Tom Ultican writes a warning about a program called the National Math and Science Initiative.
“The National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) was founded by a group of Dallas area lawyers and businessmen. Tom Luce is identified as the founder and Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil and present US Secretary of State, provided the financing…
“Tom Luce is a lawyer not an educator but his fingerprints are all over some of the worst education policies in the history of our country. His bio at the George W. Bush Whitehouse archives says, “… Luce is perhaps best known for his role in 1984 as the chief of staff of the Texas Select Committee of Public Education, which produced one of the first major reform efforts among public schools.” The chairman of that committee was Ross Perot.”
Luce can claim credit for Texas’ expensive and wasteful obsession with testing and data. Hundreds of millions of dollars—maybe billions—were squandered by Texas in pursuit of data and scores. Thanks, Tom Luce.
Ultican writes:
“Mark Twain said, “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” For Ross Perot, the founder of Electronic Data Systems the problems in education looked like data problems. He and his Chief of Staff, Tom Luce, decided standardized testing and data analysis were the prescription for failing public schools. Unfortunately, standardized testing is totally useless for analyzing learning and public schools were not actually failing.
“Tom Luce was also directly involved in implementing NCLB (a spectacular education reform failure) while serving at the US Department of Education.”
So Luce helped deploy billions of dollars more in data gathering.
Now the NSMI is promoting Luce’s philosophy of teach to the test and bribes.
The fact that these policies have failed dramatically for 15 years at the national level and for 30 years in Texas does not slow the momentum of their advocates.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This began almost simultaneously with the Bush governorship in Texas. In her wonderful book “Spin Doctors . . .” Denny Taylor writes about being at the governor’s conference and related conversations where the Phonics First scam was devised by publishing companies and foisted upon America for reasons of greed not learning.
I looks lke the ministry of education and educational policy-making altogether has become a subdivision of the department for the quick buck. A country needs something like a separate parliament for education which choses its own secretary for this very important part of our life. It should have two houses; one with the elected representatives of the people, and one with experts of education who can veto decisions of the first house if they would obviously lead to bad results.
The Japanese founder of the private Soka School system, Daisaku Ikeda made a similar suggestion. He said education is the most important responsibility of government and should be a co-equal independent branch of government with the Administrative, Legislative and Judicial branches. Somehow we need to get political patronage and payoffs out of education. Education policy led by people with uninformed agendas instead of deep experience (wisdom) and knowledge is a form of insanity.
A big problem is that Congress has hardwired tests into ESSA and there is no wiggle room for states who need/want federal dollars, about 9% to !2% of their total budgets for education.
ESSA is ugly, and so are the functionaries evaluating the required state plans for implementation. Here is an example, from Jason Botel, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, to whom DeVos delegated the
Authority to Perform the Functions and Duties of the Assistant Secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education.”
Botel slammed Puerto Rico’s ESSA plan, giving officials there 12 days to respond to a lot of absurd points in ESSA, then hedging about working with Puerto Rico officials on complying with the law.
Botel’s letter is all the more unconscionable given these facts, circulated today in effort to get some federal response to the state of emergency there, largely unaddressed for three months:
“Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico nearly three months ago, and hundreds of thousands of people still don’t have power to turn on a light, stock a refrigerator, or take a hot shower. Thousands of homes are destroyed, rural areas are still isolated, small businesses are not operating, and there’s an ever-increasing migration of Puerto Ricans to the U.S. mainland.
It’s clear that the federal government’s response to the disaster in Puerto Rico has been painfully slow and not commensurate with the hurricane response in Texas and Florida. The people of Puerto Rico need help now—it’s part of the United States too!”
Here is Botel’s letter and the long list of ESSA plan revisions he has imposed on Puerto Rico… and with an expected turnaround in 12 days. https://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/stateplan17/prfeedbackltr122017.pdf
Jason Botel is a former TFAer, former KIPP principal, and former director of MarylandCAN. He has a temporary appointment. He could be gone before the due date for Puerto Rico to submit “corrections” to its ESSA plans.
We should wary of any conservative gloom and doom predictions, and ask ourselves “Who benefits?” The faux math and science crisis was dreamed up to cheapen the degrees of those in fields that normally command higher salaries. Just like our education “crisis” was dreamed up to privatize schools and destabilize the teaching profession resulting in lower salaries. As far as not being competitive, our universities are among the best in the world, and students come from all over the world to attend these schools because of their high quality.
What struck me about this article was the lack of due diligence on the part of journalists from notable newspapers that failed to confirm data before printing and disseminating it. These so-called reputable publications that are supposed to be impartial are no better than those that publish fake news on the internet. The standardization of education is another ploy to manipulate all educational endeavors to the behaviorist format of computers. Computer instruction will undermine authentic thoughtful practice, and turn our young people into Pavlov’s dogs. The STEM “crisis” and all the other “reforms” are fake news designed to manipulate the market.
I’d be willing to bet that Luce has benefitted personally from all this, just as the creators of Common core (David Coleman and Jason Zimba) benefitted to the tune of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars from that “reform”.
Unlike most teachers, these reformers are in it for the money.
I feel ready to throw in the towel on this testing issue, but I won’t give up. It is wrong. Period. Especially when you begin to test, assess, and reteach children in kindergarten the first month of school. It is insane. We need to fight insanity.
Mary, we will fight and never give up.
Time to begin fighting that insanity with our own insanity, eh, Mary?