Peter Greene has been following the conversation at EducationPost, the blog funded by Broad, Walton, Bloomberg et al for $12 million, he says that the new spin from reformsters is that education is too politicized. He agrees but asks how it got that way. Who took the decision making power away from educators and gave it to legislatures, governors, the President, and Comgress? Not educators.
Peter Greene knows who did it:
“As it turns out, I think I have an answer for this one. Asking why the Common Core are wrapped up in politics is like asking why human beings are so involved with blood.
“The Common Core were birthed in politics. They were weaned on politics. And every time they have looked tired and in trouble, they have been revived with a fresh transfusion of politics.
“When David Coleman and Gene Wilhoit decided they wanted to standardize American education, they did not come up with a plan to sell such a program on its education merits. They called on Bill Gates to use his money and power to convince state governments to legislate systemic changes to education.
“The states signed on to a Memo of Understanding (a political tool for out-politicking politics) and many of them did it before there were even any standards to look at. This was a political move, using the political power of legislatures and governors’ offices to impose rules on educational systems– in many cases, before educators in particular states even knew that such a systemic overhaul was being considered.
“Common Core’s Pappy, No Child Left Behind, was a creature of politics, right down to its spin-ready title. It was created to put a glossy shine on bipartisan action for the kids. Educators (and other people with rudimentary math skills) pointed out early on that the NCLB end game of 100% above average was ridiculously improbable, but the political shininess plus the political notion that future politicians would find a political solution drowned out good sense. Because, politics.”
He concludes:
“At no point in all this reformy baloney have we seen the spectacle of bottom-up reform, a reform movement driven by teachers and other educators saying, “Hey, we have some ideas that are so revolutionary and so great that they are spreading like wildfire strictly on their educational merits!”
“No– Common Core and its attendant test-driven high stakes data-glomming VAMboozling baloney have come from the top down, by politicians using political power to impose educational solutions through the political tools applied to the political structure of government. Why do people get the idea that all these reformy ideas are linked? Because they all come from the same place– the linkage is the political power that imposed them all on the American public education system.
“Look. We live in the real world and politics play a part in many things. But for some reformsters to offer wide eyes and shocked dismay and clutched pearls as they cry, “Oh, but why does it have to be so political!” is the height of hypocrisy. It’s political because you folks made it political, every step of the way, and it’s not humanly possible for you to be too dumb to know that (particularly at a site like Education Post that is larded with career political operatives). So if you want to have a serious conversation about any of this, Step One is top stop lying, badly, directly to our faces. I can’t hear you when my bullshit detector alarm is screaming in my ear.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Agree with the assessment.
Yes, politicizing is rampant, but isn’t the reason schools are politicized is that they’re being profitized? Maybe that is a chicken/egg-type conundrum, but as I see it, corporate interests want ed dollars, so they push politicians to divert funding from public schools towards tech hardware and software, testing, curriculum, textbooks, ebooks, charters, consultants, etc.
Exactamundo …
There’s Big Politics in it because the pols and their pals see Big Profits in it. Take the opportunity of making a Big Pile o’ Money out of education and the corporations and their cronies will go away. But right now the sharks smell blood and it will be bloody hell driving them out of the arena.
The current privatizing overreach far exceeds just the Common Core nonsense. The irony is that none of these deforms have done anything for the children they serve. A further irony is that while the politicians want to put public education in a vice grip through an outrageous amount of unnecessary testing, the charters are free to do as they please while wasting money and resources. Anyone can start a charter and disappear with the funds! While the charters were thought to be a viable choice for poor families, they only serve a few hand picked students. When you scratch the surface, you see they have misrepresented their “success.” Worst of all, they have perpetuated segregation, and they don’t have to desegregate because the rules don’t apply. The whole process stinks of back room deals and violates a guiding principle of democracy, equal opportunity and access to all.
Where did it start? MY view: with “A Nation at Risk”. This was the beginning. EVERY teacher was incompetent. EVERY school was a disaster. If the general public did not step in to “save” it our country was doomed.
Things have gone downhill since that time. When Gerald Bracey, a psychologist – not an educator – did his research to show the fallacies of what was being proclaimed it was not publicized. The powers that be decreed that. Like the momentum that Hitler received when unopposed at the beginning education like many of our other freedoms has been downgraded. Quo Vadis?
We might go even further back if we look at court interference with local decisions about education.
You mean like desegregation and Brown vs Topeka? Yes, civil rights can get in the way. Or do you mean that pesky refusal to publicly fund religious schools? That one is being eroded, have no fear.
Old Teacher,
I am thinking about Brown. I am also thinking about legislation passed by the Federal legislature demanding that local school districts educate those with learning disabilities.
trollingeconomist,
Brown and the various federal laws about educating children with disabilities were civil and human rights issues. If you want to say somehow corporate control of schools is a civil rights issue, make the argument.
Yes, of course, it was that Pesky Emancipation Proclamation that set Plantation America on the road to ruin …
Jon,
A prime example of top down demands made on local government. One that everyone here I assume agrees with. Some top down demands are good, some are bad. We have to do the hard work of deciding which is which.
What’s all this nonsense about Top-Down v. Bottom-Up?
Still having trouble with that whole Government Of, By, For The People Idea?
In a democratic republic (= representative democracy when I went to school) the government is nothing more than the tool of the people’s will.
So tool down actions rightly occur only because the people have picked the tool up and put it to work. When that fails to happen, then it’s time for re-tooling.
Federal government mandates on education are typically condemned here, with the only argument being that they are federal mandates. That seems wrong to me. I think that some federal mandates are good, some are bad. The argument, however, takes work and can not fit on a bumper sticker.
TE, you need some real help on this topic. Here’s the best article I’ve ever read. Realism at its finest and not a hint of an agenda. This guy’s a pro thinker:
PROFIT, TE. The difference between the two is profit. Brown and IDEA were to help people. Charters and privitization are for profit, not to help people. I don’t’ understand why you can’t get it through your head.
Threatened,
It does not seem to me that The Walton Rural Center Charter School or the Community Roots Charter school are about profits. Is the Baltimore Montessori Charter School about profits? The Kona Pacific Charter School (a member of the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education) about profit? I think those schools and many others like them are about providing students with alternative models of education.
I could go on with a list of Montessori, Waldorf, and progressive schools.
If they’re a charter, dollars to donuts that they are interested in profit, TE. I’m sure there are a few exceptions, but considering the thousands of charter schools that are throwing away our children in order to make money, the exceptions are not enough to justify charter schools.
Threatened,
Do you have any evidence at all that all but a handful of charter schools are in it to sacrifice students in favor of profits or is it simply a matter of faith?
I refer viewers of this blog to the interview by Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post with Bill Gates in March 2014.
Dr. Mercedes Schneider posted a transcript of said interview on her website [google “deutsch29” and “blog” and “Transcript of Gates’ March 2014 Washington Post Interview” to find same.]
I include a length excerpt so viewers can decide for themselves what the literal leaders/funders/promoters of the self-styled “education reform” movement think of “politics.” *Hint: when they do it, their preferred term is “it’s for the kids” but when anyone else interferes with their vanity projects it’s “politics.” [Key: “L” is for “Layton” and “G” is for “Gates.”
[start quote]
L: Well, let me tell you what, what I’m hearing when I talk to people in education policy. The running joke is sooner or later, everybody works for Gates because, when you look at how the breadth of, of your funding, and in terms of the advocacy work for the Common Core, you funded on the left of the spectrum, on the right of the spectrum: think tanks, you know, districts, unions, business groups. It’s a wide variety There, there are, it’s harder to name groups, um, that are in education that haven’t received funding that, from Gates, than it is to name all the groups have. So, the suggestion is that because of that pervasive presence that you set the agenda, that it’s harder to get, to get contrasting views and to get real, honest debate because you are funding such a wide variety of actors in this field.
G: Boy, I, I, I guess we’re not going to get to any substance, uh, here, I’m sorry. Ahh [four second pause] our advocacy money is a rounding error, okay? The K through 12 education is six hundred million years of money, a year that it spent [L: Right.] and, trying to compute the R and D percentage of trying out new things…. The, the Common Core, people side, and, you know, we don’t, we don’t fund, you know, some right wing groups that we fund, and you know, some left wing group. I don’t know. I, I have no idea what you’re talking about… we, we don’t…
L: The American Enterprise Institute…
G: We don’t fund political groups. We’re not…
L: …think tanks…
G: …we don’t, like Heritage, CATO, people like that. Uhh….
L: The American Enterprise Institute…
G: That’s some experts on educational policy.
L: Fordham…
G: Say…
L: Fordham, the Fordham Institute, to do their writing….
G: These, these are not political things. These are things where people are trying to apply expertise to say, ‘Is this a way of making education better?’ But at the end of the day, it’s, I don’t think wanting education to be better is a left wing or a right wing thing. And, so making sure there’s as many experts, and, yes, some of them will have political… we’re doing evaluation. So, all, we fund people to look into things. We don’t fund people to say, okay, you like the Common Core. We’ve never, done anything like that. We do evaluations of these things. And I think the amount of analysis that goes into how do we help teachers to do better, it’s not enough. And yes, we are guilty of funding things where experts look at these things and say if they’re good or not, and they may not get adopted, and the experts may decide that they don’t like them. This one’s [meaning CCSS] come out pretty uniformly, no matter where you are politically. If you’re into the substance of, should people learn the material they are going to take on a national test. Uhh, is it fair to a student not to have been exposed to that material? Did the high standards in Massachusetts allow students to do better than students in places where that curriculum was less ambitious in terms of what those students would learn. Uhh, and so, these are factual questions. They’re not, uhh… education can get better. That’s uh, some people may not believe that, education can change, We can do better. We’re, we’re not doomed to be worse than all these other countries at how we help our, our student get better. And, yes, we’ve engaged a lot of people. It’s a rounding error. You know, education is a gigantic thing, and it, it deserves to have people of all political persuasions studying excellence.
L: Right. It is a gigantic budget, and, and your contributions are a small contribution to the overall spending on, on K-12 education.
G: A rounding error.
L: Right.
G: And it’s not advocacy in our stuff, it’s not advocacy in the sense that we come in with, with a point of view. We have people study Common Core and tell us what, we have them study teacher evaluation systems. We have them study great teachers. It’s, it’s analysis to see what works.
L: Well, are you concerned at all about, let’s go to the AFT. So, uh, a week ago, Randi Weingarten said, even though she’s a big supporter of the Common Core, she doesn’t want to take this Gates money any more for the Common Core, you know, for the Innovation work they’ve been doing around the Common Core because her members have been complaining. They say, ‘It’s tainted, or it, uh, it, it shifts the conversation, or it, it, it somehow, um, uh, tainted, uh, tainted the picture or tainted the discussion.
G: That’s politics.
L: Yeah.
G: Are we going to talk substance, about improving education?
L: I think that they’re both intertwined right now with the Common Core, There’s a lot of political pushback. In that this is a high…
G: What is the, so, let’s go to the substance? What is the thing that is being proposed as an alternative to the Common, Common Core? And let’s talk about the relative merits of the existing standards or some proposed alternate, uh, standards, not about ‘he said, she said’ politics. Is this something that can help the students? Uh, now we can poll the teachers and it’s still a very popular thing. And that’s unusual because usually the status quo wins and the new idea loses. This is a new idea that actually gets a very good majority of the teachers saying that they think it’s good. And if you look at which teachers have been the most exposed to the idea, they’re the people who are the most positive about it.
[end quote]
So when Layton talks Reality, Gates replies with a Rheeally sharp retort: “Boy, I, I, I guess we’re not going to get to any substance, uh, here, I’m sorry.” And notice that he’s not about advocacy or politics—just expertise and what’s best and studying great teachers. *Does he work off the same Cliff’s Notes for Edufrauds as Arne Duncan?*
I guess I have an inconvenient question. Aren’t “thought leaders” supposed to have, er, um, “thoughts”?
And shouldn’t those thoughts be in accord with facts, as well as logical, consistent and have some smidgeon—however slight—of decency to them?
Sorry. I guess I’m just gettin’ too political.
😏
teachingeconomist
September 13, 2014 at 12:56 pm
Old Teacher,
I am thinking about Brown. I am also thinking about legislation passed by the Federal legislature demanding that local school districts educate those with learning disabilities.”
Segregation is a violation of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. That’s why Brown trumped school boards.
Lumping it in with RttT and the Common Core as “picking and choosing federal law we like” is inaccurate. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.
This piece pretty much validates everything Common Core opponents have been saying:
“What the Common Core does for ed tech companies,” said Shayne Miel, a vice president of software development at an education start-up called LightSide Labs, “is provide a common target. It’s been a huge boon for us, and that’s because it has allowed us to work to standards that are meant for everyone in the country, rather than state-by-state.” National uniformity, in other words, represents an opportunity for a company to expand its market.
Miel’s company makes a piece of software called Revision Assistant, whose purpose is to provide a reasonable facsimile of a compassionate editor and help students learn about the stages of the writing process. According to Miel, the Common Core has done two things for the team members at LightSide (at least one of whom must be a Star Wars fan). First, it has provided a wealth of already-graded student essays from which they can extract statistical data—including word frequencies, essay lengths, and other similarly superficial things—to build models of what “better” and “worse” writing looks like.”
It’s not just start-ups that are getting involved. The titans of the education industry—companies like Pearson and Scholastic and McGraw Hill—are rolling out a series of “digital curriculum” updates aligned with the Common Core standards. Witness, for instance, McGraw Hill’s partnership with StudySync, a company whose software suite incorporates digital libraries of famous literary works, along with Common Core-aligned assessments on them and (creepy, Brave New World-ish) videos designed to model what “good” literary discussion looks like.”
Kids are about to get hit with an absolute barrage of Common Core commercial product.
Also, how did “the team members at LightSide” get “already graded” student essays?
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/the-surprising-benefits-of-common-core-standards/380100/
Re: TE
You are once again confounding, so persistently that it seems deliberately, the proper role of government in protecting civil rights and promoting the general welfare with the improper role of government in dictating curriculum.
If you’d just stop being so disingenuous all the time you might actually contribute something genuine to the discussion.
Jon,
Is it possible that some who back the CCSS see it as an attempt to protect the rights of students to a quality education?
Of course it is …
https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/ussher.htm
TE: No, it isn’t possible.
Us Department of Education finishes up another charter school promotion tour:
http://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2014/sep/11/duncan-bus-tour-ends-with-binghampton-kudos/
Besides charter schools, the Obama Administration were out last week promoting the “skills gap”.
That’s the economic theory that says that the US workforce is to blame for stagnant and falling wages.
It’s just a theory, though, although this one is admittedly beloved by DC and CEO’s.
It doesn’t seem to be true, however, using the US government’s own data:
“The Wall Street Journal devoted a major article to the efforts by President Obama and several governors to address the skills gap. According to the piece, employers in manufacturing can’t hire workers with the right skills. If employers can’t get enough workers then we would expect to see wages rising in manufacturing.
They aren’t. Over the last year the average hourly wage rose by just 2.1 percent, only a little higher than the inflation rate and slightly less than the average for all workers. This follows several years where wages in manufacturing rose less than the economy-wide average.”
Anyone else wondering why they’re all promoting something that isn’t true?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/skills-gap-in-manufacturing-seems-to-be-primarily-at-the-top
The deformers are playing the game of pointing the finger, but at the wrong people. Can’t point their fingers at themselves…NOT the agenda.
Following the money that flowed to politicians to promote privatized schools….and there you have it. Isn’t it just that simple?
Yes, it is, Donna.
I see Greene’s point insofar as it’s a rebuttal to complaints that the discourse about education has become too politicized in recent years. To the extent Greene or others would argue that the politicization of education started with David Coleman, or RTTT, or NCLB, or A Nation at Risk, he’d be guilty of the same thing he’s rebutting: drawing an arbitrary line to mark the beginning of the politicization of education, and drawing that line for a political purpose. Public education has been both political and politicized since as far back as it existed, and certainly for most of the 20th century.
Correct! When I speak to fellow association members about getting involved in the political issues surrounding education, many of them scoff at the idea stating that all they care about are their own students and families. It’s important to point out that people who have political power are making very important decisions about how my fellow members’ children and the children they themselves teach are learning. This has been a hallmark of US education going back to the 20th century. These same politically positioned people make decisions that also impact how my fellow association members are compensated which in turn affects their families. When you frame the issue of politics that way, suddenly they are interested.
All who are interested in the lamentable history of the politicization of public education in the US should read Diane Ravitch’s book, “Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms.” Another important read is “The Manufactured Crisis” by David Berliner and Bruce Biddle that documents the fallacy of the claim the US schools aren’t “competitive” with foreign school systems.
In “Left Back,” William Bagley is quoted back in 1926 lamenting that “In no other country are the professional students of education so influential” [translation: wealthy] and “in no other country is school practice so quickly responsive to suggestions emanating from this group.” That’s because they buy politicians and own the media.
Bombarded with decades of media dysinformation, the typical voter demands politicians to “do something” and politicians in turn put pressure on state education departments. The result is a dismal procession of reforms that fail because (1) the reforms are generated by those “professional students of education,” like Bill Gates instead of arising from actual educators, and (2) because the reforms are perfect examples of the “ready, fire, aim” manner in which politicians go about almost everything. Reforms need to be field-tested like medicines before they are implemented. As with medicines, an adequate filed test takes years before a reform can be properly evaluated. Politicans want to point to having “done something” before the next election cycle. That makes children guinea pigs for untested reform after untested reform. That’s unconscionable.
And then there’s — no way to escape it — racism: Immediately after the Brown v. Board of Education order to racially integrate public schools there was a great “White Flight” from public schools. When parents found out how much private schools cost, the cry for vouchers arose and was championed by the likes of Milton Friedman. The outcry for vouchers died away, however, when it became clear that because neighborhoods were still segregated only token racial integration could take place because children couldn’t attend schools out of their attendance area or distant from their neighborhood. But the outcry for vouchers arose again in 1971 when the Supreme Court ordered busing to end the de facto segregation caused by segregated neighborhoods. When voucher legislation ran into constitutional challenges, voucher proponents concocted the charter school scheme that is ongoing today, along with the voucher campaigns. A key component of the war on public schools has, along with the manufactured “facts” being relentlessly broadcast by the media owned by those “professional students of education,” been to chronically underfund public education so that it has been severely hampered in fulfilling its vital role. Now that public school students are in the majority non-white, expect all these efforts against public schools to intensify.
There’s also a mostly subconscious cultural factor long at work; I call it “The Ichabod Crane Syndrome.” The great flood of immigration into the U.S. during the turn of the 19th century was largely composed of impoverished people fleeing the oppression of European nations dominated by wealthy, well-educated landed gentry. The new U.S. was a place where one needed only a strong back to make a good living as a free man. Nothing but the most rudimentary schooling was needed. These immigrants distrusted educated people and viewed schools and teachers as tools and minions of the upper class to control others. When “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was published in 1820 the portrayal of teacher Ichabod Crane was right on the mark as far as the man-in-the-street (or field or factory) was concerned. That subliminal distrust of well-educated persons has long remained evident on our cultural literature, movies, and TV shows down to this day in which scientists and professors are often portrayed deranged bad buys. At its cultural roots, our nation still has a love-hate attitude toward public education in which the hate/distrust is mostly subliminal, although often overt, and fuels the tendency to “reform” schools and blame teachers for the manufactured problems.
Cross-posted with this comment at:
at
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Peter-Greene-Explains-How-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Conversation_Diane-Ravitch_Education_Education-Curriculum-140913-260.html
There is a reason that Diane Ravitch was one of Politico’s choices of the 50 most influential people— SHE KNOWS WHAT IS GOING ON in Education, and her blog of two years, like her 2 books, speaks for teachers — AS I also DO– something that is unique in this age when anyone and everyone has an opiNon and a magic elixir to do what can only be done BY THE PROFESSIONAL… help kids LEARN to learn… A SKILL ACQUIRED ONLY BY PRACTICE.
MOREOVER, the Ravitch Blog is where you can actually hear what is actually happening in our schools, in the only place that is YOUR country’s pathway to opportunity… hear the dedicated and successful ones, and the academics who watched in astonishment as the debacle of Core Curricula unfolded.
Peter Greene is one of the most original voices there, but if you read the feed, you will hear so many wonderful voices of the teachers like the ones that Thomas Friedman described today in The NY Times
,http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/It-Takes-a-Mentor–Thomas-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Education_Learning_Mentors-Mentoring_Teacher-140913-340.html#comment511220
The Ravitch Blog is where you can actually hear what is actually happening in our schools, in the only place that is YOUR country’s pathway to opportunity.
Greene is one of many voices at the Ravitch blog, and this piece is key to what has happened across the 15,880 districts while the media sang the song of DUNCAN; and the agenda of the billionaire’s boys club was to eliminate the voice of the authentic educators, so THEY COULD DEFINE CURRICULA and mandate everything, ending the voice of the professional teacher … the one who KNOWS WHAT LEARNING LOOKS LIKE! These were the words from the Pew research, on the real National Standards, out of Harvard. Teachers ARE the professionals who know what learning looks like in EACHh child, and must be allowed to decide HOW to reach each emergent learner in her/his care… and genuine CARE is what it is… teachers are a special breed…. by the way.
I know… I taught from 1963 to 1998, when they silenced my voice… and I retired!
I am silent no longer… I hope you read Greene’s piece and send it to your contacts….. AND get the feed from the Ravitch Blog >> Listen to teachers talk about what is happening TO THEM right now, and hear PARENTS add their voices and explain what they are doing across 50 states.
And if you know anyone who is fed up, confused and bored to tears with the media narrative about curricula, then tell them to tune in to the voices on the Ravitch Blog so a solution can be found.
You see….
only with the participation of the grunt on the line, the teacher —can we fix THE INSTITUTION OF PUBLIC education, which has been usurped by Gates/Broad/Walton/Koch and an industry awash in profits from privatizing education and testing our kids to death! Only your support for the dedicated professionals will end the “reign of error”
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/book-reviews/reform-reform
And go to this NAPTA link if you want to see the stories of thousands of teachers who experienced the assault on teachers.
http://www.endteacherabuse.org
And read the new book “Bravery, Bullies, and Blowhards: Lesson Learned in a Montana Classroomby former teacher Lorna Stremcha and discover what we teachers encountered when the assault on the classroom teacher began
http://bravery-bullies-blowhards.com
What a shock! Teachers have no say in the development of the CC! We who were around when shared decision making was all the rage know that the deck has always been stacked against teacher involvement in curriculum matters. CC and the current “reform” movement has very little to do with education and much to do with saving the dying textbook industry.
1973. ALEC.
With politicians screaming they want common core to be the pinnacle of their legislative career – all I can do os wait for term limits. It’s been crazy and such a waste of time and money.
Term limits haven’t helped in Ohio because of gerrymandering
“Everybody in education ends up working for Gates” and “politicized Common Core”
Example- CEO of Cleveland schools, testifies in Ohio’s capitol in favor of Common Core, receives an alumni award from Bowling Green State University, where they cite his Common Core work. His resume lists, as a “Special Accomplishment”, the administration of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Gates Foundation.
Disagree, there is no politics anymore, it is all about economics. Politics is an illusion, just as the two party system. It’s all about money. Even Jimmy Carter recognizes the death of our political system.