Blogger Edward Berger has a test for those who claim to be reformers.
What do you know about teaching? How long did you teach? What gives you the authority to tell teachers how to teach? And that’s just the beginning.
He concludes that most reformers are quacks.
There is a reason that people like Bill Gates, Chris Christie, Rahm Emmanuel, Jeb Bush, Andrew Cuomo, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg and yes Barack Obama will never really listen to teachers voices. And that is because, in the competition for money, power, and position, which is what is all the that really counts to them, they see themselves as winners and teachers as losers. Regarding themselves as examples of what talent and ambition can achieve, they look at someone who spends their life in the classroom as lacking in drive and imagination, and therefore undeserving in having a voice in shaping the way we train the next generation of citizens and workers. Whether or not they will say this in their speeches, they certainly say it to one another, in their private meetings, and high powered policy seminars. It is why the only teacher training organization they really trust is Teach for America, because that organization shares their view that really talented people would only remain a teacher as a passage to a more rewarding career. Unless you understand this– you will never understand why editorial writers, television personalities, corporate leaders, and elected officials systematically exclude teachers voices, and why the policies they ultimately support prove disastrous on the ground. Every section of the American Elite is poisoned with a fatal arrogance, and getting through to them with sound arguments is well nigh impossible. They only understand and respect power.
The Gates Foundation just showered more millions on allies prepared to spread Bill Gates’ gospel of testing, test-based teacher evaluation, and Common Core.
Millions for the young inexperienced teachers who fight tenure and demand testing (Educators4Excellence); millions for Jefferson County, Colorado, where the school board and superintendent believe in testing and privatization; millions to buy off the NEA; and more. Read the link to learn who else won Gates’ money this time.
The hundreds of millions that Gates has poured into teacher evaluation by test scores has thus far produced nothing but massive demoralization.
Will anyone tell Bill & Melinda?
Paul Horton teaches history at the University of Chicago lab School. He has been writing brilliant critiques of corporate reform. In this post, he reviews the history of efforts to make education rational, predictable, and measurable.
A few nuggets:
“Have you ever read Dr. Seuss’, The Butter-Battle Book? It made perfect sense to me, a Cold War military brat. The “boys in the backroom” were very smart. They were data whizzes and they invented computers that made them a lot smarter than everybody else. Both the “Yooks” and the “Zooks” believed that those “boys in the back room” could figure out solutions to every problem. But the biggest problem was that only human beings who could effectively communicate, not computers or data, could solve the world’s problems. “The boys in the backroom” were only doing what they were told: they were the smartest, but not the best communicators in town. None of those “boys” said, “making more weapons that can kill more people might not be the best way to go.” But everybody believed in them, almost religiously, to the brink of nuclear war. Slim Pickins didn’t bat an eye when he decided to ride his big A-bomb to victory.
“This might seem strange to you, but, from my very humble perspective, we might need another Dr. Seuss to write a book with a similar theme, but in a different setting. The question has become, what happens when the “boys in the backroom” take over after the “Yooks” and the “Zooks” have stopped threatening each other? What happens when one of the “boys in the backroom” becomes the richest guy in the world and decides that he wants to build “Gatopia”? What happens if he convinces many of the other richest guys that our country is doomed unless we completely tear down and rebuild the way that we teach our kids? And what happens when he and many of his very wealthy friends tell the red and blue politicians that he and his friends can make sure that they will not get campaign funding if they don’t support “Gatopia”?”
Gatopia “seeks to turn human beings into computers that are efficient and well behaved. Most importantly, computers do not ask questions or demand accountability: they do what they are told.”
Horton describes how he fell in love with learning and recognizes that Gatopia has no room for the experiences he had:
“Learning for me was about connecting with a human being. Learning was reflected in my ability to write something. I wanted to please my very demanding teachers, I wanted to conform to their expectations of excellence. I dreaded the conference to go over a paper that fell hopelessly below those standards, but respected my teachers for holding me to them.
I want my son to have teachers like I had, and I want the same for his kids. I do not want “the boys in the back room” telling me how my kid and grandkids should be educated. Sometimes the smartest people can’t think up the most important questions. Democracy requires citizens, and computers cannot produce citizens. Computers often mask deficits that we most need to develop. Data is not knowledge. We are in grave danger if we are tempted to believe that it is.”
A couple of years ago, I was on a panel discussion about school reform in NYC. To one side of me was a young man of maybe 23 or 24 who was remarkable. He knew everything. He had taught for 18 months and had learned everything there was to know about teaching and how to reform schools. I should have been impressed, but found his arrogance annoying.
He was representing a group of other young teachers who call themselves Educators4Excellence,. They are funded by the Gates Foundation. They think that teachers should be evaluated by test scores of their students. They believe in merit pay. They oppose tenure or any kind of job security for teachers.
They just received another $3 million from the Gates Foundation. For rising young stars, it pays better than teaching to be an Educator 4 Excellence.
Politico’ Morning Education Blog reports a setback for inBloom. Notice the come-on: free now, not later:
INBLOOM OFF THE ROSE? — Another state has pulled out of using the Gates Foundation’s $100 million technology service project, inBloom. The withdrawal further shrinks the project after other states pulled out in part because of concern about protecting students’ privacy. Guilford County, N.C. told POLITICO on Wednesday that the state decided to stop using the service, which is designed to hold information about students including names, socioeconomic status, test scores, disabilities, discipline records and more in one place, and ideally, help in customizing students’ education.
Guilford schools’ departure doesn’t put the project in any kind of jeopardy, inBloom said, although Louisiana withdrew in April and other states once affiliated with the project no longer are. That leaves New York, two Illinois districts and one Colorado district as firm participants for now; Massachusetts is on the fence. At first inBloom will be free, but by 2015 states and districts using it will be charged $2 to $5 per student for the service.
Here is good advice for the Gates Foundation:
Mr. Gates,
I have been working on this letter for days now. I just can’t seem to get my thoughts down before my anger gets the best of me. Then it turns into a letter of rant which helps no one, least of all my students.
I am a 10 year veteran teacher. I have earned my BA and my MAT. I also have received National Board Certification. I am sick over this testing and evaluation mess that you sir created. It’s time that you clarify and clean up what you have caused.
You and your buddies The Walton’s and Broady’s need to finally understand that you have accomplished nothing to further education. You have caused a chasm, a divide. You have made matters worse. Because it suits your agenda you have fueled the ‘everything is the teachers fault’ fire. We know it and you know it. If you truly care about students and their success and not about dollars and data points, then you will put your resources behind proven policies.
Here are some ideas that you can research, study and then support. These are changes that have actually been proven to be successful.
1. No for-profit schools. No one should make a dime off of students.
2. No standardized tests until high school. PreK-8th grade should be the time to instill curiosity, a drive to learn and to find what excites them.
3. Schools of Education should be extremely selective. Only the best and brightest should be accepted.
4. Educators should be held in high esteem as the professionals they are and paid accordingly.
5. End the competition between public schools. Support collaboration and cooperation.
6. Teachers should be expected to teach 4 classes (approximately 4 hours) per day.
7. Teachers should be expected to collaborate during the school day.
8. School meals should be free.
9. Health care should be accessible. Nurses at all prek-8th grade schools.
10. Individualized guidance for all students.
You finally agree that teachers should be at the table for policy discussions. Here I am. Hear me now: We are mad and we are NOT going to take it anymore. STOP this testing craze. STOP the school to prison pipeline. STOP closing schools. STOP making money off our children!
We won’t back down,
One of many BATs
Peter Buffett, son of billionaire Warren Buffett, is not happy with the philanthropic giants that have decided to save the world.
In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Peter Buffett writes what he has learned about Philanthropic Colonialism:
“People (including me) who had very little knowledge of a particular place would think that they could solve a local problem. Whether it involved farming methods, education practices, job training or business development, over and over I would hear people discuss transplanting what worked in one setting directly into another with little regard for culture, geography or societal norms.”
Now he realizes that philanthropy has become a vehicle to assuage the guilt of the super-rich, who can “give back” instead of actually doing anything to change the structural income inequality that creates the problems the rich want to solve:
“Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left. There are plenty of statistics that tell us that inequality is continually rising. At the same time, according to the Urban Institute, the nonprofit sector has been steadily growing. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. Their growth rate now exceeds that of both the business and government sectors. It’s a massive business, with approximately $316 billion given away in 2012 in the United States alone and more than 9.4 million employed.
Philanthropy has become the “it” vehicle to level the playing field and has generated a growing number of gatherings, workshops and affinity groups.
As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.
But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over.”
I don’t think that any reader of this blog knows Peter Buffett.
But if you do, please tell him that his father added $30 billion to Bill Gates’ $30 billion, and that this money is being used to privatize American public education and to dismantle the teaching profession.
Tell him this money is being used to tell states that teachers should not be paid more for extra degrees or experience.
Please tell him that this money is being used to impose Bill Gates’ wrong ideas about how teachers should be evaluated.
Please tell him that this money is being used to reduce everyone to a data point.
If we could get just one intelligent billionaire on our side, we could stop the other ones in their tracks.
Why? Because they are doing exactly what Peter Buffett described in this article. Engaging in Philanthropic Colonialism. Imposing their idea of what works in institutions about which they know nothing and where they have little or no experience. Furthermore, they are using “education reform” to claim that poverty doesn’t matter. They are “conscience laundering” and hurting the children of the poor by denying them the very real reforms they need: small classes, experienced teachers, a full curriculum with arts, physical education, and all the other studies that belong in schools, and a genuine national effort to reduce poverty and segregation.
In this post, New York City activist Leonie Haimson explains what inBloom is, how the U.S. Department of Education weakened privacy protections in 2009 and 2011, and why parents should demand the right to withhold their child’s confidential data from inBloom.
The creators of inBloom talk about its benefits in creating customized learning tools, but Haimson warns that the real goal is to turn student data over to for-profit vendors that will target children for marketing their stuff.
An investigative journalist is needed to figure out why Arne Duncan’s Department of Education weakened FERPA, the federal law protecting student privacy, at the same time that Race to the Top offered incentives for states to build data warehouses, and along comes inBloom to open up student data for use by vendors. It is all too neat a package.
Diane Ravitch's blog 