That’s a lot to respond to. 

1) Did you ever meet with or talk to Ted? Did you ever hear him speak? Upon what do you base this idea that he was self-important? 

2) Actually, Ted wanted a lot of things that schools and teachers do NOT do every day. He was critical of the fundamental institution of schooling — at least on the secondary level. The kinds of things that he was really talking about are things that no individual teacher can do; the require that entire school to provide a different kind of education that one that can be so completely split into different courses. Moreover, he was as critical of Andover and Stuyvesant as of our worst urban schools — often far MORE critical. 

Yes, much of what he spoke and wrote of were things that he learned from speaking with, working with and listening to teachers. But his revolutionary ideas are NOT found in today’s schools.

Were the original to him? Well, I must admit that I had them, too, and long before I ever heard of Ted. And that certainly implies that others must have had these ideas, too. And I can trace some of them back to Dewey quite easily, and back to Socrates just easily. But Ted address American secondary schooling as it existed at the end of the 20th Century. Dewey and Socrates could not do that. He brought these ideas to bear, expressed them well, advocated for more fundamental change than you appear to realize, and worked to keep the nation’s attention on a kind of education reform that did not dumb down or narrow education. So, he gets credit for some of the ideas, a lot of the application and an enormous about of advocacy. 

3) We have raised per-pupil funding for schools enormously since 1985, even adjusting for inflation. How much have the institution and goals of schooling changed? Are children from our best educated, hardest working and smartest families really challenged as they should be? Have we really changed the curriculum? Do we still ignore the fact that we know that students will forget the explicit content of today’s lessons? Do we still continue with the same compromise that that “Horace” discovered? 

How much more funding do you want? What is it that you think we lack the funding for? Those are serious and literal questions. 

We have more money, and secondary schooling still suffers the same fundamental problems in our most “successful” schools. Within-state differences in education funding between districts are vastly smaller than they were in the 1980s, while funding in the richest districts has continued to grow. Though we certainly need more money for the physical plant — and I knowledge that we will never be able to pay teachers competitively with other fields requiring the same abilities, education, experience and hard work — what is it that you think lack of funding is holding us back from? 

4) One of the last things Ted did in his life was to run a charter school that needed to be turned around. He returned to his old role of headmaster, of a sort. In fact, he released a book about this experience with his co-principal/wife (Nancy) and another principal, called “Keeping School: Letters to Families from Principals of Two Small Schools.”

So, how could you think that he wasn’t on the front lines? He was there every day as a school leader, again. And in his last years he was working with local service providers to figure out how they could take a more cohesive approach to delivering those services to needy families. Again, on the front lines.

Rest assured, he was incredibly committed to public education. I was put off by his Harvard/Andover/Brown resume, but look at what he actually wrote, what he actually said, what he actually criticized and what he actually did. 

5) What box of cereal with his name on it do you think he was selling? He endlessly gave credit to others, to their idea and to their work. Part of his brilliance was his ability to bring people together and get them to listen to challenging ideas about education. There’s record of self-promotion. He advocated for ideas and did not do it to make a profit for himself. 

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Frankly, Margo, your objections to Ted Sizer appear to lack a basis in fact. 

If I am wrong, I’d love to learn about your experiences with him, or about the things he said or did with which I am not familiar. 

So, if you know things that I do not, please share them. And if you do not really know his work, try actually reading it. I stand by Horace’s Compromise as worth anyone’s time. And if you want to know about his work with teachers on the front lines, perhaps read Keeping School. There are plenty of others, too.

I just posted a link to your remembrance on my website, and thank you for the wonderful other links too. I remember Ted as always helpful, always interested in what you, whomever you were, had to say, willing to mentor and listen, willing to change his mind. HIs great wife Nancy, too, who spoke openly about her passages to becoming “equal partner” with Ted–claiming her space as equal intellect and collaborator, also are vividly remembered by me.

Thank you for this Anthony, and I’ll now be on the lookout for your blog.

Kirsten
(author of Wounded By School, Teachers College PRess 2009)

And I’ve had some disagreements with them, too.

Ted and I agree that for schools to succeed, every child must be known well by at least one adult. This is why reducing student load is so important to both of us. (Note that the CES explanation of principles that Mr. Hoffman links to does not address class size, per se. Rather, it addresses “direct responsibility” and clearly refers to total number of students, without saying anything how how they are distributed though the day or week.) He, however, thought that small schools lead to that kind of reduced loads, without ever explaining his logic. Sometimes, I almost felt like I had him convinced that it is not a school size thing, but I never quite got there. And he never convinced me, either.

We also disagreed about charter schools, at least on the surface. He worried about a lack of choice for students and their families. However, he also worried about how choice might work away from major cities with the kind of public transit coverage that we have in NYC and Boston. As Mr. Hoffman mentions, he was worried about suburban & rural schools, too. He didn’t know how charter schools in those areas could be as accessible to the entire population as traditional public schools, with their fleets of school buses. That was something that I had not even considered.

Unfortunately, some of his students — though they respected him greatly — did not think as highly of his class on Redesigning the American High School. He was asking a great deal of them, to rethink fundamental aspects how secondary schools are structured and their goals, and those who have grown up in our system — and especially those who have done well in it — might not even understand the depth of rethinking he was pushing for.

My condolences to Nancy and their family, we’ve lost one of the good ones.

Best,
Nicholas

Nicholas Tishuk
Director of Programs and Accountability
The Renaissance Charter School
teach11372 @ gmail.com