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Doug Obletz has the right idea for Memorial Coliseum

At the heart of the Obletz plan is the Memorial Athletic and Recreational Center (MARC), a concept that fits Portland like a glove.  And I don't mean a baseball glove.

Portlanders, from my perspective, are more inclined to participate than spectate.  That's an identity better suited to Portland than as the home of another batch of professional athletes.

But the good thing about Obletz' vision for the Rose Quarter is that it doesn't pick a quarrel with Merritt Paulson, soccer fans, baseball afficionados, or Paul Allen's dream of a vibrant Rose Quarter.  It accommodates them all, but better, far better, than anything proposed so far.

Furthermore it preserves the Coliseum rather than demolishing it.  That should please those (here and here) who appreciate its architecture and military veterans who cherish the building as a war memorial.

Let's face it.  The Rose Quarter is about as lively and accessible as a desert island.  Plopping a minor league baseball stadium onto the site of the Coliseum isn't going to change that.  But a MARC facility, in combination with an entertainment center adjacent to the Rose Garden and a baseball stadium just a couple of blocks away on the site of the oversized Portland Public Schools adminstration building, is much more likely to affect the vibrancy of the currently moribund Rose Quarter.  And the entire surrounding area.

How much will it cost?  No idea.  But it's better to think big than to think cheap and then, in the future, regret the limits of our vision.  In Obletz' words, let's "make it a place the people of Portland can be proud of... ."

Carole Smith fails to bring out the best in Madison teachers

"Creating opportunities for teachers to work together, to teach in teams, to share in professional development, and to be more involved in educational decision making are ways to bring out the best in teachers."

                            Ronald Wolk, founder and former editor of Education Week

The quote is from a Wolk article taking issue with the "five faulty assumptions" underlying the school accountability movement which began over 25 years ago with the publication of A Nation at Risk.  One of the assumptions Wolk takes aim at is the belief that putting a "highly qualified teacher in every classroom" will assure educational excellence.

Wolk says that's impossible.  What he suggests instead is what I have long advocated --teacher empowerment.

Portland superintendent Carole Smith apparently hasn't gotten that message.  Her decision to freeze out teacher input at Madsion High School into one of the most crucial decisions affecting a school, the appointment of a new principal, is evidence that Smith has little regard for the educational expertise of the district's teachers. 

Instead of involving Madison's teachers in "educational decision making", Carole Smith has ignored them.  She appears to have gone out of her way to show them great disrespect. 

Bear in mind that the Madison faculty had earlier voiced no confidence in their former principal.  For that, Smith had the apparent ringleader of the staff insurrection, counselor David Colton, transferred to another school.  This latest episode appears to be some sort of payback for the Madison challenge to top down and arbitrary administrative decision making.

Here's the latest PPS Equity comment on the principal appointment dispute at Madison, from a Madison sophomore student:

"None of this would ever happen at a place like Lincoln or Grant. Smith never would have been able to get away with something like that. ... Never in my life have I met teachers so dedicated to helping students learn and succeed. ...  Now how our teachers weren’t included in the decision to choose a new principal I have absolutely no idea ... .

"Something needs to be done.  And it needs to be done soon."

I would suggest that what needs to be done is to sit Carole Smith down with Ronald Wolk's advice on how to get "the best" out of the district's teachers.

NCLB in ...England?

(Thanks to Tauna Rogers)

It's true.

In fact, as Steve Koss reports in a must read piece on the excellent NYC Public Schools Parents blog, England's 20-year experiment with "performance standards and school rating" is the "progenitor of No Child Left Behind."   The experiment has proved so disastrous that the English National Union of Teachers, with its 190,000 members, has decided to boycott the 2010 national standardized exams. 

More surprisingly, the "National Association of Headteachers appears set to follow in their boycott footsteps... ."  Headteachers are the equivalent of American school principals.

Boycott.  Where are the American teachers unions?  A refusal to administer the annual standardized tests would bring the misbegotten NCLB notion of school accountability to a screeching halt.

What are the people who run the schools going to do?  Fire all the teachers and replace them with Teach for America recruits?  I don't  think so.

How did an NCLB-type program end up in the United Kingdom?  For that we can thank --who else?-- Margaret Thatcher.  In 1988 she introduced something called the Standard Attainment Tests designed specifically to measure a Thatcher-conceived national curriculum.  Not only could these tests keep track of student progress, they were also used to rate each school's yearly performance.

Sound familiar?

Criticisms of the Thatcher program began almost immediately, but it took until the early 2000's for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to effectively drop out of the program.  But not England, which persisted in using the tests to rate schools AND to determine "teachers’ pay, headmasters’ continued employment, and schools’ reputations."

Sound familiar?

But criticism of the Standard Attainment Tests continued to grow:

"Educators throughout England were decrying the narrowing of curriculum, pervasive 'teaching to the test,' widespread demotivation of students toward learning, and impacts on students’ health due to intense pressure from schools and parents."

Sound familiar?

And then, inevitably, cheating to raise test scores reared its ugly head.  A teacher accused of helping her students cheat committed suicide.

Sound familiar?  (The cheating anyway.  As far as I know, no teacher has died as a consequence of cheating, at least not in the physical sense.)

American educators should learn the lesson of England's experiment with its version of No Child Left Behind.  So should Barack Obama and Arne Duncan.  Perhaps then it won't take twenty years to acknowledge the bankruptcy of NCLB's testing for accountability.  It shouldn't take that long to learn what British state school teacher Francis Gilbert finally came to realize:

"In practice, however, these tests have proved to be nightmarish failures. The Sats have not only led to a marked decline in standards, they have broken children's zeal for learning. They have alienated pupils, teachers and parents alike without making schools properly accountable. ... the Sats ... have bludgeoned out all enthusiasm for learning, leaving [children] lacking in initiative, floundering when confronted with unexpected challenges, unable to construct sustained arguments and powerless to think imaginatively."

'Hard science' suggests poverty DOES affect school performance

Is poverty an excuse for lower achievement in school?

The "no excuses" crowd --No Child Left Behind enthusiasts, DC's Michelle Rhee, and, yes, Barack Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan-- say no.  As far as schools are concerned, there are absolutely no excuses for poor student performance, including poverty.

Others argue (me included) that schools themselves are not responsible for the lousy test scores of kids in poverty.  In fact, if you are inclined to take test scores seriously, the "gap" between the scores of poor minority students and wealthier white students has significantly decreased over the past couple of decades.

The bigger issue is whether schools alone should be held responsible for closing the income gap in America, as Obama has implied in his pronouncements on education reform.  I've argued that poverty is a social issue, not just a school issue.  Fixing the schools alone will not cure poverty.  It's unlikely that fixing schools will close the "achievement gap."

Now comes further evidence from Cornell University bolstering the argument that poverty is indeed an "excuse" for poor academic achievement.  The authors of the Cornell study, published in the Proceediings of the National Academy of Sciences, 

"...show that childhood poverty is inversely related to working memory in young adults. Furthermore, this prospective relationship is mediated by elevated chronic stress during childhood."

That means poverty related stress affects memory, a key tool for learning anything.  Furthermore, the effect on memory is related to a physiological "response to chronic environmental demands."

That's hard biological science, not "psychobabble."

What does this mean for school reform? 

It means that the "no excuses" argument is fundamentally wrong.  It means that the NCLB demand that all kids, regardless of circumstance, should be able to "perform" as well academically as everyone else, is wrong.  It means that test-based school accountability is wrong.  It means that teacher merit pay (based on test scores) is wrong.  It means that the anti-teachers union so-called  "reformers" are wrong.

Laughably wrong.

It doesn't mean that schools should abjure calls for reform.  It does mean that reform should not be defined and packaged and handed down by politicians, neoliberals, charter school proponents, billionaire businessmen, Teach for America novices, or anyone who believes that learning can be measured by standardized test scores.  

Who should define and spearhead public school reform?  Simple.  Building educators, meaning teachers and anyone else who works in or near a classroom, the people truly concerned with the education of the children they encounter everyday. 

Teachers know about poverty.  Broad and Gates and the Business Roundtable don't.  It's clear who we should listen to.

Piracy and karma

In many respects I consider Obama "Lincolnesque" in his politics, and I mean that in a good way.  Just as Lincoln threaded a centrist path between the radical sentiments of Republican abolitionists and the reactionary venom of Democratic secessionists, Barack Obama has chosen, almost in emulation of Lincoln, centrist policies criticized by the both the left and the right. 

Lincoln was a master politician, in a way that most would say redounded to the benefit of the country.  One day Obama may be regarded as Lincoln's equal --a cautious politician keeping the best interests of his country foremost in mind.

However, although it's too early in his career to know, I fear, along with many other leftists, that Obama has placed politics, in the baser sense of the word, above sound policy.

Consider the pirates of Somalia.

In a thoughtful piece on Obama's reaction to the attempted hijacking of an American ship and the abduction of the ship's captain, Jeremy Scahill asks three key questions about the killing of the Somali pirates, the second of which concerns:

"The political decision to kill them in light of long term potential consequences... ."

The immediate consequences have been clear.  Somali pirates commandeered four more commercial ocean liners since the killings, and assaulted another American vessel as well.  Call it what you will, but actions have consequences, many of them unintended.

Gunboat diplomacy invites karmic payback.

The phrase "political decision" is more intriguing.  Scahill implies that the "decision" may have been prompted by criticism from the right that Obama is "weak on terror."  What the Obama administration decides to do with the fourth pirate, now in U.S. custody, may be more revealing about the motives for Obama's decision.  Will he be sent to Guantanamo? Bagram?  Or will he be tried openly in criminal court?

That decision may tell us more about the nature of Obama's "Lincolnesque" political strategies.

Let me be clear that I reserve judgment.  Like Lincoln, who seldom spoke in open reaction to his critics, Obama may well be working behind the scenes to ensure his policies succeed. 

We'll see. 

Teaching

"...you can have the most fantastic credentials ever in your field, but if you don’t know how to manage a classroom of 8th graders you don’t know jack."
       
                                                            Rose, in a comment to PPS Equity

Rose--as usual-- is right.  And her remark calls into question No Child Left Behind's requirement for "highly qualified teachers" in every classroom.  No matter how many academic and ed classes you pile up, you'll never be a good, or "qualified", teacher if you can't relate to kids. 

That trumps everything, especially in elementary school.  But it also matters in secondary schools.

It helps to know a lot, of course.  You better have some grasp of math before you face a room full of algebra students.  But then again, if your students can't stand the sight of you, they're unlikely, especially as adolescents, to learn much anyway.  A good teacher, regardless of specialty, is one who engages students.

Teaching is hard.  That's a judgment confirmed by the poet T.S. Eliot who worked as a school teacher, a banker, and an editor.  Of those, he acknowledged that teaching was the most arduous.

So teaching is hard.  And stressful.  But once you get the hang of it, once you master classroom pedagogy, teaching can also be extremely gratifying.  (Of course, true mastery can only be approximated.  Occasionally a teacher will feel that everything has gone right, but only occasionally.)

But here's the larger point.  Ultimate gratification in the teaching profession comes with the empowerment of teachers, not only to do well with the relatively small number of students they encounter in the classroom, but empowered to contribute to the larger educational community as well --the school, the district, the profession. 

When I write about school reform, I mean reform through teacher leadership.  That's what I mean when I talk about grassroots reform as opposed to top-down prescriptions, prescriptions often coming from people who have spent little time in an actual school classroom. 

When a building educator --a teacher-- is involved in that sort of reform leadership, that's when he or she truly begins to feel like a professional.

That's when teaching becomes ultimately fulfilling, and ultimately gratifying. 

Of pirates and pollution

So what's with all these modern day Somali pirates preying on cargo ships in the Indian Ocean?  Are they cutthroats like the pirates of old?  Islamic terrorists bent on disrupting world trade?  Or are they some new breed of ruthless mercenary taking advantage of the plunder to be had off the coast of the strategically located Horn of Africa?

According to Johann Hari in a must read essay published on Common Dreams, there's a simpler explanation.  Somali pirates are mainly just fishermen trying to make a living denied to them by the depredations of Western countries who have over-fished --and polluted-- their waters.

Polluted with nuclear waste.

"Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the [Somali] government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. ... Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. ...Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to 'dispose' of cheaply."

The combination of pollution and overfishing --the West saw its opportunity when Somalia became a "failed state"-- created Somalian piracy.  

The great question is, what do we do about it?  Or as Hari asks,

"Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the [real] robber?"

Billionaires, charter schools, and "venture philanthropy"

Oakland-based edu-blogger Perimeter Primate (Ms Primate is a school mom) brings word of a study about a new breed of charity called "venture philanthropy."

And yes, venture philanthropy all about pushy billionaires like Eli Broad who's doing his damnedest to charterize American public education.  In the process, Broad is elbowing educational professionals aside in favor of "alternative" leaders, mainly people like him from the world of business.  Bottom line is that venture philanthropists are less interested in charity than in advocacy:

"By funding charter school growth, venture philanthropies aim to radically reshape public education, especially for poor children of color, but also to change the ways that traditional foundations operate. Their vision involves philanthropy becoming aggressive in seeking out educational grantees and more engaged in advocacy; in this iteration, foundations lead educational policy change."

Read the study if you have the patience (it's a long one.)  Otherwise just read Ms Primate's post.  It contains a wealth of info.

For example, the post suggests that Washington D.C. is run not by a democratically elected Mayor and city council but an outfit of heavy hitters called the Federal City Council.  According to Ms Primate, Mayor Fenty took over the DC schools and installed Michelle Rhee as superintendent at the behest of the Federal City Council.

That sounds more than plausible to me.  Consider that one of the Council's recent "projects" was to '"spearhead"

"...the business community's support for public charter schools, as well as systemic reform of the D.C. Public Schools."

Enter Chancellor Michelle Rhee. 

Look at it this way.  Even if you support the idea of public charter schools, you have to think it odd, if not alarming, that backdoor deals hatched by the wealthy and the influential are running roughshod over democracy. 

That's venture philanthropy at work.  And that's why I wrote about the "Billionaire's Boys Club."

Why we need Steve Novick as our next governor

We need Steve Novick as our next governor for one compelling reason:

Unlike current Governor Ted Kulongoski, Novick is not averse to increasing taxes.  Oregon hasn't raised sufficient revenue to run its programs for decades --not for schools, for health care, or for public safety.  Steve Novick is just the man to fix that.

Two recent pieces he's written illustrate that point.

The first is a sort of tongue-in-cheek Oregonian op-ed entitled "Taxes and televsion --more bang for your buck!"  In the piece, Novick lists the top ten television shows "paid for by your tax dollars."  Here's an example:

"ER":  A grim, determined group of medical professionals in a County hospital fight to save the lives of their patients, many of whom are poor and/or old and whose bills are paid by Medicare and Medicaid. Paid for by County property taxes and your Federal income and FICA tax dollars, with Medicaid matching funds provided by the State.

The second is a post on Blue Oregon criticizing comments made by Allen Alley, a potential Republican gubernatorial candidate.  What does Novick find suspect?

"Mr. Alley should be aware that it is thoroughly misleading to imply that a significant portion of Oregon tax dollars are ‘redistributed’ to ‘failing businesses and individuals.’  The largest portion of Oregon tax dollars is spent on public schools. Does Mr. Alley regard Oregon’s students and teachers as ‘failing’?  Another large portion is spent on health care for poor children and families and long-term care for seniors and people with disabilities.  Does Mr. Alley consider poor children and families without health insurance, and seniors and people with disabilities who cannot afford long-term care, to be ‘failures’?"

That's the kind of campaign we can expect Novick to run against Alley or any other tax-bashing Republican candidate for governor of Oregon.  (Or weak-kneed Democrat, for that matter.)

Novick is "da man" to lead Oregon as its next governor.

School reform and the "Billionaire's Boys Club"

And speaking of the "influentia", those movers and shakers who, because of their prominence, exert so much control over educational policy, let's not forget the malign influence on that policy of the mega-wealthy.

Bill Gates, for example.

San Francisco ed activist Caroline Grannan writes that former Republican insider, Diane Ravitch, has taken to calling Gates and his ilk the Billionaire's Boys Club.  The former Assistant Secretary of Education under Bush 41 has concluded:

"It appears that the Big Money has placed its bets on dismantling public education."

Ravitch writes from New York, so when Mayor Bloomberg

"...shows up at charter school rallies and tells the parents that their local public schools are no good and that they are lucky to be in a charter"

Ravitch assumes that such a pronouncement

"...has the enthusiastic endorsement of the Billionaire Boys Club, that is, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Foundation. They know what needs to be done, and they don't see the point of listening to such unenlightened types as parents and teachers."

And how do they know "what needs to be done"?  Well, they have lots of money, don't they?  And if they're wrong (as they most assuredly are), what does it matter?  They'll lobby for their "reforms" heedless of any evidence to the contrary.

Gates, as Portlanders will recall, put up the money for the botched reconfiguration of Jefferson High School.  And the superintendent at the time --Vicki Phillips-- now works for the Gates Foundation.  So it goes.

*************************

While we're on the topic of charter schools and billionaires, over at change.org, teacher Clay Burell takes on Obama's embrace of charters.  His main objection is that, for traditional public schools, the charter model is simply not replicable:

"...if we're going to say charters should still be supported in order to serve as those 'laboratories,' the missing link in all of this talk centers on this question: 'What's the mechanism that will allow for that "duplication of success" in traditional public schools?' ...

"...One dangerous answer to this is: Traditional public schools will have that 'flexibility' when they are able to break union-negotiated teacher protections - to be union-free - and when they submit to the meddling of Gates, Broad, and the other billionaires at the Business Roundtable when they dangle their strings-attached money."