This reader says that federal intervention is appropriate on behalf of social justice: civil rights and gender equity. But it’s wrong when employed to close public schools and privatize them (charters and vouchers) or to impose curriculum (that orohibition is in federal law).
WEIRD CIRCLE
That is sort of unfair, to complain that only 2% of the Federal budget goes to Education. After all, education is a responsibility that, under our Constitution, has been delegated to the states and is under local control.
Also unfair, however, is leveraging that 2% of the federal budget — about 7% of education outlays overall — and forcing states to comply with unproven methods to transform our schools.
It is hardly a new thing — Title I and Title IX both do this and the Civil Rights acts passed in the mid-60s also used forms of leverage. But that was in the name of social justice, eliminating some of the most blatant forms of discrimination and at least reducing inequity.
But with the Bushes (and we have to include Jeb in this, since Florida pree 2000 was one of the prototypes for labeling a school as failing) this changed. There was talk of social equity — remember ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations”? — but the action was in testing and accountability presumably, once you looked at how difficult it was to not be a failing school, as a pathway to privatization via the dismantling of public education.
Never understood why Ted Kennedy was such a fan of NCLB, but at least at the beginning there was the promise of more money. And lest we forget, early in the W administration the Senate switched from Republican to Democratic control when Jim Jeffords did the same because of a lack of federal funding for special education programs. So you would think those Senators had figured out a way to make sure education would get funding. You’d be thinking wrong.
Of course, Ted supported Barrack, but is absolutely beyond me why the Obama administration has given lip service to criticizing NCLB and then continued with its substance. In some ways I think it is to show people how smart Arne Duncan is. Really. While we may not like the content of his plans, the way he has used that 2% — and esp. that 5 billion of RttT money as a lever to pry reforms from governor’s and state legislatures is perversely brilliant.
By the way, future DOE heads will never forget that.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You’d think after NCLB the Feds would realize they have no clue, and would just get out altogether. Race to the Top will go down (well it already has) as one of the biggest boondoggles ever. On the other hand I realize that the good folks behind these brilliant ideas need to keep cashing their paychecks, so it’s a self perpetuating cycle of stupidity. Planned obsolescence it is. Every 5-10 years come up with some half witted program to save the U.S. who is dangerously trailing the rest of the world in test results.
God, I need to stop being so negative and just get a job with Pearson.
Easy now. Don’t flirt with the dark side!
I can hear Pearson calling….Luuuuuuuuuke, I am your employer…….
I think there is a lot more continuity than the idea of “every 5-10 years come up with some half witted program to save the U.S.” because it is trailing other countries in test results. Rather, going back to the 1980s you see that some form of voucher or tuition tax credit (Reagan campaigned on the latter) is the first choice of monied conservatives, as well as those who would prefer religious schools for their children. These are natural Republican constituencies; although not necessarily the majority in the Republican party, they are part of its core and can not be ignored by those who want to advance in the party.
I wrote the ‘Weird Circle’ post above as a follow up to another post about how the Bush foundation is working with public officials in states to write education laws that could benefit some of its corporate funders. (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/30/e-mails-link-bush-foundation-corporations-and-education-officials/)
No surprise there, all the Bushes, Jeb, George W and George HW, have all been involved heavily. We shouldn’t forget George HW Bush ran as ‘The Education President’ in 1988. While we can trace this back to the Reagan administrations, a lot begins with America 2000, produced under the auspices of the Bush Dept. of Education in 1991.
In it the word ‘public’ is used seven times in 35 pages; as Joseph Kahne has observed, those seven references all came within discussions of school choice proposals that called into question the existence of public schools. Recommendations were for a significant institutional transformation of the system. Included was, of course, a battle over language. America 2000 argued that the definition of public schools should be broadened to “include all schools that serve the public and are accountable to public authority, regardless of who runs them.”
This is the part I understand — since the 1980s, when the Republicans have held the White House (each time with a Bush as vice-president or president) there have been efforts to discredit the US public education system and they have done something I clearly don’t think the Federal Government should do — advance forms of privatization, attack public schools and/or to lay the ground for privatization.
What I don’t understand is why the Obama administration has gone along.
Anyone have a clue?
“What I don’t understand is why the Obama administration has gone along.
Anyone have a clue?”
Simple. Look at who funded his campaigns.
Great reply Brian, spot on, thank you.
Thanks.
Money Money Money Money Money
Follow the money and……..
A lot of it started even further back – in 1973 with the Rodriguez Supreme Court decision which basically says that the federal government can’t enforce “equality” in education, it can only make sure that every student receives an “adequate” eduation. So some kids’ educations are a lot more “adequate” than others, which is fine, at least as far as the federal government is concerned. So it pretty much cut the legs off any attempt at federal levels to enforce the Brown decision, forcing equal education advocates to work piecement at state and local levels. I’m probably oversimplifying – I’ve been reading Kozol’s SHAME OF THE NATION and he devotes nearly a whole chapter to that decision and its ramifications.
There was also a nonstop assault in the 1980s and 1990s from conservative ideologues who argued that public schools were failing (evidenced by test scores), that we needed national standards and accountability, and that private competition and vouchers and charters should be part of the solution. It’s similar to federal jurisprudence on the Second Amendment or the limits of federal power. It starts in ivory towers and think tanks as an ideological and academic discussion. The next generation is raised on this stuff and eventually they’re in charge. And wow, it turns out that there are consequences to ideas.
I think that old-school liberals like Ted Kennedy combined with the Neoliberal/Aspen Ideas Festival groupthink that dominates in elite Dem circles is very cool with all corporate reform ideas. Their mentality is that “Something, anything, has to be done to save our failing schools”, and so hurrah for the Feds, even if they haven’t a clue.
Their kids are in private schools, so there’s very little understanding of the issue by these elites from the ground up; there’s just the tendency to dismiss resistance to reform as Teachers’ Union posturing protecting lazy teachers who bear no resemblance to the wonderful, high-energy, super bright, non-unionized teachers they know in their kids’ private schools. There is, alas, very little understanding about how things work in the real world or ordinary people.
And there’s very little understanding that most public schools are doing fine, and that when you factor in apples to apples comparisons between the US and other countries based on income, the US is near the top.
The problem is poverty. Nothing significant changes on a scalable level for students and schools that are “failing” until the larger society stops failing them. NCLB and RttT are the failingest of failures, parodies of the absurdity of the Feds putting their nose where they don’t belong. But it gets elite Democrats’ blessing, because Obama is for it, and so’s Bill Gates, and, you know, he might be a jerk, but his wife’s had a positive influence on him, and they just want to do good, impatient optimists that they are.
… there’s very little understanding that most public schools are doing fine, and that when you factor in apples to apples comparisons between the US and other countries based on income, the US is near the top.
Agree..
Now how to we combat the propaganda (fake crisis) of “our failing public schools”?
I do that in my new book. Point by point.
I guess things have improved a heck of a lot since 2005:
“It is true that American student performance is appalling. Only a minority of students – whether in 4th, 8th or 12th grade – reach proficiency as measured by the Education Department’s National Assessment of Educational Progress. On a scale that has three levels – basic, proficient and advanced – most students score at the basic level or even below basic in every subject. American students also perform poorly when compared with their peers in other developed countries on tests of mathematics and science, and many other nations now have a higher proportion of their students completing high school.”
Thanks Dienne — I did not want to go back to the 70s, especially court decisions, since i don’t know enough.
But still there is a difference between not seeking equality and actively seeking to discredit and breakdown the public school system. This, I think, really came to the fore in the mid to late 1970s. There was a group on the Republican side who became much more actively anti-public education, probably with the idea of harnessing lingering resentment about school prayer and the backlash against busing. These latter two had huge effects.
And then there was also the creation of the US DOE at that time.
In retrospect seems to be a department that the Republicans who opposed it have been better able to take advantage of then the Democrats who sponsored it.
And, yes, I know who funded his campaign this time, but in 2008 the funding picture was different, wasn’t it? But that is disheartening. And I also think it hurt him politically, so I still have questions about why money had the impact it did in this case.
Jack’s comment offers a competing/complementary theses, but thinking about Neoliberal/Aspen Ideas Festival groupthink is really disheartening.
One more thought — any way to increase understanding that most public schools are doing fine? Wearing a button, perhaps?
“any way to increase understanding that most public schools are doing fine? Wearing a button, perhaps?”
I think the “Rheeform” side has gone the “repeat a lie enough times and it becomes the truth” route.
Perhaps we could all dedicate ourselves to simply calling out the lie.
Some simple talking points..Our schools are not failing and the evidence is….
Every time a news report begins with “OFS” we light up the switchboard?
“any way to increase understanding that most public schools are doing fine?”
Making sure that disaggregate test score data by income level are reported in every community might be a place to start.
One of the worst legacies of NCLB is that it tagged ALL public education as failing, effectively diverting the public’s attention away from poverty and the fact that it continues to be low-income children who have not found success in school.
That diversion was a major accomplishment, too, since it had not worked with William Bennett’s “A Nation at Risk” campaign under Reagan. Following not long behind welfare reform” under Clinton, the NCLB focus on ALL students appears to me to have been a rather slick maneuver, as if legislating “Welfare to Work” had meant that our country no longer had a problem with poverty. It was of no concern then, as it’s not a concern today, that we have large numbers of Working Poor who are paid unlivable wages. Poverty is a matter which government chooses to ignore. Politicians leave that to employers to deal with now, i.e. their corporate sponsors can ignore it, too.
BTW, I really do mean reporting disaggregate test scores in each community, not comparisons across states, as Bruce Baker demonstrated how those are not an apples to apples comparisons with NAEP: http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/revisiting-why-comparing-naep-gaps-by-low-income-status-doesnt-work/
One of the worst legacies of NCLB was to label all public education as failing? But wasn’t that what it was intended to do?
You have got to give them credit for accomplishing their mission –figuring out how to falsely discredit public education. If the data-driven people wanted to improve education, they would have collected data for a while and given it to educators so as to inform their practice.
That was never the plan.
And basically you say exactly that — talking about how the diversion was a major accomplishment for those who want to dismantle public education.
So you are most definitely right, especially in connecting Risk to welfare reform to NCLB and its spin-offs. Since the 1970s we’ve seen a global effort to cut back on the activist, redistributive state. At the same time we’ve seen the ratio of earnings between the highest paid and the lowest paid increase 20 fold.
Diane mentioned recently the idea of going back to a Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. That idea is beginning to make more and more sense given their interdependence.
In retrospect, forming a separate Dept of Ed and giving so much authority to the Federal Government seems a questionable decision
ARTICULATING A VISION OF DEMOCRACY
AND THE ESSENTIAL ROLE OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
What is to be done?
Good: “Making sure that disaggregate test score data by income level are reported in every community might be a place to start.”
Better: “we could all dedicate ourselves to simply calling out the lie.”
Even Better: develop a set of talking points just like the corporate reformers have, but thoughtful ones.
For instance,
1. Charter schools are not public schools, they are privately run schools that receive public monies with minimal oversight
2. Pay-for performance is not the norm in business and has many problems, one of the leading being how to figure out who actually added value in collaborative efforts.
3. Testing is narrowing the curriculum, causing declines in creativity and keeping students from developing critical reasoning skills.
(This one seems already to have wide public acceptance.)
4. Childhood poverty rates in the US are higher than in any other developed country, Romania being the one exception.
5. The US does as well as other developed countries on international tests, better when you adjust for poverty.
6. Civil service protections have done well in creating one of the best teaching forces on the planet and they should be retained.
7. Teacher quality and school effectiveness is not the issue — 80% of our public schools are fine or better.
8. Poverty is the problem — a social problem that the schools can’t fix by themselves.
We can add on to these, but the idea would be to develop not only a counter argument, but an articulation of what public education means to democracy.
John Adams, who seemed to anticipate the current state of Congress when he feared that member of a legislature “will obtain influence by noise, not sense,” was most strident among the founders in his support for education, said the following (the second quote is part of the Massachusetts Constitution):
“Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.”
“Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates in all future periods of this commonwealth to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them, especially the university at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings, sincerity, good humor, and all social affections, and generous sentiments among the people. ”