Dana Goldstein

A Magazine Article You Should Read

On the subway this morning I finished George Packer's sad and beautiful New Yorker profile of the Israeli novelist David Grossman, an outsized figure in his nation's literary and left-wing political scene, whose young son was killed in the 2006 war in Lebanon.

The piece was so moving I stopped reading at several points just to stare into space and absorb it all. For some reason, I was particularly affected by the section about Grossman's aborted friendship with the Palestinian intellectual Ahmad Harb. The two men would like to translate each other's books, but their respective publics, Israeli and Palestinian, would consider such an effort politically suspect, so they don't. And Grossman and Harb, though admiring, can never truly get to know one another because of the travel restrictions to and from the West Bank. Packer writes:

In a better world, [Harb] and David would be close friends. “I hope, sometime in the future,” [Harb] said. “But it’s like a phantom. You say, ‘At some point I will reach it,’ but then anything will explode everything else, and you are back at square one.”

As I left, Harb gave me an English translation of his new novel, “Remains,” to carry the eight miles from Ramallah to Grossman’s home, in Mevasseret Zion.

I am now very much looking forward to reading Grossman's latest novel, To The End of the Land, which is just out in English. It tells the story of Ora, a middle-aged Israeli Jewish woman who reunites with a former lover as her son is sent to war.

What I'm Up to This Week

Today through Saturday, I'll be at the Good Schools urban education conference at Columbia. I'm moderating a panel Friday morning on how reporters can improve their coverage of charter schools and other school choice issues. I'll be listening, learning, tweeting, and hopefully finding a few minutes here and there for blogging throughout the event.

The hashtag is #goodschools.

What Happens When Curriculum Drives Education Reform?

The Times has a great article this morning about the turnaround of Brockton High School, south of Boston. My boyfriend grew up in a neighboring town and we've visited Brockton, which is where his dad works as a lawyer. (Brockton is the county seat and home to the county courts.) It's an economically depressed post-industrial town with some grand old homes, but demographics more like a struggling urban neighborhood than like a suburb. There's a large Cape Verdean immigrant community and a growing African American population. About 20 percent of children are living below the poverty line. Two-thirds are elgibile for reduced-price or free lunch.

In other words, Brockton is like a lot of multi-ethnic towns on the East Coast that have seen brighter days economically. In Westchester, where I grew up, Yonkers and Mt. Vernon are good examples. And as in many of these places, Brockton's massive 4,000-student high school was a mess. Until a few years ago.

Sam Dillon reports on how Brockton High School went from a school where only a quarter of students passed state exams to one that ourperforms 90 percent of Massachussetts public schools in the language arts. Brockton could be termed a "turnaround school," yet its turnaround doesn't conform to the neat strategies encouraged by Arne Duncan's Department of Education. Brockton didn't become a charter school. A new principal didn't sweep in to enact reform. It wasn't split into several smaller "academies." There were no mass layoffs of teachers and the union was not considered an impediment to change. There were no changes in the way teachers are paid. The school wasn't shutdown and reopened.

Instead, motivated by tough new state graduation requirements, a committee of teachers came together to restructure Brockton's curriculum around reading and writing. Every course at the school--including gym, math, and science--was rejiggered to include writing, with intensive training for all teachers in how to teach and evaluate it. Student tracking was mostly eliminated; instead, all students were expected to perform at higher levels.

The reforms at Brockton High School were focused on curriculum and instruction, not management. The school now has to play catch up to raise its math scores to where its English scores are. But the good news is that Brockton has identified a reform model--teacher-led, focused on student learning--that really works for their community.

Are Middle Class White Schools in Crisis, Too?

Nothing too surprising in President Obama's "Education Nation" interview this morning with Matt Lauer, but here's what interested me: Both Obama and "Waiting for Superman" director Davis Guggenheim have been making the argument that although we must focus on "dropout factories" and other low-performing urban schools, we can't let middle class suburban schools off the hook, since they aren't up to par with our international competitors.

Is that true? Not really.

In "WFS," Guggenheim features Emily, a Silicon Valley eighth grader who wants to take advanced math, but would be tracked into lower-level courses at her district high school because of her history of mediocre math grades. To avoid this fate, which could impact her chance of being admitted into an elite college, Emily enters a charter school lottery.

(Emily's zoned high school, by the way, is not following best practices. Most experts agree that advanced curricula for many more students--and certainly those students who want to be exposed to higher-level coursework--is an education reform no-brainer.)

This morning, Obama discussed the same theme: "Across the board in middle class suburbs...you are still seeing a decline in terms of math and science performance, and one of the things we are very excited about...we are going to specifically focus on training 10,000 new math and science teachers. We've got to boost performance in that area."

Politically, I think this is a smart point to make. Middle class and affluent parents, who tend to feel their own children's schools are adequate, should absolutely be encouraged to buy-into school improvement efforts.

On a policy level though, Obama's statement is misleading. As this NAEP chart demonstrates, math performance among high school seniors has remained basically static since 1973. That's not a good thing; of course we should be improving! But it's not the crisis of declining performance Obama (and the media) often make it out to be.

This is, in part, the point Nick Lemann made in his New Yorker column on "the overblown crisis in American education." It's important to note that the major problem with American education is the problem of class and race inequality. As Linda Darling Hammond writes in The Flat World and Education, "students in the highest-achieving states and districts in the United States do as well as those in high-achieving nations elsewhere." Indeed, American white, Asian, and multiracial children perform better than the OECD average in reading, science, math, and problem solving. It is black and Hispanic kids that are falling behind.

Highlights of President Obama's "Education Nation" Interview

The interview was with Matt Lauer of "Today." Here's what I would have asked. My analysis to follow....

Why are one-third of American kids dropping out of high school--and why are one-third of high school grads academically unprepared for college?

Other nations "have caught up and now in some cases they are surpassing us....especially in math and science. It happened over decades...how well we do economically...is going to depend on whether or not we do something about these schools."

How do we "fire" bad teachers?

"The single most important ingredient inside the classroom is the quality of the teacher. ... When I sit down with the mayor of Shanghai teaching is considered one of the most prestigious jobs, and a teacher is getting paid as much as an engirneer."

Are teachers unions blocking your reforms?

"Here's what's true, oftentimes teachers unions are designed to make sure their membership are protected from arbitrary firings." I am in "strong support of the notion that a union can protect its members and be part of the solution....We have a lot of unions that are now working with states on these reform plans that include things like charter schools, like pay for performance, and higher accountability for teachers."

What is your message to the leadership of unions and to teacher union members?

"We want to work with you; we're not interested in imposing changes on you...you can't defend the status quo in which a third of our kids are dropping out...when you've got 2,000 schools across the country that are drop-out factories, in those schools you have to have radical change. ... The vast majority of teachers want to do a good job, they're not in it for the money. ... Ultimately if some teachers are not doing a good job they've got to go."

Why do you want to expand the charter school sector? Will the expansion dilute the quality of charters?

"It turns out there are no silver bullets here. Reform is hard, it's systematic, it takes time. There are some charters that have figured out how to do a very good job in the lowest income schools." Let's "make sure we are still holding charter schools accountable like we would any school...fostering these laboratories of excellence" by lengthening the school day, giving more time to professional development, more homework, and fostering a culture of excellence.

My Education Questions for President Obama

In half an hour, the "Today" show's Matt Lauer will be interviewing President Obama about education policy. The broadcast is part of NBC's "Education Nation" blitz, a week of programming accompanied by a conference here in New York.

I'll be watching, tweeting, and blogging about the interview, but for now, here are some (off-the-top-of-my-head) questions that I would ask the president about schools:

1. What should be done--if anything--about the fact that our schools are more racially and socioeconomically segregated now than they were 10 or 20 years ago?

2. Should schools be run more like businesses? Which businesses?

3. Your Race to the Top program incentivized the creation of more charter schools, which currently educate just about 2 percent of American children. Through what process or mechanism will successful charters improve traditional public schools, which will continue--for many, many years to come--to educate the vast majority of children?

4. Race to the Top did not, however, incentivize some other proven successful urban school reform strategies, such as voluntary inter-district transfer programs or magnet schools. Why not?

5. NCLB has long been set for reauthorization. Is it a priority for your administration in 2011? Do you believe you can work with the GOP on education policy?

It's "Waiting for Superman" Friday: Twitter Chat at 11; New Story in The Nation

Yes, the big education documentary everyone is talking about opens today, and I'm doing two things to celebrate:

1. The new issue of The Nation has my feature story on "Grading Waiting for Superman"--explaining (in my view) what the film gets wrong on both the big ideas and grassroots politics of school reform. I also take a look at why so much education journalism feels like an anti-union, oversimplified pile-on.

2. At 11 a.m.--so in less than one hour--I'm taking to Twitter for a chat with The After School Corporation about how to convert the buzz around "Waiting for Superman" into lasting change for kids and schools. To submit questions or follow along, use the hashtag #wfschat, or email questions in advance to info@tascorp.org. You can also follow along on my Twitter page.

Is the Intra-Democratic Party Edu Policy Debate "A War"?

That's what Harlem Children's Zone founder Geoffrey Canada said yesterday at the Clinton Global Initiative, which I'm covering for The Daily Beast.

In a breakout session, Canada spoke bluntly about overhauling the teaching profession, and was greeted with whoops and cheers from the crowd, a mix of political, corporate, and philanthropic elites.  

“Here’s something that absolutely needs to be changed,” Canada said. “I believe that if you’re a terrible teacher, you should be fired. I know, it sounds harsh. People are thinking, ‘Oh my God.’”  

The issues of teacher tenure and pay are increasingly under a public microscope. Earlier this year, the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education grant competition rewarded stimulus funds to states that agreed to tie teacher evaluations and salaries to student achievement on standardized tests. But results of a major study of teacher merit pay in Nashville, TN, released this week, found that bonuses of up to $15,000 did not improve student test scores.

The new education reform documentary, "Waiting for Superman," features Canada and opens this Friday. It largely blames the achievement gap between middle class and poor children on teachers’ unions' protection of poor performers. The documentary elides other problems in American education, such as increasing racial and socioeconomic segregation and the lack of a national curriculum. And while the film cites Finland’s schools as the best in the world, it does not mention teachers there are unionized and awarded tenure. Instead, director Davis Guggenheim, of "An Inconvienent Truth," focuses mostly on the successes of a small group of non-unionized and high-performing charter schools, which admit students through competitive lotteries.  

Canada referenced the controversy over "Waiting for Superman" Tuesday, and tried to find common ground. “One group in America wants to talk about [the Harlem Children’s Zone] as a charter network, and the other group wants to talk about the fact that we provide comprehensive services to children. And these two groups are at war. It’s really a war. They hate each other!”

Canada explained that the Harlem Children’s Zone includes both charter schools and intensive community outreach that begins with expectant parents who attend Baby College, a course and support group where they learn about the latest neuroscience on how children learn and develop.  

“If you want to end poverty in America, you have to do more than just do schools,” Canada said. “You have to improve outcomes for an entire community.”

At the Clinton Global Initiative

I'm writing over at The Daily Beast this week, covering CGI. Check it out here!

Email From a Reader: Parental Involvement

Let's try a new feature: a weekly response to a comment or email from a reader. A few days ago I got this email from Gabriella:

Hi Dana: Thanks for your thoughtful commentary on the Fenty/Rhee loss in the District of Columbia. My question is why do bloggers, reporters, man-on-the-street types who leave comments etc never talk about the importance parents play in their children's education? The blame is always on teachers and/or the school system. What are your thoughts?

This is an important topic. A frequent charge leveled against charter school proponents, for example, is that they "cream" kids by only agreeing to work with those who have the most involved parents--the moms and dads who will sign a contract agreeing to read to their children an hour each night, check their kids' homework, and get them to school on Saturdays for test prep.

It's true that it takes an extra level of engagement for a parent to enroll their child in a charter school lottery and then agree to keep them in the charter, despite some tough requirements; what about parents who can't or won't do all that? This is a real problem that limits lottery-based schools from reaching some of the neediest kids. But I actually think some high-performing charter (and non-traditional public) schools are not given enough credit for the work they do breaking down the traditional barriers between parents and schools. If you read Work Hard, Be Nice, Jay Matthews' history of the KIPP charter school network, you see lots of scenes of KIPP founders Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin visiting families at home where the parents are most comfortable; convincing one mom to limit her son's TV time, for example, or strategizing with another about how to best tackle a child's behavioral problems.

There are lots of different ways for schools to better work with parents. I recently spoke to a Los Angeles teacher named Alex Caputo-Pearl, who works at Crenshaw High School. He has organized alongside neighborhood parents to bring new computers into the school, and to advocate for alternatives to high-stakes testing. In Alex's words, this activism was motivated by a simple question: What are parents looking for from their kids' schools?

But in general, I agree with Gabriella that parents (and communities) are often missing from the dialogue around school reform. In the new education documentary "Waiting for Superman," we hear a lot about how the Finnish education system is the best in the world, but nothing about how much easier it is to be a parent in Finland, because the government provides universal low-cost daycare, nursery school, and health care.

Why don't we talk about parenting more? Because we American optimists want to believe that kids can overcome the deficits they bring from home without having to wait for the United States to become a social democracy (as if). There's also a long and disturbing history of affluent white people judging the parenting skills of everyone else. But I do think there is a limit to how much transformational education reform we can do in the United States without looking seriously at why raising kids is do damn difficult in our winners-take-all society.