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The Great Schools Scare

The Great Schools Scare. Educating in an Era of Fear, Panic, Misinformation, and Exaggeration. John Kuhn - educator, speaker, author TASSP Summer Workshop June 11-13, 2014. Fear is a terrible place to operate from. Fear and Education. 1983’’s A Nation at Risk: “a dire assessment”

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The Great Schools Scare

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  1. The Great Schools Scare Educating in an Era of Fear, Panic, Misinformation, and Exaggeration John Kuhn - educator, speaker, author TASSP Summer Workshop June 11-13, 2014

  2. Fear is a terrible place to operate from.

  3. Fear and Education • 1983’’s A Nation at Risk: “a dire assessment” • “Our nation is at risk.” • “Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.” • “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” • “We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.” • “History is not kind to idlers.”

  4. Fear and Education Redux • Klein-Rice Report, 2012 – “U.S. Education Reform and National Security” • “a clarion call to the nation” • “Educational failure puts the United States’…physical safety at risk” • “the failure to produce [human] capital will undermine American security” • “crisis”

  5. Not saying everything is fine, but... • Opposing fear as a tactic to achieve change is not the same thing as opposing change. • Also, change is automatically good just because it’s change.

  6. 10 Signs of a Fear-Based Workplace • Appearances are everything • Everyone talks about who is rising and falling • Distrust reigns (‘I win when you lose’) • Numbers rule • Rules number (in the thousands) • Lateral communication is suspect • Information is hoarded • Brown-nosers rule • The Office seems about right • Management leads by fear From Bloomberg Businessweek. http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jul2010/ca2010078_954479.htm#p2

  7. Appearances are everything Miracle schools

  8. 1. Appearances are Everything • Stapleton High School: • 144 9th graders in 2011 • 129 10th graders in 2012 • 98 11th graders in 2013 • 89 12th graders in 2014 http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2014/04/15/arne-debunkin/

  9. 1. Appearance is everything • “The only miracle at these schools was a triumph of public relations.” • -Diane Ravitch in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/opinion/01ravitch.html?_r=0

  10. 3. Distrust reigns “I feel very, very badly for the children” [in Texas schools]. “We fail to recruit the smartest college students to become teachers.” “Teachers in America often come from the bottom of the academic barrel.” “White suburban moms who—all of a sudden—their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.” Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans” -US Sec’y of Education Arne Duncan

  11. 4. Numbers Rule • “It used to be that schools and even districts talked first about children. Now they talk about test scores and data. “Data-driven” is the latest buzzword sweeping education accountability circles. • Ostensibly, it means using information to spur improvements in teaching and learning. In practice, data-driven often appears to mean no more than narrowing curriculum and instruction to fit the standardized tests used to hold schools and students accountable. “Data-driven” usually becomes “teaching to the test.” • Most data used is simply test scores – broken into sub-scores and perhaps disaggregated by population groups. While the state tests used to rank schools for NCLB are the primary source of data, increasingly, districts and schools administer local tests, designed to mimic the state exam (or at least the multiple-choice items) and thus provide more “data” to prep students for the big test.” • -FairTest

  12. A Nation at Risk • “It was an overstatement of the problem and it led to sort of hysterical responses.” • -Paul Houston, superintendent of Princeton, N.J. schools (ret.)

  13. Three kinds of fear in education • Rational • Irrational • Cultivated

  14. Parents Have Always Feared for their Kids • Anabel Fish • Missouriann • b. Aug. 8, 1867 • d. Feb. 2, 1876 • 8 y.o.

  15. Fear in Action All parents have fears Fears are decontextualized Fears are used as leverage for policy preferences at micro level Fears are used as leverage for policy preferences at macro level Teachers are fearful too

  16. Have you seen this one?

  17. The Great Schools Scare Educating in an Era of Fear, Panic, Misinformation, and Exaggeration John Kuhn Twitter: @johnkuhntx Email: johnkuhntx@gmail.com Blog: www.edgator.com

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