West: One is what your defense of public education looks like given the escalating privatization setting in.
Duncan: And we just need to create great public school options, particularly in disadvantaged communities where they haven’t had those. So I’m the staunchest advocate, the greatest proponent of public education, but it has to be high quality. We all have to work together to get to that point. But that is the answer. Anyone who thinks we can do this through vouchers or through privatization just doesn’t begin to understand how serious this work is.
EWM: No great public school options in disadvantaged (poor?) communities! How right he is and why is that?: TFA with little training or cultural sensitivity; standardized tests that discriminate/differentiate by income; and Charter school financed by private/governmental interests. What is high quality and how do you measure it?: standardized tests that discriminate/differentiate students and teachers by income and color.
West: Two, is it true that when people say well, Brother Duncan seems to be preoccupied with test scores tied to teaching quality as opposed to the broader connection. We know President Obama, Brother Barack has talked about teaching to those tests will not work. But at the same time, is it the case that these scores still play a disproportionate role in terms of evaluating teachers? That’s the second.
Duncan: Secondly, on the test scores, it’s a really, really important point. We could spend a whole conversation on it. I think if test scores are the only things people are focused on, that’s a real problem. I think test scores should be part of a balance. We think “no child left behind” was broken. There was far too much reliance on a single test score. We wanted Congress to fix “no child left behind” and work in a bipartisan way. That didn’t happen so you know we actually went out and partnered directly with states and provided waivers to give them more flexibility. Their accountability systems, Dr. West, they’re moving way beyond a focus on an absolute test score. They’re looking at growth and gain; they’re looking at how much students are improving each year. But very importantly., they’re looking at increasing graduation rates and reducing dropout rates and looking at what percentage of students who graduate from high school are going on to college. And are they going to college having to take remedial classes, meaning they’re not ready, or are they really ready? And are they persevering. I always talk everywhere I go whether it’s evaluating a child or a teacher, which is your question, or a school or just a core state, I always say we have to look at multiple measures. If anyone thinks 100 percent of a teacher evaluation should be based on test score, I will always fight that. But I will also say that a piece of a teacher’s evaluation has to be upon whether those students are learning or not. I think there’s always a common sense middle ground. Either extreme I think is wrong. And looking at a comprehensive set of measures and hopefully your listeners can look on our website; look at how states are getting away from an overemphasis on just a single test score through our waiver package. We think that’s been a huge step in the right direction. We had 11 states apply, granted 11 waivers and some really powerful work there.
EWM: Right, not just a single test score but more test scores, every year in every grade. At least NCLB only required benchmark years. PURE reports: 100 Local Academics oppose teacher evaluation tied to test scores http://pureparents.org/?p=18870
Duncan: We have to educate our way to a better economy and also this is the civil rights issue of our generation. This is the dividing line now. Less around race and class, more around educational opportunity in our country and we have to level the playing field.
West: That to me sounds so very, very good and strong, my dear brother. I think you would admit that poverty sits right at the center of this thing. My God, we abolish poverty a lot of this stuff would follow through in terms of resource for education across the board.
Duncan: Absolutely. We have to take on poverty front and center. I think the best way to do that is with great teachers and great principals. But I always say you have to look at this holistically. If you have children that are hungry, Dr. West, you have to feed them.
EWM: What???? The economy is the civil rights issue of our generation! Less about race and class! What defines class in the USA? Level what playing field, the educational system? By equalizing educational opportunity? Who doesn’t have an equal opportunity, the economy? No Secretary Duncan, racial minorities and the poor. Someone will have to parse this response further. I tried using logic, but it did not work.
Duncan: I have not been to Louisiana recently, but I’ve never supported vouchers. Never have and never will. I’ve been very public on that.
West: But this sense that your department has this cozy relation with those coming out of the Gates Foundation and other foundations that tend to be associated with privatizing education, what do you say to those critics, though, brother?
Duncan: Again, I have zero interest in privatizing education. What I want is great public school options for every single child. What I will do and challenge the status quo is where you have dropout factories, Dr. West, where you have high schools where 40, 50, 60 percent of students are dropping, we are going to challenge the status quo there. We’re investing huge amounts of resources, over $4 billion in the bottom five percent of schools. We put out data this week that shows many of these schools are showing tremendous progress just in the first year. These are communities where folks may have thought poor children couldn’t learn or black and brown children couldn’t learn and where people just passively accepted the status quo, where children were being hurt every single year, often for decades.
EWM: Can anyone find Secretary Duncan’s answer to West’s question about Gates et.al., cozy relationship with DOE, and Gates’ tendency to favor privatization?
West: What do you say about Finland? You hear all the talk about Finland, I’m sure.
Duncan: We just had an international summit in New York last week, Dr. West. We had 23 high performing and rapidly improving countries and Finland was there. We’ve had Finland there the past two years. You look at countries like Finland and Singapore and South Korea and it’s really, really interesting. First of all, in Finland and Singapore, only the top ten percent of folks who want to teach are allowed to teach.
West: Ah, so you’ve got credentialization, you’ve got certification, you’ve got cultivation of teachers. Very important.
Duncan: So 90 percent can’t get in. End of Duncan Interview, but read on
Sahlberg: I think there are three things really that I would like to mention. The three things that Finland has been taking very seriously during the course of the last three, four decades, really, one of them is equity. I think we have since very early on put a very high accent and concrete actions also to be sure that the education system is good for everybody, not just for some. That’s why we have been driving our reforms not with the outcomes but with equity.
EWM: No mention by Duncan of the specifications of Finland’s focus on equity
Sahlberg: The second thing is that we also take teachers and their role in education very seriously. Very early on it’s not just saying that teachers are important, but we have been giving them the place in our education system that is essential and very critical.
EWM: A joke in the USA’s scheme of things, except that Duncan says most can’t get into teaching. Does Duncan support TFA?
Sahlberg: And thirdly, I think we have also taken the standardized testing or assessment of students and the entire education system very seriously. That’s why we have been avoiding the kind of a standardized testing problem that many other countries seem to have at the moment.
EWM: Evaluation, measurement, and standardized testing. Sahlberg was being diplomatic by not mentioning the USA by name.
Sahlberg: But if you look at any high performing education nation or jurisdiction, whether it’s Alberta in Canada or Singapore or Shanghai, Korea, Finland, they all share certain similarities. And they interestingly go back to what I said earlier about the role of equity. I think unless you are able to really shift the focus at least a little bit from the outcomes and the rhetoric of raising the standards and raising the bar of outcomes to equity and really return back to this great American ideal of equality of education of opportunity and do something about it. I belong to those who agree strongly with people like Diane Ravitch, she’s talking a lot about the role of poverty in education. I think the school has to play and have a role in this whole nation building thing. I think if you keep on focusing on just the outcomes and achievement, the road to a good educational performance will be very difficult. Then the other things will follow. I think that the whole issue of teachers and how do we make sure that the teaching profession is attractive and inspiring for young people. I see it very difficult to build a kind of a nationwide system of teachers when you have alternatives like Peace for America where people teach just for a few years and then they go. Everybody knows, including people in Finland, that it takes about eight to ten years to teach like a pro. That’s why I think we need to…and you should also probably pay more attention to how to make teaching a high profession where those people who choose to become teachers, they want to stay there and make their life careers there.
EWM: Agree with Ravitch? Oh my! Not only does Ravitch talk about the role of poverty in education, but she also weighs in on the preparation of teaching as not being a drive-by experience, or as Sahlberg put it: “I see it very difficult to build a kind of a nationwide system of teachers when you have alternatives like Peace for America where people teach just for a few years and then they go. Everybody knows, including people in Finland, that it takes about eight to ten years to teach like a pro. I think if you keep on focusing on just the outcomes and achievement, the road to a good educational performance will be very difficult. And Sahlberg ends with this powerful statement: “If we learn to look beyond the things that we used to do and question, challenge some of the conventionals that we have, for example, do we really need this type of standardized testing systems that we have around the world, then we are beginning to talk about real things.
EWM: AMEN!
