Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He sees right through the Obama education policy and recognizes that it is a continuation of George W. Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind.
In this astonishingly candid interview with Josh Eidelson in Salon, Rep. Grijalva lacerates Race to the Top, high-stakes testing, privatization, and the other features of the Obama education policy.
Rep. Grijalva recognizes that the Obama program is now driven by financial interests:
Obama’s education secretary is “a market-based person,” his education policy manifests a “market-based philosophy,” and “we continue to starve public schools,” the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus charged in an interview Wednesday afternoon.
The privatization of education “began as driven by ideology, but now [it’s] getting momentum because of the financial aspects,” Rep. Raul Grijalva argued to Salon. The Arizona Democrat called charter schools “a step towards” privatization, called the Chicago teachers’ strike a “necessary pushback” and warned of a “self-fulfilling conflict of interest.”
Grijalva was the first Congressman to support the Network for Public Education’s call for public hearings on the overuse of standardized testing, their costs, and misuse. Not only does he see the problem with high-stakes testing, but he understands that test scores are used to set schools up to fail and to be privatized.
He told Eidelson:
One of the things driving, right now, education is … mandatory testing … the frequency, the quantity of the testing that’s going on …
I understand accountability. I don’t have a problem with testing as a teaching tool, to help to guide the improvement in children. But what’s happened is the standardized testing has become the end-all-be-all in terms of curriculum, in terms of how you prepare students for the future.
And I think that issues related to what these tests are, how we are impacting communities that have, let’s say, learning disabilities … students who use primarily languages other than English, how are we dealing with cultural differences …
A whole hearing on testing, the culture of testing, and what it is producing for public education.
What you see … is a real move toward the privatization of schools, based on what test results are. A school doesn’t do well, a school doesn’t do well again, then suddenly there is a movement to either let that school be run by private management [or] let the students then go somewhere else — usually to a private charter school.
Rep. Grijalva sees the pattern on the rug: The game is rigged to starve public schools and force families to seek private alternatives:
And so we see enrollment in our public education system dropping as a consequence of people leaving the schools, or the schools being converted into more private institutions as opposed to the public schools … Public schools are still held to the standards that they should be held to … whatever situation they come into school, that [children] always be treated and educated in the same manner. Yet other schools outside the public institution system can pick and choose who they want to educate … and leave to the public schools a less and less diverse grouping of students, a more difficult group of students, with shrinking resources. At the same time all of this is going on, the funding at a national level and at a state level continues to shrink for public education.
Eidelson asks him the crucial question–do you think there is any hope for change from the Obama administration, and Rep. Grijalva gives an insightful, powerful response:
I think the fight is keeping some of the worst from happening, No. 1. No. 2, as long as we are resource-deprived in public schools, they’ll never be in that competitive mode that Duncan talks about, OK? As long as we shift public resources to accommodate private ventures in education, and as long as you continue to be myopic about “one mandated test tells us all,” “one Common Core will be the solution …”
There’s also, you know, a shrinking of our curriculum in order to satisfy prepping for tests, as opposed to getting people ready in a more holistic way to be better human beings, and educated better …
If you continue to starve the schools, public education, then they’re never going to be [in] a position to be competitive. And if you do independent analysis, the public education system, compared to private charter schools, is no worse and no better. You know, there’s not a significant difference – yet … we continue to starve public schools. That’s why you see enrollment drop …
There’s a demographic shift going on in our schools … So this is a time to invest in those schools, because this generation of kids of color — with many of them having English learners coming into our public schools — those are the new Americans … Those are the generations of the future …
The public schools have always been one of the most powerful integrative social institutions that we have in our country, that build community and build the kind of allegiance to the values of this nation as part of the education process. Now you have a new demographic group coming into our schools, you’re disinvesting from the schools, and you’re leaving the public schools to that demographic with less resources and less attention. This is a really, really wrong time to be pulling [away] from the commitment to public schools. And it’s probably one of the times in our history when we should be doing more investment. Because this is the generation that is going to have the greatest responsibility for our nation come 10, 20 years from now.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And is there any movement at all to impeach Obama and Duncan? Of course not because almost all of D.C. politicians are in bed together.
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Sadly, in the state of Arizona, the voices of those who share Grijalva’s views, are muted. We have AZ BAT on Facebook. Broad press coverage is virtually non-existent or is in the form of non-critical support of charters and vouchers. An article recently appeared in Tucson Weekly on opting out of testing. (The response of the District was brutal.) http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/opting-out/Content?oid=4086094. A few articles in local papers appear from time to time.
Arizona desperately needs a megaphone.
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Grijalva’s criticisms are accurate, but woefully incomplete — he overlooks the real-world facts that low-SES/inner-city school classrooms are often/usually chaotic disasters and that concerned/functional parents (low, middle, and high-SES, white and minority) do not want to their children to be educated in such classrooms.
Inner-city elected officials desperately want to at least appear to be doing something to give these concerned/functional parents an acceptable publicly-funded option for educating their children. This is why high-stakes testing/teacher discharge, charters, and (to a lesser extent) vouchers continue to receive strong support, particularly from inner-city parents/voters. These reforms appear to address the perceived/actual problems in the low-SES/inner-city schools, are inexpensive (potentially reducing per pupil spending if junior/non-union inexpensive teachers replace senior/union expensive teachers), and allow the concerned/functional parents to send their children to schools attended only by the children of other concerned/functional parents (charters, vouchers).
Yes — private businessmen see high-stakes testing, charters, and vouchers as opportunities to make $. And yes, Republicans see high-stakes testing, charters, and vouchers as vehicles for weakening teachers unions, a strong Democratic interest group. But, the main force driving these school reforms is the political appeal that these school reforms have to the concerned/functional inner-city voters/parents who are crucial to local candidates’ political success.
Until/unless we opponents of these corporate school reforms identify/propose alternative reforms to remedy the chaotic disasters that are our low-SES/inner-city neighborhood public schools, we will continue to lose to political battle. Just pointing out the negative aspects of the corporate school reforms will not convince the inner-city parents/voters. Nor will fiscally/politically-unrealistic untargeted proposals to improve the neighborhood schools by spending more per pupil.
Possible alternative reforms include: 1) reinstitute tracking (based on a combination of ability, behavior, and motivation) in the neighborhood schools (so the concerned/functional parents would know their children would be in non-chaotic classrooms with the children of other concerned/functional parents); 2) dramatically lower class size/increase aide staffing in the lower-track classes (so the children of the unconcerned/dysfunctional parents would have a chance); 3) implement a peer-review approach (similar to the successful 11-year-old program in Montgomery County, MD) to fairly/efficiently identify/remove poorly-performing teachers (with no high-stakes testing) to answer the it’s-the-bad-teachers’-fault” argument; 4) implement/enforce reasonable behavior standards starting in pre-K and continuing through high school with in-school suspension for persistent misbehavior; and 5) implement pre-school and parent-training programs for low-SES children starting as early as possible (ideally age 1) focusing on improving parent/child verbal interaction (quantity and quality) so the low-SES children start kindergarten with more of the verbal/pre-reading skills that predispose high-SES children to academic success.
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Thirty years of nonstop propaganda and the deliberate lack of funding for inner-city schools is why we are here today.
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Most inner-city schools already spend well above the national average per pupil. DC spends more per pupil than the school systems in DC’s affluent suburbs. Certainly, spending still more per pupil in the inner-city schools would improve the systems, but only marginally (unless the additional $ was targeted specifically at the causes of the bad educational outcomes (i.e., weak pre-K verbal skills development, pre-natal health care, nutrition, improving student behavior, ESL/LD aides).
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Labor Lawyer, not all inner-city districts are DC. First, I have seen inner-city districts like Philadelphia that are dramatically underfunded as compared to the suburbs across the district line, where the schools lack even the most basic necessities. Second, ask where the money in DC is going, how much of it actually reaches the classrooms and how much is wasted on top-heavy administration, bureaucracy, consultants, and contracts with outside providers that are unnecessary.
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Let’s quit with the lie the problem with education is with “lousy teachers.” That has always been a lie. Unless you have actually worked as a teacher, you really have NO concept of how much power administrators have over teachers. BTW, I take a very dim view of “peer review” of teachers when the school workplace is rife with office politics.
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Poorly-performing teachers are “a” problem, not “the” problem. Virtually every voter/parent personally recalls at least one poorly-performing teacher from their own school days or their children’s school days + recalls how the school system allowed this teacher to remain teaching for year after year. These voters/parents, drawing on these recollections, are predisposed to believe the advocates of high-stakes testing/teacher discharge when they argue that identifying/discharging the poorly-performing teachers is the key to improving the schools. I’m not arguing that poorly-performing teachers are “the” problem — at least not in the low-SES inner-city schools. But, many/most voters/parents sincerely/correctly believe that there some poorly-performing teachers in the schools and that the traditional principal-evaluates-and-discharges approach has failed to identify/remove those teachers.
Re peer-review — most teachers would put more trust in peer review (at least the type of program operated by Montgomery County, MD where the supervisor teachers are selected and assigned by the central office, not the involved principal) than in the principal to generate a fair evaluation. If you don’t trust peer review, what system would you use to identify/remove poorly-performing teachers?
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“Yeah, that was my point at the beginning. The whole market-based issue: That that is going to be the solution, because innovation in the form of private entrepreneurs will enter the education field, and as a consequence raise the standards. And that the mandatory test will be the instrument that moves that.
That, to me, was pretty clear from the beginning. And when that was mentioned from the chief of staff, actually it was no surprise to me.
It was just … said out loud it was a surprise.”
It’s good that the Obama Administration are quite frank about their market-based privatization goals with Congressional Democrats.
Ten years from now when Democrats come back and tell us “no one could have predicted” the privatization and therefore loss of the publicly-owned school system, we’ll call Rep. Grijalva and he can tell us how everyone knew, and the only question was whether Obama Administration officials would “say it out loud”.
It was “pretty clear from the beginning” when Obama hired Duncan what the objective was here, and Obama is obviously pleased with Duncan’s anti-public school agenda, since plenty of other Obama officials have gone on the lucrative careers in the private sector but public schools are still stuck with Duncan.
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My hat’s off to el Sr. Grijalva! Finally there is a Hispanic who has the guts to put the finger in the wound! I have been calling MALDEF, PRLEDF (Latino Justice), National Institute of Latino Policy, and others to ask them what are they doing to point out the discriminatory practices of the common core and their testing against ELLs and specifically, HIspanics. All I have gotten from these these “national” Latino/Hispanic advocacy organizations is a plain and simple, “that is not our priority now.”
That is why, on April 9, 2014 I wrote on HispanEduca’s Twitter and FB pages, the following:
Why have national Hispanic organizations been silent on the common core testing’s negative effects on ELLs & Hispanic students?
After a follower asked me if I knew if there was any legal action submitted –or was pending– against the common core standards’ testing to ELLs, I embarked on a search.
I asked, emailed and called national Hispanic organizations.
Unfortunately, not even national Latino/Hispanic advocacy organizations such as LULAC, NALEO, MALDEF, and others have undertaken a legal action against common core testing for ELLs.
In fact, also unfortunately, most of these organizations tend to support the new common core standards and the testing that are glued to them.
Why is that, when we all know that Hispanics have the lowest education level among minority groups; that only a handful is meeting the so-called “benchmarks” of standardized testing such as FCAT, ACT, SAT, and others; that despite the fact that more Hispanic students are going to college, only a few graduate with a higher education diploma; that our children are attending urban public schools where the most basic resources ( water, books, equipment, well-paid teachers, among many other things ) are nowhere to find; that education policy research experts have confirmed that Hispanics/Latinos are the victims of the education APARTHEID?
There might be several reasons for that.
1. First, the new common core initiative is part of President Obama’s Race to The Top (RTT) program; his response after not being able to convince Congress (well, particularly Republicans and the Tea Party faction) to reauthorize ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) of 1965, after the last Bush’s re-authorization with the No Child Left Behind Act.
2. A huge percentage of Latinos/Hispanics elected President Obama, who sold this RTT and the eventual Common Core Standard Initiative as a way to guarantee a quality education for “all”, etc. etc.
3. Given that Hispanics/Latinos are the population segment with the lowest education level, no one would argue (I would though, and if you do too, welcome to the club) that RTT, including the common core state standard initiative is highly supported by Hispanics. So there might be cultural, loyalty, and maybe ideological issues that prevent national Hispanic organizations from publicly opposing any of Obama’s education programs. I guess opposing the common core might be basically seen as opposing Obama.
4 , This stand or lack thereof makes me think that, although Hispanics voters have said that education is a high priority issue, even more important than immigration, when measured by action, there are other more important issues for national Hispanic organizations such as the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) than protesting against the common core.
Unfortunately, that only shows that these organizations are not g informed (I hope it is not that they don’t care) about how these new common core standards and their tests, and they will practically leave intact education inequities, disparities, and discrimination against Hispanic students.
Still more unfortunate is the fact that Hispanics are being kept in the dark about the movement to eradicate public education (the one that best serves the poor and minorities); the corporatization of education; the evident way in which education profiteers manipulate Hispanic parents by making them believe that “parent choice” laws such as Parent trigger will really empower them to provide their children better schools and that charter schools will help their children succeed.
HispanEduca is at the service to those who want to examine and push legal action, an injunction, against common core testing.
For starters, that is.
Lourdes Pérez Ramírez, MA
President, Founder
HispanEduca
About HispanEduca
Our vision is that every single Hispanic in the US, regardless of their socioeconomic and education level, becomes a knowledgeable and educated citizen about education policy issues that impact Hispanic students and workers.
Our mission is to empower all Hispanics so they have the opportunity to influence and develop education policies that help increase Hispanic/Latino education attainment levels.
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