The Salinas Californian)

 

Monterey has decided to go with the New Tech Network (non-profit) project-based learning model at Seaside High School. NTN is established by “business people and educators.” Mill Valley has decided to come under this companies’ umbrella, too. Please note Mill Valley is a high-test performance district. (That almost always translates to a wealthy and a well-educated populace) The educators there have some serious questions regarding NTN. But before you read that (https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-rush-for-new-tech-network-at-tamalpais-high) I would ask you to double-think what Manuel Nunez has said, “Look at our test scores. I don’t think what we’re doing now is working.”

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This make me sad because it means Mr. Nunez, an educator, may not understand the critical thinking much of ed reform espouses. Apparently, he thinks the test scores necessitate project-based learning. Not a conclusion many would come to.

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BTW... did teachers come up with NTN? Or ... perhaps it’s another top down scheme? A far better question to ask is where are the best schools nearby? And then if one answers that honestly and they get their blood pressure down – another question needs to be asked. How do they do it?

So here is the answer – 1. York School, Robert Luis Stevenson School and Santa Catalina School. One might pull their hair out and say ... but those are private schools. Yes, they are, but what makes them excellent? Answer 2: student selection.

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Few to no special ed kids. If there are any second language speakers – they are second-language fluent (Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic). Poverty is not an issue. Word gap is not an issue. (Word gap is the difference in vocabulary white collar kids have vs. children of color - as a group of course. White collar kids are exposed to a million more words and guess what? They use them.) Incarceration is not an issue. Nor is family death due to gangs.

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One also will notice the local schools mentioned are NOT using NTN. Hmmm? But how can they get those scores? Answer again: student selection. What does that mean, exactly? To enter those schools, kids are in a select group already. They have wealthy or education-disposed parents and/or are goal-oriented. They are not on survival’s edge.

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In the public schools, we also have student selection but of a different form. We select all the students. The poor, the damaged, the homeless, the parentless, those who exist marginally, those who have incarcerated family members, those who have dead family members.

Soooo, it appears once again those at the top have decided ...

 

“Look at our test scores. I don’t think what we’re doing now is working.” And the rest of the equation is “tada!” ... more of the same ... we will fix our students’ soup of complex social issues with a curriculum fix. And that fix is called NTN. Project-based learning, critical thunken.’

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Really truly, honestly ... we have done this before. But now Monterey will pay scads of $$$ to NTN (how much by the way?). And it is a form of collective duping to wave the deceptive label of non-profit. Non-profit is merely a tax designation. However, it is used as an ethical flag as if those who own the company and running the board do not make big heaps of pesos. (In fact they do – buuut by saying non-profit they make the bamboozled taxpayer think “non profit = no profit.” Ya’all, it ain’t so.)

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What is needed is not more curricular hocus-pocus. What is needed is:

 

1. Those under-performing kids need services big time and lots of them. (Shrinks, trauma specialists, nurses, dentists, interventionists – societal wrap around services.)

2. Teachers who shine. Teachers who can speak many languages and are worldly. Teachers who are not just enthusiastic but teachers who are incredibly bright. Get the best humans out of finance, medicine and law and put them in front of a class. And the way to do that is to pay teachers supply-and-demand wages (as is done in Korea, Japan, Germany, and Denmark).

3. Reduce class size to 15 in areas of chronic level-three desperation (i.e. low-performing schools in communities of desperation).

4. Re-fertilize our curriculum at all levels – the sciences, social studies, music, the arts, field trips, math that matters – not abstract publishing company lobbied make and fake destructive math.

5. Veteran teachers need to decide what works regarding curriculum, materials, all of it. Not the most recently hired curriculum specialist swaddled in new terminology and the shiniest new snake oil publishing companies’ lobbied “systems.”

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However, it is much easier to hire a company to come in and throttle teaching out of the teachers, the life out of the students, and shake tax dollars out of the bamboozled citizenry.

We need accountability (kind of like that which is demanded of teachers). Let’s write in stone which administrators and board members came up idea this idea and what it will cost. Total costs.