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.

What Has Arne Learned?

Over at the official blog of the Department of Education, Secretary Arne Duncan shares "What I've Learned in Fifty States." Spoiler alert: nothing.

Arne can be excused. Many people are unclear about the meaning of "learn." Learning implies a change of state, a movement from not-knowing to knowing, from not-understanding to understanding. The world has a large supply of people who are not interested in a change of state, and so their interactions with the world around them are not about understanding or grasping or discovering, but about confirmation. They are not looking for a change of state, but of a more solid, comfortable settling into their status quo.

Politics are not conducive to learning. You don't get many political points for saying, "Hey, I've look at some facts, talked to some people, examined the issue, and I've come to a different understanding." In life, we aspire to be, find, foster life-long learners. In politics, learning just gets you a "flip-flopper" label.

So it's not particularly surprising that in traveling through fifty states, Arne "learned" that he's always been right about everything. Not once in fifty states did he encounter something that made him say, "Damn. I need to rethink this."

Can Arne learn? It's a tough call to make from out here in the cheap seats. NEA president Lily Eskelsen-Garcia once declared that he was well-intentioned and sincere, but just wrong. Many folks suggest that he's corrupt and in the pocket of business interests, but I think that's facile. That kind of corruption comes in various shades, few of them simple quid pro quo pay-to-play. I think it's more common that you spend time with rich, important people and they are charismatic and they seem to make a of sense and so, hey, you adopt their view because it just seems so right. I look at things like the last Pearson essay about testing and, man, it looks and sounds like the work of really important people who really know what they're doing, and if I weren't inclined to be a skeptical asshole, I might find it pretty convincing. Maybe Arne's just in way over his head and he's naturally attracted to the cutest lifeguard that fishes him out of the water. Maybe he just doesn't know any better. This is a mystery I still to solve with the clues that make it out to the cheap seats because as it turns out, Arne and I just haven't had a face-to-face conversation yet.

Arne wants us to believe that he's really been listening, but poking through his map of visits reveals very few actual encounters with actual teachers in actual public school settings.

During the past five years, whether my visit was to a conference, a community center, a business, an early childhood center, a university, or one of the more than 340 schools I’ve stopped by, I’ve come away with new insight and knowledge into the challenges local communities face, and the creative ways people are addressing them. I know that in order to do this job well, it’s vital to never stop listening, especially to those in the classroom each day.

Except that most of those 340 schools were backdrops for political business, settings for conferences or announcements that allowed for good eyewash for department business as usual. And when Arne tells me that he's come away with new insights and knowledge, I challenge him to cite a specific example. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting; can anybody remember a single moment in his career that Arne has said, "Hey, from seeing how this looks on the ground, I've learned this thing that I didn't previously understand/know/believe"?

Duncan goes on to cite some specific visits in which he was excited to discover that he has been right all along and that his policies are awesome. This is not learning. By the end of this piece of puffery, it's clear that Arne has learned nothing in five years, but he has collected confirmations of his pre-existing beliefs.

He's had the chance. Say what you want about the people in the Resistance opposing the reformster policies and programs-- we aren't very hard to find. Find just one of our blogs, and the links will open up a whole world of differing opinions and spirited discourse. LEG reported a fairly direct conversation with him. And to his credit, he once actually sat in a room with some BATs. At this point Arne really has no excuse for not being at least familiar with the real arguments against his policies. He could learn about the data that shows how VAM is a failed useless tool, or that his testing program is disastrous, or that modern charters are an unregulated theft-fest. And yet somehow, even a simple "We don't all agree on how best to serve students in America's public schools" doesn't make his list.

I go back to the department blog because it is a striking example of writing at its absolute worst. It fails first in voice. There really isn't anything here to indicate that the post was written by a real person; it could as easily have been written by an intern with Arne's itinerary and a list of department talking points open in front of him. It's seemingly meant to be a personal reflection, and yet there is nothing personal about it, no trace of personality in it. This adds to the cumulative impression I've formed of Arne; he seems to bring nothing personal to his job, but seems to view it as the business of implementing ideas, policies and talking points that he has no personal investment in. When you can take it, try looking for a clip of Arne talking about basketball, and compare it to one of his official secretarial duties. Only one of those activities seems to awaken any personal passion in him (spoiler alert: it's not the one that involves your tax dollars at work).

But this is also the sort of writing that makes me scratch my head and look around for an audience. It's like a man on a soapbox delivering a desultory sermon to nobody. Who did he imagine reading this? Are his critics supposed to be reading it  and thinking, "Damn, I've had this guy all wrong. I am now convinced of his rightitude!" Are his supporters (I imagine there must be a few) suppose to take heart from a rousing pep speech, because I don't think this is that. Is it supposed to give journalists something to cover? Because there's nothing either new or strikingly quotable here. I will bet you dollars to donuts that I am at this moment writing the longest response to the piece that is ever going to be written.

The basic point of writing is that you have something you want to say and somebody you want to say it to. Arne's essay appears to fail on both points.

I take it as the intersection of Arne in particular and politics in general-- a pointless, empty exercise in talking to the air to signify, at a minimum, that you are still doing something, and that nothing has changed (just in case anybody was wondering). Devoid of personality, purpose or passion, it hints at a bureaucrat who has simply lost his moorings and any particular contact with actual human beings and the world they live in, but who may not realize that he's even adrift.

Arne opens with the observation that the best ideas come from outside Washington, DC, which is of course the kind of thing said only by people soaked in DC culture (or its outposts in places like, say, Chicago). Just add that to list of things that Arne hasn't learned. As a summative self-assessment, this is not top notch work. Perhaps, rather than trying to advance on merit, Arne is counting on one more social promotion.

What Should Arne Do?

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has taken plenty of grief.

He has been criticized by folks on the right who believe he is, at the very least, a hood ornament on the Great Studebaker of Federal Intrusion into education. He has been criticized by folks on the left for being the faceplate on the great machine that is dismantling the US public school system.

Arne is easy to pick apart (I should know-- I've done it here, here, here and here, to give just a few examples), and he invites it with such fumbling footinmouthery like his classic slam on white suburban moms. He buddied up with reformsters like John White and Kevin Huffman, cheered for the winners of the Vergara anti-tenure lawsuit, and called Hurrican Katrina a great step forward for New Orleans.

And so the pile gets bigger and bigger. The NEA called for his resignation. The AFT voted that he be sent to his room to think about what he's done. Conservative CCSS boosters blame his intervention for damaging the Common Core brand. A soon-to-be-published Vanderbilt Law Review article asserts that the signature NCLB waiver program is illegal. NEA president-elect Lily E. Garcia characterized him as well-meaning, sincere, and dead wrong about just about everything. And that's about the nicest thing anyone has had to say about him in a while. 

We've hammered Duncan for what he's gotten wrong. But as teachers, we know that you don't foster improvement by focusing on the negatives. Can we come up with some suggestions for what Duncan should do? Let me give it a shot with the following suggestions.

Meditate in Pursuit of Personal Integration

I'm not kidding. There has to be a serious discontinuity somewhere inside Duncan's head, because one of his defining characteristics as Secretary of Education is that the words that come out of his mouth and the policies that come out of his office don't match.

It has been that way since Day One. Take this quote from his confirmation hearing:

I think the more our schools become community centers, the more they become centers of community and family life, the better our children can do.

There is more in a similar vein. And an admirable vein it is, too, but Duncan's office has been a huge booster of the charter school movement, including the kind of charter-on-steroid action we're seeing places like New Orleans and Newark, the kind of chartery "save kids from their zip code" systems that actively oppose neighborhood and community schools.

Duncan's entire tenure has been more of the same. He uses rhetoric about how teachers deserve more respect and better pay, but he also applauds the death of tenure in California and suggests that educational mediocrity is enabled by the rampant lying of educators. He speaks about the importance of listening to teachers, but he rarely encounters a teacher who hasn't been vetted and screened. Then we have his recent discovery that tests are being over-emphasized in schools across America, a shocking development that he deplores without any recognition that such test reverence is a direct result of his own policies.

When I look at the huge Antarctic-sized gulf between Duncan's words and his actions, I can only conclude one of the following is true

         1) He is dissembling in the political style

         2) He doesn't understand the effects of administration policies

         3) He has in his head a powerful barrier against cognitive dissonance

         4) He is privately wracked with existential angst

         5) He is full of bovine-issued fertilizer

I'll admit that some of these are more likely than others. But whatever the case, Duncan needs to align his words and his policies, because either his policies are a betrayal of his principles, or his words are lies. Either way, he needs to check himself. As a nation, we need to have an honest conversation about the policies the government is actually pursuing, not a pleasing word-massage that has no connection to reality. The honest conversation might not be fun or pleasant, but we still need to have it.

Do the Right Thing

The best positive steps for Duncan to take would be to actually reverse the destructive policies that he has been pursuing. I know high government officials rarely write their own speeches, so let me offer a rough draft that Duncan can feel free to use:

Four years ago, with the best of intentions, we embarked on an attempt to rescue American education from the flawed policies of No Child Left Behind and renew our commitment to our children's education. In pursuing those worthy goals, we made mistakes. I stand before you today to announce that we are prepared to admit those errors and correct our course.

We believed in the promise of charter schools, but we have seen that, unregulated and unmonitored, charters have become a means of bilking taxpayers and destroying communities. We will require all states to return to tight caps on charter creation until we can develop policies that will allow charters to be developed responsibly, and not as get rich quick schemes for educational amateurs.

We believed that the development of national standards would bring consistency to our schools and economies of scale to the educational marketplace, which would in turn make our nation's school system more efficient and economical. We can now see that no such thing occured. One size does not fit all, and the profit motive has no place in the classroom. As of today, we are withdrawing our support for any sort of national standards movement that does not come from the nation's schools themselves.

We believed in the value of testing as a way of measuring educational progress. We have come to understand that tests provide a poor measure of the rich educational experiences we desire for all our children, and that our demand that tests be central to all aspects of education has simply warped and twisted the fabric of American schools. As of today, we will remove all federal standardized testing requirements, and we will ensure that such tests will never be used to evaluate students, teachers or schools ever again.

We recognize at last that the problems of poverty-strained schools cannot be solved by tests, attempts to shuffle teachers around, additional bureaucracy, and an infusion of untrained teacher temps. The solution for these schools is to work for long-term solutions to the problems of poverty, and, in the short term, blunt those effects by making sure that economic and educational resources are directed to those schools that cannot secure such resources on their own.

Finally, we pledge to take a step back and to trust the people of states and local school districts to make wise and well-informed decisions about their own education. We will listen to teachers and local officials.In the coming year, we will not issue a single educational edict from DC except to implement the changes that I have just described. And we will not take a single meeting with corporate executives from any education-based businesses. If they want your business, if they want to exert influence over you, they must come to you-- not to us. We are here to help you. We are going to stop telling you what to do.

See how easy that is? Duncan could be a hero tomorrow. If he needs a quiet place to think it over and get in touch with his better side, I have a spare bedroom and I live right next to a river. He's welcome any time, and I promise not to say a single mean thing to him while he's here.

Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats

Meet the New NEA Presidents

In election results that surprised nobody anywhere, NEA delegates crowned heir apparent Lily Eskelson Garcia the new presidents of NEA.

Liana Heitin reported on the election for EdWeek, and... well... I'm excited? Bemused? Worried about Garcia's susceptibility to cognitive dissonance.

"I believe Secretary Duncan is sincere..."

"And I absolutely believe he is sincerely wrong," she said in a post-election interview. It's a great statement, sweeping and clear. I'll even give her the desire to step away from vituperative personal political attacks. It is not necessary to prove Duncan is a dim-witted mugwump corporate tool ninnymuggins if we just establish that he's wrong.

Getting specific

Garcia showed her ability to get down to specifics by slamming the ever-popular third grade pass-this-reading-test-or-else policy popular in states where education policy is run by people who don't know any eight year olds. She held up Oklahoma as a specific example (though, as Heitin points out, Oklahoma just threw that policy out, but okay-- it's been a busy day).

And Garcia threw out GERM (the global education reform movement) which is one of the few snappy names for the people variously known as deformers, reformsters, and "reformers" (with ironic quotation marks), linking it specifically to Koch Brothers, ALEC, and "prominent industrialists."

This is your first hint that things are not looking up at NEA. Why pick all our examples from the Evil Conservative Republican Menu while ignoring that plenty of nominally Democratic folks like DFER, She Who Will Not Be Named, and, oh, the well-meaning Arne Duncan, are a big fat part of GERM as well?

And then things go deep into the weeds

When asked about the Gates Foundation, whose influence on education policy is a constant source of debate among educators, Garcia said she applauds the work they've done to promote the Common Core State Standards. "I read those standards, and I love them," she said.

Under which rock has Garcia been hiding? I don't have enough space here to cover every single argument and piece of evidence that makes it clear that opposing testing and loving the Common Core requires a tolerance for cognitive dissonance usually not available without powerful drugs. Just a list of all the GERM organizations funded by a combination of swell honorable Gates money and evil GOP money would be enough to sprain the scroll function on a computer.

Being for the Core and against testing is like loving knives and being opposed to cutting. It is like being a fan of genitals but hating sex. It is like loving airplanes and believing they should never leave the ground. It is like wanting to buy a great instrument and declaring that it's best to never play it. It is like bringing a gorilla into your home and imagining that it will never dirty the furniture. It is like setting the timer on a bomb and being shocked that it eventually explodes. It's like thinking your dog is really pretty but being opposed to dog poop.

Oh, President Garcia, we are going to have some chats here, you and you and I.

Half a Great Communicator

On the subject of her leadership style. "People will know where I stand. There will be absolutely no question. I think that will get me in trouble sometimes."

That may be, but if I may. What tends to get NEA leadership is not the part of communicating where they tell everybody else what they think-- it's the part where they listen.

I'll note here that while DVR had a twitter account that he never used, Garcia appears to have no twitter account at all. The NEA has a real problem with , I don't know, the entire 21st century. I once wrote "Today's NEA is not your father's NEA. It's more like your grandfather's NEA." The union's inability to function in any mode other than the pronouncement-by-press-release and occasional NEA-site essay makes a joke out of its other pronouncements.

I welcome, for instance, NEA's stated intention to help teachers get better at doing their job, to help with professional development. But damn-- you guys can't even operate the twitter! I don't know if I trust you to advise me on how to set up an overhead projector. What the heck are you going to tell a twenty-two year old about how to function as a teacher in today's world when NEA leadership still works in slightly-modified pre-WWII techniques?

So here we go  

It's a bold new era in which NEA declares that we must fight the back end of the Reform Horse and kill it dead, but the front end of the Reform Horse is beautiful and noble and to be cherished and loved. It is possible that NEA actually needs two separate presidents at this point-- one for talking out of the left side of her mouth, and one for talking out of the right side. In the meantime, apparently, President Garcia will serve as both.

[Update: Garcia does a keep a blog, which you can find here, including a further explanation of how she keeps CCSS and testing separate inside her head. I've added it to the blogroll over to your right.]