Many years ago, I first heard the term “semantic infiltration.” It was used to refer to the way that words, when used often enough, can become reality, even when we don’t agree with the “reality.” LauraChapman describes the way that technocratic language has corrupted education by inserting its language into the ways we think about children and learning.
She writes:
An economic concept of growth as a “measurable gain” has migrated into federal policies for education. The policy impulse is to simplify the multifaceted character of education and treat the enterprise of teaching and learning as a business in need of proper management to get results. The desired results are defined by forms of learning that can be measured and with a calculation of the rate of learning within a year and year-to-year, comparable to knowing whether profits are increasing—on a trajectory of growth or not.
This economic concept of growth as a “rate of increase” now overrides the educational meanings of human growth and learning—as a multifaceted, dynamic, and interactive process with daily surprises and influences from many sources.
Federal policies treat the economic meaning of growth as a virtue and as an imperative for accountability. This “accountability imperative” is evident in key definitions within RttT regulations and other grant programs. Federal Register. (2009, November 18). Rules and regulations Department of Education: Final Definitions. 74 (221-34), 559751-52.
“Student achievement means (a) For tested grades and subjects: (1) A student’s score on the State’s assessments under the ESEA; and, as appropriate, (2) other measures of student learning, such as those described in paragraph (b) of this definition, provided they are rigorous and comparable across classrooms. (b) For non-tested grades and subjects: Alternative measures of student learning and performance such as student scores on pre-tests and end-of-course tests; student performance on English language proficiency assessments; and other measures of student achievement that are rigorous and comparable across classrooms.”
“Student growth means the change in student achievement for an individual student between two or more points in time.”
“Rigorous” means “statistically rigorous.” Federal Register. (2009, July, 29). Notices 74(144), 37803-37. Retrieved from the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29jy09-148]
The federal definition of an “effective” teacher requires attention to the rates at which student’s scores increase.
“Effective teacher means a teacher whose students achieve acceptable rates (e.g., at least one grade level in an academic year) of student growth (as defined in this notice).
“Highly effective teacher means a teacher whose students achieve high rates (e.g., one and one-half grade levels in an academic year) of student growth (as defined in this notice.”
If should be obvious that calculations to determine “rates” of growth depend on a data system that matches the test scores of individual students and the “teacher of record” for a given student and test. Gates and USDE have poured millions into getting data systems linked and free of crud that will compromise the metrics for accounting.
These integrity of data in these records serve as “baselines” for estimates of the “value-added” by a teacher to the scores of their students and various sub-groups. VAM produce these estimates. SLOs (student learning objectives) are a proxy for VAM until statewide tests for nontested subjects are developed.
Federal definitions mandate “comparable” ratings of teachers regardless of the grade or subject. Learning a foreign language, or math, or learning in dance must be made to look comparable. The bean counters, and bookeepers, and accountants, and statisticians can’t deal with qualitative differences.
Federal policy makers have sought to “normalize” the idea that economic growth is the same as “student growth’ and just an extension of the longstanding metaphor of teaching as nurture, cultivation, gardening (kindergarten)—a child’s garden.
Today, almost every teacher who uses the phrase “student growth” in connection with evaluation has been infected with the federal definition.
Some value-added experts love this easy conflating of the meanings of growth because it makes the convoluted metrics for VAM and SLOs easier to sell… And the silly oak tree analogy one means of doing so. See. http://www.varc.wceruw.org/tutorials/Oak/index.htm
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So true.
My district’s new motto is: “Learning First.” Every school has to have a bulletin board in a prominent location with the motto, it’s on school marquis, on all school websites, and it gets drilled into our heads at faculty meetings. Of course, “learning first” really means “test scores first,” but who in the community is going to argue with “learning first?” The term has been co-opted to fit this test and punish regime, and I’m sick of it. When I say “learning first” now, it’s with a lovely sarcastic tone, because I know what it really means.
Having a motto must be the cool thing in education these days. My district’s motto this year? Transformation. Not surprising that this is happening. Public education is the new market for The Rich. Through the privatization of our public schools, a few wealthy powerful people are going to make a ton of money. It’s all about business. So if Nike can boost revenue with Just Do It! just think what can happen with a catchy, nifty slogan. My students and I have a class motto. Work hard and be kind. I like the kind of revenue our motto brings in!
One of the goals of the growth measures is supposedly so parents will have more information, so I looked at my son’s class “growth measure” in 5th grade (last year). It’s presented with numbers, so for example the 5th grade might be “+ 11” and the 4th grade might be “-3.2”. According to these numbers (whatever they are- I don’t know what they measure) his 5th grade teachers added more value than the teachers he had in 4th grade did, maybe, if last year’s 4th grade teachers were the same as those who taught 4th grade 2 years ago.
But I still don’t know enough to reach any conclusions at all. 1. I don’t know what the numbers mean, 2. I don’t know which individuals they are comparing to which other individuals, 3. I don’t know if the 5th grade teachers just did a ton of test prep and the 4th grade teachers didn’t (which seemed to be true, actually, in his math class anyway).
None of it will mean anything at all this year, because I assume they’ll be measuring them on the CC tests, which are new.
I would just challenge any parent to tell me specifically how they are using this information as one child moves thru a school. I don’t think it can be done at all, let alone “fairly and accurately”.
“. . . I don’t know what they measure.”
You can’t ever know as they “measure” nothing.
I am not sure why “rate of increase” is an especially economic concept of growth. I am hard pressed to come up with any discipline that uses the term differently.
Sure. I applied “rate of increase” to my middle aged waistline. Time to pull the license of my ineffective doctor.
MathVal,
Do you think of the rate of change of your waistline as an economic concept of growth as opposed to some other concept of growth?
Nay, why bother looking at underlying causes or what happens outside the physician’s office. It is just easier to blame the doctor.
te–of course it’s economic. Just as you reach middle-age and can finally afford to eat what you want, your metabolism slows and it all stays on your middle.
S Smith,
Certainly nutrition and biology both have an effect. The broader question is why “growth” is seen as an economic concept here when it seems to me that it is a rather universal concept.
Joseph Goebbels had nothing on the ed-reformers.
You’d also think they’d have to add a lot more factors- if they’re going to do this, they should attempt to do it well.
Shouldn’t they count absences and mobility? If the kids are absent 10% of the time, they probably aren’t making a whole lot of progress. Too, Ohio has a limited form of “open enrollment” and there’s a portion of the kids who move between schools in the county (and cross-counties) and we also have a huge cybercharter industry, which has absolutely terrible test scores. Does that “count”?
I tried to find out how transience and missing scores were handled in Ohio’s VAM measurements. I found a vague explanation and formula invoking some nifty summation symbols, but nothing concrete on ODE’s site. Another case of “just because”. The more they try to control for differences or add precision to the models, the more it seems the models degrade.
The last I checked, Ohio is using a proprietary software program from SAS to calculate VAM. If you dig you can find some of the marketing materials that SAS provided ODE officials when they got the contract. I had emailed a request for more information a couple of years ago and got a copy of the three-year contract plus the submitted SAS marketing materials, including some articles defending EVASS. The contract with SAS may have expired but it clearly stated that SAS was not responsible for the quality of data it was provided in addition to other “risk management” provisions. AS you probably know, Ohio teachers who don’t have a VAM ( about 70%) are required to prepare SLOs, a writing assignment that is the equivalent of framing a one-group pre-test post-test experiment with a “population” of students, and other pseudo-scientific language–about 26 criteria to be met for the WRITING ASSIGNMENT, and the accuracy of the teacher’s prediction of the outcome will count as 50% of the teacher’s evaluation. That calculation incidentally, is made by a computer.
The whole point is that a false analogy is being made between economics and education. People are not markets or products. There are so many variables in any given human being’s life, it is impossible to determine with much accuracy how responsible a teacher is for a student’s progress. People are not linear and static. Teachers have witnessed children fall apart in an academic year due to economic issues such as parents’ job loss, emotional problems or drug use, illness, etc.that have nothing to do with what is going on in the classroom. Likewise, not all students will progress at the same rate in any given year. Some will excel, and others will lag because they are slower learners or are unmotivated. While there are strategies a teacher can use to minimize some of these differences, these differences are real and legitimate reasons why students progress at different rates, and it’s not the teacher’s fault.
Absolutely correct!
Time for a class action lawsuit against Obama, the DOE, Duncan and other assorted bad actors.
Let’s hold the charter and cyber schools to these same standards and see what happens.
It’s all a house of cards and will come tumbling down sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.
The Oak Tree Analogy slideshow might make a bit of sense if you’re talking about teaching something straightforward such as geography. But it really breaks down when you’re talking about teaching thinking skills, which is what SBAC/PARCC claim to test. If, as I believe, thinking skills are really a nebula of capacities that arise from the interaction between one’s innate hardwiring and domain knowledge one has acquired (so that one might be a great thinker vis a vis medicine or politics, but poor vis a vis fashion or music) then teachers have no ability to TEACH thinking skills. They can teach domain knowledge that enhances thinking skills in that domain, but they can’t alter the other component of thinking skills, the genetic hardwiring of the brain. Yet SBAC/PARCC presume that teachers can teach thinking skills independent of content knowledge. Many educators vaguely believe that they can teach thinking skills, but as far as I can tell they’re merely confusing eliciting thinking skills with teaching them. So these “next-generation” tests are utterly Kafkaesque: teachers will be judged on something they cannot teach. The only rational response to this situation would be to 24/7 test prep on sample test questions. This will at least make kids fluent in the test format.
The Oak Tree Analogy slideshow might make a bit of sense if you’re talking about teaching something straightforward such as geography.
Except for the fact that students are not trees. They have minds of their own.
And suppose geography teacher A has a lot of kids who happen to be enrolled with an ELA teacher who focuses on world literature and thereby teaches, indirectly, about geography. Geography teacher B has more kids who are co-enrolled with an ELA teacher who focuses on teen issues. Unless everything is made utterly uniform, the system doesn’t work. So the reformers want to make everything utterly uniform. This is why I think Dean Vogel, president of CTA, is being very naive when he says that Common Core is ushering in a new era of teacher freedom. The measurement fiends will not permit freedom.
Geography is NOT straightforward! There are many different ways to approach it, and it is a LOT more than just teaching the kids where things are, although that is important. The whole point of geography is “why do things happen where they do?” That’s not straightforward. Geography teacher speaking here. I don’t think you meant to denigrate geography, but there it is….
Agreed. I’m glad you think that teaching kids where things are is important. I find many kids get joy out of just this, though the education experts would have us believe that this is stultifying. There should be no shame in simply teaching kids where things are. Even if you’re prejudiced against “mere” knowing, this knowing is the essential foundation for higher-order thinking, so it makes no sense to denigrate it. Common Core denigrates mere knowing and thinks it can raise our kids to the stratosphere of intellectual achievement without constructing a foundation of factual knowledge. Folly!
I find that when we talk about events in the world, they look at me blankly if I haven’t had them learn the places. Even if they don’t know the exact location, they know approximately where things are and can look them up. A lot of my kids love to watch the Parade of Nations at the Olympics, because they know where everything is. In my opinion, it’s hard to build on the basics if you’ve never learned the basics. It’s not the only thing we do in class, of course, but the foundation is important.
“. . . it’s hard to build on the basics if you’ve never learned the basics.”
Ding, ding, ding!!
Put that in the “quip of the year” award competition on “the site to discuss better education for all”.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx True enough & I wish I’d had a higher-level geography course. As a child I thought our next-door kids ‘lucky’ because they ate next to a big US map & supper- talk was about where things were. Maps got little direct attention in later grades as though their context was self-evident. In college geology I quickly gathered I knew very little about reading maps.
“Twisted Geography”
Geography is complicated
“Where things are” is understated
“Why things happen where they do”
Is tortuous and gripping too!
To be honest, the distinction between geography and geology has never been clear to me. But what a fantastic place Utah is for learning about both.
Geography??? How quaint a notion to teach Geography. I thought that was too archaic to be a “modern” subject.
Very true!
Did anyone who watched the whole “Oak Tree” analogy notice that near the end it mentioned using “race/ethnicity” as a “control” factor?
Very interesting considering that the corporate reformers specifically exploited “liberal” teachers’ political inability to do so back when they advocated NCLB as a means of closing the “race gap” in education.
Apparently, now that they own a big slice of the education pie, they’re starting to tacitly embrace the idea that it’s OK if some races don’t achieve as high levels as other races (presumably because “it’s in the blood” or some such).
Even more to the point is the “carrying over” from economics to education of the concepts of “black box” and “production function.” “Black box” is a very bad thing in economics and is the equivalent of a closed-door classroom: you can look in the window but you don’t know what’s happening inside the classroom; hence it is a “black box.”
In economics, a researcher hypothesizes or predicts a “production function” which explains the process that is being evaluated. Economists deride, in fact it causes them to pull out their hair, the fact that a multi-dimensional, human-relational environment known as a “classroom” and as “teaching” cannot be reduced to a “production function” which is the very basis for econometric analysis.
If you don’t have a good, or even plausible, “production function” in economics or statistics you cannot produce good measurement models that mean anything. This is the largest single fallacy underlying VAM and other attempts to measure student “growth” or teacher “achievement.”
I pulled out my notes from my district’s day-before-school-opens professional development session (starring a couple of Pearson reps who were supposed to “walk us through” parts of our Pearson-based curriculum, developed from our Pearson-published textbook, which provides us with Pearson-written tests, which we assign via a Pearson website). I had made a list of terms that I sincerely wished I didn’t have to hear all year long. These included:
rigor
data
assessment
standards
objectives
pacing
indicators
benchmarks
unpack
metric
Needless to say, I didn’t get my wish. There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with these words. But they are thrown around as if they are the only real ways to describe education, learning, teachers, schools, and children. Enough!
Well, get the bingo sheets out, make a bunch of different ones using those buzzwords and hand them out at the next meeting. First one to get a bingo has to buy all the faculty a drink at the nearest located watering hole.
Put Arne’s picture in the center square.
But then I’d have to put it on the dart board.
We did a version of this a long time ago. Key words on about five drums you could turn, these lined up like they are in a lottery. The ultimate phrasemaker for jargon of the day. Duncan’s communications experts thing that something like this is needed by state officials to make sure that “messaging” is consistent.
Such a good idea! Plus maybe it will bemuse the Pearson folks….I can see them wrinkling their brows in consternation…”What are those old-time veteran teachers giggling about?”
And, seriously, don’t put the word ‘student’ or ‘child’ in
any square because you know those are words you aren’t going to hear.
Let’s do a close reading first!
That charter school corruption case in Connecticut is getting bigger:
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-jumoke-academy-renovations-20140920-story.html?utm_content=buffer2a94f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#page=2
I think it’s an interesting case, because I think of Connecticut as a state that wouldn’t be opposed to regulatory oversight.
It’s “blue”, it’s eastern… compared with Ohio and MI and FL, who have no regulation.
I’m surprised by it in CT, where I am no longer surprised in OH, MI, FL or PA.
My son completed an automated test recently. He misunderstood one minor concept which was easily clarified. Yet because the test was designed so poorly, every question was missed. In the mindless minds of the econometricians, he would be branded a complete failure. No feedback, no iterative learning, no human judgement. Just some simple minded measure. And, yes, the assessment was from a “professional” education company.
Here is a deeply rooted concept of the entire measure, rank, yank obsession. Wealthy children, the children of Reformers, are allowed to fail. Their children would have a teacher observing their progress and providing guidance. The children of Reformers are not subject to the misanthropic, inhuman testing automata. Rather, the harsh, no-nonsense world of our students subject to the whims of Reformers is one of one-strike-and-you-are-out. Our children are not considered human and are disposable to Reformers. And if a few capable children and excellent teachers have their lives destroyed by misapplied science? Well, that is within an acceptable margin of error to Reformers.
The moment I realized in 1998 that Ohio was moving away from diagnostic proficiency tests to punitive achievement tests, I literally became ill and went into a tailspin. It so absolutely made me sick that I had anxiety attacks, panic attacks, and became clinically depressed.
Laura C and Robert S. with Chiarra and Dienne right behind are atop the leader board of quality and substantial posts to “discuss better education for all”! (Of course KTA is atop, alone of the “humor” leader board to “discuss better education for all”)
And as KTA says, keep on writing and I’ll keep reading.
Señor Swacker: I much appreciate your kind words that, to paraphrase that renowned Mexican superhero of yesteryear, El Chapulín Colorado [The Red Grasshopper], “no se aprovechan de mi nobleza” [don’t take advantage of my nobility].
However, when it comes to artistically “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” of the education establishment I must humbly ask you to include SomeDAM Poet.
To paraphrase El Chapulín Colorado, SomeDAM Poet’s “antenitas de vinil siempre están detectando la presencia del enemigo” [vinyl antennae are always detecting the presence of the enemy].
Mil gracias/many thanks.
😎
P.S. Keep on writing. I’ll keep on reading.
😉
KTA,
Quite right about SDP! But as a relative newcomer (brilliant wordsmith no doubt) he has to prove his “staying power”-ha ha!! So you get the nod!
“Federal policy makers have sought to “normalize” the idea . . . ”
Don’t go getting all Foucauldian on us now Laura!!
More about the econometric language that is dominating how people are speaking about the education of our students . If I am channeling anyone, it is Edward Bernays.
Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, and recognized founder of PR “public relations” in the early twentieth century merged early theories of mass psychology with savvy about political persuasion and selling corporate products and ideas through techniques borrowed from the arts, spectacle, newsworthy stunts, adroit choice of emotive language, and multi-faceted messaging campaigns, some of these lasting for years. Bernays books were known to Joseph Goebbels Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany. Among other feats, Bernays initiated ont of the first corporate advertising campaigns for the American Tobacco Company. One facet of the campaign enlisted stylish young women to march in a parade holding their torches of freedom (lighted cigarettes) to convey the idea that women should not be ashamed to smoke in public.
• 1923- Book Crystallizing Public Opinion, • 1928- Book Propaganda, 1947 Engineering of Consent.
From Propaganda, by Edward L. Bernays. 1928.
“Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man’s rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.”
Fascinating book on Bernay’s multifaceted career in Ewen, S. ( 1996). PR! A Social History of Spin. Basic Books.
Thanks for the tip. Sounds like Bernays helps see through modern platitudes about literacy and education. He might view our sanguine belief that we can make kids “critical thinkers” with a very jaundiced eye.
The goals are many with these language thieves, but a major objective they have had is to force teachers and principals — the people who actually spend days with the children — to “data-ize” the discussion. In Chicago, once that has been forced on people in the schools, the Board of Education can then hire MBAs (as opposed to professional educators who know the realities of teaching children) because all reality from the schools can be reduced to the “bottom line” on a spreadsheet.
We have been witnessing these Orwellian attacks for nearly 20 years, since corporate reform in Chicago began in 1995 with the (1995) Amendatory Act to the School Reform Act of 1988. The Amendatory Act of 1995 gave Chicago the first (and still biggest) Orwellian language attack: the “Chief Executive Officer” for a school system. Over the years, the “officer” category (based on military and corporate hierarchy, rather than educational democracy) has expanded to the point where today (in 2014), Chicago has, for example, a “Chief Accountability Officer,” a “Chief Transformation Officer,” and a “Chief Officer for Innovation and Incubation.” None of those individuals has ever taught in a Chicago school (or been a principal of a Chicago school), while our current “Chief Executive Officer” was imported from Michigan (to replace a “Chief Executive Officer” who had been imported from Rochester).
Once this ponderous production of linguistic and pedagogical nonsense proliferate (I can’t resist the alliteration), Chicago then follows up with other militarized titles. Since a “Chief Officer” can’t be expected to do the work, each of them has a “Chief of Staff” or two or three to actually do the work (sort of, since none of them knows Chicago or the job either).
We could easily complete this history of Orwellian attacks pioneered in Chicago (schools stopped “failing” when Arne Duncan couldn’t hold up that locution, so the “bad” schools became “underperforming” ones…), but that’s the topic of a book all of us need to share, much as some of us enjoyed Diane’s previous book on language hypocrisy and nonsense.
For now, we can start at the “top” and demand that schools be run by those who know education — abolishing the title and concept of “officers” — and move from there forward back to sanity. Already Karen Lewis has said publicly that when she becomes mayor of Chicago after defeating Rahm Emanuel in the February 24, 2015 election, she will appoint a school board that abolishes all these “officers” and returns school system governance to superintendents who are qualified under state and local law to actually run the schools.
At the present time, most of the highest paid people in the executive ranks of Chicago’s public schools would not be allowed to be substitute teachers in Chicago’s classrooms. Imported from out of state and “qualified” by virtue of having MBA degrees, they will all have to be (deservedly) fired as soon as Chicago begins the long march — 20 years after all these insanities began — to restore public schools and the public education of our children to American traditions of democracy and professionalism.
Excellent additions. I received a communication from a friend in Wisconsin whose job title is CEO, of a branch campus of a public university, not President or Dean.
Personnel officiers in school districts are now called “Talent Managers.”
District curriculum experts are now Directors of Knowledge Services. Orwell smiles.
I am waiting for school principals to sport the title of Chief Quality Control Officer.
Some over enthusiastic arts educators proposed that they should be known as the Chief Creativity Officers in their schools..
Laura Chapman, the Bloomberg administration started with the nutty corporate titles when he took control of NYC public schools in 2002. That allowed him and Joel Klein to hire people without credentials as superintendents. Chief Talent Officer. Chief Knowledge Officer.
Not in NY. Appreciate the history lesson.
Laura H. Chapman:
That Oak Tree presentation actually offers a whetstone to anyone who wants to sharpen their critique of VAM. Tree “growth” is reduced to the increase in height during a given time period, never mind changes in foliage quality, root health, structural condition, or any other criterion a professional arborist might consider when evaluating a tree. (Note: Arborist, not gardener, as the VAM analogist has it.) Any competent arborist (or gardener) will tell you that height increase in a plant doesn’t begin to give you a true idea of the plant’s condition or viability.
So the analogy actually gives the lie to what VAM supporters are pushing. But at the same time, the analogy falls apart, because tree height is an actual, observable attribute, whereas a change in student test scores is an elaborately derived number subject to shaky assumptions, questionable data, and multiple sources of error. Such numbers don’t mean a thing.
I hope you’re writing a book. I like the way you’re able to dig up the arcane policy details and uncover their real-life (usually bad) consequences. Congrats and thanks to you and all the others who are doing this kind of work.
Really sharp critique of the analogy. Suggest you send it to the marketers of this product.
Here’s the worst “semantic infiltration: the notion that school is a commodity. We want to provide parents with vouchers and a wealth of “data” so they can “choose” a public school they way they choose the laundry detergent at a store. President Obama wants to provide college bound students with “data” on public and private costs and results so they can choose a college the same way. Someone needs to make it clear to the voters that public education is NOT a commodity. It is a right that every citizen should have.
I saw Arne Duncan on Sunday Morning. I was yelling at the tv. He is so sure of himself. He laughed off his “middle class white moms” statement. Grr.
Wgersen,
Choosing is not commoditization. That you have to pay for something does not make it a commodity. Those who do not live in a district and do not pay local taxes are not allowed to attend public schools in the district (in most places). The relatively wealthy in my town who “choose” a progressive private school or a Waldorf private school or a Montessori private school and the staff at the Waldorf, Montessori, and progressive schools do not see the education of the children as a commodity.
You don’t “choose” an entitlement… the government provides it for you based on taxes you pay… Our country decided a long time ago that schooling would be provided for all children and most state constitutions stipulate that it will be equitably available and equitably funded by taxes. The notion that someone can “choose” a school the way they “choose” a car is a notion that was originally promoted by the Milton Friedman libertarians who want to see vouchers used to “choose” whatever school parents want for their children— with one exception: kids in a poor community won’t be able to choose a school in an affluent community… oh… and the vouchers won’t cover the cost of a private school like the ones attended by “the relatively wealthy”. This method of operationalizing “choice” takes everyone off the hook for ensuring that children have an equitable opportunity for success and, presumably, eliminates the “government schools” monopoly.
wgersen,
What would you describe the relatively wealthy as doing when they choose between a Waldorf, progressive, or Montessori education? Is it only commoditization if the relatively poor choose?
They are opting out of the opportunity to use a public good… just like commuters who opt out of public transportation… I hope our public schools don’t erode the same way our public transportation has… and to “ride the metaphor further… if fewer parents and students opt out of the public system fewer dollars will flow into it and our public schools, like our public transit, will suffer.
Wgersen,
My question was is if relatively wealthy parents COMMODITIZE Montessori, Waldorf, and progressive education because they choose between schools that offer these approaches and directly pay the tuition?
I believe the wealthy self-segregate in whatever school that puts their child in a situation where they think ALL negative factors have been eliminated, such as children who have learning issues or less life experience. They then can network as they mature and graduate, further perpetuating the wealthy insulation from the reality of the “common” American.
Deb,
But which school? The relatively wealthy in my town can choose from a Waldorf, a Montessori, a progressive, and a parochial school. I think the relatively wealthy take advantage of these different approaches to education in order to find the one that bests fits the needs an desires of their children. I think the relatively poor can benefit from the same kind of choices.
The answer is “Yes”… in their minds education is a commodity they can make choices about… but (anticipating where this affirmative response leads) that does NOT mean that “school choice” will yield the happy result of everyone being able to make the same kinds of choices as the “relatively wealthy parents” in your proposition unless we redistribute wealth so that such a choice would be possible OR we raise taxes high enough to make everyone eligible to have the same choice parameters… And to quote LBJ: that dog won’t hunt! Every “choice” legislation I’ve read about limits the funds available to less affluent (ugh) “customers”… and the “market economy” we have in place today results in narrower choices for those in poverty… and if you want evidence of that, compare the grocery shopping choices in urban areas with those in more affluent areas…
wgersen,
I think the natural direction your answer leads is to a discussion of the advisability of allowing private schools at all. If the harm caused by commoditization of schools is sufficiently great, shouldn’t we prevent it from happening?
It seems to me that this has nothing to do with funding levels or income redistribution. It is the very act of choosing and directly paying for the good that creates the commoditization. Giving everyone sufficient income to pay for, say, the Dalton school would simply increase commoditization and make things worse.
I don’t think “commodity” is the right word in this context. I think what you’re talking about is a “product.” Commodities compete on price alone, or almost alone. When I shop for a commodity, I don’t care much about who produced it or how they produced it or who got it to the market. Products, on the other hand, are not fungible and thus compete on an array of qualities, including but not limited to price.
FLERP!
Commoditization is a term of art in Marxist economics. See this link about commodification: https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm
Looks like a very broad concept. It also looks like the only thing that commodification doesn’t do is turn things into commodities.
This edu-biz speak is found on all levels of education, from kindergarten to grad school–the manifestation of a corrupted system.
Your analogy is right on! I ask how is it fair to expect at least 1 year’s student learning growth? Not every child learns at the same pace. When you factor in special education students that are performing the best they can, albeit, below their grade level on standardized tests it is clear the computer generated VAM scores are a very poor indicator of student learning and teacher effectiveness!