Author William Doyle has been observing the current “reform movement” promoted by people like Arne Duncan, Michael Bloomberg, Bobby Jindal, Rick Snyder, Rick Scott, and Michelle Rhee, and he has developed a theory about its true nature. Doyle thinks that the current movement is Soviet-style, with unrealistic targets and top-down control. What struck me as amazing is that I read an article in the Teachers College Record and blogged about it a year ago, in which the author argued that the current model of “education reform” is Stalinist. At the time, I thought this was perhaps extreme. I am not so sure anymore.
Doyle writes:
The currently dominant theories of education reform are being mis-labeled as “market-driven education reforms” or “corporate education reforms.”
Most of these theories would not last 5 minutes in a truly free market; or a profitable corporation; successful hedge fund or private equity firm, since the results have been so poor.
These sham reforms – – including turning schools over to political cronies and education amateurs and cyber-charters, the flagrant abuse and misuse of standardized tests, spending tens of billions of dollars on unproven reforms, unproven technologies and unproven testing schemes – – are actually the opposite of the free market or corporate models – – they are Soviet-style sham reforms.
Like Soviet models, they are based on top-down, rigid command and control; ideological orthodoxy and one-party thought; flagrant disregard for evidence; the brutalization of human capital; the disembowlement of unions; the crushing of dissent; and the massive misapplication of resources and data; all of which create massive inefficiencies and inevitably poor results.
They also rely on cults of personality created for false idols; and the creation of false miracles and Potemkin success stories.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Makes sense. If you accept that academic/educational success is the goal, you buy into the lies being told by people who know better. Political, economic and social control are the goals.
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Yes, I think the Soviet model is a good one — schools are very Animal Farm-esque. But I caution you about lumping in assaults on Teachers’ Unions with the other legitimate evils wrought by these reforms. I challenge the premise that Teachers’ Unions are a de facto good.
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Even a corrupt union is preferable to the Balkanization of the individual by a plutocracy. That being said, what we are seeing now, especially in Chicago, is a great example of getting unionization right. The port drivers on the west coast are another example. Unfortunately, an active enemy, the conflict of resisting exploitation by management is what causes union members to be more attentive to their own leadership. In the absence of that, in good and prosperous times, BIG rewards, respect and ferociously strong protections for whistle blowers would mitigate this on both sides, ie. incentives for vigilance and action. It’s far easier to enforce good behavior than to legislate it.
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Wrong edit!
Even a corrupt union is preferable to the Balkanization of the individual by a plutocracy. That being said, what we are seeing now, especially in Chicago, is a great example of getting unionization right. The port drivers on the west coast are another example. Unfortunately, an active enemy, the conflict of resisting exploitation by management is what causes union members to be more attentive to their own leadership. In the absence of that, in good and prosperous times, BIG rewards, respect and ferociously strong protections for whistle blowers would mitigate this on both sides, ie. incentives for vigilance and action. It’s far easier to enforce good behavior than to legislate it. One reason we do not have good laws establishing these things is that we have failed to understand the need for a separation between business and state that is just as strict as the one between church and state. They can absolutely co-exist and share a border, but they must never intermarry as the offspring will consume them both.
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I quit calling it the Sovietization of schools a while back as there are many now who don’t remember the USSR. I’ve gone to using the McDonaldization of public education-everything standardized and on the cheap to make the owners plenty of the grrreen stuff.
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NO, at McDonald’s, if they mess up your order, they’ll at least admit the mistake, take it back, do it again. No such luxury at schools…
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Not “no such luck at schools” but “no such luck at privatized charter schools”
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Duane, I think of it as the Walmartization of public education. The Waltons open a Superstore, destroy the mom-and-pop shops, empty out Main Street, then –if they can’t make enough money–they pull up stakes and leave behind a destroyed community.
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I like your analogy better!
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Interesting, that is exactly what the Tea Party says. They refer to Common Core as a top-down, centralized approach to education to serve the workforce.
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In this case, they are right.
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It’s important not to conflate the lambasting of Common Core (which is justified) with the rejection of all notion of content-area standards (which is foolish).
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Moneytheism …
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Check plus!
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Mr Doyle has developed a THEORY and THINKS that the reform is Soviet-style. Go as fast as you can to Charlotte Iserbyts free downloadable book , THE DELIBERATE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA and you will see documentation of the FACT that we have signed agreements with the Soviets to replicate their system.
Mr Doyle can quickly discern that his theory is based on FACT. I would hope to see a follow up on his part in the near future. It is always a thrill when researchers discover that their theories have sound basis and are not the stuff of conspiracy but of fact.
There are You Tube interviews done by Charlotte which are easy to access should one choose to watch and listen with objective minds. Not the stuff of conspiracy but TRUTH.
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Stalinist. An astute observation, Dianne. In political theory, I believe that that is the next stage after the corporate/fascistic state withers. The collectivization of assets and the subordination of interests to the state. Makes perfect sense.
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In this case the corporate fasces has not withered on the vine but fattened on the grapes of wrath unto others. That leaves us with a corporate owned state that no longer represents the will or the wisdom of the people it tramples in its presses.
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I have always thought vouchers (based on a dollar figure per head) seemed so far right that that they are left (that is when people say everyone should get a value of x number of dollars to spend on schooling where they choose–not certain if that simple an approach has been applied but I have heard people offer it up–like a flat tax approach). The dialogue of teaching and educating should never end. The minute someone comes up with a fix-all formula we should know to run the other way. Because to do apply a fix-all top-down formula ends the dialogue. Extreme right always ends up being extreme left, so this characterization of all that is going on seems apt. I refuse to go head to head with people in conversation about education who have sweeping answers. To me sweeping answers mean they don’t really want to be part of the dialogue that is education. When people want to challenge me I simply say that I am committed to public education. You can’t be committed to public education and have sweeping fixes.
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I tried to tell you.
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Since I was one of many people crushed by these school reform forces, and forced out of my role as AP English teacher after 17 years, I took much comfort in a reflection made by the main character, Viktor Schtrum, in Vasily Grossman’s novel, Life and Fate, about how Stalin impacted his consciousness,
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an invisible force was crushing him. He could feel its weight, its hypnotic power, it was forcing him to think as it wanted, to write as it dictated. This force was inside him; it could dissolve his will and cause his heart to stop beating; it came between him and his family.It insinuated itself into his past, into his childhood memories. He began to feel that he really was untalented and boring, someone who wore out the people around him with dull chatter. Even his work seemed to have grown dull, to be covered with a layer of dust; the thought of it no longer filled him with light and joy.
Only people who have never felt such a force themselves can be surprised that others submit to it. Those who have felt it, on the other hand, feel astonished that a man can rebel against it even for a moment – with one sudden word of anger, one timid gesture of protest. (p. 672)
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Beautiful. Thanks for that.
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I believe I made a similar comparison, only mine wasn’t Stalinist, it was based on Mao’s Great Leap Forward. And he is 100% correct. I laugh every morning, when our principal and some students are made to repeat the meaningless district “slogan” with some bs about being ready for the global world. On a site visit, our school was given bad grades because all the students (pre-K to 8) were not able to either repeat or explain what the heck the gobbledy-gook meant. I’ve got a MA + and a pretty high IQ, but I can’t make heads or tails of it either. But slogans we will shout, and therefore make it so.
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It’s amazing to me how many people are going along with all of this.
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It is Stalinist. Not only Democrats have embraced this ridiculousness but also Republicans who used to live by the mantra “local control”. They Republicans love big government now. They use it to wield top down power too. Just look at Michigan. Our government is mimicking a banana republic.
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One element that supports that Stalinist metaphor is the cult of personality that has formed around certain so-called reformers. Though the narrative is gradually changing, we’ve all seen the gushing, sycophantic coverage of operators like Michelle Rhee and Wendy Kopp.
One prospective consolation is that our system delights in destroying the idols it has built up, so they (or at least Rhee) too will fall. The tragedy is the needless waste, venality and abuse of power that people must endure until then.
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I agree Diane. Its gotten to the point where ones worst thoughts, the stuff bleeding heart liberals don’t want to believe, it’s all coming out to be true.
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There are amazing parallels. Read this communist document from 1920.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/10.htm#076
Rather disturbing the manifesto the reformers follow.
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Here are the facts regarding the USSR/USA Agreements. This is the source: “The Chronicle of Higher Education-International”, Nov. 27, 1985, on page 30 under A Chronology of U. S. –Soviet Scholarly Exchanges. Excerpts taken from a speech I gave at the Arizona Breakfast Club on Oct. 10, 1978, Published in “The Fact Finder, Vol. 46, No. 4 Phoenix, Arizona, Jan. 1, 1988.
“What happened was we turned our educational system over to the Carnegie Corporation of New York (a tax-free foundation) and to the Soviet Union. Most Americans would say that could never happen, but it did and it has been going on for a long time. For you to fully grasp the significance of the present agreement, it is most important for you to hear about the prior agreements we signed with our alleged enemy. (I’m having trouble typing all of the agreements on this blog).
“1958 (nearly 30 years ago) – A general agreement on ‘contacts, exchanges and cooperation in scientific, technical, eduational, cultural and other fields;. (Educational exchanges and cooperation in scientific, technical, educational, cultural and other fields’ was signed. (Educational exchanges included graduate students, young faculty members, ‘senior scholars, and teachers of English and Russian.” (Eisenhower was President).
These agreements have continue ever since. All this information is in public domain. When I gave this presentation, I gave a brief analysis of the USSR educational system. That is exactly what we are putting in now under the guise of Common Core. The method is based on radical behavioral psychology, promoted by The Effective School research that was implemented to restructure education…based on S-R and S-R-S in the best tradition of Pavlov and Skinner and others. Common Core has simply connected these methods with systems management,
Has everyone’s brain been washed? Order these agreements from your Congressman/woman. Get the one from China while you are ordering them. I don’t know when that one was signed, but we had Chinese teachers in Phoenix, Arizona in 1988 along with a Russian principal teaching about their culture. Really!
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Make correction of date of my presentation of all agreements. Date was 1988 not 1978. I frankly don’t see how anyone can deny that Common Core is not the Soviet System of education. I’m amazed! CitizensArrest should research the educational system of the Soviet Union. It is all in public domain.
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Thank you Ann – very well said! Shows a great deal of research as always!
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There is a more fundamental point to be made here. While I think the case for Stalinism has been successfully made, that does not mean the motivations are Stalinist, and I argue forcefully that they are not. Corporate power has no political or ideological loyalty whatsoever, just loyalty to it’s own power, influence and money. They will make use of strategies and tactics from any and every source so long as they match their particular needs. In effect, corporations are the biggest and possibly the oldest “No Labels” movement out there. It’s interesting that there is a small but growing grass roots “No Labels” movement afoot. Citizens are abandoning party affiliations, ideologies, abandoning all political identities in favor of a purely empiricist approach in the examination of and advocacy for any particular policy. It is not just independent, but anti-partisan in nature. This is perhaps the main reason that the oligarchs and plutocrats fear the Occupy movement, Occupy is not distracted by the divisive, deceptive methods that have neutered the vast majority of the rest of the population. As we have seen in the growing resistance to the corporate reform movement, once a citizen understands how they have been lied to and what the lie seeks to divert their gaze from, they won’t fall for it or other similar lies again. They develop heightened vigilance in other areas as well. As we have seen happen on occasion, there is strength in numbers that the machinations put forth by wealth and influence cannot overcome. Though there are not always the numbers needed to prevail, victory will always be highly probable when there are. This is why in addition to education, the right to vote is under assault. No bread and circuses for me, I have remembered history.
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The November 1985 agreement signed at Gineva between Reagan and Gorbachev called for “an interdependent world”. The initial purpose of this meeting was to discuss Cold War termination and cooperation for that purpose. If they had left it at that, it would have been wonderful, but one month later Secretary of State, George Schultz signed a 41 page agreement with the Soviets covering a broad range of exchanges and cooperation projects in the educational, scientific and cultural fields http://.nytimes.com/1985/12/10/science/about-education-us-and-soviet-to-share-insight… and this started a continuation from the 1958 to merge our two system of education. What actually happened, the USA adopted the Soviet System including the old 1959 polytechnic system of training the children for the workforce starting at a very early age. The scientific method used for control and conformity was the behavioral psychology method designed by Pavlov.
Pavlov with the combination of Thorndike, Watkins, and especially B. F. Skinner S-R-S is the method that was promoted under the “Effective Schools” to accompany the phony “Natiion At Risk” report.
The Reading Reform Act passed under Bush Jr. is based on approximately 38 studies of experimental psychology done on handicapped children in the Department of Health and Human Services. It is noted as “scientific reading” and states actually mandated this method under the guise of “phonics” of all things. This is the method that is being used to train teachers and has been for years for merit pay. It is simply titled “guided reading” and higher level critical thinking skills in Common Core. Attached to this “framework” is the PPBS or TQM business framework. Several large companies pulled out of this system years ago, but most of the multi-national corporations especially the large computer companies still use these methods. These companies are selling virtual reality computer softwear for workforce training, and mind manipulation programs. This is just a brief overview of what some are accurately stating, through research, on your blog. And, yes indeed, Common Core is based on the old Soviet system of education. I have all the early studies up until the early 1990’s. The Russians eventually took over all aspects of education and the corporations were eleminated except for the purpose of workforce training as noted on your last blog.
A great article appears on Jon Rappoport’s blog today titled “The attempt to destroy the unique individual” http://www.nomorefakenews.com .
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More on Common Core-research compiled by concerned citizens in Utah:
http://youtu.be/DdPz7Egl8JU This is a thirty-six minute video done by a Mental Health Professional warning of the possible dangers of Common Core methods with a few othrs involved.
This next video is approximately eight minutes long and shows portions taken from “Voices” being used for Common Core. This video shows the manipulation of young children to a certain point of view. http://youtu.belrGh7QHzmo8
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First, I find it interesting that the two web above are no longer on the web. While going through old data I found the following taken from the book “In Search of Mind” by Jerome Bruner, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1983, (Published as part of an Alfred P Sloan Foundation Program). The book was praised by Howard Gardner on the cover: Excerpts follow:
Luria visisted the United States in 1960, staying with us at Cambridge for a week….The ‘Second Signal System’ was very much on his mind and it only slowly dawned on me how crucial this idea had been to him and to his friends—both politically and intellectually–in turning Russian psychology around to cognitive ideas. It had the sanctity of being formulated by Pavlov himself…………
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This visit appears to be the result of the 1958 agreements.
It is difficult to appreciate how politically and ideologically important the Second Signal System was to my Russian friends. Marxist dialectic requires that experience ‘reflect’ physical reality. It also requires that it do so in a fashion reflecting the history and culture of people. Pavlov’s formulation of a Second System, the rather crude afterthought of an old man, provided the occasion for rehabilitating Vygotsky without rejecting Pavlov! For Vygotsky indeed saw language as the means by which mind mediated between culture and nature. Vygotsky’s views were far more genuinely Marxist. (p. 144-145)
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