Bedford Central Superintendent Jere Hochman poses the inevitable questions:
How did we let this happen?
Could we have stopped it?
What can we do now?
It must end. It will end. What is happening in education today is nothing less than educational malpractice. It is not education. It is bad for students.
Hochman writes:
Absolutely no excuse for cheating, threatening teachers, and the culture of lying.
But where were we in 2002 when NCLB was passed unnoticed under the shadow of 9/11? Why did those of us writing and criticizing the testing movement not press harder? Where were the professional organizations (NCTE, NCSS, NCTM …)? Why did we allow Mr. Obama to drink the Kool-aid left on the DOE table? Why didn’t we expose the Michelle Rhee’s, the quick fix reformers, and charter scammers when we saw what was happening Why did we allow our state legislators to fall into line so they could get re-elected based on test score results (or criticize the other guy for not getting them)?
Atrocities in history raise two questions: 1) How in the world could anyone be so evil, so toxic, so driven that such atrocities occurred? 2) Where were the bystanders and how could they let it occur?
Occupy DOE, keep writing, and then let us all make 2013-2014 be the year the professionals and parents took back public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Can you provide a link, Diane? Or is this a comment from a fellow blog reader here?
Ron, that was a comment posted on the blog
I see. Thank you!
Extremely similar questions can be posed in the same vein:
1. Why did we allow the invasion of Iraq to conitnue without robust protest?
2. Why have we allowed our system of taxation to coddle the rich and pound itself onto the middle class?
3. Why do we not put up a big stink about off shore tax havens and off shore incorporation?
4. Why don’t we protest more about taxing EVERYONE’S income not just under $113,000 per year, but taxing any amount over that absurd threshold as well?
5. Why don’t we object to democratizing other nations like Afghanistan
(to name a few) at an average cost of 2.1 million dollars a minute and at a cost of how many soliders and civiliams who have lost life and limb and how much collateral damage?
6. Why don’t we storm the streets because now Obama et al have signed off on a law that allows ANY American, on or off our soil, to be either killed or detained indefintely WITHOUT process or legal represnetation if they are suspected – not proved – to be involved in terrorism?
7. How come we don’t demonstrate against the revolving door between politicians, lobbyists, government, and private sector? Against an absence of real compaign finance reform?
8. Howis it that we are allowing our elected officials to mostly sit back passively and accept that corporations are people?
9. Will we really be willing to hold OURSELVES accountable for the fact that the combined public and private sector in 1975 was 24% unionized and presently, we are at about 7% unionized?
10. Why have we not formed a single payer health care system like EVERY other modern industrialized country: Australia, Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Holland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, etc . . . .
11. Why are we forced to buy our drugs from only American companies for medicare when Medicare could be guying them for one half to one fourth the price from foreign countries? Why have we pandered to the pharmaceutical companies and their huge profits and executive pay?
12. Why is my district slated to get rid of its blue ribbon, award winning pre-k program because of budget woes and shrinking state and federal subsisides when we have all bailed out Wall Street and the auto industry?
13. Why don’t we militantly march together in Washington
My list can go on and on with regard to the erosion of basic civil, human, economic, and constitutional rights here in the United States.
I know that Diane’s blog here is about education.
But education is not an island unto itself. It never will be. It is part and parcel of a larger picture.
What’s going on in public education right now – and connect those big fat dots – is but part of a larger picture to shift power and wealth and equality in the United States not since like the 1920’s.
The rich, the uber-rich that is, want to redefine “middle class” on their minority terms.
Who could that possibly suit?
There is growing backlash, but we are hard pressed not to fight harder, longer, more intellgently, more robustly against what has become a veritable plutocracy . . . . oligarchy . . . . you choose your label.
We the middle and working classes will shrink. We already are.
So, Mr. Hochman, I add these very germane questions to your list.
You are SO right, Robert. The American people are victims of a one-sided game of dodge ball, whereby only the schoolyard bullies maintain possession of the balls, and we are being hit with them again and again. That having been said, it’s just too much and, I believe, that’s why the Occupy Wall Street (& other cities) movement hasn’t been visible–not because of winter weather (not all cities suffer that!)–but because too many issues can spoil the broth. For example, people interviewed about the reasons for Occupy were all over the map, which is understandable in light of the points you made above & my “dodge ball” analogy. The solution, then, is that we MUST remain focused, and our focus here is clearly on education issues. AND–even within the realm of education, there are too many issues. However, it is my belief (and has been my choice) that we must concentrate on putting a stop to the “standardized” testing in this nation. As Diane has written, repeatedly, it is the foundation for the house of cards–pulling it out will cause the house to collapse, and we can begin to rebuild and take back public education for our children.
Finally, I also believe that one of the reasons people in Chicago are fighting so hard w/regard to the school closings is that the “powers-that-be” realize that WE have gotten wise–school closings based on low “standardized” test scoring schools language has somewhat ceased, now replaced with this “under utilization” excuse.
Could we call this progress?!
Correction:
In number 4 from my last comment above, I was referring to taxing income for Social Security.
I see so many complacent educators that just watch as things they oppose infect our schools and children. Even I am guilty. I oppose the Core Standards, but work is sending me to a training to learn about implementing and training early educators on the Core Standards for Early Childhood. My supervisor says to “keep an open mind”. All I know is that this trainer better be prepared for A LOT of questions about how this all relates to “Developmentally Appropriate Practice”. Even NAEYC has backed down and backs these standards. I just don’t get it. I did promise myself that if they cannot genuinely make the connection, I will not follow suit. The children are just too important.
Finally! I applaud Dr. Hochman! Occupy DOE is indeed correct! We were calm when asked to benchmark; we tolerated standardized testing; we discussed pitting schools against other neighborhood schools; we burrowed in for state comparisons; we accepted disappontments in funding; we asked for time and adjustments in “no child left behind” as we forgot thousands; we thanked God “those”kids weren’t in our scores; we accepted “those” kids and manipulated results; we watched classrooms move from inquiry to drudgery; we witnessed scandals and test prep classes”; we waited for someone to rescue our profession; no one came! The time is now for the profession to act for the rights of children to commit their minds to inquiry, their complete hearts to compassion through service, and their lives to our democracy via a real education. Time is now! No more excuses professionals! We all need to speak up like Dr. Hochman.
No “WE” weren’t all calm. Some of us have been fighting this for years, for me since the mid to late 90’s when I first heard the term “data driven decision making”. And we have paid the price. And it looks like I’m going to have to pay the price (being forced out of my job) again this coming school year when they try to evaluate me on “student growth percentiles” or whatever it is they will be using since they haven’t told us exactly what it will be. And my supervising principal (who tolerated and tried to understand me and read what I gave her) is moving on to a head principal position at our middle school. I’ve told them I cannot accept any evaluation that includes student test scores-and they know why.
Yep, it’s time for the rest of you’ll to wake up, smell the coffee and come around to the “right” side of this reform crap and quit going along to get along. You’ve done enough harm to too many children already by not standing up for what is right.
I have to disagree a little with Jere Hochman. Some of us were trying very hard to prevent No Child Left Behind from becoming law. By the late summer of 2001 George Washington University had published a monograph of which I am a co-author in which we had interviewed 19 key players in education for their reaction to what the White House had proposed. While those players were not identified, some were actively opposing what they saw was happening. People like Walt Haney at BC, who was not one of those interviewed, were trying to point out that the so-called Texas miracle was a sham, and why. People were attempting to lobby George Miller in the House and Ted Kennedy in the Senate, warning them about the dangers of the course they were following. Ultimately the only success was some trimming around the edges – the proposal for vouchers – which had been criticized by voucher proponents as insufficient – was stripped out. The idea of giving schools a bonus for providing parents with the value-added scores of the teachers of their children was eliminated. But the passage of the bill was bi-partisan, in part because the Democrats foolishly thought they had a commitment from Bush for more funding for schools.
There are people who read this blog who have been actively trying to fix things ever since, through lobbying, through speaking and writing, through political activism, through demonstrations, through resistance. They include scholars, organizations like FairTest, individuals like Deborah Meier, journalists who took the time to learn and comprehend, and teachers (and later superintendents and principals and school board members) who immediately understood the dangers to public education and took on the additional task of fighting these battles.
Some of us have been on various barricades for more than a decade.
We welcome those who have come over. That includes Diane herself, who originally supported much of No Child Left Behind, but being the good historian she is, was convinced by the evidence of the damaging direction of which NCLB was merely a part.
But please do not paint all of us as having been passive on the topic.
We tried.
We have been trying ever since.
Ken
My point exactly. Many have been vocal since the soft Goals 2000 (which began with every child ready for kindergarten) got teeth with NCLB. I will send you a Post-Dispatch commentary from June, 2001 “Educating Widgets: Like other states, Missouri risks letting the federal government take away students’ individuality with annual testing”
We were outliers – chicken littles – conspiracy theorists. I can’t tell you (well, you probably know) how many people said, “It can’t possibly happen” “NCLB will go away like everything else.”
Of course there have been critics from day 1 – but like lobbyists, they were the expected voices and quickly waved aside. Where were the media? Celebrating Superman and pointing fingers at failures. Where were the Governors and legislators? Not about to criticize anything after 9/11 and buying into quantitative measures to point fingers and rattle off solutions before their next election.
Like many of my colleagues, you, and those you highlight above – we wrote columns, complained nicely, and debated with the Commissioners (Mine was with Driscoll’s office about the downside of the new “teacher identifier number” for the same reasons we now read about the data worries in New York). But it wasn’t enough and too many remained silent.
I appreciate Dr. Hochman’s remarks and therefore am incredulous that he can reconcile his stated beliefs with his intentions to cut four school library positions and hire math coaches to teach math to raise test scores. The research on the impact of school librarians on student achievement is unequivocal, and yet, he is currently suggesting these drastic cuts.
Ah, here we have the “tell.” Let the professionals and the parents take back public education. Notice which comes first: “the professionals.” I. e. the teachers who work for the parents. The “professionals” used to have a rather nice thing going, control of the system by themselves and their unions, which then controlled the state legislatures to fund their cozy little closed shop. The parents are trying to take back public education with charters and vouchers. The “professionals” don’t like that. In my opinion, that take back will not happen for one reason and one reason only. The districts are out of money. If it only takes half as much tax generated cash to provide an opportunity scholarship (i.e. voucher) as it does to fund a student in the traditional public school system, the governors of the states (Jindal, Walker) are going to go with that option.
And how did NCLB get passed? Senator Ted Kennedy was a co-sponsor. He gave the twisty Texan (Bush) COVER for the plan. Don’t omit that. NCLB was a liberal sponsored initiative because they bought into the statistically impossible goal that every kid could be lifted to reading and math competency by, when was it, 2015? That fits in with standard liberal utopianism, where the “needs” of every kid are to be met. It is turning out that the “needs” of the poor are seemingly infinite (not literally, but certainly very, very large), and the money to meet those needs is not infinite (or certainly not large enough to actually do the job). The middle and upper class parents, therefore say, “give us a voucher (or charter) and we’ll get our kids out of a system designed to suck tax money down a bottomless pit, and we’ll go our merry middle class way, getting our kids literate and mathed, and you utopians who are the professionals who run the schools can do the best you can with what’s left.”
Unless the economy picks up really, really fast, and tax revenues come rolling back in the way they did before the Great Depression of 2007, I very much doubt that most parents have any interest in taking back public education. The “professionals” do of course, because it’s their livelihood. What I think we may be seeing is the downsizing of public education just as we saw the downsizing of the auto companies. The so-called reformers argue that that will make the public schools more “competitive.” I hope that’s true, getting more education for the same buck, but I don’t count on it. Of course we would like rich folks education for every child, as Dewey is quoted as saying, but that’s a utopian socialist dream, especially when the government is socialist in ethos. The more government, the less education. But then Dewey was a socialist riding on the back of capitalist prosperity, but when the logical consequences of progressivism came to be realized (initiated by Woodrow Wilson) in the current economy, the capitalist beast decided to eat its socialist passengers.
Because of the economic weakness of the country, almost everything in government, including national defense is taking a hit. A pity. But it’s the consequences of liberal economic policy. Teachers are part of the support for that policy. It takes a real twist to knife yourself in your own back, but you’ve done it. Happy times are not here again. Vouchers and charters will continue to expand BECAUSE they are what parents want and are cheaper, and the “professionals” are taking and will be taking the hit.
And it all comes down to what people mean by “equal opportunity.”
Harlan, I wonder how you survived in the public school system in Michigan for – what was it – 3 decades?
Survived? Did you think I would have been bludgeoned to death if my colleagues heard my views? That doesn’t serve as a very high recommendation for the tolerance of public school teachers. I truly am just trying to understand WHY what is going on at the intersection of philosophy, economics, and the American Dream (i.e. citizen psychology). As best as I can estimate public education, like many municipalities, promised more to their staffs than was economically sustainable and are now caught in a funding crunch. There just ain’t gonna be no more money, and possibly less if the national debt crisis arrives. The federal government will no longer be able to subsidize public education if the interest rates on the huge debt go up. That means the states will be on their own. And that means, in my estimation, that what the constitutions of the states mandate as an “adequate free public education for every child” will be redefined as “the cheapest per pupil funding we can get away with” which will ultimately come down to about $6000 per child per year and will take the form of vouchers, charters, and diminished public school systems. The progressive vision of a public school system which would offer a free public education adequate to every child’s need will be dead for kids whose adequate education can’t be had for $6000 a year. There is such utter squandered waste of money at the federal level, that cutting back the feds to reasonable level might free up enough coin for the states to do better. But since the national administration is not interested in reducing the size of the federal government, I don’t think it will happen. We need a Calvin Coolidge in the White House but instead we have spend thrifts.
Thanks, Dr. Hochman–I made this very same point in a comment on an earlier blog post. Superintendents–the ball is in your court. REFUSE to play the game. Parents–OPT your children OUT NOW. Older students–OPT yourselves OUT in those districts you can–otherwise, get your parents to opt you out. (BTW, there’s a very good article about this in Thursday’s {3/28/13} Chicago Reader. It’s the cover story in an issue that has several education articles. Access them online-
chicagoreader.com)
There really needs to be major outreach and organization with parents and the community. Once they start fighting together then the reformers have no chance of continuing the assault.
Agreed. The parents need to get on board. Parents only want what is best for their children. Most only think that this is what is best. They have no idea. More REFUSALS = more ATTENTION given to this issue in the main stream.
Well. some of us were in an uproar but many were sure that given its sponsors–people like Kennedy, Miller of California, the AFT and NEA, et al it couldn’t be as bad as we said.
We lost this one the same way we lost a strong union government, housing for the poor, good minimum wages, etc etc etc.
Deb
Thank you Jere! Courageous stand!
Please find, join or follow the “Solidarity with Garfield High School” group on Facebook. This is a story of a group of educators at one school that chose to boycott the mandated IMAP test (which, by the way, has revenues of over 96 million annually). The boycott has spread throughout the Seattle School District, is starting to get national attention, and has caused district administration to reassess the situation.
We must not fool ourselves. This issue is not about student achievement, parental control, nor teacher effectiveness. It is about profit.
We are not alone: http://t.co/kd0wDmeWIy
NUT conference delegates voice resentment over levels of criticism and curriculum reforms
I must make the following corrections: It is called the MAP test and revenues reported for 2012 were only 84 million.
I sincerely believe the creators of the MAP, in particular, try very hard to make a product that is reliable and accurate. However, why is it that teachers are no longer trusted to accurately track and evaluate the progress of their own students, using multiple forms of assessment? Oh, that’s right. Where is the profit in that?