Fw: Levin/Feinberg

["gerald bracey" <gbracey@q.com>]

I sent a link to a Washington Post article by KIPP founders Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin.  My linke was not hot so if yours isn't, just go to www.washingtpost.com and click on "opinion" at the top of the page.

What follows is my letter in response to their op-ed.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: gerald bracey 
To: letters@washpost.com 
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 2:39 PM
Subject: Levin/Feinberg


Of the 5 recommendations for education reform Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin make to the Obama administration, three strike me as good, one is clearly "it depends on interpretation," and one makes no sense at all.

The senseless recommendation is for a set of national standards and assessments.  Feinberg and Levin decry how the "maze of state standards and tests keeps great teachers from sharing ideas, inhibits innovation...etc."  But teachers don't cope with a "maze of state standards."  They only cope with those in their one state.  And how on earth would national standards and assessments increase the sharing of ideas and increase innovation?  They wouldn't.  The problem is that teachers currently have no control over the goals of education, only the means of reaching a goal set by someone else, often someone far removed from the dynamics of the classroom.  National standards and assessments would produce a system even farther removed from the classroom.  The Eight-Year Study, which emphasized school autonomy and democracy as a way of life, is a better model than the single purpose man-on-the moon approach.  Feinberg and Levin conceptualized KIPP themselves as teachers; they didn't robotically follow state or national standards.

The iffy recomendation is the one that contends "we should assess teachers on their demonstrated impact on student learning..."  Fine, but define, please, "demonstrated impact."  If you just mean getting the test scores up (and that's all the KIPP Annual Reports show, and show meaninglessly), forget it.  We know we can do that and we know it doesn't work.  Even KIPP's elevated test scores might be largely an artifact--Feinberg and Levin don't mention the high attrition rate at KIPP schools.  No doubt it is not the higher scoring kids who leave.

I hope Obama and Duncan find ways of doing better than this.

Gerald W. Bracey
90 Belvedere Drive
Port Townsend, Washington 98368
360-379-0133