In the latest article drafted by school administrators in SAU16/Exeter, David Ryan, Esther Asbell, and Christopher Adriski try to smooth over the disaster they helped create in the school district.
All three of these administrators offer readers a spin job on what drove parents in the district to show up at numerous school board meetings, and express how they have been failing their children.
The school shut-down in SAU16 was unlike many other districts that reopened in a timely manner. It took Governor Sununu stepping in and forcing SAU16 to reopen.
It was a little too late because many of these parents watched their children suffer academically and emotionally. Why did it take the Governor to force the reopening of this district? Where was the leadership? Where was the concern for the students who were struggling academically and emotionally? Parents gave these administrators plenty of feedback that their children were suffering –but that fell on deaf ears.
These administrators are now trying to spin this disaster by assuring parents that the learning did not stop. It “looked different, but it didn’t stop.” No one ever said it stopped, but for some children it was a disaster. Many of these parents told you that their kids were falling behind academically and suffering emotionally.
Remote learning, as we now know, hurt children academically and emotionally. That can no longer be denied– even from a spin machine–or in this case, a public relations firm. Yes, SAU16 hired a PR firm to spin the problems that plague the district.
They referenced an article in the New York Times by David Leonhardt. (No Way to Grow Up, January 4, 2022) Leonhardt wrote that “children fell far behind in school during the first ear of the pandemic and have not caught up.”
Instead of acknowledging the role these three administrators played in this disaster, they go on to publish an op-ed claiming the “learning didn’t stop;” as if that is going to comfort the many families who know their children were falling further and further behind academically. The op-ed is full of education buzzwords and edu-speak that has the reader scratching their head wondering what on earth they are talking about.
Let’s face it, this op-ed was an opportunity for these administrators to try to sell the reader on more education fads instead of acknowledging the obvious fall-out from their decisions, or a pathway to a correction.
They even mention their goal of getting students to think critically. Does anyone believe this kind of spin? When parents think critically, offer evidence, scientific studies, or honest feedback, they are dismissed and marginalized.
Then they capitalize on this disaster by trying to sell you on Competency-Based Education (CBE) in their op-ed. They ignored the honest critique of how these schools failed children during remote learning, and go on to then try to sell the reader on CBE. They don’t tell you that CBE is the old failed education fad from the 90s. Back then they called this education model Outcome-Based Education (OBE)– before that it was called Mastery Learning.
Benjamin Bloom came up with this theory of Mastery Learning in the late 60’s, but Mastery Learning failed in the US and was then rejected outright. In 1980, William Spady convened a meeting to propose the implementation of the OBE philosophy with Bloom in attendance. He said OBE would be a new name for Mastery Learning because it had been destroyed by poor implementation. Poor implementation is always the excuse they use to rename and repackage failed fads. Due to Spady’s influence, he convinced many states to implement OBE. But by the early 90’s many states in the USA rejected OBE because it failed to help students progress academically.
Today CBE is a national movement that took hold during the Obama Administration when President Obama told us during a State of the Union Address that he was changing the education model. That model would shift from a liberal arts model focused on academics, to a workforce model focused on soft skills. New Hampshire legislators jumped on board and passed into law the Competency-Based Education model, where it remains in state statute today.
You will notice that the three administrators offered no independent or peer-reviewed studies that CBE improved academic achievement for New Hampshire students. They just spun this old fad in their op-ed with no proof of academic achievement– they then expected you to just accept their sales pitch. This is just like when they tried to tell you that 2Revolutions was a reputable organization for teacher training, when we know their materials categorize everyone in New Hampshire as white supremacists. These are the same people who pay radical extremists to train the teachers in this district.
Where is the critical thinking among these school administrators ? Is critical thinking really welcome at school board meetings by parents who take the time to research what is going on, and then present evidence to the contrary? Let’s be honest, critical thinking is not welcome by those in charge of schools if it is contrary to what they are selling.
In the op-ed, they say, “And if we are asking our students to be critical thinkers with the capacity for reflection and self-evaluation, then we must engage in those activities right on up the chain of learners, all the way to the lead learners. We must create the conditions where reflection and self-evaluation are not just something that we ask education professionals to do sporadically and in a vacuum.”
Where is the self-evaluation and reflection by these three administrators? Maybe they should start with reflecting on the damage they’ve done to this district and the children they’ve harmed.
The worst part of their op-ed is that they downplayed the importance of students acquiring knowledge. Instead, knowledge is replaced by the “21st-century” mantra we are hearing from the education establishment. They seem to think we are all stupid and have never heard this sales job before. This kind of agenda has been around for many years, as I will explain.
Is it any wonder that parents are showing up at board meetings, pointing to the lower proficiency scores and school rankings? You have three administrators who are still refusing to reflect on their failures and instead, try to sell you on soft CBE. What good are those skills if a graduate does not have a foundation of academic content to draw upon?
Some history for SAU16 Administrators
Diane Ravitch, who is an education professor and historian, wrote an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe in 2009. Ravitch argued against the movement to emphasize “21st Century Skills” in K-12 schools. In her op-ed she explains how this approach, peddled by the SAU16 administrators, has the potential to harm students and public schools. These are discredited pedagogical efforts to teach life skills and replace content knowledge. (https://www.edweek.org/education/a-dissent-on-21st-century-skills/2009/09)
That is what the parents in SAU16 have picked up on. That is why these administrators must now try to spin their agenda and hope you don’t see what’s really going on.
Look at what Ravitch wrote:
“…the focus on cooperative learning, critical thinking, and employment preparation recommended by advocates of 21st Century Skills has a host of precedents. Throughout the 20th century, she says, progressive pedagogical movements repeatedly called on educators to “abandon their antiquated academic ideals” and teach students relevant practical skills through project methods, hands-on activities, and discovery-learning approaches.”
These movements eventually lapsed…..”
Ravitch argues that for “critical thinking, you need knowledge.”
(https://hnn.us/roundup/entries/116984.html)
Parents across the state are starting to realize that content knowledge has taken a back seat to soft skills or “21st century skills,” thanks to the dumbed-down Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards, along with CBE.
This was highlighted when a home-school mom contacted me a few years ago to complain about math projects her son had to do at Pinkerton Academy. After home-schooling her son k-8, she decided to place him in Pinkerton for 9th grade. She was dismayed when her son had to work on projects with a classmate during math class. She could see that he was spending a great deal of time on the projects instead of learning the math content. But the math teachers are now forced to shift focus to these 21st-century skills instead of teaching the math content.
She could see that if she home-schooled him, they would have made it through the textbook, and he would have been further along at the end of the year. Instead, he fell further and further behind because the focus had shifted to him learning to collaborate with his classmate, instead of learning the math. If you multiply that by 12 years, is it any wonder that Singapore students are two years ahead of U.S. students by the time they reach 9th grade?
Why is it, these three administrators didn’t mention any of this in their op-ed? Maybe they lack the critical thinking skills they say they want to embed in the children they are in charge of. Ravitch has seen these fads play out before. She has seen the damage it does to children who attend public schools.
There is nothing good about illiteracy, but that’s what they want parents to ignore. For all of these social justice warriors in the SAU16 administration, what good does this downplay of knowledge do for your black and brown children? What good does this do for all of your students if, by the time they graduate, they lack the knowledge needed to qualify for a top college or for a job that, not only requires skills, but knowledge too?
Elitists sell this kind of education while making sure their kids receive the best from private schools. This is no way to treat public schooled children.
The parents have figured it out. The curtain has been pulled back and they now see what you are selling, and they want no part of it. They want their kids to learn the academic content, and they made that clear at numerous board meetings.
CBE may be a state law, but it would help if the administrators used some critical thinking skills, stop selling these fads, and give parents the truth.
For the progressives who do not understand that CBE is an avenue for the Gig Economy, take a look at this.
(https://educationalchemy.com/2016/06/25/cbe-and-alec-preparing-students-for-the-gig-economy/) Take a look at how CBE is supported by the far right-wing ALEC in order to supply a dumbed-down labor pipeline. CBE isn’t about developing the whole child in the core academic subjects or the arts, it’s about supplying a dumbed-down labor pipeline. Many parents avoid this when they pull their kids out, home-school them or send them to private elite schools.
When CBE first came to New Hampshire, I could go to the district website and read the competencies for each class. Now it’s difficult to find any school district that posts the competencies online. Why is that? Parents want to know their child is mastering the academic content in Algebra I. Let’s see if the Algebra I competencies cover every concept that should be covered in the typical Algebra I class. If SAU16 administrators are sold on CBE and want to sell it to the parents, then post all of the Competencies for each class on the district website so we can review them. Are your children really competent in a good Algebra I class if they master all of the competencies?
An administration working for the families in this district would lay this all out. They would look at the good, the bad and the ugly of any education reform. They’d present all of the facts, then make a decision on how to move forward in the best way possible for the children who attend these schools. But that’s not what you got from their op-ed. You got more of the snake-oil that parents have been complaining about for months now.
MORE from Diane Ravitch: (NOTE: Common Core below is not the same as the Common Core Standards. The Common Core organization Ravitch was a member of, preceded the Common Core State Standards initiative and focused on academic content knowledge)
[Diane Ravitch is research professor of education at New York University and co-chairman of Common Core.]
The latest fad to sweep K-12 education is called “21st-Century Skills.’’ States – including Massachusetts – are adding them to their learning standards, with the expectation that students will master skills such as cooperative learning and critical thinking and therefore be better able to compete for jobs in the global economy. Inevitably, putting a priority on skills pushes other subjects, including history, literature, and the arts, to the margins. But skill-centered, knowledge-free education has never worked.
The same ideas proposed today by the 21st-Century Skills movement were iterated and reiterated by pedagogues across the 20th century. In 1911, the dean of the education school at Stanford called on his fellow educators to abandon their antiquated academic ideals and adapt education to the real life and real needs of students.
In 1916, a federal government report scoffed at academic education as lacking relevance. The report’s author said black children should “learn to do by doing,’’ which he considered to be the modern, scientific approach to education.
Just a couple of years later, “the project method’’ took the education world by storm. Instead of a sequential curriculum laid out in advance, the program urged that boys and girls engage in hands-on projects of their own choosing, ideally working cooperatively in a group. It required activity, not docility, and awakened student motivation. It’s remarkably similar to the model advocated by 21st-century skills enthusiasts.
The list goes on: students built, measured, and figured things out while solving real-life problems, like how to build a playhouse, pet park, or a puppet theater, as part of the 1920s and 1930s “Activity Movement.’’ From the “Life Adjustment Movement’’ of the 1950s to “Outcome-Based Education’’ in the 1980s, one “innovation’’ after another devalued academic subject matter while making schooling relevant, hands-on, and attuned to the real interests and needs of young people.
To be sure, there has been resistance. In Roslyn, Long Island, in the 1930s, parents were incensed because their children couldn’t read but spent an entire day baking nut bread. The Roslyn superintendent assured them that baking was an excellent way to learn mathematics.
None of these initiatives survived. They did have impact, however: They inserted into American education a deeply ingrained suspicion of academic studies and subject matter. For the past century, our schools of education have obsessed over critical-thinking skills, projects, cooperative learning, experiential learning, and so on. But they have paid precious little attention to the disciplinary knowledge that young people need to make sense of the world…
Read more here: http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/09/15/critical_thinking_you_need_knowledge/
