Jeff Bryant is a journalist who specializes in education. In a recent issue of The Progressive, he details the many failures of what is falsely called “education reform.” The term for many has been a ruse for privatization via charter schools and vouchers. Instead of “reform,” it should be called disruption and destruction. Bryant leads the Progressive’s Public School Advocate project. This is a good-news story. Ed Reform has no successful strategies or ideas, but it’s billionaire funders and the U.S. Department of Education continue to fund its failed ideas.
He begins:
It was telling that few people noticed when Chicago’s Board of Education announced in late May that it was closing down its school turnaround program and folding the thirty-one campuses operated by a private management company back into the district.
The turnaround program had been a cornerstone of “Renaissance 2010,” the education reform policy led by former Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan, who became U.S. Secretary of Education during the Obama Administration. As the news outlet Catalyst Chicago reported, Duncan used the core principles of Renaissance 2010 as the basis for “Race to the Top,” his signature policy that he rolled out to the nation.
Race to the Top, a successor to former President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program, included holding schools accountable for higher scores on standardized tests, inserting private management companies into district administration, and ramping up charter schools to compete with public schools.
Another news event affecting Chicago public schools that got very little national attention was the decision by the Illinois state legislature to rescind mayoral control of Chicago schools and bring back a democratically elected school board. The plan is backed by the state’s Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker (and, predictably, opposed by Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot). For years, prominent Democratic leaders—including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and former Chicago mayor and previously Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel—touted mayoral control and a rejection of school board governance.
A third story from the Chicago education scene was that, in December, Noble Charter Network, the city’s largest charter school chain, disavowed its “no excuses” approach to educating Black and brown students because of the racist implications. Noble’s decision added to other reports of no-excuses charter chains dropping their harsh behavioral control and discipline policies during the past year.
These stories highlight the waning of three “school improvement” approaches: strict accountability with private management, mayoral control, and no-excuses charter schools. Each approach was among the pillars of “education reform” favored by previous presidential administrations and heartily endorsed by Washington, D.C., policy shops, such as the Center for American Progress.
Taken in unison, the three stories also contribute to the much larger narrative of how the once all-pervasive and generously funded policy movement known as education reform has ended—not with a bang, but a whimper.
Other policy directives of the reform movement that are also being relegated to the dustbin of history include state takeovers of low-performing schools, evaluating teachers based on student test scores, and flunking third-graders who score below a certain threshold on reading exams.
Please open the link and read on.
Jeff Bryant is one of the best journalists out there (in any area).
He should get a prize for his coverage of school deform.
Most other (fake) “journalists” were just acting as sycophants to the billionaires and politicians.
While several blue states are pushing the pause button on failed reform, reform is still rearing its ugly head in red states with radical right wing libertarian leaning governors. During the pandemic there has been a big effort to expand vouchers that Bryant mentions. These vouchers may take the form of “scholarships” or “tax credits.” The irresponsibility of these low value vouchers is breathtaking. The education is equally low value while these schemes drain public school budgets to pay for vouchers of questionable quality.
Yes. Reforms have gone from trying to “fix” the schools to completely giving up on them and pushing people to private schools/services.
It’s hard to believe that that was not the intention all along.
First , you convince people the public schools are failing. Then you convince them that fixing the public schools is impossible. Then you pursue the alternative that was your main goal from the beginning : replacement of public schools with charters and vouchers.
Poet-
It’s appalling that so many every day citizens bought the propaganda.
There’s merit to criticism of the public education system of the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s, if schools created the current senior citizens who vote GOP (against their financial interest).
On the other hand, we can conclude that the educational outcomes of public schools, reflected in Millennials and Gen X’ers’ voting, portend a better future for the country, economically, politically and socially.
A culture war against racism, sexism, wealth concentration and homophobia should have been fought and won decades ago.
best word: irresponsibility. It’s as if the nation is being taught to choose chaos over logic.
An “Olde Sayed Sawe” comes to mind.
“By their deeds you shall know them.”
Exposing the nefarious deeds of the organized-money
syndicates, AKA “education reformers”, is well taken.
However, it also exposes the deeds, of those who
capitulate, to the nefarious deeds. It’s NOT us,
doesn’t undo the harm. Words don’t undo the harm.
Of course, THEY”RE all fakers. Their deeds tell
us so. What do your deeds tell you???
Love all Bryant articles!
(Though I’ve learned never to count on any “end” to “School Reform.”)
So happy for Chicago. Wish it were the same in Denver. We were oh so close to sending the privatizers on their way, when another teacher/community supported board member turned on her supporters. And a union teacher to boot! She opened the door to a continuation of the punitive, anti-union evaluation system which gave an opening to “reformers” which has lead to more and more heinous privatized practices and policies. Thanks to Jeff for exposing a success story. Maybe there will be one in Denver some day.
Jeannie, that’s sad news about Denver, especially because the “reformers” know that their ideas have failed. In April 2019, Van Schoales of A+ Colorado wrote an opinion piece in EdWeek declaring that Ed-reform had failed. https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/opinion-education-reform-as-we-know-it-is-over-what-have-we-learned/2019/04
He also wrote a piece in EdWeek saying that Colorado’s draconian teacher law evaluation law was a failure. https://dianeravitch.net/2017/04/07/van-schoales-colorados-teacher-evaluation-mess/
Ed-reform has turned into a Frankenstein monster, a patched set of bad ideas enacted into law and imposed upon schools across the nation, with high aspirations, unrealistic goals, and no evidence. The Walking Dead.
Yes. And irony of ironies the union endorsed enabler has now been endorsed by Stand on Children in her re-election bid. Now you and I and many of your readers know just how instrumental Stand has been in the ongoing battle for the soul of public education. Founder Jonsah Edelman has been almost singularly focused on demonizing teachers and unions. Remember how he successfully pushed legislation through the Illinois legislature that forbad teachers from striking?And remember how successful that was! Sort of like the rest of reform. Failure.
Buying into testing, punishing, and privatizing nowadays is like driving a Ford Edsel. Common Core tastes like New Coke. Charter schools were marketed as the Google Glass of education; people still wearing charter tees today are glassholes. That’s because privatization works like Windows Vista and smells like Harley Davidson Perfume.
Failure is part of doing business. Entrepreneurs go for what Bill Gates calls “moonshots” or “swinging for the fences” all the time. Few make it to the moon, or even to the fence. If the company isn’t nimble enough to discontinue a failure with enough alacrity, the results can be catastrophic damage to the reputation of the company, losses, and layoffs.
Education is too important to be left to the whims of market forces, especially when the marketeers are so inflexible and unwilling to part ways with failed products. Corporate Education Reform is a failed product. The word reform has developed a negative connotation. Standardized tests are widely despised. Charter schools and vouchers are forced on unwilling districts, not approved by voters. The waiting lists are fake. The charters have empty seats, not “high quality seats”.
Reformsters need to listen to their dark money lord, Charles Koch: “Boy, did we screw up! What a mess,” and pivot.
Thanks Diane!
You deserve a Pulitzer prize for your work exposing the fraud that is school deform.
Seconded.
Stand “on” children – coined by CTU president Karen Lewis – may she rest in peace.
Blessings on the great Karen Lewis. She was fearless.