President Obama continues his policy of using the State of the Union to demonstrate the gap between what he says and what his administration does.
Valerie Strauss carefully dissects that speech here in reference to education.
Once again, he warned that it was time to get away from “fill-in-the-bubble” standardized tests, perhaps unaware that the new federally-funded Common Core tests were made by the same old, same old and will of course demand even more filling in of even more bubbles.
Once again, he lauded his Race to the Top initiative, oblivious to the fact that its emphasis on using fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests to judge teacher quality has been a disaster.
And of course, he failed to recognize that his RTTT emphasis on charter schools and choice has opened a giant door wide for advocates of vouchers, who now want all federal funding to be channeled into vouchers for 11 million students. Once you abandon public schools, as the Obama administration has done, it is hard to stop the forces of privatization. Once you give away the civic purpose of public schooling, it is hard to argue against those who prefer consumer choice to civic obligation.
We will live with the negative consequences of Race to the Top for many years to come. If only President Obama had the wisdom to realize the damage he has done to one of our nation’s most important institutions.
In state after state, entrepreneurs are seizing on opportunities to make a buck, Common Core is absorbing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, teachers and principals are demoralized.
Some accomplishment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Is he that oblivious?
Neo-Blivious Is The New Oblivious …
Oblivious as the people who believed him and voted for him. He didn’t get where he is without votes.
More than that oblivious!
You are So Right!!!! Obama needs a lot more wisdom. It’s our fault to for voting for him. On this postion I don’t think Romney would have done any better. My grandparents were taught better than I was with all the “new math” that was shoved down our throats. My parents couldn’t even help because they didn’t understand it themselves. Unfortunately, it is still the same way today.
If he is pro consumer choice and anti public educatiion perhaps he should dismantle the dept of public education?
Romney did pretty well in MA. Sure the MACS is the bane of exististence for many teachers, but he certainly did not compromise with excellence in establishing what is undeniably the the highest performing state in the union. Sandrastotsky who denounced Common Core helped to create a model of education that should be emulated, but instead, even MA has silently acquiesced to this inferior model.
Mass was highest performing when Romney was first elected.
his Pres platform was privatization only
William Rivers Pitt | The Sugar Makes The Poison Taste Sweet
The democratic party is not playing to public education advocates because they know we have no other party to donate funds to… as long as folks who support public schools donate to Democrats because they are “the lesser of two evils” we will never have a choice when it comes to changing policy at the federal level… if public education advocates want to create change at ANY level we should deny funds to either party if they refuse to abandon the standardization/privatization policies BOTH parties adopted with NCLB and NEITHER party seems willing to undo.
I am in total agreement with you. It seems to always be the lesser of two evils…I stopped donating starting in 2012.
Ellen Lubic
It’s baffling what has happened to Democrats on education. Here’s what I posted on Valerie Strauss’s article:
Public school parents, the only “special interest” group whose only concern is children, completely disagree with the President’s education policies including an emphasis on standardized testing, closure of struggling schools, shifting resources from traditional schools to charters, narrowing curriculum, reducing teacher pay and benefits, and budget cutting. This was revealed in a national poll of public school parents (including those at charters). Enough of this so-called “reform agenda” that tends to view schools as business franchises in need of a quick corporate turn-around. We need schools that help build communities.
Tell that to the supposed “leaders” of the AFT and NEA!
They’re as out of touch as the OBOMBER.
Someone made a perceptive comment on this blog a while ago: oftentimes supporting and voting for the “lesser of two evils” turns out, in practice, to be supporting and voting for the “more effective of two evils.”
So hold all their feet to the fire: Democrats, Republicans, Tea Party, you name it, across the political spectrum.
Organize, don’t agonize. For example, opt-out. It won’t be easy but in the real civil rights movement the most important gains were made by the activists, not the politicians and the rest of the establishment.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
The Democrats were the party that never had the money the GOP had. Now that they have had a taste of it, they are ever more eager to please corporate sponsors and superpacs.
BOTH sides of the aisle are corrupt for the most part.
We will form a third party, and once the rigth seed is planted in the right location at the right time, it will spread like wild ivy, creeping up and choking every trunk and branch, engulfing a forest of old and new moneyed trees . . . .
New flora and fauna to kill off and replace the old stale foliage is the new inevitability . . . .
O! What a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
oblivious to the consequences of his actions
not at all oblivious about who is writing the checks
Agree on the misinformation about the tests. Some have an online version of manipulatives but most do not. It would be impossible to respond at a reasonable rate if states didn´t do the bubble stuff. In fact, they aren’t responding at a reasonable rate anyway.
However, looking forward this can be fixed Although difficult this could pan out as described here http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
And if they really want to get away from the bubble test, go here http://www.wholechildreform.com
Do you think that he cares about the consequences of his actions? When he retreats to the $35 million home in Hawaii that his Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker is raising money for, he will be far removed from the lives that he is ruining.
Obama is a neo-liberal.
Neo-Liberals speak out of one side of their mouth for the little guy, their nominal constituency, and the other side of their mouth for the plutocracy, their real constituency.
Obama’s gift is that he has elevated this to an art.
Imagine, there are constituents still believing that he really doesn’t want to wipe the floor with the middle class.
Michelle was here in LA last night to garner cash from the billionaires at a Hancock Park dinner with the fee of $32,000 a plate. Isn’t Citizens United terrific?
Ellen
Imagine, Madame, that there are also informed constituents who would like to wipe the floor with Obama’s ruined career . . .
Valerie has it nailed. Race tot the Top is a terrible metaphor, premise, and policy. And now we will see three-and four-year olds in pre-school tested to the limit, stack sorted for true grit from the get-go.
The dummies always go with the sports metaphors.
Years ago, I taught in a girls’ Catholic school. We had a drunken priest who used to get on the PA system in the morning, already totally loaded, and say, “Girls, you have to get out there today and carry that ball!” LOL
When he got to the part about bubbling in test answers I thought, “NO he didn’t!!!”
I used to have a mental picture of G.W. Bush with a bubble over his head reading “Clueless!” That bubble is now hovering over our president.
Maybe even Arnie doesn’t know about the bubble in tests.
I love that image of the Scranton bubble over his heading, being blackened in with a pencil. Perfect political cartoon.
President Obama once again “passed the ball” to his b-ball bud, Arne Duncan. Arne Duncan, who never taught a day in his life. Another example of the “Good Ol’ Boys’ Club”?
Reading and reflecting upon all the SOTUS commentaries and what my ears trained to hear Tuesday night, I am filled with a simmering anger at the hypocrisy of it all. The President is supportive of women: They should receive equal pay for equal work; They should have paid sick time. What about teachers, Mr. President?
Education is a female-dominated profession. RTTT-directives have inspired state and local superintendents to run roughshod over the life’s work of our nation’s most experienced and knowledgable educators. With profit as motive, many who now “cost” too much for districts to keep are being forced out and cheaper labor has come in their stead. Many have been given the “choice” of premature retirements or terminations – both of which unpalatable and for which they were not quite financially ready to bare. RTTT has also “uninspired” many a young teacher to walk away from a vocational calling with tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt. Many of these individuals are young women. Gender equality, Mr. President? Really?
Where, Mr. President, is your concern for THESE women? Time to “get real” and redefine parameters of “quality education” as being delivered by professionally-trained, committed educators… Many of our nation’s WOMEN! I dare say that if you do a “close reading” of the names of the “top” educational “reformers”, many of them were recipients of the tireless preparation and commitment of those they now seek to displace. Has the neighborhood school become a “Mad Men” spin-off location? Please consider, Mr. President. There’s a wave of women becoming MAD. What will you do about it?
well said!
I agree and I’m glad to see someone else saw this in his remarks. I also took his comment about change requiring ‘more demanding parents” as a show of support to Arne Duncan and his “white suburban mothers” remark. The president was like the patriarch standing up there on the podium telling the girls — You moms out there, get with the program and fall in line behind my boy Arne!
Interesting online book:
The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt
Click to access DDDoA.sml.pdf
Foreword, xi-xii
“One of the interesting insights revealed by these documents is how the social engineers
use a deliberately created education ‘crisis’ to move their agenda forward by offering radical
reforms that are sold to the public as fixing the crisis—which they never do. The new reforms
simply set the stage for the next crisis, which provides the pretext for the next move forward.
This is the dialectical process at work, a process our behavioral engineers have learned to
use very effectively. Its success depends on the ability of the ‘change agents’ to continually
deceive the public which tends to believe anything the experts tell them.”
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
I’d be careful about calling Obama’s rhetoric “empty”. Two-faced and mendacious, sure. But if you parse it carefully, it’s usually pretty ingenious for what it says, the way it says it, and perhaps most importantly what it doesn’t say. It’s always interesting to listen to the pundits after an Obama speech because they all seem to hear quite different things in it – exactly what they want to hear.
Perhaps the text of an Obama speech would be good material for a CCSS “close read”.
Ironically the only hope comes from the Tea Party and extreme right of the political spectrum. They don’t want the federal government shoving this garbage at their states. They are the only hope for public schools and states’ rights. I will never vote Democrat again. The only way to stop this garbage is to vote Republican, let them dismantle the Dept. of Education. Arne Duncan can go back to coaching B Ball at the YMCA, and states will be free again to pursue their own rights and goals. That is the solution!! I am not kidding at all. I don’t know any teachers who will vote Democrat again after this. We need to throw our full weight behind the most extreme branch of the Republican Party. I am already in contact with local representatives. I don’t think Texas will put up with this either. There are still a few “free” states left in the union.
Mike- no irony at all. If you go tea party then you play right into their hands. The point is privatization. If you give up on public education because of CCSS and tests then you make the case for charters and vouchers. It is a win-win for neoliberals since they control both ends of the spectrum. Read Mercedes Schneider today and get the whole story on ALEC. I am not so sure you would want to cozy up to them after reading it. http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/alecs-extensive-plans-for-education-restructuring-in-your-state/
I’m a Mom of 3 and have spoken out against CC at my local school district. A former Hillary supporter turned Tea Party supporter during the Stimulus distribution to democrat cronies and Obama bundles. The Tea Party doesn’t have CC on their platform. But many Tea Party people are speaking out against CC. Both my parents were teachers. I am trying to explain to my school district, using alumni data, to show its standards are successful and effective. But CC has no such data to prove its effectiveness. The TP isn’t pushing anything against CC. People like me are against nationalized standards and believe our community and teachers know what’s best- not bureaucrats. I’ve also heard nothing from the TP about pushing charters. There’s a lot I hear about homeschooling though , which I’d never want to do!
The new tests are not “bubble in”, they’re “click in”.
Except now we need to buy lots of new tech in order to do so.
Do they have no open-response questions?Actually, written responses are more problematic because in real life people don’t, write something once and then that’s it. They set it aside, edit it, etc.
Michelle had a former Teach for America Corp member sitting with her – shows how little respect they have for teachers. If they think you can become a teacher in five weeks they don’t have a clue. I’m sorry I voted for him.
Will you vote for Hillary? I think she will be the same thing. I didn’t even tune in for Obama’s speech. I knew it would be a bunch of bs.
I have been out of it for about a week, so bear with me if I am just repeating other people’s thoughts again. One thing that did strike me as discouraging was his so appreciative compliments of the efforts of business leaders and philanthropies who have stepped up to do all those game changing things that need to be done to education. Not a single educator was among that power group.
My thoughts exactly. Too bad he didn’t mention the profits these “do-gooders” are making with all their efforts.
The moment you hear about “public-private partnerships,” it’s all over.
YUP. As Mussolini said, fascism is the erasure of the dividing line between corporations and government.
I don’t know what to think about Hillary – I would like to believe she would be more in touch with what truly matters in education but I’m becoming rather cynical.
In the news yesterday it mentioned that Hillary hasn’t driven a car since 1996. I don’t think she’s in touch.
She did go to an average public high school just outside of Chicago, so maybe she understands public education’s value to a society?
Please, please don’t put your hopes in Hillary. She’s even more neoliberal than Obama (if that’s possible). She has no interest in public education (well, other than the same financial interest as all the other neolibs, that is).
No one is oblivious here. Everyone in charge knows exactly what is going on and why. This is Orwell in action: doublethink, doublespeak, and the Ministry of Truth are all working in sync to achieve the desired outcome.
+1
“President Obama continues his policy of using the State of the Union to demonstrate the gap between what he says and what his administration does.”
Yep.
Systems Thinking Principle: To understand a system, pay more attention to what it does than to what it says.
Obama’s arguably scorched earth reform of institutions of public education is quite evident, no matter what he says. And people like Michelle Rhee supporter, UNCF President and CEO Michael Lomax, are quite willing to participate.
Frankly, it was shortly after Obama pronounced extending his scorched earth reform to vocational education (“I’ve asked Vice President Biden to lead an across-the-board reform of America’s training programs to make sure they have one mission: train Americans ….”) I decided to retire for the evening with the wisdom of Frederick Douglas instead:
“The light of education had been completely excluded and their hard earnings had been taken to educate their master’s children.”
All right…now that everyone, here, perfectly understands what oxymoronic tripe was spoken in the POTUS SOTUS, let’s acknowledge that he is beyond being a lost cause, & start/continue to work in our own communities to save our kids’ education.
State testing time (you know, the BIG ones that “tell” all the parents if their schools are “failing,” as in not making AYP) is nigh. So, all parents, please hie thee to the United Opt Out site, click on your state, download/print all the info., & OPT your children OUT NOW!!! Even if it wasn’t on their state tests, Seattle teachers & parents
(because a whopping 97% opted their kids out!!) STOPPED the MAP tests, which were then pronounced DOA.
Enough talk, whining & moaning about Obama & Arne. This ABSOLUTELY MUST be the year that EVERYONE opts kids OUT. The future of a democratic (& I don’t mean the party), public education (NOT controlled by ALEC and NOT owned by Pear$on)
depends on you, parents!
If enough parents opt out, they will make a law forcing kids to take the tests. Believe me! There is too much money involved. The failure of these tests is the final act. After that they can label all public schools as failures and dismantle “all ” the public schools and privatize them. There is a lot of money to be made. Wait and see. That is the grand finale of Race to the Top. They have been building towards this moment for years. Aren’t you glad you voted Democrat? Is this change you can believe in?
Mike, Robert Shepherd predicated something similar when he said that what happened in NY state will happen nation-wide regarding new tests that show children and schools as failures.
I do think that once this spreads nationally, we will have a major cataclysmic shift in parent and voter voices, which is already building across the United States.
There is real hope.
But rights and justice won back will be long, hard, and painful . . . Yet, it is always that way when fighting for justice.
The edu-reform firm of Gates, Duncan, Rhee, Broad, and Klein has made one crucial error in judgement. Their plan has one major flaw that just might be its Achilles heel. Everything they want to accomplish hinges on one key requirement: PARCC and SBAC on-line testing. Living in the cocoon of the corporate world where state of the art technology is a given, they failed to fathom the true logistical and financial nightmare they have created. The first inkling of this breach was seen in NH field testing. The worst is yet to come.
It’s already headed that way. Chicago Public Schools sent out a letter to teachers that has gone viral stating that kids who opt out in certain grades won’t be eligible for promotion, among other threats to both parents and teachers.
Once you give away the civic purpose of public schooling, it is hard to argue against those who prefer consumer choice to civic obligation.
Indeed. That’s what advanced the public education doomsday clock, beginning in the seventies, by Justice Souter’s recollection.
Eric,
I would say that Race to the Top–and its requirement that states lift the cap on charter schools–represented the most significant federal endorsement of choice ever, which made it hard to draw the line between charters and vouchers.
Just echoing some thoughts above. Those test scores are now staring to collapse at the high school level. In New York. The English regents exam this week asked students to compare a poem and a prose passage through the controlling idea of “insight.” Most of us know that students with learning disabilities and English language learners would be confounded by this task. The same is true of many average American students. Add to this that the prose passage was about “yellow dust” that was actually an alien life form, and you see where this is going. The conversion scale also was tightened once again so that students who may have passed last year would not pass this year. Consequently, many students’ graduation has been jeopardized. And that is what the governor means when he talks about putting students first. Students are the first ones to be put on the plane that is being built while it flies.
It sounds like a bunch of jokers were sitting in the back room joking about how they were going to get those obnoxious little jerks this time. Can’t you hear those “I love inflicting pain” chuckles as they devised their mind numbing assessment items?
Hell, I don’t fit either of those categories and I have no idea how to “compare a poem and a prose passage through the ‘controlling idea’ of ‘insight'”.
Yes you do.
You just don’t know you do . . .
Robert,
See my recent post on your comment.
Duane
Robert,
No, I cannot as I do not know what “the controlling idea of ‘insight'” means.
Now can someone probably quickly instruct me as to what that means, then yes, I could do it.
But your comment brings up an interesting aspect of the teaching and learning process: When the ‘student’ says they don’t know/can’t do something, they are more likely than not correct. Now the experienced teacher has many tricks up his/her sleeve to then try to help the student overcome the initial “I don’t know” to one of “let’s figure this out so that I (the student) can do it”. And those tricks have nothing to do with standards, testing or any of the other supposed magical solutions that are proposed. Human to human interaction can never be replaced by standardized answers or a computer program.
Once you give away the civic purpose of public schooling, it is hard to argue against those who prefer consumer choice to civic obligation.
Then public schools ought to safeguard Horace Mann’s vision of the “common school.” Instead, we seem to be getting Dewey, Marx, and Freire with the encouragement of (at least) one teachers’ union and most teacher preparation programs.
Are teachers the only profession that aren’t educated in the strategy and mechanics necessary to maintain integrity of their own “brand?” Is it enough for them to naively trust the union operatives paid with teachers’ union dues?
Are we surprised to see the public education doomsday clock closing in on midnight?
Agreed. However we can’t sit back and DO nothing. Here’s an idea to jumpstart our own assessment, leaving room for the unquantifiable. Let’s get at it http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html