Http Neatoday.org 2018 05 01 Ted-dintersmith-what-school-can-be

90% of the novels and short stories I read are on my tablet, usually under late afternoon or evening light and occasionally accompanied by a glass of wine and whatever playlist happens to be queued up at the time.

Reading something for a Schoolmarm client is vastly different; I need a paper copy so I can annotate, highlight, tab, and markup. .Docx or .pdf alone rarely, if ever, works for me. Especially when I'm working on a longer manuscript for an author, my first read-through has to be on paper. (I'm a big fan of double-sided, booklet printing as a paper and toner saver.)

I also read differently depending on my arrangement with an author. If I'm reading for copy edits, I have the paper copy in front of me and listen along as the "read aloud" feature in Word moves through the text. If I'm going to be presenting a historical context to the author, my markup focuses on connections I make as I read. I often use the code TRM (This Reminds Me) in margins and the only music I can tolerate is uninterrupted lofi. Unless I've been asked not to, I actively work to set my identity aside and focus on what the author has asked me to focus on.

However, if I'm reading to build my background knowledge or for my own research purposes, I kick it old school. I need a paper copy, notecards, my notebooks, a highlighter, and felt-tip markers. Reading for my own purposes also typically means I'm sliding through different perspectives. I sometimes even "hate-read." I actively look for things to disagree with so I can develop counter-claims or I look for ways to change my mind. I sometimes read like a feminist and keep a tally of gender patterns in citations and examples, especially in education books.

Which is to say: there are lots of ways to read Ted Dintersmith's 2018 book, What School Could Be . One way is to consider the book in the larger context of school reform. Fortunately, Benjamin Doxtdator wrote a fantastic piece that goes deep on the issue in the book as it relates to reform, voice, and race.

Another way is to consider the notion of expertise in his book. Women are most likely to be experts at the day to day work of teaching (7 out of 10 teachers are women.) Men are most likely to be found doing the work of running a school or district (7 out of 10 educational leaders are men). Although Dintersmith dedicates his book to teachers ("I'm deeply grateful to our teachers. This book is yours. It springs from your creativity." p. xxiii), a woman isn't quoted until chapter 2. It's also compelling to consider who Dintersmith turned to as experts when writing. Although he doesn't have a reference section, he does provide acknowledgments where he opens by thanking Greg, Adam, Adam, Gabe, and Tony. The challenge isn't about these particular men, whom I'm sure are all lovely, it's the nature of the disconnect between who "inspires" him and whose voices he trusts to "reimagine education."

Dintersmith isn't new to the "chance schools now!" genre. He co-authored Most Likely to Succeed (fact checked here) and played a role the creation of the documentary of the same name (fact checked here. I'm an article author/editor.) Nor is he the most high profile. He is, though, a modern day example of a wealthy philanthropist who sees a problem and determines he is the person best positioned to solve the problem. In order to persuade the reader to see what he sees, he uses some questionable history as his springboard. And that, dear reader, is what we're going to focus on here.

Quote from the Text
"Based on a century-old factory model, this particular school excels in preparing children for a world that no longer exists." page xxiii

Fact Check
Dintersmith offers this phrase in the prologue of his book without offering a definition or explanation. In effect, he's priming his reader to think of the modern liberal arts curriculum with different subject areas as an assembly line, with a student akin to a part moved from station to station. This rhetorical approach was fairly common in the early 1900s during discussions about schools. Margaret Haley, the first woman speaker at the National Education Association in 1901, used a similar construct when talking about teacher working conditions. She complained about administrations, "making the teacher an automaton, a mere factory hand, whose duty it is to carry out mechanically and unquestioningly the ideas and orders of those clothed with the authority of position." (Source: Woman's "True" Profession: Voices from the History of Teaching, Hoffman, 1981) The difference, however, is Haley made it clear she was comparing school to a factory. Dintersmith offers the phrase without context.

Quote from the Text
ESSA: Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, which shifted some educational control to the states.
MLTS: Most Likely to Succeed, a documentary directed by the acclaimed Greg Whiteley...
NAEP: National Assessment of Educational Progress, the self-proclaimed national report card...
NCLB: No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, which escalated the standardized testing in our schools.
RTTT: Race to the Top, a Federal initiative launched in 2009 to hold schools and teachers accountable to NCLB tests

Fact Check
None of these definitions contain statements that are technically untrue. They're a tad heavy-handed to be sure, but the greater challenge lies in the author's intent. Due to the 10th Amendment, education is a matter left up to the states, which means the federal government has limited control. So, it's difficult to know what the goal of saying ESSA shifted control to the states. And while NCLB did formalize large-scale standardized testing in schools, multiple states already had testing structures in place prior to the law. The definition of RTTT is perhaps the most confusing as it was a grant program. States could choose to apply and some did, many didn't. Granted, states were facing a massive funding gap due to the recession which forced their hand... but the brief provided definition doesn't contextualize any of that.

Quote from the Text
Way back. To 1893, when education leaders anticipated that the U.S. economy would shift from agrarian to industrial. Farsightedly, they formed a Committee of Ten and proceeded to transform education from one-room schoolhouses to a standardized factory model. (page 4)

Fact Check
This sentence appears to be referring to The National Education Association of the United States Committee on Secondary School Studies. The idea for the work began at an NEA conference 1891. The Committees were formed and began their research in 1892. The preliminary reports from the various subcommittees were compiled and printed in 1893. The final report was published in 1894. In the introductory letter to the final report, they establish the goal of their work was to understand current practices in high schools in order to move towards a more "uniform" approach to secondary school studies (basically, the high school curriculum.) The only discussion of the U.S. economy in the final report is in the section on teaching economics as a component of history.

Quote from the Text
Train [students] to perform routine tasks time-efficiently, without error or creative deviation. (page 4)

Fact Check
Generally speaking, when the concept of "training" is used the final report, the authors were speaking of teacher training and professional development. When they talk about student training, though, the word is used as a synonym for teaching. It didn't carry the same negative context it has today. As an example, "the Conference on Natural History recommends that the pupils should be made to express themselves clearly and exactly in words, or by drawings, in describing the objects which they observe; and they believe that this practice will be found a valuable aid in training the pupils in the art of expression." In other words, the History committee advocated students be taught how to take notes as they engaged with objects from history in order to improve their ability to express themselves when writing about history.

Http Neatoday.org 2018 05 01 Ted-dintersmith-what-school-can-be

Source: https://schoolmarmadvisors.com/blog/fact-checking-faves/what-school-could-be-by-ted-dintersmith/

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