This morning I posted a blog about Governor Kasich appointing a former football star to the Ohio state board of education.
I got this response from a reader in Michigan:
This is part of a trend I’ve seen here in Michigan – celebrity policy-making. It’s an extension of the traveling shows of Michelle Rhee and Jeb Bush. When Rhee talked to the Michigan legislature last year many legislators seemed in awe. The same thing happened when Jalen Rose, a former University of Michigan basketball star, talked to them about education and the need for more charter schools. He was an expert, I guess, being about to open a charter school in Detrot. His qualifications, other than as a basketball star, we’re that he had attended Detroit Public Schools and he had lots of money.Legislators were posing for pictures with him and getting his autograph. Celebrity policy-making in action.
This comment set me to wondering. Our policymakers say we should be competitive with the nation’s highest-scoring nations on international tests. The College Board ran a full-page ad in major newspapers saying that our education system is “crumbling” because we have lower scores on international tests than other nations and they are beating us.
Can you imagine Finland or Japan or any of the other high-scoring nations handing their kids and their taxpayer dollars off to sports stars? There is a football player in Texas who opened a charter school; needless to say, he has no background as an educator. Tennis star Andre Agassiz has started a chain of charter schools, backed by $500 million from investors.
Does anyone seriously believe that this deregulation and deprofessionalization will improve education and allow us to overtake the top nations?
Have we lost our minds?
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes Diane, we’ve lost our minds.
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My sentiment exactly.
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I’m also starting to believe that we are a step or two away from opening up factory and employee schools. Why not? We had factory towns and stores at the turn of the 20th century. We might as well have employee sposored vocational schools. After all, business and industry keeps complaining about unprepared employees. They might as well teach them. I’m being facetious, but I’m sure the idea has or will be explored in the near future.
Keep up the great work and reporting. As depressing as it is, it needs to be done. What about an examination of DoD schools here and overseas?
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Robert Owen’s school in New Lanark (Scotland) dates back to 1815 or so as does the Institute for the Formation of Character which provided adult education.
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DoD schools prove that when an institution has total control of both family and children, it can get good test scores and good behavior.
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I assume you are being a tad sarcastic in what you are saying here. If not, then is “total control . . . [to] get good test scores and good behavior” what public education should be about?
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It’s like when people cite KIPP and say that poverty doesn’t matter. All KIPP proves is that disadvantaged kids who wants a high-expectations environment will thrive in one. So, it’s not that KIPP (or DOD schools) aren’t worth examining, just don’t ignore the assumptions that underlie them.
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I was wondering if they too were tied to NCLB requirements, what standards or curricula they are they using, and whether they hire TFA’s, Fellows or New Teacher Project teacher projects?
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They don’t seriously believe it will improve anything. But they get a photo-op and some press and they get to rub elbows with the gliterati. How many times do the public schools provide that opportunity? You know, they’re just where the rubber hits the road and how boring is that?! They aren’t rich or famous either. And yes, we’re insane.
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“Does anyone seriously believe that this deregulation and deprofessionalization will improve education and allow us to overtake the top nations?”
No, but I do not see the goal of public education as being “to overtake the top nations”. This plays right into the standardization, bad public school meme. Those comparisons, as you know, are apples to carrots, not even apples to oranges, and are based on the false concept that one can “measure” “student achievement”. Until we counteract that false meme we will be “playing the game” of “competition” vs “cooperation” in trying to be #1. Talk about insanity!
and to answer your last question with a question: Does a wild bear shit in the woods?
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It doesn’t matter if they are celebrities or some unknown, my problem is with “appointed” instead of “elected”.
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I agree. So much for meritocracy and knowing something. It appears that not only do the old rules not apply…but that there are NO rules.
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Style over substance…the American way, I am afraid.
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2 things jumped out at me from the Columbus Dispatch story on this today. First was that Kasich said Jackson would “look good” when walking into school buildings. This is now a requirement for state school board? Additionally, it broke my heart to hear OSU hero Archie Griffin say Jackson was “a leader on and off the field”. Archie, was Jackson a leader before or after a stolen credit card scandal that left him suspended from the team at Ohio State? Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m even surprised by anything coming out of this administration.
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Personally, I think the main goal is to make education so unattractive and unrewarding to current and future teachers (and future labor union members) that soon there will be a REALLY huge teacher shortage. This shortage will be used to justify a call to put all learning online and outsource it to India or some other country with low wage college educated workers willing to facilitate even though they have no true vested interest in the future citizens of our country. The fox has already entered the henhouse via legislation requiring students to take a certain number of courses online in order to graduate that has been passed by several states already.
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Yes, we have lost our minds.
Today I read that two schools near me have been prohibited by the California legislature from issuing ID cards and notebooks color-coded TO REFLECT THE TEST SCORES OF THE STUDENTS. Yes!! The students with the top scores had black ID cards and notebooks. Then came gold for “proficient” and then white for low-performing. These last were made to stand in a separate cafeteria line!!!!!! It’s so difficult to believe that this sort of nonsense is happening in the United States of America.
I do have an idea as to why this sort of thing is happening but I don’t feel comfortable expressing my views in a public way.
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What can you expect from a country whose national chief education officer is a former minor league basketball player. Arne Duncan never taught in any public school in his life…yet he’s the nations highest ranking “educator.”
Can you imagine a former athlete who never practiced law as Attorney General? How about a former athlete who never practiced medicine as Surgeon General?
And just FYI…there is at least one former public school teacher in the President’s Cabinet. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood used to teach HS Social Studies. Go figure…
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And let’s not forget the charter schools who tap Celebrity spokespersons to promote their schools. Mavericks (owned by VP’s brother, Frank Biden) in Florida contracted with Miami Heat basketball player Dwayne Wade in 2009-2010 to promote their schools at reported contract rate of $1M. (There must be a lot of profit running, at that time, 2 small charter schools, to be able to sign a $1M celebrity spokesman’s contract.)
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2011/11/joe_bidens_brother_promotes_charter_schools_mavericks.php
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I should add, too, that when ousted DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee spoke before the Florida Senate on Merit Pay and ending Teacher Tenure, she was introduced as, “the movie star from Waiting for Superman.”
Seriously, she was. And, they all gushed over her.
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Florida is always ahead of the curve when it comes to launching jazzy new ed reforms. Florida appointed ex-NFL Star Boulware to the State Board of Education in 12/2008.
http://www.theledger.com/article/20081208/NEWS/812080195/1003/NEWS00?Title=Ex_NFL_Star_Named_To_Education_Panel
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Merit Pay…. I am given kids in a 9th grade math class (Algebra 1) with a 4th grade math level and previous low test scores. Merit Pay? They are 5 grades below grade level. Seriously, they don’t know that 3/6 is the same as 1/2. People make me laugh when they want to introduce Merit Pay.
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Merit Pay…. I am given kids in a 9th grade math class (Algebra 1) with a 4th grade math level and previous low test scores. Merit Pay? They are 5 grades below grade level. Seriously, they don’t know that 3/6 is the same as 1/2. People make me laugh when they want to introduce Merit Pay.
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