In the packed cafeteria of Pugh Elementary School Tuesday evening, Houston Independent School District (HISD) Superintendent Mike Miles worked hard to sell his wholesale campus reform program, called the New Education System (NES), to a resistant crowd, some holding signs that read “Our Children, Our Schools.” Miles boasted that 57 campuses had voluntarily opted into the program.
“They love this,” Miles said. “That’s why teachers at 57 schools volunteered.”
As part of the state’s takeover of HISD—which ousted an elected school board and replaced its leadership with a board of managers and a superintendent handpicked by State Education Commissioner Mike Morath—Miles has previously said that 150 HISD schools would be under the NES by 2025. In March, the Texas Education Agency seized control of HISD, citing past failures to meet state standards at one high school. In addition to the schools that opted in, another 28 were required to participate because the schools are elementary and middle schools with students who “feed into” three high schools with lower accountability ratings.
NES originates from the Third Future Schools, a charter school network Miles founded. It requires teachers to teach from a scripted curriculum. The district will decide campus schedules, staffing, and budgets. Students who are considered disruptive are pulled out of the classroom to attend via Zoom. In addition, Miles has promised teachers support for grading, making copies, small-group instruction, and a stipend of $10,000. Salary schedules for teachers at what he calls “NES-aligned schools,” or those that opted in, will remain the same while teachers at NES-mandated schools receive a salary bump and have to reapply for their jobs. As part of the sweeping changes, last Friday Miles eliminated up to 600 administrative positions from the central office.
Since the Texas Education Agency appointed Miles to lead the school district, he has faced community protests by citizens opposed to the state agency’s takeover. But he has maintained that schools are embracing his changes.
But interviews, email correspondence, and audio recordings of campus meetings that the Texas Observer obtained contradict Miles’ public relations message that there is widespread teacher support for his program. Teachers, parents, and community members from nine of the 57 schools we spoke to said they had no opportunity to weigh in; teachers were threatened with losing their jobs if their campus did not join the program.
“Our hours will change. Our schedules will change. Our curriculum will change. But we have no input in it,” said Michelle Collins, a teacher at DeZavala Elementary School. “Neither do parents.”
According to the state education law, a Shared Decision Making Committee (SDMC) composed of parents, community representatives, teachers, other campus personnel, and a business representative is required to be “involved in decisions in the areas of planning, budgeting, curriculum, staffing patterns, staff development, and school organization.”
While Miles has publicly asked principals to obtain school input, SDMC committee members from five schools in the program confirmed with the Observer that they never met to discuss the issue. SDMC members and teachers from other schools reported that even when they did meet, they did not have a vote in the decision. One teacher said their staff voted not to opt in, but then later saw their school’s name included in the list of 57 schools in the news.
HISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Observer will update this article if they do.
In an audio recording of Wainwright Elementary School’s SDMC meeting held July 10 and shared with the Observer, Principal Michelle Lewis told committee members, “If you’re not willing to dive in and do this with us, then this is not the campus for you.” No teacher representatives attended the meeting.
Arnold Hillman is a retired educator who spent his career in Pennsylvania and retired in South Carolina. Bear this in mind when you read his satire. Must be the SC water.
The decline of both reading and math scores on the NAEP national test is a harbinger of a predictive outpouring of solutions to the problem. That has been the standard for the last 100 years of public education. We typically find panaceas to “fix” problems in education.
Here is a very simple one. Until the beginning of the 20th century, education was rather simple- teach reading, writing and arithmetic. On the side you might provide vocational programs. However World War I provided us with a look into the future.
Many of the conscripts in the American army were seen not to be physically fit. That was a danger in a war. There was no part of the constitution that mentions education. The idea of a healthy mind and healthy body was promulgated by none other than John Dewey. World War I was an instigator, and schools took up the mantle.
That’s how things change in education. The nation needed more scientists to combat Russia’s preeminence in space and so Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). I know that you are getting the idea now. If you live long enough, you will see even more of these things.
Now, how will the decline in these scores be cured by those with the money to do it. Seems like administrations these days are not in the business of fixing education. You can tell by all ofthe news about investigations, indictments, Russian problems and all sort of other adjuncts to those happenings. So then, who or what will come through to help us climb out of this educational abyss?
Lets try this on for size. How about the Broad Foundation. Let’s give them leave to train all of the school superintendents in the nation. That’s only 13,452 school district superintendents. With all of the resources available to the foundation, this could be accomplished in the wink of an eye (see the movie “I Robot” for a reference).All problems of reading and math will follow the same successes that the Broadies have had in all of the places where they have been installed as superintendents. That’s for sure.
Let then have the voucher folks come up with the plan to take over public schools and do their level best to cherry pick the students that they will help. There will certainly be some unintended consequences, such as massive dropouts, higher crime rates, more unemployment and many other charming things.
These voucher folks have a way with statistics. In their first year of operation, math and reading scores will soar. All students will be on grade level in reading and all of them will be up to fractal geometry, after surpassing the highest scores ever on the NAEP test.
Another challenger will be the charter school folks. All schools could be “charterized” and escape from the silly laws that restrict public schools in their education of kids. Since charters do not have to have all certified teachers, that will be a great advantage. We can then dismiss those pesky teachers who have not been doing a good job anyway.
There would not be any responsibility for those charters to have any parental involvement. Parents or guardians will only know what is going on when their child gets a report card.
Huge management companies will continue to “buy up” these charters and run them for profit. The movement to make these charters non-public has already happened in the Washington state Supreme Court. It has decided that Charter Schools were not, in fact, public schools.
Think of all the improvements that charter schools have made across the country since their inception in Minnesota. We can have a myriad of online charter schools which will definitely improve reading and math scores, especially in kindergarten.
We are fortunate to have a parents group that is very interested in improving education by going onto the nation’s school boards and making things so much better when they are there. Incompetent administrators are fired by the dozens and reading and math scores have already risen as a result of these actions.
The premiere group is called “ Moms for Liberty.” Not sure why there are no Dads included. There must be a Title IX reason. These folks have the kind of enviable clout that gets these students on their way to improving their math and reading scores.
With “Moms for Liberty” in charge, schools will have the advantage of being close to those who lead our country. They are proud to have national figures, some even running for President, who will make sure the schools are doing the right thing.
Then we have a group that includes some very wealthy folks. Some of them are anonymously giving funding and directions to those who were described earlier. They are famously supporters of vouchers, privatization of public schools, charters and the like. They support parent groups like “Moms for Liberty.” Their aims are certainly to help students improve their reading and math scores. We will call them, for better or worse, “ The Billionaire Class.”
With all of these folks helping out, how long do you believe it will take for our youngster’s math and reading scores to soar?
Stephen Dyer, former Ohio legislator, closely follows school funding in the state. After studying the latest budget, he realized that the Legislature was sending more money to private school students than to public school students. The Ohio legislature loves charters, Cybercharters, and vouchers. Apparently, the Republicans who dominate the Legislators don’t care about public schools. Nor do they care about accountability.
Dyer begins:
Look, I’m really excited that the Ohio General Assembly followed through on its promise to continue implementing the Fair School Funding Plan — the state’s second attempt at meeting its constitutional mandate to provide a thorough and efficient system of public schools for its 1.7 million students.
I mean, in nearly 2/3 of Ohio school districts, the state is already meeting or exceeding its promised funding amounts from two years ago. And while the lion’s share of the remaining shortage is felt in the state’s most needy districts (something I expressed concern about earlier this year), the fact that the state is actually starting to fulfill promises made to Ohio’s 1.7 million public school students is encouraging. Again, though, only if they finish the job, of course..
But the massive increase to private school tuition subsidies that accompanied the public school increase is a colossal turd in the punchbowl. How colossal?
Try this on for size:
Because the state increased the private school tuition subsidy to $8,407 per high school student, the state will now provide $210 more per student to parents whose kids are already in private schools than they will to public school students in Ohio’s urban core of Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo or Youngstown schools, which educate 173,000 students.
In fact, that $8,407 per pupil amount is greater than the per pupil state aid for nearly 8 in 10 Ohio students. A remarkable 1.13 million Ohio students will get less state aid than the parents of a private school student will receive next year.
Oh, and did I mention that not a penny of these tuition subsidies will be audited by a public entity? So we have no idea if the money is being spent educating kids or buying sweet rides for private school administrators. (Because that’s never happened in this state).
And the disparity is despite Ohio’s historic public school funding increase that occurred in this budget — again, a great accomplishment.
But man. This is crazy….
It would be one thing if vouchers (taxpayer provided private school tuition subsidies) provided better options for students. But study after study has demonstrated pretty clearly that even in urban districts, generally the public schools do better than the private schools — in Ohio, it’s almost in 9 of 10 instances that the public outperforms the private. Never mind that vouchers have also delayed critical investment in the educations of the 1.7 million Ohio public school students or added significantly to racial segregation.
Please open the link to read the rest of this shocking story.
The Virginia Democratic Party took a strong and well-informed stand in opposition to attacks on public schools.
It issued the following statement:
The Democratic Party of Virginia
Condemns the Right-Wing, Dark Money-Funded, Republican Agenda to Dismantle Public Education, Divert Public Education Funding to Private Education Management, and
Eliminate Critical Thinking and Evidence-based Curricula from America’s Public Schools
Whereas,
GOP leaders have for decades sought to dismantle public education by reducing public support to facilitate moving public funds from public to for-profit schools.
Rather than focusing explicitly on promoting privatization, the coordinated, right-wing, special-interest-bankrolled, decades-long effort has established such schemes as the annual “National School Choice Week” event and deployed “parent” groups such as “Moms for Liberty,” “Parents Defending Education” and the “Independent Women’s Forum” to make it appear that there is wide opposition to public school policies. Their current tactics are to attack public schools by opposing masking policies, remote learning, and evidence-based curricula; harassing school board members, administrators, and staff; and threatening to burn books. “School choice” is rooted in efforts to keep schools segregated by race, class, and disability.
Truthout wrote, “’Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein predicted in March 2020 that COVID-19 presented an ideal opportunity for ‘disaster capitalism,’ a tactic pushed by school privatizers in the wake of the last financial crisis. She identified the global pandemic as a ‘shock,’ or disruptive event that global elites often use to introduce free-market ‘solutions’ that redistribute wealth upwards.” Vindicating Klein’s prediction, since the pandemic, a Koch-funded group produced an “Opportunity on Crisis” report listing numerous school privatization schemes.
Education is a multibillion-dollar market, and the private sector is eager to get its hands on those dollars. Shrinking public education also furthers the overarching Republican Party goal of drastically reducing the public sector overall. Privatization also significantly undermines teacher unions, thereby reducing the voice and power of teachers to affect the terms and conditions of their workplace. Unions are also a strong and active part of the Democratic base and hobbling them hobbles their capacity to support Democrats.
Corporate-focused extreme-right Republican leaders want to censor, control, and narrow the exposure of most students to the broad knowledge base that would enable them to analyze, understand and accurately evaluate, and manage the forces that affect their lives. They want to consign the masses of America’s children to for-profit, unregulated, unaccredited, tax-funded “schools,” with large classes of inexperienced staff or digital platforms with no teachers at all, designed to supply a less-educated, malleable citizenry and subservient labor pool. Meanwhile, the children of the financial and corporate elite are to be taught a broad, rich curriculum in small classes led by experienced teachers in exclusive private schools.
Preparing people for democratic citizenship was a major reason for the creation of public schools. The Founding Fathers maintained that the success of American democracy would depend on the competency of its citizens and that preserving democracy would require an educated population that could understand political and social issues, participate wisely in civic life, and resist tyrants. Early leaders proposed the creation of a more formal and unified system of publicly funded schools.
Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.” Jefferson further explained: “The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries.”
In the 1830s, Massachusetts legislator Horace Mann advocated for the creation of public schools that would be universally available to all children, free of charge, and funded by the state. He emphasized that a public investment in education would benefit the whole nation by preparing students to obtain jobs that will strengthen the nation’s economic position and promote cohesion across social classes. Proponents later reasoned that public schools would not serve as a unifying force if private schools drew off substantial numbers of students, resources, and parental support from the most advantaged groups. To succeed, a system of common schooling would require children from all social classes, and educating children from different religious, and European ethnic backgrounds in the same
schools would also help them learn to get along. Despite its founding ideals, throughout the historical development of early public education, there was discrimination against access for girls, children of color, new immigrants, minority religious groups, children with disabilities and others. However, the founding rationale has guided the evolution of the public-school mission to promoting equity of access to all in the mid-20th century, addressing social needs after WW II and ensuring that all students receive a high-quality education in the 21st century.
The original reasons for public schools — preparing people for jobs and citizenship, unifying a diverse population, and promoting equity–remain relevant and urgent today. The Republican agenda to dismantle public education will reverse all of these.
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is facilitating this ongoing right-wing scheme of school privatization and blocking of evidenced-based curricula with his executive orders allowing parents to opt out of mask mandates in Virginia schools, and ending “the use of divisive concepts, including critical race theory, in public education.” Meanwhile, Virginia’s Democratic legislators are introducing and protecting legislation that supports and promotes public schools with enriched and broad curricula to prepare students for citizenship and work in the 21st century.
Most American parents, students, and teachers do not agree with this privatization and curricula-limiting scheme, and many are standing up for schools that protect kids’ health, teach the truth, and promote equality for all. Our democracy
requires informed citizens. Public education enables its citizens to develop their full potential, which enables our democracy to flourish. It enables individuals to learn and grow and creates a successful and prosperous society.
Therefore, be it resolved that the Democratic Party of Virginia:
1. Calls on local, state, and federal officials, within the purview of their offices and roles, to:
a. Investigate, expose, and prosecute all individuals and groups who deploy intimidation tactics, threats of violence and violence against school board members, administrators, teachers, and others;
b. Initiate a public campaign, including forums, social and other media, etc., to highlight the historical compact establishing universal primary and secondary public education as a necessity to prepare an informed citizenry for their role in a democracy; illuminate the accomplishments of many decades of public education and the benefit to our country’s democracy; and provide a platform for people, including doctors, scientists, business leaders, and religious leaders, to relate their stories of the public school teachers who were instrumental in their success;
c. Increase funding and support for public schools and educator, administrator, and staff compensation; and
d. Introduce legislation and support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education.
2. Commends Officials at all levels, including democratically elected school boards, who implement and parents who support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education.
3. Calls on grassroots activists and organizations to launch a campaign to expose the right-wing, special-interest funded, Republican agenda to dismantle public education, divert public education tax dollars to private management of public schools, and to eliminate critical thinking and evidence-based curricula from America’s public schools.
4. Calls on grassroots activists, organizations, community and faith groups, parents, and the public to support increased funding for public schools and educator, administrator, and staff compensation, and to support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education.
Gary Rubinstein joined Teach for America in its second cohort, three decades ago. He worked diligently for the organization but became disillusioned by its constant boasting and its in attention to preparing teachers well.
In this post, he notes that TFA has plenty of money j the bank, but it has lost its luster. In its glory days, it attracted 6,000 applicants. Now it gets only 2,000.
He writes:
In the last few years, TFA has shrunk. Their incoming corps size dropped from 6,000 to under 2,000. They recently laid off 25% of their staff. And those alumni education leaders have pretty much all resigned and faded into oblivion. TFA is at its lowest point since the mid 1990s.
So when I read about their big new announcement, I wondered what it might be. It turned out to be a ‘rebranding’ that they are really excited about. Basically, a new logo.
As a companion to the new logo, they released the most bizarre FAQ explaining the rationale of the new logo.
Open the link to understand why TFA is excited about its new logo.
Instead of focusing exclusively on struggling campuses, Miles’ New Education System plan mainly targets elementary and middle schools that “feed” into three struggling high schools in the district. Though the plan will reconstitute 29 total schools as a part of the system, a spokesperson for HISD clarified that only 28 traditional campuses will be impacted. The 29th school will be a temporary alternative education program which will be reformed and evaluated separately.
The schools chosen to participate in Miles’ “New Education System” are three high schools and their feeder schools.
The schools are largely low-income, Black and Latino schools
According to the Houston Chronicle’s analysis, each school included in Miles’ plan is either majority Black or majority Hispanic/Latino. The vast majority of students at each campus are also from low-income families.
At the schools impacted by Miles’ plan, the average percentage of economically disadvantaged students – which is measured by the amount of students who qualify for free and reduced price lunches – is higher than the average across HISD. In the 2021-2022 school year, the average percentage of economically disadvantaged students at the campuses in Miles’ plan was 98%, while the district average was 83%, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
New Education System schools demographics
Every school in Mike Miles’ New Education System plan has either a majority Black or majority Latino student population, and most students at the schools are from low-income families, according to data from the 2021-2022.
Most of the schools are 90-95% Black.
Most schools are already performing well
In terms of accountability ratings, many of the schools targeted in Miles’ overhaul have not underperformed in recent years. In 2022, the majority of schools included in the plan received “A” or “B” ratings, and only five of the schools were given a “Not Rated” label under SB 1365 – which exempted schools from ratings that would have received a “D” or “F” last year.
Though the three high schools at the heart of the Miles’ plan – Kashmere, North Forest and Wheatley – have had three of the five highest failure rates in the district, North Forest and Wheatley both received passing ratings in 2022.
Additionally, Miles’ plan includes four campuses that are unconnected to the three struggling high schools. These campuses include Highland Heights Elementary and Henry Middle, which also have some of the worst failure rates in the district, and Sugar Grove Academy and Marshall Elementary, which both received passing ratings in 2022 but have struggled in prior years.
So, at the point of takeover, the most troubled schools in HISD were on an upswing, making progress under the leadership of an experienced educator (who was quickly hired by Prince George’s County in Maryland). And now they are led by a Broadie who failed to make a difference in Dallas.
It would not be a stretch to believe that Governor Abbott, a mean and vindictive man—is punishing Houston for not voting for him.
Tom Ultican was a computer scientist before he became a high school teacher of advanced mathematics and science in California. Now that he is retired, he is a scholar of the corporate reform movement, whose goal is to privatize public schools.
In this illuminating post, Ultican analyzes a documentary called “The Right to Read,” which he compares to the propaganda film “Waiting for Superman.” Behind the film, he writes, is the whole apparatus of the corporate reform movement, armed with derogatory claims about public schools and a simplistic cure for literacy.
He begins:
The new 80-minute video “The Right to Read”was created in the spirit of “Waiting for Superman.” It uses false data interpretations to make phony claims about a non-existent reading crisis. Oakland’s NAACP 2nd Vice President Kareem Weaver narrates the film. Weaver is a full throated advocate for the Science of Reading (SoR) and has many connections with oligarch financed education agendas. The video which released February 11, 2023 was made by Jenny Mackenzie and produced by LeVar (Kunta Kinte) Burton.
Since 2007, Jenny Mackenzie has been the executive director of Jenny Mackenzie Films in Salt Lake City. Neither Mackenzie nor Burton has experience or training as educators. However, Burton did star on the PBS series “Reading Rainbow.” He worked on the show as an actor not a teacher.
One of the first media interviews about “The Right to Read” appeared on KTVX channel 4 in Salt Lake City. Ben Heuston from the Waterford Institute answered questions about the new film and the supposed “reading crisis” in American public schools. Heuston who has a PhD in psychology from Brigham Young University claimed that two-thirds of primary grade students in America read below grade level. That is a lie. He is conflating proficiency in reading on the National Assessment of Education Performance (NAEP) with grade level and should know better.
Ultican shows the graphs of NAEP scores over the past thirty years: reading scores have been unchanged for 30 years. The rhetoric about “the crisis in reading” is a hoax.
Misinterpreting the data shown above is the basis for the specious crisis in reading claims. It is known that students develop at different rates and in the lower grades the differences can be dramatic. That explains some of the low scoring. All but a very small percentage of these fourth grader will be reading adequately when they get to high school.
America’s leading authorities on teaching reading are frustrated. Their voices are being drowned out by forces who want to monetize reading education and privatize it.
Ultican names names and identifies corporate sponsors. Somebody expects to make a heap of money from this latest manufactured crisis.
I apologize in advance. I am habitually skeptical of fads and movements. When a hot new idea sweeps through education, it’s a safe bet that it will fall flat in the fullness of time. If there is one consistent theme that runs through everything I have written for the past half century, it is this: beware of the latest thing. Be skeptical.
The latest thing is the “Science of Reading.” I have always been a proponent of phonics, so I won’t tolerate being pilloried by the phonics above all crowd. If you read my 2000 book, you will see that I was a critic of Balanced Literacy, which was then the fad du jour.
Yet it turns my stomach to see Educatuon journalist and mainstream dailies beating the drums for SOR. As you know, I reacted with nausea when New York Times’ columnist Nick Kristof said that the SOR was so powerful that it made new spending unnecessary, made desegregation unnecessary, made class size reduction unnecessary. A dream come true for those in search of a cheap miracle!
Veteran teacher Nancy Bailey, like me, is not persuaded by the hype. She wrote a column demonstrating that the corporate reform world—billionaires and politicians—are swooning for the Science of Reading.
She writes:
Many of the same individuals who favor charter schools, private schools, and online instruction, including corporate reformers, use the so-called Science of Reading (SoR) to make public school teachers look like they’ve failed at teaching reading.
Politicians and corporations have had a past and current influence on reading instruction to privatize public schools with online programs. This has been going on for years, so why aren’t reading scores soaring? The SoR involves primarily online programs, but it’s often unclear whether they work.
The Corporate Connection to the SoR
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation fund numerous nonprofits to end public education. The National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ), started by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation backed by Gates and other corporations, an astroturf organization, promotes the SoR.
Also, despite its documented failure ($335 million), the Gates Foundation Measures of Effective Teaching, a past reform initiative (See VAMboozled!), irreparably harmed the teaching profession, casting doubt on teachers’ ability.
But the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation continues to reinvent itself and funds many nonprofits that promote their agenda, including the SoR.
Former Governor Jeb Bush’s Organizations
Former Governor Bush of Florida (1999 to 2007) promoted SoR, but if children have reading problems, states should review past education policies, including those encouraged by former Governors, including Mr. Bush. His policymaking in public education has been around for a long time.
One should question, for example, Mr. Bush’s third-grade retention policy ignoring the abundance of anti-retention research showing its harmful effects, including its high correlation with students dropping out of school.
As far back as 2011, Mr. Bush promoted online learning. He’s not talking about technology supplementing teachers’ lessons. He wants technology to replace teachers!
Many SoR supporters who imply teachers fail to teach reading do podcasts for Amplify. Are they compensated for their work? Where’s the independent research to indicate that Amplify works?
Amplify, and other online reading programs, are marketed ferociously to school districts with in-house research relying on testimonials. When schools adopt these programs, teachers have a reduced role in students’ instruction.
Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and Their Data Collection
Peter Greene was a teacher in Pennsylvania for 39 years. He is now a regular writer at Forbes and a super star blogger. This column appeared on his blog. He responded to Rick Hess’s claim that school choice is not an attack on public education but part of a long history of trying to improve them. From my perspective, it’s hard to understand how public schools improve by defunding them and replacing them with religious schools, low-quality private schools, home schooling, and cyber charters.
This is what Peter Greene wrote:
Rick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) is one of those occupants of the reformy camp that I take seriously, even when I think he’s wrong. So when he raises the question of whether or not school choice is an “attack” on public education, I think it’s a question worth talking about, because I think the answer is a little bit complicated. So let me walk through his recent piece on that very question bit by bit.
After an intro suggesting that choice expansion flows directly from the pandemic while ascribing opposition to choice to a shadowy cabal that flows from teachers unions, Hess gets to his point, which is that seeing choice as an anti-public school is “misleading and misguided.”
Hess puts choice in the context of a century’s worth of public school fixer-uppers, “a barrage of reforms.” He offers a list–“compulsory attendance, district consolidation, larger schools, smaller schools, magnet schools, standards, test-based accountability, merit pay, and more.”
Some of these ideas were good. Some weren’t. But in hindsight, it’s pretty clear that they weren’t “attacks” on public education; rather, they were attempts to improve it.
I disagree. Some of these ideas were offered with sincere hope for the best. But I’m going to single out the standards movement and test-based accountability for special recognition here.
If you weren’t teaching during the rise of No Child Left Behind, Common Core, and Race To The Top, I’m not sure if I can really capture for you the dawning sense of horror, frustration and futility among teachers at the time.
Word came down that new regulations required us to get test scores up– a little bit per year for starters, then ramping up to an impossible climb, until somehow every single student would be above average. If not, there would be penalties, maybe the complete dismantling and rebuilding of the district, perhaps as a privately-run charter school. “This is not possible,” educators said. “All will learn all,” replied the Powers That Be. “Don’t you believe that students can learn? And which child do you propose to leave behind.”
Then there were the tests themselves. Not very good, and with results coming back with so little detail–and so very late in the game–that they were less than no help at all. “Well, if we just teach the standards, the tests scores will follow,” said some optimistic educators. That didn’t happen. Schools rejiggered curriculum, pulled students away from untested material like art and recess so that they could be double-whammied with test prep.
“Maybe Obama will fix it,” we hoped. He did not. He doubled down. And 2014–the year for 100%–came closer and closer, the year when anyone dealing with educational reality knew that every district in the country would be either a) failing or B) cheating.
And through those years, one at a time or in small groups, teachers arrived at an unpleasant conclusion.
They are setting us up for failure. They want us to fail.
Why would they want that? The rhetoric had already been around on the far right, back all the way to Milton Friedman and on through his intellectual spawn– public education should be dismantled. There was a new push for vouchers and especially charter schools, and that coincided with rising noise about “failing” public schools. There was very little “let’s expand the educational ecosystem” and an awful lot of “we must help students escape failing public schools.” The constant refrain of “school choice will force public schools to improve because competition” was also an omnipresent crock, a slap in the face to educators who were already working their butts off and resented the suggestion that they were either incompetent or lazy. And that thread runs all the way up guys like Christopher Rufo arguing that to get to universals school choice, you have to get to universal distrust of public schools.
Maybe school choice wasn’t in and of itself an attack on public education, but it certainly seemed as if attacking public education was a means of promoting school choice.
I have no doubt that there are people who believe that education would work better if handled by the free market (I think their belief is magical, misguided and wrong, but I do believe it’s sincere). I believe there are technocrats who believe that standards, tests and data would improve education (ditto).
But to be a public school educator on the receiving end of all this (and more) absolutely felt like an attack. The irony is that when reformsters eventually figured out that the attack-filled rhetoric wasn’t helping and they dialed it back, the attacks themselves had become more real.
But let’s get back to Hess.
Public education can encompass a lot of approaches, and it can be organized in many different ways. Rather than blindly insist that “defending public schooling” requires clinging to outdated policies from decades (or centuries) past, we would do better to clarify principles, examine particulars, and then debate proposals.
All of this language is doing a lot of work, but as far as it goes, Hess and I probably agree more than we disagree. But the disagree part comes in the very next paragraph.
Indeed, the pandemic was a stark reminder that there are lots of ways to deliver schooling, including innovations such as learning pods, microschools, virtual tutors, and education savings accounts.
Learning pods and microschools are okay if you’re wealthy. As policy ideas in the vein of the DeVosian, “Well, your voucher may not be enough to get into a good private school, but you can always start a microschool,” they suck. I don’t think there are more than a hundred people in the country who came out of the pandemic thinking virtual education is a great idea. And education savings accounts are just vouchers with extra super-powers and porcine lip gloss. And none of these are really new ideas. They also all suffer from the same issue, which is the notion that any school choice system must be done free market style. We can do a great choice system without the free market at all (but that’s a post for another day).
Hess identifies one of the issues as the fuzziness of the word “public.” On this point, I think he gets some things wrong.
Choice opponents assert that public schools are “public” because they’re funded by public tax dollars.
No, that’s choicers. It’s been part of the charter school argument that charter schools are public schools because they are funded with public dollars. This pro-public ed writer (I’m not anti-choice, but I am anti-most-of-the-versions-of-choice-with-which-we’ve-been-presented) would say that public schools are public because they the public funds them, owns them, and operates them via representatives. Furthermore, they are public schools because they have a responsibility to the public to serve all students.
You can argue, as Hess and others do, that districts regularly hire outside firms to handle certain functions and occasionally outsource the teaching of certain students with exceptional special needs. But in all those cases, the responsibility for the management of those outside contracts rests with the public school district. A charter or private voucher-fed school carries no such responsibility. A public school district cannot, as can charters and voucher schools may, simply show parents the door and say, “Good luck. Your child is not our problem.” Do all public systems meet that responsibility as well as they ought to? Absolutely not. But at least the responsibility exists. A parent who thinks the public system is short-changing their child can (and often will) sue the district. They have no such option in a choice system, as such systems are currently conceived.
Hess is correct in calling public education “a pretty expansive category.” But it hinges on far more than whose money is being used.
In fact, I’d argue that it is the responsibility portion that is the big difference in the brand of choice being pushed by many these days. Our public system is based, however imperfectly, on the notion that we bear a collective responsibility for educating the young. Modern choice, particularly the current version sold under the culture warrior parental right brand, is about saying that getting a child an education is the responsibility of the parents, and that’s it. Yes, many choicers are also trying to privatize the ownership and provision of education, but it is the privatizing of responsibility for a child’s education that is perhaps the most profound and fundamental shift.
More importantly, simply calling something “public” doesn’t make it a good thing. While the phrase “public schooling” is suffused with happy notions of inclusivity and fairness, “public” isn’t a magic word.
Ain’t it that truth. Public education has a wide variety of issues–though some of those are the direct result of reformster attempts to “fix” things (see above re: standards and testing). But I’ve never argued that I’m against modern school choice and ed reform because public schools are perfect the way they are and everything else sucks. My most fundamental issue is that public schools have some serious issues, and modern ed reform and school choice don’t solve any of them (yes, that is also another long post). They just weaken public school’s ability to work on them while blowing through a giant pile of taxpayer money.
The point isn’t to play word games but to understand that things are less clear-cut than defenders of the status quo are prone to acknowledge. There are many ways to provide and serve the aims of public education.
After all these decades in the ed biz, I’m inclined to assert, repeatedly, that everything in education is less clear-cut that the vast majority of people acknowledge. Some folks on my side of the aisle are quick to infer nefarious and/or greedy motives when, sincere ideology is sufficient explanation (much as some folks in the choice camp assume that the only reason someone would stick up for public ed is because she’s on the union payroll). Some choicers are simply ignorant of how any of this school stuff works. Some are up against a particularly dysfunctional local version of public education. Some are anti-democrats for whom this is just one issue of many, one more way in which the government steals their money to spend it on Those People. Some want to recapture education for a particularly conservative version of christianist religion. Some want to social engineer their way to a more efficient society. Some are serious people, and some are not.
In short, the choicer and reformster camp contains a great variety of individuals.
Are some of those individuals interested promoting school choice as a way of making public education better? Is it possible to make public education better by incorporating some choice ideas? I believe that latter is true, and I swear I’m going to post about it in the not too distant future, and as for the former, well… yes, but.
But for all the variety in the choicer camp, they mostly adhere to two flawed premises– that a choice landscape should rest on a bedrock of free market mechanics and that the resulting system shouldn’t cost a cent more than the current one. As long as we start with those premises, school choice must be a zero sum game, and even if all the people who have spent the past four decades trying to tear public ed down so that choice will look better–even if all those people shut up, the zero sum game feature seems guaranteed to turn school choice into an attack on public education.
Jeff Bryant writes often about education. He lives in North Carolina. In this article, he tries to solve the mystery of why Democratic state legislator Tricia Cotham switched sides and joined the Republican Party, giving them a supermajority in both houses of the General Assembly?
Cotham was a Democrat who had campaigned in promises to oppose school vouchers; to defend LGBT rights; and support abortion rights.
Once she gave the Republicans the decisive vote in the lower house, the Republicans had a veto-proof majority and were in a position to override any veto by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.
Cotham, the new Republican, reversed her vote on everything she campaigned for or against. She supported Republicans’ efforts to reduce abortion rights; she endorsed school vouchers; and she sided with Republicans in their attack on trans youth.
In other words, she betrayed the people who voted for her and cast her lot with the hard-right Republicans who have aligned themselves with anti-progressive, anti-liberal, anti-Democrat policies.
Why? She said the Democrats were mean to her. She said they ignored her. She said she didn’t get the committee assignments she wanted. Are these good reasons to join forces with a party that has sought to destroy public education, demoralize teachers, and gerrymander the state to protect its advantages?
None of this made sense. A person doesn’t change their fundamental values because of hurt feelings.
Jeff investigated and determined that her decision was transactional. What did she get in exchange for double-crossing her constituents and her colleagues? Read his article to find out.
