A month ago, Chris Christie was making a quick will-he-or-won't-he pre-Presidential campaign tour of Iowa when he stopped at Iowa State to drop some thinks on the education biz.
The speech was attended by a modest crowd of around 160 people (plus a great lump of media) and didn't make much of an impression at the time. But it's worth looking at because Christie laid out his education ideas. Not that there's much doubt about what Christie's ideas about education are, but it's always less certain what Christie will claim his policies are.
The print coverage of the speech was pretty clear.
As Governor, Christie said he has reformed teacher tenures, promoted charter school and school choice, installed performance-based pay, and unsuccessfully fought teachers unions for layoffs based on merit rather than seniority.
But this clip shows another level of Christie's fantasy education policy.
It's short, though I had to watch it multiple times (at least once just to get past the mesmerizing trio of young men behind the governor-- two who want to be anywhere else and one who is falling asleep). Christie is telling us that he's upped charters and passed the Urban Hope Act (aka one more way to privatize more schools). "Children and their families are flocking to them," says Christie. "We've brought in transformative leaders and we've started new programs. And none of this we've done on our own..."
Now it gets bizarre.
We've worked with teachers in those communities. We've listened to community leaders and parents to get their buy-in. And we've brought in new expertise and talent from around the country...
Education K through 12 can be fixed in this country. And there are great people on both sides of the aisle, and wonderful teachers who are willing to do the right thing.
See? Chris Christie loves him some teachers.
He goes on to note that it was really hard to pull people together when they faced so much opposition. But "we of New Jersey" won't back down and won't take no for an answer. And just for that little extra touch of Iowa corn, Christie throws in a heartfelt, "We must put the God-given potential of every child first.
So there you have it. Chris Christie, uniter and lover of teachers.
Or maybe this article (complete with famous photo) from the Washington Post.
Or take a look at this article from Jersey Jazzman, covering such highlights as the moment when Christie compared the teachers union to ISIS.
Was Christie showing teacher love any of these times, or when he quickly abandoned his pledge to safeguard pensions. Was he working closely with community teachers and leaders in Newark, where people had to take to the streets to be heard, or where it looks like they're unlikely to have a say in who runs their schools?
Christie is not going to be the GOP nominee, but he is going to have more opportunities to speak baloney about education, and it will be difficult to keep up with him, both in terms of listeners identifying the baloney and other candidates manufacturing their own. How soon are the elections??
Monday, July 6, 2015
Jeb's Ed Backers Revealed
Long-time observers of the reformster scene are familiar with the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) the advocacy group that was, among other things, supposed to help Jeb Bush leverage his reformy career into a Presidential run.
At various times they have promoted specious arguments for testing, tried to use aging demographics to sell choice, jumped on the honesty gap train to nowhere, held a regular reformster-palooza gatheration, and tried to harness fake-ish social media presences to tout the whole reformy package. They are a one stop shop for reformster baloney, sliced to whatever thickness you prefer.
One thing they have not previously done is actually admit where their funding comes from. Until now.
In an act that appears related to Jeb Bush's Candidature Data Dumpage, FEE has finally coughed up their donors list. And it is a revelation, a shock, a stunning surprise of-- well, actually, no. It's pretty much exactly who you'd guess would be backing the mess.
FEE's list now occupies a corner of their website. John Connor of NPR broke the list down to make it a little more searchable.
It is not an exact list in that donors are organized by ranges. So we know that Bloomberg donated somewhere between $1.2 million and $2.4 million, which is quite a margin of error. But it's still a chunk of change, either way.
Joining Bloomberg Philanthropies in the Over a Cool Million Club are these folks, a completely unsurprising list:
Walton Family Foundation (between $3.5 mill and over $6 mill)
B&M Gates (between $3 mill and over $5 mill)
Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation (between $1.6 mill and $3.25 mill)
News Corporation (between $1.5 mill and $3 mill)
GE Foundation (between $2.5 mill and over $3 mill)
Helmsley Trust (at least $2 mill)
The Might Have Hit a Million Club includes
The Broad Foundation
Jacqueline Hume Foundation
Robertson Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Kovner Foundation
The Arnold Foundation
Beyond those, we find Florida businesses and a fair sampling of folks who have a stake in the FEE mission, like McGraw Hill and Renaissance Learning.
FEE's website breaks things down by year, which helps create a picture of FEE's growth. The first reported year is 2007 (that's the same year that Bush's run as Florida's governor ended), and while Bloomberg was still one of the top donors, that was with a measly five figures. This shift to private advocacy on public policy matters was not just an education thing-- in 2007 Bush also joined the board of Tenet Healthcare.
2008 was also a modest year, with no million-dollar and most donors targeting their contribution to particular FEE programs such as Excellence in Teaching or the annual Reformster-palooza Summit.
But 2009 was a great year for reformster-preneurs. Race to the Top was unveiled and the Common Core was looking so good that states were signing up for it even though they didn't know what the hell it was! FEE was looking less like a retired governor's hobby group and more like a one stop shop for people interested in making serious education money.
So it's in 2009 that FEE starts to draw the big bucks-- The Walton Family was in for six big figures, and that, like many of the support checks, was for FEE to use as it saw fit, not earmarked for a particular program. By 2010 Gates, Schwab and Broad had joined in, and by 2011 there were five donors in the $500K to $1 mill range. In 2012 GE became the first over-a-million donor, and in 2013 Gates and Helmsley joined the club.
2014 marked the first downward trend at the top end. Gates, Schwab, News Corp and GE all dropped back to the under-a-million category. Make of that what you will.
This is a ho-hum story. There are no surprises, nothing special revealed that we hadn't all already guessed. The curtain has been pulled back to reveal exactly who we thought was back there all along.
But it's still important because now we're not just guessing--we have confirmation. Yet one more reformster advocacy group is revealed to be a small club of high rollers, many of whom have vested interests in how this all shakes out.
The truth about FEE is a reminder-- for the gazillionth time-- that we have yet to see an actual hard-core full-on grass roots movement in support of reformster policies. It's also a reminder that if education issues were being decided on merit, or if all the Rich Person money just dried up tomorrow, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Ed reform is a big delicate rosebush in the middle of the desert, and money is the water that keeps it alive. Shut off the water, and it's done.
At various times they have promoted specious arguments for testing, tried to use aging demographics to sell choice, jumped on the honesty gap train to nowhere, held a regular reformster-palooza gatheration, and tried to harness fake-ish social media presences to tout the whole reformy package. They are a one stop shop for reformster baloney, sliced to whatever thickness you prefer.
One thing they have not previously done is actually admit where their funding comes from. Until now.
In an act that appears related to Jeb Bush's Candidature Data Dumpage, FEE has finally coughed up their donors list. And it is a revelation, a shock, a stunning surprise of-- well, actually, no. It's pretty much exactly who you'd guess would be backing the mess.
FEE's list now occupies a corner of their website. John Connor of NPR broke the list down to make it a little more searchable.
It is not an exact list in that donors are organized by ranges. So we know that Bloomberg donated somewhere between $1.2 million and $2.4 million, which is quite a margin of error. But it's still a chunk of change, either way.
Joining Bloomberg Philanthropies in the Over a Cool Million Club are these folks, a completely unsurprising list:
Walton Family Foundation (between $3.5 mill and over $6 mill)
B&M Gates (between $3 mill and over $5 mill)
Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation (between $1.6 mill and $3.25 mill)
News Corporation (between $1.5 mill and $3 mill)
GE Foundation (between $2.5 mill and over $3 mill)
Helmsley Trust (at least $2 mill)
The Might Have Hit a Million Club includes
The Broad Foundation
Jacqueline Hume Foundation
Robertson Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Kovner Foundation
The Arnold Foundation
Beyond those, we find Florida businesses and a fair sampling of folks who have a stake in the FEE mission, like McGraw Hill and Renaissance Learning.
FEE's website breaks things down by year, which helps create a picture of FEE's growth. The first reported year is 2007 (that's the same year that Bush's run as Florida's governor ended), and while Bloomberg was still one of the top donors, that was with a measly five figures. This shift to private advocacy on public policy matters was not just an education thing-- in 2007 Bush also joined the board of Tenet Healthcare.
2008 was also a modest year, with no million-dollar and most donors targeting their contribution to particular FEE programs such as Excellence in Teaching or the annual Reformster-palooza Summit.
But 2009 was a great year for reformster-preneurs. Race to the Top was unveiled and the Common Core was looking so good that states were signing up for it even though they didn't know what the hell it was! FEE was looking less like a retired governor's hobby group and more like a one stop shop for people interested in making serious education money.
So it's in 2009 that FEE starts to draw the big bucks-- The Walton Family was in for six big figures, and that, like many of the support checks, was for FEE to use as it saw fit, not earmarked for a particular program. By 2010 Gates, Schwab and Broad had joined in, and by 2011 there were five donors in the $500K to $1 mill range. In 2012 GE became the first over-a-million donor, and in 2013 Gates and Helmsley joined the club.
2014 marked the first downward trend at the top end. Gates, Schwab, News Corp and GE all dropped back to the under-a-million category. Make of that what you will.
This is a ho-hum story. There are no surprises, nothing special revealed that we hadn't all already guessed. The curtain has been pulled back to reveal exactly who we thought was back there all along.
But it's still important because now we're not just guessing--we have confirmation. Yet one more reformster advocacy group is revealed to be a small club of high rollers, many of whom have vested interests in how this all shakes out.
The truth about FEE is a reminder-- for the gazillionth time-- that we have yet to see an actual hard-core full-on grass roots movement in support of reformster policies. It's also a reminder that if education issues were being decided on merit, or if all the Rich Person money just dried up tomorrow, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Ed reform is a big delicate rosebush in the middle of the desert, and money is the water that keeps it alive. Shut off the water, and it's done.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Consolidating Charter Gains
Has it seemed strange lately, to find reformsters advocating for stronger charter school regulations? Does it seem odd to find guys like Mike Petrilli, one of charterdom's most tireless salesmen, traveling to Detroit to tell reformsters to police charter quality more thoroughly? Is it surprise to find Fordham calling for tougher charter regulations in Ohio, where they themselves operate charters?
In war, an army may take a position through rough and ugly means-- but once there, they consolidate that position by tightening up the troops, re-positioning defenses, and generally settling in.
Or if you prefer a more peaceful example, try retail. A good used car salesman knows to assume the sale and swiftly shift the conversation away from "Are you going to buy this car" to "How would you like to pay for this car?" Because the second conversation assumes that the purchase of the car is not in question.
Defining the new normal
Charter fans have been shifting into consolidation mode, working hard to assume the sale. In places like Ohio, where charters have grown up like kudzu and died off like your confused grandma's unwatered plants, supporters are quick to call for reform-- not an end to a charter system. In York, PA, an editorial points out in one breath that the small charter system has produced some staggering fails, but in the next breath calls for reform, not abolition. Even a new report on the state of New Orleans' mess of a charter system, written by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Coalition for Community Schools, decides that the widespread failure, fraud and abuse means it's time for more regulations.
This is particularly remarkable because back when folks were trying to get the charter foot in the door, every mention of a public school's failure or general shortcomings was proof, not that public schools needed help or resources or more government control, but that they needed to be shut down. When we found so much as a spot on the public school apple, we declared it was rotten and needed to be thrown away, but nowadays, when we find a charter apple that is brown and mushy, we just get out a paring knife and declare, "We'll just cut a couple of bad spots out and make a great pie!"
Petrilli and other charter pushers have fought hard on specific battles, but they are playing the long game as well. When Petrilli tells audiences like the New York Superintendents to seek out the sensible middle, he's really assuming the sale, selling the idea that replacing public education with a charter system is not all that wild and crazy, not at all a complete change of the point and mission of public education.
Charter fans regularly put out a simple message-- that, of course, charters are a permanent and appropriate part of the education landscape, and while we may need to talk about how to manage them, the idea that the charter system approach is now proven a failed experiment and should be dropped-- well, that's just crazy talk and we'd just as soon nobody even say it out loud.
Free-ish Un-open Market
In the process of tightening charter regulations, the charter army can also shed some of their erstwhile allies. A legion of charter operators descending on a city might have helped sell the Educational Variety Charter Concept, or made the dismantling of local public education more manageable, or just been a lovely paean to the Free Open Market.
But step two of having a Free Open Market is for some folks to dominate the Free Open Market and immediate start squeezing everybody else out of the Free Open Market (e.g. John D. Rockefeller or William Gates). This effect is compounded in the charter marketplace because some of the rabble are making the market winners look bad by association. The trick to watch for here is how the regulations are written. Market dominators usually like to get in there and help write the regulations so that the regulations favor the dominators (e.g. the food industry and the military-industrial complex). Look for charter regulations that favor the big players in the charter biz. Remember, when you are winning at Free Market, you want to squeeze out your competition and make it harder for other competitors to get in the game. Since most of the big players in the charter biz are also hedge fund guys, you know they already understand this perfectly.
Put the hammer away
Another feature of the consolidation stage is an attempt to shift the locus of power.
Once upon a time, reformsters loved the idea of getting the feds involved. The feds were maneuvered into pushing Common Core, high stakes testing, anti-teacher evaluation systems, Big Data collection and pushing turnaround mandates that would open the door for charters. Yes, once upon a time reformsters loved the federal gummint.
They loved them because the Big Federal Hammer was the only hammer big enough to break apart the state-level so-called-monopolies on education. "Go get 'em, USED," cheered reformsters.
Now, some things went wrong with that pretty quickly. I don't think anybody expected Common Core to blow up in conservative's faces so thoroughly, and the dream of two national-scale tests fell apart pretty quickly as well. Reformsters shifted pretty quickly to, "It's that darn Obama/Duncan who messed up our perfectly fine Common Core."
But reformsters were always going to turn on the feds. Say you're madly in love with Ethel, but she's dating Alphonse, who is big and strong and buff. So you hire/manipulate/coerce Waldeaux into taking Alphonse out of the picture. Before you can make your own move on Ethel, you need Waldeaux to go away. That's where we are now.
Reformsters are writing big thoughtful papers about how the feds need to shift control of the educational system back to the states while they are also pushing models for how the state can best implement charter expansions. They need the Big Federal Hammer to go away, because now that the golden eggs of individual states have been busted open, they need to NOT have federal regulations and control getting in their way. The dog that got off the leash and chewed up public schools has to be releashed before it lays any teeth on the charter biz.
Unintended consequences
No, I don't think they had this all figured out ahead of time. The collapse of Common Core, the routing of some Big Data companies, the failure of PARCC-- I think all of those required some improvisation. I also think they've been auditioning different models of state-level privatization, only just recently settling on the NOLA-Memphis style Recovery-Achievement School District model as most promising.
So, no, I don't think they've worked this all out, and I don't think we're on an unavoidable track toward charter domination.
School privatizers now face a challenge-- the writing of the rules. Pretty much everybody believes that charters, at a minimum, need some reining. But every piece of regulation can potentially cut into the power to make money easily in the sector. For charteristas, writing just the right regulations that tighten the market without turning it all into another version of the same old public school system, which is related to the puzzle of how to get government to hand over tax dollars without attaching strings to it.
For the rest of us, the challenge is to keep the right questions on the table. Charter promoters are predisposed to present each issue as a momentary blip, and not evidence that there's something fundamentally unsound about a charter-choice system. Instead of discussing how best to manage the privatized charter system, we should keep asking why we should even be having it in the first place.
In war, an army may take a position through rough and ugly means-- but once there, they consolidate that position by tightening up the troops, re-positioning defenses, and generally settling in.
Or if you prefer a more peaceful example, try retail. A good used car salesman knows to assume the sale and swiftly shift the conversation away from "Are you going to buy this car" to "How would you like to pay for this car?" Because the second conversation assumes that the purchase of the car is not in question.
Defining the new normal
Charter fans have been shifting into consolidation mode, working hard to assume the sale. In places like Ohio, where charters have grown up like kudzu and died off like your confused grandma's unwatered plants, supporters are quick to call for reform-- not an end to a charter system. In York, PA, an editorial points out in one breath that the small charter system has produced some staggering fails, but in the next breath calls for reform, not abolition. Even a new report on the state of New Orleans' mess of a charter system, written by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Coalition for Community Schools, decides that the widespread failure, fraud and abuse means it's time for more regulations.
This is particularly remarkable because back when folks were trying to get the charter foot in the door, every mention of a public school's failure or general shortcomings was proof, not that public schools needed help or resources or more government control, but that they needed to be shut down. When we found so much as a spot on the public school apple, we declared it was rotten and needed to be thrown away, but nowadays, when we find a charter apple that is brown and mushy, we just get out a paring knife and declare, "We'll just cut a couple of bad spots out and make a great pie!"
Petrilli and other charter pushers have fought hard on specific battles, but they are playing the long game as well. When Petrilli tells audiences like the New York Superintendents to seek out the sensible middle, he's really assuming the sale, selling the idea that replacing public education with a charter system is not all that wild and crazy, not at all a complete change of the point and mission of public education.
Charter fans regularly put out a simple message-- that, of course, charters are a permanent and appropriate part of the education landscape, and while we may need to talk about how to manage them, the idea that the charter system approach is now proven a failed experiment and should be dropped-- well, that's just crazy talk and we'd just as soon nobody even say it out loud.
Free-ish Un-open Market
In the process of tightening charter regulations, the charter army can also shed some of their erstwhile allies. A legion of charter operators descending on a city might have helped sell the Educational Variety Charter Concept, or made the dismantling of local public education more manageable, or just been a lovely paean to the Free Open Market.
But step two of having a Free Open Market is for some folks to dominate the Free Open Market and immediate start squeezing everybody else out of the Free Open Market (e.g. John D. Rockefeller or William Gates). This effect is compounded in the charter marketplace because some of the rabble are making the market winners look bad by association. The trick to watch for here is how the regulations are written. Market dominators usually like to get in there and help write the regulations so that the regulations favor the dominators (e.g. the food industry and the military-industrial complex). Look for charter regulations that favor the big players in the charter biz. Remember, when you are winning at Free Market, you want to squeeze out your competition and make it harder for other competitors to get in the game. Since most of the big players in the charter biz are also hedge fund guys, you know they already understand this perfectly.
Put the hammer away
Another feature of the consolidation stage is an attempt to shift the locus of power.
Once upon a time, reformsters loved the idea of getting the feds involved. The feds were maneuvered into pushing Common Core, high stakes testing, anti-teacher evaluation systems, Big Data collection and pushing turnaround mandates that would open the door for charters. Yes, once upon a time reformsters loved the federal gummint.
They loved them because the Big Federal Hammer was the only hammer big enough to break apart the state-level so-called-monopolies on education. "Go get 'em, USED," cheered reformsters.
Now, some things went wrong with that pretty quickly. I don't think anybody expected Common Core to blow up in conservative's faces so thoroughly, and the dream of two national-scale tests fell apart pretty quickly as well. Reformsters shifted pretty quickly to, "It's that darn Obama/Duncan who messed up our perfectly fine Common Core."
But reformsters were always going to turn on the feds. Say you're madly in love with Ethel, but she's dating Alphonse, who is big and strong and buff. So you hire/manipulate/coerce Waldeaux into taking Alphonse out of the picture. Before you can make your own move on Ethel, you need Waldeaux to go away. That's where we are now.
Reformsters are writing big thoughtful papers about how the feds need to shift control of the educational system back to the states while they are also pushing models for how the state can best implement charter expansions. They need the Big Federal Hammer to go away, because now that the golden eggs of individual states have been busted open, they need to NOT have federal regulations and control getting in their way. The dog that got off the leash and chewed up public schools has to be releashed before it lays any teeth on the charter biz.
Unintended consequences
No, I don't think they had this all figured out ahead of time. The collapse of Common Core, the routing of some Big Data companies, the failure of PARCC-- I think all of those required some improvisation. I also think they've been auditioning different models of state-level privatization, only just recently settling on the NOLA-Memphis style Recovery-Achievement School District model as most promising.
So, no, I don't think they've worked this all out, and I don't think we're on an unavoidable track toward charter domination.
School privatizers now face a challenge-- the writing of the rules. Pretty much everybody believes that charters, at a minimum, need some reining. But every piece of regulation can potentially cut into the power to make money easily in the sector. For charteristas, writing just the right regulations that tighten the market without turning it all into another version of the same old public school system, which is related to the puzzle of how to get government to hand over tax dollars without attaching strings to it.
For the rest of us, the challenge is to keep the right questions on the table. Charter promoters are predisposed to present each issue as a momentary blip, and not evidence that there's something fundamentally unsound about a charter-choice system. Instead of discussing how best to manage the privatized charter system, we should keep asking why we should even be having it in the first place.
Watch "Education, Inc."
Filmmaker Brian Malone has made a worthy addition to the catalog of documentaries about reformster shenanigans. Education, Inc is well worth your time (and your money).
The challenge for any documentary about the reformster assault is to show both the large picture of what powers and policies are fueling the privatization of public ed, and also the way these issues play out on a local level. Malone meets that challenge admirably.
He begins with his local focus-- Douglas County in Colorado. As we join them, they are in the midst of a hard-fought battle for control of the local school board-- control that was lost in previous election as a slate of members were swept in on a wave of outside money. Why would little Douglass County attract anyone's attention? Probably because they have a $500 million budget.
The clash between the reformster board members and the public school supporters is hard to watch; the board uses an escalating series of moves to silence public objections and to insure that they can meet in peace to do as they wish. It's ugly and it's not even masked in a cloak of politeness or rationalization.
Malone tells his own story as a local parent slowly becoming aware that the brutal impact on his own school system is just one local manifestation of larger forces in the nation, and so eventually he travels to other cities, including Chicago and DC. He learns about No Child Left Behind and the role of ALEC in producing the privatization policies that have popped up all across America. He learns about the role of testing in driving privatization. He takes a look at the differences in how all this plays out in a neighboring county, and what can be learned from the differences. I am not sure that he entirely gets Common Core (at one point he says that "the principle of Common Core is a good one") but that is a brief portion of the film.
What Malone does get is the power of politics soaked in an ocean of money, chasing an even huger ocean of money. Malone gets how that big soggy mess is turning into ugly and destructive policies on the local level. Malone gets how free-market ideology is destroying the fundamental idea of public education.
Much of this will seem familiar to readers of this blog, buy it's still worth watching. We've all read plenty about how combative and unresponsive reformsters can be, but watching still is a punch in the gut. And the portion of the film in which an activist discovers that a school district has actually set up a dummy charter school in order to launder money on its illegal path to fund a private religious school is astonishing in a "just when you think you've seen the most cynical and giant-balled reformster move ever" way.
Malone also underlines a sad truth, but one we have to confront-- none of what happened in Douglass County could have happened without the cooperation of the vast majority of the local voters, who just stayed home and didn't vote at all. We can talk all day about how Big Money is used to sway elections, but most elections in this country could be radically altered if the voters just showed up.
Ultimately Malone brings us back to the outcome of the hotly contested school board election; I'll leave that to the movie to tell you.
I will add Education, Inc to my arsenal of material to use in getting through to folks who haven't been paying attention. You can purchase a copy for $20, which is certainly a better use of a twenty than two big meals at McDonald's or a copy of Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. I recommend the film both for your own use to share with friends and family; Malone has done a great job of connecting the larger issues to a local setting. And here's one last thing to notice-- this is not about some urban poverty center, but beautiful, comfortable Colorado. On top of everything else, the film is a reminder that reformsters have their eyes everywhere. Time to wake up.
The challenge for any documentary about the reformster assault is to show both the large picture of what powers and policies are fueling the privatization of public ed, and also the way these issues play out on a local level. Malone meets that challenge admirably.
He begins with his local focus-- Douglas County in Colorado. As we join them, they are in the midst of a hard-fought battle for control of the local school board-- control that was lost in previous election as a slate of members were swept in on a wave of outside money. Why would little Douglass County attract anyone's attention? Probably because they have a $500 million budget.
The clash between the reformster board members and the public school supporters is hard to watch; the board uses an escalating series of moves to silence public objections and to insure that they can meet in peace to do as they wish. It's ugly and it's not even masked in a cloak of politeness or rationalization.
Malone tells his own story as a local parent slowly becoming aware that the brutal impact on his own school system is just one local manifestation of larger forces in the nation, and so eventually he travels to other cities, including Chicago and DC. He learns about No Child Left Behind and the role of ALEC in producing the privatization policies that have popped up all across America. He learns about the role of testing in driving privatization. He takes a look at the differences in how all this plays out in a neighboring county, and what can be learned from the differences. I am not sure that he entirely gets Common Core (at one point he says that "the principle of Common Core is a good one") but that is a brief portion of the film.
What Malone does get is the power of politics soaked in an ocean of money, chasing an even huger ocean of money. Malone gets how that big soggy mess is turning into ugly and destructive policies on the local level. Malone gets how free-market ideology is destroying the fundamental idea of public education.
Much of this will seem familiar to readers of this blog, buy it's still worth watching. We've all read plenty about how combative and unresponsive reformsters can be, but watching still is a punch in the gut. And the portion of the film in which an activist discovers that a school district has actually set up a dummy charter school in order to launder money on its illegal path to fund a private religious school is astonishing in a "just when you think you've seen the most cynical and giant-balled reformster move ever" way.
Malone also underlines a sad truth, but one we have to confront-- none of what happened in Douglass County could have happened without the cooperation of the vast majority of the local voters, who just stayed home and didn't vote at all. We can talk all day about how Big Money is used to sway elections, but most elections in this country could be radically altered if the voters just showed up.
Ultimately Malone brings us back to the outcome of the hotly contested school board election; I'll leave that to the movie to tell you.
I will add Education, Inc to my arsenal of material to use in getting through to folks who haven't been paying attention. You can purchase a copy for $20, which is certainly a better use of a twenty than two big meals at McDonald's or a copy of Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. I recommend the film both for your own use to share with friends and family; Malone has done a great job of connecting the larger issues to a local setting. And here's one last thing to notice-- this is not about some urban poverty center, but beautiful, comfortable Colorado. On top of everything else, the film is a reminder that reformsters have their eyes everywhere. Time to wake up.
Detroit News Is Clueless
Detroit News writer Ingrid Jacques reports breathlessly about the arrival of education experts into the motor city. Actually, the headline writer says the experts "descend" on Detroit, which tells you plenty about how the editor views the relative position of these experts and the city, even if the editor stopped short of writing "Experts descend from on high to enlighten lowly locals."
Jacques and her editors have an odd view of what constitutes an educational expert, because the experts in question are Mike Petrilli (Fordham Foundation) and Eric Chan (Charter School Growth Fund). So, not so much "educational experts" as "charter school marketing experts." They were invited by Excellent Schools Detroit. ESD deserves its own piece, but the short form is that ESD was formed in 2010 as one of those "community philanthropic boards" that allows all sorts of privatizers to get a seat at the school management table without having to be, you know, elected or anything. These boards are carefully crafted to make sure that The Right People are in charge of making all the decisions about how to manage schools (and those sweet, sweet piles of public tax money).
Chan and Petrilli were working the next phase charter talking points, which is generally to call for tighter quality controls on charter schools, because while the theory is that charters need to be opened because the charters do a better job than public schools, it turns out that many don't do a better job than public schools and so the charter system has to be fixed. This is the newest odd paradox in the privatizing narrative-- when public school systems fail, they must be replaced, but when charter school systems fail, they must be nurtured, supported, managed and improved. Go figure.
Jacques says that Detroit should look at "models that are working," citing New Orleans and Memphis, so I guess by "working" she doesn't so much mean "providing quality community school systems" as she means "creating good revenue streams for privatizers." She does note that Detroit is "complicated" and poses some "unique challenges." Which leads us to this improbable sentence:
That's partly why the education debate in Detroit is attracting such high-profile expertise.
Will this be the place where she introduce people who are actually experts in education? (Spoiler alert: no). Her next example is Paul Pastorek, the former NOLA superintendent who turned post-Katrina public school crisis in to charter school gold (well, gold for charter operators-- for students and local communities, not so much). Pastorek has used that experience to launch a new career as traveling charter system salesman-consultant, and he's been working in Michigan to show how to make Detroit's system more profiteer-friendly.
Jacques alludes to some of Detroit's issues, including a mish-mosh of authorizers plus the state's version of an Achievement School District as well as the financial disaster that happens to a public school system when you let a swarm of charters feast on its blood. Why is all this a problem? Could it be a problem because it disenfranchises local voters, or because it creates instability for the poorest neighborhoods that need stability, or because it fails to provide decent education for the students?
Pshaw. None of that. It's a problem because it makes life harder for investors in charter schools. That's why Chan's here. His investment group has big bets placed on most of the major charter operators.
But those top management companies have shied away from Detroit because of the unstable environment that currently exists. With a dozen different authorizers opening and closing schools in Detroit, Chan says this creates unpredictable enrollment and limits the expansion potential for highest-rated operators. That could change, however.
"As an investor, I'm optimistic," Chan says. "I sense you're heading in the right direction."
So we see once again why privatizing public schools is a crappy idea-- because privatization transforms the very purpose of schools. Educating students or serving a community? Naw, that's way down the list. Provide a good return for investors-- that's the real purpose of a school system.
That's why I have to feel bad for the folks in Detroit-- they have a school system deeply in crisis, and a newspaper that can't tell the difference between a doctor and a vulture.
Jacques and her editors have an odd view of what constitutes an educational expert, because the experts in question are Mike Petrilli (Fordham Foundation) and Eric Chan (Charter School Growth Fund). So, not so much "educational experts" as "charter school marketing experts." They were invited by Excellent Schools Detroit. ESD deserves its own piece, but the short form is that ESD was formed in 2010 as one of those "community philanthropic boards" that allows all sorts of privatizers to get a seat at the school management table without having to be, you know, elected or anything. These boards are carefully crafted to make sure that The Right People are in charge of making all the decisions about how to manage schools (and those sweet, sweet piles of public tax money).
Chan and Petrilli were working the next phase charter talking points, which is generally to call for tighter quality controls on charter schools, because while the theory is that charters need to be opened because the charters do a better job than public schools, it turns out that many don't do a better job than public schools and so the charter system has to be fixed. This is the newest odd paradox in the privatizing narrative-- when public school systems fail, they must be replaced, but when charter school systems fail, they must be nurtured, supported, managed and improved. Go figure.
Jacques says that Detroit should look at "models that are working," citing New Orleans and Memphis, so I guess by "working" she doesn't so much mean "providing quality community school systems" as she means "creating good revenue streams for privatizers." She does note that Detroit is "complicated" and poses some "unique challenges." Which leads us to this improbable sentence:
That's partly why the education debate in Detroit is attracting such high-profile expertise.
Will this be the place where she introduce people who are actually experts in education? (Spoiler alert: no). Her next example is Paul Pastorek, the former NOLA superintendent who turned post-Katrina public school crisis in to charter school gold (well, gold for charter operators-- for students and local communities, not so much). Pastorek has used that experience to launch a new career as traveling charter system salesman-consultant, and he's been working in Michigan to show how to make Detroit's system more profiteer-friendly.
Jacques alludes to some of Detroit's issues, including a mish-mosh of authorizers plus the state's version of an Achievement School District as well as the financial disaster that happens to a public school system when you let a swarm of charters feast on its blood. Why is all this a problem? Could it be a problem because it disenfranchises local voters, or because it creates instability for the poorest neighborhoods that need stability, or because it fails to provide decent education for the students?
Pshaw. None of that. It's a problem because it makes life harder for investors in charter schools. That's why Chan's here. His investment group has big bets placed on most of the major charter operators.
But those top management companies have shied away from Detroit because of the unstable environment that currently exists. With a dozen different authorizers opening and closing schools in Detroit, Chan says this creates unpredictable enrollment and limits the expansion potential for highest-rated operators. That could change, however.
"As an investor, I'm optimistic," Chan says. "I sense you're heading in the right direction."
So we see once again why privatizing public schools is a crappy idea-- because privatization transforms the very purpose of schools. Educating students or serving a community? Naw, that's way down the list. Provide a good return for investors-- that's the real purpose of a school system.
That's why I have to feel bad for the folks in Detroit-- they have a school system deeply in crisis, and a newspaper that can't tell the difference between a doctor and a vulture.
ICYMI: Top Eduposts of Week (7/5)
I'm going to try a new feature- a weekly roundup of the posts from the week that were worth a look. I can guarantee that the list will not be all-inclusive, but it will be posts that I think deserve having some attention thrown their way.
Line in the Sand
Here's your "if you only read one post" post. Valerie Strauss presents a guest writer who likes Common Core (kind of) and believes in testing, but whose experience as a test scorer was just too appalling to bear. A real eye-opener for people wondering just how objective the Big Standardized Tests can be.
Are Teachers Professionals?
Sarah Blaine continues a conversation that has been going on across several blogs by noting (correctly, I think) one of the critical differences between teaching and professions like lawyering and doctoring.
US DOE Continues To Force Test Failure on Children With Special Needs and ELL Students
Nancy Bailey comments on the feds' ruling that Ne York may not common sense testing adaptations for English language learners and students with special needs. Because reasons.
State Teacher Equity Plans
Russ Walsh looks at what's wrong with some state plans for putting a super-duper teacher in every classroom.
Racism and the Charter School Movement
Over at truth-out, a professor of ethics and moral leadership breaks down the fallacies of the modern charter movement.
Questor says sell
Mercedes Schneider uncovers British investment advisors telling their customers to dump Pearson stock.
Charter-Gras 2015
Ashana Bigard travels to this years National Charter Schools convention in New Orleans, and she has a few question.
Leo Buscaglia on Education
If you are of a certain age, you remember Leo Buscaglia, teh guy who wanted us all to hug each other more often (among other things). Maria Popova dips into some of Buscaglia's writings to find some observations about education.
Saturday, July 4, 2015
The Hard Way
The Fourth of July is always a popular time for folks to reflect on what this country stands for, and we come up with many fine lists both of the best and the worst. Today, I'd like to add my own item to the list.
America stands for doing things the hard way.
When it comes to running a country, the easiest way to do it is to put one guy in charge and let him tell everybody how to do everything. He can be picked by heredity or tradition or power or wealth; he can be installed by a committee of Important People, or by the roar of the crowd, or even a legitimate-ish election. But the important part-- the easy part-- is that once you have him installed, you just let him run everything. No debates. no discussions, no big arguments about What To Do Next-- just let your Grand High Potentatial Poohbah decide it all.
There's a Less Easy but Still Pretty Easy way of doing things, which is to use an absolute democracy. Every issue that comes up, you vote on. The answer chosen by the majority is the answer the whole country uses, and discussion of the issue is over. If you're in the minority, you just shut up, and stay shut up.
We certainly toyed with all of these. Early on many citizens wanted to just crown George Washington King of America and be done with it. The founding fathers wrote all sorts of rules that they didn't want to be held to (all people are created equal, but not really) and many envisioned a country ruled by the votes of the Right People.
But instead, we dedicated our country to doing things the hard way. We wrote down a bunch of foundational premises for running a country, and then we set up a mechanism by which, over time, those principles could be interpreted and extended to their natural conclusions, even if the majority of founders didn't agree with those conclusions. The constitution is the ultimate exercise in saying, "Look, I'm going to agree to these principles, and every time I try to weasel out of actually following them, I want you to bop me over the head and stop me."
Furthermore, we set up a system based on the principle of not shutting people up, sorting them somehow into classes ranging from Those Who Must Always Be Listened to all the way down to Those Who Must Always Be Ignored.
The Framers had seen the many ways in which the easy way could go wrong, and somehow, they found the means of sitting down together with fellow citizens with whom they deeply and profoundly disagreed.
We have always been annoyed by our own system. We're irritated by the way it fosters unending debate on every little thing-- even things that we thought were already decided. And good Lord in heaven-- can't the people who are Dead Wrong just shut up and go away? We waste time, energy, and money on processes that are inefficient and inconsistent. There's hardly anything in this country that we don't do the hard way, loaded with argument and controversy and inefficiency and ambiguity.
On top of that, our peculiar brand of running a country ties all of our citizens together, so that people in one community have to worry about, be involved in, pay taxes to finance decisions in other communities. Gah! Can't we just take care of our own and let those Others go hang? Having to be all tied together is just hard!
And so we are always bedeviled by folks who want to get America to do things the easy way. And with the unleashing of Citizens United, many of our wealthy citizens are doing their best to move us to an easier system, a system where the people who are Better just go ahead and settle issues for the rest of us. Also, why shouldn't I be able to just close the doors on my gated community, pay for my own police and fire company, and just not have to give a cent to those Other People?
This pressure to start doing things the easy way is felt all across our country, but we are getting hit by it head on in education.
When Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says we should just abolish school boards because letting voters get involved in school decisions is just inefficient and disruptive, he's searching for the easy way. When Bill Gates decides that all American students (well, all non-rich non-private school students) should meet the same standards, and those standards should be the ones laid out by this couple of guys he knows, he's looking for the easy way. When folks like the Waltons and Broads look for ways to break down the teaching profession so that we can have people in classrooms who just follow the instructions they're given, it's one more search for the easy way. When people across the spectrum agitate for a standardized test that can measure the complex learning achievements of every student in America, that's a search for the easy way. When charteristas think that simply unleashing the invisible hand of the market place will somehow create excellence in education (and, perhaps, help sort the Betters from the Lessers, while making some Betters a big pile of profit)-- that's a search for the easy answer, too.
There are two problems with the easy way.
The first is a moral problem. The easy way requires us to silence everyone who is not on the Right Page. If you lost the vote, if you're in the smaller group, if you're on the less powerful side, then you just need to shut up. The easy way seeks to stop all disagreement and discussion so that we can unite behind one clean, clear, elegant solution, and there is only one way to do that-- to silence everyone who doesn't agree.
Worse, and more morally repugnant, the easy way calls on us to ignore Those People entirely. It encourages us to think of them as Lessers, which somehow makes it okay to give them less-- less service, less support, less kindness, less consideration, because, hey, they're Less Than, and so they deserve to get less. We can abandon them because that's all they deserve. It is straight up immoral to treat other human beings as less valuable than our own tribe. And yet, that immoral behavior is always required by the easy way.
Which brings us to the second problem, the practical problem-- the easy way just doesn't work. Look back through history-- a nation or institution can sustain the easy way for a generation at most, but then things just fall apart. Turns out that silencing people thoroughly and forever is really, really hard. And it also turns out that engaging in immoral behavior over time comes with huge personal, institutional, and cultural costs.
Without the arguing and debating and voices that just won't shut up, you can't move forward. As a nation we have made many huge mistakes, but by and large we have been able to move forward and try to leave those mistakes behind, because the voices who could and would point out those mistakes were not silenced. The easy way lets you get stuck in a bad place.
By creating a government structure that doesn't support tyranny easily, we have made a commitment to doing things the hard way, and every time we have tried to weasel out of that commitment, it has cost us as a culture and a country.
So the current struggle in education against the forces who would like to reduce education to an easy solution is not just about education, but another version of our national struggle. There will always be people who want to silence others in the name of ease and efficiency, and they will always be wrong. To look at the rich, complex business that is the education of an entire nation's varied population of young people-- to look at that and think that there is an easy answer to How To Do It-- is to be both unAmerican and simply foolish.
Living in a pluralistic society is hard. Saying that human beings all have value and acting like you really mean it is hard. Dealing with people who don't see things the same way you do is hard. Educating the children of an entire nation is hard. That's all right. We're Americans, and 236 years ago, we made a commitment to doing things the hard way, because, in the end, it's the way that continues to lead us, slowly but surely, to a better version of ourselves as a culture. Don't let anybody con you into anything else.
America stands for doing things the hard way.
When it comes to running a country, the easiest way to do it is to put one guy in charge and let him tell everybody how to do everything. He can be picked by heredity or tradition or power or wealth; he can be installed by a committee of Important People, or by the roar of the crowd, or even a legitimate-ish election. But the important part-- the easy part-- is that once you have him installed, you just let him run everything. No debates. no discussions, no big arguments about What To Do Next-- just let your Grand High Potentatial Poohbah decide it all.
There's a Less Easy but Still Pretty Easy way of doing things, which is to use an absolute democracy. Every issue that comes up, you vote on. The answer chosen by the majority is the answer the whole country uses, and discussion of the issue is over. If you're in the minority, you just shut up, and stay shut up.
We certainly toyed with all of these. Early on many citizens wanted to just crown George Washington King of America and be done with it. The founding fathers wrote all sorts of rules that they didn't want to be held to (all people are created equal, but not really) and many envisioned a country ruled by the votes of the Right People.
But instead, we dedicated our country to doing things the hard way. We wrote down a bunch of foundational premises for running a country, and then we set up a mechanism by which, over time, those principles could be interpreted and extended to their natural conclusions, even if the majority of founders didn't agree with those conclusions. The constitution is the ultimate exercise in saying, "Look, I'm going to agree to these principles, and every time I try to weasel out of actually following them, I want you to bop me over the head and stop me."
Furthermore, we set up a system based on the principle of not shutting people up, sorting them somehow into classes ranging from Those Who Must Always Be Listened to all the way down to Those Who Must Always Be Ignored.
The Framers had seen the many ways in which the easy way could go wrong, and somehow, they found the means of sitting down together with fellow citizens with whom they deeply and profoundly disagreed.
We have always been annoyed by our own system. We're irritated by the way it fosters unending debate on every little thing-- even things that we thought were already decided. And good Lord in heaven-- can't the people who are Dead Wrong just shut up and go away? We waste time, energy, and money on processes that are inefficient and inconsistent. There's hardly anything in this country that we don't do the hard way, loaded with argument and controversy and inefficiency and ambiguity.
On top of that, our peculiar brand of running a country ties all of our citizens together, so that people in one community have to worry about, be involved in, pay taxes to finance decisions in other communities. Gah! Can't we just take care of our own and let those Others go hang? Having to be all tied together is just hard!
And so we are always bedeviled by folks who want to get America to do things the easy way. And with the unleashing of Citizens United, many of our wealthy citizens are doing their best to move us to an easier system, a system where the people who are Better just go ahead and settle issues for the rest of us. Also, why shouldn't I be able to just close the doors on my gated community, pay for my own police and fire company, and just not have to give a cent to those Other People?
This pressure to start doing things the easy way is felt all across our country, but we are getting hit by it head on in education.
When Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says we should just abolish school boards because letting voters get involved in school decisions is just inefficient and disruptive, he's searching for the easy way. When Bill Gates decides that all American students (well, all non-rich non-private school students) should meet the same standards, and those standards should be the ones laid out by this couple of guys he knows, he's looking for the easy way. When folks like the Waltons and Broads look for ways to break down the teaching profession so that we can have people in classrooms who just follow the instructions they're given, it's one more search for the easy way. When people across the spectrum agitate for a standardized test that can measure the complex learning achievements of every student in America, that's a search for the easy way. When charteristas think that simply unleashing the invisible hand of the market place will somehow create excellence in education (and, perhaps, help sort the Betters from the Lessers, while making some Betters a big pile of profit)-- that's a search for the easy answer, too.
There are two problems with the easy way.
The first is a moral problem. The easy way requires us to silence everyone who is not on the Right Page. If you lost the vote, if you're in the smaller group, if you're on the less powerful side, then you just need to shut up. The easy way seeks to stop all disagreement and discussion so that we can unite behind one clean, clear, elegant solution, and there is only one way to do that-- to silence everyone who doesn't agree.
Worse, and more morally repugnant, the easy way calls on us to ignore Those People entirely. It encourages us to think of them as Lessers, which somehow makes it okay to give them less-- less service, less support, less kindness, less consideration, because, hey, they're Less Than, and so they deserve to get less. We can abandon them because that's all they deserve. It is straight up immoral to treat other human beings as less valuable than our own tribe. And yet, that immoral behavior is always required by the easy way.
Which brings us to the second problem, the practical problem-- the easy way just doesn't work. Look back through history-- a nation or institution can sustain the easy way for a generation at most, but then things just fall apart. Turns out that silencing people thoroughly and forever is really, really hard. And it also turns out that engaging in immoral behavior over time comes with huge personal, institutional, and cultural costs.
Without the arguing and debating and voices that just won't shut up, you can't move forward. As a nation we have made many huge mistakes, but by and large we have been able to move forward and try to leave those mistakes behind, because the voices who could and would point out those mistakes were not silenced. The easy way lets you get stuck in a bad place.
By creating a government structure that doesn't support tyranny easily, we have made a commitment to doing things the hard way, and every time we have tried to weasel out of that commitment, it has cost us as a culture and a country.
So the current struggle in education against the forces who would like to reduce education to an easy solution is not just about education, but another version of our national struggle. There will always be people who want to silence others in the name of ease and efficiency, and they will always be wrong. To look at the rich, complex business that is the education of an entire nation's varied population of young people-- to look at that and think that there is an easy answer to How To Do It-- is to be both unAmerican and simply foolish.
Living in a pluralistic society is hard. Saying that human beings all have value and acting like you really mean it is hard. Dealing with people who don't see things the same way you do is hard. Educating the children of an entire nation is hard. That's all right. We're Americans, and 236 years ago, we made a commitment to doing things the hard way, because, in the end, it's the way that continues to lead us, slowly but surely, to a better version of ourselves as a culture. Don't let anybody con you into anything else.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)