Last night I attended a School Change Summit organized around Diane Ravitch's “The Death and Life Of The Great American School System”. Disclaimer: I have not read her book. Yet. So, my remarks are based on the panel's responses to her book, to her own responses during the forum and to my incomplete knowledge of her thinking and impact on American education. The summit itself was a terrific idea. Paul Bass, publisher of the New Haven Independent partnered with the Community Foundation and others to convene a panel of New Haven parents, educators, scholars and students to read the book and join Ravitch onstage. Meanwhile (in the winds section) radio, print and net journalists (I don't know why I feel the need to make the distinctions), one of New Haven's state reps and the Mayor live blogged. People could and did send in their comments while the Summit was live-streamed, and, the auditorium held a great and lively audience.
I like to "touch and smell the produce" so I actually attended. Before I go off (I'm afraid I will) let me share my frame of reference because you know that people-of-a-certain age always look back.
I started teaching writing in New York City public schools in the mid-1990's. That was during the years when Rudy Giuliani had school chancellors jumping the turnstiles faster than a broke pickpocket. The work was great; I, and other writers and artists like me were on a mission, and there was a great deal of respect (tempered by many educators' skepticism and their own fear of writing) for teaching poetry, fiction and drama to city kids. By the late 1990's the climate was changing as "standards" and "accountability" took up more of the educational airwaves. All of us in the education biz fell down the rabbit hole of metrics and quantifying the work we did as if it were possible to slice thinner and thinner slivers of raw learning and still call it tuna.
Don't get me wrong. I am all for standards and any child or adult who has survived one of my courses will tell you that if I get a whiff that you aren't challenging yourself to do better I will make your ears bleed. But even back then I felt that whole school systems were heading off in the wrong direction where in the effort to quantify they would deracinate the joy of learning and erode what little autonomy public school teachers have. I remember thinking at the time that if "they" wouldn't teach this way at Dalton or Brooklyn Friends or St. Ann's (to mention a few of the estimable private schools in New York) why would "they" think that teaching merely to pass standardized tests even for poor kids, kids with massive educational deficits, emotionally damaged kids is the right way to teach? (Kind of reminds me of the welfare reform conundrum: if you're a middle-class or upper middle-class mom we are all for you being a stay-at-home mother; but, if you're poor and we must supplement your living, raising children [which you are no damn good at anyway, or we wouldn't be having this education debate now, would we?] is second to cleaning the public parks.)
And back when I was on the Advisory Board of City-As-School High School I was part of a group of teachers, students and administrators who had a meeting at Tweed Hall with Joel Klein. The meeting opened with us all introducing ourselves. When the Chancellor, who by that time had been on the job close to a year said to all of us, "This is the first time I've met with students ...." I was stunned. It was all I could do not to look around the table as if to say, did you hear what I heard? Didn't this man think that his learning curve might have been accelerated by hearing how adolescents saw their own education?
Ohhh. Kay, I said, don't make too much of one boneheaded executive oversight. Change takes time. I'll give Bloomberg 7 years. Then we'll see how things work out.
If I dwell on New York's reform experiment I will never, and I mean never, get to my thoughts about New Haven's. So, let me say this. If you asked any New York City public school supervisor, administrator or educator if they had to send their children to a New York City public school randomly assigned using some obscure algorithm would they be comfortable with that assignment, I bet their answer would be [expletive inserted] NO! You can reform education all you want but I'll wager that there will never be an actualized urban public school system that adequately (and beyond) serves its children. Public school education must be examined through the prisms of late-stage Western capitalism, the effects of race and class on urban demography, and the particular impact of the finance and real estate sectors on municipal development (to name just 3 factors).
I've gotten this far without actually talking about Ravitch. (I haven't mentioned Sarah Palin either and that's something to be applauded.) Last night's summit is the hanger on which I'm exploring my ideas about and relationship with public education. That's why I'll call this posting Part I. Part II (soon to a cinema near you!) will follow tomorrow.
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