I wrote a post about the attacks on teachers, which got some interesting responses.
Reader A wrote:
This has absolutely nothing to do with teacher quality. This has everything to do with:
1. Destroying unions;
2. Destroying public education;
3. Hijacking tax funding for education to for-profit corporations;
4. Control of the public to perpetuate the 1%.
But Bill and Arne won’t say that in public.
Reader B replied:
@mooseinsquirrels: In attacking the problem, it’s important to outline the ultimate motives of those who’d destroy unions, etc. Otherwise, it sounds as if teachers see themselves as the primary victims. My hope is that we can refine our rhetoric in a way that makes plain the stakes for society generally.
Some in the 1% do see a big money pie of which they’d gladly enjoy a slice. But destroying unions and demeaning the profession are primarily steps in the industrialization of education. Students are raw materials, teachers are workers on the assembly line and computers are robots. Efficient manufacture demands standardized tools, techniques and outputs. Unions create friction and therefore must be eliminated.
Degradation, not destruction, is the likely outcome for public education. The system will be partially privatized, but others will profit as contractors with what remains of the public system. Just as KIPP will never accept Diane’s challenge to take over an entire system, the smarter education entrepreneurs will avoid taking over the entire system when they peel off some kids, generate feel-good numbers, and collect a profit.
Ultimately, we must convince parents in all classes that 1) education is best when it draws out the talents and passions of children, and 2) the industrialization of schooling has the effect (and perhaps the design) of squelching them.
@lets_be_reasonable: Your analysis tacitly accepts the industrialization of education metaphor. Teacher quality is measured by product quality which is measured by how much someone will pay for it. I propose we rehumanize the product and reject any value-added metric. It’s sickening.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There’s a difference between attacks on teachers and attacks on unions. Union all too often doesn’t defend teachers from political attacks – esp see Lamphere and Portelos. Right wants to destroy unions while Democrats need unions for support but also attack teachers. Randi is perfect union ldr for Dems so why would they want to destroy them?
Cheers,
Norm Scott
Twitter: normscott1
Education Notes
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Grassroots Education Movement
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Education columnist, The Wave
http://www.rockawave.com
nycfirst robotics
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And they will pursue their privatization agenda by any means necessary.
Just a few weeks ago Pennsylvania Governor Corbett’s Education Secretary Ron Tomalis was dismissing charges that the drop in last year’s PSSA scores had anything to do with Corbett’s cutting $1 billion in state funding for education last year. He claimed the drop was solely due to tighter security to prevent cheating.
The Allentown, Pa. paper The Morning Call has discovered that Tomalis was doing his own cheating. His Education Department changed the PSSA testing rules in a way to make it easier for charter schools to make federal benchmarks.
Reading this article it is clear there is massive manipulation of test score data going on to get results that fit a predetermined political agenda.
See:
State changed PSSA testing rules for charter schools without federal approval
Rules change appears to have inflated success rate of some charter schools.
from the Lehigh Valley’s The Morning Call
“Gov. Tom Corbett’s education chief changed the PSSA testing rules in a way that makes it easier for charter schools to meet federal benchmarks than traditional public schools. Education Secretary Ron Tomalis’ change, made without federal approval, might have skewed the results of the 2011-12 PSSA scores to make it appear charter schools were outperforming traditional public schools, according to a Morning Call review of publicly available test score data.”
And later in the article:
“Stuart Knade, chief legal counsel for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, said he found Tomalis’ unannounced charter-school change troubling. He said his organization has been looking at the charter school results too and has come to conclusions similar to those of The Morning Call.
He said parents shopping for a school for their children might think a charter school is performing better than their neighborhood school when it’s not.
Knade also said the change might give the Legislature the false impression that charter schools outperform traditional public schools as they consider bills supported by Corbett to expand the number of charter schools and change how they are authorized in Pennsylvania.
“The General Assembly needs to ask what is real and why are we being fed this kind of facade,” Knade said.”
http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-pa-charter-tomalis-ayp-20121005,0,2267486,full.story
I think Reader A and Reader B are just describing different features of the same elephant (or perhaps even the same feature from different angles). To see the whole elephant, you have to read “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein. The privatization/industrialization of education is only one battle in the vulture capitalism war.
While I agree that much of the charter school reform efforts are misguided and based on flimsy evidence, I think progressive educators, including Diane’s blog, are too quick to dismiss their intentions and many of the positive things that do come from the entrepreneurial approach to education. I’ve run private, public magnet, international schools and now lead the turnaround efforts in Puerto Rico. I’ve worked as a consultant for charter and international schools. In these experiences I’ve encountered passionate, committed, selfless educators on both sides of the aisle; and sadly, many mediocre, careless, incompetent, even idiotic “educators” in all corners. I can’t honestly question the intentions of most of the charter reformers, and if anything I find them hardworking, thoughtful risk takers who are often sacrificing much more lucrative careers to make a difference in the lives of children. Many practices stemming from charter school management, building aesthetcs and interior design, scheduling, customer service, parent communications, marketing and instructional practices are worth adopting in public schools. While I too worry about the corporate takeover of public schools, I think the competition is healthy for public schools and a needed wake up call for public school reform. Many schools have been complacent and its almost never healthy to have a monopoly over public schooling. Some of these charter iinitiated changes are symbolic others substantive, but they make difference in how parents and kids perceive their educational experience. Of course charters are not the only vehicle for entrepneurship and innovation, but they sure as hell have upped the ante on all of us. And that’s probably good in the long run.
“…building aesthetcs and interior design….”
So you’d agree that public schools should have a *budget* for such things? Many public schools can’t even afford to fix their leaky roofs or defective heating systems, much less worry about “aesthetics”.
It’s so easy to talk about “competition” as if the playing field were level. Maybe if the playing field had been reasonable all along, we wouldn’t need the competition.
BTW, if you’re going to tout the virtues of “competition”, you should at least show how it has improved education. But study after study shows that charters don’t improve education, even if you rely on their own criterion of test scores.
Is the reader B against grading students in the class? It seems to me that grades can be viewed as a value added metric that must also be dehumanizing.
You would not be entirely wrong. Grades in High School are often a metric for college admission. Teachers did not create the need for grades. I for my part would rather use them as a guide to show older students their strengths and weaknesses, and guide them to pursue their passions by playing to those strengths when possible while developing other academic skills.
But to be a useful guide to students, would not grades have to try to measure the success the student has had in understanding the material presented? A useful guide knows both when a student is lost and when a student has arrived at the next point on the journey. That seems to be a measure of understanding added, if not value added.
I feel that #1 should be PROFIT. Without the teachers union, the labor costs would be less and the profit margins would be increased. Salaries are viewed as a liability not an asset by this group of business people and investors. As we all know it is not about improving the quality of education for our children. The “values of selfishness” are hard at work.