Have you every wondered what “Race to the Top” was supposed to accomplish? Did it mean that we would be first in the world if we opened more privately managed charter schools, closed down more public schools (especially in Black and Brown communities), evaluated all teachers by test scores, and adopted the Common Core standards? If so, that clearly didn’t happen. Did it mean that the states who followed Arne Duncan’s instructions most faithfully would surge to the top of the NAEP tables? That didn’t happen either.
Be it noted that a “Race to the Top” is a bizarre metaphor for education in a democratic society. In any race, only a few reach the top, while most are left behind in the dust. That would seem to be a repudiation of the principle of equality of educational opportunity. For sure, it throws the goal of equity away.
For those who want to know what Race to the Top was really about, we have it straight from the horse’s mouth. Joanne Weiss wrote an article in 2011 that laid out the big idea that animated the nearly $5 billion program. Weiss was selected by Arne Duncan to run RTTT. Previously she had been CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, an organization dedicated to supporting and funding charter schools and charter chains. After the RTTT was completed, Weiss became Duncan’s chief of staff. You can’t get much closer to the action than Weiss was.
Weiss’s article was published on the Harvard Business Review blog. She called it “The Innovation Mismatch: “Smart Capital” and Education Innovation.” The problem she identified as most crucial in American education was the mismatch between capital and the culture of the consumers. There was little incentive to innovate when the market was so fragmented.
She wrote:
The capital markets that fund education innovation — both for-profit and nonprofit — are largely broken. When for-profit investors fund technology solutions, they naturally seek good returns on their investments. To deliver those returns, developers cater to the largest possible market: large urban and suburban K-12 districts.
Unfortunately, these districts are notoriously weak consumers. They often buy technology and pursue innovation based on relationships and networking, rather than based on effectiveness. Given the relative dearth of valid, reliable measures of student achievement, few innovative programs can demonstrate their efficacy – so why not select solutions sold by someone you’ve worked with for years, or buy the products that come with the best give-aways, or purchase from the company everyone has heard of? The result is a large-scale market of technological mediocrity. High-quality solutions do not rise to the top – and effectiveness is neither recognized nor rewarded.
To make the market attractive to innovators–both for-profit and non-profit–the market needed to be consolidated. There were too many “homegrown, fragmented, one-off programs.” The question was how to scale up the marketplace for innovation, and Race to the Top was the answer.
Technological innovation in education need not stay forever young. And one important change in the market for education technology is likely to accelerate its maturation markedly within the next several years. For the first time, 42 states and the District of Columbia have adopted rigorous common standards, and 44 states are working together in two consortia to create a new generation of assessments that will genuinely assess college and career-readiness.
The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.
Thus, with almost every state using common standards and common tests, and with a massive data warehouse to track student and teacher progress, entrepreneurs would be attracted to work in a national marketplace, where their products would reach a national consumer base. This was the promise of Race to the Top and Common Core. It would enable entrepreneurs to market their products more efficiently and with greater success.
This idea was a first for the U.S. Department of Education. Never before was a major program launched by the federal government with the specific purpose of creating a national marketplace for entrepreneurs to hawk their wares to the schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A smoking gun.
RTTT was designed at a time when Districts were cashed strapped (primarily due to a shitty economy) with the purpose of dangling much needed dollars (with strings attached of course) so that these Districts would take the bait. Once these Districts took the cash (which was only a short term band aid fix) these Districts had lost their local control over educational policy to the Feds. This accomplished the primary goal of RTTT which is to label schools as failures so that the vultures can swoop in with the solution to the very problem that they created (not really a solution just a quick money grab) all while reducing the teaching profession to a menial job and keeping wages stagnant (due to the elimination of traditional salary schedules) which ultimately cuts pension pay outs to the tune of billions over time.
“Race to the Bottom” …….. That is for sure. 😜
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware and commented:
Joanne Weiss. A name very familiar to Delaware education, as Ms. Weiss sits on the International Advisory Board of the Rodel Foundation of Delaware. For Delawareans, this should give some keen insight into what Rodel has always been about.
I remember when in the 1980s districts received Eisenhower or DEMSEA federal funds for math and science. You had to do a application and say what you wou would do (professional development, resources, etc.). If you applied, you got the money, based on enrollment. The district controlled the funds, and good thing generally got done. It was not a competition.
The National Science Foundation also provided grants, usually more competitive.
RTTP is a empty sham compared to things like the above. But worse, the money has supported things like VAM.
We really have raced to the bottom.
The underlying assumption of all of that is that the primary reason children are not achieving in schools, is that because of a lack of market efficiency (this is what the affordable care act created with exchanges – a marketplace where the healthy would offset the costs of the sick with an even playing field), education product developers were failing to develop good products to deliver to classroom children.
How does it follow that if you get better quality stuff, all of a sudden achievement improves? What kind of “awesome literature” would get produced that would magically turn children into readers? I could see some innovation leading to games that entice children to learn but that hardly seems a panacea.
Promises of better technology, better textbooks, better games, better grade/standard tracking, I don’t see how any of that follows the research.
With grade tracking, the underlying idea is one of intervention when children fail in a timely manner. What intervention can be marketed to a child that will fix their behavior in a classroom? Better videos to show them?
A lot of the issues our children face in the classroom stem from a lack of social cohesion and a need for a supportive community.
Race to the Top pits educators against educators, parents against educators, and schools against teachers. Is it any wonder that better “stuff” can’t replace strong communities?
I’m also waiting to see the big innovation that resulted from RttT and the market place, now that it exists, that wasn’t around before RttT and is greatly increasing student achievement where students historically underperformed. Other than picking your children of course.
The next innovation is to just give up on education – take the money from communities, give it back to those who have children and let God and the market sort ’em out. If the children fail, it will become the parents’ and teachers’ faults – certainly not the politicians who underfund schools or their marketplace partners. Blame will be placed accordingly.
“. . . the underlying idea is one of intervention when children fail in a timely manner.”
I thought Diane doesn’t want any “dirty” words used here. And you, M, have used the dirtiest four letter “F” word that can be used when talking about the teaching and learning process-“FAIL”.
The concept of “failing”, the meme that mutilates young minds, is so enculturated, so drilled into, so burned into our brains that it is hard to not use the term. So a student doesn’t learn a certain thing by a certain time-that year’s standardized test, even though they have tried their damned best and will eventually understand the concept, they are labeled as a “failure” or now in more polite terms “not proficient”.
This process of sorting and separating and labeling needs to join other nefarious educational malpractices such as dunce caps or standing with one’s nose in a circle on the board high enough to force the students to stand on tiptoes, or wearing an off colored shirt to show non-compliance (wait that’s still done at those master of discipline schools called charters) already consigned to the dustbin of educational history.
Four words, four completely misused words/concepts mark the corners of this epoch of educational malpractice: standard, measure, fail and testing.
How and when will we reject the false meanings of these words and bring back a more balanced, salubrious, integrated and comprehensive means of assessing student work????
And the mutual benefit for promoting such possible wealth for technology companies, could have been to get us to the tops of the PISA raw data table scores. Pearson is now in charge of revamping the test.
They found this on her nightstand:
I had planned to save up my 4 responses per day for replying to user comments but I just couldn’t pass this one up (2 of 4 responses today).
Diane appears to be unaware of how markets work. The reason the IBM computer standards beat out the Apple standards in the early days of PCs (1980s-1990’s) was not because of superior technology (I bought a Mac in high school and loved it), but was because of the size of the market. Whereas Apple has proprietary standards, the IBM standards were open. Dozens of manufacturers produced the computers on that standard. And thousands developed software and 3rd-party hardware. The price drops, brought on by competition and innovation, were so spectacular that Apple didn’t stand a chance. So let’s look and see if we see evidence of that elsewhere:
1. Wal-mart single-handedly implemented standards for procurement by forcing all vendors to use its electronic invoicing procedures. That not only lowered prices for Wal-mart and led to its rise as a mega-chain but those standards have expanded beyond the walls of Wal-mart itself. Furthermore, partnerships between vendors and customers can increase innovation. Software products inevitably have enhancement requests to add capabilities or improve their usefulness. By testing companies partnering with school districts, the districts can shape the standardized tests to be more useful and measure skills that have the most value.
2. HTML- in the early days of the “world wide web”, there were many browsers with competing standards. While browsers still have unique functionality, HTML standards (version 5) have made it much easier for website producers to build a single website that “works” on all browsers. This leads to greater productivity and innovation in the content on these sites.
There are many more, but let’s look at some areas where the US government has generated markets via standards:
3. ACA exchanges: I find it remarkable that an avowed liberal progressive would so easily dismiss the healthcare exchanges just recently created. Talk about a huge market! The minimum terms of the care is set and even the pricing levels (bronze, silver, gold, etc.) are determined by the feds. Vendors then come on the exchange to compete on price and/or service.
4. USA Jobs provides a central place where all jobs are listed with a common format so that folks can search, compare and apply easily.
5. Federal Biz Opps is utilized to post all opportunities for vendors to bid on federal contracts. This greatly increases the awareness of vendors so that the government can get the bet product/service at the least cost. By enforcing rules in the RFPs (request for proposal), vendors can easily decipher each RFP and determine if they can provide that product/service and how to make a bid.
6. Large contract vehicles in the federal space such as the Navy’s Seaport, DHS’ Eagle or others from the Army and Air Force provide standard terms/conditions on which vendors can compete.
7. Even before ACA, Medicare, Medicare defined standards for various health care procedures along with a set fee.
So the question is not whether Race to the Top was the first standard created by the feds to spur innovation (it was clearly not), but (1) what took so long and (2) why do the opt-out activists know so little about how the real world outside of education works? It truly boggles the mind!
Walmart’s “innovation” has come at a very steep price. Always low quality. Always low wages. Always.
Anyway, are you arguing that education should be standardized? Are children widgets to be produced in accordance with exacting standards? So that any employer can plug any widget, I mean, graduate, into any slot and it – I mean, he/she – will perform effectively?
Everything you wrote is beside the point, because it assumes education should be a market in the first place. A better question is: Why do businesspeople and economists, who do not understand the art of teaching and learning, want to be so involved in the lives of students?
(They want to be richer.)
The real “innovation” will come from teachers and communities, but only if they are allowed to. At present, they are not, because schools have been ransomed by bad policy.
Brian,
Said one fish to the other. Yeah that worm looks delicious go ahead and try it. First fish alive, second fish being filleted for a meal.
Your love of standards is well “interesting”. As one who worked in the non-public school business realm until I was 39 (and is working with UOO), as one who understands what the term standard really means, allow me to ask you to: Show me where there are any educational standards that meet the definition of a standard as the ISO* protocols demands for the development, production and usage of standards. Please show how the ISO process was followed and who got to vote on the standards.
Thanks,
Duane
*International Organization of Standards
Education is not equal to business.
IBM ultimately lost. Apple is the most profitable company in the world today.
Walmart has not led to innovation and improved products for consumers but rather increased the billions of dollars in the Walton family bank accounts while destroying small businesses of entrepreneurs all over the country. Employees are paid such low wages they often require government aid to survive.
Your examples of market ‘successes’ are sadly lacking in many ways and does not impress me at all.
Equating public schools and education to making widgets or rent seeking is vulgar and evil and supports the neoliberal hatred of commonweal, community, and caring for your neighbors, replacing it with every citizen for themselves. Disgusting!
Most of us understand markets, you clearly do not understand the concept of a common good. We simply do not want education turned into a market. Most of us here thing Europe has the right idea regarding education and it’s ready availability. The market does not assure quality, it assures maneuvering and manipulation and ends in cartels and monopolies. Microsoft isn’t innovative, they bought key patents to bottle up their competition. The stole windows from Xerox while “collaborating” with them. We understand markets and we reject the notion that we should be in one. It will lead to ruin just like it did in Chile where the Friedmanite economists ran wild.
So, the carrot was for corporations and the the stick was for school districts.
YES! Bingo.
Jon Schnur is often called the “Architect of RTTT” as David Coleman is called the “Architect of CCSS.” Mr. Schnur has resided in Montclair NJ for the past few years, where, as you have noted in earlier postings, families have protested ed reform policies by opting out of testing at a 47% rate across the district and 79% at the high school level. You’ve also recently posted about how –given that test refusal–ed reformers are viciously going after Montclair public school parents, educators and professors, with resident Michelle Fine being an example. With Mr. Schnur, Mr. Cerf–who has just taken the job as Superintendent of Newark, and a host of charter school heavies, Montclair is a hot bed of reformers. And now Campbell Brown’s The 74, with local resident Jonathan Alter on the board, has taken its swipe at Montclair parents. If they were really interested in education they’d be listening to parent protests, not mustering the forces of big money and PR to crush objections.
Should note that there is not any public link between the ed reformers going after parents and Mr. Schnur.
Confirms why I’m heartbroken.
Race to the Top, Common Core, and the collection of data were never about the improvement of education or “college and career readiness”. This is why mouthpieces such as Duncan are unable to engage in meaningful conversation with education experts, but would rather read from pre-molded scripts.
The idea behind Race to the Top was really the California Gold Rush of the 21st Century.
Profit.
Business was going to take advantage of its access to government, through political “contributions”, such as those that we witness Cuomo taking from the billionaires/oligarchs to further enhance their “portfolios”, and a Randi Weingarten with her Race to be the first give Hillary Clinton her political and premature “kiss”.
Power.
Government was going to take advantage of big business and its access to the marketplace, to consolidate its power of the people, such as through the use of data tracking, and the stacking and ranking of teachers. This was the goal of in-Bloom, VAM, and the Common Core.
It was never about the betterment of public education in the United States, never about securing the promise of a better future for our children.
It was a sinister ploy to destroy the foundations that our nation were built upon.
It was an attack on the United States.
It was an attack against the 99%.
And it was an attack against our children.
The chart was never displayed truthfully to the people of the United States.
If you take the easel, demonstrated by the business/government weasel, and turn it upside down, it will then read properly:
Race to the Bottom.
“The idea behind Race to the Top was really the California Gold Rush of the 21st Century.”
I plan to steal that line.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
It was never about the children. It was never about improving education. It was never about finding great teachers and getting rid of bad ones. It was about making money and NOTHING ELSE.
Lloyd Lofthouse: well and succinctly put.
Combine the relentless pursuit of profit with the magical thinking that everything educational and pedagogical will just somehow, someway, work themselves out and produce miracles of “innovation” and “excellence” and—
Voilà! You have the entire philosophy and practice of self-proclaimed “education reform.”
That is why, as $tudent $ucce$$ rolls in, edupreneurs (whether of the profit or supposedly non-profit variety) and their enablers and enforcers are dumbfounded and even offended by critics because—if the bottom line spells “success”—how can the “innovation” and “excellence” be in doubt?
It’s Johnny One-Note summed up in a singular metric. All else circles back to, is explained by, and is excused because of, that pot of gold at the end of the rheephorm rainbow. Black is good; red is bad.
They just don’t understand, and will never understand, why the rest of us refuse to buy into their self-serving justifications.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Their logic runs something like this…
If the metric of success is profitability, and academic achievement doesn’t rise with profits, it shows them the problem MUST be with the teachers, the curriculum, the technology, etc.
How can it be otherwise when the business model is working?
rockhound2: their touching faith in any number & stat that supports the rheephorm business plan that masquerades as an education model is a wonder to behold—
It’s just that any number & stat that doesn’t prove their infallibility is scornfully dismissed out of hand.
And when genuine learning and teaching get reduced to test scores that supposedly measure, in some mystical fashion or other, “achievement” and “performance” (psychometric lingo), genuine learning and teaching is in big big trouble.
Which is exactly why, when it come to those sacred metrics, the rheephormsters can’t help but expose themselves for the crass hypocrites that they are by not walking their own talk. Ponder, for example, CCSS and its conjoined twin, high-stakes standardized tests.
[start posting]
This is an unintentionally hilarious story about Common Core in Tennessee. Dr. Candace McQueen has been dean of Lipscomb College’s school of education and also the state’s’s chief cheerleader for Common Core. However, she was named headmistress of private Lipscomb Academy, and guess what? She will not have the school adopt the Common Core! Go figure.
[end posting]
This blog. “Common Core for Commoners, Not My School!” 3-23-2014.
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
Shameless? That might imply that the heavyweights of the self-styled “education reform” movement and their enforcers and enablers are “less” something that they used to “have.”
😎
I just don’t believe data will save us. They did this in policing- they relied on data to focus on “trouble spots” and in some ways it made the problem worse because they just used the data as a hammer in affected communities and race and to a lesser extent class (I believe) ended up playing a huge role. It had a veneer of “objective” and “scientific” and people used that to abandon their own common sense and individual duty.
Numbers won’t rescue us from ourselves. We need an ethical and overall objective or the reliance on numbers just adds false certainty to what could very well be bad policy. I get why it’s appealing, but the fact is this isn’t physics. It’s much, much more complex than that. They aren’t going to get around the human element by pretending they can rely on data and that makes them “objective”.
Duncan and his team came in as members of a “movement” and that influenced each and every thing they did. Denying that is weirdly arrogant. They would be the first people in the history of the world who were wholly objective. Are they just better people? They aren’t influenced by ideology or bias or personal connections or career concerns or money? They’re unique among… people?
Chiara,
You are right: data won’t save us if it is used to support predetermined outcomes as it has been in the reform movement. That veneer of science and objective you mention is really more of an illusion and lacks the reality of even a veneer.
Was it Voltaire who noted that common sense was not so common?
“Duncan and his team came in as members of a ‘movement’. . . ”
I’d say they came in as idiologues well steeped in their idiology of data.
The only “innovation” was finding ways to make it easier to make money off children and to do that they had to shove parents aside and strip teachers of their voice. That’s the reason they declared war on teachers’ unions.
A smoking gun indeed. Unfortunately, it’s really a smoking machine gun and our children and educators are caught in the crossfire. The question now is…what next? What can a society that believes in public education do? Answer: School leaders need to start truly leading and not following.
“School leaders need to start truly leading and not following.”
Ha, ha, ha ha ha, eh, eh ah eh. Please stop, you’re making me laugh too hard.
Adminimals have been trained to follow not lead. They’re GAGA*ers through and through. Maybe one out of a thousand isn’t but I think that estimate is too high.
Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution upon their passing from this realm.
Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
Those in power should stop promoting Vampire Economics for services that provide for the greater good. Americans are struggling enough with stagnant wages due to globalization. If capitalists want to make money, they are free to invent a new service or product and sell it. The American people do not appreciate all the corporate lies, and manipulations to force the public to accept inferior, subpar services. The attack on public education is particularly insidious because it disregards the need for stability among the nation’s children and disrespects the nation’s teaching force, most of whom are women. America should wake up and realize that public education is one of the greatest assets of our nation. Is there room for improvement? Of course! You will not find any solutions in the board rooms of corporations. Their main interest is profit, not excellence. This nation cannot afford to be so short sighted and morally bankrupt that it throws the baby out with the bath water.
Those involved in trying to make money off the backs of our foundations do so now, because it’s relatives “easy money”. Why wait until tomorrow after creating a product that can enhance the lives of people when the profits can be stolen today?
By labeling public education as a failure, those in power in business and government are really labeling themselves as failures….for to be a true success in business and/or government, the people must be the primary concern of those who legislate and execute laws…not the laws that the New York State Senate and Legislature with Cuomo give…the Myriad Laws…those that are upside down, with twists and turns, to strengthen their own power. Thus, the names of legislation that sound promising, but are really poisonous to the people.
Mr Cuomo, as the face of New York politics, is a failed leader. He is ineffective, and his administration must resign or be removed immediately.
The other fact is that privatization is not saving money. It is merely redistributing money up to the 1% that does not need it, and it displaces middle class workers that support families and pay for good and services on their incomes. These middle class workers then become poor and need to rely on government assistance. Privatization is like a scheme to get taxpayers to underwrite corporate welfare while harming the middle class and poor in the process. If income inequality is one of the big issues confronting us, privatization of services to the greater good is a prime contributor. Privatization is only increasing the income gap. Are our leaders aware of the domino effect of privatization?
Indeed, it’s all about money. I wrote this book which shows how ed-reform is to education like the deregulated banks are to the economy… Think of ways to suck up the money and don’t worry about who gets hurt. Common Core, its tests and curricula are a package deal. We are being conned… (but not the readers of Diane Ravitch’s page!)
http://weaponsofmassdeception.org/
The role of government should be to serve the needs of its people, not to use its children to artificially boost the bottom line for corporations. Educators should purchase materials and services that enhance the teaching learning experience; they should not be forced to purchase testing or technology that does nothing for students or teachers.
Her whole premise is baloney anyway. Where’s the evidence that pushing school districts to adopt tech fixes helps children or is a good and effective use of limited funds?
The Obama Administration has been pushing school districts into buying devices for a year. What evidence is this blatant sales job based on?
They’re not any better at deciding which products schools should buy. They’re promoting an agenda for public schools just like everyone else.
I don’t know that a Chromebook for each student will improve the lot of low income students in my son’s school and they don’t know either, yet they’re doing a national push. Why are they more trustworthy than my school board or superintendent? What is that based on other their own high estimation of their “objective” opinions and the fact that Duncan surrounded himself with people who agree with him? I think I get a better debate locally. Can they show me something that says they’re better at this?
My district is being inundated with Chromebooks as well. Aiming for the paperless classroom. I think the potential for improving instruction, in certain subjects, is fantastic – only one caveat: teachers need much more TIME than will ever be allotted to develop their instructional programs. Professional judgement is critical to avoid the overuse of screens and close supervision to curb the temptation of using the Chromebooks as a social media session. In the long run nothing will make much of a difference without strong parental support and the real possibilities of upward mobility for those who are willing to work hard.
Why don’t we put educational subcontractors to the same tests as any other govt subcontractirs? granted, there is plenty of graft and corruption among govt subcontractors. But at least we have procurement laws governing their commerce.
I personally know of a local business engaged in public school commerce [packaged lunches for p.s. kids] which was shut down due to bid-rigging (my friend had to testify against his partner then run to FL)– another friend a block away did a few months’ hard time for ‘tax evasion’– this in a solidly-middle-class area–
Yet, our hard-earned taxes (NJ prop taxes among the highest in the nation; we send such a hi proportion of local taxes to poor areas that we now pay 96% of our. school budget from local taxes) do not protect us from the vulture-capitalists who have already taken over Newark schools, & now Camden, & next Paterson– without so much as a single vote??
“You can’t get much closer to the action than Weiss was.”
Well, maybe a little closer. 🙂
Bill Gates laid out the very same plan in his 2009 speech to the National Conference of State Legislatures:
“When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better…”
The Testing Goose
Is that soft(ware) or hard(ware) -boiled?
All I know is that 24 Karats came with one big stick.
It’s Milton Friedman economics, plain and simple.
This paper provides a succinct and accurate summary of Friedman’s philosophy. You can see quite clearly how this is the driving force behind neoliberals like Obama, Duncan, and Hillary and how it dovetails into rightwing neoconservative philosophy so well. A deal mad in hell, if you will.
From: The Effects of Market-based School Reforms on Students with Disabilities
Curt Dudley-Marling and Diana Baker
Boston College
“Writing in 1955, economist Milton Friedman argued that the most effective means for reforming American education is to expose schools to the competitive forces of the free market. Toward this end, Friedman proposed that vouchers be made available to all parents, regardless of where they sent their children for schooling. Presumably, the competitive spirit of the free market provides a powerful incentive for schools to be efficient and effective in contrast to traditional public schools that, as monopolies, have no such incentives. Moreover, according to Friedman, the profit motive will lead to the emergence of a variety of schools to meet the demand for quality education. Along similar lines, others have argued that exposing schools to the forces of the market will spur curricular innovation and experimentation (Greene et al., 2010). In general, Friedman (1955) and other advocates of free-market reforms argue that the state’s role in education be limited to ensuring that schools meet minimum standards but, otherwise, letting the forces of the market operate without interference.”
http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/3187/3072
Yes. It is the Free Market purists approach. Free markets require a moral foundation, relatively equal power between participants, and readily available, transparent information. In short, free markets work great in a textbook or computer simulation, but fail miserable when those pesky carbon-based life forms are involved.
The zealous adherence to free markets is no longer rooted in rational thought, but has become a religion in itself. It should be very obvious that our current system is not working well and is resulting in income inequality, anger, and instability. The end game can not be good as history shows. Except for the eugenicists who see this situation as a desirable goal (except when they are considered the expendable ones), our economic system is badly in need of, should I say, …. reform.
Rather than economists wasting time misapplying discredited junk science like VAM to teaching, they should be focusing on what the heck is wrong with our economy.
Economists could stay within their own field and make important contributions, but unfortunately, some of them don’t.
They have a nasty habit of venturing into fields and weighing in on things that they are utterly clueless about. They do it on education but they also do it on climate science.
Ray Pierrehumbert schooled one of them (Steve Levitt at U o f Chicago) on very basic errors and bogus claims that he had made in a chapter on climate change in one of his books (Superfreakonomics)
1888530_791967040830921_1291441710_n
Sorry! That was supposed to be a picture. Can’t get it to load.
When I started programming back in the 70’s, we made pictures with lines of numbers and other characters
Is your picture like that? 🙂
That’s it! LOL It’s the number of children who lost the Race to the Top laying down in a row. . . .
We’re told again and again that equitable funding and preschool are two Duncan priorities, but why weren’t they priorities when he had the extraordinary power of all that stimulus and RttT funding?
Can we get an admission that the actual priorities were different? That charter schools and teacher ranking and data collection were the actual priorities?
Because coming in now and saying they have these other priorities with a GOP Congress and no leverage is deceptive. Priorities are what you do first, not what you say later. Duncan was an unusually powerful Sec of Ed, partly due to circumstances and partly do to DC’s uncritical adoration of the ed reform movement. This is what he did with that power. Not preschool or equity or strengthening public schools- that was NOT a priority, obviously.
I’m also curious why people who insist they rely on “data” continue to insist that the public loves the Bush/Obama ed reforms.
What is that based on? I know polling is unreliable but surely it means something. Where are the voters who are clamoring for privatization, data collection and teacher ranking? Is this some kind of silent majority theory?
If it’s not popular with the public that doesn’t mean it’s bad but it does mean concerns have to be recognized. Why don’t they ever address the fact that this doesn’t have 95% support like it does in DC? Is there some kind of disconnect due to how insular this “movement” is? What’s the problem?
“Only 24% NYers say Cuomo is doing a good job on education; only 20% a good job on corruption ”
Click to access SNY0715_Crosstabs_071515.pdf
I believe Joseph Goebbels, master propagandist, answered your question for you Chiara. From “The Big Lie”:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
That’s how conservatives often win elections by repeating the same lie over and over which they can do since they are backed by big money.
It’s amazing, the kind of evil person who would say something like that. Then we realize this is the strategy being employed in our own country, whether intended in such malice or not.
Yes, and I’ll repeat this again here. It seems apropos in light of Hillary Clinton’s endorsement by the AFT/Randi Weingarten and the Unity loyalty oath takers who support and protect her.
Surprising how many of these Bill Clinton supported while in office and how many are staples of the Tea Party movement and its candidates. There is little room between today’s ‘mainstream’ democrats and the Tea Party extremists.
Note too how much this list describes Obama’s governance and how much is in play in Greece right now.
The sooner teachers and parents understand that this Friedman economics dream has been in the works for 60 years and that this is not some kind of fluke but a long game played very skillfully by the moneyed class the sooner we can plan their defeat.
“The main points of neo-liberalism include:
THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating “free” enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers’ rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say “an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone.” It’s like Reagan’s “supply-side” and “trickle-down” economics — but somehow the wealth didn’t trickle down very much.
CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care.
REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply — again in the name of reducing government’s role. Of course, they don’t oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.
DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminish profits, including protecting the environmentand safety on the job.
PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.
ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF “THE PUBLIC GOOD” or “COMMUNITY” and replacing it with “individual responsibility.” Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves — then blaming them, if they fail, as “lazy.””
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376
I’m still in the middle of an experiment to determine if “Telling the truth and keep repeating it the people will come to believe it” in the case of Noel Wilson’s work. I think the problem is that not enough folks help me in repeating it.
Who made economists GOD? Why should they be the ultimate arbiter of all human activities? How many times have we been told some baloney by economists like “trickle down economics” before we realize they were merely expelling a lot of hot air.
Duane, I think you may be confused.
People only come to believe you if you repeat lies
Repeating the truth does not work. Then people only call you crazy.
“Who made economists GOD?”
Other economists, of course.
“Economists all the way down”
They’re training to be Gods
At Princeton and Cornell
The economic grads
Assending into Hell
(and no, that is not a typo)
Thank you for this informative post. Ten to twelve years ago, I began to notice that the changes being forced on my classroom in Florida had little or nothing to do with quality education. I began to investigate the companies getting education contracts in Florida and found that their boards of directors were most often comprised of marketers, public relations people, or advertising companies, not educators. Consultants were usually from organizations with euphemistic-sounding names that hid their corporate controls, bias, or intent. I’ve watched, complained, warned about and lamented the assault on public education under the guise of reform. It’s a sad day for those of us who believe in the public aspect of education, not the corporate take-over. But thank you for doing your part to get the facts before the pubic.
The ultimate problem with Race to the Top is that everyone has misinterpreted the meaning of top as meaning to the pinnacle, acme or apex of “achievement”.
The correct meaning of “top” in this misnomered phrase of a policy is the child’s toy, dreidel, perinola or even a rattleback top. My favorite as a young child was the spinning top that had a plunger in the middle that you pushed up and down that made it go round and round.
And that is what RaTT does, is to make everyone go round and round and round and round until they get dizzy and fall over
I like Race to the Dreidel much better. Perhaps Race has other meanings as well. 😀
All this talk about a free market in education, with “access” to whatever is a gross misuse of the term “free market”. In a free market the buyer has the option not to buy, but in almost all situations other than education the seller accepts an obligation to provide the “goods” to whoever has the money. Alas, not so with private schools, and worse, not so with charter schools living off public money. Who in God’s name wrote the rules for this?
Excellent points!
What was it Eli Broad said upon Obama becoming President? Something like, “Our lucky stars have finally aligned?”
For a thoroughly researched analysis of the shadow elite behind the co-opting of our democracy, I highly recommend the book by social anthropologist Janine Wedel: Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom, and Security. I also suggest that people look into the potentially damaging health effects from the constant bath of wifi radiation our children are being subjected to, particularly with the proliferation of one child-one device. It’s hair-raising.
It is interesting to read this information and to slowly digest it into the realities of what teachers and students have been subjected.
That marketplace of ideas, of various qualities are presented in varying degrees of proficiency by noneducators trained in varying degrees to sell their viability to teachers who ARE educators have had to view, use, experiment with, eyebrows raised by the experienced, and naive awe by the inexperienced.
While we SEE and KNOW what gas been happening, we are seen an subversive skeptics, unwilling to change (for the sake of change).
Furthermore, these changes have been shoved into our lives and experience with wild abandon, driving many of us out of the profession to save our sanity and health.
Our district, in truth, has always been “The Little Engine that Could”. We have this administrative attitude of “we will prove that we can do more than every other district with less money and you teachers will do as we say, not complain, produce test scores that make us look great …or else!” The Race to the Top incentivised our superintendent to double down in those attitudes, even when, as a district, we voted not to participate. We got into this for a tiny amount of money, like $120k for pd.
It is disgusting to know positively that the consolidation was about profiteering.
I wrote about Scott Joftus, edreform entrepreneur from the beginning of RTTT.
http://missourieducationwatchdog.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-wrangling-of-taxpayer-money-by-jeb.html
He told us what is was all about in 2009:
Scott Joftus, closely aligned with Bill Gates and his foundation since the early years of 2000, had this to say about education in an article aptly titled “Is the Stimulus Really “No Consultant Left Behind” “?:
That metaphor is an apt one for the market as well. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Joftus was contacted by a former contractor who was working for Global Partnership Schools, a new school turnaround venture funded by GEMS Education, a Dubai-based company founded by entrepreneur Sunny Varkey. The caller was hoping to obtain copies of Mr. Joftus’ contract for school improvement services in Kansas.
“You know we’re in a new era when school turnaround firms in the U.S. are being funded out of the Middle East,” Joftus said. “To me, that says there’s money to be made. I call this period the Wild West in education.”
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These are the same people/companies who invested in the dot.com ventures. They are just looking for a place to make more money.
But what do I know? I’m ‘just a mom’, not funded by special interest groups and can’t buy politicians’ votes. There is little to no difference between the Rs and the Ds on this issue. Both sides have sold out. It’s clear what’s happening and they are allowing it. The politicians are the ones who should be held most accountable for allowing this to take place.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
FAILURE BROUGHT TO SCALE: There is no defense for the standardization of education in light of major advances in understanding how kids learn. Particularly in American culture where individualism is imbued in our history and fabric of our founding philosophies.
But the biggest fallacies expressed here are those wayward thinkers who believe that these education vendors actually innovated. They have failed by any measure, including their own jerry rigged metrics, to improve the persistent gaps in achievement that have been constant for decades.
It’s also a weak argument to suggest that these educational products get adopted on any merits whatsoever because the way to a government contract in the age of the revolving door is not through decent products but campaign donations and patronage jobs.
The weakest argument here has to be the comparison to the ACA, a perfect example of a deliberately broken system where record profits through unsustainably rising premiums caused a popular backlash. Then, a massive bait and switch was engineered as Obama, who campaigned and won promising no individual mandate reneged in a corporate wet dream come true.
The broad contours were worked out in a backroom by Rahm Emanuel and Billy Taubin, locking in a profit margin any industry would salivate for. Then, we hear just today that the chief architect of healthcare.gov stepped down to work for the biggest healthcare consortium in the land, cashing in on al the work she did for the industry on our dime.