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Responses to “pragmatic progressive” comments

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post that listed my beliefs as a “pragmatic progressive” educator.   Before I wrote that post, I made a plan to write at least two more on the same subject; a thousand word blog post is obviously not sufficient to explain a belief system that many other educators have spent thousands of pages doing, and from comments to the post it is clear that there were several interpretations of my list.

In a slight change of plan, I will delay the two other posts on this subject in favor of responding to some of the thoughtful comments on the original post.  A big part of my decision to blog in the first place was to have a broader dialogue (see my first post ).  So, let’s dialogue.

In a post April 7th, Alan Gottlieb, the publisher of this site, wrote about a visit to a school in New Orleans where the “…feel of the school is strikingly similar to West Denver Prep or KIPP; what Marc Waxman would call a paternalistic or “no excuses” model charter school that gets impressive results by obsessing over data and paying almost fanatical attention to the details of instruction and school culture.”

I don’t think Alan intended it, but I think many readers might have interpreted this comment to mean that as a progressive educator I would find fault with obsession over data and fanatical attention to instruction and school culture.  While, in fact, as a “pragmatic progressive” I believe data is extremely important and I would put my schools’ “fanatical attention to the details of instruction and school culture” up against any of the no excuses schools.

It’s just what I think of as data, what I believe instruction should look like, and what I feel school culture should be like are probably pretty different.  But, it’s extremely important to know that the focus and intentionality of a pragmatic progressive is no less rigorous than that of others.

Jeff Buck commented “I want to push back a bit on your second to last bullet. I believe that independence is important in many contexts but I believe productive interdependence is more important. We’re all in this together and we’ll get through it together. Students who have developed a healthy interdependence will work together to understand a task, bring diverse prior knowledge to bear, consider possible alternative approaches, examine mistakes and maybe even hit a dead end together (and they know how they got there which helps find a way back). It is my strong belief that the dispositions and skills of productive interdependence belong at the top of the list of “21st Century Skills.””

As usual Jeff writes with clarity and insight.  I want to officially retract the bullet from my last post that stated “Children should develop independence.   They do this by being giving opportunities to think and act for themselves – to make mistakes and learn from them.”  I would like to revise it to: “Children should develop independence and interdependence.  They do this by being giving opportunities to think and act for themselves – to make mistakes and learn from them, as well as meaningful opportunities to work together with others.”  Thanks Jeff.

Linda Campbell brought up an interesting point about false dichotomies when she wrote “I am curious why you use the word “but” when I think “and” says it better? “Schools must be serious, but fun”….I think they should be serious AND fun. Our culture suggests that if things are one thing they cannot be something else. I find this type of thinking to be simplistic. The reason I favor progressive education is because it values the whole child….her basic skills AND her creativity; her left brain AND her right brain; her social emotional skills AND her academic skills; what she is interested in AND what society thinks she should be interested in.”

Linda – I am officially changing the “but” to “and” in my statement: “Schools must be serious, and fun.”

Linda’s comment reminded me of statement made by a Teach For America vice president during a recent visit to Denver.  When talking about responsibility of schools, he said something about how he would rather have schools that produce jerks that can go to college than nice kids who can’t.  This is another in the long line of false choices that Linda surfaces.  A pragmatic progressive would not create this dichotomy or the others above, but instead find ways to ensure students can go to college and be “nice.”  Pragmatic progressives believe in “AND.”

Audra Philippon, the founder of AXL Charter School wrote: “I’d like to highlight that this emerging definition of pragmatic progressive education does not specify a particular demographic group. All students, especially those at high-risk economically or linguistically, can benefit from such an education! “

As I mentioned above, I originally planned on two more posts on this subject.  The next will focus on what progressive education is important, especially in our current time, and I will attempt to expand on Audra’s comment.

David Hazen wrote: “Bravo! Whether a Big Picture Company school or a KIPP school, they both meet this definition. Thanks!”

I don’t know much about Big Picture Company schools, but I worked at a KIPP school for three years and have spent time in several schools that have been described as similar to KIPP, and I don’t think they meet the full definition I wrote about in my post.  My third post will detail exactly what a pragmatic progressive classroom that fits my definition actually looks like in reality.  I will draw upon my experience observing classrooms at the charter school that my wife founded called SOAR@GVR – a school serving a majority of low income students of color in Far Northeast Denver with strong midyear results (both standardized and qualitative).

I hope that the third post will begin to address the concern Van Schoales raised by commenting  “There’s little talk of specific practices or how we might know what a good school’s results would be. It’s ironic but many progressives today seem to be more focused on an ideology than on practical methods for supporting student learning at all levels.”

I look forward to more dialogue on the similarities and differences between pragmatic progressive schools and others.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Posted in Reform, featured | 3 Comments »

Reclaiming the mantle of ‘progressive education’

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Marc Waxman has been an educator for 17 years, including 12 in New York City, and the last two in Denver.

Listen to Marc discuss the ideas in this blog post in a podcast interview. [Click arrow to listen]. Or download the podcast here.

I had the opportunity to meet with Diane Ravitch for about an hour a few weeks ago.  (The meeting was a consequence of an electronic dialogue that started on this website).  In a quick email exchange after our meeting, Dr. Ravitch stated “I could see that you are a real progressive….”

I can’t tell you the last time I have heard the word “progressive” used in that dialogue, forget about positively used.

Yup, she called me the “P” word!  How could she?  Me? My 17-year resume as an urban educator seems to be as un-progressive as they come: Working as a Teach For America corps member, a KIPP teacher, a co-founder and co-director of a high performing charter school in Harlem.  For goodness sakes – I am the founding Head of School of a charter school that will be replacing an existing public school in Montbello with the goal nothing short of having one of the highest-rated schools on DPS’s School Performance Framework.  Can I actually be a progressive educator?

You better believe it!

When did “progressive” become a dirty word?  In the current world of urban education reform, it’s ok to say you are “paternalistic” and it’s ok to say you ascribe to a “no excuses” philosophy.  Those terms have clear, and positive, meaning in our current education and education reform dialogue.  But I can’t tell you the last time I have heard the word “progressive” used in that dialogue, forget about positively used.

No – I take that back.  I can recall the last time I heard the word “progressive.”  It was when I was with a group of “progressive” educators a couple months ago who had been called together by a local foundation to figure out how to talk about their schools in the media, to the philanthropic community, etc., without actually using the word “progressive.”

This blog post (and the couple that will follow on the same topic) is my attempt to take the word back, to make “progressive” a word educators, and those who care about education and enter the education dialogue, can use and use positively.

When we lose our ability to collectively know what a word means, we lose our ability to communicate.   There has been tons of media attention focused on “no excuses” schools and “paternalistic” schools, so if you have being paying attention to the current education reform narrative you knew exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned those terms above.

Unfortunately, we do not have an accessible concept for other educational approaches that can be equally, if not more, effective with the same student populations.  In one of my favorite books, “1984” by George Orwell, the control of language is a key element in the control of thought, and ultimately, in the control of action.

We must ensure that the narrowing of our education dialogue does not get to the point where we can no longer think or act in certain ways because we have lost critical language.  (It should be noted that George Orwell is also the author of one of my favorite quotes – “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”)

The definition of an educational concept is worthy of much more than a short blog post.  But we all need to start somewhere, so the list below is my best attempt to begin to reclaim the word “progressive.”  In fact, I am going to use the term “pragmatic progressive” to help differentiate it.

As a pragmatic progressive, I believe:

  • Academic achievement and social and emotional growth are equally important.  Neither on its own is sufficient.
  • Schools are critical not only to develop individuals who can drive the engine of our economy, but to develop people that will lead socially responsible, productive lives and people that will ensure we have a robust, effective democracy.
  • Great teaching starts with the student.   Teachers must get to know their students, not only as learners, but as people.
  • Instruction must be differentiated.  Children don’t learn the same thing, the same way, at the same time.
  • Assessing students consistently and continually is essential.  The best assessments are the ones that are not standardized, but authentic. Great teachers meet their students where they are and move them forward regardless if they are struggling, average, or advanced.  Assessment begins not with tests, but with observation.
  • A corollary to the bullet above: standards are useful as benchmarks, but should not be the principal drivers of instruction.  The advanced student who is ahead of standards should be supported in even more advanced work, and the struggling student who is making progress should feel success no matter how far below standards he is.
  • Classrooms should be structured, rigorous and have a palpable sense of urgency.  Every moment should matter and every system should be purposeful – whether it is designed to develop an academic skill or instill a core value.
  • School should be fun, but serious.  It should be relaxed, but intense.  (These ideas are not mutually exclusive.)
  • All people that work with children should have extremely high expectations – in regards to behavior and academic achievement.
  • Children should develop strong character traits like grit and resiliency, but also strong values like compassion and empathy.  (Again, these things are not mutually exclusive).
  • Students should be taught to think critically.  I don’t mean just the how-to-think-through-a-complicated-math-problem type of critical thinking.  I mean the how-to-critique-the-social-order type of thinking – to look at the world and decide what is right and wrong with it.
  • Children should develop independence.   They do this by being giving opportunities to think and act for themselves – to make mistakes and learn from them.
  • Learning is messy and nonlinear.  The deeper the learning, the messier and less linear it is.

That’s what the “p” word means to me.  Tell me where I got it right, where you think I am lost, what I am missing…. My next two posts will follow up on this list; one will focus on why progressive education is so important and the other will focus on specific examples from a real-life progressive classroom.   So your comments and comments will be greatly appreciated as I expect they will inform my writing.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Posted in Reform, Teaching and learning, featured | 7 Comments »

Charter schools: Potentially dangerous technology?

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

Charter schools are a type of technology – a potentially dangerous type.  My reason for presenting this metaphor is to shift the conversation around charter schools, and maybe even around education reform, to one that is more productive and ultimately useful.

A lot of my time is spent thinking about charter schools. I have opened one, I ran one for several years, I am in the planning year to open another one, my wife runs one, and my old job in a district bureaucracy was to manage the department that oversees them. So it makes sense I would spend time on the subject.

But, lately I have been thinking about them even more than usual and in different ways.  Between the documentary “Waiting For Superman,” Race to the Top, and the pretty consistent media attention, I feel almost bombarded.

What’s interesting about so much of what you hear, read and see about charters is the schism between those in favor and those opposed.  There is very little discussion about any middle ground.  In fact, there is very little intellectual, deep discussion.

Creating an opportunity for richer, more meaningful discussion is where the metaphor of charter schools as technology could be useful, but first, you need to see charter schools as a form of technology.

Charter schools represent a “package” of processes, ideas and techniques used to perform a task, in theory, better than the current “package” of processes, ideas and techniques being utilized.  To me, that’s a decent definition of technology.

In college I majored in biology and this strange interdisciplinary major called Science in Society Program.  Turns out that in my career as a teacher and school leader I draw very little on all that science I learned, but a couple big ideas made a significant impact on me then and continue to be useful mental models.

One idea was developed in a class called Innovation and Social Change – technology isn’t always good.  Maybe you realized this early in life, and maybe you think it’s obvious.  But, I’d challenge the notion that most people approach technology with healthy skepticism. How often do we individually or collectively challenge the notion that an increase in technology is anything but good?  We are socialized to believe that technological progress is always good – we can do something now that we couldn’t before.  Go us. We rarely question whether we should do something new just because we can.

Think of things such as nuclear energy or genetic engineering.  The science and the practical applications of these and other technologies almost always outpace legislation, controls, or ethical considerations.  Maybe it’s human nature to do this, or maybe it’s the American way.  It doesn’t really matter.  Bottom line – it’s a deeply embedded element of our society.

Of course, technology can be hugely beneficial, but even in the most beneficial instances there are always unintended consequences (another big idea I learned in college – and again, maybe one of those things that most people just know).  When you take these two ideas together, the fact that technologies can outpace ethical, moral, and regulatory considerations and that every application of a technology has unintended consequences, you realize that technology can be a power for good, but can also be very dangerous.

Charter schools fit right in with this challenge of technology. As someone that has worked in the charter school world for about a decade and on both sides (the operator side and the authorizer side), I can tell you four things clearly.

1. We haven’t spent enough time thinking through how to regulate or manage charter schools.

2. There are unintended consequences in the implementation of charter schools (both positive and negative).  They are cutting edge tools with the power for good, and as with most new technologies, their adoption is outpacing our best thinking about regulation and ethical considerations.

3. There are charter schools that are abusing the system and destructive in many ways.

But, and this is a very important “but”…

4. There are charter schools that are addressing issues and serving children and their families in a way that is necessary and urgent.

Sounds like a technology to me.

This metaphor can help us have a new dialogue about charter schools.  It gives us a frame from which to carefully examine the possibilities of charter schools, both negative and positive, not from an ideological position, but from a rational, scientific vantage. (Please note that I am the first one that will debunk the myth of science as purely objective and reasonable, but I also believe it is an intellectual approach I haven’t seen in the charter school conversation, and it seems worth a try).   I ask you to try this for a minute, especially if you are already in an ideological camp.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Posted in Reform, School choice | 3 Comments »

We must evolve

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

The publisher of this website and I recently talked about the idea, held by many, that societal change must occur before the education system (and other systems within society) can change.  I promised him that my next blog post would address this issue directly. So, here goes…

There are three typical stances people take towards change of America’s educational system:

  1. Everything is fine, so nothing really needs much fixing.
  2. Things aren’t fine, especially for those who are “underserved,” and we know specific strategies to fix the system (think – our nation’s current dominant narrative on education reform).
  3. Things aren’t fine, but that’s because society is messed up.  So, we need to fix society first, and then education can change.

There is a fourth way to think about this issue – co-evolution.

Over the past 100 years or so society has evolved in three “great waves.”  It has moved from an agrarian society to an industrial age and then to our current wave, the information age.  Some key characteristics of the industrial age are adversarial relationships, centralized control, compliance, and compartmentalization.  In contrast, key aspects of the information age include cooperative relationships, team organization, shared leadership, and participatory democracy.

Dr. Bela Banathy, a systems scientist, wrote extensively about the idea of societal evolution, especially as it connected to education.  He posits that, over time, society has evolved, and ideally, as a society evolves the systems within it should evolve as well.  He calls this concept “co-evolution.”  Banathy believed in a co-evolutionary relationship where education’s role could be “…in the form of co-evolution with and mutual shaping of the society and even spearheading societal development.”

“Our concern here is primarily the public image, the image that “makes” our contemporary society, the image that at the same time is shaped by the emerging and transforming society.  It is important for us to understand the dynamics of this mutual shaping, inasmuch as the same will apply in creating a new image of education.  That image IS shaped by the societal image, and the societal image IS shaped by education.  Earlier we named this dynamic recursive relationship as co-evolution.”  (Banathy – Systems Design of Education)

So, here is a fourth way to consider educational change; education must co-evolve with society in such a way that each shapes the other; society not only effects education, but education effects society.

Unfortunately, our nation has not seen the necessary co-evolution of education with society and its systems.  This evolutionary imbalance is dangerous, and we have begun to see its effects.

There is a disconnect between the core features of the information age and the reality of life for so many in our country.  Our current society still has significant inequality and injustice, to mention just a couple social ills.  In fact, over the past 40 years our nation has seen increased apathy and civic disengagement on these issues.  We can tie this to the disconnect between our society and its major systems – educational, health care, political.  Simply – while society as a whole has evolved, the educational system (and other key systems) within in it has not.

And there are other dangers with this evolutionary imbalance. Not only is our educational system inequitably meeting the needs of our country’s student population, it also lacks the structures and emphasis to produce the students our nation needs – students who can work well in teams, think creatively, and solve problems, students with well-developed social and emotional competencies, and students with grounded moral centers.  This is in large part due to the fact that it is still operating within an industrial age paradigm.

Banathy writes:

“…The societal characteristics of the current age are markedly different from – and are discontinuous with – those of the industrial age, in which our educational systems remain rooted.  The major shift toward… the Post-Industrial Information Society is manifested in massive changes in general societal characteristics, in socio-cultural, socio-technical, socio-economic, and scientific characteristics, and in organizational characteristics.  These characteristics reflect major transformations in all aspects of our lives, a total change of our societal environmental landscape.  Such a transformation requires radical changes in the “whats,” “hows,” “when,” and “where” of education.  This calls for nothing less than a massive transformation – or metamorphosis – of our educational systems.”

As educators, and those who care about education, we must work for evolution of our educational system – an educational system that can “spearhead societal development.”

This calls for paradigm change – a paradigm as evolved as the information age.  Piecemeal change (which is how we can classify the current educational reform agenda) will not suffice because it is contained within the industrial age paradigm.

I ended the last post with this question which I ask again… I ask you to take a minute, regardless of your feelings about today’s reform agenda, and envision a new paradigm for education.  What would yours look like?

Popularity: 6% [?]

Posted in Newsletter guest article, Reform | 10 Comments »

Education reform or revolution?

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

About five years ago, while running a school in Harlem, I typed out the words “What’s your paradigm?” in 72 point font and printed them on a sheet of paper that I hung outside my cubicle. It was probably the beginning of a journey about education reform that has taken a big step forward for me within the past five weeks.

You have probably heard of the concepts of paradigm and paradigm shift.  You might not know that in 1962 Thomas Kuhn published the seminal work on these concepts in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (possibly the most frequently cited book in America).  Since then the terms have been adopted into our vernacular to such an extent that many argue they have lost their meaning.

I first read Kuhn’s work in college, but the concept has stuck with me over the past two decades, and it resurfaced in my thoughts over the past few weeks in a new way.  The conversations and comments stimulated by my first two blog posts pushed me to consider the direction of the dialogue I would like to promote around education.

I realized that I am much more interested in engaging people about a new paradigm for education than I am in debating the merits of the strategies inherent in the current dominant narrative of reform.  I want to start writing a different narrative through open and honest reflection, dialogue, and discovery.

So, I Googled “paradigm shift + education” and stumbled upon a 62 slide Power Point deck written by Charles M. Reigeluth titled “A New Paradigm of Education.”  Long story short – I started an email dialogue with Reigeluth (a professor at Indiana University who turns out to be involved in some pretty interesting work around systemic change in education), started rereading Kuhn’s book as well as Joel Barker’s Paradigms, did some web research on the concept of Alvin Toffler’s “waves of change,” and began connecting the dots between all these and a couple of books by Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline and Schools that Learn) that I recently read.

My head is spinning, but I think I am on to something.  Today’s post, focused on simply retelling the logic in Reigeluth’s Power Point , will be the first of several that will follow this line of thinking.  Here goes…

There are two major types of change – piecemeal and paradigm change.  Alvin Toffler posits that there have been three great waves of change: from hunter/gatherer to agrarian, then to the industrial revolution, and now to the information revolution. When there are great changes in society there are paradigm changes in societal systems (family, business, etc. including education).

The change to an industrial society led to the industrialization of schools that mirrored many of its underpinnings; bureaucratic organization, autocratic leadership, centralized control, adversarial relationships, compliance, conformity, compartmentalization, etc.

The needs of an information age society are much different; team organization, shared leadership, autonomy with accountability, cooperative relationships, initiative, diversity, networking, holism, etc.  If these are indeed the emerging societal needs, and they are clearly different than those of an “industrial” society, then we need a new educational system – a new paradigm – that aligns with those needs.  (What that new paradigm of education might look like and how to help school districts to transform to the new paradigm are the bodies if work Reigeluth is focusing on.)

This thinking makes a lot of sense to me. From it follows that the types of reform we are currently focused on today really only fit the “piecemeal” definition of change.  And it all fits within the current box – let’s call it the industrial model of education box.  If we believe there is major societal change occurring, then nothing less than paradigm change is necessary.

Additionally, there is another idea that supports the need for systemic change.  Over the past 50 years our society (specifically American society) has become increasingly apathetic; it’s trending to more inequality, not less; it does less to help those within it who need help the most; it has become increasingly focused on the “winners” at the expense of the many; it favors assimilation over diversity.

Piecemeal changes to an educational system supporting this societal trend will at best leave us with the status quo and, at worst, reinforce the increasing divisions within our society.  On the other hand, paradigm change in education can be part of a co-evolution with society, supporting it and being supported by it, by moving from a system designed for sorting students to one designed for helping all children reach their potential.

I ask you to take a minute, regardless of your feelings about today’s reform agenda, and envision a new paradigm for education.  What would yours look like?

Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted in Reform | 7 Comments »

What I do believe

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

My first post ended with the question: What’s your vision of a good education?  Less than half the comments to the post attempted to answer that question.  My belief is that we can’t really have intelligent dialogue about education and the current reform approach unless we, each one of us, evaluates our own beliefs, the assumptions underlying them, and then shares them. I really appreciated those who put their beliefs out there.

My thinking about what good education is has evolved over the 16 years I have spent as an educator.  I don’t remember thinking too deeply about this question early in my teaching career.  I imagine that if I travelled back in time and asked myself this question I would have said something about learning to read, write, and do math well.

The first time I remember thinking deeply about this question was in a class in grad school on curriculum design.  The professor suggested that curriculums were designed based on the definition of the “good life” that the designer had.  From that point and for several years I used to talk about education being about choice and opportunity – my definition of the “good life” at the time.  A good education was one that would open up future opportunities (careers, college, etc.) and would develop an individual’s ability to make good choices.

Choice and opportunity fit together.  Having opportunity, but not the ability to make good decisions was just as problematic as having good decision-making ability but not having opportunities to make decisions.  For example, if you know yourself well and what’s important to you, but you don’t have good grades and test scores your opportunities are limited (i.e. you will have a hard time going to college).  And if you have good grades, high scores, etc. but you don’t have the ability to think for yourself, your decisions will conform to those of the majority around you.

My definition of good education has changed fairly recently.  While it is not altogether different, I think it has evolved to be more connected to my belief about the purpose of education (more on this below).  The short description is that a good education develops critical thinking and independence.

Let’s pause for a moment.  Several people who responded to the blog post mentioned critical  thinking as essential to  education.  In education there are many terms that are frequently used, but rarely carefully defined.  My experience with these terms is that each user has a very different definition.  This is certainly the case with “critical thinking.”  So let me be clear what I mean when I use the term.

Critical thinking is the act of seriously evaluating and coming to a judgment. You don’t see critical thinking applied during a standardized test.  You see it when a second-grader raises her hand to ask why it’s almost always boy characters who are the heroes in the pictures books she reads or when a fifth-grader challenges (politely, of course) another student about her approach to solving a complicated math problem or when an eighth grader identifies a point of view in a social studies textbook that smoothes over the controversial parts of American history.

It’s important also to understand that the only way you can truly apply critical thinking is when you have a solid grasp of content and skills.  You can’t compare, judge, and evaluate if you don’t have a degree of content knowledge and competency.  While knowledge and competency aren’t enough, they are essential as they form the foundation of a good education, upon which critical thinking stands.

Similar to choice and opportunity, critical thinking and independence are reciprocal.  When students develop independence, they not only think for themselves, they do for themselves. They take action based on their own thinking.  Imagine a nation where students leave school with the ability to think critically, and then take action!

Several commenters to my first post clearly believe that those who concentrate on changing our education system have the cart before the horse.  Their argument, simplified, is that until societal injustices are resolved, it is a waste of time to work on education reform since the education system sits within the inequitable societal context.  Taking a side in this debate doesn’t seem productive at this point.

But, I have a sincere question for those that take the “society must change first” stance. Would it be helpful if more of our schools were built around the definition of good education I describe above?  Couldn’t the development of these schools happen concurrently to the fight for societal equity and also reinforce it?  Students who can think for themselves, critique the social order, and believe they can do something become part of the solution, no?

My vision of a good education is based on some core beliefs, probably the most important of which is this: Our society (local, national, and global) needs to be better than it is today.  There is major fixing to be done. Given this belief, it follows naturally that it’s imperative to develop students who can identify what’s wrong and then make a difference.

Of course our education system needs to develop individuals who can fit into our economic system.  But, I believe that when taking the long view, it is equally if not more important for students to be able to fix the world, not just fit in.

What do you believe the purpose of our public education system should be?  In retrospect, this is the question I should have asked at the end of my first post because our definitions of what a good education is rest upon our belief of what the purpose of public education is in the first place.

Articulate your vision of education’s purpose, and we’ll all better understand your context for improving education. I await your comments.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Posted in Teaching and learning | 4 Comments »

Why I don’t believe in “reform”

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

Marc Waxman has been an educator for 17 years, including 12 in New York City, and the last two in Denver.

I don’t believe.  I wish I could believe.  I am supposed to believe.  But, I don’t. I don’t believe in education “reform” in our country.

I don’t believe charter schools are a panacea, I don’t believe that linking student achievement to teacher evaluation will significantly impact education, and for that matter, I don’t believe student achievement” should be the ultimate goal of education in our country.

I am supposed to believe in all this, especially if you look at my resume and follow the major media discussion of education “reform.” Let me explain.

When I graduated from college in 1994 I joined Teach For America.  I taught two years in Paterson, NJ (made famous by Joe “Batman” Clark from Eastside High School – which was just across the street from the 1,000-student K-8 school where I taught.  After my two years of TFA service I became one of the first teachers and administrators at KIPP in the South Bronx.  After three years at KIPP, I spent the next nine years co-founding and co-directing a new school in Harlem which started as a school-within-a school, was part of a take-over of a failing school that was closed, became an official New York City public school, and then converted to become one of only five conversion charter schools in NYC.

Next, I came to Denver, where I worked for Denver Public Schools in the New Schools Office where I became its Executive Director and reshaped the office to become the Office of School Reform and Innovation.  And, now I am working on opening another charter school and a charter management organization (CMO) that will support a network of charter schools in the metro Denver area.

I have wanted to communicate about my beliefs, or “unbeliefs” for a long time.  Diane Ravitch’s book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education” emboldened me to write this blog.  It’s not that I agree with everything Ravitch says.  It’s just that I felt like it was a courageous act on her part to write it.  Frankly, it was inspiring and motivating.  And, so much of the book connected to my own experiences.  Above I explained my background with Teach For America, KIPP schools, and charter schools.  But, I also have other experiences directly relating to the book.

As I went through and identified the main focus of each chapter – standards, NYC school system’s business model, NYC’s District 2, choice, accountability, testing, NCLB, the power of philanthropists – I realized that I had a direct connection to every one of them.  Although I had never done anything like it before – write a blog, an op-ed, or a letter to an author – I realized that I wanted to reach out to Dr. Ravitch and engage her and others in a dialogue about the things that matter to me about education in our country. This is my way of reaching out.

I have a feeling – although I hope I am wrong – that to many reading this I will be viewed as a polemicist. And, to be frank, I am a little scared to write for this blog. I am going to openly disagree with and challenge many people I have worked for and with, people who have supported me professionally and personally and financially, and people I need to work with in the future.  Many of these people I have great respect for.  I am trusting that these people will welcome the dialogue.  But I am scared nonetheless.

I am passionate and committed to education and am eager to engage with anyone in any way to improve education in our country (especially for those who have historically been denied access to excellent education), but education is also my job.  It’s how I pay my bills and help support my family.  So, this has real stakes for me.  But, when I think about the type of students I want to help develop – students that believe they can make a difference in the world and then go out and do it – I can’t hypocritically and comfortably sit back and not engage.  Frankly too many people – it often seems like everybody– seem to be sitting back and not engaging. Ultimately, I am more scared NOT to speak up – if nobody does, we will continue in the wrong direction.

Ravitch writes:

“If we want to improve education, we must first of all have a vision of what good education is.  We should have goals that are worth striving for.  Everyone involved in educating children should ask themselves why we educate.  What is a well-educated person?  What knowledge is of most worth?  What do we hope for when we send our children to school? What do we want them to learn and accomplish by the time they graduate from school?”

If you believe the dominant narrative, these questions all boil down to a simple concept – what’s most important is student achievement, specifically achievement on a narrow set of tasks that make up our nation’s current standardized testing program.  While I understand, to a large extent from personal experience, how tempting it is simplify in this way, we must resist.  Education and student achievement are not the same.  It’s as if we, as a nation, have decided to forgo examining the purposes of education in lieu of the narrow goal of student achievement (as defined by test scores).

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how and when I started to challenge the student achievement mantra.  It may have been when I was working at KIPP, very focused on student achievement but also taking classes at Teachers College at Columbia University.  For a class on curriculum design we read John Dewey’s Experience and Education.  In it Dewey writes,

“What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information… if in the process an individual loses his own soul: loses his appreciation of things worth while, of the values to which these things are relative; if he loses desire to apply what he has learned and, above all, loses the ability to extract meaning from his future experiences as they occur?”

This is one of the few quotes I have memorized.  At times I have printed it and hung it above my desk.

As a parent and as an educator I think about the question “What is education?” constantly.  My answers have changed over time and are still changing.  In future posts I will explore my answers.  My question for today is not what reforms we should or should not believe.  It is simply this – what’s your vision of a good education?  It’s time to have this conversation, however messy it may be.

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