A reader this morning said I should make a clear distinction between what the Republicans and the Democrats say/do about education.
I wish I could.
Race to the Top is no different from No Child Left Behind, other than the timetable.
It shares the same assumptions that testing, choice, and data are the magic keys to the kingdom of 100% proficiency.
The waivers to NCLB are more of the same data-mania.
A reader sent me this survey from Governor Scott Walker’s education department. Testing and data, plus charters and vouchers.
That’s the combination that won a waiver.
Why doesn’t Arne Duncan ever speak out against what is happening in Louisiana? in Tennessee? in Florida? in Ohio? in Indiana?
Why doesn’t Obama?
Why is there no prominent Democratic voice standing up against privatization?
Strange bedfellows.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We have many wonderful Florida Democratic legislators who are speaking out. State Senator Nan Rich, who is running for governor in 2014, has been sounding the alarm everywhere she goes about the corporate takeover of public education.
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Both sides are sharing the spoils of privatizing public education.
Obama needs every vote he can get and will not run the risk of losing his share of the pro charter crowd, he knows he has most of the teacher vote.
Romney now w/ Ryan is looking to destroy public schools altogether and turn them over to the education for corporate profit crowd.
Both sides feign that our school are failing. Those of us on the inside know it’s not true.
Both sides have corporate donors who are benefiting from the phony rhetoric.
It’s up to us to set the record straight. Challenge the critics, jump into the conversation, defend your profession.
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The commonalities between the parties’ policies involve dedication to neoliberalism, which privileges the free market, profit, and privatization. Public entities (such as schools and the postal service) are significant primarily in that they offer possibilities for plunder by wealthy, powerful corporations and their owners.
Sadly, being elected US President today seems to require allegiance to neoliberalism and those who benefit from it. Unions are targeted for obliteration. Schools are collateral damage. And, because corporate media outlets benefit, this concept is repressed. Try to find the word “neoliberal” in a newspaper or magazine.
As a former public school teacher and current teacher educator, I am not ready to give up. But the forces aligned against us are formidable. Thank you, Diane, for helping amplify our voices.
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This is a good explanation:
What is Neoliberalism?
A Brief Definition for Activists
by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376
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The peons are being thrown crumbs again today and the elites are watching them scramble to be the winner in the latest Race to the Top!
“Race To The Top Competition Opens To School Districts For New Grants To Close Achievement Gap” from Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/12/government-opens-competit_0_n_1769172.html?utm_hp_ref=education
They really do see this as a sports competition. In an interview in the Newark Star-Ledger published August 5th,
http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2012/08/arne_duncan_better_education_s.html
Arne Duncan was asked:
Q. How important are the structural reforms, like promoting charter schools, when compared to personnel issues, just finding the best teachers and principals?
A. If you just had a lot of Michael Jordans, structure wouldn’t matter. But we don’t have enough Michael Jordans.
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FIRE DUNCAN! Hire Ravitch!
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I wish someone could explain to me the difference between Barack Obama and the Republicans on a lot of things – from Big Bank bailouts to refusing to hold anybody responsible for the ’08 financial crisis to renominating Ben Bernanke to putting a Treasury Secretary in power who works for Goldman Sachs’ interests first to his willingness to put into place a health care plan that forces people to purchase PRIVATE health insurance, so much of what Barack Obama does could easily be a Bush accomplishment too. Even the health care plan – supposedly the signature “liberal” policy that Obama has promoted – seems an awful lot like a give way to the health insurance companies the way the Bush Medicare drug plan was a giveaway to Big Pharma.
On foreign policy, did you ever think a Democratic president would declare he has the power to decide who lives and who dies? Barack Obama has done this via his “Assassination List,” as reported by the NY Times. Or how about the hundreds of people he has slaughtered every month via his drone bombing campaign in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere? Does that seem a lot like something Richard Nixon would be doing? Or Regan? Or Bush? How about his war on whistleblowers and leakers, as often pointed out by Glen Greenwald at Salon? Doesn’t that also seem like something Nixon would be pursuing? (Except for the “official” leaks Obama sanctions, of course, like the one to the TImes that showcased his Assassination List.”)
It is true that there are differences between Obama and Romney/Ryan or the GOP on the big policies of the day – but they are differences of degree. As David Dayen wrote at Firedoglake, Romney/Ryan want to destroy Medicare and privatize Social Security, Barack Obama is happy to cut Medicare benefits, raise the Social Security age and change the COLA so that benefits are drastically reduced. That’s one example of a policy where they disagree, but the end result isn’t all that different for the vast working and middle classes of this country.
And that’s how I see Obama on every other issue, including education. Slightly better than the alternative, but so slight as to almost not matter much.
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You and me both, R-BE, and I’ve been saying this for a looong time.
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Missing Person Report
Last Seen Wearing ________ Uncomfortable Shoes
Location and Date _________ Spartanburg, South Carolina, 3 Nov 2007
Last Heard Exclaiming, ‘ere he drove out of sight:
“And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America. Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA9KC8SMu3o
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Two points. First, this is exactly why moving accountability for education to higher levels, President, governor, mayor, doesn’t work. a vote for Obama doesn’t necessarily signal approval of his education policies. There are just too many other important issues to consider.
Second, the new thing in evaluation of teachers, schools, and maybe students is “multiple measures.” Apparently that is the answer to criticism of the limitations of test scores. It sounds like a good idea to lookat a variety of factors, but all depends on the implementation Wisconsin is using multiple measures in its new accountability system. But 2/3 of those measures are based on test scores. The rest are for just showing up, called “student engagement” (one way to define engagement I guess), and staying (graduation). Nothing about the quality of the student experience or learning.
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The peons are being thrown crumbs again today and the elites are watching them scramble to be the winner in the latest Race to the Top!
\”Race To The Top Competition Opens To School Districts For New Grants To Close Achievement Gap\” from Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/12/government-opens-competit_0_n_1769172.html?utm_hp_ref=education
They really do see this as a sports competition. In an interview in the Newark Star-Ledger published August 5th,
http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2012/08/arne_duncan_better_education_s.html
Arne Duncan was asked:
Q. How important are the structural reforms, like promoting charter schools, when compared to personnel issues, just finding the best teachers and principals?
A. If you just had a lot of Michael Jordans, structure wouldn’t matter. But we don’t have enough Michael Jordans.
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Dunk Funcan!!!
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I also read this somewhere:
Duncan Go Nuts! LOL
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This represents another reason why I WILL NOT be voting for Obama again. I am sure other teachers feel the same way. Perhaps we should let him know. BTW…this does NOT mean I am voting for Romney either.
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Write in: Diane Ravitch and be done!
Everytime I get an email from the Obama campaign. I respond changing the subject line to either: Duncan has to go or You are running our schools. They probably get deleted but I feel better.
I am not voting for him, either way we are screwed.
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KG,
Did you also vote for Ralph Nader in 2000?
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Somehow teachers need to let Obama know that they are not behind him regarding his stand on education. I also hesitate to vote for Obama because of the way he and Arne Duncan speak about teachers. Teachers were strong supporters of Obama the first time around. Does he know he is losing votes over this? Does he care?
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All of us need to start writing the White House on a regular basis. CNN responded to voices. Maybe it is time to remind our president that teachers vote! I’m sending an email today. Hope others join me.
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Will you post an email address?
I just have the campaign links.
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I haven’t mastered link postings, but if you go to the White House website, there is a contact us section, and you can email directly. Thanks for any help you can give in making this easier for others.
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“Write in: Diane Ravitch and be done!”
Love that! 🙂
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I am an unemployed teacher. Can you imagine what Romney will do to me? Obama is not living up to his sales pitch, but I am afraid that Romney will live up to his.
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Yep, Romney will tell you he is going to slit your throat and proceed to do it, why he’s a man of his words. Whereas Obama will tell you he’s going to brush the dirt off your the back of your shirt and then proceed to stab you in the back to death.
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God bless you, Diane, for you are still in a state of naive idealism. It is NOT strange that there is no real difference between NLCB and Race to the Top. 99.99999% of all officeholders in this country are owned by the same corporate interests, and it is therefore no surprise whatsoever when they promote the same policies.
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“Testing and data, plus charters and vouchers. That’s the combination that won a waiver.”
Add to that TFA and business people steering the bus.
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BTW: Not voting for Obama is a sure-fire way to have Romney and Ryan in the White House. The Dems may be out of line, but the R’s are out to get you and me. Not voting is irresponsible. Consider what a Romney presidency would be like in the current climate and political landscape.
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As i understand it, nclb and rttt are apples and oranges. Nclb was a reauthorization of the 1964 Elementary and Secondary Education Act that tied draconian test goals to programs that had been in place for decades. Rttt is stimulus funding, giving extra funding to schools. They have some areas of overlap but are deeply different. It’s really naive and shortsighted to say that there’s no difference between the two presidential platforms on education. Romney’s platform is all code words for more and more privatizing of education.
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ESEA was passed in 1965, not 1964.
Race to the Top should have been stimulus funding, but it’s not. It funded a competition among states. They could compete only if they agreed to increase the number of privately managed charter schools; if they agreed to judge teachers by the test scores of their students; and if they agreed to impose draconian punishments on low-performing schools, no different from NCLB.
Too bad that RTTT was not stimulus spending.
It vastly expanded federal control over state and local policy, and all of its remedies demand more testing and more high-stakes for teachers and schools.
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Federal documents about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is the stimulus money act, specifically mention rttt as a component of it. I looked at Oregon’s application as one example, and they’re getting new money for things like PD and training more teachers in high-need specializations. I believe there’s a requirement to focus on the lowest-performing schools, but this is nothing like nclb’s mandates that all schools reach above-average scores. Since you’re a historian, I’d expect that you’d factcheck your blog posts more carefully.
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Please read more. States entered a contest for federal funding under the Race to the Top. The entrants were required to show that they were increasing the number of privately managed charter schools; that they were evaluating teachers by test scores of their students; and that they would “turn around” their lowest performing schools by using NCLB-style sanctions (e.g., fire half or all the staff, close the school, turn the school into a charter, hand it over to private management).
That is NOT stimulus money.
Please inform yourself. Read the civil rights groups’ statement opposing Race to the Top in August 2010. Do you think they opposed stimulus money?
No, they wanted the money for early childhood education and to stabilize schools in minority communities, not to use test scores to fire teachers and close the school.
Please read more.
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I thought I’d write one more time. I already read everything, including several of your books. I’m very well informed and didn’t write to disagree with you but to factcheck. I’m continuing the conversation because you’re extremely prominent nationally and it matters what you say.
My point wasn’t a general assessment of RTTT. It was twofold; first, I think it’s very, very different from NCLB. To say they’re the same is liking saying Target and Whole Foods are the same because they both sell cheese. I stand by the points I made in my original post. Second, RTTT is stimulus money, in the sense that it’s part of the 2009 money that Obama pumped into the economy as an economic stimulus. Calling it RTTT was perhaps a framing device to deflect Republican hostility, rather than calling it “giving lots of federal money to education.”
It’s almost impossible to visualize what kind of shape we’d be in if McCain had won, but I’m terrified to think about the consequences of a Romney/Ryan win, particularly since Ryan would be Romney’s Cheney.
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RTTT is NCLB 2.0. NCLB didn’t start the obsession with evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students. RTTT did. VAM was unheard of in most places until RTTT. NCLB didn’t start it RTTT did. The money for RTTT came from the stimulus bill but it has been used to shove standardized testing, merit pay, VAM, privatization, etc. into every state.
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