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| with Mirror by Jaume Plensa |
Dr Linda McSpadden McNeil is the
Director of the Center for Education at Rice University and a Rice Education
professor. A curriculum theorist and analyst of school structure and reform,
she has written extensively on teaching and learning in urban schools, on
school organization and on education policy and standardization. Her writings
are widely cited scholarly publications and national media. In 1988, she
co-founded the Center for Education to support research and teacher enhancement
programs to address the persistent problems of inequity and uneven quality in
urban schools. She and her colleagues in the Center for Education have for
twenty-five years designed, created, funded, and operated programs to retrain
urban teachers in their subject fields and in children’s learning and
cultures. She has two daughters.
What’s your story, Linda?
I am a teacher, my mother was a teacher,
and my grandmother was a teacher in one-room schoolhouses, so teaching is in my
bones. Now I teach Rice students to become teachers, but originally I was a
high school English teacher and that has led to all my current work.
I was a high school teacher in a
district that had taken twenty years to desegregate its schools. I quickly
realized an incredible tension between what they wanted kids to learn and what
they didn't want them to know. I thought they had hired me to be the best
teacher I could be, to be like the teachers who had inspired me to teach. A cohort of us in the English department had
that same vision for the kids and yet we were being told, “Don't teach Black
poetry – that’s political.” I learned then what I've come to call the tension
between knowledge access and knowledge control.
When I had the opportunity to pursue a
PhD at the University of Wisconsin, I
began with the questions I had faced as a teacher: “What counts as school
knowledge? What factors shape the
ways schools make knowledge accessible – or inaccessible – to kids? Whose
knowledge is of most worth?” These questions took me into classrooms for
long stints of ethnographic research, looking first at the interactions of
teachers and kids and then into the school setting itself.
I observed
the dynamic between the teachers and the students, seeing what kinds of
questions were being asked, and what was being left out. This kind of research came naturally to me
because I inadvertently became an ethnographer at a very young age. My dad’s work as an Amoco engineer of the
generation that drilled the West Texas oil fields caused us to move
frequently. As the new kid at five
different elementary schools, I always began by observing: who might be a new best friend, which teacher
would be kind and interesting. My
experiences, from being a child in some very remote schools to being a teacher
who was being told by the administration what not to teach, converged in my
doctoral studies and my first book, Contradictions
of Control: School Structure and School
Knowledge.
I
arrived in Houston just as standardization was being imposed on schools, first
from the district level, then from the state and, now, nationally. Suddenly, the curriculum was not being shaped
by the teachers in the classroom, but by “the system.” Teachers were no longer valued as curriculum
developers. Because I was already doing
research in classrooms, I was one of the first witnesses to the harm
standardization was doing to the quality of schooling. As multiple-choice standardized tests started
to drive what could be taught, I documented huge curricular losses as the
tested subjects were watered down into multiple-choice formats, particularly
math, reading and writing in those early years. Other subjects were set aside, or
their teachers made to replace lessons in the arts, physical fitness and
science with test prep drills for math or reading. Teachers were being forced to dump complex
writing assignments, the reading of novels, lab experiments, field trips to arts
performances and coastal estuaries, as well as lessons related to the cultures
of their students, to drill on the generic content of tests that would be
scored by computers.
That
was the beginning of twenty years of “school reform” in Texas which has brought
us the very top-down, centralized, standardized form of schooling most people
look on as a testing system. The testing is really just the tip of the iceberg.
The test scores are indicators in a management compliance system that ties everything
from students’ graduation to teacher’s pay, administrators’ bonuses and even
the closing of a neighborhood school, to scores on a computer-scored test.
I never
thought I would be studying standardized testing. But even as that first wave of testing came
in, it became clear that the big investments in “education reform” would not be
for perpetually underfunded schools or scholarships to recruit young people
into teaching. The financial – and political – investment would be in the
testing system. Despite all the research to the contrary, despite reports from
teachers and child development experts, none of the arguments on behalf of
children could be heard above the domineering voice of the testing industry.
Testing companies have lobbyists; third grade children don’t.
I
believe, however, that it’s up to all of us to do everything we can to create
the professional, political and moral space in which good teachers can make
magical things happen every day for the children in their classrooms. It was this belief that prompted the two
strands of work I’ve been doing.
The
first was to create the Center for Education, with programs in support of teachers’ development. And the second
was to embark on a series of research
studies that could inform not only
educators, but also parents and policy makers, about the impact of the
standardized accountability system on children and schools.
Even
before the testing became so ubiquitous, my colleagues and I were very
concerned about the anti-teacher climate in the press and in politics. We were,
after all, preparing bright, dedicated Rice students to teach and we wanted
them in schools hospitable to knowledgeable, caring teachers. So Ronald Sass, now an emeritus scientist
professor, and I created the Center for Education to be a base for teacher
development. We had generous funding and incredibly wise advice from Maconda
Brown O’Connor, our first board president.
A trustee of the Brown Foundation, she was a social worker who counseled
boys in juvenile detention. As she helped
the boys connect back to their schools, she could see the ways schools could be
nurturing or could exclude these youth as “problem kids.” To Maconda, every child had promise, and her
support of our work came from her own sense of urgency that all teachers needed
support to be able to help all kids thrive.
She was a “practical visionary” whose lessons continue to teach us.
Our
idea was not to give quick Saturday teacher workshops. All of our programs were
long-haul, addressing serious deficiencies in the schools. A key example is
science. Very few middle grade science
teachers had been science majors in college, and even fewer had ways of
connecting with the city’s extraordinary scientists. We created a teaching laboratory in an urban middle
school where teachers came for an intensive year of study and exploration with
scientists from Rice and industry, learning how to engage their students in the
questions and ‘aha’ moments that make science so powerful. We had financial support from individuals,
corporations, local foundations, the National Science Foundation and ultimately
the school district itself. And now,
after so many years, the “Model Lab” science teachers continue to be valued
leaders. And out of that original lab, new programs were created first for high
school teachers, then elementary teachers, as well as on-line curricular
resources for science inquiry across the grades.
The
School Writing Project addressed the persistent low quality of children’s
writing nationally and locally – a problem made worse by multiple-choice test
drills and formulaic writing required by the state. The School Writing Project brought small
groups of teachers together in intimate seminars to work on their own writing
as well as the teaching of writing and sharing samples of their students’ work. Over the years, these seminars branched into
specialized discussions of teaching English language learners and of
integrating the teaching of writing with the other creative arts. Many teachers have told us that they have
remained in teaching, and remained in urban schools, because of the
professional community they found in School Writing Project.
The
focus of these programs, and others such as Asia Outreach, created by Rice
history professor Richard Smith, and our early childhood programs, has always
been on empowering teachers. We have
worked to make teachers more knowledgeable about their own subjects and the
many ways children learn, and about the cultures of the children in their classrooms. We don’t just advocate for “teacher
professionalism” in the abstract, but support teachers to make their teaching
engaging and their classrooms places of inquiry and equity. Our research in schools has informed our work
with teachers. And, maybe even more important, we have learned from teachers
what we should be investigating in our research.
Our research is the other “half” of the Center’s
mission: studying what is taught in
schools, who is being well-served or underserved by our schools, and what
factors in the community and in the policy arena are shaping children’s
education. When I began studying what is
taught – or not taught – in schools, those
were classroom studies with me as the solo researcher. What I found in classrooms led me to take a
hard look at the administrative practices in schools and the policies
controlling them. For these larger
studies, I’ve had the great benefit of working with smart colleagues who share
my vision of research in the public interest. Our research looks a bit like a
set of concentric circles: from
classrooms, to systemic problems such as dropouts, to democratic schooling
itself.
After
being in classrooms documenting the curriculum losses – what I think of as the
“real learning” – under standardization, we looked at where this was coming
from. This got us into policy analysis.
Our next finding was even more disturbing. We discovered that schools were triaging
out of school the students they saw as weak, those they saw as putting the
school’s scores in danger, and they were doing so in ways that were technically
legal.
It was
from teachers and principals we knew well that we learned the real story behind
the “drop out problem.” The myth of the
standardized accountability system was that it would raise academic standards
and close the racial “achievement gap” in Texas schools. But as we spent more time in schools,
particularly in high poverty, urban high schools, we saw that the huge dropout
rate – more than 100,000 kids each year from Texas high schools! – was not a separate
problem from the testing system. The
gap, in fact, was widening.
As the state’s system of accountability
became ‘high stakes’ for administrators, directly tying their job contracts and
pay bonuses to the test scores of the kids in their schools, they began to
triage out of school those students whose scores were likely to lower the
school’s accountability ratings. These
students came disproportionately from African American, Hispanic, immigrant and
high-poverty communities. Students
literally came to be seen as “assets” or “liabilities” to the school ratings,
with the “liabilities” triaged out prior to taking the test.
Many schools were reporting dropout rates as
low as 2% or 3%, yet when those same schools had one thousand entering
freshmen, with only 350 of those students end up in the senior graduating
class, you have to ask questions. My colleagues and I started noticing that the
school ratings were higher if the dropout numbers were also up. The greater the
number of low-achieving kids dropping out, the higher the school’s test score
rating. Frankly, it took us a long time to figure out how to write about this
because it shows that our state’s education system actually rewards principals
who “lose” kids.
In the end, we never had to make the
accusation that principals were deliberately triaging weaker kids out – the
principals did it for us. They told us they felt caught and but felt the system
left them little choice. We designed a
study to find out if these schools were exceptions, or if this represented a
pattern that could explain the thousands of kids being “lost” from our high
schools. We were able to show, by race and grade level, how the “losses” of
students enhanced their schools’ ratings—and those bonuses. We published our
findings as Avoidable Losses in a peer-reviewed on-line journal. It has had almost 20,000 hits and been used
by parent advocacy groups, teachers, and legislators organizing against the
high stakes testing system.
Having
documented the losses of both high quality curriculum content and of students
under standardized accountability, my research team and I are now studying and
writing about the threat this system poses to democratic, public education
itself. The test score numbers generated
by the standardized tests mask old inequities and create new ones. Low scores
are being used to justify closing neighborhood schools and shifting taxpayer
dollars to charter chains and others who would destroy the public’s
schools. There are political and for-profit
forces working together to replace this essential democratic institution with a
market of privately owned, but tax-payer funded, “schools.” This push to de-democratize schools is
important to understand because the public’s schools are a vital venue for
maintaining a voice for democracy itself.
This is the book we are currently working on and we hope it becomes more
than just bearing witness to this anti-democratic-schooling movement. We hope it helps foster an even stronger
public discussion already underway about re-claiming the billions of testing
dollars for classrooms and high quality instruction in the public’s schools.
My
original research question, “What is shaping our kids’ access to knowledge and
to ways of learning in schools?” has led me into amazing classrooms where kids
are thriving and into the current policy fray that frankly seems hostile to
children. I couldn’t be more grateful
for the teachers and colleagues who keep reminding me why we need to keep
asking these questions.
What is your Houston story?
I’ve
been in Houston for thirty years. I was
born in California and grew up in the oil fields of West Texas before we moved
to Tulsa. Although my dad became Amoco’s
international corrosion expert, he was the kind of engineer who was a real
craftsman and didn’t easily fit any organization chart. I think I inherited
that sense of craft from my dad and from my grandparents, and I carried it into
what I think about teaching.
Who or what has been the greatest influence
on your life?
My two
daughters – one is a psychiatrist and the other is a veterinarian who does
international public health work. They are both just amazing – funny, smart
generous, caring – and always inspiring me.
The greatest
influence on my work here has to be Maconda Brown O’Connor, who was fierce and
more than a little angry about what was happening to children and youth in the
justice system and in some of our schools. Maconda’s idea was that if you sit
in a place of privilege like this university, with a base from which to work on
problems, then you have no excuse not to. And if one thing doesn’t work, try
something else. She helped us create the
Center for Education and also created the Greater Houston Collaborative for
Children, an organization of advocacy for young children. She was not shy about
giving advice, nor hesitant to give support.
Here at
Rice, there is Neal Lane. Neal is a
scientist. He was our provost in the early years of our work and one of those
rare people who is just so wise.
I’m also
inspired by people whose courage seems to them to be just common sense. Our friend Joe Elder in Wisconsin, who as a
Quaker peace negotiator took desperately needed cardiology equipment to the
hospitals in Hanoi while US bombs were dropping on the city. The young people who ten years ago started No
More Deaths/No Mas Muertes to provide relief for immigrants in peril of dying
in the Arizona desert. The Black
teachers who were assigned to integrate that white high school where I first
taught, and in doing so became my teacher as well. My professors at UW-Madison who asked
important questions about education and power and tolerated my decision to do
the messy and inefficient research in classrooms . This question is bringing to
mind how many people I am grateful for – people I need to thank more often!
What advice would you give to someone new to
the education system?
Find
kindred spirits. Find people who value
what you value. I tell my students to
seek out other teachers who care deeply about the kids and who are willing to
try things and to share ideas with you.
I’ve given that advice to my students and to my daughters as they start
new jobs. The same holds for kids
starting out in a new school – and for parents as they build a common cause
with other parents. Sometimes it might
be someone you work with very closely, or it might be colleagues around the
country who are struggling with similar issues and situations, as we are now
seeing in the movement to undo the harm of standardized schooling and get back
to focusing on kids and learning. Institutions
are always in flux and the world is so chaotic right now that kindred spirits
both anchor and energize us.
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| The countryside near Linda's cabin in New Mexico |
How do you find, or seek to find, balance in
your life?
Through
my daughters and through my friends, particularly those friends who have been
in our lives so long that we are a part of each other’s stories.
In
terms of place, we are fortunate to have a small cabin in the Santa Fe National
Forest in New Mexico. It is in a remote
area my parents took us to when I was a little girl. It’s on a narrow dirt road with few
neighbors. Once we’re up there, it’s all
sweatshirts and jeans and rain on the tin roof, hiking, fishing, or just
watching the hummingbirds. It is our
family’s spiritual home. As poet Wendell
Berry says, it’s that one place that we have to know over many years and know
by a particular tree or shifts in the stream to be fully alive on this earth.
What is your happy place in Houston?
The
homes of good friends and my porch swing on a spring evening at dusk, when the
night herons and other birds are coming “home.”
The
Rothko Chapel and Menil complex are both energizing and restorative. Think about the time period in which John and
Dominique de Menil started bringing all of these things together in one of the
most competitive, materialistic cities in the world. They were saying to
Houston, “What about human rights? What
about the spirit? How can we bridge our differences?” I had the honor of
meeting Mrs de Menil on two occasions. I don’t think she really felt what they
were doing was courageous. Yet they
created this extraordinary Chapel so that Houston would not lack a sacred space
dedicated to human rights, to social justice, to collective envisioning. Just
amazing. And it was a Rothko Chapel Oscar
Romero Human Rights event that introduced me to Dolores Huerta, whom I was
honored to host in my home, another of the inspirers in my life.
What is your favorite restaurant?
One of
the greatest gifts of Houston is that we don’t have to decide! It’s wonderful that the fourth largest US
city has so much that is local. We can
shop at a locally owned dress shop, and a local hardware store where they can
answer every question, and we can eat food from all over the world in
restaurants owned by families who brought their grandma’s recipes to our
neighborhood. Just about any local
Mexican restaurant is my favorite!
What is your Houston secret?
People
who have never been here think that it’s going to be rather desolate but end up
surprised at how lovely many parts of the city are – especially the trees. And although the reputation is oil and gas
and real estate, or space and medicine, the real Houston is in the mix of
people who are from literally everywhere. And if I have a secret, it’s probably
that I eavesdrop to try to improve my Spanish!
What would you change about Houston?
Houston
is already a truly international city. The
children of this city and the families coming into the city are the changing
face of America. That makes it even more
important for us to get education right, to get children’s health care right.
Houston should be competing with Seattle in the race to bump up the minimum
wage.
We are
now the most diverse city in the US, which is certainly something to
celebrate. But I am concerned that
diversity without equity is not progress.
Diversity without equitable political and economic power is not yet
democracy. While I love all the international restaurants and hearing all the
different languages on the street, I am starting to think that people are
looking at diversity as an exotic accessory rather than “This is who we are now.” Everyone is talking about how fabulous diversity
is, but few seem to be thinking aloud about the growing concentrations of
wealth and poverty, about what diversity means for the city’s infrastructure,
for mass transit into all the parts of the city, cleaning up the superfund
pollution sites and creating parks everywhere. The possibilities are endless if
diversity can enact a new political imagination.
And in
the schools, although diversity should be a great asset to connect all our
children with the global community, we still sometimes hear that distinction
between educating “our kids,” and “other people’s children,” suggesting that we
will not make the same investment in some children’s education.
Houston
has the chance to become a very robust international city because everything
here is truly globalized. We have a
chance to gain a real understanding of the world by learning from the human
connections within our city’s communities.
Linda was nominated as an Inspiring Houston
Woman by Pansy Gee.
For more information about Linda’s work at
the Rice Center for Education and for her publications, visit the Center's website.
