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WASHINGTON ― Prominent members of the white supremacist movement applauded Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s immigration speech Wednesday.
David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and current Senate candidate in Louisiana, called the speech “excellent.” Jared Taylor, editor of the white nationalist publication American Renaissance, said it was a “hell of a speech. Almost perfect.”
“Trump is back,” wrote Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank.
All three men also live-tweeted Trump’s speech, another sign of how white nationalists are engaging with Trump’s campaign in a way that is unprecedented in modern politics.
Trump delivered his fiery, fear-mongering speech in Phoenix just hours after meeting with Mexican President Enrico Peña Nieto in Mexico City for what Trump called a “substantive, direct and constructive exchange of ideas.” The optimism Trump projected in Mexico, however, was nowhere to be found in Arizona.
Instead, Trump laid out a grim vision of the U.S., describing it as a country under siege from violent “criminal aliens.” Undocumented immigrants, he said, were responsible for the deaths of “countless Americans.”
In response to this perceived threat, Trump proposed a 10-point plan that would, among other things, build a wall across the United States’ southern border; create a “deportation task force” within the Department of Homeland Security; triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents; and immediately begin deporting 2 million “criminal aliens.” Trump did not say how he planned to pay for these initiatives.
The hourlong speech was written to appeal directly to white men, according to Trump confidante Corey Lewandowski. “White males have a high propensity of voting [and] this speech is clearly geared at those individuals right now, to make sure [Trump] has locked them in for the election,” the former Trump campaign manager said on CNN.
To wit, the speech contained many of the same shades of xenophobia and nativism that characterized Trump’s Republican primary campaign, during which many Americans formed the opinion that Trump is racist.
For the fringe world of white nationalism, Trump’s primary campaign was a godsend. Thanks to Trump, topics that were previously taboo ― like barring people from certain religious groups or nationalities from entering the U.S. ― were suddenly front and center in national debates.
Equally encouraging for the “pro-white” movement was Trump’s reluctance this spring to publicly denounce Duke during a national TV interview ― host Chuck Todd had to ask Trump three times before the candidate said, “I denounce.”
A few months later, prominent white nationalist William Johnson was selected to serve as a Trump delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. When the news made headlines, Johnson withdrew. Trump’s campaign blamed a paperwork error.
Duke launched his longshot Senate campaign on July 22, one day after Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination at the convention. Promising to defend the “rights and heritage of European Americans,” Duke cited Trump’s success as a factor in his decision to run.
“I am overjoyed to see Donald Trump and most Americans embrace most of the issues I’ve championed for years,” Duke said in a campaign video, below.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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At last, we can put this infernal summer behind us. In case you haven’t noticed, 2016’s version of the annual blockbuster deluge was, by and large, not great. But it gets better, starting right now. The fall and early winter months are known as bastions of so-called cinematic prestige, largely because the movies released during these months are aiming for Oscar glory.
There will be plenty of time ― far too much time ― to gab about awards season in the months to come. For now, we’ve whittled down the films opening before Christmas in one handy guide, choosing the titles that might make the biggest impact. One rule: Given how many big-budget movies tanked this summer, we aren’t including any sequels, reboots or established franchise properties. (We trust you’ll find your way to the new “Star Wars” movie just fine, and rightfully so.) Think Hollywood is starved for originality? Check out these 25 films, and then we’ll talk. There’s Edward Snowden! Shia LaBeouf’s rattail! A new Christopher Guest joint! Two Amy Adams vehicles! A protective tree monster!
Get thee to a movie theater. Things are about to get good. We hope.
All release dates are subject to change.
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Image © Raul654 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 & GFDL
Whenever I talk or write about the new evidence standards in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), someone is bound to ask how this is different from No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Didn’t NCLB also emphasize using programs and practices “based on scientifically-based research?”
Though they look similar on the surface, evidence in ESSA is very different from evidence in NCLB. In NCLB, “scientifically-based research” just meant that a given program or practice was generally consistent with principles that had been established in research, and almost any program can be said to be “based on” research. In contrast, ESSA standards encourage the use of specific programs and practices that have themselves been evaluated. ESSA defines strong, moderate, and promising levels of evidence for programs and practices with at least one significantly positive outcome in a randomized, matched, or correlational study, respectively. NCLB had nothing of the sort.
To illustrate the difference, consider a medical example. In a recent blog, I told the story of how medical researchers had long believed that stress caused ulcers. Had NCLB’s evidence provision applied to ulcer treatment, all medicines and therapies based on reducing or managing stress, from yoga to tranquilizers, might be considered “based on scientifically based research” and therefore encouraged. Yet none of these stress-reduction treatments were actually proven to work; they were just consistent with current understandings about the origin of ulcers, which were wrong (bacteria, not stress, causes ulcers).
If ESSA were applied to ulcer treatment, it would demand evidence that a particular medicine or therapy actually improved or eliminated ulcers. ESSA evidence standards wouldn’t care whether a treatment was based on stress theory or bacteria theory, as long as there was good evidence that the actual treatment itself worked in practice, as demonstrated in high-quality research.
Getting back to education, NCLB’s “scientifically-based research” was particularly intended to promote the use of systematic phonics in beginning reading. There was plenty of evidence summarized by the National Reading Panel that a phonetic approach is a good idea, but most of that research was from controlled lab studies, small-scale experiments, and correlations. What the National Reading Panel definitely did not say was that any particular approach to phonics teaching was effective, only that phonics was a generically good idea.
One problem with NCLB’s “scientifically-based research” standard was that a lot of things go into making a program effective. One phonics program might provide excellent materials, extensive professional development, in-class coaching to help teachers use phonetic strategies, effective motivation strategies to get kids excited about phonics, effective grouping strategies to ensure that instruction is tailored to students’ needs, and regular assessments to keep track of students’ progress in reading. Another, equally phonetic program might teach phonics to students on a one-to-one basis. A third phonics program might consist of a textbook that comes with a free half-day training before school opens.
According to NCLB, all three of these approaches are equally “based on scientifically-based research.” But anyone can see that the first two, lots of PD and one-to-one tutoring, are way more likely to work. ESSA evidence standards insist that the actual approaches to be disseminated to schools be tested in comparison to control groups, not assumed to work because they correspond with accepted theory or basic research.
“Scientifically-based research” in NCLB was a major advance in its time, because it was the first time evidence had been mentioned so prominently in the main federal education law, yet educators soon learned that just about anything could be justified as “based on scientifically-based research,” because there are bound to be a few articles out there supporting any educational idea. Fortunately, enthusiasm about “scientifically-based” led to the creation of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and, later, to Investing in Innovation (i3), which set to work funding and encouraging development and rigorous evaluations of specific, replicable programs. The good work of IES and i3 paved the way for the ESSA evidence standards, because now there are a lot more rigorously evaluated programs. NCLB never could have specified ESSA-like evidence standards because there would have been too few qualifying programs. But now there are many more.
Sooner or later, policy and practice in education will follow medicine, agriculture, technology, and other fields in relying on solid evidence to the maximum degree possible. “Scientifically-based research” in NCLB was a first tentative step in that direction, and the stronger ESSA standards are another. If development and research continue or accelerate, successive education laws will have stronger and stronger encouragement and assistance to help schools and districts select and implement proven programs. Our kids will be the winners.
This blog is sponsored by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation
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American officials say Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably
have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services. But the
agendas of WikiLeaks and the Kremlin have often dovetailed.
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We’ve heard a ton about “optics” from the media and pundits lately. You know, usual blather about how emails don’t “look good” for Hillary. Or how Donald Trump had “good stagecraft” that helped his image, with the President of Mexico, yesterday.
The funny/not funny thing about that is that media and pundits think they’re being observant.
Yet, their obsession over optics caused them to largely ignore something Donald Trump actually said last night, which is something about as racist and ethnocentrist as we have seen in national party politics in nearly 100 years.
We’ve admitted 59 million immigrants to the United States between 1965 and 2015. Many of these arrivals have greatly enriched our country. So true. But we now have an obligation to them and to their children to control future immigration as we are following, if you think, previous immigration waves…
To keep immigration levels measured by population share within historical norms. To select immigrants based on their likelihood of success in U.S. society and their ability to be financially self- sufficient.
We take anybody. Come on in, anybody. Just come on in. Not anymore.
What’s he mean by 1965? Well, reading most of the news, this morning, you’d never know. But I guarantee you that most KKK members and neo-Nazis know exactly what he is talking about.
In 1965, we passed the Immigration and Nationality Act. That law essentially repealed the crux of a 1920s law called the Emergency Quota Act.
The Emergency Quota Act (and a 1924 bill that slightly amended it) set quotas on immigration that were based on the number of people of a nationality currently in a country. The effect and intent of the law was abundantly clear. America was mostly white and European, and the law was going to keep it that way, by putting low and hard caps on “others,” while opening the doors to more white Europeans.
The 1965 law opened up the doors to more immigrants, by bringing in people on the basis of their ability to contribute, and family they had here. It led to larger numbers of Asians, Latin Americans, and Africans immigrating to America.
So, when Donald Trump points to 1965 and says we need to reform that law, “To keep immigration levels measured by population share within historical norms,” he means, “We need to keep America from becoming any more less white than it currently is.”
That’s not all.
In fact, taken with his pledge to deport all undocumented immigrants, overwhelmingly Hispanic, Trump is proposing to increase the share of the population that’s represented by whites.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Forget the optics. Forget the shouting. Look at the proposal he laid out.
It is the biggest gift to white nationalists in 100 years. A return to white dominance.
How do I know? Because people like David Duke have been pushing for it, and white nationalists are eating it up.
From the neo-Nazi (aka “alt-right”) Daily Stormer:
If Trump is elected, he is going to need someone pushing things further right than he is. When David Duke is saying “we need to completely repeal the 1965 immigration act and issue an executive order stating that all citizenship awarded to non-Whites after 1965 was fraud and needs to be stripped from those awarded it,” all of the sudden Trump banning and expelling Moslems becomes normal.
Just to make sure people really understood what he was saying, as a parting shot, Donald Trump said, “We take anybody. Come on in, anybody. Just come on in. Not anymore.”
A direct rebuke of, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
A little on the nose, sure.
But, amazingly, apparently not on the nose enough to catch the attention of a media so insanely blinded by the “optics” for which they’re looking.
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Prince was wildly transgressive, yet was also a remarkably unifying icon for an entire generation, a genius not only musically but also in how he lived. He ignored every convention long before such fluidity was popular. After becoming wildly successful, he evaded many pitfalls of rock star fame – but succumbed to others, which tragically proved fatal. I recently tried to make a film about him, which alas was not to be (music permissions, the bane of many a film), but I will try to speak my piece this way.
In a nation and a music industry still segregated in so many ways, Prince was: black, multiracial, and postracial; funk, rock, pop, soul, jazz, electronic, and rap; a composer, performer, producer, actor, and entrepreneur; hedonistically pagan, obscene, vulgar, spiritual, and religious; a tolerant humanist, a straight-edge, a vegan, and an animal rights advocate; wildly exhibitionistic and obsessively private; macho, effeminate, straight, trans, drag queen, stud, pansexual, conservative, and monastic; rigorously perfectionist and utterly chaotic. He was someone of powerful, deep originality who seemingly overcame obstacles simply by ignoring them, and who pointed the way to a world and way of life beyond narrow categories and bigotry.
Prince was also, however, human. He was ultimately killed by the collision between his perfectionism and by his shame about having flaws, and by society’s hypocrisies: the pressure to appear effortlessly spectacular in performance (which destroyed his body); to use dangerously powerful drugs to manage his pain; to find structure and guidance in a cultish religion; and to never, ever show weakness. Prince’s prescription opioid addiction was enabled by his wealth, but he wasn’t alone: opioids are a major cause of premature death in America, killing 20,000 people per year, used by over four million Americans despite being highly addictive, tolerated largely because they are a very big, very profitable business.
Some Facts
Prince Rogers Nelson was born in 1958 to musician parents. He appeared multiracial, and was also small, balletic, and utterly gorgeous, traits which facilitated his later post-racial, pan-racial, multi-gender, pansexual appeal. His parents and their marriage were troubled, as was Prince’s childhood. His musical giftedness was evident early, but he dropped out of school, received little or no formal musical education, and for years remained unacquainted with many forms of music that he would later use (Western classical, jazz, Indian, African, New Age).
Prince signed his first recording contract at 17, signed a three-album contract with Warner at 18, and released his first album at 19. On that album he composed and performed all parts of all songs except one, including 27 musical instruments. His second album, Prince, went platinum before he was 20. His third album, Dirty Mind, one year later, displayed the persona that would define him: sexually explicit, and incorporating funk, new wave, R&B, and pop. But at first Prince’s effeminate, multisexual, cross-genre persona faced opposition; on tour with the Rolling Stones, he and his band were booed and even assaulted by traditional rock audiences.
During his early career, the entire Western music world was still rigidly segregated by race, gender, and sexuality as well as genre. Classical music was all-white and male-dominated, though it quietly tolerated gays; jazz was racially integrated but male-dominated except for singers, and rather homophobic; rock was all-white, all-male, and totally straight, except for a few female singers; soul, R&B, and later hip-hop and rap were all-black, all-male, and totally straight except for female singers.
The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Who, Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, U2, Queen, Crosby Stills & Nash, Aerosmith, The Beach Boys, Cream, Guns N Roses, Lynyrd Skynyrd – every single member of all of these groups was white, male, and publicly straight, although there were closeted gays among them. Many were sexist, homophobic, and sometimes overtly racist.
Beyond being personally post-racial, straight-male-female-trans, Prince’s music ignored boundaries and, most shocking of all, Prince formed bands composed of white, black, straight, kinky, gay, multiracial, and – gasp, choke – female performers, even in macho, rigidly straight-male positions. His longtime percussionist-drummer-collaborator-lover Sheila E. is part black, part Hispanic, most definitely female, and musically the equal of any drummer in any famous rock or jazz group, none of which had ever used a female drummer, much less a non-white one. And the more boundaries Prince ignored, the better his music became. His biggest band was called The Revolution – which it was.
And all of this was on full display in the 1984 album and 1986 film that took Prince from mere fame to superstardom – Purple Rain. The music is brilliant, often unclassifiable, and beautiful. The film’s plot involves an imaginary competition among bands, all of them in reality Prince’s creations, shot in a Minneapolis club where Prince often played. Prince’s character The Kid has the winning band, and it is completely integrated, as is the film. The Kid’s girlfriend is white. The climactic song within the film is one composed by two kinky white girls, a song The Kid initially ignores but eventually uses – Purple Rain. The audiences in the club are totally mixed, including straight white boys, who appear as a sweet, gently tolerated minority rather than a dominant group.
There is almost no overt sex, and the only violence is condemned within the film, mainly the domestic violence and attempted suicide of The Kid’s father, which is portrayed more tragic than evil. The Kid is both macho and effeminate, nearly cross-dressing while riding a motorcycle, living in a feminine, delicately decorated basement while aggressively, ambitiously competing and challenging an unseen but ever-present Establishment. While many characters are kinky, as are some of the song lyrics, this is portrayed as completely normal, simply part of the normal human condition. Also notably, while Prince himself is exceptionally beautiful, many of the others are merely average in appearance; the film is anti-lookist, too.
The film cost only $8 million and was made by an unknown first-time director. It grossed $68 million domestically in 1986. Prince won an Oscar for the music, and the soundtrack won two Grammys and went platinum. Prince was 28 years old.
But the film also shows the seeds of Prince’s eventual, tragic destruction. In the film Prince wears high heels. He does spectacular jumps and splits that look completely effortless. They weren’t. By the early 1990s, still in his 30s, Prince was using a cane.
After Purple Rain, Prince’s pace if anything accelerated. Just one year after Purple Rain, he released one of his most brilliant albums, Sign O’ the Times, together with a stunning concert film of the same name, which Prince directed with Albert Magnolli, who had directed Purple Rain.
Then in 1990, Prince released Graffiti Bridge. Between them, Purple Rain, Sign O’ the Times and Graffiti Bridge are surely three of the most brilliant, diverse, and original albums of the late twentieth century. Prince combined multiple bands and personnel (Prince alone and with The Time, Tevin Campbell, George Clinton); genres including rock, funk, rap, soul, R&B, jazz, and blues; lyrics ranging from the spiritual to the nearly academic to the deliciously obscene; words delivered as spoken prose, rapping, singing, and chorus; and ambient sounds integrated into acoustic, electric, and electronic music.
Prince left us an extraordinary legacy of beauty, celebration, tolerance, creativity, and universality
Prince fought with Warner, changed his name, filed lawsuits, and wrote “slave” on his cheek. But Prince’s handling of the music business was brilliant and often generous. He encouraged and used untested musicians; he wrote songs for them and for other groups, such as Chaka Khan. He constructed his own home studio complex, used trucks as mobile studios to record concerts, formed his own distribution company, self-distributed music both conventionally and over the Internet, and correctly predicted the decimation of the music industry by the Internet and piracy. He was aggressive in enforcing his copyrights, angering the Electronic Frontier Foundation but delighting other musicians. All the while he composed, recorded, and performed at a furious pace, even though most of his music remained locked in The Vault. In 2014, after 18 years, he signed with Warner again.
Prince was sexually attracted principally to women, and he had no trouble attracting them. He was romantically involved with an array of beautiful, often gifted, sometimes very young women, as well as some famous ones. Ideologically, Prince was a largely anti-political humanist, pacifist, and believer in animal rights. In various songs and writings he denounced gun violence, police killings of unarmed blacks, nuclear weapons, drugs, capitalism, war, and cruelty to animals. He became a vegan. He prohibited his band members from using drugs, and paid for them to enter rehab if they became addicted. He was intensely private, and rarely appeared in public or made public statements unless somehow connected to his music.
However, Prince quietly supported causes that provided help to the vulnerable. He donated time, songs, and money to organizations devoted to animal rights (PETA) and to providing opportunity or safety to the disenfranchised (YesWeCode, Rebuild the Dream, Black Lives Matter). Prince was very quiet about most of this, as a result of his religious beliefs and desire for privacy.
Prince escaped and/or rejected many traps of wealth and fame. He often walked around Minneapolis, rode a bike, drove his own car, went shopping, and went to clubs without the usual entourage. He didn’t assault hotel desk clerks, tour Africa with the President or the UN Secretary General, become aggressively drunk in public, denounce his ex-wives in the media, get arrested, rape anyone, molest children, or become a Scientologist.
But Prince was not unscathed. He sometimes behaved strangely. He appeared on television with his then-wife speaking of their child as if still alive, when in fact he had already died. And in 2001, he fatefully became a Jehovah’s Witness, supposedly at the urging of Larry Graham, the bassist of Sly and the Family Stone. If so, Mr. Graham has much to answer for.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have some admirable tenets, but they have a very dark side; it is not publicly known whether Prince realized this. The group has 8-10 million adherents globally, run by a secretive, self-perpetuating group of “elders” headquartered in Brooklyn, New York that receives a billion dollars a year, tax-free. The group was founded in the 19th century, asserts that Jesus assumed control of Heaven on October 1, 1914, and believes that Armageddon is imminent. It predicted the end of the world several times, most recently in 1975. (It didn’t happen, despite appearances). The religion is pacifist but denies the theory of evolution, regards homosexuality as immoral, frowns on premarital sex and divorce, et cetera. And, fatally for a considerable number of people, full blood transfusions are prohibited on the grounds that blood is the essence of life in God’s eyes.
We don’t know how Prince handled this in his head. Some of his songs are religious or at least spiritual, yet he also continued to perform highly sexual music. He stated that he believed, and he attended meetings, even went door-to-door proselytizing. But his autopsy found scars on his leg and hip, consistent with surgery which would probably have required a blood transfusion. Sadly, he hid this, as he also hid his drug use.
To quote him: Even doves have pride… because Prince was in severe chronic pain from decades of jumping, dancing in high heels, and doing splits. To manage his pain, he started using, and then became addicted to, prescription synthetic opioids. These drugs are extraordinarily dangerous and highly addictive. This year, about 20,000 Americans will die from prescription opioid overdoses – more than triple the number for 2001, the year Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness, and far more than are killed by illegal heroin. These drugs have now killed more Americans than the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars combined.
Over 200 million opioid prescriptions are written per year in the U.S., generating pharmaceutical industry revenues of $10 billion. Medically and chemically, there is very little difference between these drugs and illegal opiates such as heroin, and in some ways prescription synthetic opioids are worse, because they are fatal in far smaller doses. Fentanyl, the drug that killed Prince, is twenty to fifty times more potent than opium or heroin, as well as being extremely addictive. As for why Fentanyl is legal while heroin is illegal – do we think money could have anything to do with it?
I hope that Prince’s estate and family can eventually become more open about what happened, to help educate the public. Prince is not the only person whose body has been destroyed by the pressure to perform perfectly. We know now that football kills slowly by causing brain damage, that many extreme athletes are crippled far too young, and that many ordinary Americans, in pain from hard physical work or accidents, turn to drugs that kill them.
But Prince left us an extraordinary legacy of beauty, celebration, tolerance, creativity, and universality – exactly the opposite of so much that we see now in the world, ranging from Donald Trump to ISIS. Prince contributed far more to the world than most famous politicians, without ever passing a single law. Long may his music and example live.
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“If we could turn back the clock, we would like to have seen a greater emphasis on our biggest challenges–funding inequity, segregation, the effects of poverty. We would have welcomed a major expansion of high-quality early childhood education, and greater support for career and technical education and community schools.”
— Randi Weingarten
What will be the legacy of Race to the Top and Barack Obama’s other education initiatives? Indeed, what’s been accomplished in education reform around the country since 2012? Does our current traditional model of education meet the needs of most students? Is our curriculum preparing them for the jobs we need to fill in an age of globalization and artificial intelligence? What are the most critical needs for education leading up to 2030? Should tuition at public colleges and universities be free?
As the United States prepares to elect a new President this November, putting every student on a path towards a successful future should be required discussion at every presidential debate. This summer in The Global Search for Education, we bring back our popular 2012 Education Debate series and put these questions and others to thought leaders at the forefront of educational change. We asked Andy Hargreaves, Diane Ravitch, Howard Gardner, Randi Weingarten, Julia Freeland Fisher, and Charles Fadel to imagine they were Secretary of Education for the new administration. What are their answers to some of the big picture questions facing education and education reform?
Today we welcome Randi Weingarten. Weingarten is President of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of Teachers.
Randi, what will be the legacy of Race to the Top and Barack Obama’s other education initiatives?
President Obama should get credit for ushering us out of recession with the ARRA. Although it included Race to the Top, which, combined with waivers, exacerbated the test-fixation under No Child Left Behind, President Obama and Secretary Duncan both acknowledged late in the administration that “there are too many tests that take up too much time.”
If we could turn back the clock, we would like to have seen a greater emphasis on our biggest challenges–funding inequity, segregation, the effects of poverty. We would have welcomed a major expansion of high-quality early childhood education, and greater support for career and technical education and community schools.
That said, the Education Department is showing growing support for increasing the diversity of our teaching corps, focusing on the whole child and the need for a well-rounded education. And the administration worked with parents, educators, the broader education community and the U.S. Senate to create a reset through the Every Student Succeeds Act.
“We know that racism, and economic and language-based discrimination, despite many advances, still have very real effects in our schools and communities.”
— Randi Weingarten
Does the current state of our underprivileged school systems help foster radicalism?
I don’t know if there is any empirical data to answer your question, but I’d argue we need to flip it around: What are we losing–for young people, for their communities, for our nation and for the world–by not providing every opportunity for their growth and success?
Most states provide less support per student for elementary and secondary schools than they did before the Great Recession. We know that, in low-income school communities, many students are at a disadvantage not only from fewer in-school resources but also from fewer out-of-school supports, ranging from adequate healthcare and child care to safe and healthy places–like parks and recreation centers–for students to play and learn after school. And we know that racism, and economic and language-based discrimination, despite many advances, still have very real effects in our schools and communities.
There are many inspiring examples of young people coming from such challenges to become activists on behalf of their fellow students and communities, to fight injustice, and to be the change they want to see in the world, despite many obstacles.
What has the U.S. as a whole accomplished since 2012 in the field of education? Given the shift in focus in the global education reform debate from the 3 R’s to the 4 C’s, what are the critical steps we need to take to produce a new education framework for the U.S.?
The passage of sweeping new elementary and secondary education legislation to replace NCLB is a major accomplishment, and it’s one many inside and outside of Washington, D.C. had written off as impossible.
If implemented properly, ESSA has the potential to move our nation toward every public school being a place where parents want to send their kids, where students are engaged, where educators want to teach, where the curriculum is rich, and where there is joy in teaching and learning.
Whether this happens depends largely on how states and districts design their plans and assume the responsibilities that have been returned to the states, including standards and accountability, teacher development and evaluation, and interventions. States and districts now have a much greater role in determining the best approach to help schools that have been identified as needing additional supports or intervention.
Perhaps most important, states now have the opportunity to use a framework of indicators for school success that is far better aligned with the skills and knowledge students need to be successful in college, career, citizenship and life, rather than default to standardized test scores.
It’s not about moving from the three R’s to the four C’s (communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity), but about infusing those skills and habits–not only in English and math, but in science, social studies and the arts, too. Project-based learning, portfolios and other performance assessments are great ways to demonstrate content knowledge as well as the four C’s. The AFT is a member of P21 (the Partnership for 21st Century Learning), a coalition of education and business groups that helped put the four C’s on the map.
“It’s not about moving from the three R’s to the four C’s (communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity), but about infusing those skills and habits–not only in English and math, but in science, social studies and the arts, too. Project-based learning, portfolios and other performance assessments are great ways to demonstrate content knowledge as well as the four C’s.” — Randi Weingarten
What toll does poverty take on learning opportunities? How do we begin to reduce its effect on students?
By 3 years old, there is a 30 million-word gap between children from the wealthiest and poorest families. Children living in poverty have higher absenteeism and dropout rates. Dropout rates of 16- to 24-year-old students who come from low-income families are seven times higher than dropout rates of those from families with higher incomes.
Schools in low-income communities are underfunded and under-resourced; therefore, students with the greatest needs are shortchanged. There are essential elements for our public schools to fully develop the potential of both students and educators. They should be centers of community, where students, families and educators work together to support student success. They should foster collaboration. Teachers need time to engage with colleagues–whether shadowing, mentoring, co-teaching or conferring. They need a voice in school decisions and to be trusted as professionals. Teaching is a profession in which capacity building should occur at every stage of the career–novices working with accomplished colleagues, skillful teachers sharing their craft, and opportunities for teacher leadership. Learning should be engaging. Testing should not be the be all and end all. All students should have a broad curriculum that includes the arts and enrichment. Students should have opportunities to work in teams and engage in project-based learning. And student and family well-being should be front and center. Today, half of the students in America’s public schools live in poverty. Think of what that means–stress, hunger, uncertainty and countless unmet needs. The growing community school movement helps by coordinating partners and resources. Successful schools don’t do just one or two of these things. They knit them together–and they amplify each other.
Government leaders should:
“We have an obligation to provide a free public education to America’s children. In fact, it is their right guaranteed by the constitutions of each of our states.”
— Randi Weingarten
How can we make teaching a more prestigious career? How can we entice better quality talent away from more lucrative careers and into classrooms? How do we retain good teachers and make sure they are where they are needed most?
Prestige begins with properly preparing, inducting, supporting, paying and respecting teachers. It includes ensuring teachers have the time, tools and trust they and their students need to succeed. And we need a higher bar for entry into the profession, along with much better support and mentoring for new teachers than most now receive. We laid this out a few years ago in the AFT’s “Raising the Bar” report.
Teachers need voice–too many educational policies of the past decade have favored over-testing, narrow measures of progress, and managed instruction over teachers’ professional development and professional judgment.
A poll released recently by TeachStrong found that nearly three-quarters of Americans believe teachers are profoundly undervalued in terms of how they are treated and supported. Providing support for prospective and new teachers can make it an attractive prospect, such as teacher residency programs in which aspiring teachers work under the tutelage of a master teacher for an entire school year. Poor working conditions are one of the top issues teachers cite for leaving the profession. Strong leadership is essential to the success of any school. Teachers need to know they will work on a team, and it is the team who will be responsible for the learning of their students.
How do we manage the competition for resources between public, private and charter schools?
In my opinion, this is the wrong question to be asking. We have an obligation to provide a free public education to America’s children. In fact, it is their right guaranteed by the constitutions of each of our states. We should focus on what it takes to adequately resource a high-quality public education for all our students. The conversation should be about support and opportunity, not competition. Most parents want a safe, welcoming, high-quality public school in their neighborhood. The zero-sum game policymakers and profiteers would have us play in too many of America’s cities and communities today is disgraceful and a diversion from our important task of making that goal a reality.
Top Row: C. M. Rubin, Andy Hargreaves, Randi Weingarten
Bottom Row: Charles Fadel, Diane Ravitch, Howard Gardner, Julia Freeland Fisher
(Photos are courtesy of CMRubinWorld)
Join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. MadhavChavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. EijaKauppinen (Finland), State Secretary TapioKosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Geoff Masters (Australia), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Professor Manabu Sato (Japan), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (LyceeFrancais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland, is the publisher of CMRubinWorld, and is a Disruptor Foundation Fellow.
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