by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Arizona lawmakers are expected to introduce an "anchor baby" bill today that would deny birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. Modeled after birthright citizenship legislation unveiled by the nativist coalition State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI) earlier this month, the measure is, unabashedly, part of a larger effort on the part of SLLI to challenge existing citizenship law in the United States.
In last week's installment of Left Ed, I held up Matt Miller of the Center for American Progress as the prime example of how off-base, even anti-progressive, the leadership on the left is in the education debate. I pointed out how his Washington Post op-ed - a supposed "defense" of public school funding - actually does more damage to public schools by perpetuating the rightwing frame that America's system of public education is broken and "lagging" behind the rest of the developed world. I explained why Miller's interpretation of the results from the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, reveal how little the DC-centric leadership on the left understands about the strengths and weaknesses of the nation's education system. And I concluded that rather than accepting, as Miller does, the rightwing frame that America's public schools are "broken," and giving credence to irrelevant and erroneous yet popular conventional wisdom about education "reform," it's time for people on the real left to take the advice of George Lakoff and "shift the frame" of how the media communicates about public education.
This tendency of the leadership of the Democratic party to start political debates from a rightwing frame and then resort to the very same erroneous "data" that conservatives use as supporting evidence unfortunately is now often seen in the conventional media as "progressive," as evidenced by edublogger Alexander Russo, who called Miller's advice something from "angry ideal-less progressives."
Instead of fighting for progressive ideals, however, what Miller and the CAP are doing is, to quote Lakoff, "surrendering in advance." Real progressives know what this looks like on economic policy. A progressive economic policy argues that alleviating economic disparity is a moral and practical imperative and producing serious economic stimulus during a recession is more important than reducing the deficit. So why does Obama begin the debate with a compromise with conservatives on tax cuts for the wealthy and concerns about reducing the deficit? Because Obama, like so many others populating our nation's capital, is a sell-out to what Lakoff calls, "the superior message machine" that conservatives wield, which states that "deficits" are evil and "reduced taxes for everyone" are always good.
In the education debate, the message machine is 100 percent owned by the forces of the anti-progressive. Public schools are "broken" and "lagging behind" the rest of the world, the problem is "bad teachers" (and who among us hasn't had a bad teacher?), rigid standards enforced by high-stakes testing are the solution, and the force of the "free market" - in the form of nationwide charter school franchises and increased privatization - must be unleashed to lead the way to a brighter future.
Backed by billions in funding from philanthro-capitalists, fed with report after report of objective sounding BS from well-endowed think tanks, and animated in powerful media channels like Oprah, NBC "news," and Waiting for Superman, the anti-progressive message machine in the education debate has achieved near-hegemonic predominance.
Like Yertle the Turtle, it's time for progressives at the bottom of the heap to start speaking out. But the pushback can't be focused merely on negating the anti-progressive arguments. "That will only make their arguments more prominent", as Lakoff explans. Instead, the pushback has to be focused on building a "movement" based on some very basic and understandable moral "truths," such as equality, empathy, and human rights.
So, confronted with the current landscape in the media, what would a more progressive side in the education debate be saying?
This week, as the progressive blogosphere seethed in resentment over President Obama's cave-in to Republicans on tax cuts for the wealthy, at least one commentator linked the debate over tax policy to education reform.
It was depressing enough when the president caved on extending $120 billion in tax cuts for the highest-earning 2 percent of Americans at a time of war and surging debt. As proof of White House fear and timidity, and Republican greed and myopia, the news doesn't get much worse.
That's $120 billion over two years that won't go to boost job creation. Nor will it fund a portion of the $300 billion we'll spend on wars during same period - instead, we'll borrow that abroad and hand the bill to the kids. Worse, none of that cash will be available to lure America's top young talent to the classroom by finally making teaching a prestigious, well-paying career.
Oops - I forgot - no one in the tax and budget talks was talking about transforming the teaching profession as part of America's long-term economic recovery plan. After all, that would mean thinking beyond 2012. Yet the education world was rocked Tuesday when students in Shanghai, in that city's debut on a respected international test, outscored dozens of other countries in math, science and reading.
The "respected international test" that Miller is referring is, of course, the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, and the supposed stunner about this year's results is that PISA ranked American school kids 23rd or 24th in most subjects while students in the city of Shanghai outscored the rest of the world.
Miller laments how this is yet another "grim reminder of our lagging schools" and concludes that the argument about taxes and school improvement needs to be re-framed into one where retreats on tax cuts need to be equated to our deteriorating education system. In his call to arms, he exhorts the education reform movement's famed poster-person, Michelle Rhee, to lead the charge:
As part of her newly launched advocacy group, Students First, former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee should take these scary new findings to editorial boards, business groups and PTAs in every state. Only when enough of us wake up to the fact that we're losing badly in today's global education race will we have a hope of getting serious about turning things around.
Although Miller's thinking might strike many on the left-end of the political spectrum as sensible and logical - i. e., tax cuts for the rich = less money to improve our deteriorating schools - his argument will actually be quickly and summarily dispensed with in the broader debate. And it should be.
This week in the general media and internet there was an interesting rhetorical scrum among pundits and bloggers that revealed a lot about where the debate in education is heading and, in particular, what it may mean for the fate of poor brown and black kids in the most impoverished neighborhoods of America.
The tete-a-tete started with a column in Monday's Washington Post by Robert J. Samuelson in which he declared that nearly 40 years of school reform have been a "failure." To buttress his argument he points to results from tests administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress which show that while "some improvements have occurred in elementary schools . . . they're erased by high school." He also points out that even though "there has also been a modest narrowing in the high school achievement gaps among whites, blacks and Hispanics; unfortunately, the narrowing generally stopped in the late 1980s." Then he adds an aside that "(Average test scores have remained stable because, although the scores of blacks and Hispanics have risen slightly, the size of these minority groups also expanded. This means that their still-low scores exert a bigger drag on the average. The two factors offset each other.)" Samuelson concludes his column by blaming the lack of progress in school improvement on a decrease in student motivation and his observations that "more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don't like school, don't work hard and don't do well."
The next day, Jonathan Chait of The New Republic blasted Samuelson for being an out-dated, hang-dog curmudgeon who doesn't understand that "American education policy has been on auto-pilot," "the current wave of reform" has never been tried before, and that charter schools, specifically KIPP schools, "have shown revolutionary improvements among poor, inner-city students and have rapidly expanded."
Joining the fray soon after is the Daily Howler's Bob Somerby who accuses Samuelson of spewing "disinformation" and accuses Chait of being a "liberal" who doesn't "care about blacks." His argument is that from 1971 to 2008 17-year-old black students gained 29 points in reading and the fact that neither Samuleson or Chait acknowledge this shows that these authors are "dissembling" at best, or at worst, have "no earthly sign" of understanding the matter at hand. His conclusion, in a Friday post, is that "we're surprised by these test score gains; we wouldn't have thought that an increasing focus on testing, 'standards' and accountability would have produced this type of result. But these large score gains exist-and they simply beg for analysis, unless you don't give a flying fig about the kids who achieved them."
Not to be left out of the fun, Matthew Yglesias from the Center for American Progress sided with Somerby to a point, but wants to assert that the main message from looking at the most recent data from NAEP is to realize that "history gives us no reason to doubt that it's possible for black kids to do better in school." (Earth to Yglesias: Is there anyone to the left of a Tea Party troll asserting that it's not "possible for blacks to do well in school"?)
The last one hurtling into the moshpit is Kevin Drum of Mother Jones who concludes that what all this brou-ha-ha over NAEP scores shows is:
"You can say that black and Hispanic scores have risen dramatically since the early 70s. Or you can say that black and Hispanic scores have stagnated (or even dropped slightly depending on how you cherry pick your dates) since the early 90s. Or you can say that white kids have made slight gains. Or you can say that the black-white gap closed considerably for a while but hasn't changed much lately."
So according to Drum, there aren't any conclusions about the NAEP data really worth making, and he nonchalantly dismisses the whole crossfire by saying that "there's just not much there there."
What none of these supposedly informed observers of educational progress dare to address though is the 50,000 pound gorilla staring at them from the NAEP report (pdf).
The gorilla makes its first appearance on page 4:
"the reading score gaps between White and Black students at all three ages showed no significant change from 2004 to 2008, the gaps did narrow in 2008 compared to 1971. White - Hispanic gaps in reading scores also showed no significant change from 2004 to 2008 but were smaller in 2008 than in 1975 at ages 9 and 17. Across all three age groups, neither the White - Black nor White - Hispanic gaps in mathematics changed significantly from 2004 to 2008, but both were smaller in 2008 than in 1973."
Then on page 14:
No significant change in White - Black score gaps since 2004
Page 16:
No significant change in White - Black score gaps since 2004
And page 17:
No significant change in White - Hispanic score gaps since 2004
In other words, one of the most overwhelming conclusions of the NAEP data - that four years of NCLB-driven "reforms" produced nothing in terms of narrowing our country's achievement gap - is either being denied or brushed away by those who proclaim to speak for the interests of poor black and brown school children. And it is the very same NCLB-styled reforms - "accountability" based on standardized testing - that are driving the current administration's education policy and its KIPP-inspired charter school benefactors.
Yesterday, Matt Yglesias posted a strongly worded rebuttal to a portion of my Left Ed diary this Sunday. Rather than continuing with the harsh push-back I posted on the QuickHit from Mark Matson, I'm going to try to see if there is some common ground that Matt and I can agree on so that there can be some concerted effort among the progressive community to do right by the nation's school kids.
First off Matt, can you and I agree on the impact that poverty and socioeconomic conditions have on children? When you say that "it's difficult to obtain unimpeachable statistical data on how to improve life outcomes for children," I hope you would at least understand that there's nothing difficult at all about concluding that poverty has a huge impact on the outcomes of children. I would hope that you understand that the most far-reaching study of influences on student achievement, the Coleman Report, concluded that out-of-school factors - such as poverty, health, and homelife - had far and away the most influence on the "life outcomes of children" and that statistically schools had only a small influence on the trajectory of children's lives.
Second, I would hope that you agree that the next most influential set of factors affecting student achievement have to do with school level factors such as having a safe place to learn and having a guaranteed and viable curriculum. And I would hope that you would agree that a "teach to the test" approach where students are drilled in a direct instruction mode to do well on reading and math high-stakes tests is anything but a viable curriculum, because that approach ignores so many other aspects of a well-rounded education - like history and the arts.
Third, I would hope that you agree that the best instructional methods should be available to all children, regardless of their socioeconomic and cultural background. I would hope that you understand that a "one size fits all" approach to teaching simply doesn't work for every child. That instruction needs to be differentiated because we all learn in the different ways. And that children from poverty deserve the same access to instructional approaches that you and I want for our children. Since children of poverty are not inherently different from our kids, are they?
Next, I would hope that you understand that the opportunity costs (a business term I'm sure you value) of pursuing false approaches to improving our nation's schools - like the charter school movement, which produces in your words "about the same" as what we are currently achieving - are something to be avoided? Especially when we know that the results of charter schools are not just "about the same" as public schools, as you maintain, but actually worse for some kids. And especially when you know that results of KIPP charter schools in particular are grossly distorted by those schools selectively and attrition rates.
Instead of hurtling down these roads to nowhere, don't you think it would be better to talk about how we should address the root causes of low achievement with universal early childhood education and better health care for kids, which we know can work? True, these are long-term solutions, but isn't every year that we spend nitpicking around the edges of real progress with proposals such as "more charter schools" yet another year lost in the work of rescuing low-achieving kids?
Finally, I would hope that you understand the true dynamics of racism. I learned a long time ago from a public school teacher in Iowa that whenever you hear about what's best for "those kids" and how "they" should be treated differently from your children that what you're hearing in actuality is the language of racism. I grew up in Texas on the tattered edge of suburban Dallas during a time when there was something called "desegregation" going on. I went to a small, all-white elementary school perched high on a caliche knob where the September winds shocked our morning flag raising into immediate furl. After we recited the Pledge of Allegiance we were informed about the "new students" that were going to be bussed from the other side of town to "our school" and how they were "different" from us. Our political leaders back then told us that it would be better if those black and brown kids kept to their own schools because those schools were what "those kids needed." Back then, in the South, those politicians were all Democrats.
Today, as Linda Darling Hammond points out, "the achievement gap between minority and white students in reading and math is larger than it was in 1988," and a "growing share of African-American and Hispanic students" now find themselves in "highly segregated apartheid schools that lack qualified teachers; up-to-date textbooks and materials; libraries, science labs and computers; and safe, adequate facilities." And once again, as I saw on the blackland praries of my childhood, we have Democratic leaders telling us to support a charter school movement, which tends to foster highly segregated schools, as numerous studies have shown.
So my last question to you Matt is what kind of Democrat are you?
"School's Out" may be on the minds of most children and teachers right now. But in the halls of Congress, the debate over education policy and reform raged on this week.
As a broken Senate failed America's children by not passing legislation that would prevent mass teacher layoffs, politicians in another committee room held a hearing on oversight of the for-profit college industry. Many of the same rhetorical points from the argument over K-12 reform were brandished in that hearing as well.
The rapid expansion of privatization in education is the overwhelming trend at all levels. "While enrollment at institutions of higher education increased by 31 percent from 1998 to 2008, the number of students entering for-profit schools soared 225 percent over the same period."
This explosive growth of for-profit higher education is being likened to the housing bubble and the unscrupulous profiteering by the home mortgage industry that recently wreaked havoc on our economy:
"Steven Eisman, portfolio manager of the FrontPoint Financial Services Fund who has studied how the for-profit education industry operates and derives its revenue, did not mince words in his testimony. 'Until recently, I thought that there would never again be an opportunity to be involved with an industry as socially destructive as the subprime- mortgage industry. I was wrong. The for-profit education industry has proven equal to the task,' he said. 'It is my hope that this administration sees the nature of the problem and begins to act now. But if nothing is done, then we are on the cusp of a new social disaster.'
Eisman testified that the for-profit industry has grown at an extreme and unusual rate, driven by easy access to government-sponsored debt in the form of Title IV student loans, where the credit is guaranteed by the government. Thus, the government, the students, and the taxpayer bear all the risk and the for-profit industry reaps all the rewards, he said. When the Bush administration took over the reigns of government, the Department of Education gutted many of the rules that governed the conduct of this industry, he said. Once the floodgates were opened, the industry embarked on 10 years of unrestricted massive growth. Federal dollars flowing to the industry exploded to over $21 billion, a 450 percent increase."
On the K-12 side, the same Wall Street operators who recently sent our economy into oblivion are now amassing huge amounts of wealth behind the charter school industry. The reason:
"There are about 5000 charter schools in place now at about 4% of the total public school system in the United States and it's grown at about 400-500 units per year, which is about a $2 billion dollar annual investment opportunity set. So it's a very big and high growth category that is going to continue to represent opportunities . . ."
Perfectly symbolic of this "partnership" between public schools and the private sector was the recent announcement that former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will now be working for America's most prominent and well-funded lobbyist for big business, The US Chamber of Commerce.
Meanwhile Diane Ravitch, one of the most well-known and outspoken critics of the Obama administration's education policies, reported on having her say in DC and at the Whitehouse. Her conclusion:
"Living outside the Beltway, I am struck by the fact that the education think tanks in DC are like an echo chamber. Almost all share the 'consensus,' and because they agree with one another, they think they are right. The Obama administration bought into that consensus, and seems utterly tone-deaf to how their agenda is received outside the Beltway."
The frustration that educators are feeling at the tone-deafness of the political debate in DC is palpable, impassioned, and pervasive:
"It is really interesting to me that President Obama can let BP take the lead in cleaning up the disaster in the Gulf, and yet teachers have got hedge fund managers, mayors, think tank policy wonks, billionaire vulture capitalists, and no real education experts, calling the shots on public school 'reform,' with Arne Duncan as department head, whose teaching experience comes from volunteering at his mom's after school program (He actually says this, as if it means something!) . . ."
(emphasis not added)
It's not just educators either. Parents don't like Sec. Duncan's "overly disruptive" turnaround models that rely on closing schools and firing teachers. Christian churches are appalled at "the administration's effort to push states to increase the number of charter schools, its plan to turn some of the federal money used to help poor children into competitive grants, its punitive approach to dealing with low-performing schools, and the 'ugly' demonization of public school teachers." (h/t FunkyGal)
Yet so little pushback against the Washington DC Consensus on education reform is registering among politicians. Even the most progressive Democrats in Congress have mustered an opposition that can be characterized as mild at best.
So one wonders why the messages about the Obama administration's education policies aren't getting through - not just to the politicians, but also to the media, the progressive blogosphere, and even bloggers in the education industry.
True, there are fundamental structures standing in the way of ordinary people getting their voices heard in our corporate-media dominated society. But that set of circumstances does not absolve one from straining harder and striving harder to get better at being heard above the fray.
It's also true that it's not that unusual for professionals in a specific discipline to feel that their voice isn't being heard. For instance, doctors and nurses frequently complained that their voices weren't being heard in the recent debate over health care reform. But the scale at which educators are being ignored in the Obama administration's education agenda is truly off-the-charts. And no one in the Democratic Party ever went after the American Medical Association with the vehemence that teachers' unions are being vilified in the debate over education policy. So what gives?
It's not that educators aren't able and articulate advocates for their side. And people voicing their discontent with President Obama's education policies certainly know what they're talking about. But it could be that "knowing what they're talking about" may in fact may be part of the problem.
(By invitation, following Jeff's great diary about Gerald Bracey. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
The Center for American Progress is "progressive." Right? After all, CAP's website touts it as a source for "Progressive Ideas." The homepage lists its "progressive priorities." And the "About Us" blurb declares CAP's mission to draw from the great progressive "social movements of the 20th century."
So you would expect that any thoughts about education policy emanating from The Center for American Progress would be, well, progressive, wouldn't you?
CAP's most recent opportunity to push for a more progressive agenda for reforming America's public schools was released to the world earlier this month with the publication of "Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Innovation," a follow-up report to another one bearing the same name two years ago. Even though the report was created in partnership with two well-known conservative organizations, you would expect that CAP would have inserted some fairly substantial representation of progressive education values in the report.
For instance, you would expect there to be some reference to educating children in ways that are similar to those pioneered by Francis Parker, who believed that children learn best by doing and that schools have to be child-centered. You would expect to find the influence of the great American thinker John Dewy, whose laboratory school proved that schools work best when they function as a community. And you would expect to see at least some reference to the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget and the work of Jerome Bruner who established that children aren't empty vessels that schools can just pour a standardized content into.
After all, the research base that proves that progressive education practices are effective has a pretty long history and is fairly well understood.
But anyone looking for a progressive influence in the "Leaders and Laggards" report will be sorely disappointed. Because there's none. Phrases such as "active learning" and "child-centered" never even occur. Nothing about schools functioning like communities, or kids being encouraged to construct their own meaning about academic content.
Our institution has partnered with Third Way on a number of important projects - including a homeland security transition project - and have a great deal of respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product. They are key leaders in the progressive movement and we look forward to working with them in the future.
They are key leaders in the progressive movement? Really? What is this 'movement' of which she speaks? Third Way's 'honorary' Senate Chairs are Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Tom Carper, Mark Pryor, Ken Salazar, Claire McCaskill. The group's 'honorary' House Chairs are Jane Harman, Ellen Tauscher, Joseph Crowley, Artur Davis, Melissa Bean, and Gabrielle Giffords.
This is not, to put it mildly, a 'progressive' group of politicians. Blanche Lincoln is the only Democrat publicly wavering on the Employee Free Choice Act, Evan Bayh is starting a Blue Dog caucus in the Senate, Mark Pryor and Ken Salazar were in the 'Gang of 14', and all of these Senators voted for cloture for Alito, with the exception of Even Bayh who was running for President at the time and Clair McCaskill, who wasn't in the Senate yet. Every single one voted to immunize telecom companies against against unlawful behavior in warrantless wiretapping Americans. Every single one voted for the Iraq supplemental bill to fund the war in April, 2007. In other words, this is a group of conservative Democrats that have consistently voted for war funding, illegal wiretapping of Americans, a hyper-conservative Supreme Court, and broadly, a reactionary and extreme political agenda.
John and Elizabeth Edwards may not be on the 2008 presidential campaign anymore, but they are on a different campaign: making connections between the costs of the Iraq war and our weak economy.
Elizabeth Edwards, who is good about making constructive criticism of the media, observed that reporters
"certainly don't cover the connection between the issues," she said the American people see there is "undoubtedly a connection between oil, the costs of transportation in this country, and this war."
A new study in the journal Science ($ub) by Renton Righelato and Dominick V. Spracklen validates what many have been saying all along: that biofuels, especially those from the tropics, are far worse for the planet than regular old crude oil.
The study finds that we could reduce global warming pollution two to nine times more by conserving or restoring forests and grasslands rather than razing them and turning them into biofuels plantations - even if we continue to use fossil fuels as our main source of energy.
That's because those forests and grasslands act as the lungs of the planet - their dense vegetation sucks up far more carbon dioxide and breathes out far more oxygen than any biofuel crop ever could. When you destroy that wilderness, much of the carbon stored in its living matter is either burned or otherwise oxidized - which is why the destruction of tropical forests accounts for more than 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (more than China produces). Meanwhile, we'd be saving all the creatures that rely on those wildlands for life. The scale is huge: replacing even 10 percent of our gas with biofuels would require 43 percent of U.S. arable land.
Unfortunately, it hit the same day as Blogosphere Day, so I think it didn't get the attention it should have. I've been asked to help give it an extra push, and I'm more than happy to. The issue is flexible fuels, which is a big issue right now as the Senate is considering a major new energy bill.
The CAPAF project features a series of clever videos, with some inspired appearances by Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Matt Damon, Sarah Silverman, Jason Biggs and a few others, including the serial killer guy from Saw.
Links to all the videos and a bit more information below the fold...
STATE BLOGS
The Center for American Progress's Action Fund launched a