Review the list of organizations that signed a letter thanking the Biden administration for insisting on tests this spring. Some outspoken enemies of public education are there. Some rightwing groups are there. Supporters of school choice are there.
What do you make of this?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ohio Excels has ZERO teachers on staff or on the Board. Their President, Lisa Gray, taught like 30 years ago for a very short time and never in Ohio that I can tell. This is a business group. It is misguided but they have the ear of state legislators. Disgusting.
Lisa Gray was a shill for the Gates Foundation. She was not happy that I dicovered that at least five years ago.
Sen. Peggy Lehner used to reference her as her “go-to Education expert.” YUCK!!
Tell them to read this.
https://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/covid-testing-not-standardized-testing-hagopian-210224/?fbclid=IwAR3V14n_pWapdLp5TwmlWyRISRq8gKmKqLgqXupl4KubWVVXHWZ7g8BVlZ8
Seeing the National Urban League as the lead of this is like a dagger to the heart. I wish Derrick Johnson would have a heart-to-heart with Marc Morial on this.
The National Urban League has received many millions from the Gates Foundation.
Diane Well, there’s at least part of your answer: “The National Urban League has received many millions from the Gates Foundation.”
I really don’t see how, in the light of the pandemic, ANYONE can think testing at this time would be a good thing for students (or parents, or teachers, etc.), despite what they think about testing in general. CBK
“I really don’t see how, in the light of the COMPLETE ONTO-EPISTEMOLOGICAL INVALIDITIES IN/OF THE STANDARDIZED TESTING REGIME, ANYONE can think testing at ANY time would be a good thing for students (or parents, or teachers, etc.), despite what they think about testing in general.”
Duane E Swacker I wasn’t going to ask, but still want to know: What do you mean by
“COMPLETE ONTO-EPISTEMOLOGICAL INVALIDITIES IN/OF THE STANDARDIZED TESTING REGIME, . .” briefly, and if you have time and the inclination. Thanks, CBK
What I refer to with onto-epistemological adjective is the foundational conceptual basis for the standards and testing malpractice regime. Now what is that “foundational conceptual”? That describes the underlying assumptions of the psychometricians in declaring that the standards and testing malpractice regime is conceptually valid, hence a reliably useable mechanism for determining the quality of the teaching and learning process.
Why is a multiple guess question considered to be a valid method for assessing, judging, evaluating a student’s knowledge about a particular subject matter/curriculum? The assumptions made by those who make the test about what a particular question is asking and what a particular answer supposedly shows about a student’s learning are many. Without going into all of those assumptions, and falsehoods/errors, I suggest that you read Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted 1997 dissertation in which he discusses those invalidities in the process of making standards and the tests that supposedly assess whether a student has learned a particular standard. That treatise can be found at: https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/viewFile/577/700
Now another shorter read of his one those invalidities can be found here: http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/1372/43
Below in the general comments for this post I will post my summary of the first Wilson work. The summary actually is quite lacking in that I haven’t covered everything that Wilson writes about.
One of those conceptual foundational invalidities is that we can “measure” something we call student learning/achievement via standardized tests. The falsehood is that there is no measuring going on whatsoever, calling correct answers on a multiple guess test “measuring” is a bastardization of language usage as counting is counting and measuring requires a standard unit of measure, defined by those who use the unit of measure. There must be an exemplar of that unit against which measuring devices can be calibrated. That has never happened in the psychometric world but psychometricians and those supporters of the standards and testing malpractice insist that we are “measuring” student learning. It’s a false basis (onto-epistemologically speaking) upon which to base policy and practice.
Our attempts to comprehend and describe world in which we live are onto-epistemological problems. How do we know (ontology) something is what it is/true, and then how do we communicate that knowledge (epistemology) so that what is communicated can be considered to be a truthful statement.
To put it mundanely: Crap in/crap out. If out basic assumptions about our observations of the world around us are not valid, if they have biases (especially hidden ones) that skew thinking in one direction or another, and if our communication/discourse about those things is lacking in veracity, then we can say that there are onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods. And that is the “crap in” part. The decisions made from the results of that crap in then are crap out as more likely than not those decisions will be false, bad, wrong. (not counting the blind and anosmic squirrel that occasionally encounters an acorn-having something be right by sheer chance)
Duane E Swacker Ah, yes. Nothing like good philosophy translated into common (and even sometimes distressing) language. Thanks for your references and reflections on what I consider is at the core of many MAINLINE problems, especially in education. CBK
Tell them to read
Click to access 21_CSE-Leading-Education-Series-01-2021R-compressed-1-compressed.pdf
They are all pretty much organizations that are making money from the reform business. They have no idea how to actually teach learning and what should be taught. Very sad. Very powerful.Very discouraging.
Jeannie Kaplan A quick overview of Michael Fullan’s article suggests to me that it has some excellent ideas that would help move K-12 education away from many of its present and long-term problems. All of us in education, and teacher-education departments, should keep up with such thoughtful analyses.
If you are directing your “tell them to read” comment to reformers (aka deformers), however, aren’t you assuming that those involved with privatizing education . . . and its concomitant destruction of public education . . . are fundamentally driven by questions concerning what is actually best for educating K-12 children?
If so, I think you would be wrong in that assumption. The problem with that is this: **privatizing of education ultimately gains its power from either oligarchs and/or corporate entities which, in our time, are fundamentally capitalist and profit-motivated. In brief, those sources of power have too much “biased skin in the game” that, even if they are well-meaning; too easily ends up lending their interests towards closures of thinking where openness is essential . . . to a vibrant democratic culture.
On the other hand, where public education is inexorably tied to its root in a democratic culture and political system, neither oligarchs nor corporate interests, nor communism/fascism/capitalism, nor even democracy itself are SYSTEMATICALLY immune to the questioning that can come from fostering student exposure to all, and openness of thought, critical thinking, and creative development from that basis as well-understood.
Thank you for posting Fullan’s insightful article. However, the greater WE can no longer assume that everyone really does WANT a good education for all. CBK
“aren’t you assuming that those involved with privatizing education . . . and its concomitant destruction of public education . . . are fundamentally driven by questions concerning what is actually best for educating K-12 children?
If so, I think you would be wrong in that assumption.”
Spot on!
I have never seen any evidence that ed reformers are interested in what is best — they only want to see positive news about the reforms that they push.
NYC public school parent I really think it’s a deal-breaker. If you want privatization, either:
(1) you are only paying attention to the money, to the shallow logic, and to the bells and whistles; and so subsequently, you don’t understand what “public” means to your present living situation, or to what the privatization of public institutions and space is set up to do WITH and TO that living; OR
(2) you really don’t like living in a democracy as such, for whatever reason; and you want to replace it with some authoritarian power that, of course, will remain under civilization’s control; and whether a singular person like Trump, or a group of oligarchs, like C-Pac with or without covert international flavors, or just by some kind of singular corporate power or other, similar to China or, different but also the same, Russia.
The days of living in the light of a democratic spirit built by others, and without working to keep it ourselves, are over. Education is where people can become prepared to ask those questions for themselves . . . or not. CBK
The deformers represent big money, carpetbaggers and the right wing, not social justice groups and those that support authentic public education. Since education is supposed to be the responsibility of the states, why is the federal government dictating that states must test students in the middle of a pandemic? The federal government should only weigh on issues of civil rights. Testing is not a civil rights issue. In fact, standardized testing is biased so it is the antithesis of civil rights. These deformers have dictated harmful, anti-democratic public policy for far too long. The Biden administration needs to wake up to the fact that it has destructive members on its own team that do not support real public schools. Remove them or reduce their authority, and keep your campaign promises. Real Democrats support real public schools.
“We will closely watch as the Department works with states to ensure they are administering statewide assessments, as well as collecting and publicly reporting on multiple measures of the student experience for the 2020–21 school year”
No one has any responsibility other than public schools.
So public schools have to comply with each and every mandate and in return the Biden Administration has no duty to do anything.
It’s one way “accountability”. It gives a waiver to the most powerful people in government and shifts the entire burden to public schools.
This is why politicians love ed reform so much- it requires absolutely nothing of them other than issuing punishing edicts.
Ed reform basically exists to let politicians off the hook for public education.
Who’s been in their pockets? Joe?
I’m not seeing any duty for the Biden Administration. I see how public schools and public school students have been issued assignments, but I don’t see any reciprocal duty for the Biden Administration.
So this only works one way? Public schools “must” but the Biden Administration can assist schools a lot, some, or not at all?
No wonder pols love this “movement” so much. Issue a directive to public schools and call it a day!
It’s really convenient and easy that all the most powerful people in this country have public schools to dump every problem on- works out well for them.
That is what people like Gates count on. They buy the people at the top to impose devastating rules on public schools. We have seen this same MO for years, and we are tired of Democrats selling out public education.
Retired My guess is, and drawing from some early Bill-Gates quotations, they also build up straw people (like Diane) and ideas (like their own experience is the ONLY experience) in their thinking.
It’s a well-built interior ideological wall against which we can all sling our criticisms, but which is not in listening mode . . . it’s strong, tall, and resistant to the change that might come from that listening.
Those who want to keep public education, for instance, are just resistant to change . . . echo, echo, echo, echo . . . .CBK
In addition to fixing gun violence, income inequality and drug abuse, public schools are now also responsible for fixing homelessness and immigration policy.
What would this country do without public school systems to blame every problem on?
I don’t know- just seems really convenient to me. Works out well for them.
Well, they got the tests.
Now they can all get to work blaming public schools for not fixing the aftermath of the pandemic. Is it smart to let pols dodge accountability like this? I recognize public schools are the designated failures in this bad relationship, but shouldn’t someone else take SOME responsibility for 50 million American children?
So far we have schools mandated to administer the tests, students mandated to take the tests and…what’s the job for the Biden Administration, again? It’s their job to scold the schools?
Chiara I think it was the same thing with Obama–the echo chamber is just too big and well-funded, and the problem too nuanced for a quick understanding of it. By the time they get to the presidency, . . . . Again, where is Jill in this? CBK
Well, that list certainly is a hall of infamy.
The ideas and $$ that drove education policy since Reagan are still in place.
Joe Biden did promise his donors that “nothing would change.”
And here we are: $1.7 billion to spend on testing that could have been earmarked for HVAC upgrades, etc., instead of being funneled into the pockets of Pearson.
You should feel sorry for Pearson. The former CEO, John Fallon, he damn near destroyed that company. They are a shell of what they once were. John will be lucky if he ever woks again. Pearson was the 800lb gorilla, now they’re like the 8lb gorilla. But they are still in the standardized testing business in the US. I do find it interesting, the disdain for these big publishing and edtech companies. They don’t hold a gun to anyone’s head to buy their wares. Why not any disdain for the folks within these education institution that make the decision to buy their wares?
NoReformNeeded: please see my reply below under general comments (for more margin space)
Might this heartless push for spring testing be to gather baseline data that will likely be unusually low in order to make it easier to “show improvement” later thereby maximizing investor returns in future “pay-for-success” schemes? Disheartening, discouraging times.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/harnessing-private-capital-for-social-good-pay-for-success-to-build-back-better/
That thought occurred to me but it seems heartless.
Heartless does not matter. The low performance would boost the return on investment for the growing number of pay for success programs, with marketing strategies of Heckman and Stanford.
Omigosh, where has there been “heart?”
Haven’t seen any shown to public ed. for a loooooonnnng time…
(1974, P.L. 94-142)
We are in a nation in which 73 million people voted for Donald Trump. Many of them believe he actually won the election. More than 80 million voted for Joe Biden. Try teaching them that Bill Gates is not an expert regarding education. It is a tall order….a big head start is the number of teachers who realize that he is not.
I can tell you that of those 73 million who voted for Trump, there were many QAnon freaks…..and they hate Bill Gates with a passion. Q should maybe drop a Qdrop (on Parler) to the masses about Billy Boy Gates and his dealings in public education. I think these kooks would be happy to join in the Opt-out/Refuse movement.
& they’re the ones who will be even angrier, using ballots (rather than bullets) to turn the U.S. Congress red again.
Just like when Obama was president.
By the way……how much press coverage is being given to DeBlasio ordering an investigation of Cuomo regarding sexual harrassment? Too much, not enough, about right…….my uninformed gut feeling is not enough….go ahead and educate me.
Between the sexual harassment and the 15,000 dead in nursing homes (with drastically lower reported numbers), Cuomo should be impeached if not jailed If he were Republican, the Democrats would be demanding it.
Cuomo is a bully. He intimidates people.
He can’t be all that bad. He did promise to be “the champion of charters”.
What do I make of Biden’s “centrist” education moves? Well, Bernie Sanders lost the nomination, is my first thought. And Joe was Veep to Obama and his “Race to the top.” We have a long way to go to cut the cords that entangle our supposedly public schools with private corporations. We just have to keep on keepin’ on, fighting for schools that teach kids how to think, not just memorize for tests. It’s sad, but a step away from Trump and his Republicans who would not only impose more corporate strings, but also more ties to religion.
Being old enough to have taught when schools were freer and unbound by so many corporate tests and shibboleths, I could cry, but that won’t help. Thank you, Diane, for helping us all stay sane, sort of , and together, mostly.
NOT “ civil rights, social justice, disability rights, immigration policy, business, and education organizations”. They are astroturf business special interest groups all.
“The Department must not, as part of its promised state-by-state “flexibility,” grant waivers to states that would allow them to substitute local assessments in place of statewide assessments” [in boldface no less]
The chutzpah of these leeches on the public purse is beyond the pale.
P.S. Rosenblum’s annoncement if anything encouraged local formative assessments. Now getting a sharp corrective leash-yank by owner.
In Ohio, those praising Biden’s testing plan (his sell-out) are Ohio state GOP Sen. Matt Huffman whose first cousin, also a lawmaker, was in the news this summer for racist comments at a congressional hearing. Other praise for the testing edict came from Chad Aldis of the conservative, billionaire-funded Fordham Institute.
Speaking of Ohio, someone was talking about writing Sherrod Brown about this. The same Sherrod Brown who was going to filibuster* with Bernie. & did not. Sorry–this is only one example of Brown posing as a “progressive.” He is not.
*Filibuster–this is why I say “not so fast” about deep-sixing the filibuster. If/when Congress turns red again, Bernie & company won’t have it.
Be careful what you wish for…or what legislation you pass.
The only good things that can be said about Brown are he’s a blue politician from a red state and his demeanor leads one to believe he doesn’t engage in illegal acts.
What a tremendous disappointment. He told thousands of teachers, to our faces, in Pittsburgh, that he wouldn’t do this. Being better than Trump is a low bar indeed, and simply not good enough anymore.
Arthur Goldstein I found myself wondering how that discussion and persuasion went, assuming it was between Biden and Bill, and/or their staff.
Teachers and students are just lazy and don’t want to do the work of accounting for their education? . . . teachers just don’t know the need and value of testing? . . . something like that? Could it possibly be that bad?
If Biden actually promised teachers that he wouldn’t force national testing, I keep wondering: what were the possible arguments that COULD have changed his mind? Some sort of legislative tradeoff? . . . CBK
Really, no one should be surprised by this move.
Joe Biden has a long history of prevaricating, plagiarizing and working for the benefit of big banks at our expense. Corporate Democrats and their donor base got their man – at our expense, again.
Mr. Biden has already been busy raising the figurative middle finger to progressives (the Neera Tanden nomination especially comes to mind).
Now, he’s broadened his aim to do the same to teachers.
And Randi and Lilly have allowed teachers to be Charlie Brown to the Biden’s administration Lucy and the football.
Yet, the two will expect us to be the ground troops when corporatist Kamala Harris runs in 2024.
C’mon, man. I’m tired of this show.
“Being better than Trump is a low bar indeed, and simply not good enough anymore”.
It was good enough a few months ago and is still good enough, now, for me. Lest we forget just what we were dealing with, the past 4 years, culminating in the last 4 months. I won’t rest even close too easy until I start seeing some people (high and low profile) doing serious jail time. Something to send a message, loud and clear.
But, yes, Arthur. Tremendously disappointing. As was Obama’s record in public education. No argument there. At all.
Big money’s got a lot of money and power (present and future) invested in the changes that they’re seeking and forcing down our throats in public education. And, until we see a serious move towards campaign finance reform; Joe and his like are going to be the norm and the ones we’ll have to deal with in this fight. Boycotting Microsoft would be a good idea, too, for one.
What’s particularly galling to me is that you know that the strategists are aware of our lack of choice in the area of legitimate (financially able) candidates. So they’re going to factor that in when making decisions that they know will be unpopular with their base.
No Reform Needed says: “[these big publishing and edtech companies] don’t hold a gun to anyone’s head to buy their wares.”
This makes it sound like school districts are happy shoppers in a giant Walmart of choices. The choices are made for them at the state level where local boards and school admins have long held little to zero voice—where the loudest voice in the room is $lobbyists and $campaign-coffer-stuffers, i.e., ‘big publishing and edtech companies.’
Gail Collins wrote in 2012 on the national influence of TX textbook selection: “The difference is due to size—4.8 million textbook-reading schoolchildren as of 2011—and the peculiarities of its system of government, in which the State Board of Education is selected in elections that are practically devoid of voters, and wealthy donors can chip in unlimited amounts of money to help their favorites win.”
There’s a 2009 study here https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED506523.pdf on longtime trends in textbook selection and the publishing industry. State (as opposed to local) textbook selection is the pattern in the West and Southwest. “The inordinate influence that populous state-level adoption states have on the content of textbooks arises from publishers coordinating development and publication of new textbooks to these states’ adoption cycles in an attempt to increase sales… often referred to as… the ‘Texas effect.’”
Take the two cites together and you see state govt sanctioned corruption influencing the national textbook market. These decisions directly affect what textbooks are available to be purchased nationally at a reasonable price.
Meanwhile, testing. As of 2002, when Congress made $400 million available to develop the annual standardized tests required by NCLB, the ‘usual [textbook-publishing] suspects’ stood ready to divvy it up: “According to an October 2001 report in the industry newsletter Educational Marketer, Harcourt, CTB McGraw-Hill, and Riverside Publishing write 96 percent of the exams administered at the state level. NCS Pearson, meanwhile, is the leading scorer of standardized tests.” Other competitors have entered the fray [notably ETS], but as of this 2015 paper, the picture had not noticeably changed: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23479018?mag=public-schools-private-profit&seq=5#metadata_info_tab_contents (a fun note: the intersection of McGraw-Hill, the Bush family, & the stds movement/ NCLB).
The story of standards and aligned assessments is just a chunk in the continuing story of the privatization of public schools. The effect of privatization follows the usual direction of unregulated capitalism: monopoly, which narrows choice.
What do I make of it?
Not much, it’s what I expected.
I would love to see both the NEA and AFT come out with strong statements followed by some course of action on a promise not kept. Or ads showing how Corporate money is driving the Education agenda. Otherwise we are lambs once again just like under Obama.
I would like to see our unions calling for parents to opt out, especially in states that were mostly on remote.
Basically, I would like to see our dues at work!!
schoolgal If teachers unions are “getting it from both ends,” that is, from the reformers and Washington power brokers, on the one end, and parents and parents’ and community groups on the other, then it seems to me that the below needs to be done:
(1) assertive educational campaign(s) aimed at (a) parents, (b) Washington insiders, and (c) teacher-education programs in higher education that hits hard AND long to dispel the ideas that teachers are non-political slave-chattel to be pushed around by the oligarchic powers-that-be and THEIR political leanings, including the destruction of all-things-public; and that, in fact, teachers are credentialed professionals who work for parents and children in a formal democratic political climate, and do better especially with parent support, smaller classes, a doable curricula AND political power. . . .
(2) build a formal coalition of parents as an in-touch, well-informed voting block (per above SYSTEMATIC campaign) with a BETTER and more powerful lobbying voice . . . at least as long as the present awful situation in Congress remains.
(3) Teacher education programs have to incorporate political and situational awareness into their programs. They didn’t when I was teaching in a masters program, though the issue was always “live” in my classes and integrated in SOME of the curricula. But it seemed to me at the time that, by omission and sometimes by commission, the whole thing was skewed for political ignorance on the part of teachers. CBK
Here ya go CBK (and RBMTK!)
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
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.
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).
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.
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 words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
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.
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.
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.
I think they are our enemies and that we have few powerful allies.
But we do meet up with our friends on an exemplary blog in the very best livingroom on the interwebs.