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Somewhere on Wall Street there is a frustrated investment banker. He's run model after model and he can't understand it. No matter what he tries, he's just not seeing the kind of numbers his high high-flying clients expect.
Instead of generating markets where more people are either buying more stuff or buying more expensive stuff, the fundamentals of the American economy just don't grow anymore. Population growth is treading water. Disposable income for most people is on a sharp decline. And globalism and the Internet have reduced everything to a commodity, so prices are driven into the dirt.
If only there were a way to break into a whole new market. A market where demand is certain, but competition is weak, and pricing can be highly controlled. Kind of like what those guys in the defense business have been enjoying.
Take public schools, for instance. It's almost 6% of our economy that is mostly off-limits to big business. Sure, you can get a contract here and there. But what about something going nation wide! Now that could yield double-digit growth right away. Maybe 20% or more!
The infrastructure has already been built. R&D is minimal. We've all been to school. We're not talking rocket science here. And everyone pushes education in a bad economy.
Once you get around the unions, teachers are a dime a dozen. Heck, some will practically volunteer for the job. And I'm sure we can get foundation money for the start-ups. After all, "it's for the kids."
Only problem is that each school and district is so different from one another. Everything is geared to the local population, and what works for one school doesn't necessarily work for another. That makes every deal a one-off with no economies of scale to work to your advantage. If only there were a way to get some standardization across the board.
Maybe our guys on the Hill can help us out with that . . .
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| If the above hypothetical sounds too far fetched to you, consider the story of Neil Bush and Ignite Learning.
When George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988, he vowed to be the "education president." A Nation at Risk had been published five years earlier, providing school bashers with the perfect propaganda piece to wale away at public education. The economy was sliding into recession, and Americans were being warned that they were in danger of "falling behind" in the global economic competition because of our "broken" schools.
The combination of a recessionary economy and the outspoken rage against American public schools combined to push forward an agenda for education reform. America, we were told, was being ill served by its locally controlled school governance that tended toward diverse approaches to curriculum and instruction to meet local needs. And in order for the US to "keep pace" in a rapidly changing world, schools desperately needed "standardization."
From Wikipedia: "In 1989, an education summit involving all fifty state governors and President George H. W. Bush resulted in the adoption of national education goals for the year 2000; the goals included content standards." With the influence of Diane Ravitch, the Assistant Secretary of Education, from 1991-1993, the content standards movement took the driver's seat in education policy, where it has remained throughout the past 20 years, peaking in 2001 with the passing of the No Child Left Behind legislation during the younger George Bush's presidency. NCLB became the perfect trigger for national standards as it enforced them by requiring all public schools to gear their programs toward having students score well on standardized tests.
Meanwhile, back in the Bush I presidency, Neil Bush, the fourth of the six Bush children, got into deep water in a savings and loan scandal. Like many other big-time investors, he was hard pressed to re-build and find new profit centers in a recessionary economy. But by the time the '90's rolled around, Neil was on to a new venture, and he was in the process of raising $23 million from U.S. investors to start a company called Ignite Learning. The business plan for Ignite Learning was to offer "standards-based" computer software learning centers, called Curriculum On Wheels (COWs), that had "demonstrated success in improving the test scores of economically disadvantaged children." And by the time NCLB rolled-out, Ignite was ready to rumble.
Very quickly, Ignite placed its COWs in at least 40 U.S. school districts. According to the Los Angeles Times, "At least 13 U.S. school districts used federal funds available through the president's signature education reform, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, to buy Ignite's portable learning centers at $3,800 apiece." Among the contracts were school districts in Florida where Neil's brother Jeb was governor.
Neil Bush insists that Ignite's success is not due to any "interface with any agency of the federal government." But who needs "interface" when you have family? Just look at the cast of characters that's influenced the company's rise to success (emphasis, mine):
"Most of Ignite's business has been obtained through sole-source contracts without competitive bidding.
The Washington Times Foundation, backed by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, head of the South Korea-based Unification Church, has peppered classrooms throughout Virginia with Ignite's COWs under a $1-million grant.
Oil companies and Middle East interests with long political ties to the Bush family have made similar bequests
Barbara Bush has enthusiastically supported Ignite. In January 2004, she and Neil Bush were guests of honor at a $1,000-a-table fundraiser in Oklahoma City organized by a foundation supporting the Western Heights School District. Proceeds were earmarked for the purchase of Ignite products.
The former first lady spurred controversy recently when she contributed to a Hurricane Katrina relief foundation for storm victims who had relocated to Texas. Her donation carried one stipulation: It had to be used by local schools for purchases of COWs.
Texas accounts for 75% of Ignite's business."
So what have standards-driven COWs (I can barely write that without laughing) actually achieved in the classroom? Well if you're looking for genuine learning, not so much. The only "results" Ignite reports on its website are a series of "testimonial" videos, some of which are thoroughly discredited in the LAT article. But if you're looking for ROI, there's lots of good "results." According to watchdog group CREW, "some school districts spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal money" on COWs, including a $1,000 annual licensing and upkeep fee.
But the connection of content standards to corporate corruption of public education doesn't need to be based solely on the basis of Neil Bush and Ignite Learning. Ex Secretary of Education Bill Bennet has also had his turn at the trough when he "teamed with a Virginia company backed by the education firm Knowledge Universe that is Michael Milikin's money to start up k12.com his home / cyber learning for-profit school which is also commodisizing [sic] educational products. Bill managed to cut a deal with the X [sic] Governor Ridge of Pennsylvania to be allowed into the state and because of his political connections has managed to secure business relationships with several other states."
So is there a genuine case for standards-driven education? Not much. As Alfie Kohn points out, the push for content standards has always been "driven more by political than educational considerations." (emphasis mine)
"To politicians, corporate CEOs, or companies that produce standardized tests, this prescription may seem to make sense. (Notice that this is exactly the cast of characters leading the initiative for national standards.) But if you spend your days with real kids in real classrooms, you're more likely to find yourself wondering how much longer those kids -- and the institution of public education -- can survive this accountability fad.
Are all kids entitled to a great education? Of course. But that doesn't mean all kids should get the same education. High standards don't require common standards. Uniformity is not the same thing as excellence - or equity. (In fact, one-size-fits-all demands may offer the illusion of fairness, setting back the cause of genuine equity.) To acknowledge these simple truths is to watch the rationale for national standards - or uniform state standards - collapse into a heap of intellectual rubble."
It's true that many nations whose students score well on international tests have content standards to guide their schools. But many of those countries, particularly in Asia, are reconsidering that. As Yong Zhao writes: (emphasis mine)
"The U.S. has been trying hard to implement what China has been trying to be rid of. An increasing number of states and the federal government have begun to dictate what students should learn, when they should learn it, and how their learning is measured through state-mandated curriculum standards, high school exit exams, and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). There are calls for even more centralization and standardization through national standards and national testing, as well as through rewarding or measuring schools and teachers based on test scores.
I find this trend in American education perplexing. If China, a developing country aspiring to move into an innovative society, has been working to emulate U.S. education, why does America want to abandon it? Furthermore, why does America want to adopt practices that China and many other countries have been so eager to give up? But most vexing is why Americans, who hold individual rights and liberty in the highest regard, would allow the government to dictate what their children should learn, when they should learn it, and how they are evaluated?"
Despite the lack of solid evidence for nationalizing our curriculum, President Barak Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have made "common core standards" a cornerstone of education policy. According to Education Week, "President Obama recently proposed that Title I funding for disadvantaged students be tied to whether states have adopted the Common Core State Standards. And . . . in order to get the most bang for their buck in Race to the Top applications, states have to promise to adopt the common standards."
And once again, lining up behind the administration's push for standardization is the usual combination of business-related cronies, including corporate-trained school leaders, charter schools entrepreneurs, and billionaire-backed foundations. Only this time, adding to the powerful leverage of content standards and testing, the Obama administration is also pushing charter schools, widespread layoffs of teachers, and the shuttering of public schools.
As I noted in a QuickHit on OpenLeft earlier this week, you can draw a straight line from mass layoffs of teachers that recently occurred in Albany, NY directly to Wall Street investors:
"The mass layoffs are a direct result of Governor David Patterson's successful effort to lift the caps on charter schools in order to qualify for Race to the Top Funds. This allowed rightwing foundations and billionaires on Wall St. to pour, according to this report, "tens of millions of dollars" into the charter school movement in the Albany region." (Oh, and it's just coincidental that these deep-pocketed donors also gave money to Patterson's election fund.)
The main charter recipient was the Bright Choice chain of charter schools, whose president, according to EdWise, is an outspoken rightwing advocate and foe of teachers unions.
Other recipients, again according to EdWise, are 'for profit charter management firms Victory Schools and National Heritage Academies'"
Some could argue that we need national standards in order to keep religious, rightwing zealots rewriting curriculum at a local level to fit their philosophy, as a conservative Texas school board recently did. But isn't it dangerous and naive to assume that these sorts of conservative factions would not have the same level of influence at the national level? And does anyone really think that a curriculum designed and paid for by big business is going to be impartial to topics that are antithetical to corporate capitalism and the goals of getting children "career-ready" rather than truly educated?
Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to educating the nation's children - an approach that enables big businesses to connect the dots from standards, to testing, to charter schools and private takeover of public education - it's time for politicians to listen to educators and look for systemic ideas for improving education in the classrooms of real teachers. Good teaching is not a "product" that can be packaged and rolled out nation wide. Our kids are not "consumers." And the drive for profit is not analogous to bequeathing the gift of lifelong learning to all children everywhere. |
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