The Education Issue

Old Dogs, New Tricks

Siobhan O'Connor — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 PDT

We asked four grownups what they've always wanted to learn to do, then sent them to class.

BUILT TO SCALE

or, How a Double-jointed Nonpianist with Dreams of Grandeur Learns to Play Strauss in Three Weeks.

Two major ambitions defined my childhood. One was to become what I imagined headlines would refer to as "the first kid in space." The second, which seemed more reasonable, was to become a great pianist. I realized when I was very small that I wasn't like most people: I was double-jointed. I could bend the top joints of my fingers forward at will to create a sharp right angle, and pull my thumb all the way forward or backward to touch my wrist. This would, I thought, give me abilities at the keyboard that no other pianist could boast. I could only imagine the wild flourishes and the daring arpeggios I would master. I had a natural advantage, and I intended to use it.I was also a bit of what you might call a quitter back in those days. So when my mother took me down to the music Conservatory and the stern woman in charge told me I would have to learn the recorder-that fat, beige, orthopedic-looking thing-I walked away in disgust.

I nurtured no lack of rock-star fantasies and concert pianist daydreams over the next couple of decades, but I never touched another instrument-until now, at the probably-too-late age of 31. Maya, my enthusiastic and very patient teacher, begins the process by explaining the basics of music theory: tones, pitches, harmonics, chords, rhythm. I'm also learning how to read music, a completely different challenge than the instrument itself. Getting from this theoretical stage to actually playing a song feels like learning to dance by studying the properties of gravity. How do you turn these concepts and rules into something beautiful?

Well, for one, you play a lot of scales. I play them until my hands ache. I feel like every sullen adolescent forced to practice by well-meaning parents. When was the last time I actually had to practice something, anyway? I'm out of practice at practicing.

For my piece, we choose Johann Strauss's The Blue Danube. It's a good choice for two reasons: One, it's in C major, so it's pretty much all white keys. Two, as a young nerd, I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey so many times that this lilting waltz is forever burned into my brain.

"The feeling is more important than the notes," Maya tells me. This is a little comforting but, squinting at the sheet music, both seem very far away. Still, every time I stumble through the melody with my right hand, I feel myself getting a tiny bit better. After a few days of rehearsal, I've got it all memorized. Now, I can focus on the playing itself. It feels like learning a superpower. I can actually play something that sounds almost like music! Now it's time for the left hand-rhythm. I learn that part even faster than the right; it's easy in comparison. Playing both at once, though? Another story.

I comfort myself with the idea that there is only so much I can do in two and a half weeks. I have a little recital scheduled-a mandatory benchmark my editor set for me-so I work at being able to play passably with my right. That's when I present myself to Amy Zanrosso, a concert pianist and a friend, to show her what I've learned.

Amy is a friendly, low-pressure woman, but I still feel nauseated the day of the recital. Sitting at her grand piano-quite the step up from my tiny Yamaha, with its annoying habit of often not playing notes when you hit more than one key at a time-I'm exhilarated and terrified. I play.

"The way you move between the positions is pretty fluid," says Amy, adding that my progress is "good for two weeks." She tells me the most important thing is patience-patience for the weeks and months and years of practice I'll need to get anywhere near impressive.

I can't sit down and casually dazzle dinner guests with my virtuosity yet, but at least it feels like a goal I might conceivably achieve one day-distant, but not impossibly far away. And I can still play a killer C major scale. Hey, it's just the white keys.

-MARK SLUTSKY

CAR AND DRIVER

or, How a Resolute Nondriver, With the Help of a 1976 Mercedes-Benz, Finally Learns to Love the Wheel.

My father is a true Midwest-erner: He has long equated his independence with a two-door sedan. When I was a kid, he would disappear for hours in that long-nosed steel-blue jalopy, driving around Montreal in search of the few spots where NPR comes in without static. The car was his home away from home. He loved it.

I loved it too, from the backseat.

When my 16th birthday came and went without me taking so much as one driver's ed class, my father, like most of the reasonable people in my life, was concerned. Who needs a license? I thought. I'm 16, living downtown with three girlfriends, and I've memorized the numbers of every cab company in the city. "It's a basic life skill," my father would say. "Just do it. Get it over with."

As it turns out, I take after my mother. She rode her bike to work in dresses until she hunkered down at 35 and got a license, not that she used it much. To this day, she won't drive on highways-a sure sign that people should not learn to drive at an age when they understand that, unlike teenagers, grownups are mortals. Driving, I reasoned, is dangerous and unnecessary. I would walk and bike and learn to love taxis. I might even have a boyfriend with a car one day.

When I moved to New York, I felt right at home. There were nondrivers everywhere, and they were proud of it. I even stopped caring when people, ever generous, would say, "So you never got the piece of paper, but you can still drive, right?" Depends on what you mean by drive. A boyfriend let me drive his car around a park in Brooklyn once, and I laughed so hard he made me pull over. If anyone had told me then that years later I'd be cramming for the privilege to risk my life behind the wheel of a car, I'd have rolled my eyes.

And yet for the past two weeks, I've carried my DMV study guide with me everywhere I go-meetings, subway rides, work, bars. A co-worker quizzes me in the morning, which helps. Then he tells me to think of myself as the front left wheel of the car, which doesn't. Before the front left wheel of anything is going to make sense to me, I'll have to pass my theory test.

The Department of Motor Vehicles in lower Manhattan is, like all DMVs, a great equalizer. Everyone takes a number to take a number, the lines seem endless, and no one goes to the right window on their first try. When my number finally blinks overhead, my stomach drops. It's my second attempt at passing the test this week, and my confidence is shaken. In the hour I've been here, six spastic teenagers have whizzed through their tests and passed. The only two adults I see-a 30-something woman and a recent arrivé from Bangladesh-do not.

"Take your time," says the guy behind the counter, mustering a reassuring smile. I take his advice, and in a few minutes he exclaims, "You passed." I feel like a million bucks.

A week later, I'm in Long Island with friends-the perfect place for me to practice. My friend Katie will handle the highways; I'll do the parking lots and the side streets. A friend has agreed to let me practice on his pristine 1976 Mercedes-Benz, which turns out to be just the boost I need. It suits me, I tell myself. I feel like a pro. Within five minutes of my first lesson in an empty parking lot, a security guard zooms our way. "Is this a driving lesson, or angel dust?" he asks.

He's kidding, kind of, but I take it as a cue to be careful. In no time, I'm cornering tight turns, speeding up and stopping at imaginary stop signs, even reversing into a parking spot, clear on both sides. It isn't parallel parking, but it's a start-baby steps. About an hour later, Katie decides I'm ready for real streets. As I pull out of the parking lot, making a left turn, then a right, I'm exhilarated.

As I roll along the quiet road, I understand for the first time how my father could spend hours in his Plymouth, alone with the road and the radio, clearheaded, in control. I feel calm. But just as I pull around a bend, another car comes into view. Panicked, I slam on the brake, jamming the shifter into park at the same time. The car grunts at me, furious. I'm done for today, I tell them. I'll practice again soon, and I'll get my license, but I'm done for today. Baby steps, indeed.
- SIOBHAN O'CONNOR

HOOP DREAMS

or, How One Man, Disgraced on the Basketball Court as a Teenager, Tries to Conquer Rucker Park

On May 28, 1994, some stranger with anger-management issues and an ugly pair of goggles humiliated me in front of my friends. We were on opposing teams playing five-on-five basketball and he was taking it way too seriously. At one point, he scored, glared at me, and screamed, "Ahhhh! What?" in my direction. I shouldn't have laughed. Seconds later, we were chest to chest. I was 15 years old at the time. He had a receding hairline and muscles.

In the 14 years since, I've used every excuse to avoid playing pickup basketball-"My legs are tired." "I don't own basketball sneakers." "My ball is flat." If I did shoot hoops, it was typically in the morning, and it was clear to me that something was sorely missing-and not just other people on the court. Practice is fun and all, but what's the point if you never compete?

Determined to play again, I call up my old neighbor Harry, a former member of the Greek Junior National Team. "Are you in shape?" he asks me. "Sure." "But are you in basketball shape?" I have no clue, but at our first practice together, it's quickly made clear that I'm not. He recommends some drills.

Now, if there's anything more embarrassing than writing about "six-inch slides," "suicides," and "pitty-pats," it's performing them in public at 8 a.m. Twice a week for three weeks, I do at least three sets of each and then shoot around (by myself, of course). Finally, I'm ready for game action. I think.

A masochist by nature, I decide to jump straight to the toughest game in New York-Harlem's Rucker Park. It's where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played back when he was still called Lew Alcindor. Wilt Chamberlain played here too; so did Dr. J. And it's here that I, at 29 years of age, will make my triumphant return to the court. But first, I will need an in. I enlist Bobbito Garcia, a New York City asphalt legend who has played professionally in Puerto Rico.

Armed with my official NBA Spalding and my new buddy Garcia, I hit the Rucker to play some three-on-three pickup basketball. He advises me that the best way to get into a pick-up game is asking, "Who got last next?" That and going with a friend, because if you're not dressed appropriately, you can prepare to watch from the sidelines. "Right now, you look horrible," he tells me. "Don't wear [Nike] Dunks, they haven't been a performance shoe for over 20 years." I cringe and hope that he doesn't comment on the NYU gym shorts I'm wearing under my warm-ups.

Our third man, Roman Perez, a 21-year-old with a really smooth jump shot, informs us that we're up next. Our opponents include Yuta and Bang Lee, two guys from Japan who moved to New York for the specific purpose of playing more streetball. (Outdoor courts are rare in Japan; New York has hundreds.) I spend most of the first game setting screens for Garcia and Perez and chasing around Yuta on defense. All those six-inch slides and I'm still not in basketball shape. I'm sweating buckets and turning a dangerous shade of red. After the game, which we win, Yuta offers me some sunscreen. I accept because I don't feel like explaining that my complexion has nothing to do with the sun.

Our next run doesn't go so well, for me at least. Once again we're victorious, but I blow a wide-open game-clinching layup. Luckily, we get the ball back and score. Later, as I walk down Frederick Douglass Boulevard, I can't shake that miss. This is a good thing. It means I'm not satisfied with just participating. That evening, I call Garcia for his post-game analysis. "You did your thing," he says. "You didn't chuck and you didn't talk shit." Translation: If you're a beginner, only shoot when open and don't be a jerk. Over these next months, I'll keep playing. I'm going to work on my lateral movement, and keep at the pitty-pats. More importantly, though, I'm going to buy some new sneakers.
- THOMAS GOLIANOPOULOS

SPANGLISH

or, How One Woman Uses Her Mastery of Italian to Conquer Spanish in Two Weeks

It's Friday afternoon and Benjamin Bratt is standing at my front door. He says his name is Marlon, he's from Language Trainers, and he's here to teach me Spanish, but that doesn't change the fact that he's the spitting image of the actor-albeit with an Ecuadorian accent. I realize now, and will come to think this several times over the next few weeks, that my doorman must suspect untoward activity. The work-from-home writer in 10H seems to have taken a Latin lover. And it's the guy from Law & Order.

I have exactly four classes to master Spanish-or at least memorize enough words to order dinner. As it stands, my foreign-language skill set includes a hundred words of Swedish, high school French, and fairly decent Italian. But unlike Swedish or Italian, Spanish is not a language of diminishing importance-there are (almost) entire continents that speak it, not to mention large pockets of New York.

Marlon starts me off with the verb "to be" (ser) and the other verb "to be" (estar). I'm already annoyed. Why would any language need to two forms of "I am"? Naturally, I think I can make it better. Forgetting for a moment that I don't speak Spanish, I decide that it's up to me to tweak the language spoken by billions of people for thousands of years, to make it smoother, more logical, smarter. This is part of my process. Right between denial and acceptance, between prepositions and Marlon's work sheet for "Things Found in the Kitchen."

No matter how many times I do it, learning a new language is discombobulating. Not only is it hard to find the signposts pointing to comprehension, but it's hard to read them even when you find them. I can't get through the process without fighting off the twin demons of confusion and shame-which I remember all too well from my AP French class. So I just say "What?" 75 times until I get it.

And eventually, I do. Between classes, I've been slipping Spanish words into conversations with my husband and the Dominican guy at the deli, rolling my "R"s, lisping my "Z"s, and flicking my tongue on the back of my teeth for that satisfying "nyah" sound. By my last class, I feel great. Tonight, for my final exam, I will have dinner in Spanish Harlem-where I'm going to order an entire meal in Spanish. No pointing, no dictionary, no pictures, no English. Bring on the cervezas! Another dash of sal, senorita! Mas agua, por favor!

Marlon looks a little panicky. "We will practice," he says warily. He stands up and, wielding an imaginary pen, folds an imaginary napkin over his arm, poised to take my order. This goes on for a few minutes, and as I say my muchas gracias para todo, I silently hope my husband is okay with soup for dinner. Because if he wants pasta, I'll have no idea how to order it.

Later, we head up to my final exam at a tiny restaurant on East 116th Street, where the corner delis have taqueria counters and men wear cowboy boots. I sweat through my very choppy dinner order, managing to request water with no ice. I even haltingly ask the cute Mexican waitress to stick to the Español. She seems confused. It's clearly so painful for me, and she has a decent grasp of restaurant English, but she's a good sport. She plays along.

As the dinner continues and the beer bottles multiply, my Spanish gets muy meglio. Soon I'm telling the waitress that I'm a vegetariana, that I favor food that is speziato, and that dinner was eccellente.

When we get up to leave, the waitress gives us a warm goodbye and laughs a little. "I think I did pretty well," I say to my husband. "I wonder why she's smiling."

He smiles too. "Probably because you were speaking Italian."

- DANIELLE PERGAMENT

Class Action

Eric Smillie — Mon, 8 Sep 2008 13:57:05 PDT

Why are more public school educators than ever before leaving the field after only a few years in the classroom? Seven teachers take us to school.

Anyone who thinks,

Kelley Watson, 27

Years taught in public school: 3
Classes taught: 10th-grade biology in Miami and Oakland, California
Current status: Teacher, still in Oakland

Luckily for me, I don't have a husband, I don't have a boyfriend, and I don't have kids. I can't imagine how other teachers that have these things, or even a dog, can do it. It's a 24-hour-a-day job. This year at my school, half of the teachers are not returning, and we have a staff of about 23. Teachers keep leaving, and you can't blame them. It can be really stressful, and I feel really unsupported by my administration, the district, sometimes even by other teachers, and that can be really isolating and destructive to your morale. You try to make a difference and you're blocked at every step, and that can be very disheartening. Honestly, if it wasn't for coaching track and field and having those kids that really want to be out there, and not much preventing me from doing what I want with it, I wouldn't be all that into teaching, either.

Denise Santos, 29

Years taught in public school: 3
Classes taught: Hearing-impaired students in preschool and kindergarten, and 2nd and 6th grade, in Arlington, Texas
Current status: Speech language pathologist in San Francisco

I loved teaching more and more every year, but I knew that a lot of people get burned out. Paperwork and planning definitely play a factor in that-especially in special education. The class groups you get can also affect your desire to continue teaching. You can end up with a great one or a really difficult one. Testing rules everything now. In Texas, teachers are always frantically preparing for the next set of tri-annual benchmark exams and the standard state test at the end of the year.

Freeden Oeur, 27

Years taught in public school: 2
Classes taught: 6th grade in Philadelphia
Current status: Graduate student in sociology at University of California, Berkeley

I had a really difficult time, especially my first year. I just felt paralyzed by a lot of things I saw. Sometimes, I would be overwhelmed emotionally and psychologically and that hampered my ability to do things in the classroom. I tried to make a separation between my home life and my work life, and even that was impossible. I had a lot of conversations with parents and students at night and there was always a lot of grading. I think that many young or new teachers in disadvantaged schools exert a great deal of energy dealing with loneliness, bureaucratic stuff, a lack of resources, and classroom management, feeling like there's little support within the school, that they aren't able to just concentrate on instruction.

Steve Thrush, 29

Years taught in public school: 4
Classes taught: High school math, all levels, in Brooklyn, New York
Current status: Graduate student in business at Columbia University

After business school, I want to connect investors to private and charter high schools that have the latitude to do things that are successful with their students. Hopefully that will influence and inspire public policy. I think that what I've learned as a teacher will make me a good person to be looking at these types of things. I think I might be best serving the people that I care the most about by doing [education] policy. And I won't lie to you: There's also a financial element to it. While I don't think that money is the only factor, we need to pay teachers better so that it's clearer to people that education is valuable and the status of teachers is raised-and so those people who are giving this education are able to make some money.

Jacob Mnookin, 28

Years taught in public school: 3
Classes taught: 9th- and 10th-grade English in Newark, New Jersey
Current status: Founder, Coney Island Preparatory Public Charter School

By the end of three years, I was totally spent emotionally and physically; I felt like I'd been teaching for 30 years. I was really struggling at first and I wanted more support than the school was able to give. We had five principals in the time I was there, and I was observed only twice. For the 42 minutes a day that I had my students, I could make a difference and do wonderful things, but that's just a drop in a bucket. So I'm opening a charter school in Brooklyn. I want to create a place where teachers look forward to getting feedback and use that to grow professionally. Every week, we'll have observations and three hours of built-in professional development. I hope those things will create an exciting atmosphere where everybody wants to get better at teaching.

Jimena Gomez-Lobo, 35

Years taught in public school: 8
Classes taught: 3rd-, 4th-, and 5th-grade in San Francisco
Current status: Teacher, 7th- and 8th-grade math at an independent private school

The first year that I taught, I would come home and cry almost every Wednesday; I can't believe I stuck through it. Teachers really want to connect with the kids but you end up more of a disciplinarian and don't have much one-on-one time with them. Teachers I knew took jobs in lower grades just to have more of that; their sanity was worth the pay cut. Now I'm at an independent, private school and it's a 180-degree change. I'm given a lot of freedom over the curriculum and I have more support. There's a resource specialist who's not overbooked, and my school has a separate fund for teachers' professional development. Now I feel the opposite of burned out. If I'd known that a job like the one I have now existed, I would have left teaching in the urban public setting long before.

Kris Swett, 30

Years taught in public school: 3
Classes taught: 11th-grade U.S. history in Ukiah, California
Current status: Graduate student in education at California State University, Chico

Because of the budget crisis, I was given a pink slip this year, even though I was voted Teacher of the Year last year. Whenever they make layoffs, they go strictly by the years taught. The governor proposed a new budget, which might have saved my job, but I didn't want to stick around and wait to find out. I have two kids and a family, and I'm bringing home almost nothing anyway. I think most public school teachers leave because of the low pay. I developed a teaching system in my first year that some teachers are now using and I want to go back to school and work on it. I want to publish it, maybe make a bit of money and be able to go back to teaching. It's just such a shame that I'm even considering giving up something that I love so, so dearly.

School Wars

Gary Stager — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:49:22 PDT

This summer, as I listened to the unbridled joy of children playing outside my window, I read a New York Times article about first graders being placed in "Gift of Time" summer schools. For nearly 12 percent of first graders in East Ramapo, New York, summer break means being held back and receiving a "gift" of tutoring, with an extra order of tutoring on the side. Somehow, we are to believe that this will help slower children catch up.

Except they can't catch up. When they return to school in the fall, according to the Times article, they'll be segregated in their own small classes made up of other kids deemed "low-performers." At an age when children should be falling in love with learning, these children will be labeled, shamed, and tracked. Such practices have been discredited by a substantial body of research (if not common sense) and yet more and more schools across the country are implementing similarly punitive practices. Schools are seeing recess eliminated, electives are being cut, and teachers are insulted by the prospect of having their career and income threatened by their students' scores on a single multiple-choice test. All in the name of No Child Left Behind, a mathematically impossible piece of federal education legislation, which requires all of the nation's schoolchildren to be above the mean on standardized tests by 2014.

Our schools may very well be in crisis, but not for the reasons bandied about in the press. The crisis is not based on teacher pay, lack of accountability, or a lack of rigor. The problem is that we do not create productive contexts for learning in which the needs of each child are met as their talent, interest, curiosity, and passion are amplified. The last thing we need is another sweeping top-down reform. In fact, it is my belief that the dominant solution to any educational challenge will be wrong and make the problem worse.

The tragedy of No Child Left Behind, and the private and public efforts to undo its damage, is that not every child is given the chance to achieve her full potential in a caring, creative, dynamic, and intellectually rich environment. And in the absence of ongoing classroom innovation and grassroots advocacy, NCLB has taken over.

These days, anyone who attended school is an expert in education and everybody has a plan to "fix" the public schools-the philanthropist, the businessman, the bureaucrat, the politician. For ages, business leaders and politicians have wanted to privatize the entire system and let the marketplace sort things out-as it did with Enron, Chinese pet food, or oil prices. Now, they're taking control of schools through philanthropy. Parents of means, meanwhile, are opting out in record numbers, sending their children to private schools, or charter schools, or are homeschooling them. Indeed, as the federal government has steadily eroded public support for the public school system, through propaganda and failed policies, children are the collateral victims. The winners of the school wars remain uncertain; the losers can be found in almost any classroom.

Of course, none of this is altogether new. People have been trying to fix schools for as long as schools have existed, but the tone shifted in 1983, when the Reagan administration published "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform." The report began with alarming rhetoric not heard since Sputnik: "The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people."

"A Nation at Risk," which claimed that educational issues presented a threat to our very freedom, changed the tenor of educational discourse. "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today," the report said, "we might well have viewed it as an act of war." For an administration committed to eliminating the Department of Education, these predictions of an imminent apocalypse were the tool of choice to reshape the educational system.

But it wasn't until the first President Bush that the government made a serious push for help from the private sector. Bush thought business leaders might be able to help fix public schools by running them more like businesses. So in 1989, he asked the Business Roundtable (300 CEOs and governors) to try to reform education, since governors and CEOs-administrators all-share similar temperaments and a desire to impose top-down policies. Armed with corporate war chests and support from governors, the Roundtable's influence met little resistance.

Uninterested in the complexities associated with teaching and learning, the Business Roundtable demanded that state legislatures impose "outcome-based education," "high expectations for all children," "rewards and penalties for individual schools," and "greater school-based decision making." In order to enforce and measure these voluminous imperatives, standardized testing would be required. It sounds familiar now-these are the core tenets of NCLB-but at the time, the idea of applying the rules of business and competition to education was relatively new.

These efforts fuelled the higher-standards movement. It's hard to argue against raising educational standards, but imposing uniform curricula and teaching practices leads to a paradoxical lowering of standards.

The Business Roundtable continued thinking about education through Clinton's two terms-eight years during which nothing lasting changed the course of education reform-until today. Even though the public has lost some interest in buying what they were peddling, the damage wrought by the Roundtable persisted: Standards, and the measuring of standards, ruled all.

Quote:

It is my belief that the dominant solution to any educational challenge will be wrong and make the problem worse.

Rod Paige, George W. Bush's first Secretary of Education, took his post after being the superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, where he presided over the "Houston Miracle" in the 1990s. Paige, who wrote his doctoral thesis on the reaction time of offensive linemen in football, was responsible for a remarkable increase in student test scores and a substantial reduction in the dropout rate across the Houston schools. Except that the test scores were cooked and the dropout reduction was the result of at-risk students disappearing from his district like Brazilian street children.

The Houston Miracle soon became the model for the massive, standards-based No Child Left Behind Act, enacted in 2001. NCLB represented the most radical federal education initiative in history, passing easily in Congress with bipartisan support. Even today, both presumptive presidential candidates intend to keep the law in place, albeit with amendments.

As it stands, NCLB requires continuous improvement in academic achievement. At-risk children failing to make adequate progress are subjected to an extra helping of the very same instruction that has already proven ineffective. Electives are taken away, while teachers in "low-performing" schools are given scripted curricula with ambitious titles like "Success for All!" A teacher in Miami might be greeted by a lesson in mid-November that requires them to read, "Brrr! It's cold outside today. I wonder what the temperature is? Maybe it will snow." But nothing is more central to NCLB than standardized tests.

When most of us were children, we took standardized tests once a year for a few half days. The tests were a temporary distraction intended to offer one indicator of progress or aptitude. A teacher's reputation or salary was not at risk; administrators didn't feel compelled to cheat; and third graders certainly didn't vomit on the test booklet. (Some NCLB tests actually come with instructions for what to do when a student hurls on a test.) When a child comes home from school, parents don't ask, "Which quartile toward annual yearly progress were you in?" They ask, "What did you do today?" Since knowledge is a consequence of experience, it's critical that children be engaged in learning activities that nurture their soul, expand their interests, build upon personal talents, and challenge their thinking. But today's standardized tests-proudly called "high-stakes" by their proponents-trump all else. The theory behind the tests seems to be analogous to the theory that taking a sick patient's temperature every seven minutes will cure him.

Students in some cities and states can spend months each year engaged in test-taking. That does not include the incessant preparation for those tests. Just a few years ago, policy leaders would say, "Don't teach to the test," since it makes the results less valid and detracts from the richness of classroom activity. All of that has changed. Today politicians are unapologetic when they say, "Of course you should teach to the test! How else are you going to raise test scores?"

It has long been said that voters hate Congress, but like their own representative. The same is true for schools. Parents hate schools, but they love their child's school. This affection for neighborhood schools may help explain why previous efforts to revolutionize public education have failed: People felt that in general something needed to be done, but their schools were doing just fine.

But NCLB's shame, blame, and name-calling, accompanied by a steady stream of negative media accounts, miserable children, and low test scores, may finally push parents past the breaking point. A loving parent cannot help but be concerned by constant, very public reports of their children failing and their school underperforming. Perhaps the singular accomplishment of NCLB is the erosion of community support for public education. If parents do not trust their school, they are likely to withdraw their support and seek private alternatives. And that's exactly what they're doing. Homeschooling and private-school enrollment are on the rise; there are more charter schools than ever. And when that many people withdraw from thinking about and participating in the school, things go downhill even more quickly.

With the business community, politicians, and parents hysterical about public schools, the conditions are right for something really big to happen. But major changes in schooling are costly and require bold leadership. A bake sale isn't going to do the job. And so, over the past decade, two billionaires have stepped onto the scene. Taking it upon themselves to rescue public schools from teachers, administrators, parents, organized labor, and even democracy itself, Bill Gates and Eli Broad are turning public-primarily urban-education upside down.

The philanthropic work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the areas of health, education, and poverty is well documented, and Bill Gates's generosity is unprecedented. The foundation's well-intentioned investments in public education have not been particularly destructive or effective. Although they have spent more than a billion dollars to date on school-reform initiatives, the foundation's grants-given to wildly conflicting models of education and primarily focused on making schools smaller-have been met with mixed success.

More intimate schools with smaller class sizes are good for kids, who get more attention from teachers, form closer social bonds, and don't get lost in the crowd. However, you cannot change just one variable in a system this complex and expect total transformation. Also, despite the enormous benefits of small schools, there are consequences as well. It may be impossible to maintain electives, extracurricular activities, sports, or student diversity in small schools. A 2006 Business Week article detailed how a Denver high school known for its award-winning choir crumbled when students were dispersed to three different "small" schools within the building. Surely, the program could have been preserved even when the school was divided, but the Gates Foundation says it doesn't like to meddle. Additional focus and oversight by the foundation might ensure that the public schools to which it grants money actually improve.

Quote:

It's hard to argue against raising educational standards, but imposing uniform curricula and teaching practices leads to a paradoxical lowering of standards.

Eli Broad, a Los Angeles billionaire, is another kind of philanthropist. Broad funds a narrower range of interventions and has demonstrated less willingness to experiment than Gates. Broad's efforts advance a very specific model: top-down school management based on business principles. Over the first five years, Broad has committed over $500 million to his notions of school reform. He even runs an academy that trains school leaders in precisely this kind of management.

Broad's money supports more standardized testing, a longer school day, scripted curricula, merit pay, the replacement of school administrators with managers, support of charter schools, and mayoral control. In Broad's worldview, incentives drive everything, including education. The annual Broad Prize for Urban Education gives a total of $1 million dollars to five urban school districts that do the most to raise student test scores. The award also grants college scholarships to students in the district. That sort of money and the press it attracts has a domino effect: All of a sudden, others want to get tough and adhere to the Broad manifesto, too.

In 2002, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his newly appointed schools chancellor, Joel Klein, seized control of New York City's public schools, disbanding local school boards and reducing community involvement. Under Klein and Bloomberg, test scores may have risen, but chaos has ensued as the organizational structure of the district changes continuously. Now, policies similar to Broad's educational blueprint are being followed in the city's public schools. Last year, New York City earned the coveted Broad Prize.

Broad and his followers also embrace charter schools. Charters are quasi-public schools that receive public funding but don't have to play by the same rules; they have more latitude than public schools, including the freedom to use different curricula, employ non-credentialed educators, change the school calendar, ban unions, and be selective in student enrollment. In some cities, affluent parents use the charter laws to create private schools with public money. In others, like the New City Schools in Long Beach, California, innovative educators with a coherent vision of edu-cation teach in ways they believe will benefit children in their community.

It is natural for parents to want the best for their children. Unfortunately, the charter laws may create greater educational inequity-rich, involved parents get their kids into the best charter schools, leaving only the poor students behind in the slowly deserted public schools. This forced choice could be avoided if every school was shaped by its teachers, parents, and community, with all children free to attend the school best-suited to their needs or interests. For example, the Montclair, New Jersey, public schools have experienced decades of success with mandatory school choice. Each elementary school is distinct and parents are required to choose the best option for their child.

Broad recently gave a total of $23.3 million to two charter-school umbrella groups, the Knowledge Is Power Program and Aspire, to open 17 new charter schools in Los Angeles this fall. KIPP is known for its uniforms, longer days and school year, Saturday sessions, strict rules, and lots of homework. Supporters hail this formula as a boon to Angelenos, citing the schools' remarkable success at raising test scores. Critics, meanwhile, fear that students who don't get with the program quickly enough will vanish. Regard-less of whether these schools offer solutions to the challenges of urban education or not, opening so many of them so quickly may be considered reckless and surely dispenses with public involvement.

In a new twist on the public-charter debate, Broad and his colleagues have also convinced school districts to hand over public schools to private or nonprofit charter-management companies. These companies are given the use of public facilities and get to run what are essentially private schools in them. That not only removes a public resource from the community, but also gives a handful of charter providers a hefty advantage over the community-based charters. With a little imagination, it's easy to guess where this is headed.

Traditionally, corporate philanthropy in education consisted of a speaker on career day or sponsorship of a softball team. I'm all for generosity, but I'm also for accountability. And I wonder, to whom are the Gateses and the Broads of the world accountable? They were not elected or even appointed, but their money is changing the ways public schools operate. They may do this for altruistic reasons, but what is a citizen's recourse if their ideology harms children? And, worse, what happens if a billionaire finally throws up his or her hands and publicly exclaims, "Even I can't fix the public schools"? Our schools may not be able to survive the sudden cash withdrawal-or the backlash.

One way to navigate this new era of "giving" is by asking a simple question: Would these folks send their own children or grandchildren to their "reinvented" schools? Is a steady diet of memorization, work sheets, and testing the sort of education the children they love receive? Of course not. If affluent children enjoy beautiful campuses, arts programs, interesting literature, modern technology, field trips, carefree recess, and teachers who know them, I suggest that we create such schools for all children. What's good for the sons and daughters of the billionaires should be good enough the rest of the children, too.

Amending No Child Left Behind won't fix these problems. Neither will asking the billionaires and businessmen to try to be a little more careful with our children's education. These solutions filled the void we created with our own apathy and complacency. And we are not powerless to reverse the recent trends and make public schools wondrous learning environments for all children.

But in order to achieve such equity of opportunity, parents need to be vigilant and take a stand. Parents can go to back-to-school night this fall. If the science lab contains no equipment, they should demand to know why and not wait patiently while the district hopes they forget. If their first grader was excited about going to school, but by the third day cries hysterically and says, "The teacher hates me," his concerns should be taken seriously. If their kid's school is test-obsessed, parents should let teachers and administrators know that they expect more of an education. If every parent was vocally fighting for the best public schools for their children-instead of some of the most involved and caring opting out in disgust-the government would be forced to listen.

Because despite their flaws, inequities, and shortcomings, public schools are an American treasure owned by the citizens, and we should treat them as a public trust.

Affirmative Action: A History

Alexandra Hoefinger — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:47:18 PDT

The struggle to define-and achieve-equality in education

See also "The Fixer," our profile of Ward Connerly and his state-by-state campaign to end racial quotas.

1865
During Reconstruction, the Freedmen's Bureau is established to promise equal education and employment opportunities for former slaves.

1961
President Kennedy issues Executive Order 10925, designed to eliminate discrimination in federal agencies.

1964
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, outlawing discrimination of all kinds based on race, creed, color, or national origin.

1972
The Equal Employment Opportunity Act is passed, laying the foundation for affirmative-action laws.

1978
In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 against inflexible racial quotas in college admissions.

1980
In Fullilove v. Klutznick, the Supreme Court rules in favor of reasonable admission and hiring quotas by allowing that 10 percent of federal funds for public works go to qualified minorities.

1995
President Clinton endorses federal affirmative-action policies with his message "Mend it, don't end it."

1996
California Proposition 209 is passed, implementing statewide bans on racial quotas in public education, employment, and contracts.

1998
The people of Washington State follow California in banning affirmative action, passing Initiative 200.

2000
Florida passes the "One Florida" plan, but incorporates a program that guarantees the top 20 percent of high school students admission to the University of Florida system.

2003
In two cases on the University of Michigan's admission policies, the Supreme Court finds that the school can work to create a diverse student body, but could not use race as an overriding factor in admissions.

2006
Voters in Michigan pass the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, resulting in a statewide ban on affirmative action in colleges and government contracting.

2008
Voters in Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska will say yea or nay to affirmative-action bans in schools and government contracts on November 4.

The Fixer

Adam Matthews — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:47:59 PDT

A short while ago, Ward Connerly, the indefatigable anti-affirmative-action crusader, was visiting Kevin Johnson, the former guard for the Phoenix Suns. Johnson is a Democrat who runs the St. Hope Academy, which helps at-risk kids. He is also running for mayor of Sacramento. "I was making my database available to him to get contributions," Connerly recalls. "And I'm walking out and this attractive black woman looked at me and said, ‘Are you who I think you are?'"

"And I said, ‘Who do you think I am?'"

"Ward Connerly?" the woman replied, her face registering her shock.

"That's who I am."

"What are you doing here?" she asked him.

"And I said, ‘I'm supporting my friend.'"

For Connerly, 69, widely credited with halving the black student population at the University of California at Berkeley, the encounter carried great significance. Here, a man who has dedicated the better part of his life to dismantling affirmative action suddenly felt pigeonholed. "Why do we put people into these boxes and say that they're monolithic of thought?" he says now, reclining in his chair at the Westin hotel in Washington, D.C. "The general notion is that I just want to take away opportunities for minorities rather than [that] I don't think what we're doing now works. There is a better way to solve the problem."

Ward Connerly is seated comfortably in a dining room that opens onto a rear patio of the cushy Westin. He seems at ease in these environs, attired in the uniform of a middle-aged man of means: chinos, a white-and-blue-checked button-down, a navy blazer, sensible loafers. A neat moustache frames his mouth. He has high cheekbones, significant jowls, and straight salt-and-pepper hair that rings a prominent bald spot. His default expression is skepticism. A few tense moments earlier, his face creased and his eyes bore into mine. He was trying to figure out if he was being set up for another hit piece.

As the most vilified conservative black man since Clarence Thomas, Ward Connerly has grown tired of defending himself. He has walked off the stage when confronted by hostile college students, and said no to many interviews. He has built a career on taking stances unpopular with both blacks and conservatives, and expects the criticism, he says, to an extent. "I'm no right-wing extremist," he maintains. "How can you characterize a guy who sides with gays on marriage as a right-wing extremist?"

In the 12 years that he's been campaigning against racial quotas in higher education, he's been called much worse. He's been dismissed as a "house negro" by his opponents, who tirelessly chronicle his every move through a network of labor, civil-rights, and legal-advocacy groups. His supporters, meanwhile, feel he's championing the idea of a post-racial society, one in which merit trumps skin color and socioeconomics are a primary issue.

Connerly came to the fore of the affirmative-action debate in 1996. As a University of California regent-one of the 26 governing members of the state's university system-Connerly championed a ballot initiative called Proposition 209, the biggest blow to the use of racial quotas in college admissions since, well, ever. Fifty-four percent of California's electorate ultimately voted for Prop 209, which banned the consideration of race in public hiring, contracting, and admissions to the University of California, the largest state-run university system in the world. But Connerly didn't stop there. Two years later, he championed I-200, a similar ballot initiative in Washington State, and then in 2000 he helped Florida's Governor Jeb Bush push an affirmative-action ban through the state legislature.

Now, he is taking the effort nationwide. Through his American Civil Rights Institute, a nonprofit that he founded with Thomas L. "Dusty" Rhodes in 1996, Connerly has sponsored eight major anti-affirmative action initiatives. In 2006, his initiative banning affirmative action was passed by a 16-point margin in Michigan, and the last year he embarked on his most ambitious campaign to date: Super Tuesday for Equal Rights, a well-organized, well-funded drive to end sex- and race-based preferences in public universities, hiring, and contracting in five states-Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, and Arizona. If all those initiatives were to pass into law, it would be a precedent-setting assault on the nationwide effort to preserve affirmative action.

Quote:

Connerly's crusade to end affirmative action is powered by a complex money web that connects the same handful of conservative heavyweights.

So far, Connerly has seen mixed results: The ACRI didn't gather enough signatures to get the measure on the Oklahoma and Missouri ballots; it landed on the Colorado ballot, but may not remain there, as it is being challenged in Denver district court; in early July, it made it onto the ballot in Nebraska and Arizona.

"What I am working on is getting rid of preferences based on race, and trying to force my country into the position of going with affirmative action based on socioeconomics," he says. "You know it would be naïve for anyone to believe that we have totally climbed to the mountaintop with Obama's nomination, [that] all racism is over. It's not. There is still a lot of stuff to be done, but I think we have to do it in a different way."

In Connerly's world, the racial playing field began to even out in the 1970s, and has been getting better ever since. For him quotas, at this point, are beside the point. As for what exactly he is proposing, his suggestions are less concrete. "The other thing I think we need to change," he says, "is how black people are viewed."

Wardell Anthony Connerly has lived long enough to see a shift in America's perception of black people. He was born in Leesville, Louisiana, just over the Texas line. His father abandoned the family when he was 2; he was 4 when his mother died. Shortly after that, Ward came north to live with his grandmother in Washington State; he later moved in with an aunt and uncle in Sacramento.

For the better part of his early years, Connerly lived in Del Paso Heights, a mixed, working-class neighborhood where options for higher education were limited. "There were only about four black kids in my neighborhood who wanted to go to college," he says. "And one of them had the wheels." He followed the kid with the car to American River Junior College. By the time he graduated, he was student-body president.

In 1959, Connerly transferred to Sacramento State University, where he again became student-body president, as well as chairing the committee against housing discrimination and becoming the first black member of his fraternity. While he was there, he formed close relationships with key faculty members, in particular a political-theory professor named John Livingston. "Dr. Livingston would end his lectures often by saying ‘We shall overcome,'" Ward recalls. "Not in a Black Panther style but just a suggestion of revving people up. And I once asked him, ‘How will we know if we've overcome?'" He gave Connerly three measures: "Number one, when a white girl can bring her [black] fiancé home to mom and dad and the dad not become apoplectic; second, when any white, no matter how lowly, is willing to walk in the shoes of any black, no matter how successful; the third test was when a black man could be seriously considered for President of the United States.' I think by his definition we have overcome."

Quote:

What I am working on is getting rid of preferences based on race … The other thing is I think we need to change is how black people are viewed.

After graduating, in 1962, Connerly proved to be an adept networker. He spent four years in the office of state legislator Pete Wilson, who urged him to start Connerly & Associates, a land-use planning company. Their relationship was symbiotic: Wilson drove business his way; Connerly became a big Republican donor and a key ally. By 1991, Wilson had become governor of California. He appointed Connerly to the University of California Board of Regents.

Since then, Connerly has remained close to the right-wing power structure. His crusade to end affirmative action is powered by a complex money web that connects the same handful of conservative heavyweights-something that isn't lost on the progressive watchdogs who proliferate online. He has received money from Rupert Murdoch (he's also a Fox News darling), the Bradley Foundation (the same folks who funded The Bell Curve, the book that posits that black people are intellectually inferior to whites and Asians), the Coors family, and the now-defunct John M. Olin Foundation (which gave research money to libertarian ABC reporter John Stossel), to name a few.

The money trail bothers his critics, but not as much as some of Connerly's other strategies-particularly his portrayal of Super Tuesday as a series of grassroots campaigns that sprang up organically in states where he's sponsored the ballots. "It's all driven from out-of-state money and out-of-state ideology," says Craig Hughes, a Denver political consultant who is battling the Colorado ballot initiative. "There hasn't been any clamoring in the state of Colorado to ban equal-opportunity programs." Connerly claims he chose five states where there was popular support for repealing affirmative action. But look a little closer and the so-called "local" supporters-Arizona's Goldwater Institute, the Nebraska Association of Scholars, and Colorado's Independence Institute-and you'll see they're all connected to the same deep right-wing pockets as the ACRI.

Connerly is also paid handsomely for his crusade-a factor his critics think is his true motivation. He makes no apologies for his salary. When he's asked if reports that he makes as much as $400,000 per year are accurate, he flashes a quick smile and says ambiguously, "I hope it's more than that." As it turns out, it's much more. In 2003, he earned more than $1 million in compensation-the same year he was fined $95,000 by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for not disclosing who funded a proposed California ballot initiative. In his defense, the Heritage Foundation's Becky Norton Dunlop has said, "Most people who donate to causes such as this, that are controversial, recognize that talented and effective leaders must be compensated or they'll find other ways to make a living. Connerly's … willingness to speak out on the issue has had national impact." In other words, he's invaluable to the cause.

Quote:

If all three of Connerly's new ballot initiatives were to pass into law, it would be a precedent-setting assault on the nationwide effort to preserve affirmative action.

To critics like Shanta Driver, who heads an organization called the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, And Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (known as BAMN), it's unimaginable that a black man born in the Jim Crow South can in good conscience take money from opponents of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts like the Coors family. Driver thinks the real intent of Connerly's ballots is far more dire. She charges that his aim is to "resegregate higher education in America and through that to really restructure American society in a way that is once again aimed at preserving white privilege."

But Connerly feels unfairly targeted. "We are promoting a change in the system," he says. "They have the luxury of hanging back and throwing their barbs. I understand some of that, but there is no equality there. People don't ask them the same question. They never ask the NAACP or the ACLU ‘Where do you get your funding?'"

Since Proposition 209, the first large-scale affirmative action rollback, three of the four largest state university systems in the country-California, Florida, and Texas-have adopted similar programs. During this time, according to a graph trotted out by the American Civil Rights Institute, there has been an impressive increase in minority enrollment across the nine-campus University of California system. "We had this huge retention gap, a huge gap in the graduation rate, that is now beginning to close as people are going where they are academically competitive," Connerly says.

But the ACRI's data often clashes with dismal stats showing drops in black and Latino enrollment at the best schools in the system-like UCLA and Berkeley-according to a study the University of California published in 2008. ACRI data also doesn't account for California's demographic shifts: In 1989, underrepresented minorities (blacks, Latinos, American Indians, and Pacific Islanders) comprised 30 percent of all California high school graduates and 21 percent of freshman admitted to the university system. In 2006, that same group had grown to comprise 46 percent of high school graduates, but the number admitted to UC schools remained nearly the same.

The now-banned affirmative action system has been replaced with other official policies. There is the Connerly-championed "comprehensive review," which takes a holistic view of students. "We look at what school a student attended, what courses were offered, what courses you took, your socioeconomic conditions, whether you had a parent go to college," Connerly explains. Also, the top 4 percent of California high school graduates who have taken the required courses are guaranteed admission to the UC system. In schools that are de facto racially segregated, diversity will be achieved in a way that doesn't use quotas and is more palatable to conservatives. A third Connerly-backed pathway to the UC schools, through California's community colleges, is supposed to further mitigate the effects of the ban.

Still, the numbers don't quite add up. At UC schools, blacks still have the lowest system-wide admission rates of any ethnic group. The community-college pathway is also producing the lowest return for black students and for Latinos as well. And while admittance rates for blacks have skyrocketed at the university's least-competitive campuses-Riverside, Merced, and Santa Cruz-they've halved at the more prestigious Berkeley and UCLA. By this, Connerly seems unmoved. "Affirmative action might help a handful of [middle-class] black kids go to Berkeley with a heavy hand on the scale, rather than San Francisco State University on their own," he says.

With anti-affirmative-action efforts making it onto the ballots in Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska, Connerly's opponents fear similar effects on those student bodies.

Much of the debate between Connerly and his detractors revolves around the term "affirmative action" itself. Connerly draws a distinction between two phases of affirmative action. The first phase, which began with John F. Kennedy's Executive Order 10925 and was later bolstered by the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, made sure that the government did not discriminate. The second phase, proactively helping minorities, began in the mid-1960s, and can be summed up in the words of Lyndon Johnson, who once said, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line in a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair."

In practice, says Connerly, Johnson's is a policy that "[gives] certain groups of Americans what one can call preferential treatment-lower standards for college admission, contracts that are set aside … in the interest of diversity. I was in favor of LBJ's version at that moment in time. And I think we're beyond that point." Connerly says the shift occurred somewhere in the mid-1970s, when the notion "that black people needed a heavy hand on the scale in order to enter the mainstream of American life began to change."

Quote:

Affirmative action might help a handful of [middle-class] black kids go to Berkeley with a heavy hand on the scale, rather than SanFrancisco State University on their own.

Now Connerly wants the ACRI's ballot initiatives to enforce the precise language of the Civil Rights Act. But to the average person, the term "affirmative action" connotes specific diversity goals, not a general antidiscrimination statute. It's a language game conservatives play well, and Connerly is no exception. "The more you can say ‘affirmative action' and ‘equal-opportunity programs' in the ballot language, the better chance you have of winning," says Shanta Driver. "The more the question is posed as ‘preferences,' the better chance the Connerly people have of winning. There's a real [debate] about how you pose questions, a real language fight."

This language fight has already landed one of Connerly's local proxies in hot water. During the 2006 Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, the United States District Court found that the Michigan chapter of the ACRI engaged in "systematic voter fraud" by telling voters that they were signing a petition supporting affirmative action. (Ultimately, since the court found that "the MCRI appears to target all Michigan voters by deception without regard to race," it was not found to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act.) And there is credible evidence the ACRI used similar tactics during 2008's five-state signature-gathering drive for the Super Tuesday initiative.

With signature gathering complete in all five states, the stakes have remained high. Connerly charges that "union thugs" were being paid to prevent his people from circulating petitions in Missouri. But opponents from a broad-based coalition called We Can Missouri say they were only conducting voter education.

The group Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, meanwhile, faces similar charges. It turned in 129,000 signatures in support of the anti-affirmative-action ballot initiative in the state, almost double the required number. But the validity of more than half of those signatures is now being challenged in court. Its opponents would need to prove about 53,000 are false to have the petition disqualified. "We are challenging signatures like ‘Jesus' and ‘the Lord Jesus' as obviously not current registered voters in Colorado," says Craig Hughes.

Connerly, for his part, claims no real knowledge of the alleged fraud, saying that circulators are paid per petition-nothing to do with his campaign. For canvassers, he says, "it's not a matter of what they believe, it's a matter of how much money can they get. … Any time you attach a profit to it, the [potential for fraud] is unavoidable."

With all the back-and-forth bickering, the blood feud between Connerly and his opponents has no end in sight. Even as November nears, it seems clear that no matter the outcome in those five states, neither side will accept it quietly.

With Connerly's side claiming to have gathered enough signatures, Driver is preparing a lawsuit in Arizona to keep the initiative off the ballot there. In Colorado, Craig Hughes's lawsuit to have Connerly's signatures nullified also proceeds. And in Nebraska, David Kramer, the former chairman of the Nebraska Republican party, is leading a bipartisan measure to challenge the validity of the signatures gathered.

To Connerly, however, they are just delaying the inevitable: "The notion that we can use race as the entry point to solve social problems-that's dead," he says, looking past me, his eyes fixed on the hotel's patio. "And I'm not talking just race preferences. Race-based decision-making is dead."

Loose Parts Playgrounds

Morgan Clendaniel — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:28:14 PDT

Lower Manhattan, already a playground for New York's wealthy, is fast becoming the epicenter of playground innovation. In addition to the Teardrop Park, the tip of the island will soon be home to the Imagination Playground, a new play space designed, pro bono, by David Rockwell, the architect behind über-casino Mohegan Sun and the sets for the Broadway run of Hairspray. He conceived of the idea as a way to give back to the area after 9/11.

Being bowled over by his children's ability to find endless enjoyment in a cardboard box, Rockwell began to realize that he could design a playground that emphasized the imaginative power of young children, instead of just doing a slick architect's take on the kind of formulaic playgrounds so prevalent in the rest of the country.

The Imagination Playground is located at Burling Slip, where ships used to dock. Rockwell has preserved that maritime flavor with some core design elements, disrupting the sameness of play spaces. And where nature parks use the ever-changing natural world to offer fresh play experiences, the Imagination Playground uses blocks. In addition to a winding wooden ramp, a sandbox, and a water area, there are hundreds of blue foam blocks of various shapes and sizes. Stored in a container managed by a full-time staffer, the blocks are available to children, who can use them to build whatever they want.

"It allows kids to do what they do best," says Rockwell, "which is to build their own creative play space, take it apart, and start over again." This way of playing also encourages cooperation and problem-solving skills. "After the kids built their individual things, 15 minutes into it, they'd start to look at what someone else had built, and about how to link that to theirs."

Soon kids outside of the Financial District will also be able to revel in innovation of their own. Rockwell rolled out a smaller version of the play space-called Imagination Playground in a Big Box-in Brooklyn this summer, the first of many to come. Rockwell and the Imagination Playground have taken some heat for bringing only a small version of the playground to Brooklyn, and from some of the more strident nature proponents, who say that the portable playgrounds don't have a nature component. "Go to Brownsville [in Brooklyn] and see what loose objects you can find in nature," Rockwell retorts. A box of blocks may not be ideal, but it's a start.

To take this effort nationwide, Rockwell teamed up with KaBoom, an nonprofit organization that builds community in playgrounds around the country. KaBoom lets children design their ideal playgrounds, which parents and community leaders look through when selecting the playground's equipment. It plans to roll out Big Box playgrounds around the country in the first half next year.

This may be the biggest development for new kinds of playgrounds in decades. And as one of the largest purchasers of playground equipment in the country, KaBoom has a fairly strong influence over the entire industry, which may start to shift as it moves to embrace these new innovations.

"We're taking our muscle and experience, and applying it to design," says KaBoom's CEO, Darrell Hammond. "We have to build better habits by building better built environments." In order to do that, your old neighborhood hallmarks of swings and slides might be displaced by something unrecognizable. But kids will know just what it is: a better place to play.

SEE ALSO:

Fall Down, Go Boom
MORGAN CLENDANIEL rummages through the wasteland of contemporary playgrounds and finds some promising-and dangerous-innovations.

Alternative Playgrounds:
-Adventure Playgrounds
-Nature Playgrounds
-Loose Parts Playgrounds

Adventure Playgrounds

Morgan Clendaniel — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:14:27 PDT

There's an unusual park in Berkeley, California. Looking at it, "playground" probably wouldn't be your first thought. "Junkyard" is more like it, or "war zone." And, well, that would be accurate.

Berkeley's Adventure Playground is one of a handful of playgrounds in the United States based on a concept that grew in popularity after World War II. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark, the landscape architect C. Th. Sørensen created a new playground with whatever junk was available. It turned out, that's exactly what kids like. "The simplicity of the concept is still startling," writes Susan Solomon. "This idea-that kids are more interested in playing with what they find lying around than with what we think they should be playing-is the bedrock idea of all new play areas. Kids, whose lives are becoming increasingly structured by school, sports, music lessons, need time to do anything they want, and if it's not given to them, they will just take it."

Berkeley's Adventure Playground opened in 1979, and while a few others cropped up around the same time on the West Coast, it is now one of the few remaining in the country. There is no equipment, as such, in the park. Instead, kids are confronted with boards, spare tires, telephone poles, and lots and lots of mud.

It's important, when thinking about the Adventure Playground, to discard the notions you have of what a playground ought to be. It's this same imaginative surrender that allows children to build the playgrounds of their dreams. If they want a fort, they can put one together; if they want to splash in the mud puddle, no one is going to tell them not to. The freedom is liberating. It's also demanding: Skills like initiative and risk-taking are often unused, especially on a normal playground.

Naturally, some parents scratch their heads at the sound of this. But it's not a frightening forest of tetanus-bearing nails. When kids enter the park, each child must pick up "dangerous" objects, like pointy boards with nails in them, before they can have access to the park and its tools. As a result, the injury rate is something that would be bragged about at a union job site. Over a two-day period this summer, 700 children came through the Adventure Playground. The injury total was two fingers hit by hammers.

"There are no hidden risks here," says Donald. By forcing kids to assess the possibility of risk, they play more safely while also learning how to take care of themselves. There are also trained "play workers" on site, supervising. But they supervise lightly, Donald says. "You kill their creativity by hovering too close. There is a fine line between what's being creative and what's being dangerous."

Now, almost 30 years after its inception, ideas from the adventure playground are taking hold around the country. Loose parts, play workers, and the use of natural elements like mud and sand are all factoring into the next generation of parks. And while the wild parameters of the adventure playgrounds may never catch on-"No one wants a junkyard in their backyard," says Donald-the Adventure Playground has paved the way for a whole new range of playgrounds.

SEE ALSO:

Fall Down, Go Boom
MORGAN CLENDANIEL rummages through the wasteland of contemporary playgrounds and finds some promising-and dangerous-innovations.

Alternative Playgrounds:
-Adventure Playgrounds
-Nature Playgrounds
-Loose Parts Playgrounds

Nature Playgrounds

Morgan Clendaniel — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:00:40 PDT

When Richard Louv's seminal book Last Child in the Woods was published in 2005, it catalyzed a national movement to get kids not just outside, but into the woods. There is now new, compelling evidence that playing in natural settings has specific benefits beyond those associated with free play. A University of Illinois study found that playing in nature increased creativity, improved interactions with adults, and, most important, reduced the symptoms of ADHD. Still, for all the benefits of playing in nature, we live in a modern (and urban) world, and are unable to escape easily into the forest. So how to do it? Bring the forest to us.

In downtown New York City, the Teardrop Park, designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh, is the ideal natural park. Apart from the slide built into a rock formation, there is barely any physical equipment. Children can play virtually anywhere, from the pebbles that line the paths, to sand- and water-filled areas. They can make their own fun. And make fun they do-on a recent weekend at Teardrop, kids were running up and down the rolling hills and rock formations, delighted.

The equipment itself turns out to be less important than you think-though it's hard to convince people of that once they've hired you to build a playground. "We're looking all the time for park systems that want to do these sort of things," says Robin Moore, who helped work on the Teardrop Park and is a strong proponent of natural elements in his playgrounds, "and I have to say, we've not so far received many invites." A playground made up of rocks and trees and sand is a hard sell, so Moore tries to incorporate nature with manufactured equipment as best as he can. It is what the North Carolina Natural Learning Institute, where Moore is the director, did with its signature park in Cary, North Carolina, just outside Raleigh. Kids Together, as the park is called, features typical playground accoutrements (jungle gyms, tires swings) surrounded by thick vegetation.

And while it's taking time to catch on, Moore is fairly certain that Teardrop Park won't be the last of the full-nature versions of the vision. "They're starting to feel the heat," he says of communities around the country. In recent years, powered by Louv's book as well as the obesity crisis, a handful of organizations and groups have sprung up to help reconnect us with the natural world. And the idea of a set of standard playground equipment rising starkly out of concrete is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

SEE ALSO:

Fall Down, Go Boom
MORGAN CLENDANIEL rummages through the wasteland of contemporary playgrounds and finds some promising-and dangerous-innovations.

Alternative Playgrounds
-Adventure Playgrounds
-Nature Playgrounds
-Loose Parts Playgrounds

Fall Down, Go Boom

Morgan Clendaniel — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:52:00 PDT

When I was in fourth grade, my school replaced our playground. It had been a well-loved, ramshackle structure that seemed to rise 20 or 30 feet into the air. There was a rickety climbing wall made of old tires and a series of precarious metal bars. It was paradise. But when we returned to school after summer break one year, it was gone. In its place was something that looked as if it came out of a box: the standard American playground. The platforms were just a few safe feet from the ground, with a squat fireman's pole and a covered plastic slide. There was also a molded plastic handle you could grip to slide from one platform to another, a mere foot off the mulch. Sliding got boring fast. So we climbed on top of it; then we fell off.

The replacement playground was distinctly less fun than the original. What I didn't know then was that it was also distinctly worse: for me, for my imagination, for my problem-solving skills, just as its identical brethren were for developing kids everywhere. Indeed, playgrounds became safer and less inspired at a time when kids needed them most-when competition for children's attention from video games and television meant that they provided the only outdoor playing time a child might get.

In the last few years, scientists have made serious breakthroughs in the study of play, and how it affects child development. "The motivating force for a child is play," says Robin Moore, a leading researcher in children's play environments and a professor of landscape architecture at North Carolina State's College of Design. "[It] improves sensory stimulation and cognitive function when you're a young child. We know a lot about some of these things, but we've taken a lot of it for granted." And now, as one in five children from the ages of 6 to 11 has become so idle and overfed as to be considered obese, getting kids to put down the chips and play becomes harder and harder.

It's estimated that most children stare at a screen for more than six hours each day; they also spend 50 percent less time outside than kids did 20 years ago. Standardized testing and a fear of lawsuits-schools in Broward County, Florida, famously posted "No Running" signs in their playgrounds in 2005-have caused schools to limit or eliminate physical education altogether. As it stands, 7 percent of first graders now get no recess at all, with many more having their minutes drastically cut; the poorer the school, the less time is dedicated to it.

The results of these developments are far-reaching. Many kids, with their sense of play stunted by disuse, sometimes don't even know how to go about it. For a kid raised on PlayStation, a slide isn't going to get the job done. "People are focusing on getting kids outside and getting them physical," says Patricia Donald of the innovative Adventure Playground, in Berkeley, California. "But the playgrounds that they have just don't do that anymore. If you're used to going from your climate-controlled house to your climate-controlled car to your climate-controlled school and then back to your computer, you don't go outside and you don't have to think about creating and manipulating things."

Indeed, while playground design has stagnated for at least a generation, kids have gotten tougher to reach. But a growing group of architects, landscape designers, and organizations is fighting to change that. If they have their way, the playgrounds we grew up on will be a relic of the past. The next generation of children will be playing in places we won't even recognize.

The playground itself is a relatively new invention. In the late 19th century, progressive reformers started building them in overcrowded immigrant neighborhoods to give children a place to go, away from squalid streets and tenements. These early playgrounds were simple-a sandbox, a basic climbing structure-but they reflected a desire to give children a place to teach themselves about the world. Thinkers like John Dewey championed the notion that play is the equivalent of a child's work, essential to his or her moral development. In the arc of playground evolution that would follow, it is telling that in 1912, New York City removed climbing structures, citing them as too dangerous. Over the next century, the playground evolved in size and form, but nothing obstructed its path toward mediocrity. Even with the right star power and genius, innovation was squashed. In 1965, a groundbreaking children's playground concept by Louis Kahn and Isamu Noguchi, designed for New York City's Riverside Park, was axed after five revisions because of safety concerns.

Around the same time, the jungle gym became both standardized and corporatized. Part of this was a function of the market itself: As playground-equipment companies expanded, it made sense for them to offer complete sets for mail order. Susan Solomon, whose book American Playgrounds offers a definitive history, lays much of the blame on McDonald's. As the company began building cookie-cutter play spaces in its restaurants (it now has nearly 8,000), it reinforced the idea of a monolithic form of child's play. Playgrounds now, says Moore, "are supplied through regional representatives of playgrounds manufacturers. All they're interested in is selling play equipment."

Lawsuits-filed by the parents of children injured while cavorting in these public playgrounds-have also changed the business. When litigation piled up in the early 1980s, the industry responded by raising insurance premiums and adhering closely to safety standards set up by the Consumer Products Safety Commission. Unsurprisingly, few creative ideas made it through these standards, lest any innovations be dangerous and result in more injury. God forbid a child jam his finger or scrape her knee.

But what the new, safe equipment is missing, of course, is the stuff that, according to Moore, makes play fun and crucial to early-childhood development: variety, complexity, challenge, risk, flexibility, and adaptability. So what are the actual benefits of these things? What we know about play is still fairly limited. One study found that the brains of rats deprived of play are less developed than those of rats allowed to carry on normally. Another study found that playing helps build "executive function"-our ability to regulate emotion and impulse. Scientists are also beginning to study the possible link between a lack of play and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children.

Since not all play is equal, there is a new emphasis on something called "free play"-basically, unstructured time in which kids create their own scenarios, cooperate, and learn to assess risk. And because the jungle gyms at the corner playground aren't cutting it, designers are finally incorporating things that we always knew kids loved-blocks, water, sand, things to jump off of-but somehow never thought to put into the places where they play. At long last, there is a movement under way that is poised to tear down the foundation of the traditional playground, one uninspiring plank at a time. Our kids will thank them later.

ALTERNATIVE PLAYGROUNDS
-Adventure Playgrounds
-Nature Playgrounds
-Loose Parts Playgrounds

The Education Issue

GOOD — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:15:41 PDT

It's easy to shake your head at the oft-repeated statistics about how many kids don't know what a verb is, or can't find the United States on a map. But in our fear about what will happen if every child doesn't know the quadratic formula by heart, we've created a far more damning problem: We've taken all the fun out of learning. And when learning isn't fun, it's easy for kids to find things to do that are more appealing than sitting in school.

There are countless educators across the country doing hero's work. But if they're going to change the prevailing slide in American education, they need more support. We'd all agree that fear is a lousy guiding principle. Yet we have been so afraid of failure, we've stopped trying to succeed. That isn't working. It's time to go back to school.

Education features from this issue:

School Wars
Public education is nearing a breaking point. GARY STAGER assesses the players struggling to revitalize the system, and explains why all of them are failing.

The Fixer
Why is one black man trying to end affirmative action? ADAM MATTHEWS chronicles Ward Connerly's education crusade.

Affirmative Action: A History
From Kennedy's executive order 10925 to 2006's Michigan Civil Rights Initiative: GOOD chronicles the struggle for fairness in education.

Fall Down, Go Boom
MORGAN CLENDANIEL rummages through the wasteland of contemporary playgrounds and finds some promising-and dangerous-innovations.