What would education policy look like in a Mitt Romney administration?
As the saying goes, people are policy. Romney’s list of campaign advisers was released this week and it is a re-run of the George W. Bush administration.
There is Rod Paige, Nina Rees, Bill Hansen, Russ Whitehurst, Bill Evers, Carol D’Amico, and possibly others who were high-level Bush II appointees. Margaret Spellings has also advised Romney but is not on this task force. There are representatives of big corporations, and there is a state superintendent (Tom Luna of Idaho) known for his love of online learning (and getting campaign contributions from providers of same). There are also conservative policy academics, such as Paul Peterson, Herbert Walberg, Robert Costrell, and John Chubb.
There was a time when I would have been on the same side with these like-minded folks. But I am no longer like-minded. What I can bring to the table, however, is that I know their policies and ideas well because I once shared them.
Their core beliefs are school choice, testing and accountability. These were the hallmarks of No Child Left Behind, as they are now the foundation for Race to the Top. So a new Romney administration would seek to advance vouchers, charters, online learning, and test-based accountability. But because Republicans don’t like to be perceived as proponents of federal control, they would seek to minimize the heavy hand of the Department of Education, or at least the perception of control by D.C.
The advisers share a belief in free markets and entrepreneurship, so they will advocate for policies that increase the market share of for-profit corporations and online companies in the “education industry.”
Alyson Klein of Education Week obtained a copy of the talking points for the Romney education policy, which clearly describes what to expect.
The basic idea is that parents make choices armed with information. The information will be derived from test scores, school report cards, and other measures. Testing will be as important, possibly even more consequential (if that is possible), than it is today.
Once parents make choices, then federal dollars follow the child. This concept is meant to enable Title I dollars and other federal aid to support vouchers, charters, tutoring companies, online corporations, and any other education providers.
On teacher quality issues, a Romney administration will follow the lead of Race to the Top and offer money to incentivize states to reward and retain teachers whose students get higher test scores and to ditch teachers’ seniority and tenure.
The administration will oppose “unnecessary” certification requirements, which means that it is unlikely to support teacher certification of any kind. Conservatives don’t believe that teachers need credentials, just the ability to produce higher test scores. Expect a wave of ill-trained new teachers who got their degree online, continuing support for Teach for America (again in the footsteps of Race to the Top), and encouragement of any who want to try their hand as teachers for a few years. Back to the good old days when anyone could teach.
The unions are the perpetual bad guys in the talking points memo, and no door in the Romney administration will ever be open to them. This will quicken the heartbeat of conservative activists. Expect support from this administration for any state that wants to roll back collective bargaining.
In higher education, expect no federal efforts to help students pay for college.
Anticipate a return to private sector management of student loans, which the Obama administration ditched as wasteful. Bill Hansen was once a lobbyist for the private sector lenders.
The talking points memo blasts Obama for not controlling the costs of higher education but offers no plan for doing so. Expect that online higher education, which is cheap, profitable and low quality, will get a boost in the Romney administration as a means to make college affordable.
What we see in this memo is what the architects of NCLB wished they could have proposed: Not only tough accountability but unlimited school choice. Back in 2001, the Democrats forced the Republicans to give up their choice goals. But Race to the Top paved the way for charters and for-profit entrepreneurs.
NCLB established the test-based accountability agenda. Race to the Top built on NCLB’s accountability agenda and required states to expand charters if they wanted a chunk of the $5 billion in discretionary funding. Now the Romney advisers are building on the Race to the Top agenda of choice & accountability.
What’s missing in the Romney agenda is any reference to early childhood education, which is research-based; no reference to asking Congress to pay the long-promised share of the costs of special education; nothing about equity issues; nothing about professional preparation or professional development (which gets entangled with credentials, which the task force opposes). All of these issues–and others–will be left to the workings of the free market, which is not known for producing equality of educational opportunity.
Most consequentially, there is not a word of support for America’s public schools. Not one.
Diane
It’s quite depressing how Obama’s agenda has so much in common with Romney’s.
I agree with Jason. There’s no way to soften it, either. Obama’s public education record is a hip hop flop. Whereas a Mitt Romney’s is all but bound to be a flip flop rebop.
My flip flop rebop to Jason’s comment is: It’s quite depressing how much Romney’s agenda has in common with Obama’s agenda! “Birds of the same feathers stick together.” Or something like that!
I teach my students why one-party states are essentially dictatorships. Honestly, we don’t really even have two distinct political parties. So we end up with educational and fiscal policies coming from the Democrats and the Republicans that are awfully close — one that’s center-right (Obama) and another that’s extreme right (Romney). That’s not democratic.
One will have to be a great detective in order to actually find any differences between the failing ideas that Obama has pushed – against any credible data and the will of the people – and how Romney is planing to deal with education. Across the board they are inseparable twins. Both on the pro business – crony capitalism path that guarantees the distraction of public education while transferring wealth into few radical hands.
As a matter of fact they are both just a link in a long chain. Obama turned into another W Bush, but seemed to be somewhat more pro business.There is no reason to believe that Romney will be any different. Both support privatization of education, social security and healthcare – the little that is still run publicly. Both don’t see a problem with endless costly wars, Romney might even feel very comfortable to continue ‘No Child Left Behind the Race to the Top’ , he can just maintain Obama’s unions dismemberment behavior, keep the tax cut to the rich. He can follow Obama’s idea of healthcare fully given to for profit unaccountable tyrannies, which was Romney’s idea from the first place.Though if one looks carefully one might find the Obama’s cut of corporate tax will be lesser then Romney’s.
Obama and Romney are both being payed by Wall Street and other big corporations, -Obama actually got more money from ‘Bain Capital’s’ employees, Mr Romney’s former parasitic company. Therefore there should be no real reason to believe that they will be tempted to represent the American people.
We are facing a Soviet style one party system. The “choice” is between two wings of a single party – one represents the right pro business, and the other the extreme right pro business. That is the reason why their campaign is based on the candidates personalities rather then on policies, I suppose even the PR industry couldn’t find a real difference to point out for us.
Certainly see no public in public education!
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Gov. Mitt Romney was quoted as saying that he pledges to expand the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program and have it serve as a national model. I just checked the program started in 2004 and the academic results show no gain in reading and math. There was some advancement in the graduation rate, but …”about 22 percent of students awarded a voucher and still eligible to use one after 4 years or 5 years never used it to attend a private school.” Were these students counted in the advanced graduation rate? The rate of graduation does not show that these students gained academically. Is this not one major purpose of education?
Why spend billions of dollars on a program that shows no academic gain in reading and math? Gov. Mitt Romney has surrounded himself with educational advisors that most informed Americans oppose. The only ones who stand to gain from restructuring education are the large corporations and vested interest groups. Education is the number one industry now in the USA. His and Obama’s proposals are just a carry over from the movement that started years ago. Taxpayers pay, and the rich get richer while the children and teachers continue to be used as the pawns.
Some small peons in the pool have started their own cottage industry with charter schools. Legislators, Mayors, former State Superintendents of Public Instruction (two in Arizona) are involved with this travesty. Have they no shame? These private corporations, groups, foundations and etc., have no accountability to the people. They actually destroy representative government at the local level i. e. elected school boards. Plus millions of dollars are used to promote their hoax. Unfortunately, many parents, religious, and private schools, and citizens have bought their expensive clever propoganda. The “snake-oil” peddlers of old comes to mind!
The irony is that the Obama and Romney administrations both ignore desegregation, which was the last time we actually pushed for an integrated, community-based youth development. “Choice” began as a ruse to preserve segregated schools, then was transformed – by Ravitch and others – into a “market” based model. Public schools were founded by 19th century reformers to integrate immigrants and other newcomers, not to deliver a concise or weighty “body of knowledge.” Integration – helping people find the resources of … other people’s insights, knowledge, skills, and cultures – is the heart of why education is public in the first place. All the rest is of secondary consequence, and, frankly, does not merit public funding.
Skills training for high tech jobs should be paid by the employers. Ultimately, they are the ones now forcing their own employees to finance that investment and pay for it out of salaries, yet it’s totally unclear whether, devalued by high rate college loans, those salaries are worth that investment.
Believe it or not,Joe, I was never a leader of the choice movement. I have always advocated for a rich curriculum for all children. Then and now.
Glad to be corrected. I thought you were one of the early leaders of Charter options. Ironically, I don’t know if you know of the American Federation of Teachers’ early support for Pilot schools, even before Charters were fully developed, which offered much the same range of “choice” but adhered closely to the desegregated models of most urban systems where the AFT was strong.
I testified for charter schools in Albany in 1998. I was hopeful. I was wrong.
Some of the Charters are actually pretty good – I spent some time with New Tech in Napa, and know the folk at High Tech in Southern California, at about that same time. If anything, it may be the resistance of teachers in general to the kind of peer support new technology offers that has kept their influence to a minimum. It’s too bad, because there are some situations where Charters could, could have been, or once were the equivalent of Lab Schools, where others could come and look and then adapt and test new methods, curriculum, organizational ideas, scheduling, etc. It’s now so rare that, as a general principle, that also will probably evaporate.
[…] Diane Ravitch’s argument on her blog appeared to be that a Romney administration would be far, far worse than a second Obama presidency, due primarily to Romney’s stated positions and his recent […]
I find it most interesting that former Governor Mitt Romney released his advisors names for education, but for no other cabinet that I have been able to find. Did I overlook something? What about Labor? What about Transportation? What about foreign affairs? What about all the other important departments in the USA government? What about Vice-President, since he seems to have the nomination lined up? I could go on and on with these questions, but just think about why he came out with his “identical” plan that our present president has for education. Does this have something to do with corporate financial and voting support? Does this have something to do with the government supporting training for the “global workforce”? Something like cheap child labor that we saw in China?
Corporate Charter Schools certainly make a great deal of money off the taxpayers in every state, plus the local taxpayers. They also destroy representative government. Corporations and Foundations like the Gates have no responsibility to the citizens. In other words citizens can not hold them responsible for failure.
Why then, would American citizens turn over our most pecious heritage, our children, to groups that can not be held responsible to anyone, apparently? Experimentation like the “mad scientist” invention with putting sensors on children and possible teachers comes to mind. It was interesting to note that the Gates persons responding to Diana’s blog denied that the experiment was to be used on teacher, but they did not deny that it would be used on children. I read their propoganda web and it most certainly did state children and “teachers”. Do they lie to the public? Just who gave these people permission to use this on citizens? What damage could it do to children? What damage could it do to a free nation? What damage could it do to individual privacy? Who keep the data records? For what purpose is this being done? Is this another money making scheme like unproven computer education programs?
Also, the consorted effort to descredit our teachers smells of fraud and graft! The consored effort to destroy the people’s tax supported schools smell of fraud and graft!
In about 1953 Congress hired Norman Gather, a Wall’s street banker, to investigate the tax-exempt foundations, and what he found was most startling. It is also known as the Reese Report and may be found on line…just goggle it! It is time for another investigation into foundations and charter schools in the USA. This whole thing is not logical, and should never happen in a free society!
Now its Ryan and Romney promoting free market practices in public schools. A teacher from Paul Ryan’s hometown’s take on Ryan’s ideology.
http://oneteachersperspective.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-tale-of-two-janesvillians-paul-ryan-me.html
Thank you for that. I will post it in a few days.
Well, here we are two or three months later with still no information regarding what the presidental candidates intend to do with the people’s tax supported schools except to turn them over to private groups…apparently from all indications. We do not hear one word about privatizing destroying representative government.
The quest continues against teachers and unions as though individual teachers and unions do not have the right to compete and bargain like any other individual or group in the USA.
Let us remind the destroyers that “the right to compete, and the right to bargain is just as necesary for freedom as freedom of speech or any other Constitutonal right. This right is not limited to any group, foundation or corporation.” Every American has the Constitutional right to compete and bargain whether as an individual or in a union. These destroyers of education and constitutional rights should study the positive history of unions in building our nation. It is though the destroyers are void of any knowledge of American History re unions, teachers, or the role that public
education played in developing our democratic society. It is being destroyed through ignorance or greed.