Steven Singer was excited to read Elizabeth Warren’s plan for K-12 education.
There was just one thing he was troubled by.
He begins:
My daughter had bad news for me yesterday at dinner.
She turned to me with all the seriousness her 10-year-old self could muster and said, “Daddy, I know you love Bernie but I’m voting for Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth Warren?” I said choking back a laugh.
Her pronouncement had come out of nowhere. We had just been discussing how disgusting the pierogies were in the cafeteria for lunch.
And she nodded with the kind of earnestness you can only have in middle school.
So I tried to match the sobriety on her face and remarked, “That’s okay, Honey. You support whomever you want. You could certainly do worse than Elizabeth Warren.”
And you know what? She’s right.
Warren has a lot of things to offer – especially now that her education plan has dropped.
In the 15 years or so that I’ve been a public school teacher, there have been few candidates who even understand the issues we are facing less than any who actually promote positive education policy.
But then Bernie Sanders came out with his amazing Thurgood Marshall planand I thought, “This is it! The policy platform I’ve been waiting for!”
I knew Warren was progressive on certain issues but I never expected her to in some ways match and even surpass Bernie on education.
What times we live in! There are two major political candidates for the Democratic nomination for President who don’t want to privatize every public school in sight! There are two candidates who are against standardized testing!
It’s beyond amazing!
Before we gripe and pick at loose ends in both platforms, we should pause and acknowledge this.
Woo-hoo!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great point. It is so easy to get used the status quo – billionaires with no educational experience buying control of local boards to undermine unions and the stability of public funding – that one should indeed pause to recognize the sea change that is occurring. The false narrative of teacher incompetence (and not poverty) as the primary cause of the the achievement gap is finallybiting the dust.
Callisto,
SLAYING GOLIATH, which will be published January 21, puts an end to all that nonsense. The false narrative will be fully exposed.
It is difficult to know if Singer’s caution about Warren’s plan should be concerning. While the college and career jargon remind us of Obama, it is difficult know what Warren’s intentions are in the absence of high stakes testing. Perhaps she still favors the corporate testing without the high stakes, or she may mean something else. As Singer points out, teachers have been burned before by so many Democrats. They have good reason to question political intention.
While it is great that two progressives are openly supporting public education, I hope they do not split the vote. Such a division will open up the door for status quo Joe to walk through with the nomination.
I agree with Singer that Warren’s language on this matter is troubling. “We must also ensure that students are able to take advantage of those opportunities and that high schools are funded and designed to prepare students for careers, college, and life…
…I’ll work with states to align high school graduation requirements with their public college admission requirements. And I’ll also direct the Department of Education to issue guidance on how schools can leverage existing federal programs to facilitate education-to-workforce preparedness.”
It is troubling because it gives priority to the Gates/Obama/Duncan agenda of college and careers, with a brief mention of “life.” It also distracts attention from her Senate Bill 800 for post-secondary education. That bill invites USDE to rate the value of every program of study, every major and certificate program, on the basis of economic return for graduates, and with the first marker at five years after graduation. The bill purports to address the college debt problem. It does not. It does not recognize that postsecondary education may have values well beyond the economic and “efficiency” metrics in the bill. S.800 also repeals the section of the higher education which protects the privacy of a student’s personal Information (PII), on the wish list of Gates and every tech company eager to profit from “personalized” marketing and social credit scores. The bill is a sure way to discourage postsecondary studies in the arts and humanities.
I wouldn’t make too much of this boiler plate language. Preparing for colleges, careers, and life is an age-old chestnut.
Warren and Sanders are the only two candidates who have thus far given any serious attention to education.
Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Au contraire. Speaking with 20+ years in the legal field, the boilerplate is what you most need to pay attention to. It’s the stuff they know no one reads, so it’s what’s going to get you in the end.
The only word I would add to college, careers, and life is citizenship.
dienne77 says:
“Speaking with 20+ years in the legal field, the boilerplate is what you most need to pay attention to. It’s the stuff they know no one reads, so it’s what’s going to get you in the end.”
Is this language concerning, too?
” In America, the quality of a child’s education should not and cannot depend on their zip code.
As president, Bernie Sanders will fight to equitably fund our schools. He will:
…..
Provide $5 billion annually for career and technical education to give our students the skills they need to thrive once they graduate.”
That zip code line is right out of reformers’ public relations packets. And Bernie also talks about career and technical education.
I also wonder if you are concerned that Steven Singer pointed out that Bernie doesn’t even mention the for-profit arms of non-profit charters but Elizabeth Warren does.
Is that what is going to “get us in the end” if Bernie is President?
I am not as skeptical as you about what Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have in their wording. In both cases, their wording could be more clear. But I would not assume the worst about either of them. But if you do, you assume the worst about both of them.
Lots of bla-bla. Simply say, “I will put all public schools under federal control and will gather the best pedagogues and scientists in their respective fields to create federal curricula.”
There you go again. Rude and snarky.
As soon as people start talking about what schools are for, they immediately start emphasizing the importance of their own profession or at least what they personally appreciate. I think that’s where Warren messes up too.
It’s better to talk about what to deemphasize in school.
Science is not more important than the arts, music.
Knowledge is not more important than physical and mental health.
Politics is far less important than it appears by listening to the news.
Wars, kings, presidents are much less important than the 99.9%.
Career, college are less important than happiness.
Listening and taking notes are not more important than conversation.
Why not abolish mass schooling altogether? It is just a form of child incarceration and indoctrination, while also serving as a child care while parents are away slaving off for the same salary they had twenty years ago.
Where should the children go? Workhouses? Child labor?
When they start saying Collage and Currier Ready, I’ll know to relax. Not before.
Singer wrote exactly what I was thinking, every point.
Same here, LeftCoastTeacher.
The billionaire consortiums funding non-profits and school board campaigns are pushing endless black box interim assessments and surveys nearly weekly. The plan looks like replacing the year end tests with these.
The college and career readiness ties directly into the Community Schools model that is also being funded in various ways by the billionaires. Gates has his version, Jobs has hers, and sometimes the consortium funded lobbyists help pass measures to get the public to fund their plans. They continue to seat their reformers on the college/school boards, community non-profit boards, as non profits heads,committee chairs, superintendents and so on… The emphasis is for 9 and 10 year olds to begin choosing pathways, for counselors use profitable software to supposedly gather each child’s capacity for learning at specific points in time and to set them on paths to fill local government, business and non-profit positions. No critical thinking skills required.
Predictive analytics and digital student data empower COMMUNITY SCHOOLS non-profit partners to direct and redirect students.
Yes, Laura H. Chapman, the “corporatized personalized learning” packaged and sold as the fix to the one size fits all approach is cover for social credit scoring.
If Warren is serious about tightening FERPA her plan will also need to prohibit all third party access to student pii by all third party actors, including those named as non-profit “school officials” by requiring Opt-in for ALL STUDENT pii as the rule and not the exception. Otherwise, social credit scores remain in play, still controlled by the wealthy through their government puppets.
How will Warren’s promise to improve the CRDC’s data collection and timely use of these data help? Currently, the CRDC no longer tracks data on high school equivalency course exam results or Advanced Placement course exam results. These data were eliminated to track data on computer science classes and school internet access. So, the tracking goals appear to be personalized through recurring connectivity “investments” while disregarding outcomes geared toward higher achievement.
Click to access 2017-18-crdc-overview-changes-data-elements.pdf
“The college and career readiness ties directly into the Community Schools model that is also being funded in various ways by the billionaires. Gates has his version, Jobs has hers, and sometimes the consortium funded lobbyists help pass measures to get the public to fund their plans.”
I didn’t know that Community Schools are bad. What’s wrong with the model? I know of one here in TN which is funded largely from Koch money but the school works very well.