I wrote earlier this week about the frightening posdibility that we as a nation might be facing a future in which jobs are scarce, due to globalization (which encourages outsourcing to low-wage countries) and technology (in which computers and robots will replace large numbers of workers).
As it happened, Anthony Cody wrote a complementary post in which he factored in the rigorous Common Core standards and tests as the great sorting mechanism that will determine winners and losers in the new economy. The good test-takers will get the good jobs, and those with low scores will get the scraps or nothing at all.
The middle class is shrinking, he writes. There won’t be enough jobs for all who seek work. Students are crushed by debt.
“A smaller number of Americans will be better off than their parents – even with the advantage of better education. We are looking at a lottery system with fewer and fewer winners, and many more losers. And our educational system is being prepared for this.
“Our schools are the center of a battle for our collective soul.
“Our schools can be laboratories of democracy, controlled by local citizens, connected to the life blood of the community, preparing children to engage with and transform the world they are entering. The documentary series, A Year at Mission Hill shows what such a school looks like, and how it cares for the students, and nurtures their dreams as they grow. Most of us entered teaching with this vision in mind.
“But our schools can also be the place where dreams are squashed. A place where students are sorted into winners and losers based on their test scores. Students who are given academic tasks that are beyond their ability or developmental level become frustrated and discouraged. When I taught 6th grade math in Oakland, one of my greatest challenges was the many students who arrived and would write on my introductory survey, “I am bad at math.” These self images form early, and the scientific precision of our tests creates a false portrait that becomes indelible when reiterated time and again come test time. What we are creating is a system that says “If you are bad at math, and these many other difficult things on our tests, you are not prepared for college or career, and you are worthless…
“Our educational system is being used as a means to rationalize the economic marginalization of a growing number of students. That process will hit those already marginalized by class and race the hardest….
“These are the children that our educational system is being prepared to look in the eye and say “you are not going to be able to attend a good college.” In fact, many of you may not even graduate from high school if plans proceed to use these tests as graduation exams.
“So the students who have been labeled as “not ready for college or career” will be released into society, to join the permanently unemployed or underemployed, the low wage service sector, their jobs vulnerable to computerization.
“And what will the story be that explains why will this is their fate? It will not be because jobs have been sent overseas. Not because technology is increasing productivity and reducing the need for labor. Not because the economy is delivering ever more wealth to an ever smaller number of oligarchs. No. The story will be that they are surplus because they did not achieve the education needed to make themselves indispensable to some company’s bottom line. They are surplus because they are not needed to make the machinery of our society run.”
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Cody writes:
“The trends are not positive, so long as we are stuck in our current economic model. Teachers have a role to play. We can cooperate with the system, and validate the tests as accurate indicators of our students’ value as “productive members of society.” That is what we are asked to do when Bill Gates and Arne Duncan implore us to help implement the Common Core. Or we can offer our own vision of the role of education as a catalyst for democratic change. And that change that will increasingly require us to question the imperatives of an economy that no longer serves the majority of Americans, and reject the ranking and sorting of our students into those with and without economic value.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The content of this article was frightening for me to read, but I agree totally with Anthony Cody. Life will change for everyone. We are already seeing things happen that we all question. The only way I cope is through being a Christian. God said we would see the signs. I clearly see the signs. All we can do is try to prepare.
Our country cannot continue in its present state with this horrible debt. All the jobs are gone, so the last money maker is taking over our public schools through the charters and tech industry. The charters will pick and choose the children who are educated. This “picking and choosing” of who gets educated is already happening with middle class college kids. There are very intelligent middle class college kids not attending college because of lack of funds. It is already happening around us.
Let’s pause to remember a very brave “gritty” little girl who used her grit to further the cause of social justice. Today is an important anniversary of Ruby Bridges’ lonely walk to William Franz Elementary School in New Orleans.
Ruby Bridges, Grit, A Dream Deferred, and the Destruction of New Orleans Public Schools:
With all due respect and with full belief that the current ‘deform’ agenda destroys all who it encounters- students, teachers, schools – educators must confront the myths that public schools historically operated on ‘meritocratic premises’ and “careers open to talent”.
Public schools have always been ‘sorters’, based on race, class, gender and ethnicity (one can add non English speakers). In addition, children with educational disabilities did not receive the right to an adequate and appropriate publicly funded education until the mid 1970s.
This being said, the ‘educational ‘deformers’, with their charter and private schools are our current ‘sorters’. They, control their student populations via student ‘creaming’ and ‘attritioning’ (including disproportionately low acceptance rate and maintenance of students with disabilities and English Language Learners). As a gift for their questionable behaviors, which yield questionable educational results, they receive huge amounts of public funds, So, Cody has made beautifully valid points that provide arguments for continued opposition to the ‘deformer’ agenda. Regardless, public schools proponents, of whom I am one, have no right to indulge in the luxury historical amnesia.
Everything you say is true, john a.
However, one difference between then and now is that previously there were teachers who strove mightily to overcome that, and most school systems did not seek to root them out. Now, though those teachers still exist, there is an explicit effort to purge them, their humanistic curriculum, pedagogy and job protections.
I think it is very important to acknowledge that there was no halcyon day when the schools provided equal opportunities to all. Public education has always been an instrument to preserve and replicate societal structures of class, race and privilege. However, we would be missing out on some heroic work by educators if that was the beginning and end of our analysis. There have been educators and schools that have provided more democratic and liberatory educational experiences for their students. I offered the example of Mission Hill for that purpose.
And I think it is important to identify the ways in which current reform policies and practices, like charter schools and the common core system expand inequities, and push for a more democratic vision instead.
Anthony, I don’t disagree with a word you have written. There have always been moments – teachers and schools – who have opposed and resisted the ‘dominant’ paradigm. I ascribe to the sentiments you write in your last paragraph.. Michael, all that you wrote is true and the last sentence most terribly so. Michael and Anthony, I appreciate that you have read my posting in the spirit that it was written. The struggle continues.
Society has always had winners and losers, and it always will. Education has always been a way for some to gain access to opportunities they otherwise would not have had. Today we have an obsession with ranking and rating based on testing, even though there is no evidence this will improve anything. As a matter of fact, more testing is harmful to the poorest of all! All this does is narrow the curriculum, and there is more to life than reading and math. Howard Gardner’s research on multiple intelligences suggests that an education should be rich and varied so that the diverse talents of learners can be nurtured. Also the notion of school “choice” is a red herring for most parents. It really means, “Let me make money off your children,” With the politicization and monetization of education, parents and teachers, more than ever before, need to actively work towards making schools work for children, not economists and politicians. Charters may offer some improved options for a few compliant students, but public education holds the hope for vast numbers of students. It is still the best hope to realize the promise of democracy. Our children are more than some cog in an economic wheel. We need to work to change how schools are funded, require more regulation,accounting and accountability of the privateers, and continue to fight those that try to denigrate the teaching profession.
“The trends are not positive, so long as we are stuck in our current economic model. Teachers have a role to play.”
“Why or how is it that most economists are either unaware or pretend to be unaware of the specious theoretical foundations of their discipline?
A charitable answer is that perhaps the majority of economists who teach their discipline or otherwise work as economic professionals are not necessarily guilty of obfuscation, or deliberately promoting a faulty paradigm. Many economists sincerely believe in the integrity of their discipline as they carry out highly specialized research or produce scholarly publications. Economists’ confidence or faith in their discipline, however, does not make it any less flawed. They simply teach or carry out elaborate scholarly research work within a faulty paradigm without questioning, or even detecting, some of the submerged defects that makes the discipline not only irrelevant and useless but indeed harmful, as it tends to create more confusion than illumination or understanding.
It can also be argued that since most economists are deeply wedded to their profession, and are dependent on it as the source of both intellectual and financial survival, they would most likely be in denial, and would continue working within the only academic tradition or professional path they know how to navigate, even if they suspected or realized the esoteric and irrelevant nature of their discipline.”
Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics (Drake University).
FWIW, Economists are part of a sub-set, of the “circle”, formed by the cultural habitus
explored by Noel Wilson. A constant quibble fest about “methods” or “who” enacts
them, ignores the RESULTS of the cultural habitus enabled by the “circle”.
Do the RESULTS (rich getting richer, for example) define confusion or illumination?
Does our overall “civic literacy” define confusion or illumination?
Does our overall “political objectivity” define confusion or illumination?
What will it take to discover the Emperor has had his hand on the “light switch” all along?
Denial is not just a river in Egypt…
Yes, “denial’ is an accurate word for what is going on in mainstream economics.
William Black talks about that very subject, particularly as it relates to financial fraud in Economics could be a science if more economists were scientists
good read.
As I show in my upcoming book, we must shake up the 18th century model that exists today and provide a model that empowers students, parents and educators to take students from where they are, forward. The goal must no longer be winning, it must be learning. Kudos to Cody
Excellent analysis. The futurists at a Gates-friendly social enterprise (aka operating foundation) here in Cincinnati see an “ideal” scenario for education ten years from now with only remnants of “government-run public schools,” formal learning, and “professionals” in teaching.
The future economy is viewed as “performance-based” meaning that general credentials such as diplomas and certificates of achievement are less important than “competency-based” badges or other proofs of mastery and “work-force readiness.” By then most people have had to become entrepreneurs. Most work part-time.
According to these futurists, the entire system of education will become a web or (ecosystem) of edupeneurs. Teachers will be called learning agents. All traditional certifications for being a learning agent are gone. Most learning agents actually broker or provide services part-time and they are typically organized as LLCs. Learning agents can be anyone, any place. Some may have special training, but “the outcomes ” are proofs of their competency.
I am working on an elaboration of this scenario offered up as ideal, and contrasted with a stereotyped view of all that is wrong with public schools. If I leverage the reasoning being offered up in support of this “ideal future” then specialists in learning assessment will become the certifiers of choice within the fast-growing education sector populated by edupeneurs, not all of them billionaires..
Parents/guardians can choose among providers, services, and platforms (e.g., place-based, online, hybrid) according to the VIP profiles (values, interests, profiles) for their children and the ratings awarded to services that match these VIP profiles. These VIP profiles activate a recommendation system that offers up matches–one or more suggested playlists for learning, rated both by major assessors of performances (branded like Gate’s Consumer reports for educational materials) and with ratings offered by customers, including brief comments,” per Amazon.
For persons most in need of learning agents and unprofitable services, the futurists envision a lot of volunteers stepping up to offer services (some getting jobs in the industry that way) and foundations making 20-year commitments to offer services for persons “in need.”
My brief scenario is adapted from one of four offered by KnowledgeWorks, a Cincinnati based “social enterprise,” aka operating foundation, active in 25 states on issues of career-oriented post-secondary education and links with high school programs.
Since its founding in 2001, KnowledgeWorks has received substantial funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, $48.7 million. Much of this was invested in the largely failed “small high schools” initiative. Additional funds from the Gates Foundation were for high school redesign, including a greater use of technology and early college entry. In 2013, Gates money also flowed to KnowledgeWorks’ to promote the Common Core State Standards.
Since 2006, KnowledgeWorks has offered up free (and graphically slick) forecasts based on “a disciplined study of the trends shaping the future of education.” These trend studies are crafted to promote student-centered, personalized, and competency-based learning, with online formats a vital but not exclusive means of accomplishing a de-institutionalized environment for learning. The scenarios depend on stereotypes of public education gone wrong and aggrandizement of cherry-picked trends and “thinklets” from “thought leaders” and “key drivers of change.”
In a press release dated February, 3, 2014 KnowledgeWorks and The International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) announced their shared agenda for federal policies that would change “our entire K-12 education system” to fit a student-centered learning environment with demonstrations of competency, free of traditional notions of schools, teachers, and student learning. I posted a slightly different version of this with Anthony Cody.
“Teachers will be called learning agents.”
Under the scheme you describe, teachers (and “edupreneurs”) will be marketing agents, not “learning agents.” The best marketers will be able to earn a living, and not necessarily by teaching. More like by operating some kind of hustle, such as a test-prep scheme. (That’s how teachers outside of the public schools become rock stars in Korea.)
Meanwhile, if de-institutionalization does occur, American kids will miss out on programs like the ones described in the USA Today article:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/11/12/high-schools-teach-manufacturing-skills/17805483/
We didn’t just outsource manufacturing jobs, we outsourced the know-how and the capacity to improve manufacturing systems and invent new ones. To get some of those jobs back we will have to rebuild the capacity to do such work. This will require institutions that can martial the expertise, equipment, physical skill to establish programs such as the one describe in the article. De-institutionalization would also threaten traditional havens of learning such as public libraries (which are thriving despite underfunding, having kept their traditional roles while adapting to new technologies). Already the school library is an endangered species
Agree.
There is nothing wrong with having vision. Just ask Timothy Leary or George Orwell. What is wrong Gates and his ilk is that they have the resources to exercise undue influence on policy, and they have the audacity to try to reshape education and policy with untried notions. As a matter of fact, CAI (computer assisted instruction) currently has an uneven record at best. The regular people pay the price for their grand human experiment. By the way, if these ideas are so great, why aren’t other countries signing up for the Gates’ vision? How much “trial and error” are regular Americans supposed to endure while capitalists play around with the education of their children? Even plumbers and electricians are required to have a license. There is a reason for experts. They have the knowledge and experience that other people don’t. If Bill Gates needs surgery, I guarantee he will get an expert, licensed physician, not some guy that claims to know a lot about the human body and has 100,000 likes on Facebook..
There is something very disturbing about the fact that people like Gates are allowed to do an “experiment” on America’s children (what Common Core is) simply because they have paid to do so.
They seem to actually view our children as their guinea pigs to do with as they see fit and seem to have the attitude, “we’ll try this and if it doesn’t work or even results in someone not getting a high school diploma, well, no big deal, we’ll just try something else”.
I read somewhere recently about rethinking what full time employment is. If we outsource so many jobs that it becomes increasingly impossible to employ everyone who wants a job, then it is probably time to cut the workweek. If 35 hours becomes the new full time then we will need more people in the workforce. The 8 hour day is no more sacred than the 12 hour day was.
I also think we need to reign in unbridled capitalism that seems to forget the possibility of ethical standards that support quality of life that is not measured solely by the almighty dollar.
In considering the importance of quality of life, we also need to seriously debate the role of technology and whether its use always represents an advance. I’m sure we can all identify instances where technology does not take the place of human interaction. It may serve the bottom line, it definitely does not always serve the customer/consumer. Then, too, in our race to “personalize” learning/education, will we raise a generation that is increasingly uncomfortable with communication that is not mediated by an electronic device?
Think about it. Those behind the changes to privatize … were not “into” traditional education. They dropped out of school to … MAKE MONEY. They think that they are dangling the carrot in front of the masses and that everyone will have a chance to somehow make a million or billion dollars by inventing the next technowidget. EXCEPT when most of the jobs are gone and robots sweep them away, who will be sucked into buying more crap they don’t need? If people don’t have jobs, then they won’t be buying technology. They can’t continue to disenfranchise eveyone by simply paying people to make and repair computerized EVERYTHING and still have consumers with money to waste. People will have to use their money to SURVIVE, not to enrich their lives with leisurely vacations, summerwear, and gadgets. They will need basic food, clothing and shelter. Seems they wish for a very few “haves” who can pass down their accumulated money stashed away from the clutches of the evil tax-masters and hand it down to their few children and grandchildren while the rest of us are serfs working for minimum wages. Already, many professors make $10K per year. What respect! What honor! Who will want to do this? Are we so altruistic that we will all sacrifice our lives to pass along academic philosophy and truths? Or will we succumb to the tech only jobs of the future? How boring for some of us? But, hey, they are even using 3D printers to make pancakes and sugar cubes … Just ask Morocca!
Deb, I couldn’t agree with you more. Great post! Yes, we are right around the corner to using all of our income just to survive. I think many of us, including myself, are already there. My electric bill is huge, and we do not turn on that many lights. Utilities and services want bigger and bigger cuts out of our paychecks, yet our paychecks have not gone up. With a child in college, my husband and I do not have a lot of money left over at the end of the month.
Our country is in crisis. I’ve said all along that is why the evil ones are after the public schools….it is their last big chance to make some big bucks. The evil ones have trashed everything else. Turning public schools into money-making charters is their final thing to try and make their bank accounts even bigger! Everything is going to their plan. Making our teaching profession toxic will make sure fewer and fewer young people go into it. VAM will make sure that excellent teachers will be terminated. Parents, overworked and stressed, do not realize the evil going on behind the scenes.
Thanks, Deb, for your great post! I love Diane’s blog. It helps me cope.