Anthony Cody explains that the nine most terrifying words in the English language to an educator are, “I’m from Big Business, and I’m here to help.”
Business ideas about competition and incentives, he says, don’t work in schools.
Profit-driven reforms don’t work either.
Businesses and schools have different bottom lines.
As he concludes:
“The market system demands winners and losers, and the biggest losers of all are the students who find themselves left behind in schools that are unprofitable, or because they are more difficult to educate, and thus are liabilities to whatever schools they enroll in….
“I wrote a week ago that our schools are like a living organism under attack by those who wish to divert resources into profitable ventures. Those of us resisting this are perhaps becoming more activated, like white blood cells are activated when the body’s immune system detects an invasion. We need to understand the reasons business interests are realigning our schools, and work to preserve the core mission of our public education system. Our schools do not exist to prepare students to be compliant workers in an ever more efficient economic system. We are in the business of creating thinkers, not workers, creators, not drones.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For many years we have had winners and losers in public education. It’s tragic and unnecessary.
Like educators, people working in business vary. Some are competent, some not. Some deeply committed to helping strengthen the community, some focused most on what they want.
Cody’s attacks are an over-simplification.
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If I apply the same logic, so is yours.
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And the twelve most disingenuous words in the English language are “My name is Michelle Rhee, and I truly love and respect children.”
The twelve most false words in English are “I’m Arne Duncan, and I know how to teach K through 12.”
And the three most hilarious words coming from Obama are “I’m a progressive.”
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Robert Rendo: I look forward to your postings, but I think you are letting Michelle Rhee off the hook.
Forget about making children’s mouths bleed because of the masking tape she had them put on. Forget about leaving a child off with an unknown adult because she had more important things to do. Forget about her version of Egregious Math—taking “her” [she apparently team taught for two of her three years as a ‘teacher’] students from the 13th to the 90th percentile. Forget about constantly insisting in public that “I am a public school parent” when at least one of her children was attending Harpeth Hall.
This is truly frightening—and I am not being sarcastic or funny: in the immediate aftermath of Newtown, this is how she described the precious children who were murdered and their counterparts: “our most precious assets.”
These are four of the most terrifying words in the English language.
Respectfully,
KrazyTA
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You’re right, TA.
Rhee is more hideous than Medusa, more gruesome than the chimera, more predatory than the vutures who picked at Prometheus’s liver.
And she just got rewarded for being her monstrous self with her annual salary last year of $300,000 . . . . .
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It’s important to distinguish between Obama and his predecessor. For example, the Obama administration has distinguished itself from that of George Bush, Jr., by uh . . . uh . . ., well, . . . hm . . .
OK, so there is no difference.
Noam Chomsky doesn’t agree with me here. He thinks that there IS a difference, that Obama has been FAR WORSE for civil liberties than GW was.
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As Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report correctly said last year, Obama is not the Lesser Evil, but the More Effective Evil.
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Bush supported vouchers, Obama opposes them. Obama was able to convince Congress to pass the first major expansion of health care coverage in decades. Obama demonstrated that an African American could be elected President and then enormous sums spent to defeat him, an African American could be re-elected. Obama has urged a major expansion of funding for early childhood education programs, and urged higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Bush did not propose either of these things.
Apparently those and other differences don’t matter to you and Chomsky, but they matter to a lot of people, including me.
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Oh, the Obama health care plan, Obamacare . . . the one that was previously known as ROMNEYCARE
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Sorry, Joe, but the Obama administration’s ratcheting up of NCLB to new levels of insanity trumps all else for me because the consequences of that ratcheting up will be so dire.
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Robert, I understand the concerns re NCLB. However, at least for some of us, there remain important differences between Bush and Obama. that’s what I was trying to point out.
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Noam is right in many ways. Even with NCLB, test scores were not nearly as much tied to teacher evaluations.
The drawing upon the 1917 treason law (I think that’s what it was) and other more “spy-oriented” legislation to do things like detain and label people without due process has been utilized by Obama about 8 times, far more than any other U.S. President.
Obama is depraved, deplorable, and de-humanized.
The GOP are equally horrific, and I’ve never voted for them. . . doubt if I EVER will, but at least you basically know that what you see is what you get.
Obama is a “neo-liberal” . . . preaches the liberal, progressive rhetoric and then governs like a plutocratic fascist.
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I like that, Michael. Obama as “more effective . . . “.
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Robert, good point.
Obamacare is just another way of making middle class people pay more for healthcare instead of taxing everyone enough to form a single payer system. It has some meritorious aspects, but the bottom line is that it will not be an equitable system nearly as much as it is in Australia, Japan, France, FInland, and even the increasingly two tiered England.
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Do you think that a single payer healthcare system was a political possibility that Obama just choose to ignore?
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Mr. Nathan,
I too thought is was critical for a “black”man to be president. It still is, and I’m seriously proud of Obama’s melatonin levels. This was some kind of paradigm shift not only for the United States, but for the world.
But the race and skin honeymoon are long over. Bad disingenuous leadership is bad disingenuous leadership.
Although, to be honest, we have had a mostly Protestant Old White Boy’s network screwing up lives for Americans for centuries, so why not afford that opportunity to someone like Obama?
Why should he be deprived of such an opportunity just because he’s half African American?
Corruption and depravity are and should always be equal opportunity employers. Obama’s turn to turn on Americans and public education and civil liberties is proof positive that we are once again a democracy.
As far as what Mr. Shepherd said about RTTT and Obama’s education policies: All, I can say, Joseph, is that YOU should teach, like me, a low income kindergarten immigrant population, have them tested mandatorily on a computer program in reading 3 times a year, a program owned by a private company that is making a lot of money and forcing my district’s budget to not hire any more teachers in an overcrowded school, a program that offers only templated feedback like “teach more sight words to this child” rather than spelling out the specific sight words the child was and was not able to read, a program whose company refuses to release data on the empirical value for validity and reliability citing that “that’s proprietary information that teachers are not privy to”, a program that tests for reading but that reads to the children rather than having them read aloud or inside their heads, a program that is now mandated by RTTT, and a program that determines 15% of my employability despite the fact that I am a NBCT and that there are myriad other assessments we used to use that showed alarmingly different results for reading acumen but that we are no longer permitted to use as a result of RTTT. Add to this the standardized, federally reportable test known as the NYSESLAT that my kindergartners have to take, a metric that measures literacy far more than second language acquisition (the former is under the umbreally of the latter, linguistically and cognitively speaking), a metric that determines 25% of my employability under RTTT and that even if I get a perfect score on both of my yearly observations and perfect scores on the local computerized reading assessment previosuly mentioned, this standardized test has more weight point- wise and can literally throw off the lighter scoring weights of my yearly evaluation and render me as “ineffective” or “developing”.
The irony is that I was chosen this year by my superintendent and deputy superintendent of curriculum and literacy to mentor other teachers because of my acumen in pedagogy, knowing full well that when I receive my scores in September, I can be rated by Obama’s junk science teacher evaluation system as, well, just plain no good or not good enough.
Are you at all aware, Joseph Nathan, that RTTT dominates the public education landscape in this manner ACROSS the nation, or are you still an Obama fan?
Of course, Obama does not act alone, and there are a thousands of politicians and lobbyists combined who are fornicating with him to carry this plan of privatization through by portraying artificially the “crisis and failure” in public educaiton today.
There are no failures here, except for the fact that we have a very high and increasing rate of poverty, adults and children alike, in the U.S.
So wrap your arms around Obama all you want.
Send him a Hallmark telling how much you really care.
Enjoy an intimate Maxwell House International Cafe Vienna Beverage for those special moments in your life with the President. Cafe mocha for you; French vanilla cinnamon for him.
But please don’t paint him as a progressive . . . .
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Mr. Rendo, my office is in a k-12 school where the majority of students are sons/daughters of recent immigrants. Are you saying that testing of kg students is mandated by RTT or NCLB? I could be wrong but I thought NCLB mandated testing 3-8th grade, and a little at high school. Does one of these programs also require testing of kg students?
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TE: yes, he chose to ignore a single payer system. He did not even have the cajones to put it on the table with the right rhetoric because he was so afraid of what he perceived to be “political suicide”.
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You are one of the few that think it was politically feasible.
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TE:
I dont’ get it.
Do you have any data that shows I was one of the “few” who thought it not to be politically feasible? Can you please disclose the scientific constructs and experimental diseign to show that I was among the “few”?
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Joseph Nathan, in NY State, RTTT mandates a standardized test for all ELL’s, all grades. In fact, when they are older and if they ahve not exited ESL services, they need to pass both the Regents and the NYSESLAT in order to graduate high school, even though both are ELA summative assessments.
Your office is housed in such a school.
Do you yourself teach ELL’s as a content area teacher, an ESL or bilingual ed teacher, or as a common branch general classroom teacher?
RTTT and NCLB always mandated standardized testing if children were found officially to be ESL/ELL and were provided services as such. The NYSELSAT is the federally reportable mandated assessment, and yes, it’s taken at the end of pre-k as a pre-assessment and given in April as a summative assessment.
Are you in NY state?
For the record, not all offspring of recent immigratns, as you put it, are ELL’s (English language learners). . . . Whereas there are connections, it is not a rule that all will need ESL services. It depends on how they test.
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Thanks for this update. I live in Minnesota. we don’t have an RTT grant here. I work with a number of schools, having been a classroom teacher. But I am not a classroom teacher. I will check with people on Monday to see if this state requires 3 times a year tests for kg kids.
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Joseph Nathan,
I understand that each state implements what it interprets to be the correct version of the “guidelines” of RTTT, which BTW, only pays through its grant for data collection systems, teacher evaluations systems, standardized tests, and all the consultants that come with them. As a result of my district getting the grant, we are getting about 38K a year for five years.
But the mandates of RTTT actually cost my district 250K per year. Which is one of the reasons why my small group instruction ironically pushed for by the state has 11 to 12 children rather than the absolute best practices limit of 6.
We just can’t afford to hire anyone. I also teach in a space that it 11 feet by 10 feet. . … it houses my “small groups” bookcases, a guided reading library, a computer, storage cabinets, and materials and 6 rolling dry-erase boards. It’s on the second floor, and we don’t do AC in the warm months, which in NY get up to 90 degrees average.
Luckily, I have 2 windows.
My point: more money from our federal tax dollars is NOT spent on quality learning environments, but on testing, all a direct result of RTTT and NCLB. . . . .
But I know I probably have described the same conditions as the schools Obama and Arne Duncan send their children to, no?
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Maybe Joe can write about these situations and the destruction of teaching and learning in one of his articles and send a copy to Bill, Arne and Barack (if it won’t affect his funding, that is).
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A variety of columns make the points that
* comparing charters & district public schools overall, does not make sense because of considerable differences among both kinds of schools and
* it’s not sufficient to use test scores to determine
http://hometownsource.com/2013/06/26/joe-nathan-column-encouraging-but-limited-view-of-charter-public-school-progress/
While those points make sense to me, not all funders agree with either or both of them.
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Linda,
My usual classic questions:
For how long was Joe a classroom teacher?
What was his population like?
What were his school’s resources like?
Was he in a private, public, or charter school?
Did he teach prior to NCLB, during NCLB but prior to RTTT, or during both?
Joseph?
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I am anxiously awaiting the reply.
Certainly it is fabulous and so much better than the lowly unionized teacher of 2013.
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Worked as an inner city district public school teacher. That included a school for the 50 middle school students that the Minneapolis middle schools most wanted out of their schools. It also included an inner city school serving a cross section of students from various backgrounds. This was pre NCLB and RTT.
Currently working with urban district & charter schools that are 60-80% low income, 60-100% students of color, and 30-70% English Language learners.
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Thank you, Joseph. I enjoy the dialogue with you.
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Thanks, me too, Robert. I learn a lot here.
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Sometimes people find ways to work together. Here’s how former Celtic Woman star Lisa Kelley put it yesterday in Atlanta, during a celebration of America at its best
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbk3LMpPRc4&feature=youtu.be
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Mr. Nathan,
I do not care whether or not the “funders” agree with my views or not. Just because they do not agree does not mean they are right.
And statistically, in NY State, as it is throughout most of the United States, the funders and policy makers are in the vast majority of non-educators. Most have no background in education, some of very little experience in education, and almost no one has any experience in public education with challenged or no-so-challenged populations.
It is the precise absence of educators from the round table that has dramatically contributed to the disgrace we find ourselves in now.
I am glad you taught prior to NCLB and RTTT in the kind of setting you mentioned. For how many years did you teach?
Thank you always for your writing. We all learn so much from each other.
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Robert, in my comment re funders I was responding to questions about whether I won’t say something that some funders disagree with.
I taught in urban district public schools with no admissions tests (other than people had to live in the city of Minneapolis or St. paul) for 8 years. I also worked as a school administrator in an two urban district public schools with no admissions tests (other than students had to live in St. Paul. I taught at the Univ of Mn for 22 years.
As mentioned, our Center’s work currently involves both district & charter public schools.
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For the record, Joseph, this reform movement and “working together” cannot be distilled down to a simplistic musical performance given in a state where there are egregious records of educational and civil rights viloations. Not to mention, the blond should study voice for at least 5 years before performing in public . . . . She’s a hard worker and driven, but she is not accomplished.
As far as working together, you’ll never see me even conceiving of joining hands with the likes of Eli Broad, the Walton family, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Scott Walker, the Governor’s Association, CATO, ALEC, and Michael Bloomberg – to mention a few – when it comes to improving education.
I’ll stick with the true intellects and cognitive scientists who can tell us empirically and not philosophically the best conditions for teaching and learning.
As an NBCT working and living under both NCLB and now RTTT, I can empathize with you and am relieved you were not teaching under either era of politics. What you do now I would imagine is very challenging and rewarding, yet I am still glad you did not have to teach under either set of laws.
You must have a fresh lens, no?
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Interesting how different people can view the same person in various ways. The blond woman you referred to is Lisa Kelly, a native of Ireland, who has had an enormously successful career as a member of the international singing, touring group Riverdance and Celtic Woman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Kelly
She now has retired and is running a voice school in suburban Atlanta.
I don’t expect everyone to agree that she is a great singer, as I don’t agree everyone will agree on priority steps to improve education.
Incidentally, you (and others) are welcome to call me Joe. Would you prefer to be called “Mr. Rendo”, Robert, or something else?
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Add to that Big Government. Neither is a friend to education. Big government pumps out Big Money and Big Business follows.
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It took about 30 years for steady deregulation of the fiancial industries to result in the biggest crash since 1929, impoverishing small investors as market manipulators laughed all the way to their [overseas] banks. An already sick healthcare industry needed only about 20 years of deregulation to render it so out of whack that ordinary citizens were routinely bankrupted by illness while top dogs in pharmaceutical et al medical industries merrily salted profits (etc, see above). The deregulation foxes have now infiltrated the schoolhouse. I wonder what will happen
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It is already happening in charters. Absolutely poor leadership, a narrow curriculum, no arts, drama, music, low paid employees with massive turnover, no real retirement, an authoritarian CEO with a job for life for he and his family, few supplies for teachers to teach with, and very little supplies or extras for students. This is the future of the for-profit education industry in America. Absolutely disgusting.
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I hate that wordpress does not allow for second edits. . . .
Corrections:
. . . . “Most of the GOP are equally horrific”
. . . . .”More than any other U.S. Presidents combined.”
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What will happen?
That’s an easy trajectory: We’ll simply turn into most of Central and South America (nothing against either. . . I speak Spanish and French), where if you want a really great education, you’ll get one if you can afford one.
In the other Americas, you’ll pass over most of the paltry public school systems and go to a private school, or in the U.S., you’ll pass over most of the private sector-public government partnerships for schooling, and you’ll look at amazing, effective, beauitful facilities, schools like FDR Collegial in Lima, Peru for about $13,000 if you want to go abroad or if you want to stay here in the U.S., you’ll attend, for example, Hackely in Westchester County, NY, for about $30,000 a year.
It’s not like choice has not been created for you.
You’re free to choose.
El poder de elegir es una verdadera libertad, que demuestra que somos una democracia . . .
Le pouvoir de choisir,est une veritable liberte qui prouve que nous sommes une democratie, n’est pas? . . .
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Why does the market demand winners and losers? Poor performance creates losing providers of goods and services, but in the absence of poor performance there need be no losers.
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So how to you prevent poor performance? But first, TE, how will you define “poor performance”?
And I’m really confused. What was your point about winners and losers?
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My point is that a market does not require winners and losers.
I don’t define poor performance, the people making the choices to patronize one good or service provider rather than another no doubt have a variety of criteria. That is one useful thing about a decentralized market: no single person has to define poor performance.
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Does that mean that the people deciding such a label have been essentially removed form the “deciding process” and now government does a lot more of that for us?
I’m not understanding you.
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No.
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Then what do you mean?
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What I said.
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“My point is that a market does not require winners and losers.”
It does not, but it is the inevtiable consequence, no?
“I don’t define poor performance, the people making the choices to patronize one good or service provider rather than another no doubt have a variety of criteria. That is one useful thing about a decentralized market: no single person has to define poor performance.”
Then how does tha apply exactingly to public education? And in the context of RTTT? Please specify.
I know “what you said”. But I would not be asking for clarification if I understood it, no?
Do you mind answering quesitons? I truly and sincerely hope you are not being vexed. It would impede discourse.
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The creation of winners and losers is not an inevitable consequence of markets, but rather the conflict between our needs and desires and our limited ability to fulfill those needs and desires given our resources and technology. Change the system for determining what is produced, how it is produced and for whom it is produced and you might change who the winners and losers are, but you will not be able to get around the limits of our productive capacity as a society.
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It is easier to answer clarifying questions if the questioner provides more details about what is unclear.
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The statement that markets create winners and losers was not qualified to apply to education or RTTT, so I was responding to e general statement made rather than the more specific application to education.
In the traditional public school system the market for schools is the real estate market. Every house listing in my town specifies which elementary, middl, and high school district the house lies in. There is no requirement that this be listed, it is just that the potential purchaser finds it as important as the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, EITC, and is often willing to pay a premium for a desirable school.
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What exactly was unclear about my questions? I don ‘t get it.
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But what I’m not clear about, TE, is that you’re responding to a general statement when Cody’s claim is about how Big Business applies itself as “help” to public education.
How is it that you’re not responding to his article in the context of public education and RTTT’s ties to big business? This is one of the specific things I am not understanding.
I do hope I have provided some more details to you here. That is my hope.
Do you consider your response to be decontexturalized? Why or why not?
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Let me try again.
The true cost to any decision you or society makes is an opportunity cost. This applies to education as well as any thing else. However you decide who gets educated, what they learn, for how long they are educated, society gives up resources that could be used for something else. You might well argue that those resources are better used for education than some alternative, but but requiring those resources to be used for education creates losers.
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Can anyone explain to me what TE means by winners and losers and decentralized markets in the context of RTTT?
I’m confused.
The last thing i want to do is overtax TE, as he tends to be very generous with his time and commentary. So I’m thinking others can help out in answering my questions.
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Sorry I am useless when it comes to TE. I don’t get him at all. He seems to be here just to argue any point even if it makes no sense.
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Linda, I do think it would be better for all if he and/or all of us try to repsond to his comments no matter what.
Discourse is good, even when TE avoids it.
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What I mean is that TE always has questions and answers, and I would not want to overstay my welcome in his house of commentary. I’m figuring that if others can answer the questions I posed to him, it might make my potentially impositional load lighter for him, and like I said, he’s always overextended himself to offer comments.
I would not want to bite the hand that intrigues. . . . . It would be impolite.
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