Can Conservatives and Unions Play Nice?

Andy Smarick is a partner at Bellwether Partners and a senior fellow at Fordham Institute, two reliably reformy right-leaning thinky tanks, so it's safe to say that he favors the reformster view of the education debates. But I also find him to be thoughtful and intellectually honest, particularly when it comes to considering the role of conservatism in the reform movement.

I've been saving a Smarick piece from last week's Weekly Standard to mull over (it's show week, and my close reading time has been replaced by rehearsal time). In "Don't Scoff," Smarick considers the possibility of collaboration between conservatives and unions, particularly in light of two events-- the passage of ESSA and the Friedrich's case. Granted, the Friedrich case is not looking quite so game-changing now that Scalia has shuffled off this mortal coil, but Smarick's points are still worth considering. I do recommend that if you want a fuller understanding of his argument, you read his piece.

Where he sees the "key overlap in the conservative/union Venn diagram is a respect for local custom and knowledge." Both conservatives and teachers wanted the feds out of the education business, and so ESSA-- a sort-of rejection of Big Government and a extra-rare example of a federal agency being stripped of powers.

The corollary is that cocksure D.C.-dwellers not only lack the right answers; they also inadvertently warp local practice by concocting policies that serve the purposes of central administrators. The cognoscenti may view the local leader as helplessly parochial, but conservatives and unions can recognize her as informed, no-nonsense, and prudent.

Smarick sees this as a larger trend. In a term that I fully intend to steal, he refers to our recent past as The Decade of Mistakes by Experts. The failure of bankers, the economy, the border patrol, "even the New Orleans levees" has provided example after example, alarming folks all across the spectrum. "We were told ISIS was a JV team, that we could keep our health care if we liked it, that Iraqi WMDs were a slam-dunk." You may disagree with some of the failures on Smarick's list, but that's kind of the point-- no matter what your political inclination, the experts have screwed up something that you care about. While we may disagree on the particulars, all Americans have shared the experience of seeing federal experts and bureaucrats make a hash out of something important.

Smarick believe that this trend feeds directly the traditional conservative desire for decentralized, local government, and I agree with that notion even as I question just how much traditional conservatism is still alive in America. Just hold that thought for a few paragraphs.

Smarick sees Friedrich as a catalyst for what he views as a useful change-- unions dropping their political focus for a more tradespersonlike approach, a union more focused on strengthening the practices and craft of the field, thereby helping more clearly establish teachers as Local Experts who are better positioned to take the reins of local control. He does acknowledge other possible outcomes, but it looks like we don't really need to discuss the possible effects of the plaintiffs winning the appeal, so I'm going to stick to his vision of a less-politicized union.

I see a couple of problems with Smarick's vision.

First, I remain skeptical of how much traditional conservatism, the conservatism of my father and grandfather, is still a force in the world. I don't, for instance, think that Trump is a rejection of the conservative GOP establishment, but the miscalculated-but-all-too-predictable outcome of it. The right has been trying to panic voters with a long list of Terrible Things That The Government Must Put a Stop To Right Now; they simply failed to realize how effective the panic would be and how completely successful a candidate shameless enough to give the subtext voice would be. Trump is not a revolt against the GOP-- he has simply put his money where their mouth has been.

Meanwhile, Trump's Democrat counterpart is not Sanders, but Clinton, who is also a fully-manufactured product of the establishment. In her case, it's just a fulfillment of the establishment big-money purchase of politicians. They are both exactly what one could expect from the system as it stands.

At any rate, I don't see any real candidate for much of anything who actually represents the traditional small-government, trust people with local control conservative.

Nor do I think that education reform as practiced has much to do with conservative, liberal or progressive philosophies. What we have is an establishment sleight-of-hand designed to make everybody happy. "Look," say faux conservatives. "We will starve the government schools and get the centralized education monopoly out of schools." Meanwhile, liberals announce, "We will make sure that the needs of various constituencies like the non-wealthy and the non-white are thoroughly met."

And what all this actually means is that we will starve the central government into the business of being essentially a contractor who hands tax dollars over to various subcontractors. I find it telling that this ed reform pattern is repeated with Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals. It's not about a political philosophy; it's just about the politics of directing public tax dollars to private corporate pockets. The beauty of it is that it can be dressed up with the rhetoric of the left ("Helping the poor"), the traditional right ("Getting government out of the X business"), or the corporate right ("Letting the free market's invisible hand sort things out"). Folks who really believe those things can and do sign up to be part of the journey, but I'm not sure they ever get to actually drive the bus.

Meanwhile, the teacher unions, even in a parallel universe where Friedrich was settled against them, can never leave politics alone, because politics can never leave education alone.

Back in the early years of my career, I subscribed to the notion that I should just do my job, teach my students, and leave politics alone. But the more I paid attention, the more I realized that every dumb rule that got in my way and even the occasional smart rule that helped me do my job-- every single one of them had been birthed by politicians working with other politicians to do some political stuff. If there's a family of angry badgers living in your house, you can tell yourself, "Well, they're not actually members of our family, and I don't really know anything about badgers or badger control," but after they keep busting up the furniture and eating the food and pooping the living room, you eventually understand that you have to get involved in the badger game. Politicians are the badgers in the house of education, and the only hope education has is for some to work badger control. Nobody in the political world has the interests of schools, students, or teachers very high on their priority list; teachers cannot afford to sit silent while other disinterested uninformed parties decide our fates.

This has created its own set of issues. Union leadership and union membership interests are not always perfectly aligned, and leadership's desire to have a seat at the proverbial table often puts union leadership out of step. Union leaders were all in on Common Core and Arne Duncan while members were still not so enamored of either, just as both NEA and AFT leaders threw their weight behind Hillary Clinton to the distaste of many, many members. And that's before we get to the many teachers who are happily registered Republicans.

So the fracture between conservatives and teacher unions is, for me, overlaid with dozens of other fractures-- traditional conservatives vs. values voters, rand and file vs. leadership, establishment vs. upstarts, corporate interests vs. public interests, centralized power vs. local control, and the unending debates about who should get to make mistakes and who should get to judge whether or not they are mistakes. No matter what labels we're playing with or what tribes we're identifying, I remain convinced that there's almost always somebody Over There who shares some of your values and you are going to have to decide whether you follow your labels or your values.

I think Smarick's idea that teacher unions could become depoliticized tradesperson groups is unlikely given where the controls of the education biz lie-- but they can certainly focus more on the craft and profession of teaching. I think Smarick gives traditional conservatives more credit for power and, well, existence than is supported by reality-- but there are such people out there. I think it's possible to reach agreement that DC should not be running the show, but I think that agreement evaporates about the moment we start discussing what should be driving the bus. I have zero faith in the Free Market's ability to improve education for many reasons, but I have great faith that it would open the door to renewed federal meddling (all free markets are "maintained" by government). I am perfectly okay with true local control with little or no provision for being able to compare schools from state to state, but I'm pretty sure Smarick is not excited about that idea.

At root, the education debate always runs into the same snag-- as a country, we have no shared vision of what a school is supposed to do, what excellence looks like, or how to achieve any of those things. We have fundamental disagreements about how the world works and what that means to teachers in a classroom. I have no doubt that for specific issues, we can all find unlikely allies in unexpected places if we're just willing to look. But I don't think we get much further than that.

I Don't Hate Hillary, But...

I don't hate Hillary Clinton.

I don't think that she should be convicted of treason. I don't think her email handling represents an unprecedented breach of, well, anything. I don't think that she has a trail of misbehavior and ethical violations behind her any wider or deeper than the average political animal, and I believe that were she male, she would induce far less rage and indignation. And I think there are plenty of folks on the right who have developed a derangement when it comes to HRC that is unhealthy for both the country and for them.

Nevertheless, I am unlikely to vote for her.

I remain convinced that Clinton would be terrible for public education. Terrible. As in, it wouldn't be any worse if we elected Jeb! Bush. The signs are constant and clear.

Here it is again in yesterday's Independent. Covering Chelsea's appearance in Cleveland, the site noted her objection to Sanders' desire to roll back our world-topping incarceration rate, and that included the Clintonian alternative theory of how to fix things:

Senator Sanders proposes abolishing prisons for profit, which have an incentive to lock up more people, to legalize marijuana, and to eliminate “mandatory minimums” for drug-related crimes which result in sentencing disparities between black and white people.

But Ms Clinton's daughter argued that reform needs to come in the shape of education and the promise of jobs, citing her mother’s “cradle to education and cradle to jobs pipeline” policy for historically disenfranchised communities like inner cities and rural areas.

Clinton is still fond of the cradle-to-career pipeline concept, a love affair some folks like to date back to the infamous "Dear Hillary" letter from Marc Tucker. That letter lays out how education could be used to gather data, both sorting children out and directing them to a proper spot in society. After almost twenty-five years, this is still a reformster dream-- collect data as we move students through a standardized "education" program that prepares students for their proper place in society.

Right-tilted wingnuts see the spectre of socialism lurking in this sort of plan, a giant centralized government big brothering its big fat nose into every aspect of society. These folks are a century behind. When Big Brother arrives, he will not be the public face of an evil totalitarian government; he will be a fully owned subsidiary of corporate interests.

The cradle-to-career pipeline will be a complicated piece of machinery, and every single knob and valve will be owned by somebody intent on profiting from it. I don't even know what we call this concept of socialism driven by free market profit motives. But I do know that it will have neither high quality education nor the interests of students on its mind.

Dismantle public education and sell off the parts. Turn teachers into content delivery specialists. Let a million charter school bloom. Impose one-size-fits-all standards that will open the market on a larger scale. Reduce educational outputs to simply measured deliverables. Collect a ton of data and use that to select peoples' fates. Contract every single step of the process out to corporate interests, including writing the rules for how all this will be set up and evaluated.

The GOP candidates are all okay with this, think it sounds just fine. Hillary is perfectly okay with this as well, and as a bonus, it's also her answer for addressing poverty-- once we get corporate school reform in place, we'll be able to make every poor person employable, aka useful to a corporation, and that will fix it all-- poverty, prisons, the works.

How the major teachers' unions ever decided to support someone whose dream for teachers is that they be reduced to easily-replaced, low-paid McTeachers is beyond me.

Clinton has benefited from the emergence of the batshit crazy wing of the GOP (though I have still not ruled out my theory that Trump is just trolling the GOP in an elaborate scam to hand Clinton, once one of his fave pols, the election). But compared to the "serious" GOP candidates, she is just as corporate, just as tied to big money, just as willing to trash public education.

She has yet to say anything that contradicts any of this. She has yet to name one thing wrong with the education policies of Obama-Duncan, or George W. Bush. She ha yet to distance herself in any meaningful way from the policies that have been beating the crap out of public education for over a decade. And at the same time, she is tied to the privatizers, the profiteers, and the reformy policy makers who love reform, groups like the Center for American Progress, which has advocated tirelessly for reformster ideas and which was founded and run by John Podesta, the man now running Clinton's campaign.

Yes, it's a depressing time to be a teacher and voter. Bernie Sanders hasn't had all that much to say about education, and supporters mostly have to fill in the blanks-- it doesn't seem as if his strong stance against the big money running politics would be consistent with reformster policy driven by the same big money.

I don't hate Hillary. I don't think she's an evil witch. As her campaign resorts to more and more of the standard stupid, underhanded political tricks like push polls and crappy attacks, I don't so much smell brimstone as I detect the air of flop sweat.

But in terms of policy and political ties, I believe she is no friend of public education. In this she is much in step with the Democratic Party, which has decided that teachers and public education can be thrown under the bus. Trump and Cruz have had their own bad effect on the Democratic Party, which can now lean more easily into its slogan-- "Democrats! At least we're not quite as bad as those other guys!"

I wasn't feeling Clinton back when this campaign cycle started (what-- six, seven years ago?) and I haven't heard anything in the time since to make me warm up to her. Particularly not when Sanders is out there. Clinton does not have my vote-- not for the primary, and, should she pull off the upset of winning the nomination, probably not in the general election, either. I am not a single issue voter, but I am also bone tired of giving my support to politicians who turn around and attack me. I don't hate anybody, but I do hate repeatedly volunteering to be punched in the face.

DFER: Trust Clinton To Betray Unions

In his semi-regular email to supporters, allies, and hate-readers, Whitney Tilson led one item with this subheading:

Hillary (and Bill) have a long history of breaking with the teachers’ unions, which bodes well: 

Tilson is a leading light of DFER (Democrats for Education Reform), a group of faux Democrat, hedge fundy, union-hating, privateering reformsters. These are exactly the people who love Clinton when she's getting all Wall Street warm and corporate cozy, but who become alarmed when she starts talking crazy, like suggesting that charter schools don't actually serve all students.

But in his email, Tilson wants to re-assure everyone that Clinton can be counted on to break with unions just as soon as she's elected. Here are his historical supports:

…after Bill got elected governor four years later, many of his early boosters from labor felt betrayed. Specifically, the teachers unions were infuriated over the couple’s advocacy of an education reform proposal that mandated teacher testing. The National Education Association and its Arkansas affiliate worked against the Clintons after they backed the measure in 1983.
— Hillary’s first significant public role was heading an education commission for Bill, a precursor to her role as health care czar in his first term. The efforts she supported were heartily endorsed by the business community, including a dark-money nonprofit group funded by WalMart founder Sam Walton. (Tom and Matea Gold explored this in part one of their story on the Clinton money machine yesterday, which you can read here.)
— Hillary was booed by teachers when she showed up at education forums as Arkansas First Lady to pitch her proposal. “I believe the governor’s teacher testing bill has done inestimable damage to the Arkansas teaching profession and to the image of this state,” Peggy Nabors, the president of the Arkansas Education Assn, wrote in a 1983 letter to her members. She called it “a radical departure from what educators or the makers of standardized test themselves believe is appropriate or fair.” She added that the proposal “represents the final indignity” and closed by urging teachers to “make a contribution to political candidates who will support a more progressive education program.”

Lots of folks have suggested that Clinton can be trusted just about as far as you can throw the giant pile of money that Wall Street and corporate interests have invested in her. And I am one of them-- from where I sit, Clinton isn't any better for education than Jeb! unless you prefer to be smiled at while you're being gutted.

But it certainly tells us something about where we are and who she is that a group like DFER is out there re-assuring the money men that Clinton can be trusted to "break with" the teachers' unions, as if that's a basis for endorsing her. God, but 2016 is going to be a long year in politics.

Clinton-Induced Charter Freakout Continues

Man, just thirty little words can cause sooooo much fuss.

Most charter schools – I don’t want to say every one – but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them.

These have been quoted over and over and over again. Sometimes they are quoted by folks who are excited that Clinton said something supportive of public schools. But they've also been quoted by charter supporters who are absolutely freaking out.

Reformsters Robert Pondiscio and Richard Whitmire also made attempts to raise some dudgeon high over Clinton's thirty-word assault, and while I think they're wrong, they at least showed a little rhetorical and intellectual rigor. Not so some of the other defenders of the charter cause.

The Washington Post editorial board scolded her by citing bogus data from a report written by the Center for Education Reform, a group that exists strictly to push charter schools and crush teacher unions. That's high order journalistic sloppiness, like turning to the Tobacco Institute for your "facts" about smoking. The Wall Street Journal also rushed to the defense of the hedge fundies who profit from charter schools, citing more fact-free facts.

But nobody has leaned on the Panic Button with hands any heavier than Juan Williams today on The Hill. Williams is a Fox News "Analyst," a position he moved into after being fired by NPR for either A) some impolitic remarks about Muslims on planes or B) because he was buddying up to Fox. Take your pick of explanations.

All the features of the High State of Charter Dismay are here in this piece.

It starts with the headline (which, it should be noted, is probably not Williams' call)-- "Hillary betrays charter schools." Betrays?? As in double-crosses? Did they have some claim to her? Are they offended because they thought Clinton was their BFF, or because their ethical standards say that when a politician is bought, she should stay bought?

Next, Williams opens by invoking children:

My 5-year-old grandson goes to a big city charter school. But Eli and his classmates do not belong to a union. They do not give money to politicians. They can’t vote.

That is unquestionably true of Eli and his classmates. It is probably not true of the people who own and operate Eli's school. I bet those people have plenty of money to give to politicians.

Williams throws in the word "flip-flop." He calls her thirty word backstab an act of "political expediency." He accuses her of running over Eli. He says her words sound like a script written by the teachers union (to whom? and what exactly is that sound?) And then he starts in with some of the same old non-fact facts.

By law, almost all charter schools get their students from a lottery. They do not cherry-pick their students.

Yeah, no. The very act of a lottery is a creaming process, as it automatically selects out those parents who are able to navigate the lottery system and are willing to do so. When charters start taking randomly selected students from the public school system-- including students who didn't even express interest in attending a charter-- then you'll have a point. And the widespread evidence of push-outs, as exemplified by Success Academy's got-to-go list, is one more example of how charters make sure they are working with a select group of students-- unlike public schools.

Williams says he has talked to parents who see charters as "a great stride towards improving public education by providing competition and pioneering teaching techniques that offer a model for all schools." And yet, charters have done none of those things. Name one educational technique, one pedagogical breakthrough that has come from a charter.

Williams quotes the Washington Post quoting the Center for Education Reform in saying that charters take on a higher percentage of poor and minority students than public schools. No, that's not true, either, unless I suppose you are comparing charter schools to all the public schools in the country, including all the public schools that serve very white communities. But if we start looking city by city, we find things like the charter schools of Massachusetts that serve no non-English speaking students at all. Or you can check out some of the legitimate actual research done in New Jersey about exactly what populations charters serve. Or you can just keep reading copy from the ad fliers put out by the Center for Education Reform.

The Post also cited research that shows “charter schools produce greater student learning gains than traditional public schools, particularly for poor and minority students.”

It takes an extraordinary amount of laziness not to locate the research that shows that charters do no better than public schools, and often do worse. Heck, the writers at the Washington Post could have just looked through the reporting in the Washington Post to see that they were missing a point or two.

Williams moves on to a recounting of Clinton's flip-floppery, and then, of course, we have to spend some time indicting the Evil Unions.

The unions do not appreciate the Obama administration’s effort to have public school districts compete for grants given to districts with improved student achievement. They opposed holding teachers accountable for their students’ success or failure. 

That's because "improved student achievement" just means "higher test scores on a crappy standardized math and reading test." Do you, Mr. Williams, have any hopes for Ele beyond that he just learn to do well on a Big Standardized Test on math and reading? I'll bet you do. Welcome to the club.

And for the gazillionth time-- teachers do not oppose being held accountable for what we actually do. Let me put it this way-- would it have pissed you off if NPR had fired you over something to do with the actual quality of your reporting instead of some baloney about saying the wrong thing whiel talking to the wrong people? Do you think it was fair that your job security suffered for something unrelated to your job performance? Because-- again-- welcome to the club.

You want to evaluate me, come on ahead. I welcome it. But evaluate me on my actual teaching skills, and not some random trumped up fake-science VAM baloney that is neither valid nor reliable.

But Williams is not done unloading his big truck full of bovine fecal matter. This next sentence is sitting all by itself, just for impact.

In the name of protecting failing teachers and bad schools, they are the number one opponents of school reform.

Bullshit, sir. Bull. Shit. We have opposed "school reform" because it is and has been bad for education and bad for children, and because, after over a decade, it hasn't produced a single success.

The Wall Street Journal fears that  future Clinton ed department will be a wholly-owned union subsidiary, which brings me to what I find most hilariously ironic about all this Clintonian pearl clutching.

The charter folks take Clinton's words far more seriously than I do. Clinton has always been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street, and I fully expect her to behave as such should she be elected (which, if it happens, won't be because I voted for her). So Clinton said something vaguely mean (and painfully accurate) about charter schools, one time. Hell, Clinton says a lot of things. And since both unions threw support to her without making her so much as curtsy in their direction, I don't think there's much of a deal there. Nor do I think that union coffers will, this one time, outweigh the vast mountains of money that Wall Street has thrown at her over the years. And since it is Wall Street that ultimately backs the charter industry, I don't think charters have the slightest thing to worry about.

Heck-- almost immediately, a Clinton staffer walked back the terribly ouchy thirty words and re-assured charters that Clinton still thinks of them as Very Important Public Schools.

So the irony here is that while charter fans are freaking out because they think Clinton might start telling the truth about them and they might not be able to hoover up tax dollars with impunity any more, I'm thinking those thirty words are pretty meaningless. You guys really need to take a deep breath and get your blood pressure down; this is going to be a long haul.

LIly Tries To Muster the Troops

This week NEA President Lily Eskelsen-Garcia kicked off the union's work as a campaigning arm of the Clinton campaign by doing some damage control and trying to get the troops in line.

I knew we were in trouble when I saw this tweet:

It’s clear: Educators are on the same page when it comes to what our students need from the next president. http://t.co/fJilsIlz5d

— Lily Eskelsen García (@Lily_NEA) October 16, 2015

Is it? Is it clear that educators are on the same page about the next President? Exactly which page is that, I wonder?

The link in Eskelsen-Garcia's tweet takes us to this piece at her blog. "What's At Stake" presumably lays out what the union's campaign push will be.

The piece opens with a classic call to get in line. Lily has traveled the country, read the interwebs, and listened to the many points of view that teachers have been "not shy" about sharing. And "there will always be room for debate when it comes to the next candidate to support," which is good to hear, because there certainly wasn't any room to debate about the last candidate NEA leaders chose to support. But LEG is sure one thing is "abundantly clear"-- "Educators are on the same page when it comes to what our students need from the next president."

So what do we all agree on?

Well, one guy said teachers need a punch in the face and another guy wants us to all pack heat in school. We certainly don't want those guys! This is not so much "on the same page" as 'not reading from the Big Book of Crazy,' but okay.

Instead, we must keep the focus on ensuring that every student has an equal opportunity to get an excellent education, regardless of their family’s income or ZIP code. That means smaller, less-crowded classrooms that allow for more one-on-one attention and up-to-date equipment, science labs and textbooks.

I can't tell you how discouraging it is to see the language of reformsters coming out of the mouth of my union president. That zip code line is straight out of the charter operators playbook, and I'm really tired of "opportunity" and "access" and "chance in hell" to get a good education. Can we be for providing every student an excellent education?  And can't we have a better list of specifics than that paltry batch.

To succeed as a nation, we must make college more affordable by fighting tuition increases, lowering student loan interest rates and increasing Pell Grants.

This has emerged as the Clintonian-Democrat education dodge-- a platform point that, paired with universal pre-K, makes a safe, progressive-ish place to stand on education without actually addressing any of the huge issues facing K-12 schools these days.

Also, LEG asserts that teachers must be listened to. And before the hollering about irony starts, she spends a few paragraphs asserting that the association totally spent months and months "engaging" membership about the Presidential nomination. Town meetings. Distributing political information. A website!

I am heartened that NEA’s members and its leaders have engaged in this conversation, and I agree with so many of you that there is too much at stake to remain on the sidelines.

Sigh. So when the NEA leadership rammed that endorsement through over the collective howls of many members, they were just following the will of teachers everywhere. Remember when twitter and the internet were just blowing up with people saying, "President Garcia-- we just can't wait! Endorse Hillary now! We want to get off the sidelines." You probably remember that as vividly as all that outreach NEA did to membership about who they wanted to get behind in the race. I think it was just after that weekend when the dancing unicorns beat Elvis on Prancing with the Stars.


I agree that we—educators and our unions—have been ignored by political leaders. I agree that corporate education reformers have become the insiders and the outcome has been disastrous decisions by Republicans and Democrats alike. But I disagree that the answer to changing this is to step back and silence ourselves,

And yet, by throwing ourselves in on Clinton's side, extracting nothing valuable in return, that is exactly what we've done. The first Democratic debate was pretty clear-- education is off the table as a campaign issue. Clinton isn't going to address anything of substance because she doesn't have to (and doesn't want to), and the rest of the candidates won't because they no longer have nothing to gain. Yeah, it might be nice if somebody addressed the state of public education because it's important and addressing it is the right thing to do, but I'm a big boy and I know what to expect from my Presidential candidates.

LEG now enters the Stumping for Clinton portion of the homily. Put on your hip boots.

Each candidate who participated in our process supports strong public schools. But there is no question that Hillary Clinton’s proven track record on standing up for students, coupled with her depth of knowledge on the issues important to educators, make her the best choice for president.

No, sorry, wrong. There are questions. Many questions. Huge questions. Like, will she drop her love of charters and privatization? Will she take a stand when it comes to using bad standardized tests to evaluate teachers and schools? Will she tell her long-time friends and corporate backers who have a great interest in dismantling public education so they can sell off the parts-- will she tell those folks to go take a hike? And will we stop talking about Clinton's "proven track record of standing up for students" like it's a real thing and not a fiction spun out of fairy dust and unicorn poop?

But LEG says Clinton has stood out on issues from pre-K to affordable college, and she then moves into discussing some specific examples of exactly what Clinton has done and-- ha! Sorry, no. She doesn't. Instead, we get some specific Clinton work on other issues, like working on universal health care, a couple of working class person act, and the DREAM act.

But Clinton has promised she will treat teachers like they are important and listen to them and-- can it be-- yes!! There's the table!! That wonderful table!! And next to it-- there's a seat!! For us!!!

“I know how important it is for you to be the voices of education. I believe it is absolutely imperative for you to be at the table when decisions are made, at the local, state, or national level. And that’s what I promise to you. You will always have a place at the table.”

Oh, a place. Uh-oh. The servants have a place at the table. They just don't get to sit down a speak.

Look, here's my biggest problem with all this, and as much as I hate using war images, I'm going to do it here because it makes my point. It's January, 1942. Europe is in flames, and the ruins of Pearl Harbor are still smoldering. And a guy who wants to be President stands up and says, "I know you have concerns, and I want you to know that I am deeply committed to keeping the coffee fields of Brazil safe."

Pre-K and affordable college are lovely safe issues, just edgy enough to separate the D's from the R's, but still pleasantly platitudinous. But next year, I will be voting for a Presidential candidate who recognizes that public education is under attack, that a foundational institution of this country is in crisis-- not because of foreign attack or self-destructive dysfunction, but because of a concerted, deliberate attempt to tear it down and replace it with a system that is more concerned about Return on Investment than in making sure that every American child gets a good education-- and gets it without leaving her own neighborhood.

Cheery warm thoughts might have been enough in other times, but we are in a heap of trouble right now, and I don't need a president-- not of my nation and not of my union-- who thinks we should all pick up a fiddle while our home burns. I'm afraid that John Kuhn called it with his tweet:

Prediction: Someone from one party or the other is going to be elected President, and that person will be bad for public education.

— John Kuhn (@johnkuhntx) October 14, 2015

LEG's piece ends with a link to offer feedback or thoughts-- I suggest we all use it.

Not Even a Bridesmaid

I have nothing to say about the Democratic debate, really. Neither does any other education blogger, though Steven Singer covers it as well as it needs to be covered. "Near silence" indeed.

So this is how it's going to be. The GOP is going to have a cartoon discussion about education, focusing on how to use charters to dismantle public ed and on how to find wacky ways to pretend that we're not havin' that Common Core stuff. And the Democratic line on public ed? The Clinton campaign locked in on their line months ago-- stick to the safe-and-easy topics of universal pre-K and accessible, cheaper-somehow college education.

That mantra is comfortable and easy. Plain folks can listen to it and hear, "Aww, more pre-school for those precious cute little kids, and a chance for young Americans to make something of themselves," while corporate backers, thirsty hedge funders, and ambitious reformsters can hear, "Expanding markets! Ka-ching!!"

The $64.50 question is, "Would education be on the front burner if Clinton had not already locked up the AFT and NEA endorsements?" Because as it is, we aren't on the front burner, the back burner, the bunsen burner, or anywhere near the stove. Well, hey-- Lily Eskelsen-Garcia suggested that once we were all in with the campaign, Clinton would be more inclined to hear our message and pay attention to it. What did Eskelsen-Garcia have to say about the debate last night?

Education must be part of the convo. We want to hear about universal pre-k, college affordability & opportunity for all students #DemDebate

— Lily Eskelsen García (@Lily_NEA) October 14, 2015

Really? We don't want to hear anything about the disastrous policies of the last twelve years that have systematically broken down and dismantled American public education and the teaching profession? Dang, but I could have sworn we wanted to hear about that. But I guess now that the union is on Team Clinton, our job is not to hold her feet to the fire so much as it is to give them a little massage and carry some baggage for her so that she can save her strength for other issues. Important issues. Issues that aren't US public education.

Sanders, with his focus on how the rich have commandeered so many parts of our democratic society, is so close to making useful statements about the education debates, but it just doesn't happen. And I'm not sure how somebody helps it happen at this point. And those other guys? Generic Candidates #3-5? I don't know what they think about education, but I suppose now that the education vote is supposedly locked up by Clinton, they won't feel the need to go there.

Bottom line-- US public education, despite the assorted crises associated with it (both fictional and non-fictional) is shaping up to be a non-issue once again in Presidential politics. I would say always a bridesmaid, never a bride, but it's more like always the person hired for a couple of hours to help direct the car parking in the field back behind the reception hall. Or maybe the person who cleans up the reception hall after the bridal party has danced off happily into the night.

If I was harboring any dreams, any spark of hope that maybe this would be our year, that maybe, given everything that has happened, this might be the year that public education somehow became a real campaign issue, that spark has been extinguished, buried, stomped on and drowned in a bucket of tears.

Worst of all-- and this really galls me-- I might owe Campbell Brown an apology. I wrote earlier that no Democratic candidates (and almost no important GOP ones) came to her education summit because they found her irrelevant. And while I'm comfortable with that assessment of her role in education policy debates, there is one other possibility-- when it comes to public education in this country, none of the candidates actually gives a shit. I could believe that nobody went to Brown's parties because they didn't think her summits would be a good setting for a serious discussion about public education. But last night the Democrats had a chance to hold that serious discussion, and they walked right by it.

My Question for Hillary

I'll keep it brief.

Candidate Clinton has indicated in talks with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia that she will absolutely listen to teachers. That's a great promise, but let me pare that down to a more direct question.

Last year, after years of failed administration education policies, the NEA general membership called for the resignation of Arne Duncan.  So here's my question:

If you had been President, would you have required the resignation of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education?

Okay, I realize that's a little in-your-face and involves some hypotheticals (such as, would you have ever appointed the guy in the first place), so let me ask a question, because I really want to understand how your administration would represent a break from the destructive policies of the past two administrations:

If you had been President for the past eight years, and knowing what you know now, how would your education policies have been different from the policies that we've actually had?

Please, please please please PLEASE, be specific. Talk about the ESEA rewrite or Common Core or financial incentives for states. But tell us something. If you had been our President for the past eight years, how would US education have been different. Because-- and again, I'm not sure if you get this-- education policy for the last sixteen years has not been good for public education in this country.

I await your response.

Hillary's NEA Audition [updated]

Yesterday Hillary Clinton met with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia to take her shot at winning the recommendation of the nation's biggest union. This is a challenging moment for the union because, frankly, their last recommendation turned out to be a giant eight-year suckfest for education.

I'm a registered Democrat, and I vote in every election. Like most of my generation, I vote for candidates and not parties. And while the GOP has been more consistent in its general assault on public ed, the Democratic Party harbors some of the worst opponents of public education and the teachers who work in it (looking at you, Andy Cuomo). It has been particularly striking how much the Obama administration's education policies have been simply an extension of the Bush administration's policies. It is no surprise that Jeb Bush has been a big fan of Arne Duncan, or that Duncan turned to Bush 3.0 for education policy advice.

I would say that the jury is still out on Hillary, but honestly, I'd be lying. Hillary is pretty clearly tied to the same charter-loving, reform-pushing, corporate-driven, test-and-punishing reformsters as our last two Presidents. CAP, one of the fiercest reformster-driven advocacy groups in DC, was simply a holding pen for Clinton campaign leaders like John Podesta; they are close to Hillary and they have never, ever, been a friend to public education or public school teachers. DFER, a group that absolutely loathes teachers and the teachers union, is delighted that Hillary is running.

In the NEA's press release, Garcia says that she and Clinton had "a frank and robust conversation about what is a stake in this coming election." That's followed by a few words from Clinton, none of which are terribly convincing.

Some of it is a plate or verbal twinkies, a pretty puff of empty ear calories.

What we can do together to deal with the issues we know are at the real core of making it possible to look at every little boy and girl and say "yes, you will have the best chances we can give you."

So, we will do stuff for children, and it will be stuff that is good. Glad we clarified that. This clearly sets Clinton apart from all other candidates. But what about education?

Are tests important? Yes. Do we need accountability? Yes. 

Are tests important? Really? Which tests? A first grade teacher's weekly spelling test? The useless abomination that is the PARCC?


And we need accountability? To whom? For what? Is she saying that the public should get to know what's going on in their local schools, or is she saying that the burden of proof is on schools to prove to the government that they don't suck?

And then there's this baloney:

So many of our poorer schools have cut off all the extracurricular activities. We’ve taken away band, in so many places we’ve taken away a lot of the sports. We’ve taken away arts classes. We’ve taken away school productions.

Okay, I don't want to minimize what's here. The loss of extra-curriculars, music, sports, the arts-- these are all bad things. But if you're looking at our nation's poorest, most underserved schools, and this is what you see, I am concerned. Perhaps we could also talk about physical plants-- buildings that are crumbling and un-maintained. Perhaps we could talk about support for simple things like, say, textbooks. Or enough teachers to reduce crowded class sizes. We might even talk about the systematic silencing of poor, black voices in places like Newark and Philadelphia, where the non-wealthy non-white community members are being deprived of the fundamental democratic process that is supposed to be basic to our country.

This is just a weird thing to focus on, out of all the issues that face high-poverty schools and communities.

[Update: In Washington Post's coverage of the interview, the stress was on Clinton's promise to listen. Which, I suppose, is better than a statement that she will absolutely ignore teachers. But talk is cheap, and listening is even cheaper.

“She basically said ‘What kind of fool would be making public policy without listening to the people who live in those communities, the people who know the names of the kids’?” Garcia said. “I loved that.”

Well, I love that, too. But the answer to her question is "Everybody in the current administration and all her good friends at CAP." And no, you don't get any credit for Listening To Teachers when the only ones you listen to are ones that are carefully vetted and selected. And you don't get credit for listening to teachers if you then ignore everything they say.

Every major policy decision about education in the last decade has been made without any serious significant input from actual teachers. Clinton's promise to "listen" does not move me.]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hillary Clinton is a better option than Scott Walker. And having just your legs chopped off is a better option than having both your arms and legs chopped off. I'm sick to death of the Democrats arguing, well, yeah, we suck, and we're going to punch you in the face, but that guy over there is going to kick you in the junk, so choose us. And frankly, at this point, when it comes to education I don't see a lot of real policy airspace between Clinton 2.0 and Bush 3.0.

I'm happy see Clinton court the NEA vote, but I remain unconvinced, and an endorsement from my union leaders will not sway my vote in the slightest. They're political animals, and they will make a political choice. But I'm a teacher, and I am so deeply and profoundly tired of voting for people who don't respect me, or my work, or the institution that is both the foundation of this country and the object of my life's work. I'll vote for Sanders or Nader before I throw my vote away on one more politician who's just going to kick me in the face.

Am I Ready for Hillary?

So now it has officially begun, again. Hillary Rodham Clinton is running for President. Let the questions begin. But the questions I'm interested in are not the stupid ones (Was she behind a nazi commie plot to blow up Benghazi?) or the horse racey ones (Will Hillary become inauthentic in a more authentic way?) Clinton, for a variety of reasons, receives a lot of stupid animosity for a lot of stupid reasons, and there are chapters of her career that could stand to see a little sunlight. I am not interested in any of that.

My question is, will she be good for public education?

I think we can all agree at this point that it's no longer possible to assume that anybody running under the Democrat standard is a supporter of public schools. Andrew Cuomo and the Obama administration have painfully proven that sad current reality. So it would be useful to know what kind of Democrat Clinton II proposes to be.

There's not much of a record to search through. Clinton's track record hasn't brought her into education issues very often. But there is one huge honking squealing flashing siren wrapped in a fluorescent red flag atop a high-powered blinking crimson light.

It's the Center for American Progress.

CAP bills itself as a progressive thinky tank, but it could also be called a holding tank for Clintonian administration members-in-waiting. Among the folks already attached to the HRC are John Podesta, who rose through a career of political aiding to become Chief of Staff for the second Clinton term. After that he formed CAP and  has run it since. Podesta protege Jennifer Palmieri has also bounced between government jobs and CAP. They are both major players in the HRC campaign.

CAP has hosted many folks related to the campaign, including Clinton herself.  In fact, if you start looking through Clinton's various appearances intended to help stave off controversy, they often turn out to be at CAP. When close Clinton advisor Huma Abedin came under fire, CAP CEO Neera Tanden was one of her staunch defenders.

CAP does an excellent job of hoovering up contributions from wealthy money-wielding folks, and it's a measure of CAP's closeness to Clinton that this money shoveling is seen in some quarters as a means of getting access to what may be the next DC administration.

All in all, it does not seem like a huge leap to think that CAP's positions on education could hew closely to the Clinton II positions. And that takes us back to the sirens and flags and blinkers.

I've looked at some CAP stuff over the past year. Here's some of what we've turned up.

CAP offered a "paper" (because that's what thinky tanks do) providing a roadmap to implementing Common Core. The paper pushes high stakes testing, test-based accountability, computer-based testing, aligned curriculum, VAM, and the fantasy that the new tests will be test-prep free.

When Senator Alexander floated his first ESEA rewrite, CAP was there to call it a failure, primarily because it didn't love high stakes testing enough. Minorities and students with disabilities need the opportunity to take many tests, because that's how they'll achieve more. Also, parents need the feedback in order to know what the kids are doing, and also to make selections from the various school choices available. Any bad idea you've ever hated in the Obama/Duncan administration, CAP has been praising right along.

CAP is not above floating new talking points with a whacky disregard for reality, including a bizarre article that tried to argue that CCSS really helps the female girls, even though the data it cited doesn't support the claims they made. CAP also occasionally turns to TNTP for research back-up, which is like hiring Daffy Duck to work on your dignity and etiquette practice for the Royal Ball.

And CAP was sloppy enough to illustrate an article about how teachers now stick around for more years by slapping up a picture of a TFA teacher who quit after two years to get a corporate job. Fun fact: after being called on it by bloggers near and far, they've left the picture on the article.

In short, there is no reason yet to think that Clinton would change a single, solitary piece of Obama/Duncan education policy. Heck, maybe she could just keep Arne around for another four years. He already knows where the office is, already has furniture he likes.

If Hillary wants my support (and while I may be representative of nobody but myself, maybe there are a few other teachers who are kind of tired of the current administration ed policies-- just two or three of us), then she had better explain exactly what she's going to do differently. I could also say we'd like to know who we're going to get for USED secretary, but hey, we thought we knew last time that we were getting Linda Darling-Hammond and look how that turned out.

But I can tell you this. I have never been a single-issue voter, but my profession has never been so attacked, besieged and crushed under policymakers' boots. So I will not, not under any circumstances, vote for any candidate who gives me the slightest inkling that she (or he) is planning to give me four more years like the last fifteen. I don't care if you're promising me a pony and your opponent is threatening to send locusts to my home town-- if you aren't going to change the destructive, educationally abusive, mandatory malpractice policies of the previous two administrations, I will not vote for you, period, full stop.

That is what I'm ready for.