The Strange Genesis of "Education Reform"- How a Crackpot Theory Became National Policy

In future generations, historians are likely to tell the following story. Some time during the early 21St Century, a cross section of the top leadership of American society began to panic. They looked at the growing chasm between the rich and poor, the huge size of the nation’s prison population, the growing gulf in educational achievement between blacks and whites and poor and middle class children and decided something dramatic had to be done to remedy these problems.

But instead of critically examining how these trends reflected twenty years of regressive taxation, a futile “war on drugs,” the deregulation of the financial industry, the breaking of unions and the movement of American companies abroad, America’s leaders decided the primary source of economic inequality could be found in failing schools, bad teachers, and powerful teachers unions.

No serious scholar, looking at the economic and social trends of the previous 20 years, or the major innovations in social policy that unleashed the power of big capital, would have given to slightest credence to this analysis of the sources of inequality, but the idea that educational failure was the prime source of all other social deficits took hold with the force of a religious conversion. Corporate leaders, heads of major foundations, civil rights leaders, politicians in both major parties, bought this explanation hook line and sinker and so began one of the strangest social movements in modern American history- the demonization of America’s teachers and the development of strategies to radically transform education by taking power away from them

The consequence of this leap of faith, supported by no serious research, was the idea that there has to be a centralized effort to monitor educational progress though quantifiable measures, coupled with accountability strategies which called for the removal of teachers and the closing of schools, if they didn’t meet those criteria. Through policies developed at the federal level but implemented locally so that they effected every school district in the nation, scrutinizing teacher effectiveness became a national mission introduced with as much fanfare as was America’s efforts to put a rocket in space during the 1950’s and 60’s.

The centerpiece of this mission was that teachers had to be judged on student performance of standardized tests, as there were no other “objective” criteria that could generate meaningful statistical information on a national scale. But America’s states and municipalities did not have consistent testing policies, so federal policies called for universal testing related to a nationally developed set of Common Core Standards, with the loss of federal funding being presented as the consequence of failure to comply.

This all sounds very rational until you look at it from the individual school level. To evaluate teachers via standardized tests, and do it across the board, you have to have tests in every grade and every subject. This not only means tests in English, Math, Science and Social Studies, it means tests in Art, Music and Gym.

No school in any country, at any time in history, ever tried doing something like this, and for good reason. It means that all that goes on in school is preparation for tests. There is no spontaneity, not creativity, no possibility of responding to new opportunities for learning that relate to events that occur locally, nationally, or globally. It also means play, and pleasure are erased from the school experience, and that students are put under constant stress, maximized by teachers who know that their own job security depends on student performance.

What you have here, in short, is a prescription for making the nation’s schools a place of Fear and Dread, ruled by test protocols that deaden minds and stifle creative thinking. Make no mistake about it, there are people who stand to benefit handsomely from this insanity, especially the companies who make the tests and the consultants who administer them, but anyone who thinks this level of testing will make America’s schools more effective or reduce social inequality has a capacity for self-delusion that staggers the imagination. Only people with no options would choose to send their children to schools run that way. The wealthy will send their children to private schools which eschew testing, the well organized will withdraw from the system and create their own cooperative schools or engage in home schooling.

The sad part about all of this is that the Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration, continues to push this program, with the support of both major parties and a cross section of America’s corporate leadership.

There are not too many other examples in American history where such a crackpot theory guided social policy this way. The last example I can think of was the passage of the Prohibition Amendment to the US constitution, based on the conviction that the banning of alcoholic beverages would somehow create greater social stability and save America from corruption.

Someday, Test Based Education Reform will go the way of Prohibition. But not before incalculable damage is done to the nations children

Mark Naison
January 19, 2012

Educators Letter to President Obama Now Online and Ready For Signatures

Friends

Here is the link to the Educators Letter to President Obama that asks him to withdraw his support of policies which mandate high stakes testing, to include teachers and parents in all educational policy discussions in his administration and replace Sec of Ed Arne Duncan with an educator who has the confidence of the nation's teachers. Please sign and circulate widely!

; http://dumpduncan.org/fulltex/



Petition Text
Dear President Obama,

We, the undersigned, a cross section of the nation’s teachers and their supporters, wish to express our extreme displeasure with the policies implemented during your administration by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Although many of us campaigned enthusiastically for you in 2008, it is unlikely that you will receive continued support unless the following three dimensions of your administration’s education initiatives are changed:

The exclusion of teachers from policy discussions in the US Department of Education and from Education Summits called under your leadership.
The use of rhetoric which blames failing schools on “bad teachers” rather than poverty and neighborhood distress.
The use of federal funds to compel states and municipalities to use student test scores in the evaluation of teachers and as the basis for closing low performing schools.
Because of these policies, teachers throughout the nation have become discouraged and demoralized, undermining your own stated goals of improving teacher quality, upgrading the nation’s educational performance, and encouraging creative pedagogy rather than “teaching to the test.”

We therefore submit the following measures to put your administration’s education policy back on the right track and to bring teachers in as full partners in this effort:

The removal of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education and his replacement by a lifetime educator who has the confidence of the nation’s teachers.
The incorporation of parents, teachers, and school administrators in all policy discussion taking place in your administration, inside and outside the Department of Education.
An immediate end to the use of incentives or penalties to compel states and municipalities to use student test scores as a basis for evaluating teachers, preferring charter schools to existing public schools, and requiring closure of low performing schools.
Create a National Commission, in which teachers and parent representatives play a primary role, which explores how to best improve the quality of America’s schools.
We believe such policies will create an outpouring of good will on the part of teachers, parents and students which will promote creative teaching and educational innovation, leading to far greater improvements in the nation’s schools than policies which encourage a proliferation of student testing could ever hope to do.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Draft of Teachers Letter to President Obama

We, the undersigned, a cross section of the nation’s educators, want to express our extreme displeasure with the policies implemented during your administration by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Although the majority of us campaigned enthusiastically for you in 2008, we are reluctant to do so again unless we see some modification of the following three dimensions of your administration’s education initiatives:

1. The exclusion of teachers from policy discussions in the US Department of Education and from Education Summits called under your leadership

2. The use of rhetoric which blames failing schools on "bad teachers" rather than poverty and neighborhood distress

3. The use of federal funds to compel states and municipalities to use student test scores in the evaluation of teachers and as the basis for closing low performing schools

Because of these policies, teachers throughout the nation have become discouraged and demoralized, undermining your own stated goals of improving teacher quality, upgrading the nation's educational performance, and encouraging creative pedagogy rather than “teaching to the test.”

We therefore recommend the following measures to put your administration’s education policy back on the right track and to bring teachers in as full partners in this effort

1. The removal of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education and his replacement by a lifetime educator who has the confidence of the nation’s teachers.

2. The incorporation of teachers in all policy discussion taking place in your administration, inside and outside the Department of Education.

3. .An immediate end to the use of incentives or penalties to compel states and municipalities to use student test scores as a basis for evaluating teachers.

4. An end to policies that use incentives or penalties to encourage states and municipalities to prefer charter schools to existing public schools.

5. An end to federal policies that require the closing of low performing schools based on student test scores and the creation of a National Commission, in which teachers and parent representatives play a primary role, which explores how to best improve the quality of such schools.

We believe such policies will create an outpouring of good will on the part of teachers, parents and students which will promote both creative teaching and educational innovation, leading to far greater improvements in the nation’s schools than policies which encourage a proliferation of student testing, could ever hope to do

Sincerely,

When Teachers Are Seen But Not Heard

What would you say about a President who emphasizes improving America's schools in all of his speeches and invites a teacher to sit next to the First Lady during his State of the Union address, but fails to invite a single teacher to an "Educational Summit" he holds at the White House and appoints someone with no teaching experience as Secretary of Education? That is the dilemma teachers face in confronting the Obama administration's education policies. They are told the work they is crucial to the future of the nation, but find their voices are completely excluded from the discourse of how to remake America's schools, while those of America's business leaders are pushed to the forefront. The result is not only an explanation for failing schools that blames bad teachers rather than poverty and inequality for that condition, but the imposition of policies which take power away from teachers and turns them into automatons who do little more than administer tests while looking over their shoulder to see whether they meet "National Standards." There is nothing progressive about such a policy. It drips with paternalistic contempt. And it won't work. Ten years later, we will wake up and find that schools are actually worse than they were before universal testing became the measure of learning, but by that time, a generation of teachers and students will be beaten down and demoralized by a policies that represent the application of management methods honed by the pursuit of profit to a helping profession.

Hypocrisy Not Democracy

How does it feel to live in a country where the people making education policy, the Barack Obamas, Arne Duncans, Bill Gates, and Michael Bloombergs, send their children to private schools where classes are capped at 15, where there are no standardized tests, where teachers creativity is honored and there is plenty of art, music, science and sports, but want YOUR children to sit at a desk all day preparing for standardized tests, taught by teachers who work in terror of losing their jobs, in schools where art music and sports are cut to make room for testing? If you think this unfair, if you think it is wrong, if you think it is hypocritical, then join parents, teachers, students and concerned citizens at "Occupy the DOE" in Washington DC March 30-April 2! It's time to stand up for democratic education and fight off the bogus "education reform movement" which wants to create a two tier education system that reserves creative thinking for the children of the wealthy while condemning the vast majority of American children to a regime of rote learning.

unitedoptout.com/event/we-endorse-occupy-wall-street-with-action/

"Data Driven Instruction" and the Orwellian World of Education Reform

In the increasingly Orwellian world of "Education Reform" a new term has achieved a particular cachet- "Data Driven Instruction." With deadly seriousness, school chancellors and superintendents hold workshops on how to do this for their principals and teachers, offering euphemistic language for something really quite crude and brutal- TEACHING TO THE TEST! And why are they doing this? It's because the US Department of Education, through No Child Left Behind and Race To the Top, threatens to close schools, and fire teachers and principals, who do not produce the proper data! Anyone who thinks this approach is going to improve the quality of instruction, and create better relationships between teachers, students and parents, is sorely mistaken. It will increase the stress level on all concerned and squeeze out compassion, empathy and community building along with creative instruction. But the school reformers don't care. They are determined to bring a "business atmosphere" into public education, with teachers poring over test scores the way executives pore over sales data!
Initially, the response will be sullen compliance, along with more than a few departures of those who cannot accept the corruption of a profession to which they have devoted their lives, but in the long run the result will be a combination of sabotage ( forging test results) and open revolt.

And since I like to use music as a metaphor for events in "real life" I dedicate this Grateful Dead song to the architects of these awful policies, as what they have created is a truly a Ship of Fools

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9eL9QKlp0g

What Is Your Legacy?:A Story for Those Who Think Merit Pay Will Motivate Teachers

I have two cousins who grew up with me in Brooklyn, were neighborhood ball players and attended local public schools. They went into business and became very successful, probably making 3 to 4 times my salary ( and I am paid decently). They are both having serious health problems, and at one of our dinners last year, they got very serious and asked me, "What is your legacy?" I said, without a moments hesitation, "the accomplishments of the hundreds of students I have worked with whom I am still in touch with. They validate what I have tried to do in my life." A sad look came over their face, and they said, they" wished they had a legacy like that." Their legacy was " the money they are leaving to their children and grandchildren." The conversation hit home to me why I chose teaching as a profession. Teaching not only has different rewards than business, it has, in its best manifestations, an entirely different atmosphere. My cousins, who worked for large companies, made a lot of money, but they worked in a climate of fear because they could be fired at any time, either because their company had been bought by a larger global corporation( which happened to one of my cousins) or because a new management team had come in. In contrast, I was never going to become rich on my job, but I had the ability to speak freely, security against arbitrary changes in management, and the chance to change lives. I would not trade that experience for the opportunity to double my salary, or even make 10 million dollars a year, if I lost the freedom, autonomy, and ability to build lifetime relationships with students that my job has given me. It is those "soft" attributes that motivate those who love teaching, not the prospect of financial rewards