Paul Horton here attempts to understand why the Obama administration is waging war on teachers. He reminds us of Central Falls, when the Obama administration supported firing the entire staff of the high school. He remembers when the administration was neutral during the Chicago teachers’ strike, and Arne Duncan’s support for the noxious Vergara decision. He could have mentioned many other instances of the administration’s hostility to teachers, such as Duncan’s support for the L.A. Times story releasing the names and ratings of teachers. Or the administration’s silence during the large demonstrations against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, or its silence as vouchers spread.
He writes:
“In sum, the war on teachers and due process for teachers is presented by many Democrats as a new war on poverty, and, somewhat obscenely, “the Civil Rights Movement of our time.” Last year Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of Washington D.C. Schools, made speeches at southern civil rights museums that proclaimed that supporting charter schools and making teachers accountable was the key to creating a more equitable America. Closing the achievement gap and not the excuse of poverty was the new focus of the new Civil Rights movement. The National Civil Rights Museum—Lorraine Motel in Memphis recently recognized Geoffery Canada, a Harlem charter school operator and the star of the anti-pubic school documentary, “Waiting for Superman” as a “Civil Rights Hero.”
It was cheaper to wage war on teachers than to wage war on poverty. But that leaves so much unexplained. Why did President Obama embrace the Republican agenda of testing, accountability, and choice? Why did President Obama turn against one of the most reliable members of his party’s base? Horton doesn’t explain.
Cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Paul-Horton-Why-is-the-Ob-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Decision_Diane-Ravitch_Obama-Administration_Poverty-140829-676.html#comment508927
with this comment:
I was a celebrated teacher
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.htmlwhen the war on teachers was hidden, in 1998.
The lawless behavior of administration that took me out even as I was the cohort chosen by Pew and Harvard for the real National Standards research which no one hears about.
My story is the story of a hundred thousand wonderful educators. I read the Ravitch Blog daily, where teachers and parents tell the tale of the end of public education, and the other day I read one story of a dedicated teacher whose principal told him, “Do you low how lucky you are to have a job.” Can you imagine a hospital administrator telling this to a doctor? The disrespect is legend, as media joins in the ‘bad teacher’ rant. Who will want to teach if this goes on. Children are not children for long, they are the future Americans who will run things, and their shared knowledge will make our democracy work.
DEPENDS ON shared knowledge.
Click to access hirsch.pdf
When the banksters and Wall Street and the politicians caused the last economic collapse, they blamed the unfortunate poor who lost their homes because of tricky mortgages, so now it follows that the crowd blames the teacher’s union and the teachers because of the poverty, homelessness, and inequality– as if poor education was the cause. And both political parties are supporting this. The American public school system is the backbone of our democracy and it is under huge attack.
I have been saying that for years. The cabals that are running America have a pal that includes impoverishing the middle class, stressing them to the point that they have no time or energy to reflect on the lies and propaganda that the media is pushing. The 3 branches of government –created to balance each other, have been subverted. The legislature is useless, except to enable the 1%, and to allow the 1/10 of this wealthy class to possess the wealth once possessed by nations.
Democracy, which depends on shared knowledge
Click to access hirsch.pdf
is being suborned by the destruction of the INSTITUTION of public education. 15,880 school districts in 50 states make it impossible for the average person to grasp what is happening.
Television, the greatest propaganda vehicle in history, bombards our ignorant citizens with the narrative that this cabal puts out. The real story of what is happening is nowhere to be heard. Climate change is quickening, if one reads the scientist’s latest predictions, and the arctic ocean, where so many species breed and feed is about to become the fiefdom of the oil companies.
Presently, they are leading us into war, keeping fear alive. The police are being militarized and surveillance is everywhere. Orwell is turning over in his grave.
“Television, the greatest propaganda vehicle in history, bombards our ignorant citizens with the narrative that this cabal puts out. The real story of what is happening is nowhere to be heard. Climate change is quickening, if one reads the scientist’s latest predictions, and the arctic ocean, where so many species breed and feed is about to become the fiefdom of the oil companies.”
I hate to hear someone as intelligent as you (I surmise by your other comments and your background which you shared in a post), spout propaganda while bemoaning its existence at the same time. I love our planet and all of the beautiful animals and oceans filled with amazing sea life. I do think arctic drilling and deep sea drilling is a bad idea for the environment and the safety of the drill workers.
However, I do not believe in the hype about global warming, now known as climate change (because there has been no global warming) that is meant to make us clamor for carbon taxes and limitations on our carbon footprints. I think that has been a very successful propaganda campaign to lead us into thinking we cannot live in a sovereign nation with a Constitution that guarantees our liberty because personal liberty is just not sustainable any more. That is a lie. Check it out.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/global-warming-media-propaganda/5364444
You don’t believe the facts on climate change? I do not get my information form entertainment news but from the science sites that I frequent… and your argument about NAFTA does not change a thing. The scientists world-wide are looking gat the science, the loss of the coral, the changes in the sea levels, the huge raindrops, not merely the increased wind. 15 inches fell in Long Island NY, 2 week sago, 5 inches in one hour… seriously. I do not defend NAFTA or the TTP, but my dear, to be ignorant of the facts that indicate enormous changes… and here is one, you will here NOWHERE, and it is unusual, because it would mean an ice age. You see, the warm climate that NY and Madrid and Ireland enjoy will disappear if the salt exchange in the south Atlantic stops… and THAT, will happen if the arctic ice continues to melt.
Already an enormous shelf has melted. If too much fresh water dilutes that current as it did in the little ice ge…watch out North America and Europe! Take aloof at the latitude that runs through Siberia… and trace it to our continent.
Moreover, Iceland is losing its glaciers at a furious rate, and this is documented across the world. Floods where deserts once stood, droughts are turning California into the dessert it was before irrigation. Water tables dropping, and you are talking about propaganda?
If I was writing this ‘opinion’ at Oped, I would be required to give links to the articles, which I could do, like this one http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140825152018.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ftop_news+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Top+News%29
and BTW cutting carbon emissions can pay for itself in some way
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140824152339.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ftop_news+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Top+News%29
Science gives us clues at to past episodes when climate changed,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140821115841.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ftop_news+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Top+News%29 but there is absolutely no disagreement among scientists that we humans are doing the deed this time, not volcanoes or natural events. solo
Sorry, you blew your credibility with me, and proved that you have fallen for some very serious misinformation.
Science news, but the way, is great way for lay folks to learn what’s up in the science world… it is not the only one I read, but the one I use to send to my grandkids wo they know THE FACTS!!!
Why did President Obama embrace the Republican agenda of testing, accountability, and choice? Why did President Obama turn against one of the most reliable members of his party’s base?
I just sent an email to President Obama. I’ll send you copy of his response.
He is a Republican in ‘Democratic’ disguise. He is a Republican Trojan Horse in the Democratic Party. He is killing the Democratic Party, destroying the Democratic brand. He’s not only imposing fascism; he is destroying what had been the anti-fascist Party.
Yes, indeed! I can’t tell you how betrayed I feel. Almost as much as when RMN promised that he had a ‘secret plan’ to end the Viet-Nam war, and then bombed Cambodia and Laos.
We need a new ‘anti-facist Party’ Let’s frame it in the positive… We need a new People’s Party.
The fact that Michelle Rhee is now on the Miracle Gro board says it all. The company’s record of fines shows a company contemptuous of the rules written to protect our well-being . Rhee’s worse. Her legacy has harmed children.
Why did Obama embrace the Republican agenda? First, the President has absolutely no experience with public schools: he never attended a public school, he did not have every day experiences growing up with teachers and kids who attended public school. His education is limited to private schools; he has no experiential basis upon which to understand public schools. Second, No doubt the President understands the relationship between income and educational achievement; his understanding is merely intellectual; he has never had direct contact with the lived lives of children and families who suffer from education/learning limitations based on income. Finally, the President knows that the ‘fix’ for the problem of the gap in educational achievement is to equitably reallocate wealth; to shift resources and social benefits from the 1% back to the 99%. This task – which would actually address the gap in educational achievement – is beyond both his political capability and experiential predisposition. We are left with failed education policies out of political and personal realities. Moreover we are left with personal identification with policy makers such as Arne Duncan, who is doing exactly what the President called upon him to do. We are left with the current reality, It could not be any other way, no matter what we may wish.
Obama was no political outsider when he was elected, he was and is part of many elite cliques, and he is fundamentally a politician.
Ed deform has been the new thing, the new fad, the new audacious hope in education. And it just seems so progressive and goes so nicely with all sorts of forms of gentrification and privatization that grows the wealth of his friends.
. . . that grow the wealth of his friends.
The billionaires don’t want to pay for public education any more and they want to create a profit margin for investors by breaking teacher unions. They see streamlined private schools (GEMS prototype), public competitive admissions schools (Walter Payton and “Barack Obama” High), and charters as the future. They are also, as I tried to show in a recent piece, heavily invested in areas that they want to gentrify at the expense of neighborhood schools. They are essentially elitists, a weird hybrid of Chicago School neoliberalism and Straussian rule of Platonic philosopher kings using Machiavellian strategies. Democracy is symbolic gesturing, the opiate of the people.
Teachers have been and will continue to be a weak profession that serve as easy targets for our political class. Who would you rather take on the NEA or NRA?
Alan,
Excellent point.
BTW, a group asked us to tell Kroger’s, this weekend, that we object to shopping in stores where guns are brandished by customers, in the produce, dairy, baby food, etc. aisles.
IMO, the motivation of Pres. Obama is a revolving door job in 2016.
He’s a smart guy. He knows “high expectations”, tech gadgets, and unaccountable charter and on-line schools don’t fix anything.
Certainly, he looks at his own scorecard of legislative failure and understands exterior barriers to success.
Everything associated with poverty thwarts accomplishment and Obama chose to contribute to the nation’s impoverishment, by aligning himself with the goals of the Koch’s and Walton’s.
The only salvo is that the process of corporatization would have been quicker under a Republican president.
Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater? There are bad teachers. Do something about that – but don’t bring down the other super vast majority of teachers who are working as hard as one can and getting results (real learning, not just test scores) and getting scores and labels slapped on them.
The pols need something to fix so they create a problem, find a white horse, and come riding in. They all read the infamous Rubber Room article and have schools that are failing so why not lump all the teachers and all the schools in one heap, call them failing, and then ride in and fix them?
The problem is they can’t figure out how to address the root causes and the real challenges to kids who are not learning.
The problem is they would have nothing to fix if they recognized the millions and millions of children who ARE learning and ARE going to college and America’s leadership in patents, innovation, technology, business, higher education…
The problem is they ignore the fact that it is THEIR POLICIES that are preventing those children who are not learning from learning.
So – they have to blame someone and it’s the teachers – all of them.
We know a bad teacher when we see one. Why not focus on dealing just with that issue and leave the growing and excellent teachers out of these machinations.
Everyone is aghast that the teachers in New York are effective and test scores are low. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/nyregion/new-york-state-releases-localized-teacher-evaluations.html?ref=nyregion&_r=0
Hmmm, test scores based on tests based on curriculum based on standards written in isolation – none of which have had time to be vetted, triaged, revised, embraced, and developed?
Test scores whose “cut scores” have been a moving target and the definition and rules for “proficient” change every year?
Mr. Obama needs to spend all of his time addressing the heinous actions across the globe and poverty here. And – if there is any time left over- re-read HIS book and his 2008 platform on education, go back to his original education advisor, and then let the educators lead education.
I found a letter written by my grandmother (she had a column in a Florida newspaper) to the Florida Legislature in 1959 pleading with them not to close schools. So, when integration came about and the forces against it wanted to just call the whole thing (public schools) off to avoid the new requirements, the support for public school became essential. Somehow, we’ve kept those forces against public school at bay for 50 years. I presume Obama is giving up on that because it’s one less thing to have to fight over. I’m not defending him. . .I think it’s big mistake on the part of Democrats (who I also realize have weakened the public schools with their crazy standardizing ideas). The path of least resistance, it seems, is to let go. That’s what Obama has done, I think.
I want to share the letter she wrote. Granted, I’m two generations away and I am accustom to being around mixed races (as much as that actually happens in our country as a whole), so I don’t view that issue entirely like she did in 1959 (she was from Kentucky), but she is right here. She is right to defend public school. (She also wrote as part of a series in her column about being Moderate, that was put together by CURE in 1959 (Committee Urging Racial Equity). . .so even then the ugliness of extremism was a factor to be dealt with back then).
She wrote for the Dunedin Times, which is outside Tampa. Her column was called “From My Kitchen Window,” and it was very popular. Here is her 1959 letter to the Florida Legislature:
This is an open letter or plea to all members of the Florida Legislature. Please do not let yourselves be persuaded by any reason whatsoever to do anything, to agree to anything, to submit or to vote in favor of any bill which would—which could or even might–close, threaten to close, or affect the public schools adversely.
I can think of no conditions or reasons which would be sufficiently valid to close these schools, schools which dedicated and far-seeing men and women have over the past decades labored to bring about for the sake of the building of a good, intelligent, and informed citizenry, a progressive state, and a strong nation. Neither integration, nor segregation, nor any other situation is cause enough to undo this work and weaken our sovereign state to a degree we can’t well now imagine.
In these perilous days when Communist countries are turning out millions of well-trained scientists and technicians, if we—and I can’t believe any thoughtful lawmaker would be foolish enough to do such a thing actually–take away the opportunity from our children to get a good education while living at home, if we close up our schools (Heaven forbid!) then we are leaving ourselves open to destruction, and God help us.
I am a true Southerner, born and have lived all my life in the South, and I would prefer, in most cases, to have segregation. But I am also the parent of eight children, three still in local schools and I would be derelict indeed did I not protest with all my being this infamous idea of closing the schools. You don’t kill a dog to get rid of its fleas. Far, far better is it to have a few Negro children in school with white children than it is to have neither white nor Negro schools.
I am a member of the PTA groups and am also involved with numerous other parent organizations in this area, and while I can speak officially only for myself, I can state truthfully that so far I have heard not one parent express any desire to have any school anywhere closed because of its integration in any degree. Being opposed to mixing the races in school is one thing. Doing away with schools for either is another. I have heard, however, numerous ones express grave concern over the idea that through some calamitous mass hysteria or mob psychology enough votes might be found in the Legislature to undo the work of a century and close the source of education to our young.
This is the first letter I have ever written to a lawmaker, but in it I want to protest with all the vigor and force at my command against the idea or the fact of “ever, ever, ever, ever, ever” closing the schools. I am not an integrationist, I am not a segregationist; I am not a “moderate;” I am a parent, a citizen, a Christian, I hope, and a patriot who sees a wild threat to something I cherish–knowledge and understanding and opportunity to ALL, especially to our children. It is a responsibility which should be considered prayerfully and well.
Pearl Lowe Boyd
May 3, 1959
Tampa Tribune
Joanna Best: I much appreciate the honesty.
What you wrote is one of the reasons why this blog is so important.
Keep writing. I’ll keep reading.
😎
Krazy TA:
It’s funny to note the perspectives of family members and how they differ because of what has occurred in the world around them in the sense of change.
Because my father grew up in all white schools, he used to marvel and say to me, “you hear those African influences?” when we would hear a marching band. Of course, I had never heard an all white marching band (having been born in 1973), and I never had any clue what he really meant (perhaps that is why I studied music!) 🙂
…and now I see the gene pool that formed you, Joanna, to become the great teacher and lucid communicator you are, including your poetry and songs. Clarifies the intriguing and valuable comments you give us.
Thank you, Ellen. I never knew my Grandmother Pearl, but I know her through her writing.
I had no idea she was fighting the same battle 50 years ago. And I think the reasons for the attack on public schools that has to be fought (for those of us who value Public schools and perhaps on behalf of those whose lives are given value by the public schools even if they don’t realize it) are largely the same: race.
Doesn’t President Obama genuinely believe in public-private partnerships and market-based reforms? What is the Affordable Care Act?
The Affordable Care Act otherwise known as “Romneycare” and thought up by the conservative Heritage Foundation was written by the pharmaceuticals, corporate insurance companies, privatized hospitals, and supported by both political parties. Everything is being privatized as if “government” is the problem. This is the neo-liberal way of thinking.
Yes. And hasn’t President Obama embraced the “neo-liberal way of thinking” in many respects? Cornel West certainly thinks so:
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/24/cornel_west_he_posed_as_a_progressive_and_turned_out_to_be_counterfeit_we_ended_up_with_a_wall_street_presidency_a_drone_presidency/
You forget that Obama not only barred the Universal Single Payer group from California, from his closed discussions with Big Pharma, and Bigger Insurers, he actually had them arrested when they protested in front of the White House.
He also had arrested for protesting, a leader of the EPA, who was part the group outside the WH trying to get an audience with him, and to inform the media about the dangers of the Keystone pipeline.
Further, his main advisors have from the beginning of his presidency people such deregulators as Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, and the GE baron Immelt who is still at his right hand. Not a good sign for one who promised progressive hope and change.
He voted to strengthen FISA despite he promised not to, and he strenghtened the Patriot Act and the Military Commission Act of 2006 beyond what even Baby Bush did. And he strengthened the presidential power to impose execuative orders.
I cannot understand how there are still folks who think he is a wild Leftie, when his actions show he tilts Far Right.
The question is, who is running our Nation? Who is allowing corporations to have offshore accounts, ALEC bills infiltrating our States, huge profits with Federal assistance from our tax dollars?
It is no longer doing what is right for the citizens, it is doing what ever can increase profits for corporations!
Nomi Prins wrote an interesting book “All The President’s Bankers” which tells us a lot about what has been going on for a very long time. Who exactly runs our foreign policy. Also the book “Killing Hope” tells us about the history of our CIA since WWII and what involvement with South America and the Middle East has accomplished.
And Barbara…in this same category read Baker’s book on the Imperial Bush family harking back to Prescott Bush who was Hitler’s banker.
But of Joe Kennedy also was close to Hitler, as was Joseph Campbell who could not do as much damage as an ersatz philosopher. All were proud to be Germanophiles during the 30s and 40s.
The hedge fund managers, behind ed. deform, perfected “throwing the baby out with the bath water.” The financial sector took a productive nation, siphoned off resources and lessened GDP. Like the Russian aristocracy before the last Czar, Wall Street billionaires produce nothing.
Peter Mallouk’s recent book documents the false claims and the failures of the money guys.
I think it is important to recognize the support by Democrats for the educational deform movement is heavily influenced by the myth that it is a response to poverty.
This is pure myth – but powerful myth for Democrats who have been unable to take any significant action against poverty in decades. Desperate to be able to say they did something, they are doing the worst.
And that’s why I might give to individual candidates – but no to the Democratic Party despite deep ties and a long history of supporting most of their issues.
Even such groups as League of Women Voters and American Association of University Women seem to support this. The League at least has done a study on privatization but many members go along with “Race To The Top” and “Common Core” and buy the story that opponents are all of the religious right who don’t want evolution included.
I broke with my local Dem Club for exactly what you portray, Barbara. They refused to hear even a learned counter explanation by an educator, me, against CC. They bought and touted the entire concept…though not one of them could explain it.
I am now an independent yearning for Elizabeth Warren to run for Prez in 2016.
I had the same experience with the local Progressives who have been taken over by the Democratic Progressives sometimes using one name and then the other in statements from their same leader. After attending “Bring Back the American Dream” with Van Jones it was clear activists ought not to be joined to any political party. We must speak to the issues only. I have given up on any big hero or heroine to come to the rescue. It will be up to “we the people” if any changes are to be made.
Obama’s initial backer in Chicago was billionaire Penny Pritzker, heiress to the hotel chain fortune, who funded O’s political rise and was recently appointed Sec’t Of Commerce by O. From the start, O was a billionaire’s creation and advocate masquerading as a populist and progressive. As soon as he won election in Nov 08, he immediately appointed the Wall St crooks Larry Summers/Tim Geithner to run Treasury Dept for their Goldman Sachs handlers. These are the rich guys who had just crashed the economy; Obama gave them their power and money back. O from the start has not been a liberal, so privatizing public schools so as to loot public school assets for the private sector fits right into the neolib agenda for which he is an agent.
Yes Ira…and Pritzker was on the Chicago School Board before he put her in his Cabinet. He is totally beholden to Goldman Sachs, his largest contributor of bundled donations, and to Wall street.
Manchurian Candidate????
“Optipollusions”
An optipol
Is just not there
It’s optical
Not real or fair
An optipol
Does not exist
It has no soul
And has no gist
Keep ’em coming, SomeDAM Poet…
The big picture is about replacing our system of elected representative officials who are beholden to the people with unelected managers and regional directors.
They had to think of a way to get rid of locally elected school boards.
Charter schools are tax payer funded but not controlled by local school boards. Their financial records are not even subject to state scrutiny. The parents of students attending charter schools have no one to complain to for academic negligence or military style management techniques. The tax payers supporting these schools have no one to complain to for misuse of funds.
The bib big picture is about replacing our sovereign nation and its borders with what will come to be known as the “North American Union.” (In the same vein as the European Union has erased the borders, currencies and sovereignty of the previously separate European countries.)
It will be comprised of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, a border-less region combined for purposes of free trade.
The globalists could care less what our children learn or don’t learn, earn or don’t earn, own or don’t own. They care about profits.
Our U.S. middle class, our children’s expectation of achieving the American Dream, our stubborn insistence on maintaining the ideals written down in our unique Constitution are a threat and a hindrance to their global plans.
Teachers represent the middle class. They pass on the ideals our nation was founded on. They teach our children that human creativity is our nation’s greatest treasure and that everyone has something to contribute to the future of our great country.
That is why teachers and public schools must be crushed. Obama is just doing a job. Like a mafia hit man. Nothing personal.
This seemed to be what Billie Clinton had in mind when he pushed NAFTA through and lost American jobs….for what?
Exactly. George Bush Sr. attended the Earth Summit in Rio and signed the non-binding resolution in 1992 to fulfill the goals of Agenda 21. Then Bill Clinton established the Presidential Council for Sustainable Development which Andrew Cuomo sat on, alongside the head of the Dept. of the Interior and the Dept.of Energy and a representative from the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. The government officials and the NGO’s worked really hard to create environmental legislation and trade laws like NAFTA that would embody what Agenda 21 envisioned: the collapse of U.S. manufacturing and productivity and by design our economy. The “green movement” is a Trojan Horse just like Obama.
Maurice Strong was the Director General for the Earth Summit and he made a speech in which he stated that single family homes, air conditioning, meat consumption and driving cars are all unsustainable. He said it was time for the redistribution of wealth.
It was very apparent at the summit that the 117 heads of state that were present and the 178 countries that were represented all agreed that the U.S. would have to DE-industrialize in order to allow other less developed countries to flourish. This is a flawed argument that does not allow for the unlimited capacity of human creativity to solve problems without robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Remember the “Dear Hillary” letter that Marc Tucker wrote? He described an education system that would fit our students into a planned economy coordinated by labor market boards at the local, state and federal level where curriculum and “job matching” would be handled by counselors “assessing an integrated computer based program.” Twenty years later, the Common Core again attempts to put this plan into action.
Treasonous presidents every one of them: Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama. We need a patriot in 2016.
Ellen,
What makes a job “American job”? Is it different from what makes a job a man’s job rather than a women’s job? Is is different from what makes a job a white person’s job rather than an African American’s job?
TE, an American job is a job created and filled in America. It is different from an overseas job in many ways. For one, it is prevented from using child labor. Two, a minimum wage must be paid. Three, working conditions are subject to regulations by OSHA. Slave labor is prohibited. Beating is prohibited.
As for trying to make Ellen sound like she is a bigot for bemoaning the loss of American jobs, as if they are better than all other jobs….knock it off.
NAFTA crushed American manufacturing. NAFTA initiated our machine tools being sold to foreign countries for pennies on the dollar. NAFTA allowed our highly skilled machine tool operators to become unemployed. NAFTA has encouraged a race to the bottom for wages around the world and an increase in child slave labor. Do you really want to defend that?
Here is an excerpt from an article on children used for slave labor in the garment industry in Viet Nam: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23631923
They spent the next two years locked in a cramped room making clothes for a small garment factory with no wages.
The charity helps children forced into a variety of jobs from prostitution to begging, but in the past year just over a quarter of that number have been rescued from garment factories in Ho Chi Minh City, the country’s largest metropolis and industrial centre.
Conditions are often harsh.
“Last year we raided one factory. I think 14 people work, sleep, eat in a small room with the machines,” says Blue Dragon’s lawyer. “The factory owner only let them go to the bathroom for eight minutes a day, including brushing your teeth, washing, going to the toilet. ”
The youngest was 11 and most were from ethnic minorities.
Dawn,
A couple of points.
1) My concern with the statement American Jobs is that it suggests that non-Americans are not allowed to compete for those jobs. Women in the United States have long suffered from this kind of view.
2) if NAFTA crushed US manufacturing, we should be able to see huge increases in Mexican manufacturing output, right? You might want to do some research into that. You will not find the necessary growth in Mexico’s manufacturing.
3) when thinking about employment abroad it is best to think about what a worker in Vietnam would be doing if they were not in the garment industry. The worker males the best choice given the options he or she has. Second guessing that choice is likely to make that worker much worse off.
Obama has never, ever, been anything other than a Trojan Horse for the Overclass – a hollow Brand, marketed with a good back story and faux Statesman-like oratory – and was understood by the more insightful and clever members of it to be someone who could misdirect, harmlessly divert and neutralize popular resistance to the intensifying class warfare (facilitated, as always in this country, by the opportunities provided by racially-motivated State repression and violence) he formally oversees and enables.
He has been all too successful at the job he was hired for, which he will be obesely compensated for after he leaves the White House, a la Bill Clinton, and for which he was preparing himself from a very young age.
He is the poster child for a generation of African American political misleaders – including the likes of Corey Booker, Harold Ford, Jr., Adrian Fenty, Al “The Wire” Sharpton and many others – who cynically masquerade as heirs to the legacy of the Black freedom movements of the ’50’s-70’s, and then betray them for pennies to an Overclass whose insatiable greed and will to power is devouring the entire country, nowhere more so than in the communities they falsely claim to represent.
That’s exactly correct.
Glad you have Cory Booker in this mix…he who wants to also be Prez and is a huge charter school supporter….and a Dem.
Ugh, I personally find Booker to be the worst, with that insufferable, insipid tone he uses with the public, his gimmicks – “living” in the projects, publicly announcing he’s going to live on food stamps for a week, tweeting photos of himself “shoveling” snow during a blizzard when not a crystal is to be seen on the cuffs of his pants …- that he uses to con the public…
Maybe it is as simple as his non-certified brother-in-law losing his school basketball coaching job back in Chicago to a certified teacher. And he has been POed at teachers’ unions ever since then.
Janice,
There is much truth in what you say here and also that the Chicago clique, including Michelle Obama were on a certain school board together…..
Here’s a question that I hope some one can answer for me: Because it is well-established that factors such as parental discord, hidden health issues, household financial problems, and myriad behavioral factors can heavily influence a student’s achievement in school and performance on standardized tests, then in accord with the Due Process rights that teachers have, can a teacher whose job is on the line because of students’ poor test scores request detailed information about students’ home life, parental relations, family finances, and other pertinent information? If so, that would raise such a political backlash against using test scores to evaluate teachers that use of test scores to evaluate teachers would be swiftly dumped.
The saddest thing is that you can go to the faculty parking lot of nearly any public school in America and still see Obama bumper stickers on cars. How many public school teachers voted for this guy TWICE, only to get stabbed in the back?
They were fooled by his rhetoric because Republicans are overtly their enemy. They wanted to believe that Obama wasn’t just a Republican-in-disguise. So: they voted on that basis. Perhaps now they know that the aristocracy is using both Parties to destroy them — our system has become that corrupt.
Bob…I know I was not the only educator who had my credit card propped against my computer and sent bucks continually to help fund this vast scam until I maxed out the allowed amount.
But I did learn to say Never Again…and got weekly letters from Michelle showing what I donated the first time, the max, and what I donated the second time…ZERO.
What Diane Ravitch is writing now in the blog seems to completely conflict with what she wrote in “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”.
– Ravitch wrote that the test data accountability initiative was never a fully partisan one. It enjoyed Democratic support as well. Obama previously supported NCLB and later moved against it.
– Ravitch herself was initially supportive of test data accountability initiatives until they were implemented, she saw they didn’t work, and completely changed course. Many Republicans feel the same way. A lot of former NCLB supporters admit it was a bad idea in hindsight for the same reasons Ravitch explained in her book.
– The Obama administration has been a vocal proponent of data and social science study driven policy. That is in line with test data accountability.
Not true!
The current formula calculates the performance of entire classes of students, not the improvement in performance of individual students — the latter isn’t even tracked at all; only the performance of the collective is. Consequently, teachers in rich districts, with well-endowed students, needn’t worry — their jobs are safe. It’s only teachers in poorly-endowed districts who are jeopardized by the existing formula.
The current formula doesn’t measure a given teacher’s actual achievement (the improvement-percentage of his or her students) at all. Only by calculating the improvement in students’ performance can that be tracked — and it’s not tracked; it is not the basis for evaluating teacher ‘performance.’
The current formula is designed to turn the screws on teachers in poor districts. Those are the very same teachers who ought instead to be paid extra, because they face the most difficult and challenging jobs.
Obama is the friend of the rich and comfortable, and the enemy of the poor and uncomfortable.
You’re fooled by his rhetoric.
You do realize that all but the first paragraph is not Diane’s writing, but Paul Horton’s, right?
In any case, I don’t get exactly what you’re saying conflicts. The “test data accountability initiative” was and still is fully bipartisan. It blossomed under the Bush administration fully supported by the Democrats. Now it’s more of a Democrat thing, but still supported by mainstream Republicans. The opposition to testing and data comes mostly from the left. The Tea Party wing of the Republicans only objects to the federal overreach in trying to mandate nation-wide standards – they’re still very much supportive of holding teachers “accountable” through their students’ test scores.
The teachers’ unions accept the jiggered formula for rating teachers. The reason they do is that the unions’ leadership want to stoke the conflict, not to end it. The conflict would quickly end if management were to change the formula so as to rank performance on the percentage-improvement in each teacher’ students during the course of a year under his instruction, instead of on the sheer performance of that teacher’s students. Of course, the sheer performance will be relatively low in low-income, under-resourced, districts, and relatively high in affluent schools. Changing the formula would transform everything. But none of the elites would gain from that. All of the elites would lose from the change.
There would no longer be any motivation for gaming the system, such as by excluding from a school low-performing students. There would also no longer be faked test-scores, because only a student’s improvement, or test-score-increase (as compared to that student’s prior-year test-score) would count in calculating the given teacher’s ‘performance.’ Everybody except the elites would gain, and everything would be much fairer. But in today’s U.S., only the elites gain. As a result, all of the income-gains are going to the richest 1%. They’re the only ones with power. They crush the lower 99%. So: we stay with ranking teachers on the basis of their students’ test-scores, instead of on the basis of the improvement in their test-scores.
I was referring to the last paragraph, where Ravitch says, “Why did President Obama embrace the Republican agenda of testing”. If you are saying that “The test data accountability initiative was and still is fully bipartisan.” it sounds like you conflict with Ravitch saying it is just a Republican agenda.
Massimo,
Until NCLB, which received bipartisan support, there was a sharp divide between the two major parties on education. The Democrats supported equity–more funding for the neediest–and teacher professionalism. The Republicans supported testing, accountability (rewards and punishments for results), and choice. Today both parties support the Republican agenda.
Diane, if you continue to say that “accountability” is bad, then you are supporting Obama’s entire agenda, because his basic agenda is to enforce responsibility (obligations upward in the power-structure, such as of employees to employers, and borrowers to lenders) but not accountability (obligations downward in the power-structure, such as of school-administrators to teachers, management to unions, etc.).
Teachers aren’t opposed to accountability. If teachers are evaluated according to proven-successful criteria for evaluating their individual performance, then teachers will support that. They won’t support criteria that merely blame teachers when the system itself is rotten from top to (even including some teachers) bottom. They certainly won’t support criteria that hold teachers accountable for, basically, teaching in the lowest-income and most-stressed school districts, the very same “hazardous-duty” districts that should instead be paying their teachers extra for teaching there.
Your use of the term “accountability” is sick, and it provides a very false view of the teaching profession. If anything, teachers want fair accountability, rather than the existing ‘accountability’ which is the reverse of that and rewards the teachers who need (and often deserve) it the least: the ones in rich districts — the teachers of the rich.
Cettel22,
I don’t agree. When “reformers” talk about accountability, they mean punishment and reward based on test scores. I oppose carrots and sticks to reward or punish. So is modern cognitive science.
I agree with you on the over-emphasis upon test-scores. But that’s not the only, nor even a large part of the, problem.
Both with regard to test-scores and other criteria, there can be no improvement in American education until teachers are measured on the improvement in their students’ performance under their tutelage, instead of (as now) on their students performance under their tutelage.
A student’s performance (especially in the early years) depends more on what the parent, and the neighborhood, has provided to that child in the way of his preparation, than it does on whatever the teacher does with that child.
What a teacher provides (or fails to provide) to benefit that child during the student’s year under his tutelage is that student’s improvement, rather than that student’s sheer performance itself (which depends primarily upon factors other than that teacher).
Diane, I know that you sincerely believe that a system can function well without accountability. But it simply cannot. Accountability is the foundation-stone of justice. No societal system can perform well without justice. People won’t trust such a societal system, nor should they. The problem in our society, and in all societies, is injustice.
It’s unjust that merely because a teacher is teaching in a low-income school district, that teacher is penalized (instead of especially rewarded) as compared to a teacher who teaches in a wealthy one (where the students’ performance is higher — no thanks to the teachers there, who are getting paid more and having more-secure jobs because they’re not teaching in a more-difficult environment). You support that injustice, even without wanting to.
Cettel22, you echo what I have written so I have no idea what you are talking about. I repeat: NCLB and Race to the Top define accountability as rewards (merit pay for higher test scores) or punishments (you will be fired or your school will be closed) based on test scores. I oppose that. It is not supported by research or experience.
There is no accountability for the banksters who stole the national wealth. There is no accountability for those who polluted the gulf with oil… and thus they are eyeing the arctic, where so much of out wildlife feeds and spawns. The principals in the schools, and the superintendents are free to do what they wish because DUE PROCESS –which is the very path to accountability– does not apply. Lorna Stremcha’s book Bravery, Bullies an Blowhards” is about to be published. The lawlessness she encountered defines the lawlessness that occurs when there is no accountability. Her principal set her up to be assaulted in the classroom… and she was.
Here she testifies about her experience:
There are thousands of stories like this one. Go to
http://www.endteacherabuse.org, and read a few, or look at the data collected by the site administrator Karen Horwitz for her book “White Chalk Crime.”… and criminal it is when no jail time or punishment of any kind follows the most immoral, unethical and illegal behavior.
Your definition of ‘accountability’ is immaterial. It is the only way to ensure that teachers are supported by administration, and not turned into victims and serfs. I read here, on this blog, one teacher whose principal told him that ‘he was lucky to have a job.’ That kind of arrogance comes with a total lack of accountability.
The schools need many things… smaller classes, books, and materials, and some technology, but if the administrators supported the teachers, as the real National Standards said was the criteria for LEARNING. Principals must support teachers, this 3rd level research out of Harvard “The 8 Principles of Learning”, proved. This research DISAPPEARED! IT WAS PART OF THE CLINTON 2000 FOR EDUCATION, funded by the Pew center…. and it is GONE!
There is a certain segment of the Black community that believes that if only they could get their kids out of failing public schools with bad teachers (protected by unions) that their kids would have a better chance in life. Charter schools and vouchers have always seemed like a way out to them. If not for those magic solutions they would have to look at the real problem and that is failing communities. And that is a much more difficult problem to solve because your family itself may be doing okay and still the children around yours are bringing yours down. Or your family may be failing and there may be nothing you can do about it. These are problems we have struggle with for several generations. This is where the real work needs to be done. Poverty and communities torn apart by drugs and violence are the best indicators of failing schools…… not anything else and certainly not bad teachers. The best teachers in the world can not do a thing to help in the war zones some children have to grow up in.
I wouldn’t say it’s only “a segment of the Black community”. I’ve heard white parents over the years from all economic classes trying to figure out the best school, and even the best teacher within a school, so their children have a better chance in life.
We all want a clean, safe, enriching school where the staff cares about the students.
I feel cynical on this one but… I think many Americans are becoming rage addicts, who enjoy bullying teachers and blaming them for their problems as well as others.
I think that nowadays it is fashionable to have the impression that certain small subsets are “the problem”, and teachers are meek, idealistic, and an easy target. Playing the victim is kind of an American trait: we have a certain culture here, that has been used to living pretty well until this last downturn due to our relative affluence as a country. I work in a Title One school but even my students are better off than many from India, Central America… I think that in America there is the understanding ( for a large segment of the population ranging from wealthy to even poor) if you don’t work hard or even do, and you don’t get what you want, there is someone to blame and mock. I am sure that I am going to get a lot of negative responses but I see that: a lot of Americans are bullies… Reality tv drama is really a reflection of something ugly in us, as well as of course capitalism overkill and warmongering.
I love my students but I really struggle to hold them accountable: I often see parents being their friend instead of their parent, not prioritizing their education, but prioritizing new phones..it makes me sad that some of them will look back and blame me for their situation when I am killing myself trying to help them. Today we had breakfast in the classroom and one child was mocking the free food and it was actually pretty decent: I was raised to be thankful for things. I told my class that all our taxes pay for that food and we need to be respectful: easy to say but I think some people would say no.
I think that Americans are losing out by blaming the wrong people: rather than looking at factors that go into systemic poverty (lack of social nets, teen pregnancy, lack of alternative programs for kids who want to pursue a trade, commercialization of many needed RIGHTS like health care, welfare for corporations..) they all look the messenger- the teacher- and blame us.
I would never do it but I wish one day that every teacher could put every person who slags us, in a classroom, for a year. I also wish that more people would travel to third world countries and see how many places charge for school: school is a right but many think of it with lack of gratitude.
Diane, regarding your:
“Cettel22, you echo what I have written so I have no idea what you are talking about. I repeat: NCLB and Race to the Top define accountability as rewards (merit pay for higher test scores) or punishments (you will be fired or your school will be closed) based on test scores. I oppose that. It is not supported by research or experience.”
That’s not true. You oppose accountability in education-policy; you even said here, “Why did President Obama embrace the Republican agenda of testing, accountability, and choice?”
You included “accountability” in with those other two.You have consistently condemned “accountability” as if it were something to be minimized (or vaguely measured) instead of increased (and more clearly defined) throughout our (and any) society.
The basic problem is that there is no accountability (there is only responsibility); that’s the problem throughout America’s body-politic including education. No bankster who defrauded both home buyers and MBS (Mortgage-Backed Securities) investors and crashed the economy in 2008 has gone to prison for it. George W. Bush lied the country into invading Iraq and wasn’t even impeached for it. Barack Obama and our major ‘news’ media are deceiving America into supporting the ethnic-cleansing of ethnic Russians out of southeastern Ukraine, and millions are now going into refugee camps because of it. Where are the bad consequences for these and other criminal malfeasances of our elites?
You mis-locate the problem as “accountability,” instead of as mis-measuring the performance of everyone — including of teachers, and of principals, and of politicians such as Bush and Obama. Everything is being misrepresented, lies are rampant, and there is no justice exacted against such mass-deception. And this is the reason why the dedicated teachers in low-income schools can get fired en-masse while even mediocre or low-quality teachers in upper-income school districts have no need to worry about that happening to them. Instead of teachers in hard districts getting extra pay for that, they get fired for it. This is not ‘too much’ accountability; it is, instead, fraudulent ‘accountability.’
I believe that your focus, Diane, is wrong. The question isn’t whether the performance of everyone should be measured; the question is how to do that in an honest, fair, and just way, so that excellence will be especially rewarded, and mediocrity (in rich schools) no longer will continue to be (as it currently is).
This will help advance improvement of American education in both poor and rich neighborhoods.
The core problem is how to achieve authentic accountability, rather than the fake version that now reigns throughout our society and is really little else than status-affirmation — appropriate only for a feudal or fascist society.
I believe that until you wrestle with that problem, your proposed solutions will be mis-focused, on things that aren’t necessarily even part of the problem, and that might even be essential parts of its solution.
What? Our schools were just fine and our students were the best educated in the world before Reagan started saying they were not in the 80s. That is when all this nonsense started. Before that the people being held accountable were the students and the people holding them accountable were the teachers. Education was handled locally and on a state level. Politicians mostly stayed out of it and we were all better off. There is no need for the nation to figure out how to hold teachers accountable. Your whole effort and agony over the problem is a waste of time. What needs to be done is to convince the nation to get politicians back out of the classroom and let teachers teach.
Cette,
Maybe she should have put in the quotes to indicate sarcasm: accountability vs “accountability”.
I am all for accountability, bring it on! Walk in my classroom, film my kids engaging and discussing literature and analyzing where a college level text’s thesis begins…they did that yesterday all day btw.
Watch them struggle with something just above their level, but not too far. Watch them discuss and argue what a college professor means when he states something in an elegant, and somewhat ambivalent way. Watch them have rich discussions over the potential symbolism in Boo Radley’s gifts to the children in To Kill a Mockingbird ( which they brought up themselves), and watch them explain it-yes even the one from Central America who only got here a year ago-and swell with pride when they make a valid point, or understand another’s. BRING IT ON.
Film it ( so we can have proof of what happened in my class), look at my lesson frames, listen to me teach them, and watch them take thoughtful notes, ask relevant questions…that is holding me accountable. Don’t walk in my classroom with an iPad as a highly paid consultant with little of no teaching experience, look at my kids in a group with a paper and assume that I am doing a worksheet, and pick apart the verbs on my objective to try to “gotcha” me, into assuming I don’t know rigor ( and good luck doing that, btw, I can outsmart you anytime, I am the teacher, you are the person who did not care enough to stay or even be in the classroom)
This year though I have “accountability”: that is a piloted VAM based 4 page rubric that will “judge” my teaching: I have already been told the principal that they have been discouraged from giving anyone about “proficient” this year, and we will “probably all start out with some “developings’ “, just to make sure that we have “room to grow”.
This is frankly a rigged game, and it is SHAMELESS AND UNPROFESSIONAL.
Part of the rubric actually dings me for how my kids treat each other, even if I intervene. If my kid tells another kid something in a “disrespectful” tone, than I am “developing” in classroom management.
If I don’t attend all of the after school activities, than I am not “proficient”: do you know how many after school activities we have, and the time I need to prep for my FOUR different classes.
This “accountability” standard is something that is foisted on teachers, to get us to quit, after two years. You are lowering the quality of teaching in America with your faux, manipulative and UNPROFESSIONAL “accountability”.
Re. your “Before that the people being held accountable were the students and the people holding them accountable were the teachers.”:
You confuse accountability with responsibility. A student has a responsibility to the teacher, not an accountability to the teacher.
The teacher has an accountability to the student. The teacher is obligated to improve that students performance. By contrast, the student is obligated to obey the teacher.
As long as you and Diane Ravitch and everyone else in education refuse to understand what accountability is, there isn’t even a hope of doing it right.
The only way to get accountability of teachers right is to reward the most the teachers who improve their students’ performance the most (the largest percentage) per year of that teacher’s teaching of that student. In other words: what counts is not how well that student performs at the end of the year (as the current formula does), but instead how much (how big a percentage) that student improves his performance during that year under that teacher’s tutelage. If the improvement-percentage is average, the teacher is average. If the improvement-percentage is sub-average, the teacher is sub-average. If the improvement-percentage is above average, the teacher is above average. The incentive then becomes to teach so as to improve one’s students’ skill (in the given subject-area) the most.
Cettel22,
You seem to be defending VAM, although truthfully I have no idea what you are saying. Have you read Audrey Amrein-Beardsley on VAM? Or Edward Haertel? Or the joint statement by AERA and the National Academy of Education? Or Linda Darling-Hammond?
cettel22,
“The question isn’t whether the performance of everyone should be measured; the question is how to do that in an honest, fair, and just way, so that excellence will be especially rewarded, and mediocrity (in rich schools) no longer will continue to be (as it currently is).”
Your insistent belief in the “measureability” of all things educational is completely unfounded, lacking in epistemological and ontological underpinnings. The question isn’t one of “should be measured” for that is secondary to the main question “can be measured”. Not everything can be measured.
Do you “measure” the love you have for your lover, or children if you have any??? Do you measure the “amount” of knowledge that you have in your head? If so, how do you do so? Do you measure the disdain that you feel towards Diane R.??
If something cannot be measured (and the teaching and learning process comes under that realm) then no amount of pseudo-measuring, numerizing and numerology of the results of that pseudo-measuring has a scintilla of validity. In other words it’s bullshit.
For those of you who might care and not know, this conversation was picked up by “cettel22″ on Washington’s Blog
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/diane-ravitch-condemns-accountability-dissent-responds-lets-discuss.html
FWIW I think there might be some legitimate concerns about reasonable accountability versus corporate controlled accountability and my reply there was as follows:
Without going through all the bickering, some of which seems to have gone to far, I suspect that no reasonable person, including Diane Ravitch is opposed to reasonable accountability. However one problem which Diane and others may have contributed to, at least tacitly, is allowing the debate to be limited to two sides that repeat many of the same arguments over and over again.
Mostly what Diane argues against is the corporate version of reform, and unfortunately that is the only version that gets much attention in the media. She is far better than their attempt to take over education. However there are more rational people involved in the debate, some of whom focus on certain issues. For example Jonathan Kozol has criticized some of the same bad teachers that the corporate reformers use for scapegoats but he doesn’t want to use this as an excuse to let in a corporate take over; instead he wants rational accountability, although he may not phrase it that way. And both James Garbarino and Ellen deLara have also criticized some teachers for not doing enough to prevent violence. They have also done more constructive criticism to offer solutions that work without promoting corporate take over of education.
Perhaps the more important thing is who controls the “accountability,” if they have an agenda and if they’re peer reviewed by people with different views without narrowing it to two limited arguments.
Frankly saying the ‘use of the term “accountability” is sick’ seems uncalled for and only leads to antagonism.
I am speaking clear English, and you are responding with jargon. I know the reality that teachers are struggling with. I am not proposing VAM. I am not proposing any complex formula that incorporates personal information about a student: disability, “gifted” status (which is a crock), race, or anything other than measures of the student’s level of skill in the given field when entering this teacher’s tutelage, and the level of that student’s skill in that field when leaving that teacher’s tutelage at the end of the academic year or beginning of the next academic year. That’s all. If the student is disabled, or else gifted, the percentage-rise in skill over the given year is all that should matter. A low-IQ student might start from, say, a rating of 50 out of 100, and rise to 55. A high-IQ student might start from 80 and rise to 88. the improvement-percentage would be the same. Improving the formula is not complex to do. Evading the issue is to evade the problem that must be addressed.
Cettel22, are you aware that no high-performing nation in the world judges teachers by student test scores?
Now that you mention it what do the higher performing nations do in their schools? I know you have done more to explain this than corporate reformers who ignore it completely but I still don’t hear nearly as much about this as I should since the reason given by corporate reformers that we have a problem is that we’re not doing as well.
If reasonable people did come up with accountability that works it would be difficult if not impossible to sort out all the variables; especially if the decisions are made in Washington or corporate headquarters without input at the local level from people that know what is going on, which is what the corporate reformers want.
I am not proposing that. However, tests or some other quantifiable performance-measures need to be part of the evaluation-process in some subject-areas, such as in language-arts and in math. Furthermore, subjective measures of teacher-performance should be done by strangers who are carefully trained for the purpose in the given subject-area and who are themselves tested and constantly re-evaluated so that those evaluations will be as objective as possible. To the fullest extent possible, personal prejudices and personal relationships should be left out of the process. The whole institution of k-12 education needs to be restructured so as to serve the needs of the children, focused only on that. Of course, it ought to be fully funded via broad-based taxes, and there should be no public subsidization of any education that is not being provided by the government. Privatization is poison. Mussolini introduced it; Hitler then took it up. Then, finally, Reagan championed it. That’s for fascisms, not for democracies.
It needs to be made totally fair, especially because nature itself is the opposite.
“or anything other than measures of the student’s level of skill in the given field when entering this teacher’s tutelage, and the level of that student’s skill in that field when leaving that teacher’s tutelage at the end of the academic year or beginning of the next academic year. That’s all.”
Well, cettel22, your “all” is a complete invalidity and is an epistemological and ontological nightmare. Again, as above you seem to believe that everything can be reduced to some quick numbers that “prove” student learning. That my fellow, is a mighty attempt at a big conceptual leap over an unleapable gap. It can’t be done. To understand why, it would behoove you to read and understand Noel Wilson’s takedown of the numerology of edumetrics/psychometrics in his never refuted nor rebutted “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Re. your “Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!”:
Mine too, which is the reason why the system that I have proposed removes the existing system’s incentives for teachers to seek and be especially high-paid for employment in rich school districts with few if any disabled or low-functioning kids. Improving from a score of only 25 to a score of 35 is the same 40% increase as is improving from a score of 50 to a score of 70. The disincentive for having low-performing students in your school is gone. Suddenly, the most rational response of both the teachers and the administrators becomes to devote equal educational resources to each and every student. Disabled or ‘retarded’ students might qualify for public assistance on other (not specifically ‘educational’) criteria. But the system of education would be incentivized to devote equal expenditures to each student, ‘gifted,’ ‘normal,’ or ‘retarded.’ They are all equally worthy, and all equally served by the educational system, as I have proposed.
You are defending a system that’s anything but equalitarian — that is, in fact, highly prejudiced in favor of star students and rich parents.
cettel22,
I’m glad you realize how that our current system tends to reward those with the most and to punish those with the least. But to attempt to change that using a nefarious “measuring” system, device, regime is the completely wrong way to go.
Yes, we can count and measure inputs, dollars, books, teacher/student ratios, facilities but that doesn’t say much about the actual teaching and learning processes involved.
No, I am not “defending a system that’s anything but equalitarian (sic)”. I have pointed out the invalidities involved with the current educational standards and standarized testing regimes as used by public schools today, a regime that is at its core inegalitarian. Not only inegalitarian but epistemologically and ontologically rife with errors that render said system completely illogical and invalid.
Read Wilson to understand why.
For what it’s worth, cettel22, like Diane, I’m having a very difficult time understanding what you’re ranting about. You’re writing English words, but your argument is very unclear.
You want me to summarize it, so that you won’t have to think your way through the complex argument it presents. Okay: Accountability is the foundation-stone of any well-functioning society or operation; and only fair accountability can work and succeed; unfair ‘accountability’ cannot. What now exists in K-12 U.S. education is profoundly unfair ‘accountability,’ because it incentivizes schools selecting to exclude the most difficult-to-‘teach’ students, and selecting to discourage any students who might have gotten through that deselection process, so as to get them to leave. Overwhelmingly, the deselection is of low-income students and other ‘hard-to-teach’ or ‘unprepared’ ones. The existing educational system penalizes the teachers who are left with the most challenging task: educating those deselected students.
Furthermore, the slovenly assessments that are proposed by ‘reformers’ such as Ravitch serve only to hide the deficiencies in the education that is being delivered, and this harms everybody except ineffective teachers and bad administrators.
If you have difficulty understanding how this summary links up with the detailed analysis that I have presented, then I can only say: you asked for this summary, and the only way to understand how it connects to that analysis is to think carefully about that analysis. Nothing that I have said is supportive of the current testing-regimen, nor of privatizing education; but, to some people who can’t think, it could easily be confused with those types of proposals.
So fair accountability is good, and unfair accountability is bad. I get that point, and I think most people, including Dr. Ravitch and everyone who thinks fair things are better than unfair things, would agree with it. The rest of your beef with Dr. Ravitch remains unclear to me. It seems like something that you’ve been stewing on for a while, rather than a reasonable response to this one post of hers.
I will note (although I suspect you know this already) that “accountability” is a term of art on this blog. To the extent you think Dr. Ravitch is actually proposing that teachers literally should not be accountable for their job performance, you’re mistaken. If this comes across as obvious and/or patronizing, I apologize.
I’ll let you hash the rest out with others.
Btw, when your reader has difficulty understanding what your point, it’s generally not productive to assume it’s because they’re stupid. It’s usually fair to assume that your reader is literate and capable of understanding a logical argument. But it’s not reasonable to assume your reader is willing to “think [his] way through the complex argument it [here, your comment on a web site] presents.” If you’re a heavily-cited professor or Philosophy, English Literature, or Gender Studies, and your reader is a graduate student and your work is on the syllabus for a seminar they’re taking, then *maybe* you can make that assumption. Although I still would not advise it.
That ‘hash it out” won’t happen here. My disagreement with Ravitch is that to the extent that she does endorse ‘accountability’ in education, it’s on bases that will not entail the careful empirical and quantitative wrestling-with and the overcoming-of the problems that have produced the present deficiencies and injustices. It’s flippant. It’s a solution to nothing. We thus have three choices: the existing rot, hybrids of that along with foreign models, or else something that’s even worse and which George W. Obama push. They’re all bad.
This is largely gibberish to me, but by your own account, it sounds like there’s nothing more for you to do here.
TE, I guess you did not read the article that I linked to my comment. These Vietnamese children were tricked into leaving their villages. They had jobs and they lived with their families. They were better off before they were more of less stolen and forced into slave labor. When parents realized what happened, they wanted their children back. This article was written by interviewing boys who had run away from these slave labor factories.
“When he was 16 he had a job making coal bricks in his home village when a woman approached him offering vocational training.” http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23631923
You cannot defend NAFTA!!!
Mexico.http://economyincrisis.org/content/nafta-destroyed-employment-and-shifted-production
Perhaps the most drastic switch post-NAFTA has been in the two country’s trade deficit. In 1993, before the signing of NAFTA, the U.S. held a $1.6 billion trade surplus over their neighbor to the south, which supported 29,400 jobs. By 1997, the tides had turned, and Mexico laid claim to a much larger surplus of $16.6 billion. As of 2010, it’s not even close. Mexico’s trade surplus now hovers around $97.2 billion.
Jobs continue to be lost to NAFTA today. In the years 2007-2010, the U.S. economy has lost 116,400 as a result of the trade deficit created by NAFTA. And last year, the growth of Mexican auto exports to the United States alone created more Mexican jobs — 30,400 — than the entire U.S. auto industry.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/12/nafta-job-loss-trade-deficit-epi_n_859983.html
Hi Cettel22:
Your post seems to me that you disagree with Massimo whose post misquotes from other writer and Massimo cites as Dr. Ravitch.
However, if you are educator, please be patient and thorough in what you disagree about.
I suggest that you states the thread’s tittle and date, then rewrite the sentence, or paragraph that you want to dispute or debate to the writer. It saves a lot of confusion, time and energy to you, readers and the author whom you disagree. Back2basic.