In this post, I will explain why I disagree with the prolific, brilliant Paul Thomas.
Thomas is offended that the mainstream media jumped all over Secretary Duncan’s insulting comment about “white suburban moms,” but has consistently ignored Secretary Duncan’s policies that disproportionately harm black and Hispanic children, their families and their communities.
Thomas elsewhere wrote: If white outrage is the only outrage that counts in the U.S., any victory won from that outrage is no victory at all.
Thomas writes:
First, Duncan’s incompetence is no different than the incompetence exhibited by previous Secretaries, such as Margaret Spellings. Where has the outrage been about the national leaders of education having essentially no grasp of data or statistics? Or the likelihood that they feel compelled to protect their partisan politics regardless of the truth?
Next, Duncan’s most recent embarrassment must be placed in the larger context of the entire education agenda under Obama—an agenda characterized by Civil Rights discourse used with Orwellian aims of masking classist and racist policies impacting negatively and disproportionately black, brown, and poor children (“other people’s children”) as well as English language learners. Where has the outrage been about maintaining and expanding two separate education systems—one for the privileged children of our leaders and another for the impoverished and marginalized?
Here, and in other posts, Thomas has expressed his frustration and dismay that the only way to awaken outrage is to belittle “white suburban moms.”
While I usually agree with Thomas and find his articles consistently insightful, I disagree with him in this instance. It has become obvious over the past decade that the mainstream media not only doesn’t care when black and brown children are harmed by misguided education policy, they typically accept the claims of those inflicting the harm. They report without any criticism the policies that bounce black and brown children around the school district as if they were checkers on a checkerboard. They ignore the protests of the parents of these children when their local school is closed to make way for a privately managed charter or for a condo. It is obvious to everyone but the media that they don’t hear the voices of these children or their parents.
So, yes, it took a condescending comment directed toward white suburban mothers by Secretary Duncan to get the attention of the media. You can bemoan that fact, as Paul Thomas does, or celebrate it as the beginning of coalition politics.
It is beyond argument that those in power will not listen to the poor. But when the black and brown moms (and dads) form a coalition with the “white suburban moms,” they are a powerful force that cannot be ignored.
I learned this lesson nearly half a century ago from the great civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. Rustin wrote and spoke often about the power of coalition politics. He patiently explained that the great weight of institutionalized oppression and powerlessness would not be lifted from black Americans unless they joined in coalition with the labor movement; he saw the civil rights movement and the labor movement as natural allies. And he was right. Together, they pushed American politics to adopt laws that benefited all Americans and established a legal framework of equity.
My advice to Paul Thomas, whose sense of outrage I share, is to embrace coalition politics. When the white moms and dads realize they are in the same situation as the black and Hispanic moms and dads, they become a force to be reckoned with. The coalition of diverse groups is a source of political power that will benefit children and families of all colors and conditions.
Thank you, Diane, for taking my initial concerns and reaching an optimistic and productive “logical conclusion.” I think we likely do not disagree …
Please read CT Parent, posted on Pelto, read full comment (link below). Time to rally ALL parents against the corporate take over of our PUBLIC schools:
Watching the antics of Steve Perry has brought home to me just how racist so much school “reform” really is. Steve Perry is quick to excoriate “teachers” (just about all of them?) for the soft bigotry of low expectations concerning poor minority students. “Dr.” Perry, in contrast, has great faith in the academic potential of all his students; he believes that he can make any one of them “college-ready” by subjecting them to his stark methods at Capitol Prep. So Perry, like Michael Sharpe of Jumoke, is a “no excuses” man. Students are not to talk about the hardships in their lives; they are to pull themselves up by whatever strings or straps they have at hand. The good “Dr.” Perry is an exponent of “tough love,” and when the student doesn’t shape up, Perry and his minions find a way to show such students the door. “Dr.” Perry’s ship is so damn tight, students are punished for wearing the wrong color pants belt with their school uniform. And woe betide the child who comes to school in something other than the prescribed uniform. I know this to be true because a child I am familiar with, who attended Capitol Prep, was harshly dealt with by the staff for a minor deviation from the standard uniform. The child was distraught at the punishment he received, but Steve Perry knows, as well as any tyrant, that you don’t want to spoil the child by sparing the rod!
Perry’s rule at Capitol Prep is evidence of a deep racism, for the simple reason that his bullying and obnoxious ways would NEVER be tolerated in a middle class suburban school predominantly populated by “white” children. Perry would not dare to practice his authoritarianism on such children. He is an egotist, but even he cannot be so stupid as to antagonize middle class people with lawyers who know their rights. He knows that in Simsbury or West Hartford or in Farmington, parents would be after him so quickly, if he bullied their children, that his feet would not touch the ground. The School boards in any of these towns would fire him quicker than he could fire off one of his trademark tweets. But Perry does all his bad stuff to Hartford children for the very simple reason that he knows he can get away with it.
He can get away with it for a host of tragic reasons. He can justify his harsh treatment of black and brown children by laying claim to the fact that he is a minority too. This kind of pseudo racial solidarity is the stock-in-trade of every opportunist and careerist, from Clarence Thomas to Corey Booker. (Racism has clearly damaged the soul of Steve Perry but in ways that are too complex to go into right here.) Perry uses his “race” as a shield: it allows him to say things to minority children and their parents that would be deemed unacceptable if spoken by a white person. He also uses his “race” as a covert weapon: he thinks being “black” gives him the moral authority to criticize “lazy teachers” and “selfish” teachers’ unions for allegedly perpetuating the abysmal failings of “ghetto education.” We can agree with Mr. Perry that “ghetto education” is indeed a national disgrace, but we find it wrong and simple-minded to make teachers the scapegoats. If Perry read a little history, I think he would see that the “miseducation of the negro” (as Carter G. Woodson put it) has been a longstanding problem in the United States. And it is complexly related to the invidious social position that blacks have occupied in the aftermath of slavery.
Steve Perry is evidence of deep racism in one more sense: he is the “blackface” put on by powerful white interests. The people who want corporate school “reform” (with privatization as the seminal concern) have no real commitment to African American and Latino children who are caught in the morass of poverty. To my knowledge, these people do not advocate for an “end to poverty,” for a renewal of the War on Poverty; indeed, they are largely silent on a slew of social issues. However, they are loud and vocal about school “reform,” as this is central to their broader goal of securing a society that is completely subject to the discipline of the private market. In other words, they view school reform as part of a revolutionary effort to reduce the role of government in safeguarding the public welfare. They don’t want representative government, they want enhanced corporate power. Destroying public schools is a fundamental way of changing the meaning of the “public” and thus the people’s commitment to republican government.
Corporate school is racist because poor minority children are being used to advance a reactionary social agenda that will ultimately prove harmful to all Americans, but most certainly to those who are poor. In one way, the future is already here. In Hartford, the magnet schools are funded and promoted and a few Hartford kids get to go to “Heaven.” But the vast majority of Hartford children are left in “hell”–in schools with no resources, no stability, and very little hope.
It’s obvious that Steve Perry is no educator. He is merely a performer. He is playing the role of “Angry and Inspired Black Educator Who Just Wants to Save the Children if Only the Evil Teachers’ Unions Would Let Him Work His Magic.” There is comedy in Steve Perry, but, alas, it’s hard to laugh when you know he’s a front man for right wing reactionaries who could not care less about the children in Perry’s charge.
http://jonathanpelto.com/2013/11/25/public-school-parent-calls-capital-preps-steve-perry-account/
CT parent continued:
It’s absolutely shocking that the Hartford BOE disregards the parents who see their children being mistreated at Capitol Prep. I understand how galling it must be to see “America’s most trusted educator” hamming it up on television, and boasting to the end of time, about his “great” achievements in school “reform.” Steve Perry reminds me of a showy televangelist, who berates his congregation for their sloth and sins, but all the while he takes their tithes and drives around in a Cadillac, wearing fancy clothes! I’m sure you are right that his “tactics” are “demoralizing” to all who have the misfortune to fall into his sphere of influence.
Yes, if the Hartford BOE held Perry to the same standards as every other Hartford Principal, it’s doubtful that the great one could survive a moment’s scrutiny. But school “reform” is a black and white minstrel show: Perry can act up because powerful people have his back, and these people don’t really care how many children he mistreats, just so long as he advances their political agenda. In other words, it’s the old American game of using a “house slave” to keep things running smoothly on the Plantation.
I love that line they give at Capitol Prep if your child doesn’t knuckle under: “this isn’t the school for you.” Which is to say, if you can’t take being spoken to in harsh, cajoling terms; if you can’t take being disrespected on a daily basis; if you can’t match up to the “no excuses” mantra, then, yes, this isn’t the school for you! In Simsbury, I’m sure the prevailing pedagogical model turns on nurturing and cultivating potential; but in Hartford, under the rule of Dr. Steve Perry, the dominant ethos is drag, push and drive the child in the preferred direction. Of course Perry will tell us that this disciplinarian approach is just what is wanted in “the ghetto,” where so many “kids grow up without a man in the home.” The arrogant sexism and class bias of this way of thinking is breath-taking.
We completely agree that Hartford children deserve teachers who really care about them and not showboaters like Perry who use children as background props.
Linda: this is the sort of discussion—with one inanity—that is needed.
I will only add that I find it nauseating that Dr. Steve Perry thinks that black and brown students, parents and teachers need to beaten down and demeaned in order to live—not a typo—down to his expectations.
Even these many decades later, in my childhood memory I can still hear the slow and beautiful Southern drawls of the older black people where I lived describing this sort of human being. Most did not have much formal education but they were wise in the ways of the world and had hard won wisdom that no phony “Dr.” title can buy. They never cursed around children but they said what they meant and they meant what they said.
I know that in their own way they would have nailed “America’s Most Trusted Educator” to the wall as well as any of those old dead Greek guys:
“How vain, without the merit, is the name.” [Homer]
And they were just as keen to spot any differences between the walk and the talk:
“You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man’s actions are, such must be his spirit.” [Demosthenes]
I conclude by referring everyone to a guest posting on Edushyster by a teacher who worked for the educoward in question—
Link: http://edushyster.com/?p=3687
😎
Bayard Rustin is a hero about whom all Americans should know. When his home town of West Chester PA wanted to name a school after him, there was strong pushback – he had been a Communist as a young man and he was gay (which is why he was not more visible at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom – note the title – for which he was the primary organizer at the behest of A. Philip Randolph). The school was named for Rustin.
Rustin was raised as a Quaker, and was a firm believer in non-violence. H was an active participant in the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and helped organize both the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which was the organization associated with King.
There is much we can still learn today about effective political and social organizing from the life and work of Bayard Rustin. Good example to use, Diane.
Ken, Bayard Rustin was a personal friend as well as one of the greatest men of his generation.
I think you can both be right.
It is shameful that so many of us white suburbanites manage to be numb to the plight of poor kids of every background. And it is troubling that the only time the media seems to care is when the least marginalized among us get dinged in an ultimately meaningless way by a flat-footed politician.
But if we take advantage of the attention that stupid comment garnered and invite those whose curiosity has been piqued to a conversation about the casualties these policies have already taken and will continue to take on our kids, perhaps the old adage that “water floats all boats” might prove true. There is no doubt but that poor, predominately black and brown, kids have suffered and will continue to suffer the most under the current corporatist “reform” policies that willfully ignore and, indeed, may promote the devastating impact of our country’s social inequities. But middle-class people CAN be taught to understand that they and their children will suffer under a continued regime of such crippling inequity.
We must galvanize people to see their shared humanity and to join together for real and lasting good.
Thanks Diane. Yes, it must be every parent together, conscious of what is really going on, outraged and ready to act in behalf of all children. That will be a force straight from the heart, aligned with a critically-thinking mind and a ton of courage. Unbeatable.
Unfortunately, the so-called reformers studied that history and learned the lesson of coalition politics all too well, and knee-capped it early by purchasing the leadership of the AFT and NEA.
How do you establish that coalition when union leaders are co-managing – witness the disgraceful behavior of the UFT in NYC, pushing the Common Core and test-based evaluation systems on its members – the roll-out of these disastrous policies, and accepting millions from the very people who seek to destroy the public schools, teaching as a profession, and ultimately the unions themselves, once they’ve served their purpose?
I know, the answer is to throw the misleaders out, but that is easier said then done, since the One Party State that is the UFT – with Unity Caucus holding uninterrupted power for more than half a century! – has gerrymandered voting in such way that it’s almost impossible for them to lose.
I think the protests in NY, Chicago and Philadelphia should have gotten more media attention.
I’m baffled why “parental choice” is celebrated when parents are choosing to leave public schools, and is ignored or denigrated when parents are pleading that their local public school stay open.
I’m baffled why ed reformers insist they want “empowered” parents unless those parents are bucking ed reform policies.
Apparently we can “choose” any school we want, as long as it isn’t an existing neighborhood public school they’re planning on closing or privatizing and we are called to “engage” in our schools unless we object to testing, at which point Mr. Duncan and his fans in media will sneer.
This isn’t “choice” or “empowerment” at all.
Thank you Diane and Paul Thomas for highlighting the elephant in the room with “School Reform.”
The class divide is extreme in all discussions of what has happened with education in this country and the people/corporations with power and influence have used that wedge to their advantage. They tend to stay away from schools (suburban usually) with high degree of parental involvement and influence because they don’t want to fight that battle yet.
The urban poor schools are the easy choices. Because of their demographics, they have the population that is the least savvy about the forces far above their heads and lives who SHAPE almost EVERY ASPECT of their existence.
The students at my high school come from immigrant backgrounds or are poor African-American. While parents don’t necessarily TRUST the institutions they send their kids to, they have little choice and end up crossing their fingers that there are people who are looking out for their kids’ interests.
In cities like New York, LA, Chicago and Washington, DC, parents with education and sophistication in the machinations of education “know” what public schools they can “safely” send their kids to. These are the schools that have TREMENDOUS parental support because they have the wherewithal to step in and do the things that the budgets and society should be offering ALL kids.
These schools are islands in the morass of poverty and disenfranchisement. They look nothing like some of their cousin schools in the same system.
Since no parent wants THEIR kid to be a sacrificial lamb, they only naturally act in the best interest of their children. The “School Reformers” use that human quality to divide and conquer. It is only when an Arne Duncan opens their mouth that these parents realize they too are part of the war and that their kids are being conscripted in things like Common Core and the Testing Machine. That is why you see such outrage in New York right now against what is now happening in THEIR kids’ classrooms.
It is only when these parents JOIN with parents who don’t have the voice or access or influence as these other parents to create a school system that dignifies ALL kids by giving them a quality educational experience that supports and enlightens them rather than seeing them as mere dollar signs to exploit and derail their already dicey chances even further.
The question remains if the cynical views of the powerful and privileged few will win out and the two tier education system wins out to their immense profit and our society’s ever-lasting harm.
http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/america%E2%80%99s-rural-schools-and-communities
Also, it isn’t just urban and suburban anymore:
“What if I told you there were millions of American boys and girls living in communities where half of students are low-income, just one in five adults has earned a bachelor’s degree, and only 27 percent of high school graduates go on to college?
What if I told you these students are more likely than their peers in any other geographic area to live in poverty?
Most of you would probably gather that I’m talking about our inner cities.
No.
These statistics describe rural America.
Rural public schools enroll eleven million children, fully a quarter of students nationwide. Yet, sadly, the challenges faced by rural educators and their students have received scant attention from national education leaders.
My organization, Bellwether Education Partners, is trying to help solve this problem.
With generous financial support from the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation (based in Boise, Idaho) we are helping to launch a new two-year initiative, Rural Opportunities Consortium Idaho (ROCI), to study the challenges facing and the opportunities available to rural communities and their schools.
Bellwether will produce a series of papers and policy briefs on subjects like rural charter schooling and technology. We’ll also provide ongoing advice and support to the foundation, its partners, and others engaged in this issue. Though we’ll dedicate much of our energy to the particular circumstances and needs of Idaho, the project aspires to inform the entire field of rural schooling.”
I live in a rural area and having watched what’s happened in urban districts, I think I know how this goes.
“There’s a crisis in rural public schools!” This will be parroted by national media.
This crisis can only be addressed with lots of reckless urgency and creative disruption!
The cure will involve lots and lots of charter schools, online schools, or “blended learning” and getting rid of older, stale, local teachers who have things like health insurance costs and pensions.
Chiara Duggan – You mention 20-25% of the population receiving a college education as a problem. However college is suitable only for people with IQ’s above 110. This is about 25% of the US population. The balance of the population would be better served by work-study programs
Therefore 20% of the population having a bachelor’s degree is a remarkable accomplishment and about the maximum that can reasonably be expected.
“Chiara Duggan – You mention 20-25% of the population receiving a college education as a problem.”
I didn’t write it. It’s a clip from the piece I linked to, about how rural public schools need reform. I’m sorry if it was confusing.
I don’t have an opinion on whether or not more people in rural areas should or should not go to college. We have enough trouble keeping the local community college funded and open for the people who want to go there.
Many of us here in Chicago agree. But as our coalition grows, we need to frankly acknowledge the histories and realities of the struggles that have come before now. Dozens of often very good Chicago public schools were attacked and closed by Arne Duncan and the policies of corporate school reform during the years leading up to the 2008 election of Barack Obama. Many of us were organizing a resistance during those years, including the women and men who now lead the 30,000-member Chicago Teachers Union. Some of us took significant hits to our careers in the process of resisting those tyrannies as long ago as when they were spewing from Paul Vallas and Gery Chico. As historians know, it took a major coalition to defeat the mid-20th Century flowering of the Eugenics movements that inspire Arne Duncan’s policies, and that broad coalition took lots of work, from Casablanca through Yalta and beyond. But there were some who had fought against those enemies before 1939 or 1941 brought the final coalitions together. Then we were called “premature anti-fascists.” What matters is to build the coalition that can win. Agreed. But let’s not forget that the leadership for the current coalitions that are building against Race To The Top and all the related idiocies has in many ways been organizing for a decade or more. In addition to reading “Reign of Error”, (I sold my 39th copy here in Chicago at last night’s CORE meeting) we can go all the way back and thank David Berliner for “The Manufactured Crisis.” The new coalition will certainly make this year’s holidays brighter. And for the sake of accuracy and justice, we need to remember our own histories as the resistance begins to sweep aside the latest Eugenics policies of a benighted corporate class…
Thank you George Schmidt, and thank you, Paul Thomas.
I am so weary of the Arne Duncan regime (I can only imagine what it is like for the Chicago folks to have to watch his racist antics on the national stage, after witnessing them first hand on the local one). It is especially galling, but so predictable, that these policies are underwritten by the First President of Color in the United States.
Arnie Ducan and his gang did not arrive on the scene ex nihlo. Fpr two and more generations, this country has been slip sliding away from its commitments to equity and equality in all spheres of public life; schooling is but one sphere. The issue that that connects school to larger social issue is the all-but-gone social safety net.
Any notion of a collective ‘common-good’ has been lost and forgotten in a tidal wave of ideology that worships the one per-cent and their god: individualism.That we now have a character such a Arne Duncan on the scene, who has not gotten yanked fro the stage in a position of power, should come as no surprise; his continued presence is a logical extension of the hegemony of the culture of cruelty, that manufactured the ‘crisis’ in public education, the 99%/1% perversion, called the distribution of wealth , loading- up of prisons with Black and Brown citizens. Why does this tragic reality remain unquestioned and permitted?
Yes, let us do whatever is necessary to rid children and their parents, schools and communities, of educational reform. But, no, we can’t afford to solely focus on education to the exclusion of larger issues that have been forgotten. there exists a ‘common good’ lying fallow. ready to be seeded and harvested..
john a -The high proportion of prison inmates who are black reflects the high level of violent criminality in the US black population. Throughout the entire world rates of violent crime among populations of Sub-Saharan African descent tend to be much higher than other ethnic/racial groups.
The only polite response I can come up with to Jim’s 2:06 comment is “HUH!?!!”
So ironic to be reading something so disgustingly racist on this thread.
Sign Me,
One of those White Suburban Moms
john a @ 11:28 AM, 11/26–You make some good points. On this & on some other blogs, there has been talk that the U.S. has been sliding into an abyss for about the last 40 years.
Funny, ALEC just held its 40th birthday celebration in Chicago.
We will be publishing a number of historical articles (at http://www.substancenews.net) about Duncan’s history as Chicago CEO in the coming weeks — and additional histories about the recently returned Paul Vallas during the same times. From a historical point of view, some of the interest is how the “first rough draft of history” got as much wrong around “education reform” as The New York Times and others did about Iraq 2003. Sam Dillon (NY Times Arne Duncan propagandist) Is no Judith Miller, but his “news” reports in American’s “newspaper of record” deserves at least a second string Judith Miller award.
The obvious difference between the Vallas/Duncan programs and that of the George W. Bush era is training, coherence, and above all competence. But that’s much because it (the stuff that eventually became “Race To The Top”) was field tested in Chicago for more than a decade before it was launched on the entire USA.
In a way, No Child Left Behind was, at best, an amateurish rehearsal for what was to come. Of course, the ruling class was adaptable, and the election of Barack Obama was key to the whole scam. One of those, a sidelight, will be on how Barack Obama used some of us (in the Chicago Teachers Union) during his personal race to the top, then revised the historical narrative almost as soon as we had completed that job.
The Chicago Plan had been well rehearsed (and in many ways debugged) by the Chicago Boys for more than a decade before audacious hope brought tears to eyes in Grant Park in November 2008. But anyone who believed in December 2008 that national education policy would change for the “better” when the Duncan appointment was announced by Barack Obama and his propagandists in December 2008 (in one of the Chicago schools that had been butchered by Duncan’s “turnaround” policies, by the way) was ignoring history and facts.
“Race To The Top” is as much a signal policy of the Obama administration as “No Child Left Behind” was of the Bush administration. And Arne Duncan is as much a spare part in that machine as Rod Paige and Margaret Spellings were. “Race To The Top” is the latest iteration of the eugenics movement pursued by the rulings classes since the pseudo-science was re-invented in the late 19th Century as part of the rationalization for imperialism. But, and this deserves repeating, it is even more a signature policy of Barack Obama’s as “Obamacare.” Honest historians will have to face those facts after clearing away all that November 2008 (and subsequent) teary-eyed fuzziness.
The most significant difference is that since the 1970s, those rulers have not only been implementing the “Capitalism and Freedom” (versus the equity) agenda, but they were smart enough to groom a new generation of leaders groomed and slowly promoted along with Barack Obama. Harvard was not the only locus of that training and grooming, but it was by far the most significant.
The older blatant racism just wouldn’t do, but the overall policies of class dominance continued. It was brilliant, both strategically and tactically. And when they became the policies of the Obama administration, it was much more difficult for decent people to first realize, then say, what was taking place. That’s still true, as many critics focus on Arne Duncan, as if Duncan’s power — and Race To The Top — could exist without Barack Obama.