Posts Tagged → education nation

Beware of CEO Solutions

Unlike most of us, Brian Jones actually went to Education Nation last week, participated in a panel that supposedly addressed the issue of finding good teachers, and tells us what he learned.

The whole column is very much worth your time, but here, in a few sentences, is the rather depressing lesson Brian took away.

Here we have a message honed to perfection… for the wealthy: the unions are the problem; the teachers need to be cheaper; give me money now for a few beautiful schools that can help break the unions and open up the education market; but don’t worry, we don’t want too much; we certainly don’t want what your children have.

That’s what I learned from NBC’s Education Nation Summit. Beware CEOs who say teachers are the problem. And beware CEO solutions. You might find yourself in a room without windows.

And we certainly know how effective those CEOs are at running their own companies.

On the other side of things, some very smart educators who should have been at NBC’s faúx summit instead of the CEOs, participated yesterday afternoon/evening in Elevating the Education Reform Dialog, an excellent discussion of the issues that Education Nation seems to have missed.

The audio archive and chat log (all nearly three hours of it!) is now available.

Another Wasted Opportunity at Education Nation

The title of the panel discussion at Education Nation was promising: Educating the Digital Generation.

So, who are the experts invited to analyze this important topic?

CEO of Johnson Publishing, CEO of Viacom, CEO of A&E Networks, CEO of Time Warner Cable, a host of MSNBC’s morning political talking heads show.  And the token teacher (“the most important person on the panel” who was also allowed the least talk time).

Start with a video, ripped off from Michael Wesch and others, illustrating how much time kids spend with media and follow that with a discussion that absolutely, completely misses the point.

The focus of the panelists was entirely on students as consumers of media (especially the content distributed by their companies) with lots of corporate ideas for “keeping students engaged” in that consumption.

Along with, of course, plenty of praise for “Waiting for Superman”, not coincidentally distributed by a division of Viacom.

In the process the speakers totally ignored the need to help students understand how to be intelligent, creative producers of media.

As if this discussion was being held at the end of the previous century and the vast array of inexpensive, easy to use tools that allow kids to publish their ideas directly to the web (bypassing the conduits controlled by the panelists) didn’t exist.

Ok, I’ve been trying to find something positive in Education Nation (I really have!) this week but incredibly wasted opportunities like this make that nearly impossible.

Education Nation: Not Even Close

Valerie Strauss, the Washington Post’s other education writer*, takes a look at Education Nation and says it’s not the “fair, serious look at public education today” NBC claimed it would be.

It wasn’t even close.

The events, panels and discussions were sharply tilted toward Obama’s school reform agenda — focused in part on closing failing schools, expanding charter schools and using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers. It gave short shrift to the enormous backlash against the plan from educators and parents around the country who say that Obama’s education priorities won’t improve schools but will narrow curriculum and drive good teachers out of the profession.

NBC seemed to take for granted that Obama’s education policies are sound and will be effective. Seasoned journalists failed to ask hard questions and fell all over their subjects to be sympathetic. It was a forum for people to repeatedly misstate the positions of their opponents.

Exactly! Outside of the Teacher Town Hall from last Sunday, it’s nearly impossible to find any voices at Education Nation advocating for anything other than that which solidifies the status quo. Re-creating schools straight out of Leave it to Beaver.

The rest of her assessment of what passes for reform these days is also excellent.

In fact, Strauss only misses on two minor points.

First, there’s really nothing new here. Obama’s education policies are pretty much a carbon copy of those imposed by the previous administration.

Second, she comes to this incorrect conclusion.

There will come a time when this current wave of “reform” proves as unsuccessful as past fads — and journalists may look back on their fawning coverage and be very, very sorry that they gave their objectivity on this subject.

This wave of reform will certainly fail but don’t look for journalists, least of all the ones at NBC, to be sorry about any part of their crappy coverage of the topic.

By that time they will be creating a whole new narrative, likely also divorced from objectivity.

*and Jay Mathews’ heir apparent?

Observations at the Town Hall

Yesterday afternoon I watched the Teacher Town Hall* that was the kick-off event for Education Nation, NBC’s self-congratulatory, week-long look at education on their news shows, quasi-news shows (ie. Dateline), and talking heads cable channels.

This is not a summary of the two hours (minus an odd assortment of ads), just a short collection of observations.  If you saw the program and came away with something different, please leave a comment.

Although Brian Williams, the moderator, claimed several times that Education Nation was all about “the future of American education”, this town hall was very much about the status quo.  Any changes being advocated, by either the people interviewed on-stage or those who got a few seconds on mic from the audience, were minimal at best.

I didn’t hear much about student learning, which is supposed to be the core purpose of school.  And on those few occasions when the subject of learning did come up, it was always in terms of standardized tests.  Unfortunately, even many teachers are associating genuine learning with test scores.

On the other hand, almost all the teachers who spoke from the audience seemed very proud of their work and of their particular schools and students. Almost defensive.

Maybe not almost.  Many speakers talked about the profession being “under attack”, “under siege”, and about their work “in the trenches”. It’s rather depressing to hear people discussing teaching in terms of war.

And Williams seemed to take great pleasure in keeping the waters churning.  It quickly became clear that he and the producers were far more interested in the conflict that is the staple of what passes for news reporting these days than they were in a serious discussion of education issues.

Lots of talk about unions and tenure, although those who blame either for not being able to fire bad teachers don’t understand the system.  In the super large districts, it’s the general bureaucracy that is the biggest impediment to making corrections – of any kind.

The online discussion, using CoverIt Live, was worthless.  Besides being too many people contributing comments, some of them short essays, making it very hard to follow, it was also clear that the posts were being filtered. The criteria for which were allowed through wasn’t so clear.

Finally, did you know the event was taking place on the skating rink at Rockefeller Plaza in New York? It was impossible to miss that fact since Williams told the audience about it after Every. Single. Commercial. Break.

So, with the obigitory airing of teacher opinion out of the way – on a football Sunday afternoon – the rest of Education Nation can begin in prime time.

Bring on the expert panel!

*Don’t look for a transcript, recording, or other accounting of the two hours at that link. But you can still enter the sweepstakes! They’ve posted the video, but a searchable transcript would also be nice. And you can still enter the sweepstakes. :-)

Sort of an Educational “Where’s Waldo?”

Read through this list and be prepared for a quiz on the other side.

  • Maria Bartiromo: Anchor of CNBC’s “Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo” and Anchor and Managing Editor of “Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo”
  • Michael Bloomberg: Mayor, City of New York
  • Cory Booker: Mayor, City of Newark, New Jersey
  • Phil Bredesen: Governor, State of Tennessee
  • Steven Brill: Co-founder of Journalism Online
  • Tom Brokaw: NBC News Special Correspondent
  • Geoffrey Canada: CEO & President of Harlem Children’s Zone Project
  • David Coleman: Founder & CEO, Student Achievement Partners; Contributing Author of the Common Core Standards
  • Ann Curry: News Anchor, “Today” and Anchor, “Dateline NBC”
  • Arne Duncan: US Secretary of Education
  • Byron Garrett: CEO of the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA)
  • Allan Golston, President, US Program, The Gates Foundation
  • Jennifer M. Granholm: Governor, State of Michigan
  • David Gregory: Moderator, “Meet the Press”
  • Reed Hastings: Founder & CEO of Netflix
  • Lester Holt: Anchor, “NBC Nightly News,” Weekend Edition and Co-Host, “Today” Weekend Edition
  • Walter Isaacson: President & CEO of the Aspen Institute
  • Joel Klein: Chancellor of New York City Schools
  • Wendy Kopp: CEO and Founder of Teach for America
  • John Legend: Musician; Founder of the Show Me Campaign
  • Jack Markell: Governor, State of Delaware
  • Gregory McGinity: Managing Director of Policy, The Broad Education Foundation
  • Andrea Mitchell: NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and Host, “Andrea Mitchell Reports”
  • Janet Murguia: President & CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR)
  • Michael Nutter: Mayor, City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • Bill Pepicello, Ph.D.: President of University of Phoenix
  • Sally Ride: First Female Astronaut; Vice-chair of Change the Equation
  • Michelle Rhee: Chancellor, District of Columbia Public School System of Washington, D.C.
  • Edward Rust: Chairman & CEO of State Farm Insurance Companies
  • Gwen Samuel, CT delegate to Mom Congress
  • Barry Schuler: Former CEO of AOL
  • Sterling Speirn: CEO, Kellogg Foundation
  • Margaret Spellings: Former US Secretary of Education
  • Antonio Villaraigosa: Mayor, City of Los Angeles, California
  • Randi Weingarten: President of American Federation of Teachers (AFT-CLO)
  • Brian Williams: Anchor and Managing Editor “NBC Nightly News”

From a press release for NBC/Universal’s Education Nation summit taking place later this month, these people are the “experts” they’ve gathered who will “highlight some of the biggest challenges and opportunities in education in this country, jumpstarting a national conversation about one of the most pressing issues of our time”.

Your assignment is to find any current K12 students on that list.

Can you spot any current K12 teachers in there? Principals? Librarians?

How about any non-celebrity parents of K12 students (other than the “CT delegate to Mom Congress”)?

Is there someone with ideas NOT rooted in the traditional, 20th century, pre-internet, teacher-directed, information-delivery, standardized-testing-heavy, college-focused model of public education?

Anyone? Bueller?

Update (later that same day): Brian at Learning is Messy posts an open letter to NBC also asking where are the people actually involved in day-to-day education. I hope he posts the non-response he gets in return.