Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

I don’t subscribe to the notion that past generations were smarter than the current one. There was no Golden Age of education. Millions of schoolchildren fell through the cracks in the Good Old Days, and that was considered acceptable. No one spent much time worrying about making school an attractive place for kids.

Like a old hand-tool or a simple toaster, the schools did only one thing, but did it well. They concentrated on the basics of the English language, arithmetic, American and European history, and science. It was insufficient and parochial, but it was a level of knowledge common to everyone, regardless of background or income level. It was easy to distinguish an educated adult from an uneducated one.

Over the years, both the curriculum and the mission of schools broadened. Since the school day and year remained the same, they broadened at the expense of the old fundamentals. Students now pick up skills they were never taught before, but know less about the core subjects than their parents.

Test scores reflect this. I still remember a presentation in 1998 given by William Schmidt from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). I wrote about it at the time:

“He showed the audience a sample math question from the test — a simple dual perimeter problem. He explained that more that two-thirds of 12th graders were unable to solve the problem. He emphasized and repeated the lack of subject matter and content knowledge among both teachers and students. He did not place the blame solely on teachers, but noted that US curricula tend to be ‘a mile wide and an inch deep’ — covering too many topics too superficially. He also displayed data showing teachers were effective in teaching — and students in learning — many of the areas wrongfully emphasized by faulty curricula. For example, US math students ranked first in the world in rounding numbers. As many education observers have noted in the past, US schools tend to place extraordinary weight on rounding and estimating. In science, American students topped the world in ‘lifestyles and genetics’ — in other words, as Schmidt explained, reproduction. The public school’s stressing of self-esteem has also worked wonders, resulting in students who believe themselves to have great skills in math and science, even when their test results indicate otherwise.”

Students couldn’t solve a perimeter problem, but they beat the world in rounding and estimating. They trailed in chemistry and physics, but led in sex education. They had high self-esteem and confidence in their abilities, exceeding their actual performance.

USA Today reported this morning the results of a study that showed today’s high school seniors have vastly higher opinions of their abilities and their future prospects than the high school seniors of 1975.

With all the criticism of student ignorance and the failures of American public education – including here on these pages – isn’t it possible that the kids are learning exactly what they are being taught and that the current system is doing exactly what it has been programmed to do?

To extend the currently popular analogy, if you plant pumpkin seeds, you shouldn’t be surprised if you end up with pumpkins. The pumpkin farm isn’t failing, and the pumpkin farmer doesn’t understand why you’re upset with him.

If you don’t want pumpkins, you have only two choices: persuade the pumpkin farmer to plant other crops, or go elsewhere.

It’s actually a simple decision for those in the education reform business. You can expend your energy and resources retargeting the school system to a different set of values, or you can expend your energy and resources finding and/or creating that kind of system separately. People are trying to do both, but I think eventually it will end up being one or the other.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten delivered a speech to the National Press Club yesterday. Alexander Russo helpfully collected the major press reports.

Here is an excerpt:

“Our sights are set on tougher academic standards, stricter discipline, less bureaucracy, higher quality schools. These goals, shared by teachers and school boards alike, compel us to transform collective bargaining into a collaborative process – negotiations focusing not only on traditional bread-and-butter issues, and also on issues of employee involvement and school quality.

“Our challenge is clear: Instead of relegating teachers to the role of production workers — with no say in organizing their schools for excellence — we need to enlist teachers as full partners, indeed, as co-managers of their schools. Instead of contracts that reduce flexibility and restrict change, we — and our schools — need contracts that empower and enable. This new collaboration is not about sleeping with the enemy. It is about waking up to our shared stake in reinvigorating the public education enterprise. It is about educating children better, more effectively, more ambitiously.

“The new direction we are charting… is not only about vision, it is about action. It is about changing how each of our local affiliates does business, changing how they bargain, changing what issues they put on the table, changing the ways they help their members to become the best teachers they can be.”

Oooops. Wait a minute. I’m sorry, those words aren’t from Randi Weingarten’s National Press Club speech yesterday; they are from National Education Association President Bob Chase’s National Press Club speech of February 5, 1997.

As we now know, Chase’s introduction of new unionism in that speech led to a Golden Age of collaboration between unions and management, where both sides held the interest of the kids, not adults, as their primary concern. Obsolete and harmful work rules were removed, fiscal prudence was practiced, incompetent teachers were swiftly dismissed, and American public education blossomed into the envy of the world that it is today.

You can read all of Weingarten’s speech and the various press reports about it, but all you really need to pay attention to is the one sentence written by Sam Dillon of the New York Times:

“It is unclear how much practical effect Ms. Weingarten’s speech will have on the stance her 1.4-million-member union and its locals take in negotiations with school districts or in lobbying state legislatures.”

And the world looks just the same, and history ain’t changed.

Click here to read:

Emptying the File Folder Edition

With so much attention to the election a lot of stories never made it out of the file folder over the last two weeks. So here they are, in rapid fire fashion.

1) PAC Spending Not NEA’s Strong Suit
2) Wider Election Implications
3) Payback Is Expensive
4) California Memory Hole
5) Studies I Haven’t Had a Chance to Read Yet
6) Outsourcing
7) At Least It’s Consistent
8) Wicks Relit
9) Headline of the Week
10) Last Week’s Intercepts
11) Quotes of the Week

As long as we’re at it:

“The lengths to which Rhee must go just to apply basic standards of accountability in the teaching profession is mind-boggling. And reading the comments from the leaders of the teachers’ unions really does drive home the point. Until we really do bust the teachers unions, the next generation of kids in public schools is at risk. I’m one of those DC residents, whose taxes are poured into often useless schools with often dreadful teachers. I’d like to see a tiny bit more value for money.”

Leonard Pitts Jr., the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald, is not exactly one of those raving right-wingers. And yet:

“Can we be honest here? I mean, brutally honest? D.C. public schools are not good enough for the Obama kids. Not because they are D.C. public schools, but because they are urban public schools.

“I’m not doubting the dedication of public school teachers. And yes, there are exceptional public schools — but the exceptions prove the rule. Public schools, particularly in urban areas, are largely failing our children….

“You’d think it would be a no-brainer that people who don’t perform get the axe and those who do get raises. Isn’t that the way it works in most nonunionized professions? But the teachers union apparently exists in some alternate universe where everyone is rewarded equally regardless of the quality of their work.”

See other entries in the Who Lost? series:

Who Lost Arianna?

Who Lost Roland S. Martin?

Flypaper has details of a speech delivered at the Education Trust national conference by 2005 National Teacher of the Year Jason Kamras. It was always obvious that this Teach for America alumnus was a maverick. (Is that word still allowed?) His remarks to the 2005 NEA Representative Assembly (see item #5 here) had more than a few uncomfortable silences.

His speech today contained some views on the teacher salary schedule that will ensure – should the occasion arise – he will never be fed by the North Dakota Education Association. I’m sure Education Trust gave him pancakes. If not, Kati Haycock and Amy Wilkins will hear from me!

You may think I spend my entire day sifting through news stories, e-mails and documents for information about public education and teachers’ unions, and normally you would be right, but yesterday I spent hours decrypting a Civil War route cipher for a college student.

It was an August 16, 1862 enciphered telegram from Union General Fitz-John Porter to General George B. McClellan. It turned out to be a routine update of the troop movements of himself and Gen. John J. Abercrombie.

There isn’t much call these days for amateur cryptanalysis, but what’s amazing to me is how, through the power of the Internet, someone could track me down to do it.

Just 15 years ago, history research required a lot of time sifting through dusty books in the poorly lit ass-end of university libraries, filling out interlibrary loan slips, and writing letters (using the U.S. mail!) to academics for additional sources and guidance.

Today, not only have I posted my article on Civil War cryptology on my personal web page, but you can still purchase on Amazon its original appearance as a cover story in Civil War Times Illustrated, or the reprint in Spies and Secret Missions on HistoryNetShop.com, and even find citations of it in Campbell Brown’s Civil War: With Ewell and the Army of Northern Virginia and Civil War High Commands through Google Book Search.

In less than a generation, we’ve gone from a situation in which locatiing hard-to-find information was paramount, to one where sifting through an overload of available information is crucial. That requires a different skill set. I’m sure I’m not the first one to make this observation, but I hope America’s teachers are way ahead of me on it.