Teacher/poet Glen Brown points out what is obvious to educators yet utterly unknown to our nation’s leaders:
The privatization movement (aka “reform”) is failing.
It demoralizes teachers.
It punishes children who don’t give the answers the test makers want.
It is wrong.
It is antagonistic to good education.
It is failing, failing, failing.
It has no constructive ideas.
Only carrots and sticks.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The privatization movement (aka “reform”) is failing.”
No, it’s not. If you think that, you don’t understand the point of the privatization movement. It’s not about improving education. It’s about taking public resources and making a profit off it at the cost of those who benefit from those public resources (i.e., most of us. Far from failing, privatization is succeeding wildly. Milton Friedman is dancing naked in the streets of Hell.
I think she means it’s failing the system it’s supposed to save. That is, it’s failing students, schools, teachers, psychologists, principals, parents, social workers, citizens, taxpayers, and basically anyone who believes in the democracy of public education.
Yes, but the line “utterly unknown to our nation’s leaders” is completely false. They know. They’ve been told several times. They send their own kids to schools that are run completely differently than what they’re foisting on everyone else. It’s not that they don’t know. It’s that they don’t care. Everything they’re doing to education – and all the results thereof – is intentional.
I agree with you here. It’s time we stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt.
But it’s not meant to save the system. It’s meant to transfer more wealth to the 1%; “saving” the system is just a shill.
“Milton Friedman is dancing naked in the streets of Hell.”
Funniest line ever.
Isn’t it funny (ok, not really) that the ideas of the Milton Friedman gang do not actually succeed in the market place?
These ideas (reforms) have to be foisted upon people with deceptive language (the amendment in GA is a great example!), deceptive advertising paid for by groups with deceptive names.
People have to be hoodwinked, lied to, mislead, misinformed and manipulated to get these “market based” , “market driven” reforms in place. A fake crisis has to be ginned up. People have to be made nervous. Then the profiteers and privatizers swoop in.
Sigh.
Thanks again for the laugh….
Politicians see the most important upside (for them): a check from those who are profiting and will profit from these “reforms.”
Unfortunately, our democracy has become so critically ill that politicians now think they can screw their constituents with impunity, from this phony education “reform” to plans to weaken Social Security and Medicare, to mostly letting Wall Street off the hook for crashing our and the world economy through intentional fraud.
And what often happens is the honest politicians make at best incremental proposals that are like one sandbag trying to stop a tidal wave, that has another wave behind it and another.
This issue is a good place to make a stand, but we may not put an end to the theft of our children’s education until the whole system changes.
“Politicians see the most important upside (for them): a check from those who are profiting and will profit from these “reforms.””
Heck, in a few years they can go to work as lobbyists for the guys that financed them under the table.
Privatization is thinly veiled power and money grab by corporatism in all it’s ugly forms;
Blackwater (now with a new name, same vicious private army with no legal constraints), now in their greedy gun sights, public education. As so aptly stated by the comments here.
This devious plan was carefully laid and on the horizon of turning public schools into comical charter schools whose REAL record of “achiement” is based on supposed stats that bear little resemblance to facts, they are nothing but empty shells, with no teachers’ rights and hardly a living wage. Curriculum? What a joke! I’ve been in the clutches of these arrogant, teacher bashing, greedy Romney types who sing a song of excellence as they literally laugh up their sleeves by the manipulated public who have been fed for years degrading teachers as lazy, over-paid, non deserving of a decent pension…on and on until used car salespeople are held in much higher regard than dedicated teachers. This campaign of destruction will lead to the corporatist;s goal, students unable to critically think, dumbed down by curriculum that makes “graduates” prime candidates for a serf’s job, turning the US into a banana republic!
“[Test] scores should be only one element among many considered in teacher profiles…”
This is about the only sentiment I currently disagree with in teacher evaluation systems. I am to the point now where I think it is purely detrimental to our kids to include their performance on a teacher’s evaluation. First, it is unethical to hold any individual responsible for the actions of another, other than perhaps parents and legally juvenile kids. Parents are legally responsible for their kids within that age group. Teachers do not have the clout to force a student to perform any task – yes we aim to inspire and motivate – but holding teachers responsible is unjust and illogical.
Second, and most important, is that even making VAM only PART of a teacher’s evaluation still negatively impacts teacher collaboration and forces teaching to the test. And I don’t trust administrators to use VAM outcomes in ways that help teaching and learning. Rather there is evidence that administrators will be forced to make their classroom observation piece of teacher evaluation systems jive with VAM data – see TN and Houston TX.
Administrators are going to follow VAM outcomes, and it provides a bias that they will be forced to follow or come under fire themselves.
For the sake of reforming teacher evaluation, under the notion of doing it “good” but not “perfect”, we have moved backwards to a system that undermines teaching and learning and actually harms our kids. We aren’t even doing it “good”.
Teachers are nothing but test prep vessels, and I don’t care how much Bill Gates and his crew swears that teaching to the test does not inflate scores, I know better. I have seen the power of ACT and SAT test prep. materials and what they can do to ACT and SAT scores when properly utilized. I have been part of SAT prep programs and most students see higher scores on SAT’s after being prepped. Yes the gains are only modest on average, but prepping does help. Teachers do have to put food in our families mouths and we do love what we do – so what are we going to be forced to do in order to continue employement?
Prep our kids.
Me,
“First, it is UNETHICAL to hold any individual responsible for the actions of another,. . .”
Thanks for stating that. It is also UNETHICAL (and I like to capitalize it to shout it out) to use the results of a standardized test for making any inferences about anything other than for what the test was designed. So that using 5th grade math test scores to evaluate the teacher when they are designed to “assess” a student’s 5th grade math abilities is UNETHICAL-that has been a touchstone since standardized testing time immemorial (or is that memorial?).
Such a simple point that is totally lost in all the “discussions” of educational standards and standardized testing.
Why the hell do teachers put up with this UNETHICAL excrement of bovine origin??? Are we really that clueless??? Are we really that spineless to not stand up against this mierda???
Sometimes I think there is no hope for public education when we allow those outside of the profession to dictate the UNETHICAL parameters within which we teach.
Only through knowledge & good ed are we a free nation,democracy. If you’re stupid, know nothing about every facet of life at all levels, you can’t defend liberty, freedom, justice or anything else. Public Education at the highest level whereby every student is given opportunity to work to his/her highest level of skill is the goal. Nothing less.
Sticks for the many, carrots for the few, milk and honey for those in the innermost circles.
Well said.
There is some disagreement about the image of the carrot and the stick. Personally, I prefer the image of the carrot being dangled from the stick as a “reward” for the donkey in order to get it to pull the cart. Of course, the donkey never actually gets the carrot, yet still pulls the cart. Indeed, the fact that the donkey doesn’t get the carrot is necessary to keep it pulling the cart.
It throws us into pattern of Banana Republic education – train students for immediate jobs, but don’t let them think too much. And especially don’t let them learn to question.
Now that we know the election results, & that we’re still on the slow (but make no mistake–it’s sure)boat to the destruction of public education, it’s time to hie to the White House & D.o.Ed., red shirts all, CTU + the MILLIONS of parents, teachers & students to say, “STOP this testing! STOP this Race to Nowhere! Re-START our public schools!”