Anthony Cody has written a crisp analysis of the differences between what corporate reformers want and what supporters of public education want.
People like Anthony and me are often told to be accommodating, to be more receptive of the corporate style ideas.
But, as Anthony shows in this article, there are genuine differences.
Public education is facing an existential threat to its existence from people who support privatization.
They do this in a clever way, by talking about civil rights while advocating privatization.
They say it’s “for the children,” but somehow there are adults who seem to benefit more than the kids.
“They can’t wait,” but it’s not their life and career that is sacrificed while they impose risky schemes.
Yes, there is a dichotomy, and we cannot quietly acquiesce.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s all part of Basic Oppression 101. No matter how hard you’re stepping on someone’s neck holding them down, you keep a big, wide, toothy smile planted firmly on your face and you say, “Relax, what are you so upset about? If you’ll just calm down and be reasonable, I’m sure we can come to a mutually satisfactory solution.” Always make the other party look like the villians when they’re fighting for their life. Always make the other party look unreasonable for not giving in 100% to your demands.
The Chicago Sun Times put up this interesting editorial on Monday, “Real hurdle to education reform is poverty”.
http://www.suntimes.com/opinions/17268148-474/editorial-real-hurdle-to-education-reform-is-poverty.html
Karen Lewis speech at the City Club made it hard to ignore the reality of child poverty in Chicago, and now the editors are grappling with the chasm between corporate reform promises and the reality on the ground, which is the scorched earth they’ve left behind them in Chicago communities.
I posted a comment, but it was very late and I forgot to include the link to Anthony’s column. Just as well, I think, because comment filters often hold up anything with a link to await moderation. I posted the link as a reply to my own comment, and sure enough, it’s still awaiting moderation this morning.
Here is my comment to the Sun-Times story
This is a start, but the Sun-Times editors, and other power brokers in the City, need to think through “why we’ve supported a range of aggressive interventions for the Chicago Public Schools over the years, including school closures, charter openings, turnarounds, improved teacher evaluations, a longer school day and changes to teaching tenure, hiring and firing rules.”
Refusal to address the underlying truth that poverty hurts children is the rationale for the whole “no excuses” attack on public schools. Corporate and business leaders insisted that accountability to them would “close the gap”. You editors know the real stories that have been coming across your desks about what their reform has done to Chicago. Think this through.
Karen Lewis is pointing to the real solutions, as well as real problems. The communities of Chicago themselves are a resource too long ignored. There is a real choice here, but it requires rethinking the dead-end assumptions of the past two decades.
Take a look at this handy summary chart, comparing “no excuses” education reform with the social context reform that Lewis is advocating (and that the teachers in Chicago have been building in their daily work). There’s a real difference, and a real choice.
The civil rights movement was about inclusion, not exclusion. How can a charter school system that forces out 40% of low-performing students be viewed as “Inclusive”? How can a market-based charter movement that excludes special needs students because they are unprofitable be viewed as “inclusive”? The corporate education reform movement is more accurately the new Jim Crow movement based on academic segregation rather than racial segregation .
The jersey jazzman( http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/01/its-official-charters-are-not-public.html) blogs that a “charter school” was determined to be PRIVATE.
“The ruling, made by the National Labor Relations Board last month, said the Chicago Math and Science Academy is a “private entity” and therefore covered under the federal law governing the private sector.”
Since most State Constitution only allow distributions of tax monies to “free PUBLIC schools”, where is a local public taxpayer group challenging the distribution of funds to a private equity?
So far it has only been the Broad commissioners of education and other “deformers” that have told us that “charters” are public. Now we have the National Labor Relations Board, among others, telling us that they are private!
Thanks for highlighting this post. I think it is important to portray not only the “no excuse” reform solutions and their side effects, but also the positive alternatives to these bad ideas.
The debate in the comments has been fascinating as well. Given the chance, the advocates of No Excuses reforms are making it clear that they are the true defenders of the status quo. Please come over and read, and add your comments.
This “debate” is about real problems, real lives and real differences. A very good friend, a young lady, taught at a TFA location in Oakland, CA. She later worked as a recruiter for TFA at the University of Michigan. She worked with TFA for approximately four years. She has left them and I have’t had an opportunity to talk to her. I know her to be a wonderful caring young woman and I was proud of her for trying to make a difference. There are many great young people who do care, and feel that TFA is making a difference positively in places where there was little hope. I feel these people are caught up in all of this and could be part of the discussion. I don’t believe that charters, vouchers, for profits and attacks on educators because they don’t address long-standing problems of poverty, equity, broken families, crime and poor parenting. My views certainly don’t defend the status quo. The split between “reformers” and those who believe that public schools are a far better answer and investment is wider because of a societal wedge that America can’t seem to deal with. Why we spend so much energy and money on interventions around the world while our own people need so much help is beyond understanding. We have to keep talking and somehow recognize that most of us are after the same thing.
I served as a mentor to a number of TFA corps members — in Oakland as a matter of fact. I agree with you that every one of them (at least the ones I worked with) were good-hearted people with the best of intentions. But the program reinforces the very problem it was supposed to address. By placing people in classrooms who do not intend to stay, we guarantee the high turnover that made them needed in the first place. TFA did not create this problem, but it allows districts like Oakland to defer addressing the conditions and low pay that promote turnover. I should note that Oakland has completely stopped using teachers from a TNTP affiliated program, and has cut way back on TFA as well. The District has recognized this problem and is seeking candidates who want to build careers in Oakland.
The pro public school/union side has become as utopian as the TFA “no excuses” crowd. There is a dichotomy, but it is between freedom and equality. Equality will never be achieved because no matter how much you invest in health care, eye exams, and support, bad families will produce bad kids. Freedom, however, can be achieved by expecting every person to live the life which their character provides them. There is tremendous waste here too, because bad family produces, not in every case, but in most, bad character. Choices do have to be made. Do you chose to promote public education that will sacrifice all the children in trying to save the bottom 20% or do you sacrifice the bottom 20% to save the top 80%? It is a Hobson’s choice, neither alternative is morally acceptable. But you public school advocates MUST concede that the present public school/union system produced the electorate that put Obama in office for the first time, and now for the second. His administration is already a disaster, and will become an even greater one. The public school system is responsible for the low information voter which perpetrated the disaster on America, and thus, for me has zero credibility. The public school system either by design or negligence has become populated by the socialist/ communist philosophy of government and national culture. It has, therefore, in my view, zero claim to support from the public taxpayers. It is foolish to blame those who are providing the education services, but that blame would make sense if the public school establishment is fundamentally anti-capitalist. At its simplest, if you support the public schools, you are anti-capitalist. Deny it if you can. But you can’t; all you can do is abuse the messenger who shows you your true face in a mirror of words.
Fascinating! Thank you for stating your beliefs so clearly.
Perhaps No Child Left Behind might be renamed “No Good Child Left Behind.”
This shows what happens when we push the conversation forward. In the past, the No Excuses Reformers cloaked themselves in utopian rhetoric. They claimed that it was the public schools that were leaving children behind. Here we have an open acknowledgement that, in the views of some on the “no excuses” side, the idea of leaving no child behind is not only false, but communistic.
There is a countervailing idea of the public good, of public services and government that exists for the general good of all in a community. And there are extremes to which each idea can be taken. Communism suggests everything ought to be commonly owned and managed, while Harlan Underhill apparently wishes for an Ay Randian society where we leave the poor to suffer the consequences of the poor choices or ill luck of their parents and ancestors. I think most of us would like something just a bit towards the middle of these two extremes. And our public schools are designed to create that.
Many thanks, Anthony Cody, for helping push the conversation forward so that the so-called education reformers and their supporters say what they really think. The gentleman you replied to is just one of a number of like-minded folks who have pushed me, at times very roughly, over to many of the positions espoused by you and Diane and Jersey Jazzman and Edushyster and so many others who are engaged in the arduous task of ensuring a “better education for all.”
Harlan Underhill’s comment is disturbing to me for several reasons and it is at the heart of what I feel is critical to the very survival of our nation. Harlan writes “equality will never be achieved because no matter how much you invest in health care, eye exams, and support, bad families will produce bad kids”. He goes on to ask “do you chose to promote public education that will sacrifice all the children in trying to save the bottom 20%, or do you sacrifice the bottom 20% to save the top 80%? In my view the history of our country has been all about sacrificing the bottom 20% in favor of the other 80%. Year after year America has found and invented “better and more worthy” causes than its own people. I won’t go into the many years of wasted money and wasted chances. That would be pointless. Suffice it to say that our national abandonment of our own citizens has resulted, and will result, in Harlan’s “bottom 20%” becoming 30%, 40%, 50% and so on until we are literally finished as a nation. We simply cannot let that happen! Programs such as the affordable healthcare act and high quality public education available to everyone are long overdue.
I absolutely agree with you, Edward. Harlan’s shocking comments remind me of what Romney said about “the 47%,” and also make me think about the initial denial of federal funding to the Hurricane Sandy victims. (For excellent commentary on the latter, read NYC Educator blog.) Bottom line: the end of America.
We are already finished as an American nation because of such statism. You won’t be able to figure out how to correct bad character. You can try. You ARE trying. But Obamacare will result in worse health care, and public education will continue to deteriorate. And in the process of trying to fix things, you will guarantee that wel all lose our freedom. It is shocking. I rather hate the thought myself. The privatization movement is another attempt to “fix everything.” By the by, federal funding was denied in the Sandy bill because of the pork in the bill. Retiredbutmiss[es]the kids, you stigmatize me rather than looking at reality. Romney & Republicans = bad. Well intentioned by unable to see the real causes Democrats = good. I know how you guys think. Deny realtiy, keep swimming against the stream, and eventually we’ll all achieve the dream. The American Dream used to be “Opportunity.” Now the American Dream is Equal Abundant Wealth for all. Good luck. You guys won the election. You can turn up your smug utopian noses at cynical realists like myself, but you can’t change reality without a rebirth of morality, and I KNOW Democrats don’t want that.