Fw: edin08

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

> From: "GERALD BRACEY" <gbracey1@verizon.net>
>
> DOES THE ED IN "ED IN 08"
> STAND FOR EXCREMENT DISSEMINATION?
>
> PART I
>
> Eli Broad and Bill Gates have ponied up $60 million to "wake up the 
> American people about their schools." The $60 million fuel a 
> campaign to make education a major issue in the presidential election of 2008.
>
> No matter what its good intentions might or might not be, ED in 08 
> is shaping up as one of the sloppiest, most unprofessional, 
> irresponsible campaigns in memory (why such a campaign is necessary 
> in view of the schools being blamed for Sputnik (1957), urban riots 
> (1967), "grim and joyless classrooms" (Chuck Silberman, Crisis in 
> the Classroom, 1970), the SAT decline (On Further Examination, 
> 1977), letting the Japanese eat our lunch, ("A Nation At Risk" 
> 1983), and the myriad of recent publications about the Chinese and 
> Indians threatening our lunch, is not clear. Broad is 73 years old. 
> Did he sleep through all 50 years of this fuss?
>
> I will deal with this allegation more extensively in the 17th Bracey 
> Report in October's Phi Delta Kappan, but for now consider this 
> statement in the section of ED in 08's website, "More Time and 
> Support for Learning" (www.edin08.com/uploadedfiles/more-time.pdf):
>
> "China provides 30% more education than America..."
>
> What on earth does this mean? Thirty percent longer year? Thirty 
> percent more curriculum coverage? Thirty percent more years in 
> school? Thirty percent higher test scores (China has never taken 
> part in an international comparison for reasons that will be obvious 
> momentarily)? A 30% longer day? I think this last might be true, but 
> it is also true that most Chinese students get about two hours a day 
> to go home and eat lunch. There is very little difference in how 
> much time American and Chinese kids spend learning.
>
> As reported by Vivian Stewart, vice president for education of the 
> Asia Society, "Currently, only 40 percent of Chinese students go to 
> upper-secondary schools." That is, past the 9th grade. "Its 
> long-term goals include: a world-class education for the top 5 
> percent to 10 percent of high school students; universal 12-year 
> education by 2020...." (China's Modernization Plan, Education Week, 
> March 22, 2006).
>
> Jim Fallows is an former editor of and currently writer for The 
> Atlantic Monthly who has often written about education and who is 
> currently stationed in Shanghai. In an email to me this spring, he 
> called the schools in Shanghai "awful." Deborah Meier and Eleanor 
> Duckworth, two of the nation's premier educators, were gentler. They 
> were invited recently to consult with Chinese educators. The Chinese 
> are concerned about the quality of education schools are providing 
> even for the elite. In an August 18 email, Deborah said "the idea 
> that they have a superior education system is beyond absurd."
>
> She also wrote that most of the "immigrant" Chinese kids are not 
> even in school. "Immigrant" is the word applied to Chinese families 
> who have moved, illegally often, into the cities from the poor rural 
> regions. All Chinese schools charge tuition and they cannot afford 
> it. Immigrant Chinese kids are legion.
>
> Deborah says that they were told "that in many rural areas there are 
> virtually no teachers--even if there are schools." As for the 
> schools she visited, "The schools we saw were middle class ones in 
> Shanghai which were working with the University and seemed pleasant 
> enough but had 50 kids in a class and a relatively ordinary pedagogy."
>
> China has come a long way and its plans, as outlined by Stewart 
> anyway, are impressive but it has quite a ways to go. Fourteen years 
> ago, Lena Sun in the Washington Post noted that "many state-run 
> schools [in contrast to the private schools that have high 
> tuitions], especially in poor, rural areas, have no heat and 
> sometimes no electricity. Some students have to share notebooks, use 
> pencils with no points, and sit on hard, backless wooden planks. 
> Education is such a low priority in some areas that classrooms are 
> used as cow-sheds." They should file an adequacy suit.
>
> What most struck Sun was the press for conformity starting in 
> pre-school: "Every child gets his or her cot ready for the required 
> nap, whether they are sleepy or not. There is virtually no 
> unstructured time...Even toilets breaks are scheduled into the day; 
> the children squat together over one long trough in the communal 
> bathroom." ("Chinese Swaddled, Not Coddled," March 20, 1993).
>
> The state of rural education in China was shrewdly captured in a 
> 1999 movie, "Not One Less," by Zhang Yimou (Red Sorghum, Shanghai 
> Triad, Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern, The Story of Qiu Ju, Riding 
> Alone for Thousands of Miles, House of Flying Daggers, etc). A 
> 13-year-old girl is pressed into service as the teacher for a 
> one-room school house when the regular teacher must return to his 
> home town to perform filial duties following the death of a parent. 
> The film deftly contrasts the old poverty of rural China with the 
> new poverty of urban China.
>
> PART II
>
> In a policy paper, EDin08 says, "The average school year of nations 
> participating in the Third International Math and Science Survey 
> [sic--they can't even get the title right!] is 193 days, compared 
> with 180 days in the U. S."
>
> This is not true. We don't know what that average is.
>
> In another place, EDin08 says, "By the time they've graduated from 
> high school, students in other countries have obtained the 
> equivalent of one more year of education than their American counterparts."
>
> Even if this is not a meaningless statement, we don't know if it's true.
>
> Craig Jerald formerly of the Education Trust (and you know how I 
> feel about them) now the director of policy for Edin08 pointed to 
> the source of both statements, "Getting Smarter, Becoming Fairer" 
> from the Center for American Progress, another outfit that ain't 
> doin' the right thing:
>
> "The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 
> considered one of the gold standards in comparing student 
> performance across countries, revealed that in only two of the 13 
> participating nations did students spend fewer days in school than 
> American students. On average, students in participating nations 
> spent 193 days annually in school, compared to only 180 in the U. S. 
> Drawn out across 12 years of study, this 13-day annual deficit 
> translates into a 156-day gap over an academic career--or nearly one 
> full school year. There is little doubt that the extra time students 
> in other countries devote to education contributes to the 
> differences in academic achievement."
>
> Actually, there is a lot of doubt, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
>
> It's about 80% of a year.
>
> Most of you are likely stuck back in that statement about the 13 
> participating countries, knowing that there were 41 countries in the 
> 1995 round, 38 in the 1999 incarnation, 45 in 2003. In the 1999 
> version 13 countries stayed on for some benchmarking research and it 
> is from those 13 nations that the figures about instructional days 
> come. By country:
>
> Korea 225
> Japan 223
> Taiwan 221
> Italy 210
> Czech Rep 197
> Russian Fed 195
> Netherlands 191
> England 190
> Canada 188
> Singapore 180
> U. S. 180
> Hong Kong 176
> Belgium (Fl) 175
>
> Mean = 193. Median, which is the more appropriate statisitic here = 
> 191 which lops another 24 days off that full year.
>
> Since the legend reads "instructional days" I assume they've 
> subtracted all those days in Japan that are used for parades, games, etc.
>
> So the country with the highest score, Singapore, 604, has the same 
> number of days as we do while those with fewer days also scored 
> higher, HK at 582 and Belgium at 558. The U. S. scored 502, above 
> the international average of 487, but only one country below 
> average, Italy at 479, took part in the benchmarking part of TIMSS99 
> so we have a bit of a selection problem here. Even so, it looks like 
> days in school has nothing to do with score. In the absence of data 
> for all 38 countries, the Center for American Progress and Edin08 
> are committing the Base Rates Fallacy.
>
> In TIMSS 2003, the 3 nations with the largest number of annual 
> instructional hours devoted to math, Philippines, Indonesia and 
> Chile, were among the lowest scorers (pp. 34 and 270, TIMSS 2003 
> International Mathematics Report). Japan in 1999 ranked high among 
> school days, but in 2003 was 30th in number of hours devoted to math 
> while top ranked Singapore was 24th. The U. S. was 10th.
>
> Once more, time and score seem unrelated.
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> Why is it that education "reformers" feel obligated to idealize 
> education elsewhere and demonize it here? Why is it that 
> organizations like Center for American Progress and Edin08 feel they 
> can write sloppy reports--as long as they put American schools in a 
> bad light--and that it doesn't matter.
>
> After Bill Gates' demonizing speech to the National Governors 
> Association in 2005 (Gates is 50% of the $60 million behind the ED 
> in 08 campaign), I wrote an article, "Yo Bill Gates: If You're So 
> Rich, How Come You Ain't Smart?" I wrote about the general 
> fear-mongering tendency in Stanford Magazine's July/August 2006 
> issue, "Believing the Worst." Putting the title and "Bracey" into 
> Google will pull up the article. A much shorter, but slightly more 
> current version is at www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey.
>
> Somebody needs to shake up ED in 08. In the meantime, as my granma, 
> a school teacher with an 8th grade educaton used to say, "Don't pay 
> 'em no mind."
>
> Jerry
>
> P. S. Roy Romer and Craig Jerald at Edin08 and John Podesta, Cindy 
> Brown and Elena Rocha at CAP will get copies by USPS.
\