Jeff Bryant decries the phony bipartisan consensus surrounding education “reform.”
He wonders where are the progressives.
He compares the bipartisan consensus around education reform to the bipartisan consensus that prevailed before the war in Iraq, when dissenters were marginalized and ignored.
But he sees hope in the growing rebellion against high-stakes testing.
More and more parents and students understand that what is happening does not work, will not improve education, and will inflict grievous wounds to public education.
How long can our policymakers continue to demonize teachers and expect that “better” or “great” teachers will magically appear to take the places of those who left in disgust?
I share his view that the current reign of toxic policies will not last forever. Not a one of them has any evidence behind them, and not a one of them works to improve the quality of education.
Failure cannot survive indefinitely. The American people will indeed awaken to the great hoax called education “reform” and reclaim their schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I read this article in Common Dreams recently: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/26-2
You could probably list the 147 people who talk to each other about “reform”… These interlocking directorates are quoted widely… Alas, free-thinking progressives who favor nuance over orthodoxy don’t unite well and don’t provide pithy quotes…
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Thanks Diane! Here’s where to subscribe to the original site where this was posted: http://educationopportunitynetwork.org/
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Not sure about the Progressives, but I am sure that there is “no honor among theives.” When it comes down to it, the reformers are in it for themselves individually. It’s “What can I get out of this?” So when the situations begin to crumble (and they will because reformer actions are built upon lies), then the refomers turn on one another. This is our best hope and one that I am seeing even as bills are being proposed for the upcoming Louisiana legislative session. Louisiana Acts 1 (Teacher and Principal Hiring, Tenure and Eval) and 2 (Vouchers/Course Providers and Associated Funding) have been knocked down in the lower courts. Some legislators who treated teachers badly this time last year are now seeing these teachers as a voting constituency. The governor who was so popular this time last year now has a rating that has dropped into the 30s.
There is hope, even if the Progressives don’t band together.
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The Progressives are indeed uniting, planning to flip the script on the sham reformers. April 15, Chicago, Hilton Hotel: Reframing Reform: Equity and Excellence in Public Education: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=onw87zaab&oeidk=a07e76zkw70f24fea5c
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Teachers and administrators will have a huge role in pushing back all that is wrong in the corporate test and data obsessed and semi-privatizing reform model of education. But that voice will be nothing compared to the voice of parents and the general citizenry. Almost no level of government and virutally no union or group pf celebrities will be willing or able to do anything to right what’s wrong because we are up against some very powerful individuals, and they are trying to use their money and influence to drive the narrative of “educational crisis” and even try to institutionalize it. Nothing is failing in that vein.
Yet, it will be the parents and taxpayers mainly who will be the main force of preserving education as a public trust. And it is educators joining together with parents that has created a voice which will not be ignored. Parents and taxpayers outnumber all other groups, they vote, their children attend the public schools, and they are on a spectrum of socio-economic backgrounds.
I would love to see the NAACP, of which I am a member, get involved in countering the closings in Chicago.
Additionally, the Network for Public Education (NPE) is a diverse group, and it is a universal umbrella that includes anyone and everyone, certainly not just or even mainly teachers. NPE is more than a soundbox for like minded people. It will directly address politicians and candidates, the ones who sign off on legislation, when it comes to public education. Getting in on the political process, the statuatory genesis of policy, lobbying, promulgation of new laws, and even challening their legality is a prime goal of NPE, among others.
Fire will be fought with fire.
That said, Diane, I respectfully don’t agree with you about the trajectory of this reform. Just because a policy is a failure does not mean it will go away, if I am understanding correctly what may be a little bit of optimism on your behalf. One of the worst outcomes of RTTT and APPR is that there will be huge numbers of teachers per state, like 15 to 35 percent, that show up as “developing” or “ineffective” two years in a row, which then triggers termination.
Many perfectly fine and excellent teachers stand to be let go this way, to the detriment of administrators, children and parents who have done nothing but extoll the virtues of such teachers. As school districts become more starved of public funds through various local, state, and federal mechanisms, school boards and principals will be hard pressed not to consider creating release valves for letting out the budgetary pressure of more expensive, more experienced teachers. This creates a revolving door, and demotes teaching to a profession that can never be a true career.
Of course, I have to add there is significant backlash right now, starting but not at all ending with Texas’s legislative reduction of mandated testing from 15 down to 5 tests to graduate high school. This is a successful and indispensable example of push-back, but it hardly stops there.
I think we’re in this for the long haul, as in a decade, and it’s going to be a long, protracted fight, one increasingly arriving at civil disobedience and hopefully NEVER more than that.
I urge everyone and their grandparents to join NPE . . .
We all have the truth behind us; now all we need to do is amplify it through our voices, our numbers, and our solidarity.
We have the truth.
We are the truth.
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I agree with much of Robert Rendo’s reply. Especially that there is growing amount of backlash. Congrats to Texas. If you agree it will be the parents and the taxpayers who will be the main force in preserving public education, n New York there is a parent petition at testing.nysut.org to end the over-reliance on high-stakes, standardized tests.
Also, yes, yes, yes join the Network for Public Education.
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With you all the way, Ms. Kay. Much obliged.
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Where are the progressives? Or how is it possible that an educational reform package (NCLB, RTTT, charter schools, VAM, etc) that has so little valid research support can become the overwhelmingly dominant paradigm in ed reform? There is no doubt that a vanity fair constituency of powerful folks (CEO charter school profiteers, book and testing companies, billionaire ideologues, right wing media outlets, ambitious fair weather politicians, anti-unionists, non-peer reviewed think tanks on the take, and a confused but frustrated public, etc.) explains much of this, but I think ultimately this is an insufficient explanation.
I think what progressives (anti-deformers) are missing and why they appear weak, is that there is a genuine root problem of lack of choice faced by parents who do not want to send their children to public schools that they feel are inappropriate for their children. This is the hypothetical question posed by the deformers, “Would you send your own children to a zoned school where 50% are performing below grade level”? Except the question is not hypothetical for a very large parent constituency. For a parent in this situation, explanations of why current reforms will not work, or what will work in the future, do not really matter since this is somewhat like patiently explaining why there are not enough life boats to go around for your child, or why more or better life boats will be built in the future, when they are on the sinking boat now.
Charter schools and vouchers may certainly be poor policy from a larger socially concerned or longer term perspective, but if you are one of the millions of parents who need a better school for their child now, this is not the point. Nor is this just a question of solving poverty as I have pointed out elsewhere, since probably more than half of free lunch students actually do reasonably well in school. It is just that they probably do not do as well as they could because in the schools they are in, the other half do not. Which is why there is a genuine issue here of school choice even for poverty parents. It is this issue and constituency that the deformers have captured, and I believe is the real source of their strength.
I do not have an answer to this issue but I believe unless progressives address it seriously with more immediate solutions that meet parent concerns who are in this situation now, they risk losing the long term battle for public education.
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Some excellent points. There is another element, however. A lot of elite progressives have supported public schools in the abstract, but of course wouldn’t actually send their kid to a public school and likely didn’t attend one themselves. Of course, no privatization scheme is going to force elite schools to admit anyone they don’t want, but the rhetoric of choice does give a comforting sense of false hope.
The problem is that schools who want to “improve” their reputation/scores/marketability will find all kinds of imaginative ways to ensure the right kind of student population. At the high school where I teach, if we got rid of all our ESL students the overall quality of our school would go down as our rating went up
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Of all your insightful comments here and elsewhere, this one is the finest. I wish it could be ‘elevated’ to a new post for further discussion. I especially agree with your last paragraph.
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Thank you for this reality check. I count myself among the “progressives” (which I put in quotes because I worry that this word is meaningless to a lot of parents who might side with us but wouldn’t identify themselves in this way.) I work directly with parents on school organizing, and hear A.S.’s concern all the time. They are desperate for better options NOW, not in 5 years when their children are turned off, or too far behind, or unprepared for college. Whatever we want to call ourselves who are committed to equity, quality and preserving local, community-controlled public education – we need some immediate strategies that will bring parents on board with us. I don’t know what they are, but we need to get some creative juice going here.
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Where are the pwogwessives?
Well, some are busy rationalizing drone strikes on US citizens, because Obama does it; some are busy supporting cuts to “entitlements,” because Obama does it; some are busy explaining why bank fraud cannot be prosecuted, while whistleblowers face decades in prison, because Obama does it; and some are busy closing schools and parroting cliches about public education, because Obama does it.
Where are the pwogwessives? Busy congratulating themselves for buying organic at Whole Foods, and having their consent manufactured for them.
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Well said, Michael. My wife and I are always drawn to your commentary.
We all need to revisit the definition of “progressive”, “liberal”, and “neo-liberal” and recalibrate the definition to address the common good, not just the individual.
Our president and all the profiteers he seeks to please are beyond disgusting. . . Obama more so because he as paraded around as a democrat and, as Paul Krugman has stated so many times, rules as a moderate Republican.
But, labels have become blurred and almost meaningless. Obama and his politics on education are disgraceful. I am required by law to refrain from language any more colorful than that . . .
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We need to come to terms with our terminology: What has gone wrong in American K-12 education is a truly bipartisan FAIL. It doesn’t do any good to try to blame it on “right-wing” anything, nor does it help to suggest that “progressives” are the answer (they’ve been as big a part of the problem as anyone, from the outset). To the extent that we continue to cling to this kind of polarized discourse, it seems unlikely to me that any real improvement will come to pass.
While it might be emotionally satisfying to say “It is all the fault of _____” (fill in the blank with your favorite political bogeyman), that sort of thing isn’t going to bring the public together to reclaim control of their schools. The divide, if there must be one, should be between those who believe in local control of public schools, and those who prefer distant, unaccountable bureaucratic control. There are people from across the ideological spectrum who favor true local control, just as there people from across the ideological spectrum who support NCLB, CCSS, wall-to-wall testing, etc.
We need to stop pretending otherwise…
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The progressives at Michelle Rhee’s cookies and drank antifreeze that tasted like Kool-Aid. Even the President did. I am thinking they are coming out of the coma and starting to rumble. Some seem to be noticing that the schools are worse and not better. I like the comment, however, about progressives sending their kids to private school. Those and parochial school parents are often above the fray. It doesn’t hit hard unless it hits home.
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In the community where I live the majority of folks who describe themselves as progressives behave like Rhee and friends on steroids. The majority send their children to charters or homeschool them. We have had school board candidates run as progressives while strongly supporting school choice. In the most recent school board election, February 2013, the charter lobby ran a candidate who was widely supported by the progressives. One of our state senators, who is known as the Progressive in the Senate supports a local charter, believes in school choice, is always introducing voucher bills and constantly bashes teachers. It has been extremely frustrating to see these so-called progressives help ALEC and the 1% dismantle public education.
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Here is an interesting report on why reform is bipartisan. Follow the money.
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Unless and until the core issue of structural inequality in public schools is sincerely addressed, there can be no REAL education reform, just a continuation of the mass confusion of thoughts and arguments present yesterday, today and many tomorrows…until.
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