Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Creating a Positive View

By Ellen D.B. Riggle, PhD

As an academic researcher, I have typically taught and written  about things that would depress and scare ordinary people (actually, these things depress and scare me too):  depression and anxiety, psychological abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, violent attacks, discrimination and everyday prejudice.  I discuss these topics in the context of the stresses that people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) face and have to cope with.  It seems that in my academic training, I was taught to focus on negative issues.  Implicitly I was taught that if nothing is “wrong” then everything must be okay, and we don’t need to talk about that.

Focusing on “what’s wrong” is important.  For example, the current focus on the violence and psychological abuse associated with bullying is essential to providing all children and adults with a safe environment for living their lives.  We are all responsible for solving this problem so we all need to be talking about it.  But in focusing on what’s wrong, sometimes we forget to also focus on “what’s right.” 

 “What’s right” are stories that often get ignored or that just aren’t seen as interesting enough to make the news.  A case in point:  my friends, two women who have been partners for decades and are devoted parents and now grandparents, spend their time and energy acting as mentors and positive role models for young LGBT people and their allies in the pursuit of social justice -- they don’t make the news.  The Rhode Island Catholic Bishop who opposes marriage equality by stating that “homosexual activity is immoral, an offense to God, a serious sin” – he makes the news.  This creates an imbalance in the messages that we are exposed to and impacts the stories that come to mind when we think about LGBT lives.

If we are to successfully address issues such as stigmatization, bullying and other public health risks for LGBT people, we must create a culture that, on a regular basis, celebrates instead of denigrates LGBT lives. How do we change this imbalance of messages and create a celebratory culture?  One way to address this challenge is to share the positive stories of LGBT lives.  In our research with over a thousand LGBT people, we have heard stories of personal growth and life lessons that can benefit us all.  We have heard stories about the benefits of living an authentic life and how that brings people closer to their family and friends.  We have heard stories from many people about the importance of being flexible and creative in relationships with their partners so that both partners flourish.  We have heard about how people develop compassion for others and engage in work or volunteer activities to support and benefit people in need.  All of these actions come from positive qualities that people associate with their LGBT identities. 

Our personal stories have power over how we define our own lives and they have power when we share them with others.  Talking with others about the positive aspects of LGBT identities, recognizing the benefits of these identities in individual lives and the life of our communities, is an important part of creating a celebratory culture.  Sharing stories of LGBT lives will help to re-balance and re-focus the conversations that people have. 

Ellen D.B. Riggle is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Political Science at the University of Kentucky.  She is co-author of A Positive View of LGBTQ: Embracing Identity and Cultivating Well-Being.  For more information about her research, go to www.PrismResearch.org.

The Messages in President Obama’s Spotify Playlist

By Benjamin S. Schoening and Eric T. Kasper 

Now that 2012 is upon us, so is another presidential election. Barack Obama is seeking a second term as the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, and four candidates are currently vying for the Republican Party nomination. There are many strategic decisions which these politicians make to promote their candidacies, including crafting inspiring speeches, offering eloquent answers to interview questions, and creating patriotic backdrops at campaign events. For as long as there have been American presidential elections, one of the candidates’ quadrennial considerations has also been selection of the right music.

President Obama made news on February 9th when he announced his campaign’s Spotify playlist. For those not familiar with Spotify, it is an online music service that streams songs to members of the website. President Obama released his playlist in 2012 in much the same way that he announced his iPod playlist during his 2008 candidacy. Playlists such as this can send powerful messages to the electorate, as they can transmit political ideas or associate a candidate with a notable musical celebrity. With this in mind, let’s have a look at a few of the 28 songs on President Obama’s Spotify playlist.

One of the more notable selections is Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” President Obama previously sang the first few bars of this song at an appearance in the Apollo Theater in New York City on January 19th. Although originally written as a romantic song when first released by Green in the early 1970s, the song’s title and hook offer a powerful message from an incumbent president to the voters: vote for me, so that we can mutually continue along the path we are on now.

A second song choice by President Obama that musically asks for another opportunity to serve the country is U2’s “Even Better than the Real Thing.” In multiple places the overarching message is that the listener will be satisfied by giving the singer one more chance. The song goes on to refer to its audience as the real thing and even better than that. This can be interpreted as a way to “pump up” supporters of the President. Again, like “Let’s Stay Together,” the lyrics of “Even Better than the Real Thing” were clearly originally written with romantic intent, but the key catchy parts of the song can be co-opted to express relevant political messages.

REO Speedwagon’s “Roll with the Changes” exemplifies another important political theme for President Obama. The title of this tune harkens back to one of the President’s major campaign slogans from 2008: Change we can believe in. The lyrics go on to tell the listener that the singer is available when the listener is ready to move along with the changes that lay ahead. The lyrics also tell the listener that the tables have turned, and they imply that the darkest hour has passed. Certainly, one could see this as a message from President Obama that the economy is on the mend and things are getting better because of the changes he has implemented.

The songs a campaign chooses can also be used to thwart the message of the political opposition. One song on President Obama’s playlist that does this is “No Nostalgia” by Ages and Ages. Recently, Republican candidates have expressed a message that the country is on the wrong path, and only they can restore America to its past greatness. The hook of “No Nostalgia” takes aim at this notion, claiming that instead of looking to the past we should concentrate on the promise of what our country is now and can become in the future.

Of course, one must be careful not to read too much into these lyrics and song choices. Still, there is no doubt that President Obama and those working on his reelection campaign thought long and hard about which songs to release. Ultimately, song choice is an important consideration for presidential campaigns. The right song can become a memorable way to express important political messages. On the other hand, the wrong songs can muddle a campaign message, and key song omissions can lead to hurt feelings among those who were musically snubbed.

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About the authors: Benjamin S. Schoening and Eric T. Kasper are the authors of Don't Stop Thinking about the Music: The Politics of Songs and Musicians in Presidential Campaigns.  Benjamin Schoening is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County and music director of the Red Cedar Choir in Rice Lake.  Eric T. Kasper is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County and the municipal judge in Rice Lake.

The “College is For All” Debate: Addressing a Lot of Maybes

By Frank Burtnett, author of the Bound-for-Career-Guidebook and Bound-for-College Guidebook.

Maybe college…maybe not…maybe a 4 year college or university…maybe a 2 year community or technical college….maybe right after high school…maybe not until later in life. There are a lot of “maybes” that need to be tossed into the “college for all” discussion.

President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan weighed into the discussion a while back by stating that the nation’s ability to compete on a global playing field requires an increase in the awarding of college degrees. The President has set a goal of sixty percent of Americans earning a postsecondary education degree by 2020. Counter arguments, however, are being bantered about saying that college graduates are finding it difficult to find jobs in current economy and students should be more focused on workplace knowledge and skills training that are immediately adaptable and marketable for the current and future crop of jobs. They argue that many of those careers and jobs simply do not require college.

What does this conflict in mission mean for American education? Should our schools place greater emphasis on the preparing students to succeed in postsecondary education? Should “college for all” be the mantra of the times? Should career and workplace skills receive greater attention? Can K-12 education do both?

The experiences of the economic downturn and recession have added fuel to the incendiary debate as many are saying that the college degree is no longer as attractive as it may have been five or ten years ago. Allow me to argue for education. Regardless of what the high unemployment figures are telling us, the fact remains that college graduates are less likely to be unemployed or underemployed and stand the best chances for achieving their career aspirations when the recession is finally over. They even fare better in other demographics like physical and mental health.

Allow me to suggest a middle ground. Schools, in my estimation, should be about the business of helping students achieve their full educational and career potential. No more….no less. Of utmost importance is the need to recognize and facilitate individual differences. College immediately after high school, whether it is the transition to an Ivy League college, a public university or a local community college, is a reasonable step for many who are enrolled in our schools. Others may wish to work and engage in more self-awareness and option exploration before taking that crucial next educational step. Quite possibly a stint in the military can serve to clarify the future and point the graduate in the right direction. There are multiple educational routes to the world of work and K-12 students need to learn about the viability of all of them.

In many respects it is about helping young people outline options while getting a better handle on the characteristics and traits that define each individually. When you have a better understanding or who you are and a clearer view of the future and the options it affords you, you’re better equipped to make good educational and career decisions.

K-12 education needs to prepare students with a kind of “readiness” for future study and entry into and about the workplace. Make no mistake---education is going to be a part of that future. Knowledge and skill acquisition will be necessary for everyone prior to their entry into any occupation or career in the workplace, and will be just as important for maintenance and growth in one’s work and the mobility to move about their chosen career.

Americans cannot escape the inevitable fact that one day, for many---sooner than later, they are going to find themselves in a college classroom. Stopping out of education after high school is the equivalent of career suicide. But let’s consider the outside chance that some of our current K-12 students never find themselves on a college campus. Is being “career and college ready” not a great parenting skill, one that they might utilize with their own children?

Essential to being “college or career ready” is a sense of self-awareness and being able to comprehend all of the options that lie before you. Equally important is having a life plan---a set of short and long term goals that will lead step-by-step toward a goal or set of goals out there that will become clearer with each move forward.

Teachers, counselors and all educators, along with parents, can play a critical role in helping students set realistic educational and career goals and then take the action steps that are needed to make those aspirations come true. Students need to have experiences in school and in life that will help them structure their exploration and decision-making and more effectively engage them in the transitions that take them from school-to-college and school-to-work.

The more students know about the educational and career development process---the more “ready” they will be to control those parts of it that are the most controllable. There are no “one size fits all” solutions or answers. There are just a lot of “maybes” that need to be addressed, today, tomorrow and way off in the future.

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Dr. Frank Burtnett, President and Principal Consultant of Education Now, splits his life between Rockport, Maine and Fairfax County, Virginia. He is the author of the Bound-for-College Guidebook and Bound-for-Career Guidebook (Rowman & Littlefield Education).

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This message appeared originally in the Portland Press Herald on July 3, 2011. It has been modified for presentation here. FB

 

 

A Night at the Supreme Court with fellow Courtwatchers

By Darcy Evans

Wednesday night was an eventful night for Rowman & Littlefield. Our Senior Executive Editor of Political Science, Jon Sisk, was recognized on the floor of the Supreme Court. No, he wasn’t presenting an oral argument, but he was there to hear one, or at least the reenactment of one. In celebration of our recently published book by Clare Cushman, Courtwatchers, and as part of the third annual Frank C. Jones Reenactment lecture, Mr. Sisk and about two-hundred of D.C.’s legal elite, watched as Justice Antonin Scalia presided over the reenactment of Texas v. White, a Supreme Court case from 1869 that dealt with the complicated issue of the legality of secession and the legitimacy of Confederate governments during the war.

                                       R&L's Jon Sisk, Darcy Evans, and Lynsey Weston

While the court case was intriguing, the book party afterwards is where all the fun was had. Clare was there to sign copies of her book which was sold at the Supreme Court gift shop. People were buying two or three at a time. That is exactly what her humble publisher likes to see! The party was very well attended. Sandra Day O’Connor even dropped in for a while. I suspect some people were there for the wine and fabulous food, but hopefully they bought a book as well, or at least thought about buying a book and will buy it later.

                               Darcy Evans, Gregory P. Joseph, and Jon Sisk

We are indebted to the Supreme Court Historical Society, not only for all their help with the book, but for putting on a wonderful event. Pictured here with Darcy Evans and Jon Sisk is the president of the Organization, Gregory P. Joseph, who was kind enough to present Justice Scalia and the Court with a copy of the book. Perhaps we will find the Justices reading it between cases.

Courtwatchers is now available. Click here to learn more.

Detours on the Way to a Classless Society

By Rudolph H. Weingartner

For many right-thinking people—that is to say, liberals—equal pay for equal work has always been a goal to be achieved. While this aspiration pertained particularly to women, who once were very far from getting the same compensation as men and have yet to reach parity, it applied, as well, to discrimination that is based on race, religion, national origin, disability or age. The objective of reaching equality is an expression of a piece of American ideology that wants us to stand out as a classless society or at least to come closer than Old Europe, not to mention the lands of the Middle East. And since we are talking about economic criteria, this goal has a genuine resemblance to Karl Marx’s notion of a classless society, though it would be best to keep quiet about that, since it might scare off potential friends of the cause.

Progress is being made. Last January, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. The law makes it easier to sue a company for pay discrimination and in that way discourages such bias in the first place. In another part of the forest, however, there is backsliding. I shall be pointing to practices, moreover, that cannot be alleviated by Congressional bills, signed by the Chief Executive. In the second edition of my Fitting Form to Function: A Primer on the Organization of Academic Institutions [Rowman & Littlefield, 2011], I give a brief deploring account of the vast increase of the use of adjuncts, part timers, and full time lecturers to teach students that the professoriate used to teach. These non-regulars, can never attain the stability of employment that tenured faculty enjoy nor are they remotely compensated at the same level as the so-called “regular” faculty.

You might say the work they do is not equal to that of the (proportionately) shrinking regular faculty and, indeed, for some of the regulars this would indeed be true. But many others, with a small number of courses to teach, engaged in research that is trivial that seldom brings beads of sweat to their brows. On the other hand, the teaching load of the irregulars is large, calling for multiple preparations and the ministering to—that is testing, grading, advising—myriads of students and poorly paid. Two classes of faculty: one markedly more favored than the other.

And now this insidious two-class system is infecting the world of lawyers. An account in The New York Times of May 24, 2011, “At Well-Paying Law Firms, a Low-Paid Corner” describes an expanding practice very similar to the one that has taken hold of the world of post-secondary education. Besides hiring attorneys who stand a chance of becoming partners of the firm (and are generously paid, accordingly), other “fullfledged,” competent lawyers are being hired, earning “less than half the pay of their counterparts, “doing pretty high-level work — writing briefs, visiting client sites, prepping witnesses for hearings.” Law firms used to be composed of two classes: partners and aspiring partners—a healthy division, like that of tenured professors and those on tenure-track. Healthy, because ability and energy came close to assuring “promotion” from the lower to the higher class.

What we are now seeing both in the world of higher education and in the legal establishment is the creation of inferior and superior classes with as much chance of moving upward as in medieval times, a serf had the potential of becoming a knight. Are these signs that we are sliding back into the Middle Ages?

Rudolph H. Weingartner is Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh and the author of Fitting Form to Function: A Primer on the Organization of Academic Institutions: Second Edition.

Two Common Questions: How “Ready” are Students to Answer Them?

By Frank Burtnett

What do you want to be when you grow up? Where do you want to go to college?

Just two interrogative sentences consisting of a total of eighteen words, but individually or together they can stir excitement, curiosity and anxiety in the student to whom they are directed. Admittedly, the responses will vary greatly for different students at different times in their personal schooling and development. And, in some instances, the student may not be able to offer an answer. That’s okay too.

One’s career development consists of a series of stages---awareness, exploration, decision-making---during the formative years. Options are considered which are then followed by educational experiences, including the acquisition of knowledge and skills in a formal setting called school or college. Along the way some real “hands on” experiences like part-time or summer work, along with service learning (volunteerism), may be sprinkled into the learning process.

Eventually, the formal educational experiences end or slow down and the individual moves from school or college to the workplace and continues to grow and develop there. Over the span of one’s work life, additional adjustments will be made during the maintenance, mobility and advancement stages of the career development process. One working in contemporary America can also expect that continuing education is going to be a significant part of those developmental stages.

Sound complex? In reality, there is usually a comfortable flow to it all. And for most, it typically results in career satisfaction.

Today educators are using the expression “career and college readiness” to refer to the preparedness that leads students through school and college and into the workplace. President Obama, Secretary of Education Duncan and the most recent chair of the National Governors Association have each spoken on the importance of youth readiness as a critical aspect of our nation’s “Race-to-the-Top.” This long overdue emphasis on “readiness” suggests the best results will occur when education supports and facilitates the career development process.

Teachers, counselors and all educators, along with parents, can play a critical role in helping students set realistic educational and career goals and then take the action steps that are needed to make those aspirations a reality. In my two Rowman & Littlefield Education books, Bound-For-College Guidebook (2009) and Bound-For-Career Guidebook (2010), I offer information, answer questions and engage my readers in personal exercises that will help them structure their exploration and decision-making and more effectively engage in the transitions that take them from school-to-college and school-to-work.

The more students know about the educational and career development process---the more “ready” they will be to control those parts of it that are the most controllable. There are no “one size fits all” solutions or answers. Every student should have the opportunity to choose his or her life’s work---not be sentenced to it.

Frank Burtnett is the President and Principal Consultant of Education Now (www.ednow.org) in Springfield, Virginia and Rockport, Maine and the author of the Bound-For-College Guidebook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding and Applying to Colleges and the Bound-For-Career Guidebook: A Student Guide to Career Exploration, Decision Making, and the Job Search.

The Intellectual Legacy of Blessed John Henry Newman

By Jane Rupert

When Pope Benedict xvi beatified John Henry Newman on September 19, 2010, he recognized Newman not only as a pastor of souls but as leaving a rich intellectual legacy.

Newman is of singular importance to us at once in both capacities. He is a pastor to the mind, a modern physician to the intellect, a radical thinker (radix, root) who goes to the root of the dilemma of an age driven by the physical sciences and its specific habit of mind.

In a reversal of the plight of Galileo in the seventeenth century, when the speculative reasoning of theology was applied to the physical domain of science, in our era the empirical reasoning of physical science has become the universal key to knowledge in all domains. One of Newman’s contemporaries, Charles Darwin, gives a personal account in his autobiography of the erosion through disuse of other avenues to knowledge outside empirical reasoning. Darwin refers to the atrophy of the part of his brain that had once delighted in poetry, music, and art. He says that he perceived this loss not only as a loss of happiness but also as an enfeebling of the emotional and the moral part of his nature, and as possibly injurious to the intellect.

Throughout his lifetime (1801-1889), Newman ministered to this specifically modern problem of the diminishment of the mind that resulted from the hegemony of empirical science and from the influence of the narrow epistemology of empirical philosophers like Hobbes, Hume, and Bentham. He was the great advocate of those other pathways of the mind that lead to the inner contemplative world of thought, both in the liberal arts and in the soul’s relation to God.

In The Idea of a University, he defended the two kinds of reasoning—suspect in the modern age—which are cultivated in the liberal arts. First, he explained the important function of speculative thought which contemplates the ideas of things, such as the idea of a university. Second, he represented the rationality of literature whose nuanced language discloses the personal sources of literary thought.

This pastor to the intellect also spent a lifetime articulating how the mind functions in the inwardness of religious belief. In his sermons in the University Church at Oxford, in letters to The Times, in his final book, The Grammar of Assent, Newman describes the magisterial role of the imagination in our mental image of God where thought is harbored implicitly within the image. He argued the legitimacy of this implicit reason in religion when thought converges from various quarters in a manner common to all areas of both implicit and explicit deliberation, including the development of hypotheses in the physical sciences. As doctor of the mind, Newman also preached on the theocentric conscience and on the integrity of mind realized when our disordered faculties find unity through centering on the Personality of God.

Today, when unbelief prevails and the humanities are further marginalized, Blessed John Henry Newman’s defense of reason speaks with ever greater cogency.

Jane Rupert is an independent scholar living in Madoc, Ontario. She received her PhD from the University of Toronto. She is the author of John Henry Newman on the Nature of the Mind: Reason in Religion, Science, and the Humanities.

Let’s Create a New Month for Breast Cancer

By Sabrina McCormick, PhD

In a few days, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM) will be over. Thank goodness.

I suppose I shouldn’t say that, but the endless reams of pink products get on my nerves. This might seem insensitive and even cruel. It’s not. In fact, it stems from a respect for the struggle that women have against a horrid disease, and the history of the Month that in no way gives those women the respect due to them.

My annoyance starts with my distaste for the marking of women who have breast cancer with girlish femininities. That is hardly where it ends. Rather, every time I see a pink teddy bear or banner about a fundraising walk, I remember who owns the month and therefore who is telling the world, yes, I mean the world, what to think about breast cancer.

Most people don’t realize that one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies owns NBCAM. In 1984, the Executive Directors of Imperial Chemical Incorporated, Cancer Care, Inc., and the American Association of Cancer Care Physicians met to discuss the growing breast cancer crisis, and how to educate Americans about detection and treatment. More and more women seemed to be succumbing to the disease, but few were using mammography, the only medical test for detection. In addition, the Company had taken a turn for the worse in the late 1970s thanks to over-investment in petrochemicals, plastics and agricultural goods. It reported that even after reorganizing and streamlining, it had to “make greater levels of profitability and market penetration, and change its product profile (Pettigrew 1985).” Pharmaceuticals were the next venture, and it would need a consumer base. That is when the first National Breast Cancer Awareness Week was founded.

Over the years, Imperial Chemicals became AstraZeneca, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, and the owner of the NBCAM logo. Over those same years, the Month grew in popularity and consumption of pharmaceuticals grew. Today, Astra is a multi-billion dollar venture.

Here is my biggest problem with this scenario: women are still dying en masse. 40,170 women died in 2009, to be exact. Mortality is decreasing, but at what cost? 254,650 women got breast cancer last year. My film and book, No Family History, show the tremendous pain and suffering in the lives of women and their families even when women survive.

We need to take a new approach to this disease.

And so, I propose an alternative: National Breast Cancer Prevention Month. We are aware of breast cancer. Now, let’s prevent it. The idea is simple. During this month, we stop exposing ourselves to chemicals, toxins, and unhealthy living that leads down the road to cancer. During this month, we start to change what we consume, and so indicate to the companies making these chemicals that we will not support them. We spend this month telling our legislators we will not vote for them unless they protect us from these chemicals.

Let’s keep our daughters safe. Let’s stop breast cancer before it starts. Let’s stop buying pink and start thinking green.

Sabrina McCormick is a Science and Technology Policy Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences working in the Environmental Protection Agency, and she is also research faculty at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, and the author of No Family History: The Environmental Links to Breast Cancer.

Transform, Not Reform

By Francis M. Duffy

Here we go again! One more time politicians and pundits are calling out school systems for failing to provide America’s children with the education they need and then offering their worn, tired, and failed recommendations for change: A longer school year. Fire incompetent teachers. Create charter schools. Dump more money into failing schools. Practice continuous improvement. Reform! Reform! Reform!

None of these “fixes” can do what needs to be done to provide America’s children with the education they need to succeed in our 21st Century knowledge economy. We need to transform our school systems, not reform them.

Education reform is a failed strategy because it focuses on fixing the broken parts of school systems (which is pejoratively referred to as piecemeal change) while sustaining the underlying paradigm that drives teaching and learning in those systems. Fixing the broken parts of any school system is a failed change strategy when the underlying paradigm has outlived its usefulness.

A paradigm is a set of theories, models, beliefs, and so on that influence the performance of an entire field. The dominant paradigm influencing the performance of school systems is one that emerged at the beginning of the Industrial Age in the late 1700s-early 1800s. This Industrial Age paradigm created a factory model for educating groups of students by requiring them to learn a fixed amount of knowledge in a fixed amount of time. There is no place in that paradigm for providing each child with an educational experience that is tailored to his or her needs, interests, and abilities. There is no place in that paradigm for providing children with a personalized educational experience. This paradigm always has and always will leave children behind. Leaving children behind is an unavoidable consequence of the Industrial Age design of America’s school systems.

Providing America’s children with an education that satisfies the requirements of our 21st Century knowledge society requires a paradigm-shifting revolution that drives out four old inter-connected Industrial Age paradigms that influence the design and performance of America’s school systems. The four paradigm shifts are:

Paradigm 1: the way teachers teach and how children learn (shift from group-based, teacher-centered instruction to personalized learner-centered instruction;

Paradigm 2: the design of the internal social infrastructure of school systems (shift from an mechanistic, bureaucratic organization design to an organic, participative design; and, transform organization culture, the reward system, job descriptions, and so on, to align with the requirements of the new core and support work processes;

Paradigm 3: the way school systems interact with external stakeholders (move from a crisis-oriented, reactive approach to an opportunity-seeking, proactive approach); and,

Paradigm 4: the way in which educators’ create change (shift from piecemeal change strategies to whole-system change strategies).

A revolution to transform America’s school systems requires political advocacy, courage, passion and vision. Although a revolution to drive out the old paradigms requires muscular political advocacy, when educators in school systems and politicians interested in education step forward to lead or join this revolution on the front lines of change they will require much more than political advocacy. Fighting this revolution requires significant courage, passion, and vision. They must have courage to stand and fight for that in which they believe. They need passion to give them the emotional energy and resilience they need to persevere. And, they must have a vision to serve as their North Star to keep them moving in the right direction.

Further, these three traits—courage, passion, and vision—must be simultaneously present in each change leader. A change leader can have courage, but lack passion and vision. A change leader can have a powerful vision, but lack the courage to fight for it. A change leader can have courage and a vision, but lack the passion to pursue the vision relentlessly. All three traits must be present all at once in each man and woman who steps forward to lead this revolution.

Our society cannot afford to carry its old education paradigms forward. It does no good to dream of an idealized future for education if that future is just a projection and continuation of the past. Instead, change-minded revolutionaries should imagine that the four paradigms controlling the design and performance of school systems were destroyed last night and now they must invent four new paradigms. What would be the main features of those new paradigms? How could educators change the mental models supporting the old paradigms? And, importantly, how can they design new school systems driven by the four new paradigms and the new mental models required by the paradigms?

The time is now. The need is great. The past before us is not the future. We need to create a brand new future for America’s school systems—a future created through transformation not reformation.

Francis M. Duffy, Ph.D. is the author of Dream! Create! Sustain!: Mastering the Art & Science of Transforming School Systems. He can be reached at duffy@thefmduffygroup.com.

Collateral Damage?: The Problems of Teacher Assessment

By Phillip Harris

"We've got to be able to identify teachers who are doing well [and] teachers who are President Obama said on September 27 in an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's Today show. "And, ultimately, if some teachers aren't doing a good job, they've got to go."

Don't think too hard about it, and everything about education reform seems so simple, doesn't it? Find out who are the ineffective teachers, try to help them improve, and if that fails, then fire them. What could we possibly be overlooking?

For starters, let's look at the President's first point: distinguishing between teachers who are doing well and teachers who aren't. That should be easy enough. That's what the various value-added systems of evaluation seek to do: compare students' test scores early in the year with the same students' scores late in the year and, after some statistical legerdemain, voilà!: a measure of growth to judge a teacher's effectiveness. How simple it all seems to politicians and policy makers!

But like most of what passes for reform in public education, the more you know about it, the less likely it seems that it will achieve what you hope for. Like charter schools and merit pay (which also depends on finding a sound way to judge teaching performance), using value-added efforts to improve the teaching force has surface appeal that just doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. And anything that will affect the lives of so many teachers and so many of our children is worth at least a little close scrutiny.

We've argued in our new book, The Myths of Standardized Testing, that the tests aren't very good at measuring real student achievement, or predicting future success, or motivating improvement, or even being objective. So using these flawed measures for value-added assessment, a purpose they weren't designed for, just seems way off base. But we're not assessment experts, so maybe we're missing something.

Here's what those who know best say. Five years ago, Henry Braun, then at ETS, now at Boston College, argued that value-added assessment wasn't yet ready for prime time -- and might never be the panacea some of its proponents hoped. Now, just three weeks before the President sat down with Matt Lauer, Eva Baker of the National Center for Evaluation Standards, and Student Testing at UCLA and a list of co-authors that constitutes a Who's Who of Assessment issued a report titled Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers (Economic Policy Institute, 2010). In that report, the co-authors cited non-random assignment of students and teachers, the failure to distinguish the contributions of multiple teachers over time, and the instability of the ratings from year to year for the same teacher as problems that made using value-added methods an unwise choice, at least for the time being. We think if you can't resolve the instability problem, the whole effort becomes a crap shoot.

But using a complex assessment mechanism for unsupported purposes is always fraught with problems and unintended consequences. Already blowback has begun. With the LA Times' recent publication of the test scores of students linked to individual teachers and schools, we now have the apparent suicide of Rigoberto Ruelas, Jr., a fifth-grade teacher who was upset that his scores were not higher. Described by former students as someone who "took the worst students, and tried to change their lives," Ruelas has now lost his own. Collateral damage?

Phillip Harris is Executive Director of the Association for Educational Communications & Technology. He is the former Director of the Center for Professional Development at Phi Delta Kappa International and was a member of the faculty of Indiana University for 22 years, serving in both the Psychology Department and the School of Education. He is the author of The Myths of Standardized Tests: Why They Don't Tell You What You Think They Do (December 2010), with co-authors Bruce Smith and Joan Harris.