Event: Behind & Beyond the Debate: A Public Speaker Series On Education In Newark
Session 2 - Contemporary Contexts: Examining Market-Driven Reforms and the Production and Reproduction of Urban Schools and Students
Organizer: Rutgers University - Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience
Date & Time: Thursday, November 10th 4:00-6:30pm
Presenters:
Maia Cucchiara - Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, College of Education, Temple University
Michelle Fine - Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology, Women's Studies and Urban Education, Graduate Center, CUNY
Charles Payne - Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor, School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago
The Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers is now in its second decade as an interdisciplinary. They focused this series on education and schooling in Newark. The event I attended is the second of three sessions. I have information on the third session if anyone is interested.
Session 2 focused on elements that will aid in understanding school reform measures for Newark schools. Charles Payne opened the lecture by providing a context for school reform. I learned school reforms can be categorized on a spectrum. The two ends of the spectrum are a business model and what Payne refers to as “educational progressive.” The business model includes characteristics such as cost efficiency, mayoral control, merit pay, anti-union, and privatization/ charter. On the other hand, educational progressive reforms include better training and support for teachers, a higher quality of teacher student relationships, and building at the institution level This information helps me to deeper analyze school reforms to assess my understanding and level of support.
Next, Maia Cucchiara outlined two elements that can be effect in school reform change. They are public engagement and civic capacity. Public engagement and civic capacity go hand in hand. They both call upon members of the community to be active in advocating for their needs and the needs of their children. In addition, a powerful force is created when individuals come together across different lines, such as race, ethnicity, and neighborhoods. I learned this collaborative work and voice are essential in achieving priorities and needs. Parent and community member involvement can also lead to positive student outcome.
Michelle Fine then provided a comparison between public schools and charter schools. She explained that criteria in public and charter schools are demographically unequal. Fine stated that the public is being sold a crisis of education from Cerf. Charters are seen as "a sight of innovation" that must be spread to public school. Charters tend to promote high teacher quality, student achievement, accountability, and engaging parents. However, Fine stated that the only difference between charter and public school is parent engagement, where overall parents felt respected and a sense of membership at charter schools. She also added that parents at times were dissatisfied and found charters to be militaristic and did not teach their children to be critical thinkers. Fine concluded by highlighting the access to charter schools. She asked, "Who's not in?" There is a lower percentage of ELL, poor, and special education students in charter schools. Charter schools do not represent the diversity of their communities.
Maia Cucchiara labeled Newark as a laboratory for reform. From this lecture, I learned how I can become involved in reform specifically through public engagement and civic capacity. Involvement and understanding that individuals have a voice and a stronger one together is essential is changing reform. I can also provide parents and community members on with information on school reforms and how they can become involved. This can be in a simple form such as telling them about ALI and Rutger’s Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience.
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ReplyDeleteAlong with Katie, I also attended this event. I found it to be influential in rekindling my fire to be apart of the community.
ReplyDeleteUnlike many in the public sector, Michelle Fine is not anti-charter school. She made very clear that charter schools are also public schools. In fact, she was advocating for people to fight to keep charters public to strengthen unions in the public sector. While she supports the idea of charter schools, she acknowledges the overemphasis of charter schools is dangerous. For one, social misconceptions that all charter schools are "better". She mentions thorough studies like those conducted by Stanford as charter and general public schools being fairly similar in success/performance (50% of charters are even to public, 17% are better, and 30% are worse). She has seen charter schools that are excellent, but she has only seen militaristic schools with uncredentialed employees and/or overworked teachers. The overemphasis of charter schools has also led to the invasion of public space. General public schools and even housing areas are being closed to make room for these "better" schools. She mainly spoke adamantly about keeping public space public. Charter schools are allowing for more privatization of public space. She believes that public space must remain fair and equally opportunistic.
Charles Payne also spoke about the power of "charter school talk" and Waiting for Superman. Because there has been so much "talk", the people in power are forgetting how to use the data from around the country to actually improve schools. With the focus on charter, the people in charge as well as the public have failed to ask why NJ has had such great success in performance when compared to other states-no one mentions the success of the Abbott decision. There has been so much talk about accountability that there has been more focus on kicking teachers out then keeping good teachers in (he mentions that his state of Illinois has a 50% teacher turnover rate). He cautioned to watch for organizations posing with names that sound like they have the best intention for children but are really pushing for legislation for privatization and the weakening of children (ie. Stand for Children which has grown power out west). The lack of unification of communities has helped these misdirection to go on unnoticed. He mentioned how many powerful organizations of past movements would not have let these injustices happen. People have grown a strong distrust for any policy. Communities are not coming together to fight for their needs because of that distrust.
These speakers helped me to realize that the role of public school teachers during this era is incredibly important. We can either be apart of strong change for the betterment of democracy and the public or we will stand by watch private corporations take over one of the last true symbols of democracy-public schools. Of course, teachers have to prepare all children to be not only skilled contributors to the economy but fair and valuable parts of society. Teachers though must also be in the communities they teach to help educate the entire community. Communities are becoming less and less aware and being mislead by false information. Teachers have to be a strong part of helping the the communities take over their schools so that the needs of the community are fairly addressed, not the needs of the market.