In her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, Diane Ravitch, who was a devotee of No Child Left Behind-type policies when she served as Assistant Secretary of Education under Poppy Bush, shows that the data is in and the corporate educational "reforms" that have been rammed through for the past twenty years have amounted to nothing more than the downsizing and shredding of what was once a thriving public education system in this country.
"Our schools will not improve if we entrust them to the magical powers of the market. Markets have winners and losers. Choice may lead to better outcomes or to worse outcomes... Our schools cannot improve if charter schools siphon away the most motivated students and their families in the poorest communities from the regular public schools. Continuing on this path will debilitate public education in urban districts and give the illusion of improvement... Our schools will not improve if we expect them to act like private, profit-seeking enterprises. Schools are not businesses; they are a public good." (p. 227)
This last point -- that "schools are not businesses; they are a public good" -- is what President Barack Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, (like Margaret Spellings before him) fails to understand. Secretary Duncan has used his $4.3 billion in "Race to the Top" cash as a cudgel with which to beat down teachers (and especially their unions), denigrate what they do in the classroom based on quantitative data of dubious value, and to promote "market" policies of coerced privatization that debase the teaching profession -- all in the name of "improving" public schools. No wonder Secretary Duncan was persona non grata at the recent convention of the nation's most important gathering of educators. (What a brilliant move it is to alienate public school teachers, a central pillar of the Democratic base, right before the 2010 midterm elections! Genius, I tell you! Genius!)
Ravitch notes that Secretary Duncan appointed Joanne S. Weiss, "a partner and chief operating officer of the NewSchools Venture Fund" to "design and manage the Race to the Top." Weiss, according to Ravitch, is "an education entrepreneur who had previously led several education businesses that sold products and services to schools and colleges." (p. 218) So like George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind," the Obama Administration has decided to turn over its hallmark educational policy to union busting profiteers?
At a time when state governments across the country, especially California, are using the budget crisis brought on by the economic meltdown as an excuse to roll back public education and beat up teachers and their unions, the Democratic administration in Washington is throwing its weight behind the privatizers and MBAs, joining the chorus of teacher bashing that seems to have come out of nowhere. Arne Duncan has never taught a class in his life and has thus far shown an arrogant disregard for professional teachers who have decades of hands-on experience inside the classroom. The "moderate" Republican governor of California, (whose budget eliminates welfare in the state), has also endorsed a bill by a troglodyte Republican in the State Legislature that would urge school districts to lay off, rehire, transfer, and assign teachers with no regard to seniority or collective bargaining contracts. In effect, it would make Wal-Mart workers out of professional educators.
Nobody in power seems to be listening to what teachers have to say about how best to improve public education. The Administration is telling teachers that all those envelopes they licked, and all those doors they knocked on, and all those phone calls they made to help elect Obama in 2008 were nothing but a goddamned waste of time.
And this raises a more fundamental point: Arne Duncan and other privatizers of public education don't know the difference between being a "teacher" and being an "instructor"; nor do they understand the difference between a "class" and a room full of students. They want to reduce professional educators to mere instructors, where all subjects, including arts, humanities, and science, are standardized and homogenized and handed to children as if instructing them on the techniques of CPR. The classroom is then reduced to an irreverent gaggle "instructed" on how to take a standardized test by Wal-Mart workers scared to death about losing their jobs. That's a long way from John Dewey! "Memorization, regurgitation - vegetation," would be an apt slogan.
"There are many examples of healthy competition in schools," Ravitch writes, "[b]ut the competition among schools to get higher [test] scores is of a different nature; in the current climate, it is sure to cause teachers to spend more time preparing students for state tests, not on thoughtful writing, critical reading, scientific experiments, or historical study. Nor should we expect schools to vie with one another for students, as businesses vie for customers, advertising their wares and marketing their services. For schools to learn from one another, they must readily share information about their successes and failures, as medical professionals do, rather than act as rivals in a struggle for survival." (p. 228)
The closing of schools and lay offs of teachers in the communities surrounding California's capital city have been devastating and demoralizing to educators. The brutal budget cuts have made it more difficult year after year for teachers to do their jobs. Budget cuts are followed by more budget cuts. Teachers are told each September that they're just going to have to make do with less, which means larger class sizes, cuts to music, art, literature, physical education, lack of supplies, low morale. And then useless politicians from both parties lecture teachers blaming them for all of society's failings to properly fund public schools. This cycle must be broken. Diane Ravitch has done educators a favor by honestly appraising the terrible consequences of policies she once championed. If we have to wait twenty years for Arne Duncan to see the light, it will be too late.
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Riveting book.
The most amazing thing is that policy makers would never, ever send their own kids to the schools they are creating.
Who wants their children to grow up without learning how to think or understand the world around them? And that's precisely what the policies of Bush/Obama are demanding.
Genuine learning will return when standardized tests are eliminated. Let's hope that's sooner rather than later.
Someone is working very hard to make sure that "An American Education" means nothing more than "Can make change."
You do realize that is the point, right?
Both charter schools and No Child Left Behind are programs that regress to the bad ol' days when education was a means of chopping the corners off square pegs to make them fit in round holes.
Charter schools are based on the notion that business-like management solves educational problems, that profit motives make schools lean and efficient. One of the several problems with that idea is that "good" fiscal management and a disciplined faculty are all it takes to mold little minds into future workers for the market-machine. Funding-driven standardized testing tries to get to the same result by shifting all the pressure directly onto the teachers and students. Not only are the methods approaches flawed, but so are the goals. Human beings have endured through the millennia because they are adaptable, observant, creative. Human beings are NOT merely raw material to be stamped or extruded into predictable products rolling off an assembly line.
Will somebody please tell that to Obama?
Charter schools are taking some of the better students away from the traditional schools. Then the message is clear; change and improve or else. Not all charter schools are perfect, some are just gatherings for deliquents. But many(like my employer) are meeting the needs of Arizona students and preparing them for success in college.
In spite of my ragging on corporations, your non-private charter school success does not "destroy" my argument, which was more about reducing students (human beings) to their test scores.
You imply that all traditional schools "lower the materials to the students," while all charter schools "raise the students." In this case, you're overgeneralizing about the methods and successes of types of schools. Charter schools vary tremendously in effectiveness. A recent evaluation of charter schools in Boston revealed that test scores were lower in those schools than in traditional public schools. Obviously, the administration at your school has helped you and the students become excited and inspired. Wonderful! However, the 2009 Stanford study (CREDO) showed that among charter schools nationally, 17% had better academic gains than public schools, 46% were no better, and 37% had a worse achievement record. Whether charter or traditional, the success of any school should be celebrated. But I still think the business community and American politicians rate test scores above individual human development.
The process needs some substantive material to work on. The substantive material does also matter in its own right. And success with the substantive material is somewhat of an indicator of success with the process. But it's entirely possible to move forward on substantive material while deteriorating on what counts.
Our system devalues creativity and problem solving for learning the 'right' answer to a test question. It is creativity and problem solving that will allow the next generation to solve the problems that we have created. Our focus on creating 'good employees' to perpetuate corporations and organizations that have failed humanity and the environment will not help either.
Our kids (way too many of them) now only have school as a constant. There is NO ONE working with us to get these kids educated; NO ONE accepts responsibility for their education (we are being forced to accept ALL THE RESPONSIBILITY). Walk a mile in my shoes and learn. STJONES
PTAs -- By giving parents controls beyond their abilities went a long way toward diluting the teacher's ability to control the classroom and course of studies.
Local School Boards -- Local demagogues were given the gift of being able to determine curriculum,
when in most cases they wouldn't be able to make a coherent grocery list.