Jeff Bryant writes here of the uses of a crisis.
When everything is terrible, terrible, and getting worse, the public can be convinced to go along with any crazy idea, even to hand their children over to for-profit entrepreneurs.
The next crisis, he predicts, will occur when the results of Common Core testing come in, as they already have in Kentucky. There, the proportion of students meeting proficiency levels dropped by nearly one-third and the achievement gaps grew larger. This is a crisis! More proof that our schools are failing!
As Rick Hess pointed out in an earlier post, many reformers expect the Common Core standards and assessments to convince suburban parents to abandon their public schools.
There will be mass demand for privatization, for online charter schools, for vouchers, for new hardware and new software.
Cui bono?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We have a winner! To understand the concept more clearly, read Naomi Klein’s THE SHOCK DOCTRINE. No other book that I’ve come across adequately describes what’s going on world-wide, not only in education, but across the board – the “debt ceiling crisis”, the “fiscal cliff”, the “war on terror”, etc. When the privatizers can’t make use of a convenient natural disaster like Katrina or Sandy, they create their own whether through wars or through “austerity”. The process is fully bipartisan, which is why, with few exceptions, it’s useless to appeal to the Democrats.
I second Dienne’s comments.
Please read Ms Klein’s book.
“The only way to resist shock is to know what is happening and why?’ N.Klein
Here is a great little video made by Alfonso Cuaron.
I predict that more families will realize that these tests
are not valuable to students. It will take parents requesting that
their children not take part in not only the money making field
tests but also the standardized tests ( which by the way Pearson
should compensate my child monetarily for since they’re taking
academic time away while building their data base) . There is no
shred of research that all this testing is to help our students. It
will take students breaking their pencil points after a reasonable
amount of time for a state test for people to take notice. What is
reasonable for an 8 year old? How about 20 minutes not 90; teacher
created/corrected and bathroom breaks!
I agree with you, Mom/Ed. One of the best–if not the best–high schools in Illinois is New Trier, which serves several affluent suburbs. New Trier has not made A.Y.P. in at least two years (although they consistently rank in the top five–have been #1, in fact–for ACT scores. Now THAT should tell you something about the validity of the state “standardized” tests!)
It was the subject of a Chicago Tribune editorial, “New Trier’s F.” I can tell you–as the parent of a New Trier graduate–no one cared one whit about these ridiculous test results (the SpEd subgroup did not make the “meet/exceed” number, but the percentage was close to the 70% required). Parents received the requisite “school choice” letter (that is, children in a “failing” school can be moved to one that is not “failing.”), and I believe that NOT ONE PARENT
requested a transfer. Additionally, I taught middle school in a suburban area where our schools had an 85-98% Free Lunch rate.
Our school failed many years (again, due either to our SpEd subgroup or our ELL subgroup) and, still, NOT ONE PARENT requested a transfer–and we have two other middle schools in our district.
What other result can there be? Our kids are being tested on CC and our curriculum does not yet align. Our teachers have not been fully trained. Our materials do not yet support CC. Plus there is no money in our budget or enough time to accomplish any of this before March testing. This is planned failure on the part of the state in PA so more charters and vouchers can be proposed. Plus the plan has not yet been approved by Washington or the PA independent regulatory board. The governor and secretary of Ed push forward…driven by big private money. A planned crisis.
Thank you for posting this, Diane. Your comments and the linked article clearly capture the motive behind these crazy educational initiatives that we teachers are trying to manage.
I am attending a meeting today where I will learn about one such “glitzy” online test which will tell us everything we need to know about students and their academic growth. It is like those in power have planned the crime but they want to put the murder weapon in my hands. I don’t think the meeting planners anticipate the questions I have for them today.
The true threat lies in the end-game. FOX News again this morning, with the “China threat” and the doomsday prediction that by 2030, The United States will no longer be THE world superpower. Set aside the lack of debate over whether benevolence backed by power or domination without regard is the shared goal. Think about the playing field being defined by this supposed competition we are apparently losing with China. How are we to win? We need a massive class of underprivileged and underpaid workers, with few to no choices to advance in their position in societal strata. Fenced in work factories with pitiful wages and unhealthy deregulated conditions, military service maybe…How could we ever create those conditions here? Start with schools.
Ready, Fire, Aim!
(Of course, that’s just how things are playing out for public consumption; on the inside, the aim is quite clear: smash and grab everything you can, while you can)
After failing to meet the history and civics education goals articulated during our Constitution’s bicentennial, are educators expecting another quarter century to step up to the plate?
State legislators await a plan where unionized schoolteachers preserve American global preeminence. An annotated bibliography and cost out would be a start.
They’re reading David Gelernter now:
What Is the American Creed? If we forget our basic ideals or shrug them off, we no longer deserve to be great.
The Friendly, Neighborhood Internet School.
The problem with Plan A (“Wait it out; this too shall pass”) is we now have $100B in (borrowed) education stimulus spending. And the results are?
Atomic scientists fear negative global consequences of their knowledge; they invented the doomsday clock. Will educators step up to the task of managing the public education doomsday clock? Or will they be content to say, “We told you so!”
“State legislators await a plan where unionized schoolteachers preserve American global preeminence.”
First, why is it unionize schoolteachers’ job to “preserve American global preeminence”? Are you specifically referring to test scores (PISA)? If so, that leads to my second point, which is that “unionized schoolteachers” are in turn awaiting a plan from state legislators to deal with child poverty.
why is it unionize schoolteachers’ job …
Not their job, but they need to have their bid on the table. Else SlimeCo puts in a bid and wins.
“unionized schoolteachers” are in turn awaiting a plan from state legislators to deal with child poverty
SlimeCo says poverty doesn’t matter. Teachers respond, “Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice says SlimeCo is slimey and data shows poverty correlates to low scores.”
Legislators ask, “Is that your final offer? We can spend ed money with SlimeCo which promises results–or they close. And that union leader rant about ‘right wing bastards’ didn’t win you any friends. And that Great Lakes bunch produces what the union pays for. So we have no alternative but ‘innovation’.”
Why aren’t educators willing to show politicians that what worked in Montgomery County MD can work throughout America?
When suburban parents start abandoning their schools, they will be shooting themselves in their feet and their pocket-books. Most of their wealth is in their property values and what their property is worth is directly tied into how highly their school districts are held.
It’s no fun to see your house fail to appreciate in value or even to lose value. People who don’t have kids in schools will be even angrier when they are asked to raise their taxes to support schools that aren’t propping up the worth of their biggest personal investment.
Presto, change-go, lots more house-poor families and there will go another chunk of the middle-class, never to return.
Please don’t think I like this crazy system, I don’t (even though I live it). But that is how things are set up at the moment.
This is NOT going to happen. I also forgot to mention that New Trier co-sponsored a screening/discussion of the film “Race to Nowhere.” It garnered a huge audience, and the parents were pretty mad about RttT!
Great point! In Michigan, in 1994, we were in the midst of a long-running tax revolt. Many of our schools were unable to fund themselves due to the unwillingness of local taxpayers to support them. In the summer of 1994 MI Gov. Engler and the MI legislature abolished the state property tax as a means of funding public schools. This “crisis” made it possible for the Gov. and Legislature to present the voters Proposal A and a “statutory alternative” (a very bad one) that would automatically be put in place if voters rejected Proposal A. Proposal A increased the sales tax from 4% to 6% and dedicated a percentage of the state lottery revenue to education. This was a political slight of hand that was very flawed in that it did not provide funding for buildings and only funded operations. Local voters continued to hold the purse strings for buildings and improvements. Over the years the same public schools systems that were underfunded and falling behind continued to suffer the same fate as their buildings deteriorated. Since Proposal A was passed by the people of Michigan the state legislature has raided the School Aid Fund repetedly and recently began funding junior colleges with School Aid Fund money intended for public schools. The “gap” between the highest and the lowest spending districts (per student) has narrowed but the “gap” has widened when it comes to buildings and capital spending, totally dependent on community support and the wealth of the district. Public education has always been a community endevor and public schools have to hold an honored place in the community. The Michigan Governor and Legislature is back to proposing and passing bills like crazy without looking to the past for perspective and context or to the future to think about what the long-term implications of bad law will be. Of course it is much more difficult to address the core problems in the communities with low performing schools. In most cases poverty is the foundational cause and governments do a lousy job addressing that problem.
The craziest part of turning parents against their public schools is that there is zero evidence that the privatized alternatives will educate their children even adequately, much less in a superior way. That needs to be emphasized by commentators and the media, over and over again, to break through the money-machine propaganda.
Well, yes and no. The goal of the rheeformers is to force public schools to focus almost exclusively on testing and test prep, thereby seriously narrowing the curriculum. Charter and private schools are largely immune from the testing requirements (except for charters that specifically target poor and minority communities), so they are free to skip the test prep and have a broad and rich curriculum. So eventually (and already in some communities like mine) if you want your child to get an education beyond test prep, you will have to send your kid to private school. If you can’t afford private school and aren’t “lucky” enough to get your kid into an “elite” charter, you’re stuck sending your kid to an under-resourced, overcrowded school with all the kids who didn’t apply to/get into/manage to make it at private/charter schools. You’ll just have to hope that not all of the experienced, dedicated, caring and knowledgeable public school teachers have bailed by that point.
Unfortunately, some private and particularly parochial schools feel like they need to mimic and parallel what public schools are doing in order to keep current or “cutting edge.” This is frustrating since independent schools can be, well, independent.
Aha! Thanks, Diane. I finally understand the rush t Common Core assessments! A chance to spread the crisis talk deeper and further. Clever.
My young TFA co-worker told me today that we will be seeing more and more boarding schools for under privileged kids. We will totally be the parents for all of America’s kids then.
And the TFAers can pretend to be parents for 2 years.