"You're Either With Us or You're With the Status Quo": Privatization Supporters Push Obama to Pick Their Kind of Education Secretary

Both David Brooks of the New York Times and the Washington Post editorial board ran eerily similar pieces on Friday about the two rival camps within the education reform movement.

Both essays categorize the two major education interests as existing at irreconcilable poles. The Post writes:

The different education factions of the party -- those pushing for radical restructuring and those more wedded to the status quo -- were each convinced during the campaign that Mr. Obama shared their particular viewpoints.

Brooks frames it:

On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers' unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.

So pick a side. You're either with the bold chainsaw of "reform" or you're a wimpy defender of the stigma-laden "status quo." Wrap your arms around the testing monomania Joel Klein brought to New York, or you're soft on accountability. Embrace Michelle Rhee's nuclear approach to administering schools, or you're a status quo-hugging wuss.

Here's a snippet from this week's Time Magazine cover story on the hard-charging DC schools chancellor:

"The thing that kills me about education is that it's so touchy-feely," she [Rhee] tells me [Time reporter Amanda Ripley] one afternoon in her office. Then she raises her chin and does what I come to recognize as her standard imitation of people she doesn't respect. Sometimes she uses this voice to imitate teachers; other times, politicians or parents. Never students. "People say, 'Well, you know, test scores don't take into account creativity and the love of learning,'" she says with a drippy, grating voice, lowering her eyelids halfway. Then she snaps back to herself. "I'm like, 'You know what? I don't give a crap.' Don't get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job."

I get it. Proficiency in basic skills is essential. Do I get slapped with a status quo label for suggesting that there should be other priorities in school (and childhood) besides basic skills drilling for students at risk? Also, Rhee is working with a particularly horrendous system in Washington, DC; is her scorched earth attitude the kind we need as U.S. Secretary of Education?

The status quo-defending enemy has a face. Both Brooks and the Post editorial board name Stanford professor and top Obama education adviser Linda Darling-Hammond as the personification of the education anti-reformist. This is disingenuous. True, Darling-Hammond doesn't want to blow up America's schools the way acolytes of Klein and Rhee may. She does not always side with privatization of schools. She does not view teachers' unions and collective bargaining as categorically repellent. And in 2005, she co-authored a study that was critical of Teach for America's high attrition rate. However, Darling-Hammond's comprehensive body of work, particularly on teacher quality, is progressive and speaks to improving the realities of life on the ground in American schools.

Thoughtful, incremental reform is still reform, and it may be wiser than the corporate-supported nuclear option. David Brooks and the Washington Post do Americans a disservice by waving a chainsaw and shouting you're either with us or you're with the status quo.

Dan Brown is a teacher and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle. He is not a member of a teachers' union.

Comments

[xanderhod]

Thank you so much for setting the record straight! Trying to portray Linda Darling-Hammond as "status quo" is absurd. I am a high school principal in California, and from her position at Stanford, she has been one of the most prominent and effective advocates of progressive school reform in the state, if not the nation. She supports real redesign of schools, not tinkering around the edges. She is a huge advocate of teacher quality and teacher training. And she is always focused on equity and on improving the achievement of low-income students and students of color. She has been a teacher, a researcher, a policy advocate, and a school founder. I can't think of a better "change" pick for Secretary of Education.

[TopProf]

There is reliable evidence that class size reduction (number of pupils per teacher) increases achievement. Now there is reliable evidence that pre-school has a positive impact on cognitive abilities and hence later achievement.
What has consistently failed to show any positive effect include 1) making schools accountable for test results, 2) Reading first --making every kid sound out letters before encountering books and 3) vouchers and charter schools. Those "studies" that seem to show positive impact of voucher schools are not credible because they are bought and paid for by right wing think tanks who commission the results of studies and never, never pass the standards of scholarly review.
If Obama picks the neoliberal voucher supporters for SOE, it will be a tragedy for public schools. Read the post about Edison in Philly. This thing has happened whenever schools are turned over to the private sector. Darling-Hammond supports REFORMS THAT ACTUALLY WORK.

[blindjester]

Best education post I've seen yet.

Well done.

BTW, charter schools in Arizona consistently lag behind public schools in both NCLB and Arizona Learns. They've had 15 years to get it together, and they haven't done it.

[nypoet22]

smaller class size may seem superficial to some people, but in fact it's the ONLY change that has been empirically proven to yield better educational results, no matter what the instrument of measurement. if a teacher has fewer students, that means more personal attention, less time spent on classroom management, and more student time-on-task. rich or poor, black or white, "whole learning" or the "3-r's, " a smaller class almost universally improves every teacher.

[Mangos]

Does the Education Secretary also cover student loans that defaulted after the published cohort rate period--a dirty little secret?

Don't correct the antiquated public school system. We don't know what the jobs of the future are going to be, so we can't pretend to know how to train and what to teach our beloved children. It is their dreams that will create the future, so they should decide (and let us know through an interpreter). What they are observing now will determine their dreams for our future.

It may mean that women return to the home and work from there, if necessary. Women have special gifts, so this has nothing to do with becoming dependents again. We have a bunch of empty houses coming to the market. Maybe they should be the new school houses to reduce class size. I say all this simply to move your mind towards the edges of the box.

We must meet the entire goal of education: imparting our knowledge to the young as they grow up to higher learning arenas and step out into the job market DEBT FREE and without their parents having to pay significant portions (or any) of their salaries.

[nikto]

Poor children are actually being used as a "device" to discredit Public Schools.

Poor neighborhoods have a bottom percentage of kids who simply don't do well in the classroom environment, and certainly do not test well, persistently. Their personal & family problems are Legion.

These kids' failures are blamed on Public Schools, which get taken over by Private, for-profit Charters.

Then, the Charter school goes into "secrecy" mode (which public schools can't do, by law), and basically just kicks-out those kids it can't work with (without the Public finding out), and keeps the "workable" kids as
its main source of profit.

Mission accomplished for school privateers.

[1differentdrummer]

How about America defines its education goals? What do we want to get out of it? If you want good teachers, how about you should recruit them and pay what they are worth? Could we possibly get rid of racism and classism in schools? What is a reasonable goal for kids in school when big employers import employees from overseas at the cost of US citizens' jobs? Go to a big city, what jobs await grads there?

[nikto]

The quality of a school, again and again, despite political/cosmetic efforts to the contrary,
IS NEARLY ALWAYS DETERMINED BY THE STUDENTS.

Sorry, but that's just the truth.

Public schools are not failing---They are doing their utmost, under horrendous conditions
(in big city schools) to educate the Great Masses of poor, immigrant, gang-involved, broken-families,
etc etc etc etc.

America has failed its People--especially its poor & low-income.
America uses school as a band-aid for social problems that need MUCH MORE
than test-scores and politician's bromides to heal.

Charter schools just throw out all the rules and run
kid-warehouses for-profit on the taxpayer'$ dime.

Charter Schools are just LEGALIZED ROBBERY.

[TopProf]

Slight change is needed: TEST SCORES are correlated with socioeconomic status. This is different than saying the students determine school quality. The relationship of test SCORES to SES is fact, not cosmetics. This is also the reason that basing principal tenure or teacher pay on test scores is fallacious and makes teaching in a rich school desirable and teaching in a poor school dreadful. Any meaningful increase in a school's test scores can be fully accounted for by 1) changing the social demographics of the students who attend, 2) eliminating special education or english language learners from the test score average or 3) cheating

[KHAAANNN]

All the "Privatization" fools only want one thing, to keep the "unwashed masses" out of THEIR schools.
Private schools only succeed for one reason, they can keep out anyone they don't feel like teaching and thus can cherry-pick the children of highly motivated (and highly compensated) parents.
They don't have to deal with kids with disabilities, drug problems, broken homes, lack of health care, inability to speak English, etc.
Public schools on the other hand MUST accept and accommodate EVERYONE.
I am constantly amused by the "Privatization" push in PRIMARY schools, but no one ever talks about it at the COLLEGE level, where it already exists. I would bet good money that every one of the "Privatization" pushers kid's when to PRIVATE COLLEGES (at $75K/semester.) Hows that working out for you eh? Got your kid into William and Mary this year? I thought so.
This is another in the long, sad, list of symptoms of the breakdown in American Society. The stratification of Education. The wealthy get all the good schools, the poor can go pound sand.
This is NOT the fault of the Teachers Union, or the State either, it is the fault of the PARENTS who use schools as a big baby-sitter, and when little Tommy or Suzy don't turn out the way they want, they blame the Schools.
Good parents create good schools, which turn out good students.
No amount of money or mandates is going to change that.

[lilpeg]

Public education is one of the most important fundamentals of American life. We have a troubled school system here in my city but, I managed to move into a neighborhood with great schools. The parents of the kids that attend these schools are v. involved in school policy decisions and in monitoring our children's progress. One thing that needs to be done is to PAY the teachers. Offer salaries that are competitive with those jobs that the Teach America young'uns leave for and demand quality product from the teachers that work for your school. Parents can be effective in changing instruction models that do not work. It is important for everyone to participate in the local, public education community. As below, our best high school in the city, the one with all the national merit scholars, is a crumbling wreck. Infrastructure dollars could be spent there and construction workers could be well employed helping the community rather than building tacky ex-urb mcmansions.

[arvay]

Rhee makes a lot of sense. She may be a bit too autocratic, but that's not the issue here.

I have never understood why teachers would object to merit pay for high performers, measured by how well their students learn what they're supposed to learn. Back in the Jurassic, when I was a student, we had these "grades" that told us how well or not we had grasped the subject matter. I don't see why these grades are invalid. Or tests. That's how we determined our grades.

And let's not repeat the formula that some kids' are the victims of dysfunctional family life. This is code for "black and Hispanic." Odd that Catholic schools can take these same kinds of kids (not necessarily self selected) and produce college-bound graduates in large numbers. With smaller budgets and lower pay than many public schools.

Seems to me there are two parts of the American scene where people can be rewarded for bad performance: corporate boardrooms and under the mantle of tenure. Can you imagine how anyone would react if incompetent corporate executives excused their fumbles by claiming that executive leadership requires some ineffable, non-quantifiable, semi- mystical qualities that can't be measured?

What nonsense.

[blindjester]

You've displayed an utter lack of knowledge on the subject and a contempt for the truth.

Well done.

[arvay]

And the brevity of your "analysis" speaks volumes about your expertise. You offer no facts, just name calling. Got tenure? It should not exist.

[BlackJAC]

Ever notice that the people who favor vouchers are not private school alumni and consequently have zero idea of what attending private school really entails?

[TheIndependenceParty]

De-regulation and privatization have ruined our country in so many ways in the last 28 years since Reagan. The notion that the privatizers won't let go of schools as the last public service not ruined in that way is bizarre!

Yes there are things that public schools could do better. Teach real science not religious hoo-haa, ... economics, managing your money, balancing a check book. Make the kids and their parents take a stake. Education is not a product, it is a process. Pay teachers like professionals.

When kids take pride in learning, and parents insist they learn, ... our schools will get better.

"Smart is the new Rich" as they would say. They can take your house and your car, but they can only take your mind if you give it to them willingly!

[mamajama]

Why are "teacher's unions" the favorite villain of both right wing commentators and of "centrist" education reformers? I recall Bush's Ed Sec branding unionized teachers as "terrorists". Why? Because they did not meekly knuckle under to higher expectations with lower funding and support.

In every progressive movement ever, the teacher's unions have been at the forefront of the action. Part of every teacher's mission is to fight ignorance and encourage critical thinking, i.e. "preparing students to become citizens in a participatory democracy," The other part is to bring basic literacy and math skills to a marketable level, Neither part of this mission is dispensable.

This mission requires teachers who are adequately prepared, compensated, and supported. Creating job insecurity by always threatening to privatize public schools detracts from this mission. People who actually care about students MUST care about teachers, and MUST support reform from the grassroots up, which requires unionized teachers.
Change imposed from the top down never works. If there is no buy in and ownership, change is resented, and is subject to the fashion whims of education - every teacher knows that there is a 3 year cycle for sweeping education reforms within their district, corresponding to the Superintendant's election cycle.

I hope that Darling-Hammond or another person who believes in public education and does not demonize teacher's unions is Obama's pick for Education Secretary. The bad old days of branding hard-working teachers as terrorists, demons, lazy, etc, are hopefully gone with the Bush administration.

[kgb999]

I'm not a teacher, so I'll defer to my girlfriend who just left the NY school system - for all sorts of reasons mostly related to corruption. The Rhee model is BS. Besides, Rhee's tendency to mock her detractors should disqualify her right out of hand. Don't put psychos in charge of the education department!

Get rid of the criminals who horde plasma TVs and DVD players in secret rooms that should be used for teaching ... waiting until they can be written off and taken home brand new in the box. Eliminate the principals who lie about ESL student enrollment and use the excess funds for ... plasma TVs (I don't know what it is about NY school officials ... but they love them some Plasma screens!!!).

We don't need another battery of tests designed by well-connected contractors for millions that can be used to justify eliminating teachers who don't tow the line. We need to clean house and establish a system of accountability that includes teachers and administrators. One that views education in terms of individual improvement vs. the artificial construct of aged-based proficiency.

[Cheryl Lubin - Huffpost Blogger]

This is a great piece that correctly derides the divisive stance Rhee and others have made. Obama's selection for Secretary of Education might consider a few guiding precepts:
1. Gather a panel of educators who face the bone-crunching reality of teaching on the front lines every day. This sort of advisory network would keep the SOE grounded in reality.
2. There are teachers out there who are at the top of their pedagogical game, but weary of the struggle. Pair them with new teachers for a truly meaningful mentorship program. State budgets have trimmed and/or eliminated such programs.
3. Class size in urban districts is the emblem for society's glaring disdain for our kids. Why should students languish in a 40-student classroom when administrators get huge pay increases and countless perks? Trim the bureaucratic fat and reroute the funds to the students.
4. This is admittedly a utopian whim, but it's just a thought: why do so many Ivy League grads eschew public education? Lack of upward mobility and financial reward. Make it a lucrative profession, and hold teachers such as myself (13 years in Los Angeles) highly accountable. The creative, dynamic minds of this generation will come if they see there is both inspiration and solvency in the job.
5. Teachers in my school donate at least 15 hours a week unpaid to help their students. Last year we chose to forego an hour's pay to highlight our concern about class size. We do care.

[karinova]

As part of the education reform effort, I hope they spend a little time talking to students in some of the worst schools (and some of the best). I think people sometimes underestimate the kids-- they are well aware of how bad the situation is. I remember junior high-- we ALL knew who the ineffective teachers were-- usually within days. I knew about tenure when I was 12 years old.

[ladyv]

My 9th grade English teacher sat there and read true crime novels while she had us all read other stuff out loud. All she did was assign roles if it was a play, or decide which seat in the classroom would take the first paragraph and which direction the paragraph progression would go, and then she'd read her book. I remember while we were reading Julius Caesar, she was reading Fatal Vision, that book about the officer who (allegedly) killed his wife and three little girls and tried to blame it on Manson groupie copycats. There would be a 5 question quiz or so at the end of what we read, super simple questions, and then we'd start the next one.

True story. She was also the yearbook and newspaper sponsor.

[wolfgangmo]

And a good supervisor should have been on her like fleas on a dog. Let her keep her red stapler and move her to a broom closet.

Sadly good supervision in American schools is a rare beast.