CAP's Unimaginative Reimagining

The Center for American Progress is a thinky tank that has historically been a home for Democrats (it's where many cooled their heels waiting for the Hillary Clinton administration--oops), and as such, it has always demonstrated the many ways in which Democrats have failed to step up for public education.

They yammered endlessly about the awesomeness of Common Core (seriously-- see here, here, here, here, here, and here, just for starters) and various other versions of chiming in on the narrative that public schools are really terrible and need some help. CAP is a fine exhibition of how Democrats completely lost the knowledge of arguments, even the vocabulary to defend public education, so that when Betsy DeVos came along they were flat-footed and flustered.

Are things getting any better over there. Doesn't seem like it. Post-COVID lots of folks have tried to use the pandemic as the new Hurrican Katrina, a chance to run the shock doctrine in real time (instead of the slow motion disaster capitalization that folks tried to implement via testing "failure"). So CAP wants to add its two cents.

CAP offers "Five Ways Government Can Reimagine K-12 School Design in the Wake of COVID-19," and like way too many of these post-COVID reimagining pieces, it could be subtitled "We sense an opportunity to get traction for the same policies we've been pushing for forever." 

Their five ideas?

Competency-based education. Aka mastery learning aka proficiency based learning. New Hampshire is currently looking at this (bundled up with many bad ideas) and it comes with a variety of shortcomings. You have to decide what mastery looks like, decide where to draw the line in what becomes basically a pass-fail system, and reconcile yourself to the notion that education is a single destination and not a process. 

Privatizers like CBE because it seems easier to automate, and CAP tellingly pairs CBE with "personalized" learning, which also appeals to folks who think school would be great if it were delivered by software algorithms (well, at least that would be great for Certain Peoples' Children). 

Credits for anytime, anywhere learning. Again, this notion suits privatizers just fine. Never mind those silly English classes in those old fashioned schools-- just buy some software, read a couple of books, earn some mastery badges, and voila! This meshes nicely with the neo-liberal vision of a world in which everyone's competencies are set down in a blockchain form so that employers can sift through meat widgets digitally to find exactly what they want.

Modernize and strengthen data systems. Yes, let's get those cradle-to-career data systems going so that you can have a digital permanent record. Because the problem with the surveillance society is that it can't get its mitts on you early enough. So let's extend it down into schools, so that prospective employers and law enforcement and God knows who else can see that you pulled some low social skills scores in second grade. 

CAP says "Strategies and systems such as these will help ensure that all students are seen and supported throughout their educational journeys" and the "seen" part is certainly true. I'm just not sure it's desirable. But it fits nicely with the toxic idea that children can be engineered to be just what parents or leaders or corporations want them to be. 

Improve the CGSA program and the IADA. That's the Competitive Grants for State Assessments program, which is the federal government helping states search for bigger, better Big Standardized Tests. Also the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority. More of the same. CAP would like more of more of the same. 

Because the way to get schools into a new future is more assessment baloney from the feds and states. And I'm pretty sure that sticking with variations on what we've been doing for the past couple of decades qualifies as "reimagining."

Invest in state learning networks and professional development. Let's have some peer-to-peer networks "to examine the effectiveness of innovative assessment models in improving student learning outcomes, as well as scale best practices from pilot programs and ongoing redesign efforts." Because after all these years, these folks still believe that weighing the pig makes it grow fatter. Also, their steadfast belief that if it works in a rural school with 200 kids in Iowa, then we can just transfer it to an urban New York school of 2000 and it will be great. "Find a great idea and take it to scale" has yet to work, ever, but sure. Try it some more, while pretending that it's a "reimagining" of anything.

It's the conclusion that has the most CAP line--

Top-down mandates alone cannot drive the reimagining of public education.

Yeah. Top-down mandates can do it all by themselves, but they sure are important, and bottom-up stuff should try to help out. 

None of these ideas is good, none of them qualify as reimagining anything, and most of them aren't even good ideas, anyway. 

Not for the first time, I look at the vast field of right-tilted thinky-advocacy tanks, and CAP, and wonder what it would be like if there were a thinky tank devoted to support and enhancement of public education. That would be such a cool thing, but CAP certainly provides no hope that such a beautiful unicorn could come from Democrats.