On July 28, 2014, following the
BAT Rally outside the US Department of Education, a delegation of BATS
went up to the Education Department’s
Office of Civil Rights to share some of the main issues that BATS had with Department Policy. Representing the BATS were Marla Kilfoyle,
General Manager of BATS. Dr Yohuru Williams of Fairfield University, Chicago
BAM (Badass Moms) leader Shoneice
Reynolds and her son Asean Johnson, Tennessee BAT leader Larry Proffitt, and Dr
Mark Naison, co founder of BATS. The meeting had been set up by Marla Kilfoyle
through an official of the Department of Education’s Office of Communications.
Arne Duncan was not originally scheduled to attend the meeting, but
dropped in unexpectedly in the middle. What follows is my account of the meeting, including the dialogue
with Mr. Duncan, along with and some reflections on what it all means. How much of what transpired will lead to
further communication and action, and how much represented a “smoke and mirrors”
game by officials of the Department remains to be seen.
After going through security, we were escorted to a conference room in
the
US Ed Department’s Office of Civil Rights, where we were met by 9 people,
including a senior staff member of the Office of Civil Rights, Robert Kim, who
chaired the meeting, along with staff members from the Offices of
Communications and Community Outreach and several student interns with the
Department. Mr Kim, who chaired the
meeting, was very cordial and asked us if we could present our major concerns,
saying he hoped we could find areas of agreement as well as areas where we
disagreed, and that a dialogue could
develop which would hopefully continue after the meetings.
When Mr. Kim asked if someone would present the groups major concerns, I
stepped forward, I decided to do so in a manner which would focus
attention on Department of Education policies that maximized educational inequality and violated the civil rights of
students, parents and teachers in inner city and working class
communities. Using my own experiences
in the Bronx as a reference point, I said that BATS were deeply concerned with
how Race to the Top Policies, which required rating schools and teachers on the
basis of student test scores, closing allegedly “failing schools,” and preferring charter schools over public schools
had the following consequences:
Leading teachers in vulnerable neighborhoods
to “teach to the test” to the detriment of activities which fostered student
creativity.
Leading to the use of recess time, gym time, and after school time to
test prep, maximizing health problems in poor and working class neighborhoods
Leading the mass firing of veteran teachers and a sharp decline in the
percentage of teachers of color on many cities.
Leading to the destabilization of neighborhoods and the smothering of
parent, teacher and student voices in the shaping of education policy.
Leading to the demonization of public school teachers and their being
blamed for everything from the achievement gap for the persistence of poverty
and inequality.
Leading to the best young teachers leaving the profession prematurely
The irony here, I said, was that these policies, promoted with Civil Rights rhetoric, were riding roughshod over
the Civil Rights of residents of inner city communities. I asked for a two year moratorium on all these
policies- no more school closings, no more VAM, no more charter school
creation- and a new effort by the US Department Education to have teachers
voices have a primary role in shaping Department policy rather than business
leaders.
My remarks appeared to catch many
of the officials there by surprise. Several agreed with what I was saying;
others tried to defend Department of Education policies and say states were
ultimately responsible for the abuses I was describing
The points of agreement expressed by
Department of Education officials who spoke up were on the following issues:
Need to reverse the declining percentage of
teachers or color
Need to stop best young teachers from
leaving the profession
Need to stop use of recess and gym for test
prep
Need to end demonization of teachers
by public officials
However, several of the officials, while agreeing that we needed to
address the above problems insisted that school closings, charter school preferences,
and the use of test scores to rate teachers and schools were not the sources of
those problems
As this point, Shoneice Reynolds, Asean Johnson, and Larry Proffitt
entered the conversation forcefully and eloquently. Shoneice and Asean talked in depth about
how in Chicago, community schools were
first starved, then closed and charter
schools put in their place, smothering and stifling parent voices, depriving
children of great neighborhood schools, and making Chicago neighborhoods more
dangerous. They gave example after
example of one great program after another being eliminated in public schools,
while charter schools were created which were often limited in their
programming and abusive in their discipline policies.
Larry Profitt described how rating
teachers on the basis of test scores was driving the best teachers out of the
profession in almost every school district in Tenneessee and were severely
constricting the curriculum. Both put
the blame squarely on the US Department of Education for promoting policies
which led to those destructive consequences and for promoting rhetoric which
demonized teachers.
Right in the middle of both of these conversations, Arne Duncan walked
in and introduced himself! Needless to say, we were surprised because we were
told he would NOT be at the meeting.
Especially since he entered, along with one of his top aides, just as things were starting to get heated and
real disagreements were emerging.
Secretary Duncan after
introducing himself, and saying
that he could only stay for a few minutes, asked for two things; first if we could articulate our concerns about the
Department’s policies on dealing with Special needs students, and secondly, if
Shoneice and Asean could step out with him to talk about what was going on in
Chicago.
In response to his first comment, Marla Kilfoyle started speaking about
her concerns about Department from her standpoint of the parent of a special
needs student as well as a teacher. She said it appeared that Department
policies were forcing school districts
to disregard individual student IEP’s and exposing special needs students to
inappropriate and abusive levels of testing.
Secretary Duncan deflected her remarks by saying that the Department was
concerned that too many children of color were being inappropriately diagnosed
as being Special Needs children and that
once they were put in that category they were permanently marginalized. He then
said “We want to make sure that all student are exposed to a rigorous
curriculum.”
At that point, I interrupted him in a
very loud voice and said “ We don’t like the word ‘rigor.” We prefer to talk
about creativity and maximizing students potential.”
Secretary Duncan was someone taken
aback by my comments. He said “ we might disagree about the language, but what
I want is for all students to be able to take advanced placement courses or be
exposed to an IB (International Baccalaureat) curriculum
At this point, Larry Proffitt interrupted the Secretary and said that in Tennessee, Special Needs
students were being abused and humiliated by abusive and inappropriate testing
and that their teachers knew this, and were afraid to speak out.
We were clearly at an impasse here, which the Secretary dealt with by saying
he had to leave and asking Shoneice and Asean to step into the hall with
him and continue the conversation.
The rest of us in the room were all
now pretty confused and more than a
little upset. However, Robert Kim spoke
up and said that the rest of the DOE staff were ready to spend up to a half an
hour more continuing the conversation, and hopefully we could develop some
consensus on areas of agreement and ways of continuing the dialogue.
Now, things started to get really interesting! The woman from the Communications office who
hadn’t previously spoken up, said that she was concerned about how angry
teachers were at the Department since because it was her experience that every
time Secretary Duncan travelled to a new city, he met with teachers to hear
their concerns. I then said, perhaps
impolitely, that the Secretary fueled teacher mistrust by making statement after statement showing disrespect
for teachers, from his support of the firings of Central Falls Rhode Island
teachers in 2009, to his comments on Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans public
schools, to his support of Cathy Black for NYC school chancellor, to his recent
endorsement of the Vergara decision undermining teacher due process. “Maybe if you can tell him to stop making
provocative comments like these,” I said, “maybe teachers will regard the
Department more favorably.”
At this point, Dr Yohuru Williams chimed in with a suggestion for how
the Department could genuinely welcome teacher voices- calling a “National
Teachers Congress”- where teachers from all over the country could come
together to frankly express their concerns about Department of Education
policies. He added “those teachers can’t
be handpicked to say what the Department wants to hear, they have to be
democratically selected.” His suggestion was discussed for several
minutes and the Communication directors promised to give it serious
consideration. This was one of the few talking points in the meeting from which
there might be some serious follow up
After this the director of Community outreach and one of the interns
started critiquing our perspective that federal policies were driving the best
teachers out of the profession, stifling creativity in the classroom, and
leading to a decline in teachers of color. In doing so they started defending school closings and VAM, asking us whether there were any circumstances under which
schools should be close and whether there was any method of evaluating teachers
that did not rely on student test scores.
At this point, Dr Williams spoke up, saying that in Connecticut, the
suppression of community voices in cities like Bridgeport by unelected school
boards was being justified by arguments that mayoral control was supported, if
not required Race to the Top, and that similar dynamics were at play in
Hartford and New London. “Does the US
Department of Education support real democracy in education decision making,” Dr.
Williams he asked?”
They two officials had no real
answer to what Dr Wiliams was saying and deflected attention from his critique
by insisting that we needed to hold teachers accountable by student test scores
because there was no other way of making sure teachers took every student
seriously and helped all of them reach their full potential.
Now things started to get really heated. Larry Proffitt said that
teaching to the test is not real teaching and to have students full potential
unleashed , you needed teachers to give them individual attention and kinds of
in depth instruction and inspiration that no bubble test could measure. I said VAM was a disaster, along with the
rest of Race to the Top and we need a
two year moratorium on test based teacher evaluation.
Robert Kim then entered as a peacemaker and said “how can we keep this
discussion going?”. We said, call us back. We are glad to continue a discussion
about how to best get teacher voices more input into Department policy, how to
find forms of assessing teacher quality that do not depend on student test
scores, and how to attract and retain more great teachers, especially teachers
of color.
Mr. Kim and the two Communications office said they would find ways of
keeping the conversation going, and then called an end to the meeting.
We left the meeting feeling that we had spoken frankly, that we had been
heard, that some people agreed with our main points, while others
disagreed.
However, nothing concrete had been achieved. There were no policy
changes that anyone had agreed to and certainly no overall agreement to reverse
the directions of Race to the Top.
There were a few small glimmers of hope at the end of the meeting. Mr
Kim, the top Civil Rights official ,
came up to me after the meeting and said that he really liked our group,
that he would try to find ways of keeping the conversation going, and that he
would like to meet with me the next time he came to New York. I agreed to
remain in communications with him.
Through the entire meeting, he had been respectful, helpful and astute.
Then, after everyone else left, another staff member from the Office of
Civil Rights came up to me and said he really liked what we had to say. What
could their office do right now to help us?
I thought a second and said to him “ Investigate charter school abuses.
All over the nation, unregulated charters are employing disciplinary practices and
expelling students in ways which would not be acceptable in a public school. If
your office would start investigating such practices as civil rights
violations, it would make a huge difference.”
He smiled at me and said “Thanks for the suggestion. I will look into
it.”
His response gave me a glimmer of hope that some of the ten plus people
in that room were on the same page as BATS on a few issues, even though the
Secretary was clearly unmoved by anything we said.
We spoke truth to power, without fear and without compromise.
Whether we will be called back to continue the conversation only time
will tell.