{"id":1958,"date":"2011-04-20T15:16:38","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T20:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=1958"},"modified":"2020-07-25T19:11:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-26T00:11:27","slug":"in-education-nothing-succeeds-quite-like-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=1958","title":{"rendered":"In Education, Nothing Succeeds Quite Like Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just read with horror that Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emmanuel has appointed Rochester, NY schools superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard to be the new Cathie Black<\/a> of the Chicago Public Schools (the nation’s 2nd largest school district). This continues FOO’s (friends of Obama) full-scale assault on public education and teacher unions<\/a> begun months<\/a> before President Obama was even elected.<\/p>\n

Apparently, large city schools superintendent is the only job for which references are not checked.<\/p>\n

Jean-Claude Brizard is an Eli Broad<\/a> disciple<\/a> whose singular genius was creating in-school suspensions where kids waste time doing nothing in school, rather than outside of school. (video<\/a> news report here<\/a>) That’s some reform!<\/p>\n

Since coming to Rochester in January 2008, Brizard has pushed for his own brand of reform: instituting a contentious in-school suspension policy, and moving problematic teachers out\u00a0of classrooms into what some New York City teachers call “rubber rooms.” (Rochester City Newspaper – March 17, 2010<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In February, more than 95% of Rochester teachers voted no-confidence in Brizard.<\/a> Now that’s quite a recommendation and cause for a promotion!<\/p>\n

Just like Rahm Emmanuel used the “punch a hippie<\/a>” strategy while in the Obama White House, his appointment of Brizard is a form of “punch a teacher.”<\/p>\n

In an April 19, 2011 article Chicago Tribune article “Our Kind of Guy to Lead Chicago Schools<\/a>,” they write the following about Brizard.<\/p>\n

\n
Can Rochester, N.Y., superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard pad a payroll? Skirt the rules? Spend frivolously? Distort statistics to make himself look good? Infuriate his constituents with a high-handed style?<\/div>\n
Check, check, check, check and check.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mike Klonsky has done some fine writing<\/a> on the Brizard appointment and Rochester, NY television station WHAM 13 (ABC affiliate) reporter, Rachel Barnhart, has assembled an indispensable collection of articles about Brizard’s record<\/a> in Rochester, so you may fact-check his record for yourself. It is too bad that Mayor-elect Emmanuel did not heed the advice of George W. Bush and “use the Google” before subjecting Chicago school children to Jean-Claude Brizard.<\/p>\n

I wrote the following about Brizard in 2008 for my Good Magazine <\/em>cover story, School Wars<\/a>. Alas, it was cut from the article.<\/p>\n

Where do they grow these guys?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The new Superintendent of the Rochester, NY Public Schools, Jean Claude-Brizard, has a dream. He wants to create \u201cDream Schools\u201d in his urban school district. Here is how the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle News described his dream.<\/p>\n

…the plan calls for bundling troubled schools together in a special group to be called “Dream Schools.”<\/p>\n

Those schools would be mandated to teach a uniform curriculum, devote longer blocks of time to math and reading, offer after-school tutoring \u2014 and face closure if they fail to improve over time. Schools would be selected for the distinction based on state test scores.<\/p>\n

“We are going to put them in a box and tell them what they need to do to get better,” Brizard said. “After intense intervention, if there is no improvement, guess what? We’ll shut them down.”<\/p>\n

The Democrat and Chronicle<\/em> news article later reports, with no sense whatsoever of irony of contradiction that new Superintendent Brizard’s plan, “would both strengthen and relax centralized control of schools.”<\/p>\n

Right, you have all the freedom you want at the local school-level to treat teachers like robots and teach a standardized curriculum!<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, Superintendent Brizard announced his plan to spend $1.2 million to save the Reading First program in Rochester. The announcement was made the very same week that the US Government declared that Reading First didn\u2019t teach children to read<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As I read the news I could not help wondering to myself, \u201cWhere do they grow people who think like that?\u201d The answer is simple. You learn that ideology trumps even common sense at the Broad Academy, an intensive program in which future school leaders are trained to think like their mentor Eli Broad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In September 2008, District Administration Magazine published an article I wrote in which I explored how Jean-Claude Brizard appeared reality-impaired and driven by ideology. The text of that article follows:<\/p>\n

Who Ya Gonna Believe? (2008)<\/h1>\n

The ongoing battle between facts and mythology<\/h2>\n

It has long been accepted that good teaching requires a mixture of art and science. Outstanding teachers possess a solid knowledge of learning theory, human development. That content knowledge is brought to life by personal gifts, creativity and craft. Sadly, education news stories suffer from a lack of critical analysis or follow-up questions and educators too often justify questionable practices on the basis of personal beliefs, even when such beliefs are contradicted by evidence.<\/p>\n

There is perhaps no greater educational battleground in the fight between ideology and fact than reading instruction. In fact, No Child Left Behind went to great lengths to redefine \u201cscience\u201d when it insisted that every classroom practice adhere to \u201cscientifically-based research\u201d to the exclusion of evidence that interfered with their belief system. The underlying assumption of NCLB\u2019s Reading First program was that every child learns to read through a program of \u201chighly structured, systematic sequential explicit phonics instruction.\u201d Research and common sense challenges that belief system.<\/p>\n

First of all, not everyone learns everything the same way. Second, if the only way to learn to read is this form of alphabet sound connection, how does one explain the billions of people who read languages such as Chinese or Hebrew that don\u2019t have such written language systems? How do deaf people read?<\/p>\n

The Department of Education\u2019s May 2008 report on the efficacy of Reading First concluded, \u201cReading First did not improve students\u2019 reading comprehension.\u201d Wow! That\u2019s fairly unambiguous. The creators, funders and enforcers of a national reading initiative announced that it did not work. Surely, a reading method that failed to improve comprehension would be tossed on the dustbin of history, right? Not so fast.<\/p>\n

Let the spinning begin. “On the plus side, researchers found that Reading First teachers spent more time emphasizing phonics and other aspects of what many experts consider solid instruction — about 10 minutes more a day, or nearly an hour more a week. “Teachers’ behavior was changed,” Institute of Education Sciences Director Whitehurst says.<\/p>\n

Fantastic! Teachers are spending more time doing what doesn\u2019t work. Just as the program was declared ineffective and long since its corruption was made public, Rochester, NY Schools Superintendent Jean Claude-Brizard, proposed to spend $1.2 million dollars of local funds to “save\u201d Reading First in his district. Truth makes some educators emotional. The Arizona Republic recently wrote about educators who \u201cmourn\u201d the passing of Reading First. Barbara Wright of the Casa Grande Elementary District told the paper, “This was good, solid, research-based information, and we implemented it in all our schools at the time, even though only two schools were funded.\u201d She said that despite the probable death of the ineffective program that it will \u201ccontinue to guide the district\u2019s reading program.\u201d I\u2019m sorry, you should not be allowed to claim something is solid or research-based when it has been proven ineffective. Such claims are not scientific. They are religious.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just reading<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the April 2008 issue of District Administration, Long Beach California Superintendent, Christopher Steinhauser, proudly boasts of his use of grade retention. The Broad Foundation even rewarded him for it. Like Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Jeb Bush, Steinhauser embraces making students repeat a grade as an effective policy tool in the face of an overwhelming mountain of evidence that it does more harm than good.<\/p>\n

Other professions have a term for when you put your personal belief ahead of facts \u2013 malpractice.<\/p>\n

Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Joe Biden have often said, \u201cYou are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.\u201d This is excellent advice for educators who continue to eliminate recess, impose zero tolerance policies, cut arts programs, maintain agrarian school starting times, \u201cteach algebra\u201d at younger and younger grades and spend months each year testing or preparing students to take high-stakes tests. Conventional wisdom too often goes unchallenged and ineffective practices become myths. These practices are justified by personal beliefs.<\/p>\n

The great philosopher Stevie Wonder reminds us, \u201cWhen you believe in things that you don\u2019t understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain\u2019t the way.\u201d In education, adult superstitions cause children to suffer.<\/p>\n

Published originally in the September 2008 issue of District Administration Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gary S. Stager is Senior Editor of District Administration and Editor of The Pulse: Education\u2019s Place for Debate.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just read with horror that Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emmanuel has appointed Rochester, NY schools superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard to be the new Cathie Black of … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[446,427,435,428,526,434,436,424,425,431],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classic-stager","category-education-policy","category-featured","category-general","category-leadership","category-learning","category-news","category-obama","category-politics","category-teaching"],"yoast_head":"\nIn Education, Nothing Succeeds Quite Like Failure - Stager-to-Go<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=1958\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In Education, Nothing Succeeds Quite Like Failure - Stager-to-Go\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I just read with horror that Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emmanuel has appointed Rochester, NY schools superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard to be the new Cathie Black of …\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=1958\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Stager-to-Go\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/gary.stager\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-04-20T20:16:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-07-26T00:11:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gary Stager\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@garystager\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@garystager\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gary Stager\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/?p=1958#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/?p=1958\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Gary Stager\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/8bd320bea4758fc56f376ecdd9b8b184\"},\"headline\":\"In Education, Nothing Succeeds Quite Like Failure\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-04-20T20:16:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-07-26T00:11:27+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/?p=1958\"},\"wordCount\":1407,\"commentCount\":3,\"articleSection\":[\"classic Stager\",\"education policy\",\"Featured articles\",\"general\",\"leadership\",\"learning\",\"news\",\"Obama\",\"politics\",\"teaching\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/?p=1958#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/?p=1958\",\"url\":\"http:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/?p=1958\",\"name\":\"In Education, Nothing Succeeds Quite Like Failure - Stager-to-Go\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-04-20T20:16:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-07-26T00:11:27+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/8bd320bea4758fc56f376ecdd9b8b184\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/?p=1958#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/?p=1958\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/?p=1958#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"In Education, Nothing Succeeds Quite Like Failure\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/stager.tv\\\/\",\"name\":\"Stager-to-Go\",\"description\":\"The personal blog of Gary S. 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