I want to test out a theory. I invite you to tell me what you think. It’s a thought experiment but very close to reality.
Suppose you wanted to destroy public education.
Suppose you wanted to make it so unpleasant to be a teacher or a student in a public school that everyone began to long for a way out. What would you do?
Let’s see. You would subject kids to tests repeatedly to the point that their parents complained bitterly. You would take away art and music, maybe physical education too, to make more time for testing. You would open a few charters, which would scoop up the best students, the strivers, and exclude the troublemakers. You would leave the public schools as refuges for the kids rejected or unwanted by the charters. Wouldn’t it be likely that all the motivated parents would clamor for a way to get their kids out too? Then there would be charters for the “good” kids and the public schools would be the dumping grounds.
Do the same for teachers but in different ways. Threaten them with termination if they don’t comply. Tell them their experience and education don’t count. Tell them their quality will depend on their students’ test scores. Watch their spirits droop as their best students leave for charter schools. Be sure to put non-educators in charge and lecture them regularly about how they are responsible if any child should fail. Snap the whip to keep them on their toes. Never treat them as professionals but as lazy time-servers who need constant reminders of their inadequacy.
In time, public education would be stigmatized and avoided by all who could get away. Is this where Race to the Top is going?
These thoughts, which have been percolating, were inspired by the following comments from a reader.
She wrote:
I was pleased to learn, thanks to Diane Ravitch, that the head of the principals’ association here in NC came out against testing last week. Ironically, my state superintendent just announced that NC will be paying (millions, I assume) to Pearson, a British company, to create tests that I and other NC teachers will have to give. NC is a nightmare to teach in right now. There have never been unions, so teachers have always been asked to do things administration could never get away with in a union state, but every work day this year is devoted to Race to the Top. My next semester begins on January 23 and the work day on the 22nd is occupied with RttT instead of finalizing my grades or planning for new students and courses. One of our RttT workshops involved using string, tape, spaghetti, and marshmellows to construct something. We also watched 30 second Disney/Pixar clips which were referred to constantly as “authentic texts.” I have been teaching English since the 1970s, and I have never seen anything like the direction public schools are going in now. I know Ms. Ravitch is strongly against charters, but I am for anything that is exempt from this madness that has over-taken public education. Public education is apparently for sale, and teachers and students are the victims. Like the Titanic, I am not sure it can be saved.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You cache on quick …
Quick? A lot of people who cared about public education were saying this exact same thing 25 years ago. As Roy Jones said, “Y’all musta forgot”
Sorry, couldn’t find my old ironicon …
At least when George Wallace renounced his lifelong ideology he apologized. He didn’t just say “I changed my mind” or “today’s racism is totally diferent from the kind I used to preach.” I know I’m ranting but this just boils my blood.
Ah, here it is …
One thing I loved about teaching when I first began, 24 years ago, was the degree of inspiration and creativity I could bring to my lesson plans. It made teaching and being a teacher exciting for me. My excitement was the motivation, it was infectious to the students and learning was the natural by-product.
Now, everything is highly structured and scripted. We are told the objectives, and given a highly methodical method of lesson design and expected to do it, regardless of whether it makes sense with the content. Talk about boring “cookie-cutter”!
This is classic organizational theory (a business model) where everyone is seen as a machine that can be tweaked to increase production. We are not seen as experts or professionals, just workers who couldn’t tie our own shoes without the supervisor’s policy detailing the method.
I for one wish this corporate-management/student-consumer mentality would leave the public school system. Teachers are not like assembly-line workers putting together a wiggit, and learning is not a product that can be pre-packaged and sold at market.
One thing I loved about teaching when I first began, 24 years ago, was the degree of inspiration and creativity I could bring to my lesson plans. It made teaching and being a teacher exciting for me. My excitement was the motivation, it was infectious to the students and learning was the natural by-product.
Now, everything is highly structured and scripted. We are told the objectives, and given a highly methodical method of lesson design and expected to do it, regardless of whether it makes sense with the content. Talk about boring “cookie-cutter”!
This is classic organizational theory (a business model) where everyone is seen as a machine that can be tweaked to increase production. We are not seen as experts or professionals, just workers who couldn’t tie our own shoes without the supervisor’s policy detailing the method.
I for one wish this corporate-management/student-consumer mentality would leave the public school system. Teachers are not like assembly-line workers putting together a wiggit, and learning is not a product that can be pre-packaged and sold at market.
Yes, this is the corporate strategy facilitated by government at all levels whether Dem or GOP, whether Cuomo, Christie, Bloomberg or Booker, supported by corporate mass media, whether NYTimes or Daily News. Add a point or two–underfund and over-regulate the public schools while over-fund(with corporate money)and under-regulate the privatized charters(and subsidize them with free public spaces taken away from public schl teachers and students). This has been the corporate Rheeform strategy for the last 10 yrs and it can work as long as teacher unions refuse to organize their members to fight back and as long as parents are not consolidated to stop it.
Here is the sad part!! It has not been secret. This could have been advocated against
at least twenty five years ago. When all the Wingspread meetings on education were
taking place all over the country. When the professionals were asked to have active
roles in the design (unknown to them there was a bigger plan) and then kicked in the
unmentionable. Realizing their role in this travesty some started to expose the truth
and try to lead a quiet rebellion. It did not work and now the desperate move to try
and save one of the greatest gifts of a free nation, Public Education, is at risk!
Those of us who have been advocates for the disabled for no less then thirty years
followed these trends and began to scream. Not even our own organizations would
believe this was happening. Now we have a return to the push through drop out
education system that ignores the law and the science which exists in the shadows.
Betrayal even by those that profess to care and work for the children.
Greed, power, selfprotection and paycheck fear, organizational resistance to change,
intellectual and financial elite rubbing of elbows, union blindness, on and on, and
then BAM here we are!!! Is it too late? It is better to act with conscious and ethical
fortitude then to quietly hide in the shadows.
This is where the rubber meets the road!
Diane Ravitch has proved that with her blog and the hope is that all who read will act!!!
For the sake of the children Do No Harm by activating a loud Alarm!!!! The internet
is the guy who rode his horse town to town warning the citizens to take up their
courage and battle those that would threaten Freedom (education is the very
heart of freedom).
I think there is some truth to this, but when I reflect on the history of school “reform” I also think these reform efforts reflect a sincere (and insane) mindset. Unfortunately, especially in Anglo-American cultures, business has become the standard by which the values of all activities are measured. We view all activities, economic or not, in terms of production and consumption, and profit. Our culture exalts business leaders who extract the greatest profits from tightly controlled organizations, and whom we view like great military or political leaders. We relentlessly seek “efficiency” in terms of highest return for least investment, often looking at every activity in terms of dollars and cents. We are in every way the embodiment of R.H. Tawney’s “acquisitive society”. We no longer seek joy or mastery (or even competence) in our actions; we only care about cost, not value, Oscar Wilde’s definition of “cynic”.
And so we view education not in terms of developing intellect, but of producing graduates. And if we are in the business of production, then we also have to maximize the efficiency of that production. Efficiency requires tracking quantities using statistical measures, and tight operational controls on the process of production. So, the process of education requires tests to measure “quality”, and operational controls require close oversight of teachers–the means of production–who will must adhere to highly standardized procedures and practices in order to make the statistical measurements useful. Thus, teachers can’t be creative or spontaneous, because that will undermine the standardized operations needed to enable comparisons of teacher performance. Curriculums have to be standardized and designed to facilitate testing in order to gauge student performance. All of this is needed to maximize efficiency, i.e., the production of graduates at the lowest cost.
As I’ve written elsewhere on this ‘blog, none of this is new: This was the agenda of the original reformers at the turn of the 20th Century. Back then the goal was to “Taylorize” public education by adopting standardized textbooks and replacing the liberal arts curriculum with a synthesized and heavily scripted one that was designed to produce graduates who knew what they needed to know in order to function in society. The goal was to abandon intellectual development–that was needed only for the scions of the wealthy, who would attend the best private schools–in favor of a passive, programmed, and productive general population to work in the factories.
The only difference with our current situation is the use of computer technology to deliver the same stultifying content and replace as many teachers as possible. I always laugh at those who claim that some how we’re in a new world of technology that requires completely rebuilding our educational system. It’s the same old story told with bright new costumes.
The reformers don’t want the public to think; they want them to obey their betters, who are the Gateses, and Bushes, and Bloombergs, and Rhees, etc., as demonstrated by their wealth. They truly believe they are doing God’s work.
La plus ca change, la plus c’est le meme chose.
David,
You have described so eloquently what I’ve been thinking, and trying to explain to my colleagues, for the past few years.
Thank you.
Well said, but perhaps we need a new definition of “sincere,” for when firmly-held beliefs also correspond perfectly to the economic interests of those holding them.
Michael,
Sincerity is at the heart of “delusional”. The fact that the rich get richer off of these ideas doesn’t mean they’re insincere; on the contrary, the added wealth only confirms their delusion and encourages them all the more. Wealth only confirms their superiority and rights as the stronger. They’re not interested in democracy, which requires sharing power with the “less able”.
But of course, there are many who play this game solely for the money. In fact, because the whole approach is so irrational it invites exploitation and demagogy.
David,
Your second paragraph is dead-on.
Your thought experiment is interesting… but it should start with this premise:
Suppose you wanted to gain access to the billions of dollars spent on public education.
And with that premise, you could note that the profiteers want to get in on the game help with the stigmatization by making sure the media firms they own have frequent headlines about “failing public schools” and “greedy teachers with pensions and benefits”.
In the early 1990s when all of this for-profit mania was beginning, anyone with a calculator and a school budget could see that it would be a cinch to make a profit with a charter school. You have a cost/student that is high because the budget includes sunk costs like pensions and benefits for retirees, debt service, busses, athletic fields, etc. District budgets also had high operating costs baked in: state pension payments and health insurance costs for employees; higher than necessary salaries for low demand jobs; and, in many cases, higher wages than needed for support staff (i.e. school custodians received higher compensation than custodians in the hospital). Also, if you are starting a charter school you don’t have to follow the regulations that govern public schools. That means you can pick and choose students, operate in an abandoned office building, hire uncertified teachers with degrees from “brand name” colleges (to help with the advertising), and require parents to transport their children. So, by opening a charter for “gifted elementary students”, hiring teachers using a pay scale of your own choosing, and finding a conveniently located facility, you could operate your charter school at a much lower cost/student than the public school you are competing with and make a profit that would make oil companies envious…. like maybe 30% per student. Oh… and since the early 1990s charters have been able to reduce the cost/student even more by introducing on-line learning! It’s what happens when capitalism is unregulated and our country has been convinced that’s a good thing. As the last beloved President declared: “Government is the problem”….
President Obama and many governors believe that the private sector can deliver education cheaper and better than public schools can…. and to make sure that is the case, they are tightening the rules, regulations and testing regimen that govern public schools… and evidently— based on your last post about LA— manipulating data to make sure for profit charters look good thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. I hope that your efforts to bring these shenanigans into the sunlight will wake up the public to what is going on.
Exactly, what I’ve been saying for years. Gates and Murdoch are just drooling over our tax dollars (not to mention all their billionaire friends.). I just went to a meeting for tech teachers, put on by those two in Chicago this past fall, and the amount of information they want to gather on ‘our’ children is astonishing and appalling! And now Zuckerburg wants to get in on it with Rocket schools, kids sitting in front of computers almost all day. Well if the first two gather the data and the third one prescribes what the students are fed through the computer’s screen they can set your children’s course for life. Kid not doing so well in math and English, well let’s just start feeding them stories about the army or blue collar jobs, that way the less than stellar kids will be all set to lead the drone life they have planned for them. Mind you their children will never go to these Rocket/computer schools. Late bloomers will never stand a chance in this new world.
Don’t forget the attraction for big investment. There’s the New Markets Tax Credit, bonds guaranteed to be paid back by the state, etc. Charters make excellent investments.
“Efficiency” to the corporate mind means reducing the cost of labor. Now that corporations own ever-increasing segments of government, “efficiency” means reducing the number of officials they have to buy. Hence the shift from local control to State and Federal control, all in the name of … wait for it … “Small Government”.
Efficient education should include the measurement of long term profits/gains as we weigh our hamburgers value to the future. Steaks and hotdogs be damned. Is anyone else sick of being quantified via young variable pieces of meat coming off a production line? Talk about flipping burgers!
This data-driven education taken to the extreme, and it amounts to “data collection” on our children.
To get the money from “Race to the Top” every state is working hard to create a statewide data base; FERPA laws have been changed to allow for the release of that “personally identifiable” data to non-government (i.e. private-backed) organizations.
What is the one segment of the population that corporations haven’t fully tapped into as it relates to personally identifiable demographic, academic, and personal “marketing” data? Pre-k on up – all our children! Who wouldn’t want their hands on that? Imagine the reporting and policies that will result from studies of the failing schools? Imagine the personalized learning products that will be developed and sold? Local schools will be a thing of the past – we are heading towards fully controlled Federal schools.
This data will be a gift to any “organization” that can prove their product is for the children.
I think at this point, parents have to take a stand and opt-out of providing all that data (i.e. refuse to submit children to the testing.)
I now think there are two axes of corporate reform, which have been allies in lobbying and “advocacy”, even though their agendas are ultimately contradictory. Neither agenda is in any way secret. Both are aimed at monetizing public educational services, in some way that tax money will run through economic entities they control. That dichotomy might be the source of the push-pull seesaw of fragmented destabilization and authoritarian centralism that’s destroying public schools here on the ground.
Previously, corporate reformers pursued two “free market” goals at once. The outright displacement of public education, into the free market, was one overarching goal of the Pioneer Institute, for instance, but top-down, private, data-driven control of a centralized public system was another.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Institute
The governor of Louisiana openly mandates public money for out-of state cybercharter investors. Michelle Rhee, who started out with the failed (and discredited) Edison Schools in Baltimore, is on board, as is Jeb Bush. Their interest in standardized tests is in using them as an engine of destruction, by holding the public sector legally “accountable” to gibberish vendors.
On the other hand, The USDE website proclaims that investing public money in profit-driven innovation is its mission. It claims to have already imposed the “voluntary state” Common Core assessment juggernaut across the country, to the horror of other profiteering stakeholders whose insider connections lie elsewhere than the Gates-Pearson partnership. Their goal is regulatory capture of the fabric of education itself, for their software and data industries.
Corporate education reform has to answer somehow for the damage to US education, which has become undeniable. As the public becomes aroused against its fraud, waste, corruption, and scorched earth, reform is talking out of both sides of its mouth, each side increasingly appalled by the other.
The doublespeak you are observing here is not specific to the public education sector, it is the “forked tongue” that has always been a distinguishing mark of free market rhetoric.
I used to think that the fundamental conflict arose between corporate control and democratic governance, but there is another contradiction or hypocrisy within the corporate model itself, namely, this —
While corporations loudly tout the ideals of free and fair competition in the marketplace, each and every one of them, especially once they grow beyond a certain size, is secretly seeking monopoly by all the available means, including the slanting of the playing field by corrupting government.
You would also make sure that the consituents of public education had less and less investment in demanding that it survive. You would distribute essential educational resources such as experienced, skilled educators and stimulating curriculA in inverse proportion to the enrollment of low-income students and children of color. You would encourage school culture that paralleled prison culture: metal detectors, criminalization of adolescent behavior, stripping teachers and principals of the authority to deal with common, non-violent discipline issues and substituting cops and underpaid, under-trained “school safety officers”. Despite the research demonstrating the relationship between attendance and suspensions with academic failure and dropping out, you would ignore various research based alternatives to suspensions and expulsions. You would start early so kids got the point by having unbelievably high expulsion rates for black boys in pre-K.
And you would gather the data in one big national database- attached to every child’s identity- to utilize predictive models, and to manipulate the data to impose more and more mandates…
So in other words, teachers are just the prostitutes and corporations are the pimps. I could think of a lot more exciting ways to prostitute myself which are not yet legal in my state. Legal gambling is coming so one never knows.
You’d make much more money too. And you may be more fulfilled at this point?
“Hey, you never know” lol
No tests either. Well, except those other kind of tests.
I think there should be a law to test every politician for syphilis. Over a 30 year period this germ can causes insanity.
Before any of this, the first thing that I would do is funnel money to conservative think tanks to pay “intellectuals” to argue that public schools are failing and that charters, vouchers, and competition are the answer. After 10 or 15 years of that work, the foundation would be in place, the big money (Gates et al) would follow, and I wouldn’t need the intellectuals anymore.
Thanks for your work, Diane, they couldn’t have done it without you!
“In time, public education would be stigmatized and avoided by all who could get away.”
For the very wealthy — like Ms. Ravitch herself — this has always been the case.
We have always had a healthy system of private schools and universities in this country, for those who had the additional resources of family income or earned scholarships. I don’t know anyone who had much of a problem with that, as long as private schools were funded by private dollars.
In my own experience of both systems, our public schools were quite competitive in the quality of education they provided, and even better in some respects, all things considered. Likewise, I don’t know anyone who had major problems with the original scope and purpose of charter schools, which were by design carefully monitored marginal experiments, whose extra overhead hardly made them models for mega-profit-taking.
But that was yesterday … and yesterday’s gone … and we have to face the fact that public-funded private, religious, and segregated schools are now being used as wedges to destroy the system of universal free public education on which the survival of our democratic way of life depends.
And that is something that we should all care about.
If I wanted to destroy public education…
First I would create a (fake) crisis.
To do this I would frighten people “facts” like foreign powers are wining and will soon beat us (at what? are you sure we are comparing apples to apples? so what if they win? These should be the response, but what do I know?). I would produce books and lots of slick looking charts and graphs to support my talking points.
Pound repeatedly using the media I control.
To deepen the crisis I would constantly talk about “our failed public schools”, use this phrase constantly. (repeat a lie often enough it becomes true). I would blame everything on the “failed” public schools.
Can’t find a job?
Going broke?
Working 50 hours a week to make ends meet?
Community crumbling?
Frightened or confused by diversity/immigration/gays/feminists/Muslims/who or what ever?
Think your taxes are way too high?
You now know who to blame!
Pound repeatedly using the media I control.
Keep the crisis going and ratchet it up a bit by planting the seeds of resentment toward the employees of the public schools (lavish incomes, ridiculous benefits, only work 9 months of the year, poor students themselves…note none of this has to be backed up with any real fact or reason). As the public, who are struggling with a real economic crisis, do slowly become resentful, I will step up the rhetoric about lazy, stupid, “welfare queens” as teachers.
Pound repeatedly using the media I control.
Now I have my fake crisis.
Now I have upset, fear, anger, mistrust and thus unrest.
“People want change”!
“People want choice!”
In crisis it is easy to get people to go along with whatever idea is “laying around”.
That idea was carefully planned.
Saviors pop up demanding loads of public money for tests, programs, new schools, for finding and placing the “best and brightest” teachers and all manner of things.
They also demand access to children and their private data.
They want to take control of what should be public
The people will quickly agree because “something must be done” to avert the fake crisis I planned.
Now, we funnel public money into private coffers.
Privatize the profit, but leave the public holding the bag with disappearing communities, unstable home values and depleted resources.
A few gain control and vastly increase their wealth.
The chumps are left with a mess.
PS: If you have not read The Shock Doctrine, do your self a favor and check it out!
Hmmm, this all sounds familiar. Wait, probably because much of it has already happened and will happen.
The secret strategy of corporate school reform for what pupose? Well, how about peonage, all over again…
You know what’s sad? The vast majority of teachers in this country wouldn’t even know what you people are talking about or the truth behind it. I expect the general public to be duped, but teachers?
THAT is the problem.
Maybe recruiting teachers from the bottom 1/3rd of college graduates is a problem after all.
I challenge any teacher in this forum to ask teachers around the lunch table who Michelle Rhee is.
I did. I wish I hadn’t.
New literature, well kinda new, documenting abusive school principals, explains this, but as a formerly gifted student working in education… well, I have had one peer in 23 years.
And BTW, when Broad/Bersin took over San Diego in 1997, I told the charter school/public school prince and pauper story Diane tells here to my students and told them that as much as they hated school, what was coming for their kids would make our schools look like a Neiman Marcus next to a Walmart.
I’d also like to note that the ‘Race to the Top’ money is actually ours. We paid the taxes that fund it, shouldn’t we have a say in how it is distributed? We now have the means to gather people together, in ways we never have before, why aren’t we all standing up and saying we are not going to let you take our public education system away. We are done letting you degrade and demoralize it and us just to fool people into handing it over for a quick profit. We need to stop jumping through the dollar hoop, we need to convince people that this is not just an inner city problem..they will start them but eventually come after all schools (the money is just too tempting).
But I also know these corporations have no idea what business they are really getting themselves into. They don’t know what kind of customers parents really are…very demanding ones (when they want to be and when their kids are involved).
Absolutely right…the Department of Education has a $70 Billion dollar budget and with the trajectory it is on, it will only go up. Imagine if that was returned to the States?
And again you are right – it isn’t just an inner-city problem. The rich districts have the money to comply with the data collection mandates even better than the poor ones. So the poor ones will be taken over faster…then the rich ones will fill in the database quicker…policies will be made based on the success of the “rich” districts which will result in money being extracted from those areas and channeled to the pop-up Charter/Federal schools. Public Education as we know is going to change.
If teachers understood that they are dispensable under this plan, they might speak up. If parents knew their children are only pawns in a much larger agenda, and the destruction of their future is only collateral damage, they might speak up. The only force that can overcome this is if parents and teachers work together! We are the only ones who can speak up for the children. What do you think our children are going to remember about their “public-school-turned-government school” education in the future? I can’t even imagine.
I’m retired from teaching now, but I watched it change from a very rewarding job into one that was SO burdened with administrative directives, and useless workshops, and actual teacher abuse, that I’m glad I’m out. Not because of the kids, but because of the extreme overburden of work that I couldn’t possibly accomplish in the time allotted, and responsibilities that I couldn’t fulfill. So yeah, they’re accomplishing what they wanted. I don’t see much future for the public schools, and with that, the country as a whole. Sorry to be so pessimistic!
So, you HAVE been to Louisiana! I was just yesterday talking to fellow educators about the lack of resources in schools, overcrowded classrooms, low morale of teachers and principals, and confusion of parents and that this is leading to the desire of teachers to get out of education completely or look at places where life would be easier (no rules charters or no evaluation no testing private schools.) Add new laws and policies that make it impossible for teachers to discipline students or demand proof of multiple steps of positive behavior bribes before a student can be sent to an administrator or removed for disrupting a class. Add to this a legislature being duped into believing that teachers are the problem behind achievement gaps and failure of students to learn in a state known for high proverty and the “failing schools” agenda is all about helping kids, not segregation or profiteering by any means. Add to this teachers who are so overwhelmed and exhausted trying to keep up with the demands of a new evaluation system that threatens their jobs if students don’t perform on tests, curriculum that is here one day and gone the next so they don’t know WHAT to teach children anymore in order for them to even pass the tests, and all the while trying to raise their own children after getting home at 7:00 at night and spending weekends writing lesson plans and grading papers because they do not have planning periods because all of the PE, Art, Music teachers have been removed from the schools. Teachers in Louisiana may not know the names of Michelle Rhee or Eli Broad or know what the Gates Foundation is doing to their profession because they do try to get at least 5 hours of sleep at night. So that means the rest of us who do know and have the means to do so have the responsibility to fight for them and for the students who are the pawns of public policy and ultimate losers in this chess game. Is there a game book for this destruction? How can we think otherwise?
Diane, I find this post most amusing. Sounds like it could be part of your next speech at an NEA function. Do you honestly believe that this post reflects reality? It reflects a mindset that has entrenched our public education system for decades, which is one that fears change and seeks to protect the power structure of self-interest groups that has de-stabilized our education system. I know that folks who you deem as “corporate ed reformers” will not post on this blog, nor should they. If you are complaining that public education is “for sale,” as the reader you quoted says, you should have logged that complaint before the big deals took place with the major textbook publishers.
It’s time we all worked together to reform our education system. Teachers are undoubtedly a critical part of the solution, but it is the spreading of fear and misinformation such as this that will create the artificial barriers to such a collaborative solution. The future you are articulating is not a drop close to reality.
EduShyster alert!
And I do not mean the super cool blogger
😉
Reinvent_ED, wanting to make a buck or two off of education:
Al Meyers
Reinvent_ED
Al Meyers is the founder and official licensee of TEDxPeachtree, whose inaugural event was held on 12/4/2008 in Atlanta, Georgia. TEDxPeachtree seeks to develop and share the TED experience on a regional level by bringing together inspirational leaders, innovators, artists and entertainers in metropolitan Atlanta. The TEDxPeachtree team is comprised of an all volunteer team of individuals hailing from an eclectic mix of professions, all who believe in TED’s mission of “ideas worth spreading.”
In 2010, Meyers co-founded the Atlanta Music Project, the first music program in Atlanta inspired by the globally acclaimed Venezuelan social reform program, El Sistema. AMP is an intensive music program for at-risk youth right in their neighborhood.
Previously, Al did some part-time consulting for Georgia Film Credit Consultants, which was created to facilitate, broker and fast track the sale of film tax credits earned through the 2008 Georgia Entertainment Industry Investment Act (GA HB1100). The GFCC team had a direct hand in the design, composition and execution of the new Georgia incentive law and Georgia’s Department of Economic Development Year 2020 Business Plan.
Meyers also ran his own boutique consulting practice, Saisei Consulting, a provider of strategy and corporate development advisory services to early-stage, growth-stage and mature digital media companies around the world. Al has advised several startups in the areas of digital media, 3D technology, online games and games for K-12 education.
Al is also a sought-after speaker on such topics as disruptive innovation in education, and the role of online games outside of the “purely entertainment” arena.
In 2008, Meyers was Co-founder & CEO of Past4Ward, LLC, an Atlanta-based startup focused on developing an immersive learning platform for classroom education based primarily on online game-play. The Company’s mission was to improve education in schools, with a new technology that allowed students to play games and learn at the same time. Learning through video game-like environments is an ideal learning tool for today’s digitally-oriented children, who learn and think differently than previous generations. The company’s emphasis was on student-centered learning tools using game mechanics and other web 2.0 features. The Company’s approach, backed by academically rigorous research and data, showed unequivocally how using games in classroom instruction could lead to successful 21st century learning outcomes.
Thanks for sharing my bio with everyone. I am honored : )
Actually, teachers make a buck off education too, as do the folks to whom you pay your NEA dues. So if your values are in the right place, and you’re putting kids first, then I really don’t see the relevance of your analogy.
I do..because your virtual future society app or whatever it is on your site is crap! There’s your analogy.
Now, now, Linda. Lets not get hostile here. No reason for your mean-spirited drivel.
Especially when you’re always spreading the love for teachers, the real ones. Practice what you preach Al.
For me, the tell is that Mr. Meyer is a “…sought-after speaker on topics such as disruptive innovation in education…”, which in education is a euphemism for diversion of money from the class room, union busting and monetization of student’s data sets.
True to form, that was followed by his “immersive (!) learning platform for classroom education based primarily on online play.”
In other words, an edupreneur riding the wave of Shock Doctrine policies.
Sought after? On line play? Both have multiple interpretations… Just more edubabble!
And Linda and all of you, I will leave you to your rants and preaching to the choir. You do not know me, and you make statements that reflect someone who does not take the time to know a person’s values and what’s in their heart.
I am not a know-it-all. I listen and learn. And with that, I will leave all of you to your homogeneous rants and not post on a blog that chooses not to embrace diversity of thought and instead lashes out at views that are different than one’s own. That is not civil discourse which is the foundation of a healthy democracy. And certainly not the way social studies teachers would ever teach their students!
Diane, I will not post again on your blog, but you will see the positive outcomes of my continued work to improve public education from afar. But I’m sure that from your perspective, it will all look like more attempts to destroy public education, not improve it.
Buh bye! See ya! Take your ball and go home. Waaaaah.
If it looks like a duck, if it waddles luck a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it is reasonable to assume that it is a duck.
You are always welcome to post on this blog. I welcome dissenting views so long as they are couched in civil language and tone.
I future that you think is being predicted is already the present. The things listed in the original post are current reality. Fear change – please. That is all education has been since I can remember – one change after another. Teachers go with the flow until the pendulum swings back again. The miracle will be when they are ready to say “enough.”
If you don’t think Diane’s post reflects reality, then you are either in denial or have no concept whatsoever of what has been happening to public school education for the past twelve years. If, as you say, corporate ed reformers won’t post here, then why are you?
He’s a wannabe.
No Linda. I care about our kids’ future, and don’t want any child left behind. For you, it’s “no teacher left behind.”
Arrogance and ignorance…always a bad combination. Kids can always spot egoists and frauds.
And why do I post on here? Because someone has to speak for the silent majority who feel that the views here do not help the efforts to reform our public education system. All I see are posts from disgruntled educators who choose to rant instead of feeling like everyone is out to get them. Instead of trying to be part of the solution, you put up roadblocks every step of the way. It’s truly sad, because in my state, I actually talk to teachers and they communicate with respect and try to collaborate. These teachers practice respectful behavior to role model for the kids. But on here, there are some who should never be allowed into the classroom, especially if their administrators saw how they communicate with people who hold different points of view than their own.
I choose to collaborate on solutions to help our children, not protect a status quo that is unacceptable. And in my state, it is needed and it will work.
I only wish that the teachers who post on this blog can have the courage to try and be collaborative. But I can speak for all those so-called “corporate reformers” as you call them that this would be a wish that will never come true. And that is the tragedy here.
Truly, you are a legend in your own mind. You have rarely spoken to us in a respectful tone. The courtesy you want extended to you has never been offered to teachers here. You come out insulting and degrading a profession and you want us to bow down to your greatness. Your schtick is wearing thin.
I don’t see it that way.
Reinvent Ed, you do not speak for the silent majority. You speak for the 1%. The majority of parents and teachers do not want for-profit schools. They don’t want test scores used as the goal of education. They don’t want their kids to be taught by a computer. They want what Obama and Gates and Rahm Emanuel want for their children: small classes, art and music, a safe and well-resourced campus, daily sports, experienced teachers.
The problem is that they do not want all to have what their privilege has let them have and then they want to tell everyone else what to do which is exactly what they would never allow for their children. Is this hypocrisy or what?
It is sad, Diane, that you feel so compelled to label me the way you do, when you have clearly not taken the time to see that I share the same vision as you do about learning. I have built a successful after-school music program for at-risk youth because the public schools abdicated their responsibility there. Before you try and paint me a certain way, take the time to get to know the person’s values. The labeling has to stop. That’s the problem here. Anyone who disagrees with you is labeled as a corporate reformer or some evil villain. That sounds so childish and is not helpful in the important work that needs to be done to improve our education system.
BS
Asked my Chicago alderman the same question but in this way: With all the awful initiatives, does the mayor really just want to drive the middle class out of the city?
I would start by becoming President of the United States and come up with Leave No Student Behind. The public schools are designed to fail, thus creating a niche what can be filled with what ever the corporations have to sell. By the way, there are no charter schools in England.
“By the way, there are no charter schools in England.”
Not yet anyway. Considering Pearson is a Britiish company, that makes the UK easy prey. Michelle Rhee went over there on a marketing mission last year. Hopefully, they won’t fall for her antics.
The achievement gap between low income and higher income students is a problem in all countries and the UK has its own issues with poverty and ELLs, as well as a much more entrenched history of privileged, aristocratic elites.
They call them academies over there. Read the Guardian and such. The same players are everywhere when you track it out. This is big international business.
People must first believe that it can be saved and presented with a real option out of this insanity. My belief is that after they killed JFK, then MLK and then Bobby Kennedy they took the wind out of the sails of most people and put them into fear if you come out against the system as you could also get this kind of treatment. After all, we did this to the top and who are you? We must get back that “Can do” attitude as we had for civil rights and ending the war in Vietnam. Otherwise, the results are going to be tragic.
If you want to see the future of education, look at Walmart: the product of the education biggest bucks ever buy what they want the Waltons.Do you really know anyone who WANTS to go to Walmart and who comes back out and says, “What a great experience that was, I think I want to go back tomorrow.” Do you see any employees who look like they want to be there either? What I see are people on fixed incomes trying to get the best value to feed and cloth their families and “brave” the Walmart experience because they have to. Then I see the people who can afford to and who will do anything to avoid Walmart go to the stores that are a bit pricier but have a better atmosphere and provide a less hectic experience. This is the future of our public schools: divide the Walmart folks from the Albertsons folks based upon income and ability to provide themselves alternatives. Our future public schools, if the Walton’s have their way, will be – God forbid – Walmart schools.
We have known for years from stories in the media about the discrimination of females in Walmart management. We know from talking to employees at Walmart that they get just enough hours to avoid being full time and having to be provided retirement and health care benefits. Look at Louisiana and the attempts here to force teachers out of defined benefits plans to 401 K plans so that they can work until they are 70 and retire in poverty – unlike the legislatures who are tying to force this. Charters and vouchers look better and better to both the shoppers and the employees when compared to Walmart. How can anyone think this is not by design? We may have a present that look bleak but it is nothing compared to the future if the privateers get their way and re-segregate our schools into publics and public/privates. Who has the money to fight the Waltons and the Gates and the Broads and the Carnegies?
Do your history. It does not always take money to fight big money. In L.A. County a small group of people in just 3 weeks with under $25,000 stopped a $90 billion 1/2 cent tax until 2069. So who says you cannot beat them. This is not to say this issue is done as the first thing they did after they lost is to introduce SCA-4, Senate Constitutional Amendment-4 which would reduce the vote to pass transportation bonds from a 2/3 vote to 55% as they just did with school bonds. This is so as to be able to put the public into what I call “Permadebt.” With interest we were talking about $300 billion. Many had counted this money before they had it and are now mad as hell that someone took away their free money. This $90 billion only had one paragraph of controlling language. The previous $40 billion has 37 pages of controlling language. Ask yourself the question “Why no language?” Maybe, they just want to be able to do with it whatever they want without restriction.
Did not Alexander the Great and many others win battles while being vastly outnumbered many times? So who says the world has changed? Most battles are won by inspired troops who do not give up in the heat of battle.
This analogy I really like, but don’t forget it was his father’s four generals who did the second level leading, and his father from whom he inherited the dedicated and trained army. Those boys were true professional soldiers. I’m not sure there is that kind of cadre on the ground anywhere except in Chicago. Still, I love your hope. Aux barricades, mes comerades!!!!! Wasn’t that the cry in 1848? But, oh yes, the bourgois destroyed them. Sorry. I forgot.
My final words for Diane’s blog:
Again, I say that this blog is a rant – the adult equivalent of a group of children ganging up on someone to bully them into submission. The ongoing problem with teacher unions and other self interest groups putting grownups before children in our education system is that you all resort to a form of bullying to protect your turf. The definition of bullying is as follows:
“Bullying is the repeated actions or threats of action directed toward a person by one or more people who have or are perceived to have more power or status than their target in order to cause fear, distress or harm. Bullying includes name-calling, obscene gesturing, malicious teasing, rumors, slander, social exclusion, damaging someone’s belongings, threats and physical violence.”
When folks say “ed shyster alert,” that is exactly what you all are doing. You are ganging up in groups and that is your “perceived power,” regardless whether you think that is the case. Further, it is precisely why ed reformers will not risk putting themselves out there and post on this blog, or any blog that is promoted by pro status quo self interest groups (e.g. NEPC), for fear of being “cyber bullied.” Think twice before you post on this blog or any blog for that matter, because it is clear to those of us trying to reform our public education system that it is the continued hostility from folks like each of you that prevents you from having a meaningful voice in the process.
And that is sad.
Please take your own advice…repost…quick refresher….look in the mirror and reflect on the above definition. And this is sad, too:
A quick refresher of your comments which you consider to NOT be insults:
1. “Folks LIKE YOU refuse to accept ideas…”
2. “You just want homogenous thinking….”
3. “You are part of the problem…you will be on the outside looking in.”
4. To LG…”it’s amazing you are a teacher…”
5. “Your comments are pathetic”
6. “You need to accept the fact that many teachers are not trained to integrate……..to project based learning.”
7.”99% of the readers if this blog will never accept real reforms”
8. “You are just protecting the status quo”
Comments one and two could apply to you as well.
Comment #3 is inaccurate; we are on the inside every day.
Comment 4 and 5 are rude and don’t forget you didn’t want to be insulted.
Comment 6 is wrong, wrong, wrong. You need to visit more public schools. I think you got an invite from LG.
Comment 7..YOU know what 99% of the readers will and will not accept….a big egotistical, no?
Comment 8….what is the status quo, Al? Twelve years of testing?
So if you want to fix this together (the Exxon Mobil slogan) stop making assumptions yourself and stop insulting the workforce.
https://dianeravitch.net/2012/12/29/how-the-profit-motive-changes-education/
“My final words” Glad to hear it.
You have identified the general tenor of about 75% of the posters on this blog, including our Lady Goddess Leader, but occasionally someone with independence says something quite worthwhile. Granted one has to grope around in the union muck and Ravitch book self promotions to find the diamonds, but they are there. Some people, like yourself, may possibly be serious about real education reform (few of those here, of course), probably don’t want to waste your time visiting this out house, but for some of us, we enjoy the stink and the ferocity and aggressiveness of the flies who buzz about it, it reminds us that the public school system has completely failed when a hypocrite like Obama can be reelected, elevated, feted, revered, and worshipped, by 52 percent of the electorate when his own education department is so puzzlingly (not to me, but to the blogger and commentators here) putting stimulus money into the destruction of good public education in the country because he gets his real money from investment bankers and because to keep the Democrat party in power ad infinitum he needs an undereducated electorate. The mal-educated have no capacity for independence, and thus are guaranteed dependency voters. Diane’s utopian reforms won’t happen. They are so unlikely, I can’t even convince myself she really wants them to happen. It’s just as likely that Diane is a tool of the administration as not, a way of shutting up the party cadre by giving them meaningless slogans to shout. But in the short term its good for her upcoming book sales and massages the egos of teachers who see themselves as downtrodden victims (they actually ARE) and enjoy Mme. Spartacus’s perorations. It’s amusing to see the slaves worshipping their own self-destruction. It’s a good reason for staying around, if you are on welfare and have the time, but you can’t take the nasty bullying seriously. This is gang warfare. You’re spitting on their playground, so don’t expect respect, even if you deserve it. Which I’m not actually totally convinced that you do. What ARE you doing to reinvent education? On the other hand, don’t go down to the piers unless you can handle the peers.
It must be a conspiracy, right? Or, just maybe, something needed to change. Cost has been steadily rising and performance has been on a steady decline. Maybe this will help, maybe it won’t, but doing the same thing and expecting different results is……..
To Just Me,
Performance has been steadily rising for the past 20 years.
Every one of the corporate reforms is either failing or makes no difference other than to demoralize those who do the work of education every day. Should we ask teachers an principals to take charge of the stock market? Its performance is more sluggish than test scores.
Just sayin’.