Educating in an Era of Fear, Panic, Misinformation, and Exaggeration

The Great Schools Scare

John Kuhn - educator, speaker, authorTASSP Summer WorkshopJune 11-13, 2014

Fear is a terrible place to operate from.

1983’’s A Nation at Risk: “a dire assessment”

“Our nation is at risk.”“Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.”“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”“We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”“History is not kind to idlers.”

Fear and Education

Klein-Rice Report, 2012 – “U.S. Education Reform and National Security”

“a clarion call to the nation”“Educational failure puts the United States’…physical safety at risk”“the failure to produce [human] capital will undermine American security”“crisis”

Fear and Education Redux

Opposing fear as a tactic to achieve change is not the same

thing as opposing change.

Also, change is automatically good just because it’s change.

Not saying everything is fine, but...

1. Appearances are everything2. Everyone talks about who is rising and falling3. Distrust reigns (‘I win when you lose’)4. Numbers rule5. Rules number (in the thousands)6. Lateral communication is suspect7. Information is hoarded8. Brown-nosers rule9. The Office seems about right10.Management leads by fear

10 Signs of a Fear-Based Workplace

From Bloomberg Businessweek. http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jul2010/ca2010078_954479.htm#p2

1. Appearances are everything

Miracle schools

Stapleton High School:144 9th graders in 2011

129 10th graders in 201298 11th graders in 201389 12th graders in 2014

1. Appearances are Everything

http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2014/04/15/arne-debunkin/

“The only miracle at these schools was a triumph of

public relations.” -Diane Ravitch in the New

York Times

1. Appearance is everything

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/opinion/01ravitch.html?_r=0

3. Distrust reigns“I feel very, very badly for the children” [in Texas schools].

“We fail to recruit the smartest college students to become teachers.”

“Teachers in America often come from the bottom of the academic barrel.”

“White suburban moms who—all of a sudden—their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.”

Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans”

-US Sec’y of Education Arne Duncan

“It used to be that schools and even districts talked first about children. Now they talk about test scores and data. “Data-driven” is the latest buzzword sweeping education accountability circles. Ostensibly, it means using information to spur improvements in teaching and learning. In practice, data-driven often appears to mean no more than narrowing curriculum and instruction to fit the standardized tests used to hold schools and students accountable. “Data-driven” usually becomes “teaching to the test.” Most data used is simply test scores – broken into sub-scores and perhaps disaggregated by population groups. While the state tests used to rank schools for NCLB are the primary source of data, increasingly, districts and schools administer local tests, designed to mimic the state exam (or at least the multiple-choice items) and thus provide more “data” to prep students for the big test.”

-FairTest

4. Numbers Rule

“It was an overstatement of the problem and it led to sort of hysterical responses.”

-Paul Houston, superintendent of Princeton, N.J. schools (ret.)

A Nation at Risk

1.Rational2.Irrational3.Cultivated

Three kinds of fear in education

Anabel FishMissouriann

b. Aug. 8, 1867d. Feb. 2, 1876

8 y.o.

Parents Have Always Feared for their Kids

Fear in ActionAll parents have fears

Fears are decontextualized

Fears are used as leverage for policy preferences at micro level

Fears are used as leverage for policy preferences at macro level

Teachers are fearful too

Have you seen this one?

Educating in an Era of Fear, Panic, Misinformation, and Exaggeration

The Great Schools Scare

John Kuhn Twitter: @johnkuhntxEmail: johnkuhntx@gmail.comBlog: www.edgator.com