Russ Walsh, who works at Rider University in Pennsylvania, asks a simple question:
What if Chicken Little had 70 billion dollars? Would his comical error in believing the sky is falling have been dismissed so quickly? Would the acorn of truth have been discovered and Chicken Little disgraced? Instead of making Chicken Little the laughingstock of the barnyard, would we instead be drawing up plans for “sky proof” shelters and evaluating them with standardized quality control measures all financed by Chicken Little’s largesse? Perhaps Chicken Little would decide that the public barn on the farm was substandard and he would contract out to have charter barns built. Perhaps he would finance a project to bring Common Corn to the barnyard feed, so that chickens in Mississippi would be fed the same stuff as those in Wisconsin. Perhaps Chicken Little would be lionized in the media as the great fowl hope for the future of barnyards everywhere.
What if everything the “reformers” have been saying for the past decade and more is simply wrong? Would we believe them if their claims were not backed up by the billions of the U.S. Department of Education, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walmart family, and a pride of politicians?
No, of course not. But why do we believe them? Could it be the power of the Big Lie technique, where you say that same thing so often that people start thinking it is true.
Or does it serve the purposes of those who see a way to jump into public education as an emerging market?
Russ concludes:
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am seriously thinking of putting that list in my Christmas cards this year.
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“Only a crisis – – actual or perceived – – produces real changes.”
Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism turns out to be prophetic when the focus turns to public education WITHIN the United States!
Milton Friedman famously said: “Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real changes. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” (1982)
In her groundbreaking book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein coined the term “disaster capitalism” for the rapid-fire, corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling from shock. The master of disaster? Privatization and free market guru Milton Friedman. Friedman advised governments in economic crisis to follow strict austerity measures, combining radical cuts in social services with the full-scale privatization of their more lucrative assets. (http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/07/10903/alec-exposed-milton-friedmans-little-shop-horrors)
All these incarnations share a commitment to the policy trinity – the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending – but none of the various names for the ideology seem quite adequate. . . . In every country where Chicago School policies have been applied over the past three decades, what has emerged is a powerful ruling alliance between a few very large corporations and a class of mostly wealthy politicians – with hazy and ever-shifting lines between the two groups. . . . Far from freeing the market from the state, these political and corporate elites have simply merged, trading favors to secure the right to appropriate precious resources previously held in the public domain. [GE2L2R note: I would contend that as it is now being applied to education, it is our most precious resource that is at risk – our children!] . . . A more accurate term for a system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business in not liberal, conservative or capitalist but corporatist. (p18)
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“. . . these political and corporate elites have simply merged. . .”
Or in the word of the coiner of the phrase, Mussolini: FASCISM.
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That “Chicago School” of economic thought is a direct descendent of the Vienna/Austrian school of economic thought.
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Unless there are two Rider Universities, Rider U. is in Lawrence Township, Mercer County, NJ.
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“What if everything the “reformers” have been saying for the past decade and more is simply wrong?”
What if everything the “teachers” have been saying about a student’s learning, i.e., grading them, for the past decade and more is not only simply wrong but greatly harms many students?
What say all the readers here about that???
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What have the teachers been saying about a student’s learning? There are hundreds of thousands of teachers (?) in the country and there are hundreds of thousands of grading styles adjusted for all the different grade levels. The teachers are pretty much told how they should grade the pupils and when these assessments should be done. Maybe you should address your concerns to the curriculum advisers of the school systems?
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Joe,
I addressed the teachers but could have easily included administrators, curriculum coordinators, etc. . . .
My object being to declare that the “grading” of students is as an illogical and unethical a process as is “grading” schools and/or teachers and that we should be questioning that practice as much if not more than the edudeformers work because it has a more direct negative/harmful effect on students.
Should we be washing the teachers’ hands of the misdeed?
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Duane, this is worth answering. It’s a heavy responsibility. On the one hand, the grade is there for them as a credential, so they can access resources they need and deserve.
Fifteen years ago, my girls who had been relegated to “general ed” courses would come back to me, and ask for a letter to Roxbury Community College attesting that the course I taught them was actually college preparatory chemistry with labs. The letter was always accepted, and my (excellent) students were allowed to enter the associate degree program for an RN. I think about what that will do for them and their families, for generations to come, and then I look at the next class of children in front of me. Again and again. What is the price for each of them, if we fail to do any one little thing that might pull them through?
On the other hand, I would look at a young man approaching 17 and still stuck in the ninth grade. The labs were a gift for him, but he hesitated to speak up because his writing and processing has earned him a “special ed” label which is much more of a burden than a help. He was a score supressor, and he’d been targeted to disappear without advancing to the tenth grade tests. The whole experience of school was hurting him, his mind would try to take him away from it, to safety. The best I could help him to was a C, but many others in his situation broke off completely.
The bottom line is, there have to be opportunity paths ahead for all the kids. Instead, we have almost nothing for most of them. What awaits even those I can sort into the highest level?
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It is an interesting question. Our “meritocracy”, such that it is, relies on school and schooling to sort individuals over time. Wealthy parents have been able to send their children to schools that either don’t “grade” their students or are able to meaningfully de-emphasize it as part of the educational journey. Those students end up doing well because of their already high SES, a stable of adults who are focused on their individual development, the reputation of the schools with higher education gate keepers, and on and on. Add in a hardworking, motivated and reasonably intelligent student and you’ve got a recipe for success.
Although I’d love to see all students freed from the mindset that comes along with “grading”…I wonder how a public school could do away with grading in a meaningful way (above and beyond stopping this excessive testing nonsense) given that it serves this function for society?
For college students, I’d like pass/fail with a very high bar (B/B+ level work) in order to pass. Crazy, I know…but with grade inflation you are pretty much dealing with students above and below a certain line anyway. They need to get out of the mindset of fine-grained distinctions that don’t exist and begin to understand what sets apart the best work from mediocre work in the discipline. (This probably works better for languages, humanities and the social sciences.)
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Emmy,
“Our “meritocracy”, such that it is, relies on school and schooling to sort individuals over time”
The question is, at least in my mind, whether or not public schools should be those “sorting” devices/institutions.
It brings to mind this question: What is the fundamental purpose of public education?
So, I ask you, Emmy: What is the fundamental purpose of public education? Where did you get that purpose? and Is it the same for everyone?
Duane
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What if “Titles” are disabilities or impediments on future progress?
What if this is all a matter of consciousness, and WHO is qualified
to function as the cultural appartus in establishing Exceptionalism,
or Moral Superiority, and for WHAT purpose?
What if a specific “Title”, (claiming a superior consciousness),
has led to a distorted perspective of achievement?
What if Society was the measure, of this “Achievement”?
Continue, or Change?
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NoBrick,
I’m not quite sure of the thrust/gist of your comment. Can you elaborate a bit more, please?
Duane
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Duane,
I agree that much about teacher grading is problematic. And if you are suggesting that in some sense the profession brings such things as grading schools and grading teachers onto itself by a reliance on grading children, I would not disagree. Still a teacher’s assessment of a child’s progress is a more reliable and valid assessment than a snapshot standardized test.
I think most educators would agree that teacher grading is flawed. That can be improved without the destruction of the public schools.
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Russ,
I agree with “. . . a teacher’s assessment of a child’s progress is a more reliable and valid assessment than a snapshot standardized test.” Although many would disagree!
I like your use of the word assessment versus using grade, as it implies something more than that “snapshot standardized test”. I have no problem with assessing the student in conjunction with the student and/or his parents/guardian or other adult advocate. And it would be a narrative dialogue and not just a pronouncement by the teacher.
It could be done were we to dedicate enough resources to public education (and this country has way more than enough resources to do so-hell, if we can spend trillions on illegal wars of aggresion we have enough to properly educate the citizenry).
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Duane,
The use of the word assessment is chosen deliberately and the ideal assessment would be one that produced a dialogue with the student and parent and laid out next steps for further learning. I agree this can be done, if it were a priority of policy makers.
Grades are a shortcut form of communication, that suffer from the same problems as all shortcuts. They don’t tell the whole story.
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Thanks for all the responses. I’d like to hear/see some more!
Gracias from the old fart Spanish teacher!
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I’m waiting for the local, state of federal leader who refuses the money provided by the private foundation.
Once that happens, I’ll believe all of these reforms were out in with independent review, based on evidence.
Is there a state or district that has refused a Gate’s plan after review? The lack of a rigorous review process is ITSELF damaging to credibility and public trust that someone, somewhere, is looking out for the interests of existing public schools and the existing population of children in those schools.
Having people on the payroll review the work of other people on the same payroll is not “rigorous”, it’s reckless.
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That last statement is quite correct Chiara and points to the incestuousness of the process.
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Who specifically in these foundations is charged with protecting the interests of the tens of millions of children currently attending existing public schools?
We’ve seen example after example of actual harm coming to existing schools and the children who attend those schools as a result of really reckless and ill-considered “reforms”.
Were those “unintended consequences” and if so, who in the foundation was responsible for protecting those schools and those children?
Because they are the MAJORITY of children. They should have been considered.
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I think teachers are working with living breathing individuals, not some uniform material. There is always room for doing things differently and getting even better results and we know it. Every lesson taught to 30 individuals could be done better for some of them. My point is not that we have failed, but that we succeed when we engage in this process with kids. “To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield” is our motto. Education is a human endeavor, not a mechanical one. Don’t let the chicken littles make you think any less of what you are striving to do.
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