‘ROUNDING THE GLOBE”: Critical analysis of Boston Globe education coverage
‘Just places to play’
Two related stories appeared in the Globe today that deserve close examination.
Reporter James Vaznis was once again assigned the task of carrying the banner for the state’s latest education reform idea (thereby saving the DOE public relations office time and effort).
hhttp://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2010/06/10/asking_more_of_preschool/
Vaznis’s Page One story about the latest educational madness was headlined, “Asking more of preschool,” and went on to report that the Department of Early Education and Care may require pre-school teachers to have Bachelor degrees so that pre-school can become more academically rigorous.
In his lead, Vaznis constructs a timeless monument to unexamined assumptions.
Here is the lead:
“Once considered just places to play, preschools now sandwich science and math lessons in between naps and recess. To help teachers meet the new academic rigor and to reduce socioeconomic achievement gaps that start before kindergarten, the state wants more teachers to earn bachelor’s degrees.” (Italics mine)
Just places to play.
Two graphs below, we are informed that more highly educated teachers who know “how a child’s brain develops” may be able to fashion a remedy that will help poor kids catch up. He cites unnamed educational specialists for this possibility.
Here is how Mr. Vaznis might have written his lead had he been better informed:
“Despite studies by educational experts about the importance of play in a child’s development, the Department of Early Education and Care may require preschools to sandwich more science and math lessons in between naps and recess in an attempt to reduce socioeconomic achievement gaps that start before kindergarten. A first step being considered involves mandating pre-school teachers to earn bachelor degrees.”
But on what authority might Mr. Vaznis have written such a lead? Well, on the very same day that his story was printed, a press release was sent out about a new book, co-authored by eminent educator Deborah Meier, that makes the educational case for the important benefits for kids of play in free, unstructured environments. The book is called: Playing for Keeps: Life and Learning on a Public School Playground.
Anyone concerned about child (and brain) development will surely be familiar with the vast literature about the importance of kids having “just a place to play.” Let me guess what kind of pre-school ambience Globe reporters would prefer for their own children?
(Sorry, but before I forget, I have one additional question for James Vaznis. Why, in his recent reportage about the “Amazing Teacher” website though which the City of Boston hopes to recruit teachers for its underperforming turn-around schools, did Mr. Vaznis merely identify the funder of the site as “a private foundation.” Mr. Vaznis, please, what foundation? Name names. Does this foundation work closely with the Globe and the state in advocating for Charter schools?)
A related story appeared on Metro Page One with June Wu reporting that 3rd grade reading scores have remained stagnant, the socioeconomic achievement gap has remained wide, and that half of 3rd graders are reading at less than proficient levels.
http://www.boston.com/news/edu…
Ms. Wu details a Harvard report that takes current reading programs to task for these poor results.
Question: Could Ms. Wu have found someone-perhaps even a professor at Harvard-who might have suggested that the problem was less the reading programs than the socioeconomic gap itself?
The tale of an increasingly unequal society, with all the drab statistics and depressing costs pertaining thereto, is apparently far less compelling that simply herding all those incompetent, uncaring teachers together in the public square for their daily drubbing by Globe columnists. We all prefer someone to blame who isn’t us.
The most important thing, it seems, is that all the well-heeled elites who people our powerful institutions-in the media and industry-not feel guilty about the current state of affairs. After all, are they not crusading for poor kids to obtain a better education, albeit the kind of teaching and learning they resolutely reject for their own children?
Finally, these two question for the Globe. Do you merely ask your reporters to turn state press releases into stories? Or do you encourage your reporters to being to their story assignments a healthy degree of curiosity and skepticism?
Deval’s education consultants are heavy on representatives of teacher colleges.
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p>Said representatives benefit when more people are forced to p*ss money away on “education” courses to become overqualified for jobs.
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p>Deval’s education consultants think most any problem can be solved by making people who want to work with kids take ever more courses.
part of the “just don’t stand there, do something” agenda. It doesn’t have to be right, however; it just has to look as though something’s being done.
your comment is beneath you.
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p>The drive for credentialing and standards goes deeper than the teacher colleges that once opposed them. (If you want to blame a segment of academe for our current standards and asseessment regime, blame the humanities. They started it). You can blame the Governor or his people for thinking inside the box, but quite frankly, everybody’s doing it.
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p>The problem is education is governed by a performance-based business management model that–I think–originated with influx of business people into policy circles back in the 1980s. A quick look at our educational policy-making boards in Massachusetts reveals a continuing bias toward business and educational administrators (those who run the “business” of education). It’s all top-down management when it comes to education policy in Massachusetts, and it comes from thinking inside an ideological box.
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p>So how does the top control those of us at the bottom? They make rules. They require credentials. Do these things improve the situation? Not necessarily. But that’s about all they can do aside from auditing compliance. The same is true with legislators. They make laws. A kid gets killed on an ATV, they make a law. Bureaucrats do what bureaucrats do. And they aren’t directly accountable to us, even when they involve a boatload of people and do a traveling show–like they did before the Readiness Project.
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p>The bias against schools of education goes far back. Like teachers unions, teacher colleges had a lot to do with improving the teaching profession over the years. (Only recently have the humanities even worried about their pedagogy).
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p>The bias against schools of education began in the 1930s and 1940s with intermittent assaults on what was termed progressive education, though that movement was hardly monolithic. Arthur Bestor’s bestselling Educational Wastelands (1953) was probably the most vociferous attack, a polemic really, on the state of American education. Admiral Hyman Rickover also began speaking out against our educational system and calling for standards and testing. The father of our nuclear submarine fleet thought that the Russian education system was far superior to ours. Bestor was an historian; Rickover a champion of the liberal arts.
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p>The accountability movement, which bequeathed us with curriculum standards and testing, was dominated by people educated in the humanities. In policy circles, we had Diane Ravitch (history), Chester Finn (history), and William Bennett (philosophy). In popular writing, we had E.D. Hirsh (English), Allan Bloom (philosophy), and Mortimer Adler (philosophy). It’s not that the humanities shouldn’t have a seat at the table, but the social sciences and education in particular have been locked out. The two perspectives conspicuously missing from education policy-making today are teachers and educational researchers.
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p>Thanks to schools of education, we know a lot about educating children today, much more than we did 30 years ago. This is more apparent at the elementary than at the high school where we are still less apt to address the needs of individual children effectively.
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p>It’s not an exaggeration to say we already know a lot of what we need to do to make big improvements, but the hard part is implementing (and financing) the changes. But true to the performance-based managerial style of our ruling classes, our education policy–at least as far as Obama is concerned–is centered on how schools are governed, not how students are educated.
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