Archive for the ‘Book Summaries’ Category

50 Myths & Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education by David C. Berliner, Gene Glass, and Associates takes on many myths that have support amongst reformers and the media. This is a must read for anyone fighting the madness of our current test-and-punish school reform system. Give a copy to any policy maker you know.

Myths, Hoaxes, and Outright Lies

• “America’s public schools are being hijacked and destroyed by greed, fraud, and lies.” James Meredith – 1st black students at the University of Mississippi 10/1/1961. This quote sums up the purpose of this book. The authors limited themselves to only 50 and hope that readers will send in some more that do not appear herein. Myths are beliefs in things that may or may not be true. They fill in the void left by ignorance. The focus here is on myths that are untrue and that are having unhappy consequences. Hoaxes are different in that the person pushing them knows them to be dubious or untrue, but also knows that they will greatly benefit the pusher. Liars are different in that they don’t even believe what they are saying. Once again the lies are promoted for someone’s self-interest. The overridding myth is that America’s public schools have failed. The authors do an excellent job showing that this is not the case.

Myths and Lies About Who’s Best: Charters, Privates, Maybe Finland?

• The focus here are the international tests where the US usually ends up in the middle of the pack. This is where we have been since the first efforts at country sorting where made in the 1960’s so it’s not like we have gone downhill. If you sort out the poor kids our scores are at the top with countries like Finland where poverty is 5%. The fact that the tests are in different languages and use the metric system makes them less valid. Never the less, reformers have used these scores to promote unproven reforms.
• The same test scores are used to show that private schools are better than public schools, but once you take socioeconomic the status of the students into consideration, public schools do better. Private school students are wealthier and whiter. Teachers have more autonomy, better resources, and few students with disabilities and English language learners. They also have less violence and discipline problems as they can control who they accept and who they get rid of. While charter schools are actually public schools, they share many of the same qualities as operators can game the system to control their population. While comparing publics to charters is difficult, the evidence we do have indicates that publics do better. The big reason in my mind is that when compared to public school teachers, charter school teachers are less experienced, less likely to be certified, less well paid, and have higher turnover rates.

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A Guide for Interprofessional Collaboration Edited by Aidyn Iachini, Laura Bronstein, and Elizabeth Mellin would make a great textbook for any course on social work, which is a course that anyone who cares for individuals, families, or communities should take. The complex needs people face cannot be served by any one profession, which is why collaboration is essential. This book also belongs in any well-stocked professional development library.

Part I: Foundations

1. Relevant Contexts for Interprofessional Collaboration in the 21st Century: Social Issues, Settings, and policies

• Social work comes with many complex challenges. Addressing them cannot usually be achieved by social workers alone. Therefore, the social work profession is increasingly emphasizing interprofessional collaboration. Other professionals included are psychologists, counselors, doctors, educators, nurses, pharmacists, child welfare workers, and law enforcement among others. Bringing teams together often falls on the social worker. Collaboration is challenging, which is why many universities are now offering courses in interprofessional collaboration.

2. Exploring Definitions and Models of Interprofessional Collaboration

• There is a spectrum that extends from cooperation to coordination to collaboration. It goes from increasing levels of interdependance, structure, commitment, and risk. At the highest collaboration level services are co-located with multiple professions contributing to treatment.
• A second continuum goes from interprofessional to interdisciplinary. Multidisciplinary collaboration happens when professionals with similar backgrounds engage in mutual work. Mental health assessments are often multidisciplinary. Interdisciplinary collaboration occurs when boundaries between knowledge and expertise are blurred. Transdisciplinary collaboration occurs when boundaries are crossed, knowledge is exchanged and transformed into something new.
• The remainder of the chapter summarizes models that deal with the inputs, processes, and outputs of services.

3. A Model for Interprofessional Collaboration (MIC)

• The model used for the rest of the book is Bronstein’s Model for Interprofessional Collaboration (MIC). It contains five constructs. Interdependence involves people relying on each other to reach agreed upon goals. Everyone needs to understand everyone’s role and area of expertise. Newly Created Professional Activities are those that occur unexpectedly and are often thought of as synergy. Flexibility is necessary when rolls are blurred. Collective Ownership of Goals should involve everyone participating in goal setting, implementation, and evaluation. Reflection Process should take place thoughtfully and regularly.
• Beyond the five constraints, there are four things that influence the process. 1.Professional Role: Everyone needs to articulate their expertise and contributions. This will help avoid turf wars. 2. Structural characteristics deal with having time, space, and administrative support for collaboration. 3. Personal characteristics are important as collaborators need to like and trust each other. 4. History of Collaboration: Having a history of positive collaboration is important. This is why it needs to be a focus of classroom work and internships.

Part II: Putting the Model Into Action: Interprofessional Collaboration Across Settings and Populations

4. Education

• This chapter takes a look at a specific project where the team used the model from chapter 3. The project was called closing the broadband gap (CBBG). It was a university-school developed partnership aimed at addressing 1. using technology to engage students and enhance learning, 2. engaging parents in student learning, and 3. addressing the broadband access gap. The collaborators were social workers, the technology coach, teachers, administrators, business professionals, and parent engagement coordinators.
• As you read on you first encounter the five constructs followed by the four influencers. You are taken step by step through the project’s creation and implementation. You get to learn from the obstacles the team encountered. You learn that like many collaborations, the social worker is the link that holds the project together. By traversing this exemplar, you will better understand this important model that is worth using if you wish to collaborate on a meaningful project.

5. Criminal Justice

• This area brings courts, prisons, jails, and probation officers into the mix while keeping everyone else in play. Again, the social worker is at the center of the action. Here the MIC model follows the path of a young woman involved in the crimes of drug use and possession, shop lifting, and prostitution. This case is further complicated by having two children out of wedlock and a stressed relationship with her mother who has custody of the children. Many incarcerated people have multiple issues with things like drugs, mental health, economic insecurity, and employment. Employment is the key to getting these clients back in the game, but all of their other issues, including lack of education and skills get in the way.
• A key concept here is that the client has to buy into the plan, which means that the client must be involved in making the plan. It’s common for the clients to feel like a child as multiple collaborators are more or less telling them what to do. Further tension arises when the client fails to comply with the plan, often drug relapse, and the social worker shifts from advocator to law enforcer.

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After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform by Andrea Gabor uses examples of successful and failing schools to demonstrate how the principles promoted by W. Edwards Deming can lead to school improvement. She provides extended histories of reforms in New York City, Massachusetts, Texas, and New Orleans to show how democratic grassroots reforms are more likely to work than the top-down approaches used in most states and cities. Everyone with the power to impact school reform needs to read this.

Introduction: The Quiet Revolution

• Andrea starts by reviewing the work of W. Edwards Deming and how he helped Japanese and then American companies modernize and improve. He found the blame to lie with top management and the answers to come from bottom-up reforms as employees closest to problems were in the best position to solve them. Unfortunately, the corporate-reform industry that has gained ever-increasing influence on how American schools educate children has largely ignored the strategies they used to improve production as they tinker with school reform.
• Business reformers came to the education table with belief in market competition and quantitative measures. Expertise from corporate boardrooms is favored over experience gleaned in classrooms. They also distrust of the education culture. It also came with arrogance, suspicion, and even hatred of organized labor. What is needed, however, is democratic collaboration, iterative improvement, and grassroots participation that is protected from bureaucratic meddling. We should value data as we understand its limits.
• Schools have different goals and cultures than businesses. This makes them less suited to being run like businesses. Three decades of top-down, corporate-style education reforms have proven deeply unpopular and have reaped few benefits. The number of bad teachers is also overestimated by reformers, but efforts to punish low performers has lowered morale and increased turnover. Other business practices like incentive pay have also had a negative impact. The only winners have been the testing and technology industries at the expense of a narrowed curriculum. This book will reveal what has worked, which should guide the next reform effort.

1. Big Dreams, Small Schools, How Entrepreneurial Rebels Built a Movement in New York City

• This chapter takes us through some history of New York City Schools from the 1960’s to relatively recently. It tells of how a number of schools gained success by being small and at the same time allowing teachers to pretty much run the schools. In a sense, they used Deming’s grass-roots ideas to interest students in the learning and act as role models. They shunned standardized testing and looked at other performance indicators. A sense of creative non-compliance pervaded these schools as they bent the rules and looked for cracks in the system. Classrooms were more open and curricula less fixed. There was lots of learning by doing, art, music, and field trips.

A new generation of educational leaders arrived who had no experience teaching. Rather than learn Deming’s principles like industry, they instituted top-down reforms. Even though they saw the success of small schools, they missed the rest of the factors that lead to success. This also included those involved with funding like the Gates Foundation. Unfortunately, the De Blasio administration has increased bureaucracy and shunned the flat organization models of successful schools.

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