A reader comments:
The profitization of public education on the backs of students, parents & teachers is obscene to the spirit of the human being business we call Education. Families raise the children, educators prepare them for the free world as American citizens armed with knowledge and compassion to contribute to the good of this planet.
No matter how critical the corporate deformers think testing should be to the rest of us, WE educators have something they do not…experience.
The business model just doesn’t work quite the way they think it should in education. We aren’t manufacturing widgets, cookies or engine parts that are built through exact science and physics…all ingredients are the same in measure and substance to the finished product that rolls out on the assembly line after rejects are tossed out for scrap materials.
We are grooming human beings who are uniquely individual and diverse in their abilities, culture & wiring. Last time I looked out into my classroom, there weren’t any robots looking back at me.
It may feel right to test the living hell out of kids for the sake of using the latest data analysis and pretend it’s important to the artful task of teaching, but coming from a Southern farm growing up, I may know a thing or two about how to produce a fine, marketable outcome.
“You can’t fatten a pig by weighing it!” Testing is NOT teaching.
The results can redirect teaching, suggest new methods, offer ideas and determine that more time is needed for a child to learn the material, but excessive amounts of testing will not create a learned student. It is a waste of time beyond the basic measurement of how “fattened” s/he is with the knowledge needed to become a great American citizen.
That time is better used to connect, welcome an abiding relationship and create a more humane environment in which a child can truly learn and grow into the kind of citizen we all want going out into the world.
Quit the bickering, ignore the foul pundits who seem to think it’s okay to make blood money from their pitiful displays of greed and start speaking out against it all. This meek & mild approach to our work has to end. Some will be sacrificed, but that’s what happens in great battles.
We have all the good stuff on our side. Without an uprising and demanding of the right change, we will continue to suffer. The administration has been put in the middle of this tirade, forced to succumb to irrational mandates funded by philanthropists and govt interventions that do not work and from the top down, the teachers carry all that angst, frustration and fear into the classrooms where it is dumped onto the hearts and minds of students.
Make no mistake about this truth folks…the conditions of education are the conditions in your childrens’ classrooms. Always has been, always will be. It’s a human being business and no amount of infiltration of corporate shenanigans will ever change that. Don’t mess with human nature, big boys. You will never be greater than that reality. I am one “Edgy-cator” these days!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Loved it–especially the quote about the pig!
Thanks for posting this letter.
Excellent post! Making profit shouldn’t be one’s first thought while thinking about education. Preparing students for their future lives should be that thought. I know it is hard to keep a clear focus on what is important, and that is why educators need reflective practice. But also people deciding about education need to check their assumptions – preferably very often.
I do understand the idea behind using data to guide instruction (my students are teachers learning about instructional design), but this needs to happen in small scale, every day in the classroom, not on the national/state level. We need immediate feedback loops that support students’ learning. When data like PISA results are being used to create new curricula, we have lost the focus (preparing students for life) and are reacting instead of acting to improve education (i.e. teaching for the test).
Learning happens in interactions and is improved by focused and effective feedback. http://notesfromnina.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/interactions-that-support-learning/ Business model was not built to support interactions or to provide feedback but to create profit. Today we have tools to provide students with individualized educational plans and multimedia tools for gathering information and make learning the personal experience it should be. Why aren’t we using them?
Amen to that !!! … Get mad, get out there … before its all gone …..
Respect!
the idea of a t’shirt with ” Can’t fatten a pig by weighing it” appeals to me … with a squealing piglet image ….. & has me chuckling and chortling
I applaud you for your wonderful post. I have been saying for years that children are not objects. Schools are not factories. You said it better than I ever could. I would love to see this in newspapers and media throughout the U.S and other countries, as well. I encourage everyone to post this to your facebook or other media. Parents need to be inspired to take action to opt out of testing, vote for local people who care for children for school boards, etc.
SO RIGHT!!!
Judging from recent history, the business model doesn’t even work that great for business.
Reblogged this on thewordpressghost and commented:
Diane,
Help me out.
What is the difference between business men profiting and elected officials & bureaucrats profiting? Is there any difference?
Ghost.
“This meek & mild approach to our work has to end. Some will be sacrificed, but that’s what happens in great battles.”
agreed!
The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.
Che Guevara
It has always amazed me that the “business model” is offered up as a standard for education. For any business looking to make a quality product, that business will seek out the best-quality raw materials possible to make its product. It will refuse to deal with a supplier that offers sub-standard goods. By choosing only the best for its manufacturing process, it is able to provide a top-quality product for its consumers, and I’m sure its product is tested at numerous times as it is produced.
But as educators, we have no choice in where our “raw materials” come from – they are the children who live in the districts in which we teach. In theory, EVERY child wants to/is willing to learn. But throw in any of the sundry learning disabilities, as well as home-life variables and everything else children and adolescents deal with on a regular basis, and theory becomes only that – the reality is oftentimes much different. And then, if they are not up to the “standard” we would like them to be in order to be successful, it is up to us to attempt to “refine” them and “rework” them until they ARE “fit” to be turned into a “product” that is “career and/or college-ready.” And Heaven forbid they actively work against us in this noble endeavor!
Require ANY industry anywhere to deal with these same restrictions, and there would be uproar. It would not surprise me were industry to ask, “Where is the ‘acceptable profit margin’ in this business equation?” So what’s the price for a child who’s capable of sliding smoothly from high school into a career or college situation? I don’t think it can be arrived at by following a “business model.”
And the sooner we realize and accept this, the sooner we’ll be able to truly focus on taking our children from where they are when they walk into our classrooms and guiding them to where they can reach their true potential.
Your statement “Last time I looked out into my classroom, there weren’t any robots looking back at me” is the problem that THEY have with public education! They WANT ROBOTS!!! Follow all orders without question, dress alike, no critical thinking there, just learn how to fill in the correct bubble, walk quietly do not speak unless asked a question and so many other strict rules! So the private schools (no high stakes tests) for the elite will produce the leaders of tomorrow, the charters (HIGH STAKES TESTS) will produce the OBEDIENT workers and the soldiers and the rest (in the few underfunded and overfilled public schools) will be the service people looking after and cleaning up after and fighting wars for the elite! The ones that do not obey and do not fit in a nitch will fill the jails that will also be owned and operated by private billionaire Corporations!
Common Core talking points:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-Common-Core-in-California/436128033134967#!/photo.php?fbid=446168658797571&set=a.443599459054491.1073741828.436128033134967&type=1&theater
“The state of an organization reflects the state of the leader’s mind.” – from The Tao of Leadership – and that IS what happens in the classroom… the administrators are stressed, so then the teachers are stressed, and then the students are stressed – THAT’S what happens to human beings… which is why the “carrots and sticks” business idea is such a poor way dealing with human beings. It’s a trickle-down effect… no one person can contain that much angst without it effecting other people around them.
The problem is the Neo-Liberal agenda put forth by Democrats and Republicans alike. Please read this explanation of Neo-Liberalism: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376
Clinton’s legacy of ridding the nation of “welfare as we know it,” NAFTA, etc. is not “centrist” liberalism; it’s an indicator of how the Democratic party was shifting to become a party of Neo-Liberals, with the same basic economic agenda as the GOP. That’s why both parties are on the same page today in Education and support privatization. That’s also why it’s so difficult to distinguish between the two parties anymore (except for the extreme TEA and religious right factions in the Republican party).
The Democratic party is no longer a party of liberals and they have not been for awhile. They are Neo-Liberals and that’s a whole different ball game. Anyone who cares about children, workers, and the 99%, needs a new party to represent them, before the 1% co-opt through privatization all of our remaining public services and eliminate the few safety nets we have left for our most vulnerable populations, children, seniors, the disabled and the poor.
“Market forces” are not a solution to lagging achievement, and the consumerist/materialist worldview that believes we can buy our way into success through selection of the best products the market has to bear has not worked for public education in the U.S. where inequalities in access to opportunity persist.
Look at the nations with the highest achievement. They use public funds to fully back equity of access to instruction, high levels of teacher development and collaboration, and decentralized curricular choices within a context of national outcomes.
The U.S. is poised for meaningful public education reform when we leave market forces out of the discussion.