Anthony Cody gets stronger and sharper with every column he writes.
In this post, he explains how the best defense is a good offense.
He shows how critics of NCLB were tricked in 2008, then tricked again by Race to the Top.
It’s time to stop collaborating with those who want to destroy public education, he says.
It’s time to recognize, he writes, that Common Core is old wine in new bottles. Instead of getting rid of the testing and accountability dragnet, we will be ensnared in it even more deeply.
He writes,
“The Common Core could be called a “High Tech Rehabilitation of High Stakes Tests.” The major goal of the project has been to overcome objections to data-driven school reform, by offering standards and tests that are so new and different that we will not mind having our schools driven by them. They are heavily supported by a coalition of corporate entities that stand to make billions from the privatization of education. If we cannot mount a coherent counterproposal, we will be stuck objecting piecemeal to the worst elements of this regime, just as we did with NCLB. This may give us some small victories, but the entire project will remain intact.”
What would a good offense look like? The first step, as he puts it, is to “discredit bogus claims and false solutions,” as we do here regularly, like the stories about the miracle schools where 100% of the students graduate and go to college (except for those that don’t), or the miracle claims for mayoral control (but forget about D.C. and Cleveland), or the phony claims about privatization and inexperienced teachers.
What else? Read his post.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The internet does provide a remarkable opportunity for people to share information and mobilize others. People may find that they agree on some issues and disagree on others. Here in Minnesota, for example, people who agree on some things and disagree on others worked together to help increase overall funding for public schools, increase funding for all day-every-day kindergarten, and provide funds for low income families to send their children to pre-schools.
LikeLike
And it is amazing how many people get hold of bogus claims and false solutions, characterize them and then posture based on which “team” they think they should be on. Generally, the sexy team attracts folks who buy into everything they hear (like bogus claims and false solutions). The public school team ain’t sexy. And that’s OK. We’re solid. We give off more light than heat (hopefully). Hopefully there will be more people who realize they are in the dark–rather than cold people who just want a little heat.
LikeLike
“It’s time to stop collaborating with those who want to destroy public education,” he (Anthony Cody) says.”
Please cc Randi Weingarten, Michael Mulgrew and Dennis Van Roekel. They all have severe cases of collaboritis, a chronic condition that results in an irrational need to seek approval from those who are trying to kill you and the people you claim to represent.
LikeLike
Excellent post, Anthony.
I will be on @thechalkface (online radio) Thursday 6 p.m. EST to discuss the manipulation of information behind Weingarten’s statement that “75% of AFT teachers surveyed support Common Core.”
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/chalkface/2013/06/06/special-episode-of-at-the-chalk-face-w-mercedes-schneider
LikeLike
Weingarten has been tweeted this info.
LikeLike
She has also been tweeted a request to publicly post AFT demographic information as well as complete survey results (Saturday 10 p.m. CST). No response yet.
She did respond to my notice of being on @thechalkface.
This was the first response. @VickyJohnston61 @thechalkface-you mean eggregiously misrepresenting polling methodology.Impugning the integrity of a pro is beneath us
Second response:
Randi Weingarten @rweingarten 23m
@thechalkface @VickyJohnston61 -interpretation is fine- not falsely accusing the pollster of calling people to get a predetermined result
My response to Vicky Johntston (my Twitter connection):
Mercedes K. Schneider Look. It’s her slide. She omitted the actual numbers and names of categories. That is manipulation.
Saturday at 8:12 p.m.
Mercedes K. Schneider And the title of the slide is also manipulation. If CCSS has “overwhelming support” from teachers, then why leave the details off of the slide?
Saturday at 8:13pm
Mercedes K. Schneider I’ll tell you why: The most popular response from their 800 AFT teachers was “somewhat approve” of CCSS. That doesn’t sell the “overwhelming” piece, now does it?
Saturday at 8:14 p.m.
It is after this exchange that my friend Vicky tweeted the request for release of demgraphics and complete survey results.
LikeLike
Correction: Weingartern received the info release request Saturday 10 p.m. EST, not CST.
LikeLike
I should also add that my FB comments are in reference to this blog post (also tweeted to Weingarten):
This post will be the subject of the @thechalkface discussion.
LikeLike
Unfortunately, Mercedes, facts have been proven to be an ineffective remedy for the overwhelming majority of those suffering from collaboritis, although there’s some evidence they can inoculate those yet to be infected.
LikeLike
Michael, a friend who works in PR explained to me–patiently–that facts don’t change minds. Narratives do. The corporate reformers have a narrative: “our schools are broken.” It is wrong, factually wrong. Our narrative: they are promoting a privatization agenda for power, fun, and profit and we won’t let them get away with it.
LikeLike
Michael, there are a lot of folks out there who will benefit from this innoculation. 🙂
LikeLike
And on behalf of myself and all those people, I thank you.
LikeLike
Thank you, Michael. I appreciate your support.
LikeLike
By manipulating release of facts, Weingarten is shaping a narrative. The best litmus test of narrative manipulation is a comparison of fact to narrative.
People want to know how to evaluate research and how to decipher fact from fiction. The NPE webinar on this subject (tonight, 8 p.m. EST) has quite a crowd enrolled.
http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/2013/05/npe-webinar-uncovering-the-truth-about-education-reform-june-4-2013/
LikeLike
Financial and educational accountability should always be there. What they are doing now is not accountability with the high stakes testing to the test not for knowledge and ability to think. It all starts with financial accountability. We need all students in the U.S. to be able to communicate, language and to do math. We cannot have general standards state by state as that makes no sense in general. When you do not teach to think you have not really taught as that is a contradiction in terms. Presently, there is no accountability it is all smoke and mirrors. In California with 80% of the funding for the Dept. of Ed. coming from the Feds only to monitor NCLB and RTTT there is no money for monitoring anything else in the state. With Browns new program there will be no accountability at all and all money will be flexible. At LAUSD 24% of all revenue/student is special ed funding. Give Deasy, Gates and Broad flexibility and all that money will go into the sink hole and never help special ed children especially with RTI. This is all a big game to rip us off. The real problems are with top management or administrators. This is true in finances, education and child abuse. Administrators regularly break the child abuse laws and falsely charge teachers with false crimes and then terminate them with no “Due Process.” I am willing to bet the same things are happening in many of your districts also. Gates and Broad last year placed the superintendents and many staff in 40% of the medium to large school districts in the U.S. last year. Think about the implications financially and educationally.
LikeLike
Since there’s no reply button for a reply, I just want to say that Diane is absolutely right about the power of narrative over facts.
I raised the matter of facts only because Mercedes Schneider and Ms. Weingarten are contesting some, and in my years of observing Ms. Weingarten, and having to work under the catastrophic decisions she has made, I’ve found she is impervious to them, and tends to have an elastic view of what they are.
LikeLike
Michael, it is not for Weingarten that I am contesting. It is for those who want to critically weigh her “narrative.”
I am tired of data manipulations. I expose as much. It’s what I do.
I have a steady stream of readers to my posts about the AFT survey.
LikeLike
The AFT survey is far too theoretical in its conclusions considering the sample size versus the overall membership.
Furthermore, one must ascertain how many of those teachers surveyed belong to the Unity Party or had some vested interest in being connected favorably to it.
Michael, what do you think?
I worked 8 years under her leadership.
Weingarten conjures up so many fancy adjectives and metaphors. . . . . In all fairness to her, she has been wonderful for exercising one’s imagination for analogy, hyperbole, metaphor, and imagery, all socially acceptable ways of channeling one’s opprobrium for her.
I should leave at that on so public a forum as this.
LikeLike
M. Schneider: simply the mere mention that you and like-minded folks are effectively addressing yourselves to the citizenry of this country and not kowtowing to the “people who count” draws criticism from certain quarters.
Could it be the same crowd that thought King George was a sure bet and still haven’t figured out how the most powerful ruler in the world lost to a ragtag bunch of good-for-nothing colonial trash? The same bunch that knew for a fact that the North was going to lose the Civil War and that slavery would go on and on and on forever? That women would never ever in a million years get the vote?
The surest sign that they are wrong yet again are the kerfuffles—and worse—that you and Diane and others are garnering and will continue to garner. The edufrauds feel more than a sting in your deft exposés of the error of their ways [not to mention the ways they make error after error after error]. If I may so humbly suggest, keep in mind that “laughter is poison to the pompous” and think of their attacks as a backhanded compliment:
“The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.” [Victor Hugo]
Keep on making them admire you more and more.
🙂
LikeLike
Just so, Mercedes, and you are correct. My point was not that you were contesting Randi, but her “facts,” so that people may fairly judge.
LikeLike
Robert,
My feeling is that an AFT poll about the Common Corporate Standards, even if scrupulously conducted, corresponds to polls taken about support for the Vietnam War (another one the AFT got totally wrong), circa 1964.
In other words, people still don’t know what’s going on, don’t fully realize how brazenly they’re being lied to, and haven’t seen the mortality figures skyrocket yet.
Let’s revisit this in two years, and see what the member polls say.
LikeLike
Excellent assessments by all. The article builds a case for presenting a strong offense which seems the best solution. Chest beating and blame placing does not influence the main stream of society. Moving forward with a viable plan does.
Please read the Cody links and particularly Arthur Camins cogent comments. I am in total agreement with him as to the need for a Federal education presence in order to ensure that all districts in all states are guaranteed equal opportunities for education. Many areas of the US left to their own local school boards could and would cheat their of-color and poor students of real education. As I have said before, they would have carte blanche to teach classes on how to pick cotton. This metaphor is not a joke for we are close to losing the most important Federal law, Brown v. Board of Education, which was actually a compendium SCOTUS decision of 5 cases in 1954. and with charter proliferation, is being rapidly eroded.
Both Dems and Repubs in legislatures can be equally as uninformed and cold about fair public education for all of American’s students. Realistically funded and diverse academic and job prep curricula (as with vocational ed) in every district seems a key goal, but this can be only implemented by Federal mandate and oversight (and I do not mean Common Core issues and endless testing). We all have seen in districts across the country, that local school board members can be totally ignorant and very biased and many have very little interest in a solution to poverty, the key ingredient for school failure.
LikeLike
George Bizzetti: “We cannot have general standards state by state as that makes no sense in general.”
Rubbish. Why can’t states have their own standards? You presume, with this statement, that NCLB won’t be radically changed in terms of testing criteria to avoid sanctions and that test Your statement also seems to subsume that the future will see more and more centralization of communities around strategically placed sites of power and food distribution. Bigger cities mean more and bigger concentrations of poor people who can’t even get it together to grow their own crops because the government wants the land used for high rises and and sports arenas.
Also, you are being misleading by not explaining your remarks. Like what you say about California getting 80% “of their funding for the Dept. of Ed. coming from the Feds only to monitor NCLB and RTTT”. This is federal discretionary money, as allowed by the NCLB legislation (the renamed ESEA legislation) that you are talking about. Discretionary money can be spent by the feds in any way they see fit to support education without need to spread it evenly across States. The feds only provide approximately 10% of the funds spent by states (in formula grants) on primary and secondary education and these formula grants allow a percentage to be used to cover state Administrative costs.
In regard to the future, it is not like we were preparing to send all our children off to apply for the same type of job. Every time there appears to be a shortage, the post-secondary school industry responds by vastly overproducing. Further, there are jobs and careers that don’t appeal as much to children from Appalachia, Tennessee back country and West Virginia hollows, Kentucky and Pennsylvania .mining districts or Iowa and Indiana corn country as they do to children raised in NYC, Boston, and Cleveland.
LikeLike