One Book, But Why That Book?

September 13, 2011

In the last decade a large number of colleges and universities have initiated a “community reading” program, where everyone in a university and its neighboring community is required or strongly encouraged to read one book and discuss it over a series of events in an academic year.

In principle the One Book idea sounds great.  Even as core curricula in higher education are being eviscerated, this appears to be an effort to have a shared intellectual experience on issues that are central to the missions of each participating university.

The practice, however, has not met that potential.  As Harold Bloom put it, “I don’t like these mass reading bees… It is rather like the idea that we are all going to pop out and eat Chicken McNuggets or something else horrid at once.”  Of course, we don’t have to select the book equivalent of Chicken McNuggets, but in practice that’s what universities appear to be doing when they choose their One Book.

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has a report that documents what books universities actually choose based on a review of One Book programs at 245 universities and colleges.  The results are incredibly disappointing.  Rather than choosing high quality and intellectually stimulating books, universities tend to pick current, shallow, popular books. In particular the NAS report finds:

First, almost 90% of the books selected were published since January 2000.  If important works tend to stand the test of time, almost none of the One Books have passed that test.  Once you look at the list of what was selected, I think it’s safe to bet that almost none of them will be read a hundred years from now.  Rather than exposing the university community to enduring truths or works of enduring quality, the One Book programs almost always picks a topic that is likely to be a passing fad or a disposable work.

Second, the topics are remarkably skewed toward what is considered politically correct.  Out of the 245 selections, 58 were on African American themes, another 18 on African themes, 10 on Native American themes, 7 on Latino themes, 5 on East Asian themes.  24 One Books were about environmentalism, 10 about Hurricane Katrina, 10 were comic books or graphic novels, and 8 were self-help books or about the pursuit of happiness.

Third, memoirs and biographies dominated the list.  There were 79 memoirs and 62 biographies, more than half of the total.  Why so many memoirs?  The NAS report answers:

… memoirs are “a genre familiar to students.” In high school English courses, students are taught to base their interpretation of works of literature on their own personal experiences. A recent study on high school literary study finds that this emphasis on the personal “may be contributing to the high remediation rates in post-secondary English and reading courses.”

Training students to write from the perspective of personal reflection gives them a taste for more of the same. This is one explanation for the popularity of the memoir in common reading programs. Another is that our society has an appetite for true stories. The growing number of reality TV shows is evidence of this. Getting to hear from the author in person at a scheduled campus speech is part of the allure of the memoir. The emphasis on memoir may also reflect the rise of post-modern sensibilities in American higher education. A memoir often presents “my truth,” rather than “the truth.” It is a way of asserting the primacy of self and the importance of opinion as trumping common judgment, authority, and hard-won facts.

The most popular One Book is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks(2010) by Rebecca Skloot, which was selected at 39 of the 245 institutions.  The NAS report describes the work:

The book does make a history of complex scientific research accessible to average readers, and Skloot explains biological jargon in simple terms. Readers will come away from the book having learned new things, but the writing itself is journalistic, not intellectual. Judging by what they say about it, some colleges seem to have chosen The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in part because it can be read as a story of racial injustice.

Tied for the next most popular is Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, which was selected by 9 institutions. Wikipedia summarizes the plot:

 It tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, the Syrian-American owner of a painting and contracting company in New Orleans who chose to ride out Hurricane Katrina in his Uptown home. After the storm he traveled the flooded city in a secondhand canoe rescuing neighbors, caring for abandoned pets and distributing fresh water. Soon after the storm, Zeitoun was arrested without reason or explanation at one of his rental houses by a mixed group of National Guardsmen and local police. He was not immediately charged with a crime but was imprisoned for 23 days without having stood trial. During that time he was accused of terrorist activity presumably because of his ethnicity, was treated inhumanely, and was refused medical attention and the use of a phone to alert his family. His wife and daughters, staying with friends far away from the city, only knew that he had seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth.

Also selected by 9 institutions was This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women, which is a self-help book by Jay Allison and Dan Gedimen.  Seven institutions picked The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore.  NPR summarized the plot:

 In the book, author Wes Moore tracks his own life, alongside the fate of another man of the same name.

While both Wes Moores grew up in poverty in Baltimore, the two men had dramatically different fates: The author became a Rhodes Scholar, while the other Moore is serving a life sentence in prison for murder.

And 6 universities or colleges chose No Impact Man by Colin Beavan about a New York City family that attempts to have no impact on the environment for an entire year by buying nothing newly made, producing no non-compostible trash, and only buying food produced within 250 miles of their apartment.

Another 6 chose The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, which Wikipedia says “is a novel for young adults written by Sherman Alexie. It is told in the first-person, from the viewpoint of Native American teenager and budding cartoonist Arnold Spirit, Jr. (better known by the nickname “Junior”). Detailing Arnold’s life on the Spokane Indian Reservation and his decision, upon encouragement from a reservation high school teacher, to go to an all-white high school in the off-reservation town of Reardan, Washington, the novel deals with issues such as racism, poverty, and the following of tradition.”

If you didn’t notice Shakespeare, Camus, Ellison, or Plato on the list, you’d be right.  But the NAS helpfully compile a list of 37 suggested books that includes these authors and would be far better for One Book programs.

As the old United Negro College Fund commercial used to say, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”  So is the opportunity for everyone at a college or university to read and discuss a quality book.

(edited for typos)

9 Comments | higher education | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Benjamin Ginsberg on Administrative Bloat in Higher Ed

September 9, 2011

Johns Hopkins political scientist, Benjamin Ginsberg has a new book out: The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters.  In it he documents how universities have experienced explosive growth in the number of administrators and other non-faculty professionals and how this administrative bloat is making costs soar while distracting universities from their primary mission.  His argument is virtually identical to the report I wrote last year with Brian Kisida and Jonathan Mills that was released by the Goldwater Institute.

I’m thrilled that Ginsberg is getting more attention for this issue.  Here is a taste from his Washington Monthly article summarizing his book:

Between 1975 and 2005, total spending by American higher educational institutions, stated in constant dollars, tripled, to more than $325 billion per year. Over the same period, the faculty-to-student ratio has remained fairly constant, at approximately fifteen or sixteen students per instructor. One thing that has changed, dramatically, is the administrator-per-student ratio. In 1975, colleges employed one administrator for every eighty-four students and one professional staffer—admissions officers, information technology specialists, and the like—for every fifty students. By 2005, the administrator-to-student ratio had dropped to one administrator for every sixty-eight students while the ratio of professional staffers had dropped to one for every twenty-one students.

Apparently, as colleges and universities have had more money to spend, they have not chosen to spend it on expanding their instructional resources—that is, on paying faculty. They have chosen, instead, to enhance their administrative and staff resources….

Every year, hosts of administrators and staffers are added to college and university payrolls, even as schools claim to be battling budget crises that are forcing them to reduce the size of their full-time faculties. As a result, universities are now filled with armies of functionaries—vice presidents, associate vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, provosts, associate provosts, vice provosts, assistant provosts, deans, deanlets, and deanlings, all of whom command staffers and assistants—who, more and more, direct the operations of every school. If there is any hope of getting higher education costs in line, and improving its quality—and I think there is, though the hour is late—it begins with taking a pair of shears to the overgrown administrative bureaucracy.

I also particularly enjoyed this bit Ginsberg had on strategic planning at universities:

Another ubiquitous make-work exercise is the formation of a “strategic plan.” Until recent years, colleges engaged in little formal planning. Today, however, virtually every college and university in the nation has an elaborate strategic plan. This is typically a lengthy document— some are 100 pages long or more—that purports to articulate the school’s mission, its leadership’s vision of the future, and the various steps that are needed to achieve the school’s goals. The typical plan takes six months to two years to write and requires countless hours of work from senior administrators and their staffs.

A plan that was really designed to guide an organization’s efforts to achieve future objectives, as it might be promulgated by a corporation or a military agency, would typically present concrete objectives, a timetable for their realization, an outline of the tactics that will be employed, a precise assignment of staff responsibilities, and a budget. Some university plans approach this model. Most, however, are simply expanded “vision statements” that are often forgotten soon after they are promulgated. My university has presented two systemwide strategic plans and one arts and sciences strategic plan in the last fifteen years. No one can remember much about any of these plans, but another one is currently in the works. The plan is not a blueprint for the future. It is, instead, a management tool for the present. The ubiquity of planning at America’s colleges and universities is another reflection and reinforcement of the ongoing growth of administrative power.

Be sure to check out Ginsberg’s book.  We plan to have some meetings to discuss it, will form a study group to consider recommendations, and will then issue an action-plan that is aligned with our strategic priorities.

1 Comment | higher education | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Rick Hess Nails National Standards on Their Stealth Strategy

September 6, 2011

I’ve been complaining that the advocates of national standards, curriculum, and assessments have generally been unwilling to articulate and defend their view.

Rick Hess confirms the existence of this stealth strategy, given that Education Next has been unable to get a single expert to step forward and defend the rigor of the national math standards in a forum in the magazine.  Ed Next has asked six leading people and all have turned the offer down, complaining that they are too busy.  Rick isn’t buying it.  He writes:

I’ll be blunt: I don’t believe them. After all, the leading thinkers who have found the time to contribute to Ed Next forums have included such seemingly busy people as Richard Elmore, Kati Haycock, Diane Ravitch, Hank Levin, Andy Rotherham, Joe Williams, Rick Hanushek, Checker Finn, Jay Greene, Bruno Manno, Chris Whittle, Bryan Hassel, Eva Moskowitz, Susan Eaton, and Howard Fuller. Rather, I think the reluctance to contribute is due to hubris, impatience to focus on implementation, political naivete, and disdain for what they see as mean-spirited carping….

There are long rows of argument and persuasion still to be hoed. And, if you’re eager to overhaul what gets taught in forty-odd states serving forty million or more students, that’s probably as it should be. If Common Core-ites don’t have the patience or stomach for that task, they should let us know now–and save everyone a whole lot of grief.

The notion that Common Core proponents needn’t make their case is an affront to democratic values. When seeking to make substantial changes to public institutions, the burden is supposed to be on the would-be reformers. After winning a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, civil rights advocates spent decades making and re-making the case for school desegregation. Charter school advocates have spent two decades arguing their case. That’s normal and healthy. The “we’re really busy now” stance of the Common Core-ites is akin to the NAACP having decided in 1956 that it had done plenty to make its case, that everyone understood its arguments, and that it should just buckle down and focus on “implementation.” It’s akin to charter advocates having decided in 1993 that they’d adequately made their case and could move on….

As I’ve said many times, I’ve much sympathy for the Common Core effort, but am skeptical that it will turn out well. To have even a shot at working as intended, this requires bipartisan support from a range of state officials and buy-in or acquiescence from educators, parents, and voters. If the Common Core’s architects are done explaining its virtues–if they think that eighteen months of explaining its merits to a moderately attentive audience of self-selected elites amidst tumultuous debates over health care reform and the stimulus is sufficient–and that everyone needs to just sit down and get with the program, then I feel comfortable predicting that this whole exercise will end real poorly.

Hmm.  I’ve been hearing a lot of predictions lately about the pending collapse of national standards.  Maybe the tide is starting to turn.

12 Comments | National Standards | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Jay Mathews Gets It Right on National Standards

September 6, 2011

Jay Mathews may not have gotten it right in his bet with Greg over how many school choice programs would be adopted during the most recent round of state legislative sessions, but he is completely on target with his take on the bleak political future of the national standards movement.  I’d say that he is Right On!

Here’s the money quote:

[A system of national standards, curriculum,  and assessments]  sounds great. But it won’t help and won’t work. Such specific standards stifle creativity and conflict with a two-century American preference for local decision-making about schools….

No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top grants are likely to be the high water mark of federal involvement in schools. Washington officials will dump all kinds of education programs so that they don’t have to cut too deeply into monthly allotments to regular voting geezers like me.

We already have all the national standards we need from decades of states borrowing one another’s ideas. The colleges generally agree how much math, English, history and science our students need. Employers are pushing for special requirements for students who want to work after high school. Those local business executives will know better than any national panel what the students in their communities need to learn in the way of teamwork, critical thinking, presentation skills and time management.

And Jay Mathews favorably discusses one of my blog posts on this topic, so obviously he is right. : )

3 Comments | National Standards | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Barriers to Digital Learning

August 30, 2011

Digital learning has significant potential but it also faces significant political barriers.  Existing regulations, such as seat-time requirements, teacher certification requirements, and the immobility of student funding, all stand in the way of rapid expansion of digital learning in K-12 education.

Notice that I did not include the lack of a national set of standards as a significant barrier to the expansion of digital learning.  I understand that a number of backers of digital learning support the national standards movement because they believe it will allow digital learning providers to achieve scale and offer products in all 50 states without having to contend with 50 different sets of state standards.

But at the recent Harvard conference, Shantanu Prakash, the head of Educomp Solutions, one of the largest digital learning providers in the world, was asked whether different sets of standards were a major obstacle to his company’s operations.  He conceded that the markets in which they operate, principally India, have numerous different standards.  But he also said that this was a trivial barrier because one of the strengths of digital learning is that it typically consists of many small modules that can easily be added or dropped to fit every set of standards.

If backers of digital learning think we need to streamline state regulation to achieve scale, they should be focusing on teacher certification and seat-time requirements rather than standards.  But would any of them really support the idea of having teacher certification and time requirements decided at the national level?  Wouldn’t the opponents of digital learning be able to seize a national regulatory regime to block the expansion of digital learning everywhere?  If so, why is the same concern not true for national standards?

The reality is that the biggest opponent of digital learning will be the teacher unions, who must recognize that digital learning allows cost-savings by replacing labor with capital.  Digital learning backers will have to fight the unions in each state to ease teacher certification, seat-time, and the immobility of funding.  At least now they have beach-heads in states that have a more accommodating regulatory environment.  But if digital learning folks support the construction of a national regulatory regime, they may be marginalized everywhere.

9 Comments | instructional reform, National Standards | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

More Union Sock-Puppetry

August 29, 2011
According to Politico, the web site devoted to mocking and attacking Michelle Rhee was not the spontaneous act of a group of disgruntled citizens, but was actually created on a computer registered to the American Federation of Teachers.  Reporter, Ben Smith, writes:
Rheefirst.com, the anonymous website bashing former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, was created by a computer registered to the American Federation of Teachers.The site, which refers to Rhee as “the Sarah Palin of education” among other things and is the main online source of attacks on Rhee, was launched in February. An tracking tool traces the IP address back to the AFT’s offices in D.C. The site has since jumped to several other IP addresses….The site is the latest in a series of seemingly grass-roots education movements that are actually backed by unions and union members. Last month, we reported that the Save Our Schools March presented itself as a grass-roots event but failed to publicly list the union members involved in its executive committee.

This sort of thing is known among internet hipsters as sock-puppetry — you make it seem like there are many independent voices saying the same thing, but really it’s just somebody’s hand up the business end of an old sock.
Readers of JPGB will be familiar with several example of teacher union sock-puppetry that we have highlighted in previous posts, like this, this, this, and this.

9 Comments | teacher union | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Terry Moe Tells It Like It Is on Unions

August 26, 2011

Here’s Terry Moe speaking on his latest book, Special Interests: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools.

9 Comments | teacher union | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

How Diane Promotes Civility

August 24, 2011

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Diane Ravitch’s hypocrisy has reached a new high, if that is possible.  A few months ago she pleaded for an end to “meanness” in education policy discussions after she was caught fabricating (or imagining) serious allegations of misbehavior against Deborah Gist, the education chief in Rhode Island: 

I despair of the spirit of meanness that now permeates so much of our public discourse. One sees it on television, hears it on radio talk shows, reads it in comments on blogs, where some attack in personal terms using the cover of anonymity or even their own name, taking some sort of perverse pleasure in maligning or ridiculing others.

I don’t want to be part of that spirit. Those of us who truly care about children and the future of our society should find ways to share our ideas, to discuss our differences amicably, and to model the behavior that we want the young to emulate.

And yesterday Diane sent a mass email praising a blog post by Mike Petrilli lamenting the name-calling in education debates.  She wrote:

Mike Petrilli is one of the few people in today’s education debates who is consistently thoughtful. He never resorts to mudslinging. There is a special place in heaven for him. We can all learn from his civility.

But the very same day Diane retweeted the following message to her 18,000+ Twitter followers:

@DianeRavitch thank you for being on the front lines for us. I would resort to violence were I confronted with Brill’s smugnorance.

I understand that a retweet does not necessarily mean endorsement, but people cannot avoid responsibility for what they choose to forward.  You can’t decry the incivility in discourse and then forward to your 18,000+ followers a message about resorting to violence in response to Brill’s “smugnorance.”

(edited for typos)

2 Comments | politics | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Pending Collapse of National Standards

August 23, 2011

As I previewed yesterday, I think the the tide has turned and the push to nationalize standards, curriculum, and assessments will fail.  It’s impressive how far the current effort has gotten and the Gates/U.S. Department have a bunch of folks believing that their triumph is inevitable.  But the drive for nationalization is doomed for the following reasons:

1) Every major Republican presidential candidate (and even the minor ones) have come out clearly against national standards.  That means if the Republicans retake the White House, this federally-driven effort will fall apart.  Even if Obama is re-elected, having the Republican standard-bearer come out clearly against national standards will raise the profile of this issue and signal to congressional, state, and local Republicans that this is something they should oppose.  A louder and more partisan debate on national standards makes any big national change highly unlikely.

2) It’s true that forty-some states have signed on for national standards but that was largely a cost-free gesture in response to Federal offers of Race to the Top money and selective waivers from NCLB requirements.  At this point the national standards are just a bunch of words on pieces of paper.  To make standards meaningful they have to be integrated with changes in curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy.  Changing all of that will take a ton of money since it involves changing textbooks, tests, professional development, teacher training, etc… States don’t have that money to spend while the Feds don’t have any more to bribe them with and Gates itself can’t even come close to footing the bill.  Up until now states have been paid to do something cost-less, but things will fall apart when state legislatures have to be asked to pay for the implementation.

3) The national standards effort has needed the feeling of inevitability to move forward.  Once the juggernaut stalls people have some time to reflect and discuss the merits of nationalizing key aspects of our education system.  Opposing groups in each state will have the time and ability to form and gain their own counter-momentum.  And divisions among the disparate supporting groups will become more apparent, making some previous supporters turn against the effort.  A lot of people, like Randi Weingarten, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Checker Finn, fantasize that they’ll be at the controls of this nationalized machine once it is built.  Time will make more clear who will really be in charge (hint: it ain’t gonna be Checker) and the losers will rescind their support.

4) Digital learning supporters will have more time and experience to discover that achieving scale to provide virtual instruction across states will not require a national regulatory regime.  The textbook industry has achieved incredible scale and sells nationwide despite 50 different state standards and even with less ability to customize their products for each state.  Besides, when backers of digital learning discover who will be at the controls, they may recognize that a national regulatory regime could hinder their efforts in all states, preventing them from achieving beach-heads in more reform-minded states so that they can build and refine their business models.  The digital learning supporters of national standards provide the strongest intellectual cover for nationalization on the right, so as they peal away from the nationalization effort the partisan nature of the debate will become even more severe (see above).

I honestly can’t see how the nationalization folks can prevail politically without slipping requirements into a re-authorized ESEA.  The use of selective waivers by Duncan is so obviously abusive and manipulative that it will certainly backfire (to wit: Mike Petrilli’s denunciation of that tactic).  Since ESEA re-authorization is going to take a while and since it will be virtually impossible to slip a nationalization of standards, assessments, and curriculum requirement into it, I see the whole nationalization project as doomed to fail.  Rather than their victory being inevitable (as they would like people to think), I see their defeat as inevitable.

12 Comments | National Standards | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Stealth Strategy of National Standards

August 22, 2011

I just returned from another excellent conference organized by Paul Peterson and the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance.  At the conference I had a number of interesting discussions about national standards where I pressed advocates to describe the theory or evidence behind the push to nationalize standards, curriculum, and assessments.  For the most part, people had a hard time articulating exactly why they favored this strategy.

In the past I suggested that the reluctance of nationalization supporters to make an open and straightforward case was part of an intentional strategy:

… their entire project depends on stealth.  If we have an open and vigorous debate about whether it is desirable for our large, diverse country to have a uniform national set of standards, curriculum, and assessments, I am confident that they would lose.  Time and time again the American people through their political and educational leaders have rejected nationalization of education when it has been proposed in a straightforward way.

I continue to believe that the chief architects of the nationalization campaign at the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education are intentionally concealing the full extent of their nationalization effort to improve its political prospects.  For example, repeatedly describing the effort as “voluntary” and led by the states is obviously false and misleading, especially as the primary impetus was financial rewards during Race to the Top and its persistence is the offer of selective waivers to NCLB requirements to those states that comply with federal wishes.

But most of the national standard supporters I spoke to at the Harvard conference were not trying to obfuscate.  Instead, they were genuinely puzzled by the need to articulate a justification.  They simply assumed that all right-thinking people would support the idea.  The suppression of an open debate by the chief architects of the nationalization plan has prevented many of these people from ever hearing dissent or having to wonder about whether their initial inclination to support it was well-founded.

It was also interesting that once I pressed people to say why they supported nationalization out loud, the flaws and limitations of their arguments became apparent — even to themselves.  Having to articulate your reasons can serve as a useful check on whether people have really thought something through.

For example, one person used the phrases “national standards” and “rigorous standards” interchangeably.  Obviously he simply assumed that rigorous standards are produced at the national rather than at some other level.  Once he said it, it was easy to press him on why the national level would necessarily be more rigorous.  It was clear that he hadn’t really thought about that and had no quick response.

I have a theory (and evidence) to support my opposition to national standards, which I described at the conference and have described before on this blog.  It comes from Paul Peterson’s book, The Price of Federalism, in which he explains how the national government is better at redistributive policies, while state and local governments are better at developmental policies.  Education is mostly developmental, so it is best done at the state and local level.

If you want to learn more about this theory you can read my earlier post and the Price of Federalism, but the point is that I have clearly stated my reasons.  Supporters of national standards often have not.  Having to articulate one’s theory and muster supporting evidence is a very useful exercise to avoid policy mistakes.  I’m not saying that there are no plausible theories and no supporting evidence that advocates of nationalizing education could offer.  I’m just saying that virtually none of them have had to explicitly make their case — to themselves or anyone else.

If we are going to make an enormous change to our educational system by centralizing control over standards, curriculum, and assessments, I at least want to have a big, open, national discussion about the wisdom of doing it.  If, after that discussion, policy and opinion leaders were still determined to proceed I would probably continue to dissent but I would feel a whole lot more comfortable.  At least they would have thought of the various implications of this gigantic change.

The thing that is so irritating to me about the Gates/U.S. Department of Education juggernaut is their obvious disinterest in having a big, open national discussion.  They prefer brute force over intellectual exchange.  Of course, they seek to avoid the open discussion because they’ve already made up their minds about the right thing to do and are just trying to maximize the political prospects for success.

The Gates/USDOE juggernaut is intended to create the impression that nationalization is inevitable, so you might as well get on board.  A number of the nationalization supporters with whom I talked at Harvard offered inevitability as a reason for why they were supporters.

Tomorrow I’ll explain why I think nationalization is far from inevitable.  In fact, I think the tide is about to turn on the nationalization movement.  The D.C. and other policy folks who just like to support the winning team might want to tune in tomorrow.

24 Comments | National Standards | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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