Jack Hassard, a retired professor of science education at Georgia State University, here nails the corporate and political assault on public education. He calls it “the web of influence peddling.” In my recent book, I called it
a “Reign of Error” and a great “hoax” perpetrated by the privatization movement. We both agree on the ultimate goal: the destruction and privatization of a basic democratic institution.
This post is a must-read.
He writes:
“In this post I argue that politicians, lobbyists and corporate executives have worked together to peddle their influence in the name of educational reform. This triad of influence is dismantling public education one charter school, voucher, tax incentive, and law at a time.
“In today’s culture, politicians and especially business leaders, have perpetuated the myth that academic achievement in a few subjects is the most important outcome of schooling, and that indeed, there is a huge gap between achievement of students in the United States and its counterparts in other industrialized nations. Furthermore, these same politicians and business leaders would have us believe that there is a serious decline in the supply of high-quality students from the beginning (the end of high school) to the end of the Science & Engineering “pipeline.” Both of these cases are myths—that U.S. students do not achieve at high levels, and that there is a serious shortage of high quality persons for science & engineering. They are perpetuated to fulfill the needs and desires of officials whose best interests are served by claiming such weaknesses in the American educational system (see Lowell & Salzman).”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From the article:
“… that academic achievement in a few subjects is the most important outcome of schooling, and that indeed, there is a huge gap between achievement of students in the United States and its counterparts in other industrialized nations.”
Why we focus on “achievement”, the supposed end product, instead of the teaching and learning process is beyond my comprehension. Many far better than me have pointed out the logical fallacy of viewing, seeing, talking about, discussing the teaching and learning process in business/manufacturing terms. Education and the business world are two different realms. Can on inform the other? Yes, in a very limited fashion. The business world needs/demands well trained workers (which is not the same as well educated, critical thinking workers). Training and achievement fit the business sector. Teaching and learning (especially learning critical thinking skills) are part of the public education realm and by definition should resist strict training regimens.
I don’t give a hoot (being nice am I as another four letter word that ends in “t” is a better descriptor) about student achievement. It’s a false goal of education, and certainly shouldn’t be a goal of the teaching and learning process. And I couldn’t care even less for the comparisons used whether international, state, local or student to student. Pure nonsense (again, (being nice am I as another eight letter word that ends in “t” is a better descriptor)!
“. . . by definition WE should. . .
I posted this early this morning, but it fits here too.
It’s interesting. If Gates and others believe that standardized tests reveal achievement, but their own kids are in private schools where achievement is not measured by way of lots and lots of standardized “benchmarking,” then is the public school student who showed appropriate “achievement,” (read, growth) but who has no connections to he banking or business world going to be selected for top tier schools and better jobs out of school over the graduate of a private school because of those gains?
That is to say, what is the REAL standard?
Perhaps it cannot even really be encapsulated.
Perhaps the success of students later in life is part schooling, part personality, part exposure to other ways of living, an ability to adapt, an ability to notice decorum and an ability to ignite their own ambition? But if we dress test scores up and try to pass it off as “achievement,” aren’t we inappropriately streamlining the schooling part? Aren’t we narrowing that parent of a student’s equation unnecessarily? Where that aspect of schooling is NOT being narrowed by those attending private schools?
What is noble in establishing student achievement? And should achievement by students in public schools carry them on a different pipeline because of the involvement of mandates? And if so, why and where is that pipeline leading them?
Señor Swacker: yes, “achievement” in quotation marks!
We can’t counter the superficial and misleading propaganda of the charterite/privatizer movement if we use their terms as if their meanings are obvious and shared. Case in point: if we mean “learning” then let’s use that term, not psychometric terms like “achievement” or “performance.” And they use “choice” while Chiara has quite accurately pointed out that they leave out three words: “choice but no voice.”
Lance Armstrong had great “achievements” a la self-styled “education reform” [i.e., quantifiable metrics like VAM and the scores of high-stakes standardized tests] but, as W. Edwards Deming said about numerical goals:
“Anybody can achieve almost anything by distortion and faking, redefinition of terms, running up costs.”
[THE ESSENTIAL DEMING, 2013, p. 55]
Let’s keep it real.
Not Rheeal. Not even in a Johnsonally sort of way…
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Readers of this blog who are not familiar with one of the driving forces behind the destruction of public education, now including higher education should visit the ALEC website–American Legislative Exchange Council. Look at the corporate members and the legislators who are eager to use the “model legislation” for states from ALEC. These templates are ready to use by legislative committees and governors, with a few tweaks. You can find the most recent templates for k-12 legislation. These narrow the state responsibility to improving academic achievement while expanding markets for online learning, choice, and the rest. ALEC is a non-profit. It is also the one-stop shop for Republicans and their corporate supporters to shape national policies, state-by-state, without having to rely on the skills and reputations of members of Congress.
The hammer (“dismantling one board at a time”) would never have been sufficient to do the job.
So they brought out…
“The Wrecking Ball”
Common Core’s a wrecking ball
For public education
Smashing down the legal wall
On local regulation
Could you please repeat your version of Country Joe McDonald and the Fish’s I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag? It’s not Vietnam and we’re not fighting the Viet Cong, but there is a war and “plenty good money to be made”. Just think of the success we, The Reformers, had there . . . I can’t get the following verse out of my head:
Well, come on Wall Street, don’t move slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go.
There’s plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade,
Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.
What’s your version of “the Fish Cheer”?
Thanks. Your poems are clever, insightful and right on target – present song lyrics included!
You must be confusing me with Some Other DAM Poet because I haven’t done a parody of Country Joe.
More “science!” from ed reformers:
“The expansion of retention laws comes as a recent Dartmouth University study contradicts the widely-held notion that students stop learning to read in third grade.
Associate Professor of Education Donna Coch said her research looked at the elasticity of the brain when it comes to reading by comparing third-graders to college students. Her study found that third-graders’ brains had not yet fully developed the processors that allowed the college students to see strings of letters and symbols as words.
“These third-grade reading guarantees are implicitly buying into the idea of a fourth-grade shift,” she said. “Our data suggests there is no fourth-grade shift.”
On what did they base Jeb Bush’s 3rd grade reading guarantee? The fact that he’s a celebrity/politician/related to powerful people? Do state lawmakers do ANY due diligence before they all sign onto the latest fad? I just love how cavalier it all is. HUGE disruptions in millions of lives for yet another experiment.
Gosh, I hope this experiment on 3rd graders goes well. God forbid the adults should do anything carefully and responsibly.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/30/third-grade-literacy-retention-laws_n_5907272.html?utm_hp_ref=education&ir=Education
Isn’t anyone outside of education aware of Bloom’s taxonomy or Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development? I always thought that the progression was sequential and that the rate of progress through each level differed for each individual.
Piaget didn’t have access to our modern medical science on the working and development of the brain to confirm his observations, but like Darwin and his “theory” of evolution, advances in science have confirmed or corroborated their careful and thoughtful observations and reasoning.
If I may make a recommendation on the next edu-business opportunity, I see huge growth in “test security”.
I read sales are up 40% since last year. This is where you education funding is going. Not just to the testing industry, but to a new spin-off industry.
Click to access EndofErasures.pdf
Chiara, I often think part of the business plan for the reformists is the Apple example. Build the hardware, then open up the rest – there’s an app for that – to developers. Everyone gets a piece of the pie. $$$!
In the ACT article I linked, it says that if the there is some kind of problem with a student and a test, two people have to go to the student and resolve the problem. The one adult is there to watch the other adult help the student, so the adults don’t cheat.
It’s a great piece, and obviously I have ridiculously high expectations for adults, but there’s another actor in this drama.
Nothing says politicians and lawmakers have to buy any of this. They are actually adults with agency and free will. They could DECLINE to be purchased. That is possible, it’s within recorded history and human experience. Nothing says the Los Angeles school board has to spend a billion dollars on screens. They could independently research and resist the sales job and refuse to go along. That is within their power. In fact, it’s their job. It’s what they were hired to do. They are the advocates for the public interest. That’s why they’re at the table.
Totally. Yes. You are right.
Not only our public schools but our nation.
Roger Williams names names of the politicians, lobbyists and business moguls, in his Florida Weekly article, “The Business of High Stakes Testing (Sept. 24-30).
He describes the sale of American students, with a concrete and concise chronology.