Paul Thomas says that events are moving swiftly, and we must move with them.
When the corporate reform movement started, educators were taken by surprise and treated like children. When did it start? Was it the accountability movement that began after “A Nation at Risk” in 1983? Was it the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001? Or the election of Michael Bloomberg in 2001 and years of pointing to the New York City “miracle”? Or the appointment in 2007 of Michelle Rhee in 2007, who was the darling of the media? Or the arrival of Race to the Top, which was no better than NCLB? Or the firing of the staff in Central Falls, Rhode Island, and the release of “Waiting for Superman” in 2010?
Thomas writes:
“Most of those accountability years, I would classify as Phase 1, a period characterized by a political monopoly on both public discourse and policy addressing primarily public K-12 education.
“We are now in Phase 2, a time in which (in many ways aided by the rise in social media—Twitter, blogging, Facebook—and the alternative press—AlterNet and Truthout) teachers, professors, and educational scholars have begun to create a resistance to the political, media, and public commitments to recycling false charges of educational failure in order to continue the same failed approaches to education reform again and again.
“In Phase 1, educators were subjected to the role of the child; we were asked to be seen but not heard.
“In Phase 2, adolescence kicked in, and we quite frankly began to experiment with our rebellious selves. In many instances, we have been pitching a fit—a completely warranted tantrum, I believe, but a tantrum nonetheless.”
Now we are in Phase 3, says Thomas. In Phase 3, we shift to substance, not just putting out fires. We are the adults. The reformers may hold the reins of power but they are in retreat as it turns out that none of their ideas actually works.
He says: “In short, as I have argued about the Common Core debate, the resistance has reached a point when we must forefront rational and evidence-based alternatives to a crumbling education reform disaster.
“We must be the adults in the room, the calm in the storm. It won’t be easy, but it is time for the resistance to grow up and take our next step.”
I am all for Phase 3, but I am not sure who will be convinced by rational and evidence-based alternatives. We have always had the evidence. We have known–even the reformers have known–that their reforms are causing a disaster. They believe in disruption as a matter of principle. How do we persuade them to consider reason and evidence? I think that Phase 3 commences when parents and educators wake up and throw the rascals out of office. In state after state, they are attacking public education, teachers , and the principle of equality of educational opportunity. The best way to stop them is to vote them out.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I very much feel like I’ve been an adult all along. Can democracy and a free press save public education?
Yes, a free press can save public education. We’re only now seeing what a free press looks like in this new millennium, though. We are creating it, now, with this blog and others. We’ve learned that the information/action twitter infrastructure can self-assemble responsively. We are much faster than any DFER-funded astroturf effort., and we’re the side who use it to a purpose.
Yes, Democracy can save public education. We can vote them out. We can stand up to them in our schools and communities and in the streets. Again, the long work of developing a clear core for that effort is visible here, and extends far beyond..
Well done so far, all of you here. However we characterize it, we are indeed moving to a third stage.
That would assume, of course, that we HAD true democracy and a true free press. I don’t think we do, anymore. And that’s the problem.
Depends on the definition of freedom. What does it mean to have a free press? Does it mean that whoever owns a media source—for instance Fox owned by Rupert Murdock—that the CEO/owner may do whatever they want with it?
That’s what President Reagan and the first President Bush must have thought when they made sure to kill the Fairness Doctrine that was designed to foster an honest debate and support the truth over the freedom to lie, cherry pick facts and do so without any way for anyone to challenge anyone on the same forum.
After the Fairness Doctrine was gone, the media shifted from reporting the new based on facts/evidence to reporting opinions as if they were the news and conservative talk radio exploded leading to Rush Limbaugh and his clones.
Therefore, freedom does not equal truth supported with valid evidence. Freedom, as we have it today, means the rich and powerful are free to lie as much as they want to influence voters to create a society that the money men want and not a society that is the best one for the most people.
For instance, I read a Tweet a few minutes ago that pointed out that the Koch brothers earn something like 1.8 million dollars an hour (or was that for one day) and the Koch brothers are also against the minimum wage, labor unions and government oversight designed to protect the people from scum like them.
Although I agree, I also worry. I worry about the size of the apathetic voter population. I wish we could be more successful in energizing citizens in all communities into the belief that voting is a truly important civic responsibility.
Unfortunately, those who are promoting CCSS and not recognizing the impact it has on children are indeed “adult children”. They are the classic Puer aeternus who grew up smothered and entitled with privilege, and now see themselves as a god…..when actually they are a “child-god” who will never grow up (psychologically).
My comment from Thomas’s post:
“edu-reformers”
Paul, you give them too much credit calling them “reformers”. My term is “edudeformers” or if you wish “edu-deformers” because the policies and practices that they propose do not reform public education but deform it into something that is not recognizable as public education, because it won’t be public education but all private for profit education.
Word association can be powerful to getting people’s attention. If we are in Phase 3, we need to use language that will help lay people to education and especially parents to accurately interpret our message as to how the “ed-deformers” are corrupting their child’s education, well-being, and potential.
quote: “Was it the accountability movement that began after “A Nation at Risk” in 1983? ”
I distinctly remember walking u p to a USDE official (a really decent person) and asking him why , in order to get funding, we have to treat the public relations like “beat the Japspejorative ” with the messaging (yes it was still Japan before the current China)… in order to get the corporate elite (war hawks to place a value on education)…. He was very kind and polite but he didn’t have an answer.
The next thing I remember is the principals and superintendents saying what they observed about “do more with less” which became the motto….
The technology boom and bust (dot.com plunge as the brokers called it) was hitting education with enormous requests for expenditures for computers….. firms that already owned computers (like Mitre Corporation in MA) had space left over and had to build “profit centers” in educational goals and their “mark up rate” called overhead was 80 to 90%….. not like an administrative office in education (where the business manager might be called Mr. 10%)…. These were some of the elements in the culture pushing for the takeover. In MA the accountability and standards movement was a bit more sensible but now these forces have collided and are pushing a train-wreck through the schools and doing harm….
Also, I laugh then snarl at the quote: “Work smarter not harder”
I’ve been trying to figure that out since NCLB. These people are kidding themselves and love to talk the talk. Which would you prefer: Live by the slogan or lead by example? In this case, the top-down has no answers and lip service is all that they can provide. If leaders can’t lead by example then how are the workers supposed to know how to be successful?
Jon: “Work smarter not harder”
I think these “catchy” phrases are mocking…. and they most frequently come from those who haven’t actually done it….
platitudes don’t help much….
The “work smarter” implies scorn and contempt…. the connotation is
“I am superior” and you are …. (implies a derogatory)…..
Regarding Phase 1, a George Carlin quote is applicable, “If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.” Michelle Rhee and Campbell Brown are the mallets.
The Sourcewatch listing for Walmart has been updated to identify Walton spending for the promotion of charters, vouchers and privatization of schools.
Unfortunately, Cami Anderson cannot be voted out of Newark. Perhaps Students First will ask her to succeed Michele Rhee, or she could start her own nonprofit Lobbyists First to advise Cory Booker et al.
Cami Anderson can be voted out of Newark, Booklady, it just takes more than one election.
We’ve already voted Baraka in. Next step is individual legislators across NJ, and of course Christie. Keep stepping forward, everybody.
NJ has two-term limit for governor, which Christie has reached. He’s unlikely to be influenced by state legislators; he’s previously said that he doesn’t care about criticism of her.
My wife—who grew up in Mao’s China, starved during the Great leap Forward famine and then as a teen was sent to the labor camps during Mao’s Cultural Revolution—once said, “America is having its own Cultural Revolution and the people won’t stop it until they have suffered as much as we did in China.”
But in China, the man who led the country out of that insanity was Deng Xiaoping and he had to wait for Mao to die before he could act—millions died from starvation and the purges, literacy dropped dramatically, the schools collapsed, etc. It took decades to rebuild.
Who is the leader or leaders of America’s Cultural Revolution and is there an American Deng Xiaoping waiting in the wings to step forward and end this insanity?
We can identify most of the leaders: Bill Gates, Obama, Duncan, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, hedge fund billionaires, etc.
Diane is right, vote all the bums out of any office possible. Teachers and parents are a mass base of voters(and consumers). We are stakeholders. Voting against Cuomo in NYS Sept 9 in the Dem Gov primary is first on the agenda–vote for Zephyr Teachout, urge everyone else to do so. Undermine Cuomo’s Wall St policies favoring privatization. If Teachout loses the primary, then go all out for Howie Hawkins for Gov under the Green Party. It takes only a few percentage points shaved off a major party candidates total to make an impact.
Resistance is an essential first step, but it is not enough. Exposing misuse of data, lies and bad outcomes is essential, but also not enough. We need to reclaim the initiative for improving education with strong evidentiary arguments, but also strong moral arguments grounded in values with which the public can identify. Then we need to put forth a different set of solutions to improve education. Then the public will demand and vote for different people with better ideas. I wrote a bit more about this here:
Click to access Resistance-to-Attacks-on-Public-Education-is-Not-Enough.pdf
Yes, vote them out, & people need to run! Toni Preckwinkle (former teacher, was a Chicago alderman, & now is Cook County Board President {staying in her job, not running for mayor}) put it well–in an interview, she said that we voters have to blame ourselves (& she included herself in that) for what we’ve been getting in ILL-Annoy–& THAT is why she (again, a teacher!) ran for office! I know people starting to run for office for those very reasons–very hard to vote people out (such as our gubernatorial race) when it’s akin to the 2012 Obama-Romney election. That having been said, Chicago is saying, “Run, Karen, run!”
Dishonest history is bad history.
Self serving history is a norm that should be avoided.
This “phasing” of the Resistance has elements of both.
Just because some people were on the wrong side (Diane) or on the sidelines (most of those reading this) during the late 1990s doesn’t mean there wasn’t resistance. So don’t make history conform to whatever it is you’re now warping.
If there was a “Phase One”, it included Resistance beginning during the 1990s. We were resisting in Chicago during the 1990s. There was also articulate resistance we knew of from coast to coast.
Some people didn’t wake up to the plague of “standards and accountability” until after the onset of the 21st Century. That group by 2001 had the convenience of a Republican asshole President, who replaced a Democrat with the same physiology on “school reform”. Bill Clinton was pushing corporate “school reform” with as much hypocrisy as George W. Bush. In two State of the Union addresses, he praised Chicago’s “model” until his aides warned him that the Daley-Vallas thing was a fraud. But many of us, here and elsewhere, organized resistance long before Clinton was out of office. And we made that resistance public, both locally and nationally — including with several presentations at AERA and NCTE (two I remember).
That was “Phase One” and there was widespread resistance.
That was during the 1990s and early 2000s. I was fired by the Chicago Board of Education at its August 2000 meeting as part of that resistance fight.
That’s all I have time for this morning.
One of the crucial tidbits of dishonest historiography on this stuff comes from the “Red-Blue” obsessions and obsessives. When the President of the United States was a Republican (W), there were some who suddenly discovered the problems of standards and accountability.
Then when the “Audacity of Hope” strode into Grant Park in November 2008, that bunch shut up again, and even tried to head off the resistance for a time, even though Arne Duncan was a predictable disaster from the moment in December 2008 when he sat with Barack Obama in Chicago posing for the front page of the New York Times and preening for the first of those Sam Dillon hagiographic “news” pieces.
Anyone who wants more of these facts of history can read Back Issues at substancenews.net and substancenews.com.
Dishonest history is bad history, no matter who is telling the stories…
“Vote them out” IS the best answer… which is why some of your posts describing union endorsements are so disheartening. If unions can’t get behind Zephyr Teachout and the Working Families Party chooses Cuomo over Teachout because they are believing a promise he made to turn the Senate over to the Democrats how can NYS get “the right people elected”? And, alas, Citizen’s United means that any politician who can raise huge sums of money will continue to dominate the media by buying advertising that slanders their opponent and promotes whatever fanciful promises they make. Finally, the domination of two parties makes it impossible for educators. The neoliberal’s control of the Democratic party means that BOTH party’s have the same view about education contrary to what Fox News et al are promoting. (To read some right-wing blogs one would think the Democrats are promoting Socialism in schools and are tools of the unions!) I haven’t given up hope on democracy in our country, and I DO think we are heading for an awakening at some point… and I hope it happens very soon. Otherwise we’ll be stuck with a choice between, say, Hillary Clinton and some “moderate” Republican in 2016 and we’ll have at least four more years of “corporate reform”.
I don’t buy Thomas’s diagnosis for a second. For one thing, it’s a gross oversimplification that ignores what actually happened during the first two “phases.” (See George N. Schmidt’s comment above.)
I don’t buy his prescription, either, for the simple reason that what he’s calling for in his mislabeled “Phase 3” has actually been in process for years, and the results, although encouraging of late, haven’t been spectacular. It’s possible that more, not less, direct action is in order. More parents opting out of testing, for example, and more teachers consciously subverting the top-down mandates.
Take one example of “resistance” from 2003, when Deborah Meier published In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization. You can find The Publishers Weekly review on Amazon:
“According to Meier, the currently fashionable educational panacea increased standardized testing is either irrelevant to academic excellence or an actual deterrent, as teachers teach to the test and ignore everything that’s not on it. Likewise, teaching children test-taking techniques trains them to distrust their own intuition about what’s right or wrong. Reliance on test results (which are largely meaningless, Meier says) denies parents’ and teachers’ ability to assess learning. This is a passionate, jargon-free plea for a rerouting of educational reform, sure to energize committed parents, progressive educators and maybe even a politician or two.”
Apparently her well reasoned, evidence-based arguments were unable to energize enough people in 2003 to make a dent in the bogus accountability movement. But that was during Thomas’s Phase 1, when educators supposedly remained silent.
The weakest part of Thomas’s post is his characterization of so-called Phase 2:
“In Phase 2, adolescence kicked in, and we quite frankly began to experiment with our rebellious selves. In many instances, we have been pitching a fit—a completely warranted tantrum, I believe, but a tantrum nonetheless.”
What is he talking about? And what does he mean “we”? He doesn’t identify any of the “many instances” of resistance he calls tantrums, so I can only guess what he means. Is he talking about Diane’s “Phase 2” publication of Reign of Error? Is he talking about the heroic efforts of Leonie Haimson to stop inBloom? Is he talking about Anthony Cody’s blog exchange with the Gates Foundation? Is he talking about recent books published by John Kuhn, Jose Vilson, and Mercedes Schneider? The 2014 Network for Public Education National Conference? Not exactly tantrums. Not exactly the work of adolescents. All substantive and thoroughly reasoned.
Maybe he’s talking about the 2011 Save Our Schools events? Or United Optout’s Occupy the Department of Education in the spring of 2013? No, tantrums are spontaneous. They don’t require that much planning. Maybe he’s talking about Garfield High School testing boycott? Can’t be. A tantrum is an individual outburst, not an act of solidarity that has been deliberated in advance.
Thomas seems to have taken a course from the Thomas Friedman School of Inapt Metaphors. His child development analogy just doesn’t work, not in its basic concept or its execution. I’ve been a fan of his work, but in this case I think he’s way off the mark.
If there’s a next phase of “resistance,” here’s one of the most promising components… highly organized boycotts of high stakes testing. See this how-to post on Anthony Cody’s blog:
http://www.livingindialogue.com/starve-testing-beast-chicago-teachers-show-us-organize-test-boycott/