Although you wouldn't know it from reading the national press and following the blogosphere, education is a critically important issue in Tuesday's midterm election. Unfortunately, it's important for reasons other than what it should be, as a referendum against the awful school reform policies inherited from George Bush and fortified by Arne Duncan.
Instead of mistaken reform policies, the overall foundational narrative for education among the candidates' competing debates is the impact of the financial crisis on school funding. And while there are many insipid perspectives on education that both Democratic and Republican candidates generally share - that our system of public education is "broken," teachers need to be held more accountable for test scores, charter schools will lead the way to dynamic new education practices that can be scaled up across the country, etc. - there are very clear and obvious themes that differentiate Dems from Repubs and gives good reason to vote Democratic if you care about public schools.
First off, one of the most divisive issues in the election is the worthiness of the stimulus funds provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that were injected into the economy by the Obama administration after the financial crisis hit. Quoted in this article from Education Week, Joel Packer, the executive director of the Committee for Education Funding points out "there's no question that for education, [cuts and layoffs] would have been demonstrably worse without the stimulus." Republicans - even those who hypocritically accepted the funds - are generally critical of ARRA while Democratic candidates generally speak positively of the legislation even though, as Packer says, "generally, the stimulus has become a negative brand."
Beyond the issue of stimulus funds, though, the differences between the education policies and provisions of Democratic and Republican candidates become more diverse but significant, nevertheless. Scanning across a map of the 2010 election relevant to education, on a race-by-race basis at the state level there are races in particular that have significant impact on the direction of education policy. For instance, Democratic candidates in many of these races - such as the gubernatorial races in Iowa and Texas - are pushing for increased attention and funding of early childhood education, which would be a huge improvement in the well being of children and families in those sates.
On the federal level, the overriding edu-issue at stake in the upcoming election is the role of the federal government in public schools. As Paul Rosenberg wrote about in this diary earlier this week on Open Left, "the spread of anti-federalist ideology in the realm of education" is a commonly alarming theme among the majority of Republican candidates, and many of these extremist candidates want to shut down the Department of Education altogether and abandon critically important federal policies such as ESEA.
While I'm no big fan of many of the interventions - such as Race to the Top and i3 competitive grants - being pushed by the Obama administration, the federal government has been responsible for many of the historic landmarks that have made education in this country more accessible and equal for minorities and the less-well-off. Preserving the federal government's role in education is a priority that every progressive should feel motivated to fight for, even if the policies of the current administration are out of whack.
Now, I wouldn't be upset to see a new Republican majority in Congress cease funding for Race to the Top, as some have predicted. But as Diane Ravitch explains, a Republican majority would also likely reinforce many of the really bad elements of the education reform movement:
"There will be more votes for the Billionaire Boys Club, who hope to take charge in city after city with noblesse oblige policies. There will be more support for naming and shaming teachers by publishing test scores, even though this approach produces high error rates and demoralizes teachers. There will be increased support for policies that ignore poverty while blaming teachers for low scores. And even greater demands to rely on testing of basic skills as the best and only way to measure quality."
I'm not being naïve at all about the Obama administration's agenda. Regardles of the the outcome of the election, he all too clearly revealed his plans for education in this comment he made in a conversation with progressive bloggers earlier this week:
"Look, the -- I'm a pretty stubborn guy when it comes to, on the one hand, trying to get cooperation. I don't give up just because I didn't get cooperation on this issue; I'll try the next issue. If the Republicans don't agree with me on fiscal policy, maybe they'll agree with me on infrastructure. If they don't agree with me on infrastructure, I'll try to see if they agree with me on education."
In other words, Obama will quite likely keep education policy as a compromise crutch he can haul out to show-off his "bipartisanship" to the media. But his alone is not reason enough to abandon the Democratic party, in my mind.
Most of the wailing, weeping, and gnashing of teeth for an alternative to the duplicity of the Obama administration and the tepid politics of the Democratic party in general are not compelling enough in my mind to persuade progressives to sit this election out or vote Libertarian (the only viable third party in my state). If you happen to like a single one of your local leaders or favor a candidate who is trying to unseat a Republican office holder at the local level, that is reason enough to vote Democratic despite what you think about Obama. Holding high your displeasure with Obama at the expense of a local office holder or challenger who, in some respects, matters more to your immediate needs would be more than irrational. It's stupid.
This Week's Duncehat Award: Andrew Rotherham
Writing in Time magazine, edu-corpratist Andrew Rotherham shares his profound insights on how political leadership should respond to the resegregation of American public schools. His advice? Give up.
"No one in the mainstream of the education debate wants segregated schools. But while such schools are not an immutable condition, they are an unfortunate fact of life today. That's why so many in the reform community see issues such as improving teacher effectiveness, providing a better curriculum, and expanding high-performing charter schools into underserved communities as more impactful and immediate steps than grand schemes to change housing policy or school district boundaries. And, of course, there are plenty of schools that demonstrate that high poverty rates and low achievement are not inexorably linked. These reformers, myself included, are not opposed to efforts to create more economically integrated schools. We're just keenly attuned to the practical constraints."
This "the poor will always be with us" attitude is pure hogwash.
Based on an analysis of NAEP data, minority students made tremendous strides in achievement when school desegregations were at their height in the 1970s. True, the gap in achievement remained. But it is in the last few years, as resegregation and poverty have surged, that gains among minority students have diminished.
Writing in Educational Leadership Jonathan Kozol sums up pretty well what Rotherham's callous indifference amounts to:
"People who devote their lives to tinkering with clever ways to close the race gap by 'demanding more' of children and their principals and teachers within segregated settings are, knowingly or not, upholding the same failed and tainted promises given to people in the United States more than a century ago by Plessy v. Ferguson. They are ripping to shreds the legacy of Brown and Dr. King. Only those oblivious to history would dare deceive us in this shameful manner."
This week, with the education "reform" propaganda machine roaring in the background - in the form of NBC's Education Nation and the debut of Waiting for Superman - I attended Open House at my child's high school. In this annual ritual, anxious and animated parents bustle through the hallways of their children's school, following in condensed form the sequence of classes and teachers that their children experience each day, eagerly collecting handouts from faculty, writing down contact information, and happily introducing themselves as "so-and-so's Mom or Dad."
I've attended these events for nearly twenty years, beginning with my oldest child's kindergarten, but I couldn't help but notice this year how the constancy of the ritual differs from the furiously unreal diatribe about education in the mainstream media.
You see, in "real-world" talk about education that's going on at Open House, standardized testing does not take center stage. Teachers introduce parents to the curriculum they'll be teaching. They explain their grading and assessment philosophy. They describe some of the instructional methods they like to use in class. And they ask parents to offer whatever kind of insights they have about their children's interests and learning styles. Parents don't ask to see the teacher's test scores from last year. They don't want to know what kind of incentives are in place to motivate the teacher. And they don't threaten to leave the school for a "competing" institution if the teacher's "results" don't measure up to snuff.
Despite what they're being told over and over, by politicians and pundits who eschew public schools for their own children and by a parade of education "experts" who've never set foot in the classroom, that our nation's schools are "broken" and populated with "ineffective" uncaring teachers, parents engaged in real-world education talk like their local schools and expect them to evaluate teachers, not to punish them, but to help them improve.
This past week's "reporting" by the mainstream media on the number one issue on many people's minds - the "ground zero mosque" - is a great example of how bad our media culture has gotten in this country. Even people who don't normally write about political matters could easily point out how the MSM's narrative about the Park 51 community center has been perpetuating "lies or intellectually dishonest arguments designed to bring out the very worst in all of us," namely:
1. It ain't a "mosque."
2. It ain't at "ground zero."
3. It ain't American to restrict private activities of any kind based on religion.
But while prominent bloggers in the progressive community - Glenn Greenwald, digby, and others ¬ continue to seethe about the media's miasma regarding Park 51, they hardly ever challenge how the media distorts America's perspectives on something that's really a whole lot closer to home for most people: our neighborhood schools.
As I've stated in previous editions of Left Ed, the "disappearance" of education news in the media (and by derivation, the blogosphere) leaves the American public with a void that is all too easily filed with half-truths, distortions, and outright lies. And even when education makes it into the headlines, reporters rarely get it right.
A better case in point cannot be found than this week's example of "education journalism" in the Los Angeles Times.
Just as the citizens of Los Angeles are heading back to schools, the intrepid journalists of the LAT thought it would be a smashing idea to trash local teachers, not in the abstract, but by name. In this video, the crack-reporting team of Jason-and-Jason declare in sweeping generalization that teacher evaluations in America are across the board a "subjective" effort and that only those states using a "value added" approach can illuminate the way forward to better instructional practice.
Based on this totally "subjective" judgment, the LAT announced that it was going to publish a series of articles called Grading the Teachers that would ostensibly show "how effective Los Angeles Unified School District teachers have been at improving their students' performance on standardized tests." The article that followed the announcement went so far as to identify to the public individual teachers as being "effective" or "ineffective" based on an evaluation method known as "value added" analysis.
Although US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was fine with the LAT's series, most people remotely cognizant of quality education practice were not. Two prominent authors and commentators, Diane Ravitch and Rick Hess, who often don't see eye-to-eye on school policy-related matters, had no problem agreeing that the LAT's public outing of teachers was a mistake.
So it all comes down to this. As schools across the nation are winding up their academic calendars, test scores are ruling the lives of educators and families to an unprecedented extent. Some kids -- especially those enrolled in special education programs or those whose primary language isn't English -- are having their futures forever altered by a score from a single test given on a single day. And teachers' lives are also being thrown into turmoil as "technical glitches" delay test results and sew confusion. From my own perspective, high-stakes tests meant that my child could take the last of school week off from classes so teachers could use that time to drill and retest students who failed end-of-year exams.
So as teachers dutifully marched through their orders to impose a test-driven approach to education that is antithetical to everything they believe to be in their students' best interests, they are nevertheless being told that that their jobs must be made harder and their work held to an ever tougher scrutiny.
Leading pundits such as David Brooks hailed this year as the year that public school teachers have rightly become "fair game." According to Brooks, the whole reason for 27 years of school reform failure is that we haven't been tough enough on teachers. What's needed is to get "Patton-esque" on these lay-abouts and adopt "stubborn, data-driven" policies that have a "low tolerance for bullshit."
The recurrent call to "get tough" on teachers and schools now dominates the discourse on education in our country. Time and time again, we are told that the solution to boosting student test scores is to ratchet-up the pressure on educators. Teachers are told that they have to work harder and for longer hours; their training has to be tougher, and their jobs made less secure.
From their cushy chairs and air-conditioned offices in DC thinktanks and corporate headquarters, education reformists chant the get-tough mantra to make standards "tougher" and make teaching more "rigorous." Addressing an audience of educators that is mostly female, their prose bristles with masculine exhortations to be tough-minded with teachers and "stiffen" requirements.
And some wonder why teachers feel they are being beat up on?
In the education community, it's hardly a cause for celebration when the latest results of a National Assessment of Education Progress hit the media, as one did this week when the results of a NAEP report on urban school districts was announced. And NO, that's not because NAEP results are always bad, as indeed the results of this latest NAEP are not all bad. And NO, it's not because educators are inherently resistant to assessments. In fact, according to surveys, the vast majority of teachers welcome being assessed based on student engagement, principal observations, and locally made and administered student performance evaluations.
What makes announcements of NAEP and other broad assessments unnerving to educators is that the results are used by politicians and pundits as the basis to propose, well, just about anything.
Unfortunately, some of those people using NAEP and other studies to make ridiculous pronouncements about the state of public education are people who are supposed to be allies of public education, specifically people who call themselves "Democrats." In her weekly blog post, Diane Ravitch spotlighted the clout of a particularly powerful group of Democrats known as Democrats for Education Reform who are actively undermining traditional public schools.
"This is a small and politically powerful organization that involves some of the nation's wealthiest hedge-fund managers. A story in The New York Times explained that when New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wanted entrée to the hedge-fund crowd for his political fundraising, he had first to meet with Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. No money for his candidacy unless he showed a favorable stance towards privatization. Democrats for Education Reform-referred to as DFER (dee-fer)-is active nationally, promoting the candidacy of pro-charter candidates for state legislatures and for national office."
The rightwing is elated at the tendency of people who call themselves Democrats to support Bush-era ed policies that undermine teachers' unions and public schools:
"From enacting new curricula standards to school choice measures such as charter schools, the NEA has been bested by the coterie of centrist Democrats, conservatives, libertarians and idiosyncratic left-learners who make up the school reform movement. The fact that Democrats -- including prominent liberals such as Green Dot Schools founder (and Rock the Vote cofounder) Steve Barr -- are also some of the most-prominent backers of school reform means that the NEA can no longer count on the Democratic National Committee for unquestioned support."
I've often been perplexed at the tendency of Democrats - even those who profess to be progressive - to support education policies that are not the least bit democratic, let alone progressive or even liberal. Is it because the Washington consensus on education policy is just a front for corporate takeover of public schools? Is it because they're all engaged in a global capitalistic plot hatched by the World Bank to subvert publicly funded schools? Is it because there is a failure of the minds of our leaders to grasp, as William Timberman suggested in comments to last week's Left Ed post, the importance of public education in the scheme of all the other overwhelming problems they face?
Today on Left Ed, let's consider another option. Let's explore the idea that much of the Democratic party and its leadership is seriously off-kilter on education and willfully ignorant of the destructive nature of their policies because they suffer from a case of Education Deficit Disorder.
Similarly, my Quick Hit linking to Charles Murray's ridiculous NY Times op-ed exempting voucher schools from the same kind of accountability being used to pummel traditional public schools also drew the attention of Diane Ravitch, who quite rightly pointed out the "double standard" that "when public schools fail to raise test scores, it is a sign of their decrepitude and failure; when voucher schools fail to raise test scores, well, so what, they weren't supposed to do that."
As if on cue, charter school cheerleader Paul E. Peterson anted-up to the stupidity of school "reformist" arguments by claiming that "what makes charters so important today is not so much their current success, on average, but their long-term potential to innovate." Got that? Charter schools don't have to prove they're any good at all. It's all about "choice" and "innovation." But in the meantime, those traditional public schools had better measure up!
In the meantime, what is the track record for "innovation?" When it comes to teacher preparation - another whipping post for the reformists - not so hot. Edublogger Claus von Zastrow uses a new report from The National Research Council as evidence of the whole folly of chasing after reformist innovations:
"We spend an awful lot of time in this country debating the relative merits of 'traditional' and 'alternative' approaches to education. We'd do far better to spend our time looking for what works, whether it's new or old, sexy or boring, alternative or traditional.
The National Research Council's new report on teacher preparation bears out this point. The report's authors found that 'there is more variation within the "traditional" and "alternative" categories than there is between these categories.' What's more, they found 'no evidence that any one pathway into teaching is the best way to attract and prepare desirable candidates and guide them into the teaching force.'
And that's our biggest problem. We lack evidence to inform our ever more strident debates between new and old."
(emphasis not added)
In the meantime, the number of scandals involving those "innovative" charter schools has grown so large that there is now a new blog devoted entirely to keeping us up to date on the whole disgraceful matter. (BIG hat tip to Jim Horn.
My reason for these scattershots across the arc of the education debate is to hammer home the point that the policy ideas of the Obama Administration and other school reform enthusiasts are not based on any evidence whatsoever that any of the new "innovations" they are pushing for - charter schools, basing teacher evaluations on student test scores, alternative certification - will work.
Earlier this week, the edublogosphere was swarming with links to this memorandum from the US Department of Education warning of the "vulnerabilities in the oversight of charter schools." (h/t The Frustrated Teacher)
Since 2005, there have been 40 investigations of charter schools using public funds fraudulently. What these investigations have found is that charter school officials have used taxpayer money to pay for things like "an extravagant lifestyle" (Minnesota), "spa treatments and personal vehicles" (California), "purchases at stores such as Louis Vuitton" (Illinois), and "funeral expenses" (Wisconsin - that's what passes for fun there).
There have been 18 indictments, 15 convictions, and 24 cases are still being pursued. But because this memorandum was sent as a warning for further vigilance in regard to this type of crime, it's easy to assume that the problem is apt to get much worse. And in fact there's ample proof that it is.
One of the more important items in this week's education news was a new bill sponsored by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin proposing a $23 billion "bailout" fund for saving tens of thousands of teaching positions that states and school districts will not be able to fund in the coming school year. A WaPo article reported that Education Secretary Arne Duncan stopped just short of endorsing Harkin's bill but said that unless Congress acts, there will be "an education catastrophe" resulting in 100,000 to 300,000 teachers losing their jobs. "It is brutal out there, really scary," Duncan waxed empathetically and took care to note that schools and kids "suffer" when teachers are laid off, class sizes balloon, and summer sessions get canceled.
At the same time Duncan was lamenting the effects of teacher lay-offs on children, his staff was busy on Capitol Hill pushing a "blueprint" for education reform. A key element in the blueprint is that at least 5% of the nation's schools - potentially 10% - that are deemed "lowest performing in state" will be forced to adopt a federally mandated "intervention model." Of the four models prescribed in the blueprint, only one does not involve mass firings of teachers.
As Randi Weingarten, the leader of the American Federation of Teachers, pointed out, adopting Duncan's blueprint will quite likely "cost teachers their jobs."
In another fit of cross-purposeful policy making, Duncan's team is also pushing a National Education Technology Plan (NETP) that urges schools to pursue ambitious learning goals such as teaching students twenty-first century skills, critical thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, and multimedia communication. The plan also "calls for engaging and empowering learning experiences for all students," where teachers conduct "personalized learning instead of a one-size-fits-all" approach to curriculum and instruction.
While most educators would probably regard NEPT's goals as worthy, they can't help but point out how these goals conflict with the Obama administration's overall blueprint for education. How can a school system that emphasizes high-stakes testing in just two subjects - reading and math - fulfill the curriculum goals of teaching "collaboration and multimedia communication?" How can an approach to schooling that values test data more than any other output at the same time assert that it is "personalizing learning? "As one commenter in the previous link states,
"The focus of the federal and state governments on high-stakes testing is in direct contradiction to creating an environment where humans learn best... Stop attaching funding to only standardized test scores. Then, perhaps schools could begin moving towards creating an environment where 21st-century skills can develop."
So here's the deal: At the same time that our federal government is mustering financial resources to save teachers' jobs, it's also pushing measures to eliminate them. And at the same time that the US Department of Education is urging educators to focus their programs on ambitious learning goals and qualitative learning experiences, it's doing everything it can to undermine those goals by focusing on a narrow curriculum and strict, quantitative measures. This cognitive dissonance that characterizes the Obama administration's approach to education reform isn't anything new.
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 . . .
The book sweeps across more than 50 years of American education, pivoting on key events that forever changed the landscape of our nation's schools: from 1950's-era segregation, through the 60's and 70s' years of experimentation and its backlash during the Reagan Presidency, through the promulgation of No Child Left Behind legislation, and up to the current education policies of the Obama administration. Ravitch, a historian by trade, describes a ruthless power grab, carried out ostensibly "for the children," that is bent on dismantling our national education system. The cast of characters is surprisingly small but immensely powerful, including a Nobel Prize economist, influential think tanks on the right and left, five U.S. Presidents (Democrat and Republican), deep-pocketed education philanthropists, and a raft of bullying and dictatorial mayors and school chiefs. The recurring theme throughout the story is that a "great hijacking" of American public education is putting education at risk to "the vagaries of the market and the good intentions of amateurs."
What's perhaps more startling than the message of the book is the nature of the messenger. Ravitch, a self-avowed "conservative," was an early and eager advocate for market-based, NCLB-implemented approaches to education reform. She was Assistant Secretary of Education and counselor to Education Secretary Lamar Alexander under President George H.W. Bush and appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board under President Clinton. She also co-founded an influential task force at the conservative Hoover Institution that advocated for "education reforms based on principles of standards, accountability, and choice." In her own words,
"I was attracted to the idea that the market would unleash innovation and bring greater efficiencies to education. I was certainly influenced by the conservative ideology of the other top-level officials in the Bush administration who were strong supporters of school choice and competition . . . . Like these reformers, I wrote and spoke with conviction in the 1990s and early 2000s about what was needed to reform public education, and many of my ideas coincided with theirs."
But when Ravitch went beyond the rhetoric of reform and actually looked at the reality of what choice and competition were doing to public education, she experienced an "intellectual crisis." The ideas she had been promoting so passionately were not working, and in fact, were becoming powerful weapons of destruction.
In this two-part diary I argue that the moment of truth that Diane Ravitch describes is a clarion call for progressives to forcefully push back against the Obama administration's misguided education policies. In part one, I specify the talking points that Ravitch arms progressives with in the fight to reclaim public education. In part two, coming next Sunday, I put the book into the broader context of what's driving a "Washington consensus" on education that is being pushed by politicians and mainstream media.
According to leading "education researchers" (sub required), the draft guidelines that the Obama administration has published for federal economic-stimulus money and Title I aid for schools "have no credible basis in research."
The researchers point to two regulatory priorities in particular that are lacking in research evidence: evaluating teachers based on students' standardized test scores and promoting the growth of charter schools.
"One theory of action seems to be that holding teachers more accountable for the gain in their students' test scores will induce them to become better teachers," writes Duke University's Helen Ladd. "At this point, I am not aware of any credible evidence in support of that proposition."
And research on the performance of charter schools has shown that their track record is "highly variable." ....
I wrote an earlier diary, back in June, about the research on charter schools--which came from charter school advocates, actually. I also managed to find an open link to the article, here.
Jeff goes on to say:
The article points out that the Bush administration was famous for insisting that schools adhere to policies and programs that were based on "scientific research" while it promoted an agenda that had nothing "scientific" about it.
Now, the Obama administration is insisting that schools make decisions based on "data that shows what works," while it pursues mandates that have no data to support them.
What's the difference?
The difference is, apparently, that just like Clinton with NAFTA, a Democratic President has much easier time screwing the Democratic base than a Republican would.
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