It has become conventional wisdom that “education is in crisis.” I have been asked about this question by many interviewers. They say something like: “Do you think American education is in crisis? What is the cause of the crisis?” And I answer, “Yes, there is a crisis, but it is not the one you have read about. The crisis in education today is an existential threat to the survival of public education. The threat comes from those who unfairly blame the school for social conditions, and then create a false narrative of failure. The real threat is privatization and the loss of a fundamental democratic institution.”
I thank Laura Chapman for pointing me to an excellent online resource sponsored by Education International, which advocates for teachers and free public education around the world. The online site gathers together news from around the world about the crisis I described, the corporate assault on public education, both in developed countries like our own and in nations where the public education system is rudimentary and severely underfunded.
As we have seen again and again, the corporate education industry is eager to break into the U.S. public education and turn it into a free marketplace, where they can monetize the schools and be assured of government subsidization. On the whole, these privatized institutions do not produce higher test scores than regular public schools, except for those that cherrypick their students and exclude the neediest and lowest performing students. The promotion of privatization by philanthropies, by the U.S. Department of Education, by rightwing governors (and a few Democratic governors like Cuomo of New York and Malloy of Connecticut), by the hedge fund industry, and by a burgeoning education equity industry poses a danger to our democracy. In some communities, public schools verge on bankruptcy as charters drain their resources and their best students. Nationwide, charter schools have paved the way for vouchers by making “school choice” non-controversial.
Yes, education is in crisis. The profession of teaching is threatened by the financial powerhouse Teach for America, which sells the bizarre idea that amateurs are more successful than experienced teachers. TFA–and the belief in amateurism–has also facilitated the passage of legislation to strip teachers of basic rights to due process and of salaries tied to experience and credentials.
Education is in crisis because of the explosion of testing and the embrace by government of test scores as both the means and the end of education. The scores are treated as a measure of teacher effectiveness and school effectiveness, when they are in fact a measure of the family income of the students enrolled in the school. The worst consequence of the romance with standardized testing is that children are ranked, sorted, and assigned a value based on scores that are not necessarily scientific or objective. Children thus become instruments, tools, objects, rather than unique human beings, each with his or her own potential.
Education is in crisis because of the calculated effort to turn it into a business with a bottom line. Schools are closed and opened as though they were chain stores, not community institutions. Teachers are fired based on flawed measures. Disruption is considered a strategy rather than misguided and inhumane policy. Children and educators alike are simply data points, to be manipulated by economists, statisticians, entrepreneurs, and dabblers in policy.
Education has lost its way, lost its purpose, lost its definition. Where once it was about enlightening and empowering young minds with knowledge, exploring new worlds, learning about science and history, and unleashing the imagination of each child, it has become a scripted process of producing test scores that can supply data.
Education is in crisis. And we must organize to resist, to push back, to fight the mechanization of learning, and the standardization of children.
Unions just WON the Friedrichs case in a 4 – 4 SCOTUS vote! The tie results in the lower court decision being the final outcome.
While this is very hopeful, people need to understand that this does not set a nationwide precedent, it only applies to the area encompassed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Much work remains to be done.
Elected officials and bureaucrats have destroyed public education, not privatization. It’s nice to throw things at the folks we didn’t elect, but in this case, you are simply flat wrong.
Stock73.
You are wrong and/or totally misinformed.
There can be no doubt that some elected officials and bureaucrats have been complicit in undermining public education, but the destruction is overwhelmingly sought by privatizers and profiteers.. and this is not just in the United States. You have not bothered to look at the website in this post. I suggest you do so.
Stock, the only you got right was that elected official have destroyed education…they did it by allowing charter schools, privatization and rich people to buy policy changes.
Hey stocker73, did you ever answer my prior questions?
“Elected officials and bureaucrats have destroyed public education, not privatization.”
I agree with you, stock73: Elected officials like governor Walker and bureaucrats like Duncan have been working hard to make sure they only destroy public education but not privatization. Some may even go so far to say that Walker and Duncan help privatization.
This is slightly a different topic but one that affects teachers and unions. It was a news alert from the New York Times concerning teachers in California:
With the Supreme Court split 4-4, public-sector unions effectively prevailed in a case they saw as a major threat
A case that seemed poised to deal a major blow to public unions ended in a 4-4 tie on Tuesday at the Supreme Court, effectively delivering a big victory to the unions.
When the case was argued in January, the court’s conservative majority seemed ready to say that forcing public workers to support unions they had declined to join violates the First Amendment.
But the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February changed the balance of power in the case, which was brought by California public schoolteachers who chose not to join unions and objected to paying for the unions’ collective bargaining activities on their behalf.
Great, but that is also a very close call.
Now I also hope all teacher unions will make themselves less vulnerable to criticism and lawsuits by looking at their preferred policies for tenure and also beefing up their rights to bargain for decent working conditions, free of intimidation, with needed teaching aids and so forth.
You can bet that this one case is not going to be the last one.
Diane offers all educators and parents of school aged children an accurate description of the USA crisis in education. Market forces are attempting a take over of public education in USA. Standardized tests are designed to spread children across a bell shaped curve and to identify 50% of students below the mean. Politicians and editorial writers call these tests rigorous and blame teachers for half the children below the mean. Insanity.
New York State Board of Regents may move to criterion referenced tests without a bell shaped curve in the design. New tests can assess students’ grade level skills aligned to the appropriate reading levels and the expected curriculum. Parents and educators must voice their desire for less testing and more valid assessments of students that inform teachers and guide their instructional practices.
Edwards Deming, a guru of the quality improvement process, stated that testing never improved any system.
Improving children’s learning in schools within impoverished communities takes a “whole village” improvement process.
“New York State Board of Regents may move to criterion referenced tests without a bell shaped curve in the design.”
That’s a crock also. Each item on a criterion referenced standardized test is vetted against whether it sorts students in a norm referenced way. The pschometricians want you to believe that all is well in the testing heaven of “criterion referenced” but the norming happens at the individual item level whereby if all answer the question correctly and/or incorrectly the question is thrown out. Each question is supposed to end up having a bell curve of correct and incorrect answer in the sense of 50% correct and 50% incorrect. Psychometricians cannot escape the bell curve trap in which they operate.
“New tests can assess students’ grade level skills aligned to the appropriate reading levels and the expected curriculum.”
Sure, yep, no doubt, that is if one believes psychometricians. The devil is in the details and when those details are based on error and falsehoods, for example, what exactly are “grade level skills” and how can one assess such things when there is no standard of measurable unit, no measuring device, no calibration of the measuring device? What are the definitions for/of “appropriate reading levels and the expected curriculum”? Again, there are no agreed upon definitions/standards.
The cited quotes are pure unadulterated blather of education jargon that results in educational malpractices that cause much harm to the most innocent of society, the students.
Duane,
I was reading a simplistic book to my K ESL kids resulting in intense discussions about what a yard is. The page about the dad mowing the lawn was more controversial. Finally, one of the kids shared that she had never seen a lawn mower. The point was well taken. I have yet to see a lawn in this neighborhood. What are we measuring?
the global education site is an interesting and hopeful place…..especially when someone tries to clobber you with how great the rest of the world is…..I had five minutes….offered a comment—not sure if it will win approval…..sometimes it works to just let it flow naturally without thinking……sometimes it works better to obsess for hours before you offer a post….I have to trust their judgement about whether to approve…..”I believe St. Louis, Missouri is a classic example of the road towards privatization. The mayor was able to take control of the school board—fair enough in a democracy—and pay a superintendent 500,000 dollars to start closing down schools, and cheapening what was offered in the public schools. The mayor lost control because the people voted to go a better direction—fair enough in a democracy. They were particularly skeptical of charter schools. The mayor, a senator, and a billionaire pressed for a takeover of the system…..and gave the power to a 3 person appointed board, which was just renewed to make it a total of 12 years. Failures by Texas Can and Imagine should have strengthened the case against charters—-they simply bragged about how they were easy to get rid of if they did not fulfill what they were being paid to do. Over a ten year period, St. Louis population dropped from 351,000 to 322,000. Ten thousand of the loss came from the public school population—36,000 down to 24,000….now with 8000 in charters. The mayor does not openly brag about how subtracting that many students and a large number of their mostly poor parents has improved the demographics of the city—-but he has probably told plenty of his selected friends. Meanwhile, at the state level, there is a board, chaired by Doug Thaman, which is in charge of charters..that board is bigger than the state board. In addtion, a key aid to the mayor, Robbyn Wahby chairs a state charter commission larger than Thaman’s board….17 state level people for charters, 7 for the rest of the state, 3 appointed for slps. KIPP has 15 members, mostly bankers who are well-informed about such issues as attrition and percentage of children with diabilities. Senator Danforth’s daughter is in charge of an all girls charter—probably with test scores to brag about. As nearly as I can tell….these people are extraordinarily secretive……the nine people on Wahby’s board are focusing on expansion to st. louis county……there is a lot of money to be mined, more in the poorer schools than the self sufficient wealthier districts.
I read you blog entries consistently as this issue is very important to me right now because I have a child who is about to enter school, but we are leaning more towards private school, or specifically Catholic school. The many catholic schools we’ve visited still adhere to the traditional classroom teacher-student interactive based learning and not an obsession with testing. And Catholics, for all of its problems, still has a pretty good and sound education model. I live in California, a state which has just doubled down on Common Core. Very few school districts opt out and common core teaching isn’t what I want for my kids. Also, I am not the ‘activist’ type sort of mom, I am not diplomatic nor do I know how to be ‘political’ when I need to be and I would just end up insulting everyone and get my kids kicked out of school. And me home-schooling them isn’t an option either.
You and Paul Thomas Anderson (The becoming radical – read his blog too), both education experts, have said that poor performing schools are a function of institutional racism, poverty, classism, elitism etc., and research backs this up. No matter how ‘good’ teachers in impoverished areas are, if the students external conditions don’t change, not much will change academically. And I agree that blaming teachers, school administrators etc is just a red herring and deflecting from the real problem, which is a social justice issue. However, racism, poverty, elitism and classism, will not not go away overnight, and while we ‘wait’ for these centuries entrenched social problems to alleviate, students of all social backgrounds but especially poor minority students need to be educated adequately to compete in the workforce. In spite of all of the structural and social challenges, students need to be properly educated. For experts such as yourself and Anderson to keep ‘explaining’ to everyone why despite Herculean efforts on the parts of teachers, principles and administrators, students in impoverished areas have a hard time keeping up with students who are not, isn’t really helping the short term situation where have at hand. Waiting for the social situation to improve is like waiting for the cows to come home.
Thanks, Everyday Voices. I am ok with your sending your child to Catholic schools, so long as you don’t ask the taxpayers to pay the tuition. That’s your right. And it may be a long wait until we see government pay attention to deep-rooted social problems, but the day will come sooner if we fight for it.
No, I never intended for any taxpayer dollars to send my child to private school, but I would much rather my children attend public school if they actually taught the traditional way, not Common Core. Thanks for your input.
I misspelled disabilities, and made a math mistake on pupil population lost…too much has happened…hard to squeeze it all in…….it was like writing a summary of an nba game for a quick reading on espn.
Dear Diane, Thanks for all the work you do. I was trying to find an email address for you but had no luck. Anyway just a quick question. I saw your name listed as a board member of The Fordham Institute which surprised me. Are you still active?
Thanks,
Charlotte
Hi Diane, It looks like you didn’t use the n-word again, i.e., neoliberalism. If we do not confront neoliberalism head-on, we could win individual battles in this fight, but we will lose the war. Neoliberalism can be seen as a tactic or project that furthers the logic of capitalism: ceaseless accumulation and the commodification of all things. The logic of neoliberalism is degregulation and the privatization of all things.
The reason school privatization is world-wide is because it is part of a larger neoliberal project led by corporate capital and endorsed by the politicians, think tanks, and academics they have purchased. The neoliberal project is ravaging the world. If anyone wants an object lesson take a look at the UK. The neoliberal assault as been rapid and sadistic. They are brutalizing the NHS, they already privatized the post, they are literally kicking the disabled onto the street, zero hour contracts for workers, demands by the IMF of Ireland to privatize its water. Much of this is already here in the u.s. in some form – or worse. As the empire goes, so goes the rest of the world…
It is imperative that the people in the fight for public education understand corporate-led neoliberalism. When they do, they will see their struggle is a small piece of a bigger puzzle. While totally overwhelming, there is strength in organizing as part of a bigger fight, and that fight must be international. There is no reason those united for public education can’t be the beginning of that movement.
21st C. Poet,
How is neoliberalism different from neoconservatism, or just plain old crony capitalism?
I understand it is easy to get bogged down in terms and definitions. One difference: in the u.s. for instance, it has been implemented by Democrats and Republicans. In another example, you can see how a similar thing happened with the Tories and New Labour. So, essentially, neoliberalism exacerbates crony capitalism and creates oligarchies or plutocracies, but the goal is an international, essentially stateless, plutocracy. Trans-national corporations will fight still fight amongst themselves, but they will use state coffers and tax-payer money. They do now, but it will be exacerbated. Corporate wealth and rights increase, citizens become consumers and their rights and wealth and common ownership (of things like education) decrease.
Because the neoliberal project is corporate led and actually has no allegiance to individual states per se , you end up with things like NAFTA and the TPP. Because it is world-wide, many of the same corporations involved in buying-off politicians and exploiting americans are doing the same thing in other countries. Same plan, same implementation, often by the same corporations. I should add, people like former goldman employee Mario Draghi, now head of the European Central Bank, really help this process along, but I won’t start a list, it would be very long. I will say the bill gates is on it too…
21st C. Poet,
I guess the reason I also stumble over the word “neoliberalism” is that there is nothing liberal about the project you describe.
Maybe it is faux liberalism, or libertarianism, or just corporatism.
As chomsky has said, “neoliberalism is neither new nor liberal.” If you want to get a better understanding, you can start with wikipedia. After that, David Harvey’s, ” A Brief History of Neoliberalism” is an excellent primer.
ok, I will mention one more name: rahm emanuel. we have always had crony capitalism, but if you want to see neoliberal tactics deployed to forward the neoliberal project, study rahm. You can’t get more textbook than that.
another point of difference: neoliberalism is about making the public private. This is also known as stealing. AKA, class war waged by the rich against the poor. As most people know, the rich already won. But they want it all. That isn’t just greed, it’s greed inscribed into the rules we all play by. The logic of capitalism is ceaseless accumulation and the commodification of all things – otherwise known as greed. That is why capitalism can never be regulated in the long term. In the short term we have to regulate it as much as possible, but in the long term, the arc of capitalism bends toward serfdom for all but a few.
That’s the $64,000 (is that the right number?) question!
Diane,
It’s not, just different names for the same disease of heart, mind and character/soul that in previous times was denounced as avarice, greed, and/or gluttony. Only now that disease is promoted as a vaccine against laziness, sloth and “lack of grit” (to use the most recent term).
Neoconservatism is generally used for the military imperialism/dominance of the world whereas neoliberalism is more about economic imperialism/dominance, but the two are tightly entwined and difficult to separate. “Liberal” in “neoliberal” has nothing to do with liberalism as we typically conceive of it, but rather the original definition of liberal which was about protecting private property and the rights of property owners from the power of the state, which was in those days the monarchy.
One difference between neoconservatism and neoliberalism could be a difference in the “social” plane. For example, neoliberals may be fine with abortions and gay marriage.
Or another difference may be the means, not necessarily the goals — neoconservatives may be more open about going to war, for example.
Aside from that, and slightly different origins in terms of time frame and the main players of the game, they appear to be the same… political/corporate dominance that does everything it can to feed itself by taking from others.
Would like to hear more on the difference, if someone knows.
As for “crony capitalism,” Socialists would argue that there is no such thing as crony capitalism — it is simply “capitalism” taken to its logical conclusion.
Going deeper, the problem is simply greed, a disease that goes back to the age of humanity, as Duane pointed out.
Why are people greedy?
Maybe if we figure that out, we can solve the problem.
Ed Detective, that might solve our verbal conundrum: just refer to the “reformers” as the Party of Greed and their dupes.
Dangit, Dienne, you just had to post one minute before me.
Another factor is that neoconservatism tends to be bound up with nationalism, whereas neoliberalism transcends national boundaries through international, stateless corporations that can dominate even sovereign nations.
Diane, sure!
The destroyers
The oppressors
The neo greed-sters
Party for the advancement of my short term profits
I think the easiest to remember where to put “neoliberal” is to associate to free capitalism. In latin, “liber”, as an adjective, means free.
Neoliberalism is as good for us as free capitalism, free market and Milton Freedman. Maybe we should call the whole thing Freedmanism and liberals would stop taking offense.
Wow. Creepy. And they think its a good thing. For anyone interested, look up what happened when friedman style neoliberalism was imposed on Chile by the IMF. Also search Boliva and Ireland water privatization.
Here is piece by Greg Palast, who I believe was a student of friedman’s at U of C way back when:
http://www.gregpalast.com/tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile-2/
Great article, 21st century poet. Funny and completely timely.
“Pinochet did not destroy Chile’s economy all alone. It took nine years of hard work by the most brilliant minds in world academia, a gaggle of Milton Friedman’s trainees, the Chicago Boys. Under the spell of their theories, the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatized the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatized 212 state industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus.”
Glad you liked it. Greg Palast is a great reporter. It’s worth checking him out.
Education is also in crisis because….
As a nation, we persist in maintaining school funding based on widely disparate local tax revenues. This perpetuates and exacerbates rather than mediates inequity.
As a nation, we refuse to do anything substantive to address increasing patterns of school and residential segregation. This perpetuates and exacerbates, differential learning expectations, stereotypes, prejudice, and division, undermining democracy and unified struggles against inequity.
http://www.arthurcamins.com
Right on, Arthur.
Your post is so on point that I wish it could be sent to all of our policymakers, parent and teacher groups and the media. You have outlined the real crisis and exposed the hypocrisy and invented “crisis” of those that want to reform and privatize.
Naomi Klein wrote of these types of man-made disasters in “The Shock Doctrine”. All should read and be familiar with her analysis.
“The worst consequence of the romance with standardized testing is that children are ranked, sorted, and assigned a value based on scores that are not necessarily scientific or objective. Children thus become instruments, tools, objects, rather than unique human beings, each with his or her own potential.”
Replace “standardized testing” with “grades” and the same is true.
Just my weekly reminder,
Keep reminding.
“Just my weekly reminder”
People might start thinking you are me!
Well we do both like justice 😉
When are we going to realize that education is changing and that we need to change the ways we evaluate its success?
We keep detesting the test situation, but we continue to compare success by referring to the same tests.
We are so obsessed with comparing, evaluating, justifying, and categorizing schools, teachers, and students based on faulty data collection. Yet, in order to fully realize persnal educational success, students need to be given basics and then guided to make their own discoveries once they have attained a level of ability that gives them the tools needed to pursue a life of their own.
We are entrenched with false rubrics of accountability that are then used to justify admission to colleges, determine job opportunities, and make or break our futures.
The system isn’t working. The secret to finding employment is networking. Who you know and your willingness to keep learning new things will get you further tgan jumping through artificial hoops.
Deb, after you enter college, you will probably never take another standardized test in your life. What a worthless waste of time!
Standardized tests, though faulty, have been around for some time. It has only been the last six to eight years that they have become high stakes, and they have put public schools on the defensive with VAM, retention and rigged cut scores. It is no accident that all this has happened since billionaires, corporations and government declared war on public schools. These interest groups want to destabilize, starve and dismantle education for the masses while they profit from taxpayer funds. This is far more than disruption. This is a twisted plot to hijack democracy without any regard for the interests of students and their families.
Diane,
It is true. Now, for teachers, subs, poll workers, professional development, training courses, we are given 15-30 minute modules that we read, reread, and take immediate tests afterwards. It proves absolutely nothing. It isn’t a test, a thinking activity, or anything but an exercise. If tgat passes as education and training, it is no wonder people often don’t know of what they are speaking. We have entered a world of absurdity.
One of the benefits of this blog is the freedom to not get bogged down in disputes about labels and ideologies that seem to matter most to some academics.
Maybe, but my original point was that neoliberalism has real effects (like the privatization of education) and that it needs to be fought nationally and internationally. People can label it however they want, but the project and tactics have to be understood, because it’s happening all over the world.
I knew that was too vague for people when I first said it, so I gave concrete examples of what it is, how it works, and even individuals who are carrying it out. That’s not vague. It is actually at the heart of the reason our two main political parties are in trouble.
I also offered that all of the great people involved in the battle for public education could be the vanguard of an international fight against neoliberalism. If they don’t see that it is a bigger fight than just education (and just in america), then they may win some skirmishes (like the ability to opt out) but lose the overall war. It’s not about labels, it’s about all of us against global corporate rule.
21st century poet. I agree.
“It’s not about labels, it’s about all of us against global corporate rule.”
The article’s link ” Global Education Industry (GEI).”, supposedly pointing to the Yearbook full of data, doesn’t work for me.
I believe governments who support the privatisation are actually committing a moral crime. They are entrusted by the electorate to protect, support and develop society not make money from it. Here is part of my article on why we should a) be very concerned and b) resists such moves.
“It appears to me to take a service and turn it into a business at a stroke. It changes the moral ground on which the needs and reasons for education are built. To me it also says that a society, a government, and those elected to be responsible have decided to neglect their duty to provide an education system that will ensure the survival of the society they serve. They have delegated their responsibility for the most base of reasons – money.”
Full article at: