The latest episode in the corporate takeover of public schools in New York City is playing out in Mayor Bloomberg's appointment of non-educator Cathleen Black to replace Joel Klein as the city's Chancellor of Education. Black is a magazine mogul and 20-year member of the board of directors of Coca Cola, a company under attack for its union-busting activities and its contribution to childhood obesity. She is a product of private schools; her kids attended boarding schools; and she has no experience in the public sector.
The secrecy of her appointment process has annoyed even those who support corporate leadership, leading to considerable opposition to Black from unions, parents, and educators, which is giving State Commissioner, David Steiner and his advisory panel pause.
Steiner's vision for school reform draws on a corporate model. I recently spoke on a panel on Long Island in which Dr. Steiner was the respondent. I lamented that it had become impolitic to mention John Dewey's name in public, so under attack were educators and Dewey's notions of democratic and experiential education. I expected and received the standard response that giving urban kids any thing other than a skills-oriented, high stakes accountability-driven education was to undermine their future. What I wasn't prepared for was his assertion that Dewey, late in life, recanted all of his life's work. With the wave of his hand, he dismissed the most important educational philosopher of the 20th century. This kind of thinking, even by credible academics, is responsible for hollowing out our public schools of creativity, critical thinking, and grounding in the richness of students' experiences and local communities.
The early 20th century legacy of looking to business to design our education system first gave us the impersonal, factory model school that was obsessed with bureaucratic efficiency. This system worked reasonably well for awhile, but as more working class and poor youth entered the system, it did little more than teach them obedience and track them into low-paid jobs. Today, everyone from the left to the right agrees that this is scandalous and needs to be changed, but there is little agreement on how to get there.
The corporate community and most venture philanthropists, persist in thinking schools should be run like businesses. This time around though, instead of the factory model school, they have bequeathed us the latest business fads: quasi-markets (school choice), deregulation (charter schools), autonomy (superintendents and principals as CEOs), statistical control of product quality (high-stakes testing), and a shift from system inputs to system outputs (testing without investing). There is nothing in this corporate grab bag that is evidence-based, and the evidence that has accumulated as these reforms have been implemented over the last two decades is not promising.
Results for charter schools have overall been mediocre, in spite of the well-funded hype of Waiting for "Superman", and the latest test scores for New York City have been a devastating blow to Bloomberg's claim that New York City's corporatized system has been successful. And the next corporate boondoggle, funded by Race to the Top and Bill Gates, will be pay-for-performance for teachers. This merit pay scheme not only has no evidence base of success, and was even reviled by the business guru, W. Edwards Deming as diminishing social trust and destroying the culture of collaboration necessary for corporate success.
But the real failure of the corporate model is that it has further hollowed out schools that serve low-income urban youth. University of Chicago professor, Charles Payne points out in, So Much Reform, So Little Change, that while these schools were never rich learning environments, evidence-based reforms like Reading Recovery, school designs like Comer Schools, the Coalition of Essential Schools, Accelerated Schools, and 30 years of research on effective program implementation were making inroads. Impatience with the progress of these reforms led to the current mix of corporate inspired reforms, NCLB's obsession with high stakes testing, and scripted instruction. But poor kids of color deserve a richer, more motivating, education that draws on their multiple intelligences and experiences. This Deweyian approach has apparently been relegated to the trash heap of educational history, at least for low-income youth.
Some of this notion that inner-city kids need a more "skills-based" approach was attributed to Lisa Delpit's critique in, Other People's Children, of largely white, progressive teachers who failed to understand the scaffolding of skills needed before providing poor children with progressive teaching methods. This has often been translated into the "back to basics" notion promoted by conservatives like The Fordham Institutes' David Whitman. In his book, Sweating the Small Stuff, he argues that poor kids need paternalistic, boot camp schools that protect them from the pathologies of their surrounding communities. But Delpit was clear that this was not what she meant, when she wrote,
Students need technical skills to open doors, but they need to think critically and creatively to participate in meaningful and potentially liberating work inside those doors. Let there be no doubt: a "skilled" minority person who is not also capable of critical analysis becomes the trainable, low-level functionary of the dominant society, simply the grease that keeps the institutions that orchestrate his or her oppression running smoothly. (Delpit, 1995, p. 19)This was another of Dewey's ideas that is apparently no longer valid: the notion that schools prepare students for citizenship and participation in a vital and equitable democracy. There is nothing wrong with cross-sector borrowing of ideas, but as long as educators continue to indiscriminately borrow leftover ideas from the corporate closet, they will fail to provide poor and working class students with the rich, motivating, and critical education they have a right to.
But Cathleen Black is not even part of this conversation. Under a chancellor with no particular loyalty to public schools, no understanding of education, and no public vetting, the largest public school system in the country and thousands of low-income students of color may be placed at even greater risk.
Delpit, L. (1995). Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: New Press.
Sarah Butrymowicz: Charters and Traditional Public Schools: Partners Rather Than Rivals?
Larry Ferlazzo: What Do School Reform Technocrats and Failed Urban Renewal Schemes Have in Common?
I only wish there was the remotest possibility that this market-model approach to education could be turned around. But, given its pervasiveness within the culture at large, it seems unlikely. Hell, we've privatized the military!
I agree with your points.
Federal policies with matching federal compliance grants linked to corporate contracts like Reading First and Race to the Top provide the perfect funding source for the corporate baron-robbers.
The pseudo-reformers bash teachers to exploit students and at the same time buy corporate-technology-assessment rubbish forced into classrooms to benefit the insiders through contracts and kickbacks using taxpayers’ funds.
The no-bid renewal contract with Wireless Generation signed by Arne Duncan in July 2008 for $2,800,000.00 is interesting and provides one example of a no-bid contract without educational value or purpose. Did Murdoch have inside information?
http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/The_Board_of_Education/Documents/BoardActions/2008_07/08-0723-PR16.pdf
And when I hear that Ms. Black is specifically qualified re 21st century jobs, I simply ask: Which 21st century job types has she created?
This is the popular American paradigm and this paradigm has helped to create a society that is heading straight for third world Latin American status.
Since the start of Wall Street controlled corporations during and since the Reagan years and corp-controlled gov, this nation has become a debtor nation par excellence.
As Reagan stated we are going to turn the bull loose and turned loose they did. Here is the interesting part most Americans want more of the same even while it takes us to third world status.
"But "quality" in education has to do with honoring the uniqueness of each child. Variance is not something to eliminate, but rather something to be taken into account".
Variation is not our enemy as most teach. Variation is a divine gift for humanity of the highest order. Now to come to understand that variation for the betterment of all is the great challenge in our lives. If we know how to define it, measure it, analyze it, then improve the system we can better educate all of our children.
As long as we treat systemic causes of variation as special causes the self-destruction, chaos, resentment, and stress will continue. Pay for performance has little understanding of systematic causes of variation and bases most of its rewards and punishments on one line drawn as a math calculation. I.e. average.
It is to produce educated, knowledgeable people who can be hired and contribute to their companies. (The fuzzy head types are already suspicious, because this sounds so......unsocialist).
A distant second, for only a handlful of companies, is interest in making money from the needed rejuvenation of American public education. We all know how difficult that is. Most companies in it, and most that will ever try, make very little, or no, profit from it. It is too damn hard. One of the factors making it so is the iron triangle of braying (1) educators (2) ed. gurus who could not manage themselves out of a paper bag, and (3) a category of parents who believe that tax-funded schools owe them an education as good as top private schools.
We get the kind of schools we deserve.
I appreciate your post. So far, everybody has been so agreeable. I may post this in two sections since it is a bit long.
My problem is not with business. I've run a couple of (not very successful) businesses myself. Not even with corporations, when they are appropriately regulated to protect the public from events such as those we've all witnessed on Wall Street. My issue is with how we might better think through which ideas from other sectors (such as business) might be appropriately transferred to the public sector (or the other way around)..
As I pointed out, it was businessmen who designed our current education system! See Raymond Callahan's classic book, "The Cult of Efficiency" (1962) for a historical account. See also Larry Cuban's book "The Blackboard and the Bottom Line: Why Schools Can't be Businesses."
Part of this discussion would involve which practices have an evidence base of success within business (not just CEO bragging books or free-market ideology), and then how these might be (or not) appropriately transferred to a sector with a fundamentally different technical core and professional culture. For instance, most notions of product quality involve the elimination of variance. (Every hamburger or plane engine should be the same). But "quality" in education has to do with honoring the uniqueness of each child. Variance is not something to eliminate, but rather something to be taken into account.
The other issue I have with your post, is the assumption that schools exist solely to produce employees for corporations. While schools should be charged with producing literate citizens, who can think analytically and critically, it is the corporation's responsibility to invest in any training beyond that. Why should the public subsidize private corporations? Ironically, the particular corporate model that has been imported into education is producing a more test-driven education, which is the antithesis of what good corporations want from future employees. See Thomas Freidman's recent column in the New York Times on this topic. This brings us back to the promotion in education of elimination of variance and the statistical control of product quality, which has further encouraged high stakes testing.
I often feel that education has not so much failed the corporate sector, but rather it has failed to produce active citizens who might have organized to prevent the Ponzi schemes that AIG and so many other corporations were engaged in. After all, these corrupt CEOS and their corrupt regulators that gave them triple A ratings were all products of our school system (though not all went to public schools).
I agree with you that money making isn't the prime goal.
Thanks again for the post. I appreciate that you are reading posts on Huffington. Liberals and conservatives all need to learn from each other.
Gary
As a product of NYC public schools I can add this: It is what you make of it. My parents encouraged me to do well and I applied myself, while others in my neighborhood did not. Because they missed their opportunity they are working manual labor jobs.
The issue as I see it is less about Black and her skill set, even though her educational skills are indeed lacking, but more about mayoral control of the schools and the politicization of our education process.
This is what I think the conservatives have in mind by advocating the elimination of the Dept. of Education.
They want the education of our kids to be left to the business model.
But of course they only came to this after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which is their true goal.
To eviscerate the decision through the back door.
But for Brown, they would be supportive of public education. They are trying to find a way to have their tax dollars going to support their private schools they want their children to attend to keep them away from the Brown decision.
Duncan stated that "Overhauling the nation's public education system, including adjusting No Child Left Behind this year, is a 'golden opportunity' to improve the quality of life for everyday Americans."
New York City just got a new Chancellor of Education who never taught a class. Putting up a scarecrow and giving them a fancy title and thinking that it means anything other than the sheer political will power wouldn’t get past a street wise 3rd grader. How do they sleep at night?
I taught in the south Bronx 45 years ago. Same problems...different players. Nobody cares about the kids. This song I wrote in 1966 tells the whole story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u46Uwa6KMQM
Just as the management of business organizations often point to the worker, business practice will have us pointing to teachers as the cause and thus solution to the problem. Yes we have to elevate our view of the teaching profession because this will represent and reflect the importance of learning that our culture needs to embrace. However paying teachers more or incentivizing them—as has been advanced by business-minded people—will not provide an improved learning experience any more than paying people in business has lead to improved quality of products and services.
This quote is a correct statement. Deming someday will be recognized for his profound knowledge and his “complexity of thought” as it applies to the attainment of knowledge applied to leadership. These TQM types saw the statistical tools but missed that aspect of his profound knowledge that leadership must have or they would continually confuse systemic causes of variation with special causes.
This so often happens. Drucker had some great insights into the role of the knowledge worker and leadership but then put a pay for performance as a reward for results. Those that lacked his insights grabbed the pay for performance and the destruction began. What Peter Drucker missed or lacked knowledge of was the importance of understanding variation as it applied to leadership principles.
Without an understanding of special and systemic causes of variation leaders will confuse the two types of variation of phenomena and create chaos and hardships within their organizations. As Deming correctly observed just using statistical tools is like putting out a fire in one area of the forest that is consumed with fire.
The teachers in America will now get a first hand experience at the senseless sub optimization of a mentality of a fear based pay for performance. I.e. for teachers this will be to teach to the tests to survive this profound management ignorance.
The goals of business and the goals of education are simply not the same. Corporations aim to produce profits. When things are failing, they rely on slash-and-burn tactics. You can't fire kids for performing poorly, and you can only fire so many teachers before you find out that that's not working either. Plus, business revolves around developing specialized skills. Business wants you to learn for a purpose; education asks that you learn broadly and become a thinking being.
My biggest problem with Cathie Black... I haven't heard her say a thing about her plans to change the school system. If you're under fire then you should be showing us why you deserve the job. No one cares about your track record in the failing publishing industry. They want to know what you plan to do for their children, for the future of this nation.
Doesn't anyone have the moxie to stand up to this man, and FOR the students of NYC?
Here we go again.....
It's a done deal- she's in.
Once again, the Mayor has used his power over the school system to place a corporate executive in the position of Chancellor. Despite protests by parents, teachers, and legislators, the Mayor has refused to listen and bent the law to his own will.
This is one reason educators object to business - the business people have no interest in other than "what sells" (which is based on "what sells" to other business people who are now strangely at the top of the educational institutions. In setting curriculum (ie, producing, selling, buying educational products) they are in effect setting social policy!
It is so unfortunate that any sense of community, citizenship, etc. is excluded, even thought this is where Dewey excelled.
I am (with all great hope) thinking this is perhaps a cycle that will bust in the future, since it has no foundation behind it. A business model assumes a "customer" but it is not the parents, the children or the community that is choosing anything. So the customer is another business person selling to a business person, none of who have studied even the basic courses a beginning teacher must take (educational psychology, educational philosophy, child development, teaching methods, group dynamics, history of education, student teaching or many other topics).