Democratic Education Blog

I’ve been waiting to hear from Arne Duncan, the new Secretary of Education appointed by Obama, to get an idea of where he and Obama will be taking educational change in their administration.  Unfortunately, an Ed Week interview with Duncan gives the impression that Duncan will not be making any significant changes from where Bush and Clinton have been positioning education policy over the past two decades: more standardization, testing, and high-stakes accountability based on test scores.  To be fair, Obama and Duncan are rightly expanding that agenda with an emphasis on early childhood support, and the economic stimulus plans in the House and Senate indicate a great deal of money (a total of $140 billion) for education including much needed school construction and more funding for lower income students and students with disabilities.

But the rhetoric from the top sounds the same.  Here’s Duncan in the Ed Week interview:

 “With this fund [$ from the economic stimulus plan], we really have a chance to drive dramatic changes, to take to scale what works, invest in what works,” Mr. Duncan said in an interview last week, his first full week at the helm of the Department of Education. He said he would aim to “reward those states that are pushing very, very hard to get dramatically better.”

OK, I think I could agree with the sentiment – improving our schools.  But alarm bells should be ringing in everyone, because anyone who says “invest in what works” and “schools and students must get better” has to define what those simple words, “works” and “better,” mean.  And for Duncan it seems pretty clear:

Secretary Duncan said the Education Department would want to use the money in part to reward states—as well as districts and nonprofit groups—that have set rigorous standards linked to strong assessments and monitored by student-data systems.

In other words, continuing on the path of previous Education Secretaries Margaret Spellings and Rod Paige, Duncan equates “better” in education as “high test scores,” and “works” anything that leads to higher test scores.  Now, if better meant that more students ought to be happy with their schools, able to pursue their interests and curiosity, developing confidence and compassion, and that teachers are becoming more autonomy-supportive of their students, then I would be the first to stand behind Obama and Duncan and their new path forward.  But unfortunately, they seem caught in the trap that education can only be assessed through multiple-choice tests on academic achievement.  This is in part understandable, with the history of industrial-style conventional schooling in the U.S. that goes back generations, and with progressive groups and journalists, such as the New York Times in its editorial today on education, promoting the idea of national academic standards and rewards based on those tests.

But hope and change are pouring into the U.S. Government and throughout the United States, echoing around the world.  And while I applaud Obama and his administration for the stands they have taken, overturning many of the awful policies of the Bush era, the question appears: Why has that hope and change not come to the education arena?  Why aren’t the values of our democracy – freedom, participation, self-determination, collaboration, equity – more central to the practice of education?  And why do we continue to think that young people do not deserve to have a central voice in determining the direction of their own learning?

It is the continued duty of those of us embracing human rights and democratic values in schools to make the case for uniting those values with our educational practice.  And perhaps all is not lost.  Mike Klonksy notes that an early appointee of Duncan to the Education Department, Carmel Martin, may be someone who cares for smaller learning communities and a more progressive take on teaching and learning.  And with additional appointments coming, perhaps we shall see more encouraging signs.  It has been mainly just words so far, the action is yet to come.

Let’s keep the Obama/Duncan Ed Watch going and keep our hope alive.

I’ve been hesitant to comment on Arne Duncan, President-elect Obama’s choice for Secretary of Education, someone I had not heard much about before his name surfaced among those being considered for the position.

I did, however, know about and think quite highly of Linda Darling-Hammond, a thoughtful (and practicing!) educator currently at Stanford University who has been an education advisor to Obama and was also thought to be a potential Secretary of Education nominee.  Her 2007 article in The Nation clearly shows her wisdom regarding many of the changes we need in the education system, including ending the over-emphasis on testing encouraged by NCLB and promoting performance-based assessments such as science experiments and research papers, encouraging the development of critical-thinking skills and problem-solving, respecting and supporting teachers, equitable funding, and attention to non-school issues that impact young people (I’m still hoping Darling-Hammond is an Assistant Secretary of Education appointee, go to Change.org’s education site for some news and a petition along these lines).

But Duncan is the nominee.  I have read many critical commentaries on Duncan by people with more knowledge about him, including those by Chicago educators Michael Klonsky (and here with Debbie Meier from NYC on Democracy Now) and Bill Ayers and those by other leading voices in education such as Henry Giroux and Kenneth Saltman, and their points do make me quite wary of Duncan.

But I also have hope.  I have hope that the signs that Obama does believe in many of the values of democratic education will show themselves to be true, and that such values will influence Arne Duncan and the direction that Obama’s administration takes with regard to education.  I also know that the coming months and years will take continual work to keep the values and vision of democratic education in the public dialogue and part of the reform efforts that Obama and Duncan will spearhead.

So, in an effort to kick off that work and take the Obama-Duncan team at face value, in the days ahead I’ll report on what I see and hear from them as we go along.

Here’s a Duncan video responding to some of the education comments from the public on the Obama Change.gov site.  While it’s a good start in terms of open government, Duncan did not specifically mention any individual comments, and he only highlighted those ideas he supports (alternative teacher certification, improve vocational education, increase college attendance).  Understandable, at least for an initial response video, but the public will not really believe that the open government claim is authentic unless their voices are truly heard, even if the response is negative.

I’m also not too excited by the points Duncan brings up in terms of revitalizing education or connecting education to our deeply-held democratic values.  But check it out, and also check out Duncan’s confirmation hearing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (yes, that Senate committee has some widely divergent tasks, unless of course you think that the goal education is simply to prepare people to work and engage in “labor,” but that’s another issue!)

With the U.S. presidential election just a few days away, the impact of a new presidency on schools and education has been on my mind a great deal.  I’ve seen a bunch of emails and reports from various individuals and groups (not to mention the campaigns) describing the candidates’ views on education, and Obama and McCain’s education advisors have also been speaking a good deal, such as in NYC at Columbia.

I want to focus for a minute on Senator Obama’s education policy, in part because he is leading in the polls (though by all means the election is still very much up in the air) but mainly because there are indications that an Obama Administration might move education ever so slightly (or even strongly?) in the direction of democratic educational change.  While I’ve written previously taking a pessimistic view on Obama’s education plan, here are a few reasons I’m becoming more hopeful:

• One of Obama’s education advisors is Linda Darling-Hammond:  Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor and co-convener of the Forum for Education and Democracy, is a strong advocate for progressive educational reform and social justice issues in education, and a fierce critic of the standardization and high-stakes testing that has dominated education reform this decade.

• Another education advisor is Michael Johnston: Johnston is the principal of Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton, Colorado, an Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound school, which feature student presentations of learning and project-based work that lets students explore areas of interest.

• Obama has mentioned the Mapleton, Colorado School District’s reform plan in his talks, including his recent 30 minute advertisement, and he gave a major education policy speech at the Mapleton Expeditionary School in May 2008.  (Now of course one must be skeptical about the motivations for appearances, but I couldn’t help but be impressed by Obama’s choice to take the time to watch a student’s presentation of his learning and provide helpful feedback to the student – check out the last link for that interaction.  At the very least, this means Obama is familiar with the practice of performance assessments and not simply evaluating based on tests).  Obama praised Mapleton’s reform efforts, which included breaking up a large high school into several smaller high schools that include the Expeditionary school as well as the Mapleton Early College High School, modeled on the student-initiated internship program of the Big Picture Schools.

• Speaking of tests, while Obama may not be as critical of NCLB or testing as some would like, Obama has repeatedly critiqued the over-reliance on standardized multiple-choice high-stakes assessments.  Front and center on the candidate’s education web page: “Obama and Biden believe teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests and he will improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure readiness for college.”

• The Obamas send their kids to the University of Chicago Laboratory School, a pioneering progressive school founded by John Dewey, still considered one of the most influential (progressive) educators in American history.

• Obama supports the creation of an Innovative Schools Fund (pdf) that would promote “innovative” public educational options such as charter schools, Montessori schools, and theme-focused schools,  mentioning such examples as the Mapleton Colorado School District and the Austin Polytechnical Academy in Chicago, the latter featuring hands-on learning and internships.

By all means, one ought to be aware that an elected candidate may be unable or unwilling to support all that he or she campaigned for.  And I must say I share some of the worries of critics who point to Obama’s support for merit-pay for teachers, and who are frustrated that Obama does not take a stronger position in favor of authentic rather than test-based assessments, or that he does not more strongly highlight the importance of students, parents, teachers, and local communities being more involved in educational decision-making.

Still, taking Obama’s education position as a whole, I cannot help but be instilled with a sense of optimism and hope that an Obama Administration would indeed bring us that much closer to an education system based on our democratic values and a belief that young people can be active co-creators of their own education.