Maybe it is just me, but I find myself outraged by the “reformers'” incessant manipulation of language.
“Reform” seldom refers to reform.
“Reform” means privatization.
“Reform” means assaults on the teaching profession.
“Reform” means eliminating teachers’ unions, which fight for better salaries and working conditions.
“Reform” means boasting about test scores by schools that have carefully excluded the students who might get low scores.
“Reform” means using test scores to evaluate teachers even though this practice has negative effects on teacher morale and fails to identify better or worse teachers.
“Reform” means stripping teachers of due process rights or any other job security.
“Reform” means that schools should operate for-profit and that private corporations should be encouraged to profit from school spending.
“Reform” means acceptance of privately managed schools that operate without accountability or transparency.
“Reform” means the incremental destruction of public education.
I am reminded of George Orwell’s lines from his prophetic novel 1984:
“War is peace.
“Freedom is slavery’
“Ignorance is strength.”
The goal of the leadership in the novel was to teach the population “doublethink.” To believe in contradictory ideas.
So we see schools closed, teachers and principals fired, and we are supposed to believe this is “reform.”
The media, with few exceptions, say that what is happening almost everywhere is “reform,” so it must be reform to replace public schools with privately managed charters, and to fire experienced professionals and replace them with newcomers, with untrained and inexperienced teachers and with principals who taught for one or two years.
It must be reform to allow out-of-state billionaires to buy local and state school board elections so they can control the schools of a state they don’t live in.
I confess I am also irritated by the habit of referring to young children as “scholars.” To me, a scholar is someone who has devoted his or her professional life to the advancement of knowledge. If a five-year-old is a “scholar,” what do you call a distinguished university professor who is widely recognized for her research and publications?
Has the public been suckered into believing that the destruction of public education is “reform”?
Does the public willingly accept the idea that hedge fund managers and equity investors are taking control of what is supposed to be a public responsibility?
Will we let them monetize our children and their public schools?
Does the public understand that a small group inside the Beltway wrote the “national standards” behind closed doors, that one billionaire (Bill Gates) paid for them and paid millions to national education organizations to advocate for them, and that the federal government bribed 45 states to endorse them?
How long will the public tolerate tests tied to those standards that are designed to fail 65-70% of the nation’s children?
How much longer will we allow the nation’s children to be labeled and sorted by standardized tests whose outcomes may be predicted by family income?
When will the public realize that test-based accountability does not improve education, does not promote better teaching, and actually reduces the quality of education?
How long can the Emperor parade through the streets before someone tells him he is naked?
How long can a charade persist before the public knows they have been conned?
How long will it take to unmask this great theft of a democratic institution that belongs to the public, not to entrepreneurs, foundations, rightwing ideologues, hedge fund managers, or their compliant politicians?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on aureliomontemayor and commented:
Words can kill public schools
Reblogged this on History Chick in AZ and commented:
Diane Ravitch exposes the double think of the “reform” movement!
The semantic warp is many levels deep by now —
“Privatization” doesn’t mean what it used to mean. What the piratizers mean by it now is “diversion of public funds into private hands”, which is really a crime.
Fascism maybe?
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html
Not maybe!
I ask some of the same questions. Just yesterday I spoke to a retired administrator. He told me about the blatant abuse of power, treating teachers that speak out with impunity and a perfect example of the good old boys.
Teachers must unite, speak out like the nurses do and demand change.
From George Orwell, POLITICS AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1946), first two paragraphs minus the last two sentences of the second:
[start]
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.
[end]
Link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/Politics_and_the_English_Language-1.pdf
I think this complements the posting quite well.
But then, what do I know? I also think that rheephorm deeds should match rheephorm words…
😎
“REFORM” is mistreating children – children of color, in NoExcuses charter schools, because they are poor, their parents are poor, they ‘picked’ the wrong parents at birth, they live in the wrong neighborhood, they MUST be yelled – because ‘their parents yell at them’, because the ‘Scared Straight’ approach is what these TFA-types & Billionaires are permitted to use every minute of the long extended test-prep schooldays…to yield high test scores for Billionaires Profit Games.
Would any parent or community allow college grads w/ no teaching credentials, mistreat white children this way? We know the answer!
We want equality for all children? Start treating all children with kindness, support, fairness, patience, guidance, love, joy, hope, and all things related to raising healthy, happy and curious children.
I fear an entire generation of under-educated, robotic, angry, impatient, turned-off, high test scores driven, void of humanity, disconnected, lost children who tried to survive the chaos of EDUCATION REFORM under NCLB & RTTT.
Bush, Obama, Gates & Co. LEGACY!
BTW, their children are safely tucked away in loving a d supportive school…because their children ‘chose the right parents’ at birth.
Facebook’s “OTD” function just reminded me of a status I posted on this day 3 years ago —
“Economic Flimflam”
Mainstream economics
Is built on flim and flam
Like superhero comics
Reality be damned!
A frightening article on the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership).
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_most_brazen_corporate_power_grab_in_american_history_20151106
One of your best from the heart posts! The content of this text should be a call to action for every parent, teacher and student that care about democracy and the future of our young people. You should send it to our legislators, the mainstream media and the members of the Supreme Court. We should post the names of all the complicit politicians along with how much money has gone to them and their campaigns to sell out the common good.
Wait, you mean we haven’t always been at war with Oceania?
We were, until we weren’t, and we will be again.
It’s our job to reform the reform.
Impossible: so-called reform is deceptive, insidious and toxic.
It cannot be reformed, but must be defeated and discredited, once and for all.
And then what?
I will not allow the word “reform” to be co-opted by greedy politicians, out -of-control philanthropists, and misguided entrepreneurs for the rest of eternity.
Considering “Welfare Reform,” and now “Education Reform,” I fear that horse has left the barn already. In our corner of the Kingdom, we need to come up with newer, fresher, more honest language, because “reform” has been tainted by the edu-privateers.
My personal favorite is when the national ed reform orgs plant the same op ed in every state, customize it by replacing “Ohio” with “Michigan”– YOUR STATE HERE, blah, blah, blah.
http://s.mlive.com/ISVYQTW
I’ve also noticed something about the paid Common Core salesforce- all they talk about are the Common Core test scores. I thought ed reformers had turned over a new leaf and vowed to stop reducing our children to test scores? What gives? Did they fall off the wagon already?
Also, on a related note, weren’t public school parents promised “support” for public schools in return for not opposing this giant national Common Core experiment? When do public school students start to see some upside in return for students obediently and compliantly sitting for every test these people come up with? Shouldn’t we be seeing some “support” for public schools start to roll in from the national ed reform lobbyists and their politicians? Maybe we shoulda got it in writing, huh?
Reform is rehabilitation. And with Common Core-aligned testing, Down is the new Up.
I’m not one much for superlatives but. . . . . .
. . . . . Diane, this is your best post ever!
Thank you, Duane
Agree
We live in a post-modernist world. Both left and right have been eating this diet in college and graduate school for decades, and they have been stinking up the professional schools and departments of the social sciences with this junk as well. Even the physical sciences are starting to talk “epistemes“!
This kind of sophistry was always part and parcel with advertising and public relations. But the corrosion of thinking that has been the legacy of post-modernist teaching reaches throughout our culture now. We now have no adults to overrule the children.
M&S,
Would you please define “post-modernist world/teaching” and explain what about whatever that is that is so bad.
I’ve read my share of what are called the “post-modernists” (not that I’ve necessarily understood all of it, some seems to be purposely “intense and thick” which can serve to obscure and not enlighten) and I’m not sure which part of it would be considered sophistry.
Help me out!
TIA,
Duane.
What the heck are epistemes? I’m guessing some relationship to epistemology. Post-modernist to me just means that I am woefully out of date, which is fine by me.
Don’t feel bad. Today’s post-modern is tomorrow’s pre-modern.
I believe it was Foucault who penned episteme, and yes it does have to do with epistemology in the sense of “the basis for understanding a particular part/phenomena of thinking/knowledge”. Thesaurus.com doesn’t recognize it but here is something from synonym.com:
1. episteme (n.)
the body of ideas that determine the knowledge that is intellectually certain at any particular time
Synonyms: cognition, knowledge, noesis
It is quite similar to Kuhn’s “paradigm” concept.
Thanks, Duane.
Everyone should read the information sheet Ohio is sending to parents on the Common Core scores. Parents were repeatedly promised that ed reformers WOULD NOT label children on a 1-5 scale based on this test, and we were also promised that the ed reform “movement” activists who run this state WOULD NOT over-rely on one test score, despite their unhealthy obsession with testing and ranking kids.
That is exactly what they’re doing. They’re all but announcing any kid who doesn’t score a 4 or 5 will not be a “success”. Good job, Ohio. Way to build trust. Do exactly the opposite of what you promised parents. Make sure to let 3rd graders know they won’t be a “success”, based solely on this stupid test.
http://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Testing/Testing-Results/2014_2015-Ohio_s-State-Test-Results/PARCC_Ohio2014PerformanceLevels.pdf.aspx
Institutionalized failure and the stigma of failure attached to young children will be the true legacy of the so-called reform movement.
This is not what any parent or child deserves fro a public service institution and a helping profession.
In an oxymoronic world, we are being led by oxen and morons.
This is one that made me laugh because you read it so rarely.
The LA Times refers to ed reform as “corporate reform”
Here’s how they describe on of President Obama’s hires:
” Has become closely associated with corporate-style reforms”
Yes, he certainly has! 🙂
http://graphics.latimes.com/lausd-superintendent-candidates-2015/
“Reform” means eliminating professional educators, school boards, neighborhood schools, and community voices.
“Reform” means diverting funds to “managers”, “consultants”, “pubic-relation experts”, and “contractors”.
“Reform” means eliminating livable salaries, health care, retirement and pensions to educators.
“Reformists” personally distain higher education and advance degrees.
“Reform” means ignoring scientific evidence and research on how children learn and create “papers” justifying their practices.
“Reform” means using fear and lies to market their product to the Public.
“Reform” means diverting educational resources away from the neediest children and espouse a mythology poverty is not harmful to children.
“Reform” means ignoring child development and how children access knowledge.
They take advantage of semiotics in their messaging. They use our pre-existing ideas that we associate positively with other fields to make us choose or represent our thoughts and feelings to be other than what they are, mainly by use of our pre-conceptions of what the title of something is and that it has some direct connection to the underlying purpose/ideas posed by an article or organization.
Take how they use statistics to represent “big gains” on various tests, “individualized instruction”, “Education Reform”. Big gains are relative, so you can manufacture a huge gain (wouldn’t you say a 100% increase from 1% to 2% passing is huge?). Individualized instruction is about sitting a child in front of a computer with a one size fits all paced program whose methods are neither individualized and it can hardly be considered instruction. Ed reform practically speaks for itself – it distorts education so badly that we can barely call it our ideal of education and opportunity for all. It destroys education, it doesn’t improve it and at best does so on a very narrow definition of education.
It extends to their organizations and their naming (where you never have to prove what your cause is and people are accustomed to organizations stating their purpose in their name) – Families for Excellent Schools is neither from families, they pursue a very narrow definition of excellent (some parts of which have to do with the union status of the school oddly) and the only truth in advertising is they are about schools (though arguably you could make a case for other things they advocate).
Let’s extend it to grant programs- Race to the Top – No Child Left Behind – Testing Action Plan – these sound like great ideas (all schools moving together to the top, all children succeeding, changing testing actively).
Research studies – Measures of Effective Teaching – Paying Teachers Appropriately – Boosting Teacher Effectiveness. These usually have a very cynical undertone about the current quality of teachers and their ability to incorporate sound educational practices – and usually the practices they want to see implemented (with little proof that they are effective) are of the “data driven” variety which usually rests on data that is far from objective (and even data itself sounds neutral).
They all use the semiotic of meaning we assign to titles (and assume titles state succinctly what they mean) to mislead or twist their actual purpose – which is a very effective marketing tactic.
As you point out so well, often the misleading, positive titles are really about something negative and in contradiction to the intent of the activity. It is all part of the propaganda of “reform.” Choice sounds like something people would want to make things better. In the upside down world of “reform,” choice may be loss of a comprehensive neighborhood school with a qualified staff as well as loss of the collective community voice. This is all part of the plan to confuse and obfuscate the true intention.
I would add that “Reformists” are anti-science. Their vision is to create an educational world that replicates our failing health care system where huge profits go to the top administrators, fees and costs increase exponentially, and the burden of paying for education is passed on to families.
This use of “reform” is the same as “market reform” worldwide. It means creating a market where there wasn’t previously a market.
In cases where there are good reasons *not* to have a market, such as education, this means we need to go through particularly vigorous brainwashing.
“The Rheeanderthals”
The school “reform” was hatched
In agency of ads
And policy was snatched
From prehistoric fads
alternate title “The Arneanderthals”
Your nation more than any other, believes private = good public = bad.
That may be the root of the problem – a sincere belief that some things which could
be considered a routine government function cannot be sustained and cannot
survive legitimate transparency and oversight.
Diane A powerful summary.
The “reformists” now want to purge higher education of all studies and degree programs that are not clearly of monetary value. Programs are stack ranked by salaries earned within ten years of graduation or a similar return on investment metric. Bottom line is this: don’t study anything unless you know the “monetized skill sets,” and income you can expect to earn.
Don’t study the humanities—not archaeology, not comparative religion, not ethics, not history, certainly not classical studies, not archaeology, or anthropology.
There is no need to study languages, or literature. There is no value in learning about the histories and philosophies of the social sciences, education, or the arts. Forget those vague multi-disciplinary studies so attractive to students who score high on SATs.
Follow the lead of Japan and close down at lease 25% of the social science and humanities programs in universities.
Follow the lead of Obama and Rubio in trivializing studies in art history.
Follow the lead of Ben Carson who thinks a federal department of education might have merit if the purpose “would be to monitor our institutions of higher education for extreme political bias and deny federal funding if it exists.”
Or follow the lead of any anti-intellectual, anti-knowledge pundit who is certain that critical thinking should not be tolerated. Period. End of discussion.
. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/spreading-the-free-market-gospel/413239/Koch
Let’s get Diane Ravitch to the White House – NOW – to guide President Obama’s education policies in the last year of his presidency! The time is now! Arne Duncan is leaving. The President just acknowledge mistakes have been made, under his helm, in the zealousnesss of high-stakes testing. The stars are in alignment. We only have 13 months to bring Ms Ravitch on board. No approval by congress needed. Only the President to ask her. Please follow the link below to sign the petition, then send it out to your social media contacts.
Who knows?! Maybe if we ask, it will happen?!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/441/312/837/
So Diane, what is a viable action plan for parents and educators? How can I help my students and child survive for the time being? What are the steps I can take to help make change?
Melissa,
Join with other parents and opt out. Let the state know (wherever you are) that you won’t allow your child to be numbered, rated, and graded by a standardized test. Join whatever group in your state is fighting to stop the privatization of public schools. Inform yourself. Read Yong Zhao’s books–especially his latest on the downside of standardized testing (“Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?”); read Pasi Sahlberg (“Finnish Lessons”); read “Reign of Error”). Join the Network for Public Education and find out who else in your state to work with.
I was thinking about this post and Orwell as I drove home… and then, I thought…
Hey, the words “reform” and “school” have always had a bad connotation for me -stretching way back to when I was a very young.
In our part of Massachusetts, there was a “Reform School” where the “bad kids” were sent. I remember riding in the back seat as we drove by it and my mother would joke, saying something like, “If you don’t be careful, that’s where you’ll end up.” (I could be a handful.)
Of course, some of these so-called “reformers” want to have schools that are like mini-prisons.
I guess a reformed school is the LAST place I want to be…..STILL!
Diane, do you know George Lakoff? I have no idea what he’s up to these days, but he certainly had the right idea when he wrote “Don’t Think of an Elephant” many years ago.
He brilliantly described how the republicans mastered the art of framing and using the same language we use, but skillfully, and cunningly, to their advantage.
We need to do that now. We need to turn the crazy reinvented vocabulary back on those who seek to destroy our schools.
I think those of us who believe education really is about kids, not profits, can be equally as skillful at using our language to further our cause. But I think we may need some coaching from someone like Mr. Lakoff.
If you or any of your readers know him, can you see if he’s interested?
Alice, I met with George Lakoff a few years ago and we discussed these issues. Our problem is both language and the money trail. We have to call things by what they are. We are in a propaganda blitz, on the receiving end
Would he step into the fray with us? Give us some lessons on how to win the propaganda war? We obviously need help.
He wrote the book for the democratic politicians. Wouldn’t he want to help little ole us? He just seems to have the right take on why the “other guys” always seem to get so much attention when we know we have righteousness and logic and common sense on our side. Yes money is on their’s. But they also have a very real linguistic edge. We need to make headway on that front in order to have any chance at all fighting the billions and billions.
First quit using the edudefomers’ language (note I didn’t say reformers) such as “measuring student achievement”. Call them out, there is no measurement, there are no standards of measurement, there are no agreed upon standards whether metrological or documentary. Anytime you here/see the misuse of terms call them out. Yeah, people will think you’re splitting hairs or that “Oh, it’s just semantical differences”. Don’t let them get away with that crap. Call their misusage out for what it is–bullshit. Too crude? Use Bovine Excrement or Equine excrement.
It’s up to all of us, individually, daily and constantly to call out the manure for what it is. Remember the edudeformers/privateers have the money and the media but we have the truth and the sheer numbers to overwhelm them if each and everyone does his/her part. It’s not that hard.
Hooray!! TOTALLY agree with you DS! One of my biggest blood-pressure raising issues at school is hearing my colleagues so easily and quickly adopt all the corporate lingo, as if that makes them sound more educated, more important, more “effective.”
ARGGGGHHHH.
We all need to put the cabosh on using reformer language. It’s a carefully orchestrated plan to “infuse” the public dialog with words people think they know the meaning of. But those who care to question, discover the “reformers” have corrupted the very meaning of those words and co-opted them for their very successful PR campaign. That’s how the CCSS movement swept over us so swiftly and successfully. It’s all about the message. And they’ve mastered the art of framing. Unlike those of us trying to fight back the tide of insanity. We need progressive linguistic experts to help us frame our stance. We need to use the same skillful, manipulative tactics. Facts and logic are not working. We need to build new frames of understanding. And we need help.
Just finished reading “Witch and Wizard” by James Patterson. (Trying to keep up with my students…) Not my usual genre to read, but I stuck with it and loved it for its final paragraph:
“Listen, please: seize the moment, however worried you may be about what’s coming next. It’s your brain, it’s your life, it’s your attitude…Go out there and fill up with sights, sounds, and ideas that are bigger than yourself. We all know from history — to say nothing of this current reality– what can happen if we stay quiet and just do what’s put in front of us.”
Yes, let’s take a lesson from dystopian YA lit!!
I also have noted the perversion of educational terms among those of the reformster mindset. This blog reminded me of one I wrote almost a year ago on this very topic: https://readingdoc.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/a-perversion-of-terms/
Great Diane!!! You should repost this again and replace “public” with parents/educators…. Way too many teachers and parents are uninformed or apathetic
“Words” (parody of the Bee Gees’ song)
Lie an everlasting lie
A lie can bring “reform” to me
Don’t ever let me find it gone
‘Cause that would bring a storm to me
This school has lost it’s glory
Let’s start a brand new story
Now my Guv , right now
There’ll be no other time
And I can show you how, my Guv
Talk in Orwell-lasting words
And dedicate them all to me
And I will give you all my bucks
I’m here if you should call to me
Don’t blink and never really mean
A single word you say
It’s only words, and words are all you have
To take their schools away
Don’t blink and never really mean
A single word you say
It’s only words, and words are all you have
To take their schools away
It’s only words, and words are all you have
To take their schools away
It’s only words, and words are all you have
To take their schools away
“I see you wrecked your car.” “No, I just re-“formed” it.” Ms. Ravitch knows too much. But it’s not really rocket science, is it? Educated people don’t vote for the regressive party, so let’s eliminate education. This story ought to be on every front page, on every TV news channel, and in the hands of every parent.