People with single all-explaining ideologies have a tendency to let their philosophic blinders distort how they view empirical reality

People with single all-explaining ideologies have a tendency to let their philosophic blinders distort how they view empirical reality.... he decided to abandon the belief that a single ideology can be applied to all problems. There are a lot of different goods in society: liberty, social justice, equity, community, virtue, prosperity. It’s crazy, Taylor argued, to prioritize one of those goods in nearly every single policy context. And yet that’s what ideologues do....

Excerpt from David Brooks, "A New Center is Born" - NYT

The words above made some sense based on my experiences inside caucus politics in the UFT.

There are ideologues on the left and the right - and probably in the middle. One of my complaints about so many socialists, especially Marxists, is that they are locked into an ideology that supposedly explains all. But then again we find splits, with so many socialist branches and ideologies, each one with their own ideology and analysis that distort empirical reality.

I can pin the current UFT election and caucus mess to these same factors - ideologues acting under theories rather than the realities on the ground but will expound further in upcoming posts.

I don't generally agree with David Brooks and I had a lot to disagree with in this column. Here he is talking about a former libertarian who saw what a straight jacked the free free free market ideology had locked libertarians into. Like government is always bad bad bad leads to bad privatization schemes. His false equivalency of comparing Donald Trump on the right with Bernie Sanders on the left is an indication of Brooks' own locked box ideologies -- and don't forget Brooks' history of supporting ed deform and attacking teachers and their unions.

Here are the blogs I've done on Brooks and ed deform.

March 17, 2009: A Clueless David Brooks
May 9, 2009:David Brooks is More Clueless Than Ever
May 13, 2009: Ravitch - MUST READ: What 'The Harlem Miracle' Really Teaches 

June 16, 2008: David Brooks and the Status Quo at the NY TimesJune 21, 2008: Responding to David Brooks

July 29, 2008: Michael Fiorillo Challenges David Brooks

March 20, 2014: Newark Teacher Endorses Ras Baraka and Slams David Brooks for Jeffries Endorsement
Dec 12, 2008: The New Know Nothings

Dec. 13, 2008: Pathetic Letter to Times From Weingarten

David Brooks is More Clueless Than Ever

You just have to read David Brooks' "Harlem Miracle" piece in yesterday's NY Times where he says "We may have found a remedy for the achievement gap." The best is this quote from ed deformer shill Roland Fryer, "What Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children’s Zone’s founder and president, has done is “the equivalent of curing cancer for these kids.""

You know the ed deformer mantra about "no excuses" or that "throwing money at the problem doesn't solve it."

Well. check out a few facts about Harlem Children's Zone sent by Leonie:

According to 60 minutes, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/11/60minutes/main1611936.shtml

“Harlem Children’s Zone raises $36 million in private funds per year. Classes have a ratio of one adult for every six kids as well as state-of-the-art science labs, a first-class gym, and a cafeteria that looks more like a restaurant.”

According to the school’s data on the 2007-8 school report card,
https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb-rc/2008/1a/AOR-2008-310500860864.pdf

Class sizes are 18 in K-6th grade, and in 8th grade they range from 12 to 20 kids per class, depending on the subject.

According to the same school report card, the school enrolls 1% ELL students.

According to other state sources, it has 0 % special ed students.

Now, of course, if we had a union that was not collaborating with the ed deformers, they would be using their vast resources based on our dues to do the work of exposing these shams instead of leaving it to Leonie, running on a shoe-string budget, to do.


I didn't even get to the arrogance about middle class and poor people values. I found the values of many poor people I worked with more generous and less mean spirited than so-called middle class values. Give me these kids to work with over the middle class kids any day.

Another comment on the NYC Education News listserve did deal with it.

Yes, but aside from all the benefits offered in these schools, look at what else they offer--what Brooks calls "no excuse schools":

"... an emerging model for low-income students....The basic theory is that middle-class kids enter adolescence with certain working models in their heads: what I can achieve; how to control impulses; how to work hard. Many kids from poorer, disorganized homes don’t have these internalized models. The schools create a disciplined, orderly and demanding counterculture to inculcate middle-class values....

Basically, the no excuses schools pay meticulous attention to behavior and attitudes. They teach students how to look at the person who is talking, how to shake h ands. These schools are academically rigorous and college-focused. Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City . ... Nearly half of the teachers did not return for the 2005-2006 school year. A third didn’t return for the 2006-2007 year. Assessments are rigorous. Standardized tests are woven into the fabric of school life.

... Ever since welfare reform, we have had success with intrusive government programs that combine paternalistic leadership, sufficient funding and a ferocious commitment to traditional, middle-class values. We may have found a remedy for the achievement gap."

I'm sure this has long been discussed and debated, but is this "paternalistic, intrusive" program the best way of closing the achivement gap?"

Related:
Ed Notes has commented on previous columns by Brooks on education.
A Clueless David Brooks
Pathetic Letter to Times From Weingarten

A Clueless David Brooks

I actually like some of the things moderate conservative David Brooks says – at times. But when he can be so clueless about education, can you believe in anything he writes? In his March 13 column, "No Picnic for Me Either," Brooks' confusion is evident in his opening words:

In his education speech this week, Barack Obama retold a by-now familiar story. When he was a boy, his mother would wake him up at 4:30 to tutor him for a few hours before he went off to school. When young Barry complained about getting up so early, his mother responded: “This is no picnic for me either, Buster.”

That experience was the perfect preparation for reforming American education because it underlines the two traits necessary for academic success: relationships and rigor. The young Obama had a loving relationship with an adult passionate about his future. He also had at least one teacher, his mom, disinclined to put up with any crap.

Wait a minute. His mother was also his teacher? Brooks confuses the elemental point right here. It was his parent, not his teachers who made the difference. The so-called ed reformers talk about great teachers out of one side of their mouths while disrespecting the mass of teachers out of the other side. People who talk about total solutions to the problems in education and say they must include attacking the social problems in the lives of kids (which include parental and home life issues) are always accused of making excuses. Sadly, Obama has joined the chorus.

The phony ed reformers are finding that as they take over more of the public school system, they discover it will take more than merit pay or charter schools. They themselves start making excuses. (Just wait 'till KIPP takes over entire swaths of schools and can't hide the warts.) Like, why does Joel Klein have to close so many schools that have been under his control for 7 years? He and Arne Duncan talk about the need for charters to promote innovation. Klein and Duncan have run entire school systems for 7 years. What stopped them from innovating in the public schools?

Brooks' next paragraph takes us from confusion to total bewilderment.

We’ve spent years working on ways to restructure schools, but what matters most is the relationship between one student and one teacher. You ask a kid who has graduated from high school to list the teachers who mattered in his life, and he will reel off names. You ask a kid who dropped out, and he will not even understand the question. Relationships like that are beyond his experience.

Okay, so let's get this straight. The most important factor in graduating from high school depends on a relationship with a teacher? Did Brooks actually read Obama's book? Can he cite even one teacher Obama credits with having a transforming influence on him?

I went to school in East NY section of Brooklyn where many of our parents didn't graduate from high school - my mom didn't even go to elementary school and could barely read or write and most of us couldn't name a teacher who made such a great difference. In fact, we had quite a few lousy teachers - more than great teachers. Yet my mom nudged me as much a Obama's mom.

But let's look at Brooks' other clueless point – that kids who drop out had no relationships with teachers. He should check the letters and phone calls I received over the years from my former dropouts, some from state penitentiaries. My fault, I guess. Or maybe Brooks should have joined me at some of the funerals I attended for former students who were slaughtered in drug wars.

In fact, I found the future dropouts in my 4-6 grade classes were the most needy of a parent surrogate, and they were the ones I often grew closest too.

The kids with stable families looked at their teachers as, well, teachers. Some were inspired. One teacher in my school took a few favorite 3rd graders to Alvin Ailey and one of the kids swore that day she would become an Alvin Ailey dancer - and she did. I had that same child in the 6th grade and believe me, she would have been successful no matter what. Her mom was a nurse, one of the few students in my schools whose parents had middle class jobs.

Related:
Brooks entire column is here.

This week from the Daily Howler: David Brooks doesn’t know several things. He does say some things which are useful. http://www.dailyhowler.com/

FAIR dissects David Brooks

http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8459

David Brooks Loves Data--When It Gives the Right Results

This comes from FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). Showing the failure of our media to do its job, they deserve our support.

by Jim Naureckas

In a typically half-empty David Brooks piece (3/13/09), the columnist praises Barack Obama for embracing "rigor" in education policy, for endorsing "testing and accountability," for "mak[ing] sure results have consequences." He complains about the "education establishment’s ability to evade the consequences of data" and that watered-down proficiency standards mean that "parents think their own schools are much better than they are." He commends Obama's commitment to "use data to make decisions," and Education Secretary opposition to "ignoring failure."

But Brooks says many doubt whether Obama "has the courage to follow through" on these principles, and point to "the way the president has already caved in on the D.C. vouchers case":

Democrats in Congress just killed an experiment that gives 1,700 poor Washington kids school vouchers. They even refused to grandfather in the kids already in the program, so those children will be ripped away from their mentors and friends. The idea was to cause maximum suffering, and 58 Senators voted for it.

Obama has, in fact, been shamefully quiet about this. But in the next weeks he’ll at least try to protect the kids now in the program.

The odd thing is that the D.C. voucher program is a very poor poster child for the importance of rigorous, data-driven education policy that rewards success and punishes failure. The students participating in the voucher program have been watched closely, and according to two Department of Education studies they aren't doing significantly better in reading or math than the peers they left behind in public school. The one bright spot that the studies found is that parents of kids in voucher schools report being more satisfied--in other words, "parents think their own schools are much better than they are."

"Rigorous" is not a word one would apply to Brooks' argument here.

FAIR blog
2009-03-13

The New Know Nothings

I just heard Jonathan Alter rant against teacher unions on Don Imus while praising Bill Gates as a reformer. Alter joins David Brooks, another education Know Nothing in pushing the Joel Klein/Michelle Rhee/Arne Duncan model of "it's all the teachers and their unions fault" model of school reform. Brooks recently wrote his second column pushing his vacant ideas on education.

What's interesting about these Know Nothings is how they refuse to look at places where the anti-union market based "reforms" have had little impact. Arne Duncan brags about how he fired the teachers at low performing schools. How has the Chicago model worked out? (See my recent column about how PS 225 in Rockaway had most of the teachers dumped out in March 2005 and is now being closed.) As a matter of fact, the refusal to look at the record of Chicago 13 years after mayoral control began and where George Schmidt reports the union has been rendered just about helpless, is a major plank in the Know Nothing platform.

Another plank is the refusal to look at all the right to work states where unions barely exist and how education is working out in those places.

Alter never mentions Gates' recent turn around on his support of small schools, a movement that has decimated and de-stabilized so many schools in New York City. Ooops! Let's try another experiment with no data backing it up. The irony, of course, of all these data kings never using data to judge the validity of their "reforms," would be delicious if it wasn't so destructive.

The rants ignore the significant voices of vocal parents in New York who have actually made a firmer stand against BloomKlein than the UFT.

I put a lot of blame for how this is being played out squarely on the teacher unions, who could of/should of been fighting for the kind of education reforms that would work. But they abandoned that fight a generation ago. We expect people like Gates, Alter, Brooks, Klein, etc. to act the way they do. But when the rank and file have to fight a two-front war, their situation is very bad indeed.

As we full well know, the UFT has barely made a stand at all. I won't go into the gory details. You see, the UFT/AFT wants to play "me too – see, we are also reformers." No, not the kind of reformers who call for low class sizes and offering urban kids the same kind of education wealthy kids get. But merit pay, ending union work rules, support for the testing mantra (though making squeaks about how much they are opposed.)

The tragedy is that our union leaders are not Know Nothings. They actually know something about how schools work but have decided to play the political game with the union attackers. "We'll give you some of what you want now and sell it to the members while leaving you loop-holes to get the rest. We will then put on a big act for the members about how awful this is but shrug our shoulders with a 'what can we do' attitude." The key issue: hold on to power.

They want to be a partner with the business community and have a seat at the table. Except for the extreme right wing union attackers, the reformers are perfectly happy to have a UFT/AFT on board as their intermediaries in selling their platform from the inside. The union leaders will get dues no matter what happens to the teachers. And most importantly, they will remain in power.

If a reform movement within the UFT ever got started and attracted masses of rank and filers, watch how quickly the gang running the schools line up with Unity Caucus to keep militants away from union power.

Related
Greg Palast had a great post at Huffington which I posted at Norms Notes. Is the real Gates interest to make sure poor kids are educated in a narrow, test-driven school he would never send his own kids to so he can assure enough data entry clerks?

Is Obama Getting Bad Advice on His Appointments?

Joel Klein is being considered for secretary of education, which would make as much sense for our schools as Michael Brown did for disaster relief.

Has Barack Obama forgotten, Michael "Way to go, Brownie" Brown? Brown was that guy from the Arabian Horse Association appointed by President George W. Bush to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brownie, not knowing the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain from the south end of a horse, let New Orleans drown. Bush's response was to give his buddy Brownie a thumbs up.

We thought Obama would go a very different way. You'd think the studious senator from Illinois would avoid repeating the Bush regime's horror show of unqualified appointments, of picking politicos over professionals. But here we go again. Trial balloons lofted in the Washington Post suggest President-elect Obama is about to select Joel Klein as secretary of education. If not Klein, then draft choice No. 2 is Arne Duncan, Obama's backyard basketball buddy in Chicago.

It's not just Klein's and Duncan's empty credentials that scare me: It's the ill philosophy behind the Bush-brand education theories they promote. "Teach-to-the-test" (which goes under such prepackaged teaching brands as "Success for All") forces teachers to limit classroom time to pounding in rote, low-end skills, easily measured on standardized tests. The transparent purpose is to create the future class of worker-drones. Add in some computer training and -- voila! -- millions trained on the cheap to function, not think. Analytical thinking skills, creative skills, questioning skills will be left to the privileged at the Laboratory School and Phillips Andover Academy.

Alphie Kohn has a piece in The Nation which I also posted at Norms Notes.

Beware School 'Reformers'

For Republicans education "reform" typically includes support for vouchers and other forms of privatization. But groups with names like Democrats for Education Reform--along with many mainstream publications--are disconcertingly allied with conservatives in just about every other respect.

Sadly, all but one of the people reportedly being considered for Education secretary are reformers only in this Orwellian sense of the word.

Duncan and Klein, along with virulently antiprogressive DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, are celebrated by politicians and pundits. Darling-Hammond, meanwhile, tends to be the choice of people who understand how children learn. Consider her wry comment that introduces this article: it's impossible to imagine a comparable insight coming from any of the spreadsheet-oriented, pump-up-the-scores "reformers" (or, for that matter, from any previous Education secretary). Darling-Hammond knows how all the talk of "rigor" and "raising the bar" has produced sterile, scripted curriculums that have been imposed disproportionately on children of color. Her viewpoint is that of an educator, not a corporate manager.

Imagine--an educator running the Education Department.

For more research-based pieces, check Leonie Haimson's consistent defense of reforms that will work at the NYC Public Parents blog. Leonie's stake is that she has a child in the NYC schools. In this piece Leonie punches holes in the entire Bill Gates rationale.

No evidence of improved outcomes at NYC's small schools

And of course the work done by Eduwonkette to debunk the Know Nothings. And then there's the ongoing discussion between Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch at Bridging Differences.

You see, the new Know Nothings want to know nothing about all this evidence of opposition that goes way beyond teachers.

Previous Ed Notes articles on another David Brooks column in July.

David Brooks and the Status Quo at the NY Times

Responding to David Brooks

Michael Fiorillo Challenges David Brooks

David Brooks and the Status Quo at the NY Times

I've been thinking about how to address David Brooks' ridiculous op ed in Friday's NY Times on education where if you don't agree with the likes of Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Andrew Rotherham and, best of all, Al Sharpton (read all about his extortion racket,) you are labeled a status quoer. On first look, I thought it was a Tweed press release. Well, now that I think about it, it read a lot like Tweed PR chief David Cantor.

NYC Educator's brilliant piece today pretty much nails Brooks, who ought to visit the lovely trailer NYC teaches in, but I want to add a few points.

Brooks focuses on where Obama will go on ed policy. Brooks puts him between the regressive ed reformers and the progressive ed reformers whom the RER zombies are branding as "status quoers." NYC Educator focuses on the fact that none of the so-called regressive ed reforms seem to have worked, but Brooks wants to continue to arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic anyway.

In his own fit of rhetorical gibberish, Brooks refers to the "patina of postpartisan rhetoric" as he writes about the competing vision of the Progressive Ed Reform Movement (PERM):

The status quo camp issued a statement organized by the Economic Policy Institute. This report argues that poverty and broad social factors drive high dropout rates and other bad outcomes. Schools alone can’t combat that, so more money should go to health care programs, anti-poverty initiatives and after-school and pre-K programs. When it comes to improving schools, the essential message is that we need to spend more on what we’re already doing: smaller class sizes, better instruction, better teacher training.

Does Brooks really believe we're spending more on smaller class size? Maybe in the private schools his friends attend. What does he think about the fact that the class sizes in NYC are 25%-35% higher than the rest of the state? Who really supports the status quo, people like Brooks or the PERMs? Brooks and the RER's are really about busting teacher unions. Lucky for them they have a compliant AFT/UFT that is frightened of being branded as SQ's to deal with.

Brooks says, "the crucial issues are: What do you do with teachers and administrators who are failing? How rigorously do you enforce accountability? Tough decisions have to be made about who belongs in the classroom and who doesn’t. Parents have to be given more control over education through public charter schools. Teacher contracts and state policies that keep ineffective teachers in the classroom need to be revised.

What irony. Has he seen how parents in NYC have less control over their schools than ever as regressive ed reformers use mayoral dictatorships to hand entire urban public school system over to Bill Gates and Eli Broad, while Brooks' friends in the suburbs actually get to elect school boards and vote on budgets?

What to do with reporters and editors who are failing?
Who belongs in the NY Times newsroom?
As NYC Educator points out, Brooks and the NY Times were vigorous war hawks and don't seem to worry about accountability and failures when it came to their own promotion of the weapons of mass destruction and general coverage of the Iraq war.

And then there's the issue of how a trillion dollars can appear out of nowhere, but those who call for even a fraction of that expenditure to lower class size are branded status quoers.

Let David Brooks take a look at the failure of the NY Times, not only in relation to Iraq, but in the biased coverage of education in NYC. True accountability starts at home.


Check out this review of Susan Ohanian's new book for some sanity.