Condoleeza Rice asserted in her speech to the Republican National Convention that education is the civil rights issue of our day. And the solution–music to GOP ears–is school choice. This echoes the findings of a report issued by a task force she co-chaired with Joel Klein, which said that US public education is a very grave threat to national security. (See my review of that report here.) And the solution: charters, vouchers, and the Common Core.
Rice was echoing Mitt Romney, who said in May that “education is the civil rights issue of our era” and the answer was school choice, including private and religious schools.
And Arne Duncan too has said that “education is the civil rights issue of our generation…”
This is quickly turning into one of those cliches that speakers trot out for every occasion. The only thing new is that it is now the battle-cry of the rightwing, who until now were not known as civil rights leaders.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear someone say that “eliminating poverty in America is the civil rights issue of our day?” Since poverty is the single most reliable predictor of poor performance in school, poor health, poor attendance, dropping out, and almost every negative indicator, wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear some of the politicians addressing the root cause of inequality?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But we’re responsible for eliminating poverty……(sarcasm)
It’s funny how she touted the typical solutions like Common Core while Rick Santorum (or maybe someone else in primetime) bashed national standards and federal control on Tuesday.
Rice was just restating the conclusions of the report she co-authored with Klein, bashing public education and basically anticipating the Romney privatization agenda
Civil rights are the civil rights issue of our day. One of the basic questions therein is whether a quality public education – like the one “guaranteed” under the NJ Constitution – is a federally protected civil right.
“GOP platform’s contempt for public education” by Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/gop-platforms-contempt-for-public-education/2012/08/29/b8e83a96-f16d-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_blog.html
“Poverty is not just income… Poverty is also debt… [It] is a sense of powerlessness, [and it] is relative… Hungry children cannot concentrate and cannot learn… Most schools offer teachers no tools to help families get food stamps or housing subsidies or other benefits to which they may be entitled… The more we invest in children, the less we will have to invest later in prisons…” (Shipler, David K. “Connecting the Dots.” Ending Poverty in America. Ed. Edwards, John, Marion Crain and Arne L. Kalleberg. New York: Norton, 2007. 13-22).
Yes especially for Emergent bilingual students. It’s Deja Vu all over again!
Until the charter/private/faith-based schools compete for top teaching talent, their efforts to convince the public that they are serious should be questioned. Education’s critics talk about the need to have top teaching talent in front of students, yet I have never seen a charter/private/faith-based school try to market the talent of its teachers. Follow the money; this is theft from America’s next generation.
Other than the explicit support of vouchers, I honestly cannot distinguish between the GOP and the current admin. when it comes to education.
Too true.
This has been the overarching theme of the week: And even Chris Matthews figured it out, although in an idiotic way, last night: “Hey: Here’s where we can have some bipartisanship–on the education issue!” Well, duh! On Education, Obama is a right-wing republican.
Did anybody else see the MSNBC commentators’ reactions to Jeb Bush’s speech?
When Jesse Jackson, Jr. proposed a constitutional amendment to make a free, public, quality education a civil right for all citizens in 2009, he did not receive any co-sponsors. Could it be that JJJ sees a different solution to inequality than Dr. Rice and her “deformers”?
Diane, Paul Thomas, and others have enlightened me. I previously would have thought Rice’s comments would bring good to public education by attracting more attention to our schools. However, I now embrace this mantra:
Reforming public education does little to reduce poverty. Reducing poverty does lots to reform public education.
I recently wrote my district what others have known but I just learned from Thomas’ book, Ignoring Poverty in the U.S. http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Ignoring-Poverty-in-the-US
Public Education’s Eight Ball: Student Poverty
http://oneteachersperspective.blogspot.com/2012/08/public-educations-eight-ball-student.html
This has nothing to do with improving civil rights. How can it? An important aim of privatization is the elimination of teaching positions, tenure and seniority and other benefits.
School districts fire thousands of teachers, including many of color who are raising families in mostly minority neighborhoods.
The economic crisis Walls Street created chasing the housing bubble has especially hurt these neighborhoods, their schools and their students.
The education market is the current bubble.
For Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Pearson, and K-12 Inc., among others, there is great support for a scalable, national market — which CommonCore standards created.
Local billionaires support privatization because there is room for them to make money on real estate deals involving charter schools and on investments in publicly traded charter management operators.
Improving civil rights? No, increasing segregation of races, religions and income classes. Public Money going to help those who set up separate but unequal schools. Getting our children away from “poverty” children & others we don’t want to expose them to in a fake world.
My point exactly, sandyman1946. See my comments to Carrie
It can if we combine a constitutional amendment with some of the language of the 14th amendment. We could cover poverty and educational inequities.
And just think of the money and lives that will be saved if we eliminate the 25% child poverty rate. Life would be so much more enjoyable for all. Now that is a civil right that should be our society’s goal.
This reform mess just re-directs attention away from societal ills. Clever move.
Continuing in the “Everything they say is a lie,” vein, the hostile takeover of public education (mendaciously called “education reform,” just as the elimination of Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1996 under Clinton was called “welfare reform”) is predicated on disenfranchisement.
Urban school systems have been the beachhead for privatizing public education nationally, which in almost every instance has taken place after the removal of publicly-elected school boards, and the imposition of mayoral or state control of the schools.
Just as “War is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength,” so too is the elimination of democratically-run public schools, and their being handed over to private equity and venture capital funds, “The Civil Rights Movement of Our Time.”
Michael, you could come up with quite a nice translation of reform rhetoric, as when a bill to privatize public education is titled “The Student Success Act.” Naming something doesn’t make it so. Saying something doesn’t make it so. I can’t quite nail this down. There is a conscious effort to deceive the public about what is happening, like calling vouchers “opportunity scholarships.” Might as well rename spinach: Call it ice cream.
Yes, Diane, and thanks for your reply and all your important work.
We could certainly use “A Devil’s Dictionary” of so-called school reform, or a professionally-produced T-chart showing parents and teachers “What Reformers Say” vs. “What Reformers Do.”
reformers say “your zip code should not be your destiny,” but no one wants that to happen. as long as we ignore poverty and racial segregation, zip code will continue to be destiny saying something is not the same as doing something about it
Diane, I commented earlier asking for your help To organize a campaign for us to email the White House about our concerns for addressing poverty as the root of the problem instead of blaming public education.
If you could help organize a write in campaign with a link on your blog, I know we can come together as a group to change the tone of the conversation. We need your help to take over their deform rhetoric and lead the offense instead of being on the defensive. We need a leader to help us organize. I have been told by someone whose opinion I respect, that we just complain and don’t really do anything to help ourselves. Help us to actually do something. Thank you for everything you have done so far.
Bridget
Bridget, you could start here: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/23/your-homework-berliner-on-education-and-inequality/
Thanks Diane, I did read that and already bookmarked it for future reference. What I really was requesting is a link for your readers to actually contact the White House, if possible. I think if we send out mass emails as a group, maybe they will understand that there are many ofus, we have a voice, and won’t be silenced. I feel that you’re the perfect leader to help organize us. I was hoping that you could help organize our voice beyond this wonderful blog, to a place where our government will hear us. I feel helpless. I want our voice to be heard, and I was hoping you could help us get our message out there, and speak as a group. Thanks.
David Berliner is one of us. He writes, comments, researches, but he too is like us, all good substantial and researched rhetoric, but no action. It does not contribute to our scholarly reputation.
That’s harsh. A struggle needs facts, evidence, logic, and Berliner provides it.
Diana:
I can sometimes be too hard on us because we are being overtaken by money, will, action, and the press. We need all that you say, but we have them.
We don’t have the money or the political power. Our job is to let the public know what is being done to their children, their schools and their communities.
The accumulated failures of the reformers must be revealed.
Diane
Love you and your work. We do have the “souls”. They represent political power. Chicago Teachers Union will bring Chicago Public Schools back to reality because they have the organization that just keeps growing. Our mayor has stepped in openly because of what he perceives will be transformed into political power, power to get an elected school board which will take “opt” him out.
Keep it going!
Diane
Bridget, your acquaintance whose opinion you respect is exactly right, but we do know how to blog, tweet, respond to blogs and tweets, as long as ours is rhetoric. We don’t put our rhetoric where our children live.
“There is a conscious effort to deceive the public about what is happening, I can’t quite nail this down”
It’s the American Way, marketing and advertising, creating demand through misleading but not totally false statements.
Bottled water is “purer, more natural” than tap water, when in fact that bottled water was taken from a tap and maybe processed through a de-ionization device and then had salt added to “improve” the flavor, but it’s still “pure and natural”. And we’re going to charge you an arm and a leg for that bottled water.
From: http://www.mytwodollars.com/2010/08/06/cost-of-bottled-water-vs-tap-water/ : “Approximately 40% of all water in bottles sold in the U.S. is just filtered water straight from the tap, which is exactly the same thing you can do at home for only a fraction of the cost. Filtering your own drinking water at home costs a little more than $0.002 per gallon, compared to the $0.89 – $8.26 per gallon that you pay for the same filtered water in plastic bottles. According to a Fast Company article, if the water we use at home cost even what the cheapest bottled stuff costs, our MONTHLY water bill would be around $9,000.”
Marketing and advertising, the ability to dance around falsehoods making them appear to be truths. (And I kid my daughter that she got a degree in lying-marketing. “Oh dad, don’t say that”, “Sorry, Darcy but I gotta tell you how it is”. And she actually had a course in business ethics-I’d like to have seen that syllabus.)
Diane, it is and will increasingly be the most important issue in the 21st Century. This is a result of burying ourselves in numbers without grasping their fullest meaning. Yesterday, I listened to our Minister of Education applaud Alberta’s position in as the one of the top 6 six educational systems in the world according to APEC results. What he did not acknowledge was the 27% of students who never finish school in our province, which is the wealthiest in Canada and perhaps in North America. He did not disaggregate and acknowledge their are issues in indigenous communities and in our inner cities. He took one number as superior to all others and created a narrative that is much more palatable.
Ivon
Prof. D has it exactly right–“Poverty is the Civil Rights Issue of Today.” Spread it around, argue for it, show the reams of data, help it go viral.
Diane, can you post link here so we can all send a clear message to the white house and our president restating all the comments here. Maybe if we all stand together we might begin to change the conversation to force them to acknowledge that poverty truly is the root of the problem. We need your help here to organize this.
Irashor, poverty is not the only indicator of inequality in educational performance. so is color. Civil rights, yes.
Inequalities exist for children who stray from the norm in any way, whether their parents were born in another country or on the “wrong” side of town. If they speak a different language, have a disability or just can’t sit still for the test-driven instruction, the road to that high school diploma is filled with obstacles that come from our own reluctance to embrace change.
I love your response, but I am not quite and wish we could all have a round table discussion.But I am not sure I know what you mean by children who stray from the norm. The examples you give are the children who are victims of the inequalities
Dr King, who died in support of a public workers strike, would weep. At a time that the Black community is being devastated economically–including its middle class who were especially hurt by the housing bust and who make up a disproportionate number of civil service/government employees–not to mention the impact of the imprisoning of so many black men (and women), or the effort to reduce the African-America voting strength. Shameful use of a noble cause.
Universal health care should also be the civil rights issue of our day but the right wingers vehemently oppose universal health care, they call it socialism or Marxism-Leninism. Then they claim that having health care is not a right, it’s not in the Constitution, they contend that health care is a privilege. Free universal public education for all American children is a civil rights issue but not in the sense that the school reformers intend.
I don’t believe the right to a free and public education is in the Constitution either. I wonder if they consider public education socialism as well?
There’s no mention of education anywhere in the Constitution. They refer to our schools as “government schools”.
The Constitution of New Jersey provides that:
(TAXATION AND FINANCE), SECTION IV, PARAGRAPH 1. The Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all the children in the State between the ages of five and eighteen years.
Not that Governor Sammiches or the NJ courts have done much with it. Don’t know what other state constitutions may provide.
Yes, they do consider public education as socialistic. And as Mark C. and JDM point out, no there is nothing in the federal constitution about public education, but each state’s constitution definitely defines the right to a free and appropriate education for all. For, example in Missouri: Article IX, subsection 1a: “A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, the general assembly shall establish and maintain free public schools for the gratuitous instruction of all persons in this state within ages not in excess of twenty-one years as prescribed by law.”
I watched the RNC on CBS last night. Ms. Rice had been speaking to the delegates for several minutes before CBS went to her. When they did, the first thing you heard her talking about was the failing condition the the country’s public schools. I wonder, was that a planned time to start sharing her comments to the t.v. viewers? It disgusted me.
CBS, the network proud to bring you the Teacher’s Rock special a few weeks ago. Coincidence, I think not.
To the War on Democracy, the War on Education, and the War on Science, we must now add the War on the English Language — all being prosecuted by these Right Wing Corporate Warriors.
There is no perversion of language they cannot warp their forkèd tongues around.