“Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty”
Henry Demarest Lloyd
News that teacher shortages exist in many states is not surprising to the nation’s educators.
Many, if not most, teachers in the United States today do not feel as though they are respected. Public school teachers feel as though their profession is under assault in a country that seems to be abandoning the idea of public education.
Those who seek to defund public education and replace it with a corporate model that makes use of market mechanisms to serve “strivers” and their families sound very well intended.
Education “reformers” typically target takeovers of inner city schools by managers who see charter school networks as assets in stock portfolios. Much as investment firms have bought up distressed mortgages, investors in charter schools envision long-term investment and risk leading to long-term dividends. These fledgling education capitalists sing a confident song of win-win: their schools will close the “achievement gap” between inner city and suburban youth and display the data proving it in “real-time.” They proof will be displayed in the “data,” lighting the path for the disruption of public schools and relieving tax-payers of school pension debt as the corporate school model displaces public control of schooling. The key source of profit for this privatization scheme, the real target of education capitalists, is the destruction of teacher unions. Investors will benefit by profit margins derived at the expense of teachers and their families. With the institution of work to order regimes that pay charter schoolteachers lower salaries, fewer benefits, and that offer virtually no workplace protections; investors will be able to realize more value in their portfolios.
That the Obama administration made a Faustian bargain with Republicans on public education is blindingly obvious. Long before Obama considered a run for the presidency, his best friend, Marty Nesbitt, along with Rahm Emanuel and the major Chicago developer clans: the Rauners, the Crowns, and the Pritzkers guided the creation of public-private partnerships to build housing to replace the city’s decaying and crime-ridden behemoth public housing projects under the Clinton era Hope Acts.
These same individuals, not surprisingly, turned to public-private initiatives in education, by founding and funding the Noble Charter chain. These schools cater to the city’s inner-city “strivers.” While the resources provided by the Pritzkers, Crowns, and Rauners to these schools and their students represent a sterling display of civic investment, what they give they hope will be multiplied by more investment in similar charter enterprises. Mr. Nesbitt predictably has started an investment firm, the Vistria Group, that seeks to attract investors into the charter school education business. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, has expressed great confidence in Mr. Nesbitt and the Vistria Group.
The direction of Obama education policy was thus built on two factors: the focus on building public-private partnerships in education modeled on the dismantling of the Chicago Housing authority and the need to attract Silicon Valley and tech sector billionaires, most prominently, Bill Gates. The tech billionaires also wanted more access to school markets and the privatization of public schools could free up money that would otherwise go to teacher salaries and benefits. When the Obama transition team chose Arne Duncan as Education secretary over arguably the most knowledgeable and able education researcher in the country, Linda Darling-Hammond, the die was cast.
Mr. Duncan was never a teacher and thus has little empathy for teachers or teaching. His favorite teacher, a University of Chicago Laboratory High School English teacher, has expressed “concern for the future of her profession” in the wake of attacks on teachers coming from Bill Gates and his foundation, Michael Bloomberg, Republican governors, representatives of the Bush and Obama administrations, and most prominently, her former student.
Many teachers view Mr. Duncan’s Race to the Top Initiative as a failure and the recent revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as a necessary corrective to out of control Federal, state, and local testing mandates that turn teaching into a nightmare.
We have reached an Education tipping point in the United States. We can either reverse course and end our romance with the privatization of Education and our obsession with standardized testing regimes, or our resourced starved public schools will simply collapse, trapped as they are in a zero-sum game of diminishing resources.
The editorial pages and publishers of the New York Times and the Tribune Company have served as the praetorian guard of education reform movement sponsored by well-intentioned plutocrats who have little or no first hand knowledge about the everyday challenges that face most public school teachers, students, and parents.
Our political leaders need to begin to listen to parents who opt their kids out of invalid and ridiculous tests, teachers who are quitting or fleeing teacher hostile states like Kansas, Indiana, North Carolina, and Arizona, and potentially excellent candidates for teaching who decide that teaching is not a rewarding profession.
Disruption is leading us down the wrong road.
Paul Horton teaches history at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. His views in no way reflect the views of the board or the administration of the Laboratory Schools (several former members of this board are mentioned in this article)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Apologies if you already posted this:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/02/1367825/-Jim-Crow-and-school-vouchers
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And this very important follow-up from Julian Vasquez Heilig —
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“…well-intentioned plutocrats…”?
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Pluto = Hades
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I will not name names, Dienne, but in their own minds they are well intentioned. Sorry I can’t comment further, but all of this stuff is close to home and involves some risk on my part.
Driving my son to college today, so I will not be able to stay in touch for further comments other than to suggest that we all reread Lloyd’s Wealth Against Commonwealth: the truth is the same, but it is just a new set of Gilded Age billionaires.
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Thank you, Paul Horton, for always saying what needs to be said. It is good to read your words again. Your views should reflect the views of all schools…
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Capitalism, the idea that wealth can regulate itself,
If left unchecked will eventually destroy Democracy,
The very idea that a People can govern themselves.
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I’m afraid that part of Obama’s legacy will include union-busting on a scale far beyond Reagan’s, except that it was “well-intended,” justified by “data,” and meant to help educate poor children.
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I no longer believe the union-busting aspects of ed reform are “well intended”. I think they’re a necessary means to an end, which is different than “well intended”.
As to Obama, I’m not a union member, but I remember Mr. Obama’s campaigns in Ohio and I think he flat-out lied to those rank and file members and betrayed them. It may not matter in the very fancy circles he runs in but it matters to me, because I live here and I know some of them.
They didn’t deserve that. I don’t care about the labor leaders, they can take care of themselves and they’ll keep their jobs, but what he and his administration did to rank and file members is appalling. I hope they’re all comfortable in those private sector gigs they’re all taking, at Uber and McDonalds and Amazon.
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Eric Holder, who did not indict any of the banksters when he was appointed by Obama to head DoJ, ran right back to his Wall Street law office after he deserted his Cabinet post.
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While I can understand the willingness to experiment on change models in urban schools with high drop-out rates and widespread violence, I cannot understand how any leader in his right mind would think it is justified to destroy public education which is a building block of democracy. If Obama looked at facts, he would understand that public education is serving most of our students well. The degree of chaos and punitive policy inflicted on public education in the name of “reform” is unjustified. The starving of public schools should be illegal as we have a moral obligation to adequately fund them and do what is right for our future voters. The fact that Obama would jump blindly on a bandwagon that allows billionaires and corporations to insert themselves into national policy is irresponsible. Furthermore, one thing I learned from working with Judy Johnson was that when you make a change, you are obligated to evaluate what has happened. Nobody is the “reform” movement is willing to do this. The only thing we know for sure is if you are selective enough, you can get decent results from the few survivors. This is wonderful for the handful of “strivers,” but this does NOT a national policy make. At what price have we come to this conclusion! The purpose of government is not to produce markets and help sell products for corporations; the purpose of government is to serve nation and its citizens. Our president and his administration have been negligent. They have failed to support strong public education and have abrogated their responsibility to millions of children and their families.
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It’s also really, really convenient for powerful people in government and industry to blame people who make 50k a year for income inequality, generations of bigotry and institutional racism and a declining middle class, because that shifts attention away from the inability or unwillingness of powerful people to do anything about it.
The “skills gap” appeared just as people started noticing they hadn’t had a raise since 1999. It was disputed by some economists, but it was treated as gospel in business and government circles. There was no debate. They didn’t get a raise because they were lacking skills, didn’t have enough “grit”, needed higher math scores, had to learn to survive in the “gig” economy, whatever. The problem was US, not THEM.
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The big “crisis” in education was invented by those that were seeking a way to profit from our public services. They then conspired to undermine public education to make them profitable. Our president, who never attended a public school in his life, fails to understand that public education is a community. When you attack public education, you are attacking local governance and a way of life that Americans value. Parents want their children to have access to academics, but they also value the arts, sports and opportunities to grown as a whole human. Our national would not have been able to accomplish all it has without strong public education. Public education has been invaluable in the way it has attempted to provide opportunity and access to all. Our current politicization of education has destroyed middle class jobs for countless women, many of whom are minorities. Students and families have been torn apart due to attacks on public schools. This is a misuse of government.
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These three comments are some of the best I’ve read on this blog.
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Dear colleague ‘retired teacher’….I just reread Obama’s memoir on Audacity which he wrote in 2006. Everyone should reread his views on education…he lays it all out early on. He believed then in doing exactly what he has done to destroy public education in favor of corportatizing and implementing CC. We just were not paying attention then, and although he did acknowledge poverty as an issue he made no direct link to inner city academic failures, and now we are suffering through the worst of his Machiavellian plan.
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He should write an addendum: The Mendacity of Blind Allegiance.
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Arne and Obama truly were the catalyst for the destruction of Chicago’s public school education and the deform movement. It’s embarrassing that a black President has presided over the wide scale destruction of public education. I don’t know what the future holds but if it is charterization, it’s not good. By the time the public realizes this, it may be too late.
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Re good intentions: consider the “good intentions” involved in military interventions ostensibly on the basis of “human rights.” And thus we get Iraq today. Just to name one. One of many, in which the common thread has to do with profit. Which is, all too often, the common thread of “reform” initiatives in the education world.
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I think the “good intentions” are just how they’re sold to the public in order to get buy-in. Bush and his administration knew that Iraq wasn’t about “human rights”. It was a power play.
In any case, “human rights” was just the third excuse they tried to sell us after “Saddam was involved in September 11” and “WMD” started sprouting holes.
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We all know where the road paved with good intentions leads. Just another example. “Oh will we never learn, Oh will we never learn”?
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And we will keep voting for the lesser of the evils (evil candidates, that is).
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“We can either reverse course” is absolutely correct, but simply by pointing out the wrongs of the corporate model is not sufficient. Did the Tea Party stop the ACA by simply saying it was wrong? Of course not. Nor can we continue to follow their model of so called reform. They couldn’t come up with a viable alternative to ACA because they had none.
We must be smarter than that. Public school teachers are the best innovators in the world. We have been well educated and we understand how children learn best. We are smart enough to come up with a viable alternative to the testing fiasco that includes local, whole child assessment. But, as evidenced by comments on this blog as well as presenters at the public ed conference, we simply don’t do it.
Teachers are disrespected mainly because they took away our profession and judged us based on their irrational reality that every child must be at the same place at the same time, in the same way on the same test or the teacher is the failure. We know that kids blossom at different rates. They get their teeth at different times, walk at different times, recognize colors are different times but still we expect them to perform on an artificial test all at robotic sameness like the Stepford Kids. We know they learn and demonstrate learning in different ways, not like commodities.
Unless we demand a system of education that allows teachers to take back our profession, we will fail. No longer can we only talk about what’s wrong with the failed system now in place. By not talking about a viable alternative to the testing fiasco, we too are disrespecting our teachers.
Since we rarely talk about the innovative skills of teachers we are hiding our light under a bushel. The perception then becomes, like the Tea Party, that our teachers are failing our kids. That is wrong. By standing silent about the viable alternative, whole child local assessment, we are, in affect, admitting we have nothing. We are in affect stating to our parents that we will not be accountable.
Yes, we are at a tipping point and is time to change course or perish. Of course we must continue to point out the wrongs of the system. But we must also tell parents that if they opt out of the test, we will have a system ready to replace it. And no, going back to the “good old days” is not it.
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Excellent assessment, Cap Lee…thanks. Right on! But it is the moment to align with the Tea Party on one issue, that of halting CC. Their goal is to stop government control, ours is to see our students as individuals rather than cogs to be used in the corporate machinery. We have empirical evidence of the damage done by CC testing.
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Cap Lee, what you are driving at is union reform. If teachers in their wisdom want to save schools, there has to be consideration given to how unions have fed the venom now being used against them. Even if the conclusions are that no changes are in order, if politicians are pointing at unions, smart teachers need to think about why. Without name calling. Without resentment.
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Teachers cannot save our schools. We have been blamed for their failure through a false narrative, now we are supposed to save them? Yes, teachers are part of the equation, but public education will disappear if the public remains indifferent. The opt out movement shows what concerned citizens can accomplish. Keep on truckin’, NY! I haven’t heard much recently, but Pennsylvania seemed to be reversing some of its reformist worship because of citizen activism.
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This is wonderfully succinct and focused explanation of the web of destruction being woven in this country in Chicago, LA and elsewhere. BTW, these profit seekers seek big enough districts to extract adequate profit – don;t expect them to expand to the myriad small, remote/rural districts except by online schools, perhaps the worst model of education imaginable.
The university Lab Schools are in a terrible vise – they represent so often what the best parents want for their children, yet often are limited practically to serving only those children of best parents despite desiring a role in educational equity and social justice. Thus, how sad for the exceptional UChi school to see its own graduates and families head up this assault on the ideal of common schools. And how horrific the last 2 Demo administrations have been on matters of educational policy – I cannot for a moment trust the intentions of another Illinois candidate this year. Both parties have signed off on the faustian contract of antidemocratic education that really seeks only to extract talent from poor/urban communities and leave the rest for residual public schools to manage – eg, special educ and language learners, all the non-seekers, I guess.
Thnx for this excellent analysis by Teacher Horton.
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Ditto…thanks to Paul Horton, and Mike and Cap Lee and retired teacher, et al, for your many insights.
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Great comments and so, so true……..very scary stuff!!!!!
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