A few years ago, someone coined the term “zombie policies” to describe policies that fail again and again, yet never go away. One such zombie is “merit pay,” which has never succeeded yet never dies an ignominious death or loss of reputation.
I mention this because our current education system is hampered by at least 20 years of zombie policies, beginning with No Child Left Behind, then Race to the Top, then Trump’s fervent support for privatization.
In 2010, when my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing abd Choice are Undermining Education” was published, I participated in a debate with Carmel Martin, one of the key strategists of the Obama Department of Education. She defended every aspect of the Bush-Obama approach: high-stakes testing, closing low-performing schools, charter schools, evaluating teachers by student test scores, and so on.
A year or so later, I was invited to the White House Executive Offices to meet Obama’s top education team: Melody Barnes, chief of the White House domestic policy staff, Roberto Rodriguez, Obama’s White House advisor on education, and Rahm Emanuel, the President’s chief of staff.
Rodriguez asked me what I thought of merit pay, and I said candidly that it never succeeded. Why will students learn more to get a bonus for their teacher? He said, “We just put $1 billion into merit pay.” He said, what do you think of Common Core? I said, “give it a trial run in a few states before imposing it nationally. You will quickly learn how to make it better.”
Rodriguez said, “that’s too late; we have to roll it out in almost every state before the 2012 elections.”
Fast forward to the Biden administration. Carmel Martin now has Rodriguez’ old job as White House education advisor, and Rodriguez has Martin’s old job as assistant Secretary for Planning, Policy, and Evaluation.
This worries Jan Resseger. She had been hoping for a fresh vision. With the two powerhouses of the Obama in key roles, it looks like Biden is winding the clock backwards. The zombies are back!!
She writes:
At the end of his first hundred days, President Joe Biden deserves credit for taking important steps to help public schools serving children living in communities where family poverty is concentrated.
First, the President promised during the campaign to triple funding for Title I schools, and the federal budget he has proposed for FY22 would accomplish two-thirds of that promise by doubling the federal investment in Title I, whose funding has lagged for decades behind what is needed for equity.
Second, in the American Rescue Plan federal stimulus passed in March, the President expanded and made fully refundable the Child Tax Credit. In his new American Family Plan he has proposed to extend these urgently needed changes in the Child Tax Credit until 2025. The expansion of the Child Tax Credit will make it possible for America’s poorest families with children to qualify for this program for the first time. We know that poverty is an overwhelming impediment for children, and ameliorating child poverty is an important step toward helping America’s poorest children thrive at school.
During the campaign, Biden also promised to move public school policy away from two decades of standardized testing. That is a promise he has, at least until now, entirely broken.
In a letter, dated February 22, 2021, Acting Assistant Secretary of Education, Ian Rosenblum informed statesthey must test students this year on the mandated annual high-stakes standardized tests, the centerpiece of the test-and-punish school accountability scheme introduced in 2002 by the No Child Left Behind Act. Rosenblum said the Department of Education would permit flexibility for states which applied for wavers, but Rosenblum described the flexibility in gobbledegook: “It is urgent to understand the impact of COVID-19 on learning. We know, however, that some schools and school districts may face circumstances in which they are not able to safely administer statewide summative assessments this spring using their standard practices… We emphasize the importance of flexibility in the administration of statewide assessments. A state should use that flexibility to consider: administering a shortened version of its statewide assessments; offering remote administration, where feasible; and/or extending the testing window to the greatest extent practicable. This could include offering multiple testing windows and/or extending the testing window into the summer or even the beginning of the 2021 school year.” Not surprisingly there has been enormous inconsistency in which some states have been allowed to cut back or delay or pretty much cancel testing, while others were denied their requests.
Rosenblum released the federal guidance on testing before Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was confirmed, and everyone hoped he would rescind the policy. But instead, Secretary Cardona justified demanding standardized testing in this COVID-19 year, despite overwhelming problems with the practicality, consistency, reliability, and validity of the tests. The Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss quoted Dr. Cardona: “He said student data obtained from the tests was important to help education officials create policy and target resources where they are most needed… Cardona said… that he would be willing to ‘reexamine what role assessments’ play in education—but not immediately. ‘This is not the year for a referendum on assessments, but I am open to conversations on how to make those better.'”
One would have hoped that Dr. Cardona would be familiar with the huge debate that has consumed education experts and also many parents who have been opting out for years now. He assures us that mandated testing during this school year, which has been utterly disrupted by COVID-19, will be used to drive federal investment into the school districts where tests show students are suffering most. However, standardized tests, as mandated by No Child Left Behind and its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act, were not designed to drive a system of test-and-invest. Instead federally mandated standardized tests are now the very foundation of a maze of policies at the federal level—and across the states—to identify so-called “failing schools” and to punish them with policies that rate and rank public schools, punish so-called failing schools by privatizing or closing them, evaluate schoolteachers by their students’ test scores, and require states to remove caps on charter schools.
Now, as the Biden Administration and Cardona’s Department of Education staff up, it is becoming apparent that Education Department and White House staff will include key people returning from President Barack Obama’s administration—people who helped design and implement these test-and-punish policies,
Last week, Education Week‘s Andrew Ujifusa reportedthat President Biden will nominate Roberto Rodriguez for the position of Assistant Secretary of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development in the Department of Education. Rodriguez was a special White House assistant to President Obama for education policy. And before that, he helped formulate accountability-based school reform as staff to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee when the No Child Left Behind Act was formulated in 2001.
In 2012, Education Week‘s Alyson Klein quoted Rodriguez bragging about Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top program: “Mr. Rodriguez, the White house adviser, argues that the Race to the Top has spurred big and lasting change, including helping to advance the Common Core State Standards, which 46 states and the District of Columbia have adopted. ‘We are going to take credit for helping to accelerate the adoption of these standards throughout the country. Race to the Top clearly did that.'” You will remember that in order to be able to apply for a Race to the Top grant, states had to promise to adopt formal standards, and after Bill Gates had funded the development of the Common Core, most states grabbed onto what was available.
After serving in the Obama White House, Rodriguez became CEO of an organization called Teach Plus, whose website claims its mission is “to empower excellent, experienced, and diverse teachers to take leadership over key policy and practice issues that advance equity, opportunity, and student success.” Progressive educator and writer, Steve Nelson readsthat mission a little differently: “On the surface it is dedicated to developing ‘teacher leaders.’ The clear sub-text is to inculcate the values of anti-union reform in a generation of young teachers. Sort of like Teach for America, graduate school edition. They rail against seniority as job security, asserting with no basis that subpar teachers are retained in times of cost cuts because of union protection. They also claim that unions stifle innovation. Teach Plus has received more than $27 million from the Gates Foundation and has among its donors the Walton Family Foundation and an all-star roster of philanthropic sources dedicated to so-called reform… For several decades public education has been a battlefield between committed educators with little money or power and committed non-educators with lots of money and power.”
Roberto Rodriguez will face Senate confirmation to his new position. But if he is confirmed, he will join an administration that includes a former Obama era colleague now serving in the Biden White House. Diane Ravitch reports that Carmel Martin holds the the same position—Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy—that Roberto Rodriguez held in the Obama Administration.
The 74‘s Kevin Mahnken provides some background on Carmel Martin: “Carmel Martin is one of the most powerful education experts in Washington, a top Democratic policy adviser…. So why haven’t you heard of her? ‘Carmel’s a ghost,’ said Andrew Rotherham, a longtime education commentator and founder of the nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners. ‘You’re not going to find lots of published stuff by her. She’s that archetype that you can work with on various issues, an inside-game person, but she’s set herself up for this moment because she doesn’t have this crazy-long paper trail.'” Martin also was staff to Senator Ted Kennedy back in 2001, when the No Child Left Behind Act gathered bipartisan steam. Mahnken describes Martin as a defender of Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top and the Common Core standards when she served in Obama’s White House and of Arne Duncan’s policy demanding that states evaluate teachers by their students’ scores.
Secretary Cardona’s has kept everyone’s eyes myopically focused on school reopening after COVID-19. But we all need to pay closer attention to the other policy initiatives that will emerge from Cardona’s Department of Education. Diane Ravitch worries: “that Rodriguez and Carmel Martin will make policy, not Secretary Cardona or Deputy Secretary-designate Cindy Marten. Biden is looking to the future with his sweeping domestic policy plans. But in education, he is looking in the rear-view mirror to the architects of Obama’s failed programs.”
janresseger | May 3, 2021 at 7:45 am | Tags: American Rescue Plan expandes Child Tac Credit and makes it fully refundable., Biden hires Carmel Martin and Rodriguez from Arne Duncan days., Biden’s proposed federal budge would double Title I., Cardona continues to require standardized testing., Carmel Martin, danger of test-and-punish school reform, Miguel Cardona, Roberto Rodriguez, Steve Nelson, Teach Plus, Will Biden repreat education poli
“Teach Plus has received more than $27 million from the Gates Foundation and has among its donors the Walton Family Foundation and an all-star roster of philanthropic sources dedicated to so-called reform… For several decades public education has been a battlefield between committed educators with little money or power and committed non-educators with lots of money and power.”
Ed reform has a REAL echo chamber problem and public school students are suffering for it.
We have to get some people who don’t come out of this narrow pipeline into the Biden Administration or we’ll march along with the Bush-Obama-Trump approach forever.
These ed reform echo chamber resumes have become a requirement for hiring. They ALL have them. They go from government to Gates or Walton or Broad or Koch directed non profits and then back again. I’m not even questioning their intentions. Maybe they believe the Gates/Walton/Broad “market based” schemes are better. I’m simply asking if it’s wise to make allegiance to this narrow set of beliefs a requirement for employment.
Why have we outsourced public education policy to 5 billionaires and their employees? Is this a good idea? Can we possibly reconsider or even contemplate reconsidering, or must we do this forever?
Ed reformers had huge political wins this last year. They jammed thru vouchers in state after state. They didn’t get anything done for public school students, again, but they did enact part of their agenda. Maybe they could step aside and allow people who value public schools and public school students to handle public school policy. They’re not interested in it anyway. They can “reinvent systems” (privatize) on the Gates and Walton payroll and we’ll hire some other people to get some work done on behalf of the students in the “government schools”.
“narrow pipeline.” YES
Ed reformers, who all come out of the same set of billionaire funded non profits and lobbying groups, are asking us to believe that they are not captured by this agenda.
It’s not a credible claim. We’re (now) able to look at their work over decades and it’s all rigidly aligned with this agenda. Whatever “benefit of the doubt” one might have had is contradicted by their actual work. There’s a track record now. The work speaks for itself.
It is no longer credible for them to say they’re not privatizing public education when literally the only work they perform is privatizing public education. It’s insulting to continue to make this claim. We’ve all watched them do it. Through Bush. Through Obama. Through Trump. My youngest child has never experienced any national education policy BUT ed reform. His entire public school career has been conducted relying on this set of beliefs.
Obviously it’s anecdotal and other public school parents might have had a different experience but the sole contribution of ed reformers post-pandemic for public school students is they all sat for standardized tests. That’s it. That’s all they got out of the multi-billion dollar Professional Public School Critics Association that makes up ed reform.
At some point don’t these people have to add some value in PUBLIC schools? When does that start? Bush, Obama, Trump. Still waiting.
I was a little worried about Secretary Cardona when he was hired because I think he comes out of a different world than a lot of the Obama rehires.
He was running a public school. That’s a much less sophisticated political environment than the national ed reform lobby. I was afraid they would eat him alive and we’d end up with a figurehead “public school person” when the same old crew were running things behind the scenes. I hope it doesn’t turn out like that. I think a public school perspective is vital in a country where 90% of families use public schools. He’ll have to be really tough and independent-minded not to go along with all of it, because he’s surrounded by the Gates and Walton-trained echo chamber.
It appears that Cardona is a classroom educator who knows nothing about the billionaire-funded efforts to privatized public school funding.
As always, Zombies Policies fail again and again at their Espoused Goals but they come back again and again because they keep succeeding at their Actual Goals. There is a whole literature in Organizational Development on this phenomenon.
Perfectly observed, Jon.
nice juxtaposition: espoused goals vs. actual goals
That’s a big theme in organization research literature. See especially Argyris and Schön going back to the 70s and drawing on John Dewey even further back. Here’s just a random bit off the web —
http://www.reallylearning.com/Free_Resources/Organisational_Learning/organisational_learning.html
“zombie policies”
perfect descriptor
Before adding more Title 1 funding, we need an audit in Texas regarding Commissioner Morath’s willful noncompliance with the fiscal safeguards introduced with ESSA. Dallas ISD, where Morath was a Trustee and was apprised that local property tax dollars were being intentionally skimmed off Title 1 campuses, has been profiteering off Title 1 campuses for a decade. As Commissioner, Morath has done nothing to stop this practice. ESSA guarantees Title 1 students their fair share of local, state, and federal funds before the addition of Title 1 funds. Why doesn’t the Dept of Ed enforce federal civil rights laws?
I have a feeling Texas is not the only state with an ethically challenged leadership. Several states are trying to put a stake in the heart of public schools. The federal government should audit or have some way to require that federal monies are used for the intended purposes.
Public schools have already been through all the epic failures of billionaire backed deform during the Obama administration. To continue on the downward spiral of test and punish and market based education policy is a huge mistake. Appointing policy wonks that will continue Obama’s bad policies will not move public education forward, and neither does breaking campaign promises to the nation’s public schools. I am afraid that Cardona and Marten are mere window dressing for a house owned by Bill Gates.
I was always taught that my word is my bond. Democrats should stop lying to public school educators and parents. Then, perhaps the public would have more trust in them.
Here’s what Randi Weingarten of the AFT had to say about moving forward. “We have an opportunity to rethink accountability and assessment,” she said. “Let’s change accountability systems to reorganize schools around teaching and learning. Around what we want children to know and be able to do. And around the science of learning and development — instead of around testing.”
Rahm Emanuel closed 50 schools in one day (not to mention covered up the death of a child who was shot 16 times by the cops) yet Biden appointed him Ambassador to Japan. Does anyone seriously think there is anything Biden won’t do? Educationally or otherwise?
Rahm needs a job and it’s best that he is in Japan and out of our hair. Just thank your lucky stars that we don’t have to listen to him blather on continually.
I was hoping Biden would send Rahm to Micronesia.
In a rowboat.
Japan did not merit having Rahm imposed on them.
We need to deal with our own toxic waste, not off-shore it.
TAGO!
“Does anyone seriously think there is anything Biden won’t do?”
He won’t pass laws to disenfranchise progressive voters. He won’t demonize AOC and get his supporters to threaten her life and the lives of other progressive legislators. He won’t foment hate and divisiveness.
Biden gave the man who used to call the shots (chief of staff) at the Obama White House a powerless job that Caroline Kennedy used to hold.
If you can’t tell the difference between Biden and president Trump, who you spent so much time defending on this blog, then I doubt anything posted here will ever convince you.
I do not understand these kinds of posts which mimic the kind of dishonest “Biden is evil” propaganda coming from the far right Republican party. Real progressives like Bernie and AOC have criticized those who speak like this because AOC and Bernie know that the people who push these false right wing propaganda are far more interested in destroying the Democrats than they are interested in progressive issues. It is mostly found on the far right and by people who claim they are on the left but spew the lies of the far right.
Biden WILL place Ron Klain, who is liked by Bernie and AOC, in the most powerful position in the white house — the chief of staff job that Rahm Emanuel held under Obama, years before Biden gave him his powerless Ambassadorship that was previously held by Caroline Kennedy
Who or what is this “Trump” thing you keep referring to? Never heard of it.
Biden will normalize rightwing policies, like Obama did. History repeats.
Hey, what ever happened to that huge infrastructure plan? I guess hot air evaporated.
Biden will normalize right wing policies?
The only people I see normalizing right wing policies are those who insisted that the radical right wing agenda and casual fascism and anti-democracy embraced by the Republican party is not distinguishable from what the Democrats have been doing so let the right wing seize all power and don’t worry about because progressive movements will supposedly thrive under right wing neo fascism.
Call me when the Democrats start disenfranchising voters. Just started watching the trial of the Chicago 7, which really made me think about the rantings of those on the left who destroyed Hubert Humphrey and convinced a generation of young people that it was no big deal if Nixon was empowered or Reagan was empowered since Humphrey and Johnson were no better. That’s how we got here. I thought AOC and Bernie taught us how dangerous that kind of thinking was.
Jimmy Carter opposed universal healthcare. That didn’t mean he was normalizing the right wing agenda. Democrats like Jimmy Carter and LBJ and Truman did some progressive things and some conservative things. How does that make them “normalizing” it? The ones who normalize right wingers are the ones who convince voters that the policies of FDR and Jimmy Carter and Biden and Trump are the same.
— Saying his friend Benjamin Netanyahu, “Stop bombing and killing Palestinians!”
— Condemning Israel for installing apartheid/Jim Crow segregation against Palestinians in Jerusalem.
I’m familiar with some of those closed schools. Some of those schools had low attendance rates. It’s expensive to heat, cool and clean a school with only a few attendees. 😐
It just adds insult to injury. Japan is already in disarray, thanks to current PM and ruling party’s tyranny of incompetence. They are now facing mounting criticism over dismally low vaccination rate(2%) and ineffective measures to curb the infections as the threat of COVID variant strains is proliferating across the nation. One female minister who is in charge of Olympics Games is a Japanese version of Betsy DeVos. She knows absolutely nothing about the magnitude of crisis people are facing in the country.
I will send Rahm dog to Bonin or Dejima Island for good.
The title of this post suggests that the Biden administration can circumvent the ESSA if pressured to do so. The policies that they must follow are all contained in that federal law which differ from the NCLB act. The RTTT contest and the USDOE (Duncan) waiver were simply offers that states could not refuse based on the unconstitutional provision of the NCLB act that forced noncompliance. Any expectation that the ESSA will be revised or rewritten is unrealistic. Teachers are political orphans with little redress. Yet it might be wise to redirect our voices. Times are right for the expansion and enrichment of educational opportunities for disadvantaged and underserved students instead of the constraints of .”two subject curriculum “.
The racist, misogynistic policy of test and punish will always be the sword of Damocles hanging over the Democratic Party, until the string breaks and the sword drops. Doubling down on merit pay is a risk only a fool would take, and there are fools in the Department of Education, completely ignoring all facts and telling public schools to take their masks off, to drink bleach. Fools.
Perhaps it’s time to start a Public Schools Party. 🤓
I am sick and tired of education bureaucrats and other policymakers, some of whom think that merely having attended schools or having earned degrees from big-name colleges makes them an authority, dictate to teachers.
When was the last time an education bureaucrat or policymaker asked teachers, the real experts on teaching and learning, what they and their students needed and gave it to them?
As for the relentless standardized testing pervading our public schools, how hard is it to understand that the standardized testing regime is essentially a means for blaming teachers and “failing schools” for what everyone knows, or should know, are profound social inequalities? It is immoral to continue to batter students with these tests when we already know the results beforehand: children in richer communities outperform those in poorer communities.
Let’s not do stupid again.
There’s so much our kids need.
It seems unfathomable that Democrats don’t make the clear connection between quality public education and the preservation of our democratic republic. That quality education begins with a quality teaching staff. Anti-union efforts will impede the quality in the classrooms all our children deserve. I was in a teachers’ union all my career. I am grateful for the positives provided my profession through collective bargaining, but the union also stood up for what was best for the students, eg. class size, length of school day, civil rights protections, assured certification of teachers, protection for the arts and music, etc.