A reader just raised an interesting question offline.
He lives in New Jersey, where the state constitution requires that the state provide a “thorough and efficient” public education.
New Jersey officials today are doing their best to dismantle and privatize the state’s public education system.
Are they violating their oath of office?
What does it say in other state constitutions where the privatizers are busy dismantling the public system for fun, power, profit and ideology?
Many of us have wondered whether President Obama hears the voices of teachers. Many have wondered whether he understands that educators–not only teachers, but principals and superintendents–despise Race to the Top and see it as a calculated effort to undermine professionalism and advance the privatization agenda. And many have wondered whether the President knows that he may be jeopardizing his re-election by turning off an important part of his base.
I would add to all this wondering that a lot of us will have to swallow hard, forget our passion for education, and vote for Obama. The alternative is too alarming to contemplate.
Mark Naison, who blogs regularly, has written an important column about these issues, which I reprint here:
How to Lose a Close Election
Virtually ever poll now has President Obama and Mitt Romney embroiled in an extremely close race. The President could very well win this election; but he could also lose. And if he does lose, I will have to go back to something I first started saying nearly three years- namely that turning off the nation’s teachers with educational policies which silence their voice, and put them under extreme stress, is not only bad for the nation’s schools, it could cripple the President’s re-election efforts.
Many of you have read some of my blog posts which made this argument, and have seen the “Dump Duncan” petition which I helped to draft which called on the President to remove his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, incorporate the nation’s teachers into Education Policy discussions, and stop requiring schools to ratchet up the number of standardized tests to receive federal funding.
But what you haven’t seen, or known about, is my private efforts to engage people close the president in conversation about teachers disillusionment, efforts which were totally unsuccessful. The President’s inner circle, from what I could gather, refused to bend on support for Race to the Top and Secretary Duncan. They were not only convinced that these policies would end up improving the nation’s schools; they felt that the political gains to be made in terms of support from large funders and influential journalists was far greater than any losses that would occur in terms of teacher enthusiasm, particularly since they knew the largest teachers unions would support the President no matter what policies he chose to implement.
Now, at crunch time, when it’s too late to change course, I can tell you that this judgment was a severe miscalculation. Not only have the President’s policies failed to narrow testing gaps by race and class, they have contributed to teacher morale in the nation to be the lowest it has been since pollsters began measuring this trait. But the political consequences may have been even more serious than the educational ones. Most teachers will probably end up voting for the President, but from what I have seen, in both New York and around the nation, they will not be manning phone banks, canvassing in their neighborhoods, travelling to swing states on the weekends and generally giving time, money and energy to assure the President’s election the way they did in 2008.
Many pundits attribute the Obama victory in 2008 to an incredibly strong “ground game” composed of huge numbers of volunteers, as well as paid staff, working to get out the vote in battleground states. Many of those individuals, including me, my wife, and many of my friends, were teachers, professors and school administrators. During this election, I know of few, if any educators putting in that kind of heroic effort, almost entirely because they are feeling betrayed by the President, indeed, by the entire Democratic Party, on educational issues, even though they support the President’s positions on reproductive freedom, gay rights, taxation and medical care.
There is no way of knowing whether the phenomenon I am describing is will be a “game changer” in this election. But based on what I have seen in 2008 and in this campaign, there is a chance it could be. And if it is, the Obama brain trust has no one to blame but themselves, because they have had ample opportunity to change course, and indeed have been pleased with by many of their supporters to do just that.
Mark Naison
October 22, 2012
Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
“If you Want to Save America’s Public Schools: Replace Secretary of Education Arne Duncan With a Lifetime Educator.” http://dumpduncan.org/
A charter school in Orange County, Florida, closed its doors for the last time in June.
The principal took home a cash payout of more than $500,000 after the school failed.
The local public school board is outraged and says the taxpayers’ money should be returned to the district.
The principal’s customary salary was $305,000, almost triple the $116,000 typically paid to public school principals in the same district.
She is still on partial salary as she helps to close out the school.
As the song goes, “nice work if you can get it…”
I received a tweet tonight that said that one of our faithful readers, and a frequent commenter on this site, whom I knew only as Kathy 1, had died very unexpectedly.
Her name, I learned from the tweet, was Kathy DuPuis.
This was the tweet: “We lost a good friend and warrior for public education this week. She came home from a long trip, tired and worn out, logged onto her computer and commented on a Diane Ravitch blog.”
Her last comment was October 17 at 5:12 pm. She commented on a post about President Obama’s Disappointing Response, a form letter written to one of us. She wrote: “President Obama can’t say teachers don’t care.”
Farewell, Kathy 1. Your voice will be missed. I hope President Obama heard you. We did.
Michelle Rhee continues as the front group for corporations, right wing millionaires and billionaires who want to bust unions. She is joined in her opposition to Michigan’s Prop 2 by the deceptively named Democrats for Education Reform, the group founded by Wall Street hedge fund managers to advance privatization.
Anthony Cody has a stunning article this week about what is happening in Louisiana.
The expansion of vouchers and charters will facilitate the re-segregation of the schools, he predicts.
Governor Jindal eliminated all funding for public libraries in his new budget.
The TFA Commissioner has put a young and unqualified TFA alum in charge of teacher evaluation.
The freight train of reform (aka privatization) is running full blast in that unfortunate state.
Arne Duncan will be there any day now to congratulate Governor Jindal on the progress made in “reforming” the schools.
And lots of thanks to the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Netflix founder Reed Hastings, and Teach for America for turning the clock back to 1950 and calling it “reform.”
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General issued a stinging audit, showing a near absence of oversight of charter school spending in the three states studied: Florida, Arizona, and California. On the same day, the California charter schools association celebrated another big expansion of the charter sector in that state. There are now more than 1,000 charter schools with nearly half a million students in them, and the state department of education lacks the staff to monitor them. Some of the schools never open; some open and close within a year or two. Some pay outrageous executive salaries.
The main focus of the audit was the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation, which awarded over $1 billion to spur the growth of charter schools. It is headed by James Shelton, formerly of Edison Schools, McKinsey, the NewSchools Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation. He is an avid proponent of charter schools.
Expecting Shelton to monitor the growth and oversight of charter schools is like calling out the fox who is guarding the hen house and expecting him to be more vigilant. His job is to increase their number, not to monitor their quality.
Please pay attention, folks. The U.S. Department of Education is doing whatever it can to spur competition in the education sector by funding entrepreneurs, Gulen schools, no-excuses schools, and anyone who wants some federal money to go into business with no regard to quality, longevity or soundness.
What’s the best way to stop the attack on teachers?
Run for office.
Many teachers in Ohio figured that out, and they are running for legislative seats.
Some are taking on impossible tasks, but, hey, you never know.
When the legislators refuse to listen, then run against them.
Organize parents and others who care about public education.
Run for office.
On the list linked here, there is one person I have met personally, and that is Maureen Reedy.
If you live in her district, help her.
She will stand up to the profiteers and beat them back.
Change the legislature. That’s the best solution of all.
Throw the bums out.
Zack Koppelin is a hero of public education.
Zack is the first student to join the honor roll.
Zack is 17 years old. He opposes the use of public funds for voucher schools that teach creationism.
He is outspoken. He is fearless. He is smart. He is courageous.
He is a model for the adults who wring their hands and say, “what can we do?”
While Governor Bobby Jindal has been coddling the fundamentalists, Zack has stood up to them.
Jindal is prepared to destroy not only public education, but science education.
Zack says the Governor is wrong.
If every state had 100 students like Zack Koppelin, our nation would be a different place.
Here is today’s press release about his latest activism:
October 25, 2012
In his excellent book Finnish Lessons, Pasi Sahlberg explains the nature of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). GERM adores testing, accountability, competition, and choice. GERM squeezes all joy out of learning. GERM treats educators as interchangeable parts with no wisdom. GERM relies on market mechanisms, which are totally inappropriate in education.
This is an email regularly published in Australia. It succinctly explains how Joel Klein persuaded the Australian minister of education that New York City had experienced a miraculous transformation: test more, hold teachers and principals accountable, close schools, open schools, and scores go through the roof. Australia is now following New York City’s model.
Unfortunately, no one informed the Australian government that the New York City miracle collapsed in the summer of 2010, when the New York State Education Department revealed that it had consistently lowered the cut score (the passing mark) on state tests. When the cut score was restored, test scores across the state plummeted. The New York City miracle evaporated. But Australia is still betting that it might work, even though it did not work in New York City.
This is from Phil Cullen’s Treehorn Express:
NAPLAN TESTING FAILS TEST
World rankings in PISA tests show that Australia has slipped from 2nd in 2000 to 7th in Reading in 2012; from 5th in Maths in 2003 to 13th in 2012; from 4th in Science in 2003 in Science to 7th in 2012.
While there has been no change in schooling operations in the ‘top five’ countries, the most significant change to Australian schooling has been the introduction of NAPLAN testing in 2008 at a cost of over half-a-billion dollars per year.
Despite the warnings from experienced world commentators, education academics and statistics specialists, Australia governments have persisted with protocols based on an urban New York system of schooling introduced by the federal government in 2008-9. The chief of the system in New York at the time was an influential lawyer, now heading a Murdoch-owned test-publishing and tech-ed enterprise. His efforts at transforming schools were less than successful on any terms.
The system has been described as high-stakes reform, based on standardised [one size fits all] modes of testing that have only tenuous links to evaluation of learning effort.
Experienced school educators [see LINKS below] insist that children learn best and achieve at their highest when their natural love for learning is fostered; and evaluation of effort and progress is part of the learning act. They see the fear-of-failure routines and the constant practice of past tests as preparation for a new one, as deleterious to child development.
The lack of public exposure of experience-based opinion and the embargoes on professional comment have also concerned former principals and teachers of state public schools.
http://www.dianeravitch.net http://www.literacyeducators.com.au http://leading-learning.blogspot.co.nz http://www.networkonnet.co.nz http://saveourschools.com.au
http://primaryschooling.net http://www.marionbrady.com http://susanohanian.org http://alfiekohn.org http://www.essential.org http://optoutofstandardizedtests.wikispaces
http://www.essential.schools.org http://www.joebower.org http://treehornexpress.wordpress.com/bridging-the-ditch/ http://allthingslearning.wordpress.com
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