Vermont decided not to apply for a waiver from NCLB.
Not because it loves NCLB. No one does.
But because Vermont education officials had their own ideas about how to help their schools.
And they discovered that Arne Duncan’s offer to give them “flexibility” was phony.
He did not want to hear Vermont’s ideas. Contrary to his claims, the waivers do not offer flexibility.
What Arne Duncan wants states to do is to agree to his own demands, not to shape their own destiny.
He wants them to allow more privately managed charters. He wants them to evaluate teachers by student test scores. He wants them to adopt Common Core state standards. He wants them to agree to threaten and close down schools with low test scores. He has a laundry list of what he wants them to do.
Of course, this is all very puzzling since none of Arne Duncan’s mandates have a solid basis in research or evidence. In that regard, they are not much different from NCLB. You might say they represent NCLB without the timetable.
Even more puzzling is the assumption that Arne Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education know how to reform the schools of the nation. It is not as if anyone would look at Arne Duncan’s Chicago as a model for the nation. That district is once again being “reformed,” this time by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
And from a strictly Constitutional point of view, the U.S. Department of Education has never been empowered to tell schools and school districts how to reform themselves.
Quite candidly, there is no one at the U.S. Department of Education who is competent to tell entire states how to reform their schools.
So, kudos to Vermont.
A state that said no to federal control, federal mandates, privatization, and other bad ideas.
As often, I add a footnote to the original post: Bruce Baker of Rutgers alerted me to a change in governance in Vermont. The legislature just passed a bill to have the state commissioner of education report to the governor. This opens the way for business community and privatizers to exert more influence. Privatizers like to eliminate input from parents and communities, making it easier for them to get what they want.
Vermonters: Don’t let it happen.
Stay outside the consensus.
Keep Vermont and Vermont parents and communities in charge of your schools.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t know how long I can continue reading this incredibly informative and depressing blog! I want to comment on something you wrote in Ed Week. Yes, I believe that in some cases charters will skim off the motivated, middle class students and leave the less capable in the public schools and no one will care what happens to them. But I also believe that it will sometimes work the other way. The corporations will take over poor neighborhood schools in say Miami and those schools will be corrupt, unaudited, video-staffed warehouses while the public schools will be largely middle class. The insidious part of this “charter” movement is that either way, the troublesome lowest quartile will be out of sight and out of mind while charter principals make six figure salaries. Some will get the big bucks for doing such a great job with “our kids” and some for doing such a great job keeping those other kids away from ours. It is beyond ironic that on the watch of our first African American President this resegregation is taking place. Add to that the move to prevent minority voters from registering, and I am speechless.
What is happening is indeed depressing, but it should inspire those of us who care to resist, not to take it. The privatization of the schools, the nonstop attacks on the teaching profession, and the ongoing resegregation are important developments. I am convinced that the public does not support any of this, but doesn’t really know what is happening. Our job is to educate the public.
I have a certain sense of irony when you say that our job is to educate the public. Isn’t that we have been doing all along? It is simply amazing how quickly people forget just what teachers do each and every day and how easy it is to work to “change education” instead of asking the rank and file teachers what is working and what is not. Our biggest problems in education stem from lack of understanding of what we do and what we actually COULD do if our hands weren’t so tied. The constant “teach to the test” mentality is strangling creativity and innovation. We really need something akin to “occupy the classroom” since that seems to be the only way others are getting attention!
Like hot cakes and maple syrup, Diane.
Willard Garvey, who headed the Center for Privitization in Kansas, sent a letter to President Ronald Reagain pushing the center’s agenda for privitization. He said “privatiztion will make representative government obsolete”. These radicals have almost achieved their goals. Elected school board members are being replaced by appointed groups, design teams, foundations, corporations, mayors, former state superintendents of public instruction who were in on the ground floor, legislators, and snake oil peddlers from every concievable area trying to make money off the backs of parents and their children.
The testing snake-oil peddlers are just one awful example of how our children and the taxpayers are being used. Good for Vermont for taking a stand.
After doing extensive educational research for thirty years, I’m now convinced that this “restructuring/destruction” of our schools is not about education, but restructuring our total constitutional Republic. When you destroy the lowest level of representative government, the local school boards, and replace them with non elected people as noted above, then we are well on our way to destroying our representative government.
There appears to be little difference between our current president’s agenda and the pending Republican candidate. I hesitate to label groups, but when we see the political right such as ALEC, Heritage Foundation and the secret Council for National Policy supporting privatizing along with the Council for Foreign Relations, considered left, then one must ask “Is there truly any difference in the political leadership in our country?”
The American people may be able to stop this privatizing/destruction if they acknowledge that the movement is not educational, but a radical political movement. Vermont is a good place to start. Congratulations!
Well said. Scary, but well said.
It IS indeed depressing and I so hope Vermont stands their ground! @Dr. James Norwood – very well put! Once again this morning, I had to hear how student test scores do not match excellent teacher evaluations. Why are teachers the only factors impeding student progress and success? What about the students, their parents, and other outside influences? AND most importantly, what about administers’ leadership, school boards, school superintendents, politicians, the greedy privateers, etc. My students could learn with all their hardships if I was allowed to take care of each student as a person as well as determine the best route for their academics. DOWN WITH MANDATES AND SCRIPTED PROGRAMS DUMBING DOWN OUR TEACHING AND LEARNING!
oops…should be administrators…
On a side note, we should point out the this nation who “cares” so much for its children has, according to UNICEF report published today, the second highest child poverty in the west. The richest country in the world, that praises itself to have a unique and sacred perception of ‘family’ calls itself a nation of family values , seemed to be failing to feed house, and educate the children they insist are so important. Giving the word ‘hypocrisy’ a new meaning in the way the lies are out in the open, shameless, since the facts don’t seem to make any difference.
Public education could not be accomplished while 23% of children are hungry or homeless or malnourished, but it is not suppose to work. ‘failure by design’ is when public education is being starved by crony politicians only to point out that the “system is broken” and rush in unaccountable tyrannies to “fix” it but rather rob the public from wealth and education. Those policy makers from Obama, Gates, Duncan, Rhee, who make decisions for us against our wishes and will, do not use the public system – nor do their families – they are wrecking, and have no concern regarding its privatization and destruction. Their only concern is to benefit crony capitalists and keep feeding the testing industrial complex. Those are guaranteed not to go to sleep hungry tonight, unlike 23% of our children.
Thanks for finally talking about >Vermont Stands Up for Its Children |
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