main: September 2008 Archives

I hope that everyone will read about Don Rosenberg, the long-term, deeply respected music critic of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, being reassigned so that he will no longer be reviewing The Cleveland Orchestra.

The music journalism perspective has been covered very well, very quickly and if you haven't taken a look, you can find it on the pages of artsjournal.com.  However, beyond the question of whether a music journalist or any arts journalist might have to think twice about dishing out negative reviews, there's the simple matter of freedom of press/media and the question of whether this is really isolated or connected to a much larger web that should give us all a chill.

Of course it's a push-pull, the key function the press plays in a free society, the Fourth Estate, as it were, versus the need to make money. Few have illuminated this conflict better than the late Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly. We see it playing out today in the troubles at the LA Times, and changes underway at the Wall Street Journal.

Many wondered what happened to the press when it should have taken a closer look at the WMD theory that got us into Iraq. While it may appear to be a long leap from WMD to what's happened to Don Rosenberg, it's worth a good look. The critical importance of the free press demands nothing less.

I have felt the chill, running an organization that has sometimes taken a publicly critical position regarding decisions by the New York City Department of Education, with me serving as the spokesperson for the board of directors. The chill has come in the form of pressure applied to stop the criticism, as well as being labeled someone who spread "misinformation," "bad data," and more. And as I have heard from a number of reporters, the chill has come in the heavy pressure exerted upon them to soften their reporting.

So, if Don Rosenberg can be reassigned in order to aide in sunnier notices of Franz Welser-Most, well imagine what happens when arts and arts education advocates rile up presumably much more powerful people and interests, including mayors, school district leaders, civic elite, unions, etc.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, whose publisher is on the board of directors of The Cleveland Orchestra, should be ashamed of itself. At the very least, even if you give the Plain Dealer some benefit of the doubt on this action, it looks just plain bad and helps to stoke an atmosphere of fear.

Eduwonkette. She's Babe Ruth, Wayne Gretzky, Diane Ravitch, and Edward Murrow all rolled into one. She's absolutely brilliant as she manages to remain cheeky and friendly, while taking on many of the specious claims connected to testing, accountability, and the powerful propaganda machines claiming great success as a result of test score obsessed reforms.

The more I read her blog, the more I see new ammunition forming for arts education advocates to take on the giant machine of tests and purported accountability, the so-called successful reforms that push arts education and other subjects out the door, helping to make a well-rounded education the sole domain of elite private schools. (Have you ever heard of a private school that doesn't offer the arts?) For those who feel that data orientation driving education can't be easily countered, Eduwonkette has been taking this arena apart, in a way that can only be done by someone who really understand statistics, and always finds the perfect expert voice to further illuminate the matter at hand.

Give her blog a read today, and take a good look at her September 22nd post, Come Feel The Noise, and her September 23, post, What Does Educational Testing Really Tell Us: An Interview With Daniel Koretz.

You hear it all the time, that schools should be accountable same as the workplace.

Merit pay, determined by performance evaluations, rewards high performing employees and creates a highly competitive, successful workplace. Conversely, workers that do poorly as measured by their employee evaluations will be weeded out. It all works for the good of the company and its profit line and/or mission. Produce and we will reward; don't produce and we will get rid of you.

So, shouldn't this be extended to schools? Would it be just that simple to use tests to determine the performance of a student, a school, a teacher, an administrator, and give bonuses to those who score high and improve the most, while weeding out those with persistently low scores?

It makes sense, right?

Hey, wait a minute. Richard Rothstein has written two very fine pieces that examine such practices in the workplace and whether they are being appropriately and adequately translated to the schools.

The crux of the matter here is that the workplace has long moved away from such simple measures to evaluate performance. Even in a sales-based situations, simple numbers are only a portion of what is a much more complex, subjective set of measurements used to determine performance and possible rewards and consequences. So, the idea of building teacher tenure around test scores because that's how it's done in corporate America just doesn't hold water.

Here are the two Rothstein reports. The first one, shorter than the second, is a good place to start. He's on to something very important. And yes, it is also about arts education.

The Corruption of School Accountability

Holding Accountability to Account: How Scholarship and Experience in Other Fields Inform Exploration of Performance Incentives in Education

Many people know Martin Bookspan, the long-term host of Live from Lincoln Center on PBS who retired in 2006. For those of you around long enough, you may even know Martin from his tenure at ASCAP.

Janet Bookspan was Martin's wife and I remember her today in this blog because she was one of the first people to prepare artists to work in the community and schools. Essentially, among a handful of people like Janet and my former boss Mitchell Korn, the term "artist training" was most likely born after they began work in this area. Everyone knows Eric Booth, and they should!, but you may not know the people who preceded him in this work before arts education was quite a field.

The field of arts education is relatively new. That being said, it has a longer history than many people realize. Young Audience chapters appeared as early as the 1950's. Young People's concerts were being led by Walter Damrosch and the New York Philharmonic by late 19th century. In the early 60's, the Ford Foundation placed composers in residence in public school systems for three-year terms. There is a long defunct organization named Affiliate Artists, which placed concert artists in long-term residencies in communities across the United States. It's the organization which put artists residencies on the map. Jesse Rosen, who runs the League of American Orchestras worked at Affiliate Artists during its last few years of existence. When you look at what Ford did back then and at the approach of Affiliate Artists, you're looking at residencies that are of a duration rarely seen in the United States today. (That's the topic of a future blog.)

Janet Bookspan worked with artists in places like Affiliate Artists, the New World Symphony, Manhattan School of Music, and others, to help prepare the artists to serve effectively through communications, presentation, and other skills. While she may not have been tackling specific K-12 issues, she was helping to build a field of artists seeking to communicate effectively on and off the stage.

I once had the pleasure of co-training an ensemble at the Manhattan School of Music with Janet. She had superb skills in helping the artists to talk (yes talk!), to walk, to center themselves on the stage. She helped musical artists think through how to use their space effectively, as well as how to handle audiences. I stole a number of her tricks for use in my own work training artists.

The field of arts education, which has grown immensely since the days of Affiliate Artists, has people like Janet to thank, who took on this work without any previous script or model. Janet's role is certainly one of the bricks that this work has been and will continue to be built upon.

With city, county, and state tax rolls down, and expenses rising, we're probably looking at the scenario of proposed cuts to arts education budget lines. 

The following email came my way yesterday from Big Thought of Dallas. It's a great example, from a great organization, of rolling up your sleeves to mobilize constituents against budget cuts to arts education.

The Dallas arts community needs your help, please...WITHIN THE NEXT 48 HOURS!

Based on some comments and emails to yesterday's blog, I thought it might be helpful to provide a link defining the term "school choice." It's from none other than the foundation run by the very father of school choice, the oracle of free market school systems as well as everything else free market: Milton Friedman.

http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/friedman/schoolchoice/

Dagnabbit! Just when you think you did a nice blog on where the two major presidential candidates stand on arts education (and education overall), one of the candidates has to go and unveil a new education platform.

Yesterday, in Dayton, Ohio, Barack Obama presented his "A New Vision for 21st Century Education."

Tops on the list is school choice! For those who were excited by Barack Obama mentioning arts education in his primary speeches and on his platform, well, I have bad news for you. It's not part of this vision for a 21st century.

So, after looking at this new vision, and matching it up with John McCain's education platform, well, my friends, the answer is yes, arts education will be determined by Republicrats, (somehow Democans doesn't have the same snap!), at least for next four years.

It's true, Barack Obama has an education platform that includes arts education, and during the primaries he spoke any number of times about the importance of arts education. That being said, if you want to find his platform for arts education, be prepared to click through any number of times until you get to his fact sheet on arts.

John McCain has an education platform that doesn't mention arts education specifically, but lists a number of priorities buoyed by vouchers, charter schools, and NCLB.

There was a point about six months ago when people were emailing around Obama's fact sheet, excited by what it said about arts education and the arts in general. Of course, things change once the general election begins.

Yesterday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," in response to a question on where he would break with the Democratic Party, Barack Obama said that ""I think that, on education, we do have to improve accountability. And I've not only supported charter schools, which the teachers' unions have opposed, but I've also said that we should look at pay-for-performance," he said. "That's not something that's popular in my party."

Once upon a time, the lines that separated the two parties was pretty clear and pretty firm. That has changed. For a long time you could count on the Republicans to advocate choice, privatization, merit pay, accountability, and be harshly critical of the teachers' unions. The Democrats have always depended on the unions, and historically have been opposed to things like privatization of public schools.

Today, well, increasingly you have Democrats sounding these long held Republican themes.

You may ask, exactly what difference does this make for arts education? Well one thing is for sure, the efforts building for influencing policies on the Federal, state, or local level that are arts education positive become meaningless if all the schools are privatized. If you were at or read about the platform developed at the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver, well kiss that goodbye, or at least the arts education portion. For those who found interest in the recent RAND/Wallace Foundation report on coordinating systems to improve arts education, well, if you go to a system of choice, charter, voucher, etc., the thrust of that report becomes moot.

The big question out there is really one of whether or not public schools should exist anymore? So, you may ask how vouchers and charter schools could possibly bring down the public school system? I mean, after all, why shouldn't you be able to pull your child out of his or her school, if you don't like the education provided, have the money in hand in the form of a voucher, and give that money to the private school that admits your child. What's the problem with that? Wouldn't this pressure force the public schools to improve? Competition is the answer to the problems with the schools: "you give me competition, I'll show you progress," sounded Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a recent announcement on charter schools in New York City.

On the matter on vouchers, does anyone really think the private schools will accept all students? It's not a reasonable assumption, based on simple math or the ways in which private schools operate. What you will end up with will be the cream of the crop being accepted by private schools, and then public schools left with only special needs students, troubled students, or simply those who's parents did not have the capacity or inclination to find a private school. Once that happens, public support for public schools will disappear into thin air.

As for competition, I am not sure what precisely will establish the "market forces" for real competition among schools, other than standardized test scores in reading and math. At the very least, it doesn't bode well for arts education.