First up is "The Hatchet Job On Linda Darling-Hammond", in which Bracey wrote:
In the run-up to Obama's picking a secretary, two sides formed in a debate over the desiderata for a secretary and might have duked it out, but only one side was permitted to throw punches in public. It wasn't Dems vs. the GOP. Indeed, that huge sucking sound you hear is Republicans trying to control their laughter. The two groups are largely within the Democratic Party. They might duke it out still because some see secretary of education-designate, Arne Duncan, as the right man in the right place and others see him as evil incarnate (though not quite so incarnate as Joel Klein or Michelle Rhee). If not evil incarnate, a man to further the corporatization of education and the commodification of childhood.
This last sentence is, of course, key to everything going on here. Bracey continues:
The winners in the fight-that-wasn't were the people who managed to get themselves anointed by the mainstream media--or "corporate media" as some call them--as reformers. They thereby once again illustrated George Lakoff's powerful concept of "frame." This gang consisted of Mike Bloomberg, Joel Klein, Paul Vallas, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan and, weirdly enough, Al Sharpton. Really. It is useful to remember that "reform" means only to reshape, not necessarily improve.
The losers were actual educators in schools and universities who were mostly not permitted in the ring. The "reformers'" advocates managed to label their opposition candidate, Stanford's Linda Darling-Hammond, as an instrument of the "status quo" and as a teachers union tool. Ludicrous? Yes, but it happened.
Of course, this is the exact opposite of what's happened with health care, where it's the actual reformers-single payer advocates-who are roundly excluded, while all different sectors of the status quo get together to decide how to carve things up in the new dispensation.
In this paragraph, Bracey samples the attack mounted against the educator:
In Newsweek, Jonathan Alter wrote that Obama knew "that if he chooses a union-backed candidate such as Linda Darling-Hammond...he'll have a revolt on his hands from the swelling ranks of reformers." Swelling ranks? Says who? Edward Sarby in the New Republic asked "How dangerous is Linda Darling-Hammond, Obama's old-school, pro-union education guru?" "Worst case scenario," answered Mike Petrilli of the Right-wing Fordham Institute. The Washington Post said the secretariat was "A Job for a Reformer." It described the choice as between "warring camps within the Democratic party, those pushing for radical restructuring and those more wedded to the status quo." After Obama selected Duncan, the Post ran a puff piece on his sterling qualities.
Virtually nothing appeared in her support, Bracey recounts:
Aside from a few letters to editors and blogs, about the only published support for Darling-Hammond came from John Affeldt in the Huffington Post, Alfie Kohn in The Nation, and the San Francisco Chronicle in an editorial. Fred Klonsky's blog called the one-sided and often loaded language used by the pro "reformers" bunch as "The hatchet job on Darling-Hammond." Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) emphatically agreed and headlined its take on the sad affair, "The media's failing grade on education 'debate.'"
Next up is "Extra! Extra! Schools Not Cause of Current Economic Crisis!" from February 18. Here, Bracey picks up on an alarmist claim by Education Secretary Arne Duncan:
The February 7 Wall Street Journal quoted secretary of education, Arne Duncan, saying, "Educationally, we used to lead the world, and we have sort of lost our way in the last couple of decades. We just have to educate ourselves to a better economy."
Supposedly, Mr. Duncan came to Washington from Chicago. His statement is more indicative of someone who arrived from a cave or another planet.
Indeed, as Bracey goes on to remind us, the rhetoric of educational crisis has been with us ever since Sputnik. (And we didn't even bother trying to educate people who looked like President Obama back then.)
"Lost our way in the last couple of decades?" In 1983, 26 years ago, then secretary of education, Terrel Bell, put forth "A Nation At Risk." It said we had sort of lost our way in education. Finding "a rising tide of mediocrity" in the U. S., it painted Germany, South Korea and, especially, Japan, as countries that were leaving us in the economic dust.
You remember Japan. "A Nation At Risk" and media stories portrayed Japan as an economic colossus astride the globe. The reason? Its students scored high on tests....
Japan has suffered almost 20 years of either recession or stagnation. Its students still ace tests in international comparisons, but the Japanese now know that high test scores do nothing "to educate ourselves to a better economy."
A few years after "A Nation At Risk" scared people, the United States began the longest sustained economic expansion in its history....
That's relatively recent history. "A Nation At Risk" kicked off the conservative era attacks on education. But we can't blame conservatives alone. The scapegoating of education started much earlier:
Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, schools have been the scapegoat of choice for any social crisis, real or imagined. Fact: the U. S. had a satellite-capable rocket in the air in 1956 and chose not to put anything into orbit. Political, strategic and diplomatic reasons all played roles in that decision as did the internecine warfare among Army, Navy and Air Force, bickering over who should get to go first. But, after Sputnik went up, Life ran a five-part series, "Crisis in Education." Life was not alone in where it placed the blame.
Similarly, the schools were blamed for the urban riots in the 1960's....
The main difference was that back then, educational panics weren't carefully calibrated to advance a rightwing agenda. But the right was certainly canny enough to realize the potential.
In addition to the long history of crying wolf, Bracey points out the lack of correlation (much less causation) today:
If anything, the current catastrophe only emphasizes the weak link between schools and the economy. High scoring nations have suffered at least as much economic damage as the U. S. Above-average Iceland is an economic basket case. France, whose students also score well, is on strike. In spite of its test aces, Japan's Nikkei stock index hit a 26-year low in October 2008.
The most recent global competitiveness reports from the Institute for Management Development and from the World Economic Forum, which just had its annual bash in Davos, Switzerland, ranked the U. S. as the most globally competitive in the world--as they have for years. Whether or not today's cataclysm will affect the next sets of rankings, you can be assured of one thing: the schools will have had nothing to do with it.
In short, the educational panic is so paper thin it can be utterly demolished in a single brief column-provided the author is someone who knows what they're talking about.
Does this mean American education is free from all problems? No, of course not. It has plenty of problems. It's just that the problems it has are not the ones that the education alarmist obsess over. And that's precisely the point: if you identify the wrong problems, you'll ask the wrong questions. And if you ask the wrong questions, you'll get the wrong answers. So it's of utmost, primary importance to identify the right problems, and expose the wrong problems for the deceitful shams the really are.
Moving on to the two more recent columns, there is some overlap between the two, so I'm going to draw from them both together. The first was "On Education, Obama Blows It", published on February 25, just after Obama's speech to Congress. The second was "Duncan and Obama: Airballs", published on March 5. In both he criticizes Obama's recycling of the tired old rhetoric of educational crisis. The second one begins:
They might have great jump shots, but on education they're both tossing air balls. While both have visited charter schools, neither has entered a regular public school. Their oratory has been uninspiring and sometimes downright scary.
At the New York City charter school that Duncan visited, he said, "We're not just facing an economic crisis here in America. I'm absolutely convinced we are facing an educational crisis as well." Uh oh, here we go again. We had an education crisis in 1957 (Sputnik), another one in 1967 (ghetto riots--schools took the hit), 1977 (On Further Examination), 1983 (A Nation at Risk), 1998 (international comparisons in math and science) and yet another one in 2002 when George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Law.
You, the same old stuff Bracey just debunked in his previous column. I'll avoid going on into the details again. I just want stress how non complicated it all is. Obama and Duncan are simply swimming in a sea of lies, and all the good intentions in the world won't change that.
So, what other lies or distortions does Bracey focus on and expose?
Well, here's an example of two fraudulent representations (if not outright lies) woven together, which Bracey then picks apart:
Obama's speech observed, "three quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma...." What it didn't observe is that those occupations produce very few jobs. For every systems engineer a computer firm needs (and we have three newly-minted, home-grown scientists and engineers for each new job), Wal-Mart puts about 15 sales people on the floor. Sales people, hamburger flippers, janitors, maids, waiters--those are the jobs that people find. Given what these jobs pay, they often they find more than one so they can feed their own kids.
Of course, that "more than a high school diploma" is a meaningless weasel-phrase usually tossed around to scare everyone into thinking that everyone needs a college degree. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that overwhelmingly, the great majority of jobs need--and will need in the future--only a high school diploma and short-term (one week to three months) on-the-job training.
Look, I don't doubt that Obama means well. But on a basic level of rhetorical honesty, how is this really any different from a lot of the misrepresentations we got from the Bush Administration? What's more, imagine if he actually sat down with someone-like Bracey-with a firm grasp of the actual educational challenges we face. Wouldn't it be far, far better for him to be making a well-meaning case that was also based in reality?
Next, there are dropout deceptions:
Obama told Congress and the nation, "We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation, and half of our students who begin college never finish." Where did this dropout rate statistic come from? Secondary school programs in other nations last from just two years to more than five. Kids in other countries are tracked into different kinds of schools--vocational, technical, pre-college. How can "dropout rates" be compared?
Less than half finish college? Tell that to the dean of admissions at Stanford or even the two oldest public schools in my home state, the College of William & Mary and the University of Virginia. Where you find low completion rates is at community colleges. One reason is that, even with the low tuitions, many students have to work too many hours at paying jobs to earn the requisite number of credits for a degree. Community colleges were conceived as a tryout: Do you think you want to stay in an academic setting for a while longer? You'd expect some people to decide, "No."
Again, let me reiterate: the point here is not to deny the existence of problems. For example, as Bracey notes, "Kids in other countries are tracked into different kinds of schools--vocational, technical, pre-college." We could certainly do more of that. In some places, charter schools are being used to do just that. But charter schools have no necessary relationship to diversifying curriculum options. In fact, there are good reasons to believe that such diversification could be better achieved by larger public school systems with a broader range of resources. If phony crises and a not-so-hidden war on public education were not on the agenda, we might well have made such changes years ago.
Indeed, please note this observation Bracey made, on a topic already covered:
Alas, both President Obama and secretary Duncan seem to have bought into the long-standing--but wrong--assumption that high test scores equals a healthy economy.
Maybe that's why Duncan told the charter school the stimulus should spend more money on more testing.
What should be obvious is that educational diversification and standardized testing point in directly opposite directions. One assumes that different students are headed toward different goals, and need to prepare accordingly in a manner suited to their particular needs. The other assumes that "one size fits all." The fact that these two contradictory ideas can coexist, seemingly without notice, is indicative of how far from a rational, pragmatic, reality-based enterprise we actually are. |
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