Maybe We Don’t Have It So Bad – The European side of the crisis

A few weeks ago I wrote about the simmering populace of Europe. The economic crisis had spurred riots throughout the continent. Well things haven’t gotten better. The situation has taken a dangerous nosedive. You think we have it bad. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet kid.

from The Moderate Voice

You think it’s bad here in the US of A?

Take a look at our friends across the pond – and across France and Germany – where you get to those great “emerging markets” that captured the world’s imagination after the fall of Communism. From about 1995 to the early 2000s, the story of growth in places like Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and the Baltic nations was nothing short of astonishing. Many of these nations were even able to join the elite European Union and share in the great common market.

Oh, the good old days.

Well, they’re done. Kaput.

And now European leaders are asking the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bail out the nations of Eastern Europe for a cool sum of $500 billion. This isn’t to bail out Eastern European banks. It’s to bail out Eastern European NATIONS.

In many ways the crisis in Eastern Europe mirrors ours: too much debt and speculative growth in real estate and retail, especially in Latvia and Estonia. Look at the debt ratios of some of these countries. They make the Asian crisis in 1997 look like child’s play.

Added to this was the complex problem of currency exchange, where millions of Poles and Hungarians and Czechs were encouraged to convert their debt into Swiss francs – low interest rates enticed borrowers to eschew the zloty and the forint for the stable Swiss currency. But, like resetting adjustable rate mortgages in the US, the Swiss-based mortgage rates have gone up, as have defaults in Poland. What’s worse, the Swiss franc is actually in danger of collapse as a result of Switzerland’s investments in Eastern Europe.

It’s as if Eastern Europe was a giant sub-prime market, and the resulting carnage is taking out the venerable banks of Western Europe.

So, yeah, we’ve got it bad here. But things are actually quite a bit worse in Europe, where they have to contend with multiple governmental positions (the ECB can only dictate continental policy so much without pushback from individual creditor nations). And the Euro, the pride and joy of the new European economy, will likely face devaluation vis-a-vis the dollar. (Which is a reason why concerns over a devaluing dollar at this point are unfounded – what would the dollar devalue in relation to?)

This will get worse before it gets better. I’m not trying to be an alarmist here. This is just the truth. How bad will it get? Are we on the brink of something like 1848(the Year of Revolutions)? Keep watching!

Education Crazy Talk – What direction should ed policy go?

This morning I read this article at Change.org. The piece by Alaskan teacher Doug Noon rips Arne Duncan’s education policy to shreds. Noon is mostly skeptical of Duncan’s reliance on standards, accountability, and teacher incentives to improve our schools.

from Change.org

His program is doomed. It’s doomed because it’s aimed at the wrong target, and it can’t be fairly implemented. With test scores as the standard of excellence, very few teachers will be “incented” to apply themselves. We know that standardized tests measure students’ backgrounds more than real learning. And we know that students with special needs require more time and attention than the achievers. We also know that, due to the fact that poor and affluent people tend to live in different neighborhoods, some schools serve more challenging populations than others. None of that is a matter of chance.

Test scores should be a standard of excellence. Without standards how can we know where are, who needs extra help, and who can be given more challenging work. The way we test those standards is flawed. Specifically multiple choice exams. Life is not multiple choice. Life is applying what you have learned to any given situation. A little example. In preparation for grad school, I took the GRE exam last summer. I didn’t study or practice. At this point one understands you either get these type of tests or you don’t. I scored a 1020 on the multiple choice sections, an average score. On the written section I scored a 5.0, the upper 27th percentile. Now that’s a big discrepancy in my scores. It demonstrates the unevenness between multiple choice and open-ended assessments in gauging what a student has actually learned.

Standards are still important. That much of NCLB I agree with. It places the wrong kind of standards on schools. Multiple choice questions are not good measures of applied knowledge. They are only good measures of how good one can memorize.

First we need to simplify our standards. Students should have more open-ended questions. The questions would show whether or not the child actually had a grasp of the concepts being tested. This will also push students to do more than just show up and receive a C.

I’d like to make my case for Outcome-based Education. If I sound a bit ignorant on the subject I apologize. I’ve only just started researching it. OBE recognizes all students are capable of improvement, some faster or slower than others. All can succeed, regardless of class, race, gender, or ability. It doesn’t matter if the district is poor or “challenging”. That is no excuse for failure in teachers or students,(though Noon seems to think is an excuse for poor teacher performance. If I’m wrong let me know Doug). I have simplified OBE a great deal, but I urge readers to look into in greater detail as I am.

LDH Another Look – Was I wrong about Linda Darling-Hammond

After a recent post on Linda Darling-Hammond not joining Arne Duncan’s Department of Education team I received a comment about my stance on Darling-Hammond.

Change.org education writer Clay Burell said this in response to a recent post.
Re: LDH as “status quo” – Derek, you bought the spin. She advocates reforms across the board, just in directions different from privatization and union-busting. Search “Linda DarlingHammond” tags on my blog and you’ll get a lot of links to learn just how misleading the media “status quo” label was.

I went back and read Clay’s posts on Linda Darling-Hammond, as well as some others. After reading a wider variety of opinions on the woman and words from Darling-Hammond herself I feel I can make a more educated opinion of her.

Some have accused LDH of being against student and teacher accountability. I could find no reference in the pieces I read to Darling-Hammond either being for or against teacher accountability. From what I have read she seems to be focused more on student performance. I still am a firm believer that things like tenure, raises, and bonuses should be linked to teacher performance. Since the only way to measure teacher performance is student performance, the two must be coupled. It would improve my opinion of Darling-Hammond ten-fold if she was as well.

I agree with her assessment of our school standards system.

from Gotham Schools

Darling-Hammond said her vision draws on the examples of countries like Finland, Sweden, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canada, which outperform America on international tests and which she said do a list of things wtih their schools that America doesn’t. One is that they use better tests, with more open-ended questions, less multiple choice, and more personalization by individual schools.

Though she didn’t endorse national standards, she did praise Finland et al for having “leaner, fewer, higher, deeper” standards than our 50 states. She did say that all students should be asked to meet the same high expectations.

I think we need to have some sort of national standard. This would be the only way to ensure all students would meet the same high expectations. This does not mean there cannot be local personalization cannot happen. What problems children are solving don’t matter as much as that the problems prove they can use certain knowledge to reach their conclusions. Give multiple choice the axe. Multiple choice represents the 20th century, the lever pulling, button pushing past. We need to evolve into the 21st century.

Linda Darling-Hammond is a proponent of just the kind of tests and standards we need.

from The Quick and the Ed

Darling-Hammond has spent a lot of time studying the teaching and testing systems of high achieving industrialized countries and likes them better than ours. Among other things, she says, they teach fewer topics in greater depth; focus more on reasoning skills and applications of knowledge rather than on coverage of content; and rely heavily on open-ended questions “that require students to analyze, apply knowledge, and write extensively,” in contrast to US tests that “rely primarily on multiple-choice items that evalute recall and recognition of discreet facts.”

Given the growing consensus that well-crafted performance assessments would represent a big step towards teaching students the higher-order thinking skills that they need today (Darling-Hammond points out that US students score lower on problem-solving that their international counterparts), this would be a smart investment–and a refreshing change from the Bush administration’s hear-no-evil, see-no-evil stance on test quality.

As I said earlier, this is the way we need to move. Show students what they learn has a practical application, that solving the problem is more than just knowing the answer. Outcome -based education people!

Well Clay, maybe Linda ain’t so bad after all.