Get over it, Deb? It's not my impression that providing larger and larger cash rewards for a few, and less and less for the many has improved our society over the past 25 to 35 years. Productivity? It matters to me—depending on what gets produced. Sometimes the less the better.

You argued that no one can be considered underpaid if they are willing to work for such low pay—no one, in short, is exploiting someone's else's desperation. It was this mindset on the part of the "haves" that caused our fellow "have-nots" to create unions everywhere in the world, so that poorly paid people had some choice.

I'm hoping the young people I've taught are never that desperate. I hope each of them grow up to be someone who matters. That's where the kids and I agree. Naturally then, they admire (and learn best from) adults who are also "somebodies," who exercise the freedom and power to make choices, to speak their mind, to feel competent and expert at something valued by others. And to make a decent living.

Indeed, in a culture sick with money worship, my viewpoint may seem utopian. But better (I remind myself) my utopia than the dystopia we seem to be embracing. I want a well-educated citizenry that doesn't depend on others being "down" to feel they are "up," that helps the young value what money cannot buy. Schools do that in many different ways—including how they "reward" the students and staff of the community they belong to.

What I value most about schooling—private or public— and what I believe is missing for too many schools (especially those that serve the poor) is a culture of learning focused on the habits that democracy needs and deserves. The gap between the well-off and all the "others" damages democracy even more than the gap in test scores does. I think it's related to my love of freedom. I have invested in the hope, but not certainty, that our best shot at freedom lies with democracy, which in turn depends upon a relatively well-functioning balance of power.

As a practical matter, I've spent many years playing with these issues in urban public, mostly successful schools. Everything I've experienced tells me that paying some superintendents or principals or teachers a lot more than others injures the school culture—and will not help test scores rise.

Does this back and forth help us (or our readers) think through the issues better, or are we both setting up strawmen?

Let's return to this dialogue at another time. Thanks, Rick.

Deb

- Deborah Meier