Betsy DeVos Goes Full Trump: Kuyper, Arrows and the Unholy Mob

Generally, when education secretary Betsy DeVos makes a public appearance, you get a rehash of the same old talking points. But put her in front of a friendly, like-minded audience, and she may just let her hair down and let 'er rip, giving us all a clearer picture of what she's really got going on upstairs. 

That just happened this week as DeVos made an appearance at Hillsdale College. Hillsdale College, a super-conservative, uber-Christianish, Euro-centric college in Michigan, known for its strong resistance to federal anything and special treatment for any non-white non-traditional folks. They love Jesus and the free market with notable zeal. They have ties to both the Macinac Center and the Heartland Institute. They have a Charter School Initiative with a whole raft of charter schools (mostly "classical"), and a teacher prep program. In short, these are Betsy DeVos's people. 

DeVos's prepared remarks open with nods to Hillsdale's history of awesomeness, with special attention to how smart they've been to avoid getting help from the feds. And that lets her pivot to her current fave point--that the Covid crisis has "laid bare" all the Bad Stuff of US public education. 

"Sadly," she continues, "too many politicians heed the shrill voices of the education lobby and ignore the voices of children, parents, teachers and health experts who are begging to get our students back to learning."  Not Betsy-- she's a fighter, fighting for students and parents and against anyone who wants the government to be "parents to everyone."

Now she pivots to world history, and a chapter that is actually new--and revealing.

DeVos wants to talk about a guy long associated with her beliefs, named Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper was a 19th century Dutch theologian/politician who also founded his own newspaper. He was a staunch opponent of modernism in theology, aka the idea that the interpretation of scripture should take modern science, knowledge and ideas into account. He's the granddaddy of Dutch Reformed Church. In the Netherlands, he put together a Christian political party, and pushed the idea of "common grace," the idea that Christian faith should permeate every aspect of daily life. The State, he asserted, must take into account the Bible. Christ should be the Lord over nations, not just the church. And the government should not discriminate between funding secular institutions and religious ones. I am seriously short-handing the work of a guy who was an extraordinarily prodigious writer, but you see why DeVos is a fan. 

DeVos, like others, sees Kuyper as a guy who stood up to those modern ideas that came out of the French Revolution (sometimes we call them the Enlightenment). There's some debate about whether or not we can lump Kuyper in with the Dominionists, the folks who think Christians are supposed to take charge of society's institutions until Christ returns, but here's what DeVos says to the Hillsdale crowd:

Kuyper asserted that the way forward was to separate education from partisan politics. He said that “the family, the business, science, art, and so forth are all social spheres which do not owe their existence to the state and which do not derive the law of their life from the state.” And so, Kuyper argued, “the state cannot intrude [into these spheres] and has nothing to command in their domain.”

The family, says DeVos, should be embraced as the "sovereign sphere,"  the font of all institutions, government, art. athletics, business, science, education, music, and generally all culture. This strikes me as an argument that's much more appealing if your family is a bunch of billionaires. For DeVos, the Founders said "we the people" govern because "we know what's best for ourselves, and for our children." What are we to make of the fact that the Founders thought "we the people" meant white land-owning makes? DeVos isn't going there. Instead

Our schools exist because we pay for them. So, we should be empowered to spend our education dollars our way on our kids.

There are a couple of points to address here, but I want to underline something important here. Arguing the various aspects of school choice with folks in the DeVosian camp can be frustrating, like trying to nail jello to the wall, because their arguments shift and change. There's a fundamental inconsistency to many of their points (like, say, a woman who admires a 19th century guy who opposed "modern ideas," but who criticizes schools for using a 100-year-old model). That's because there's really only one reason they believe school choice is right--because they believe it is. Whether or not choice schools would be better at educating or provide more equity or higher test scores--all of that is beside the point. I suspect that DeVos and her crew feel like the folks who say, "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people," only for them it's "I don't know how to explain to you that tax dollars should fund religious schools as directed by families, and if you are one of those secular humanist government types, I don't really want to." 

In DeVos's statement, those personal pronouns are doing a lot of work-- especially the "our education dollars" part. Because the tax dollars that have been collected from citizens do not belong to the parents of school age children. Calling those tax dollars parent dollars slides us past one of the inherent problems of school choice. Imagine if, instead of having the government do it for them, parents had to knock on the doors of their neighbors to collect "their" education dollars. Here's Betsy DeVos knocking on the door of that nice gay married couple up the street: "Pardon me, but I'd like you to contribute several hundred dollars so that I can send my child to a school to learn that you and your spouse are going to burn in hell for eternity." 

Next she brings a little joy to Jeanne Allen's world by stealing Allen's favorite image. "I like to picture kids with their backpacks representing funding for their education following them wherever they go to learn." 

Now she's jumping to cost, citing $739 billion for US taxpayers. That's $15K per student, and she inserts this whopper:

Now, I can imagine what you’re thinking: “I could educate my child for 15 thousand dollars per year!”

Nope. Certainly not if you're a parent of a child with special needs. Not if you intend to send them to an upscale private school. And we're not just talking about school tuition--consider all the add-ons like uniforms, transportation, in some cases lunch, plus any other extra treats. 

DeVos cites a survey from RealClear Opinion; she neglects to mention that the survey was sponsored by her pro-choice charity, American Federation for Children, and nothing I could find indicates how the respondents were selected. But DeVos waves these results as proof of choice's inevitability. And DeVos says she's just getting started. She's spent half her life on this: "More than 30 years of time and treasure devoted to giving all kids the same opportunities my own kids had."

Well, again, no. There's very little she could do to provide other children the opportunities available to the children of billionaire heirs and heiresses, though of course paying taxes (rather than sheltering assets) wouldn't hurt. Or demanding that her local school district boundaries be redrawn to better mix wealthy and not-so-wealthy families. But none of that is what she means by "opportunities." She means something more along the lines of the opportunity to be shielded from the government and instead attend a properly Godly school. 

And here's the other thing. Private schools, homeschooling--that's always been available. Parents are free to choose--what we're really talking about is having other taxpayers pay for it, like saying "I think I should have private security for my home, and I think the Army should provide it."

She says she's been working to "reform" education since soon after President Carter "bent to the demands of big union bosses" and created the Department of Education.  A department she will now proceed to disparage.

If you haven't been inside, you "haven't missed much." She's seen what the department focuses on, and "let me tell you, it's not on students." Rules and regulations. Staff and standards. Spending and strings. On protecting the system. And I'm not one to exalt the wonders of bureaucratic systems, but this is a point that DeVos seems incapable of understanding--not every family is led by caring billionaires who can protect their children from anything and everything. And no, the free market won't look out for all those children, either. But even now, as we face an unprecedented threat of disease, DeVos insists that providing leadership, guidance or even data to meet that challenge is not her problem. It's a reminder that another way to say, "Families, you are free to choose whatever" is "Families, we wash our hand of you. You are on your own."

And now, having rejected and slammed the system, DeVos will cite evidence from the system--the NAEP test results, results that she has misrepresented before and so she now simply says that two third's of US students "can't read like they should," which means nothing. 

She throws in an unsourced unsubstantiated but touching story about an illiterate child, notes that prisons are full of illiterate folks, and then she does something that is, actually, unusual for Betsy DeVos-- she mixes in some usual baloney with some flat-out lies.

She says that she's been trying to put herself out of a job from Day One (probably true). So they "restored state, local and family control of education by faithfully implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act" (okay, it's highly debatable that ESSA does that), by ending Common Core (nope, that's just a lie--there's not even some twisted means by which she could honestly believe that's true), and by "urging" Congress to combine K-12  programs into one grant ("urging" is not doing). They expanded vouchers in DC. They "supported" the creation of more charter schools (by using the same faulty grant program that has been used for years). They "joined" the pro-choice folks backing Espinoza v. Montana (thoughts and prayers). And she is still trying to find a way to shoot some pandemic relief money to private schools. 

She'll plug Tim Scott's School Choice Now shtick, the slightly mutated version of her Education Freedom scholarship tax credit scheme that has failed to fly for four years. She ties it to Scott, though it's co-sponsored by Lamar Alexander, but Scott's rags to riches story provides better optics than Alexander's riches-to-more-riches story. More freedom, choices and funds, says Betsy

The “Washington knows best” crowd really loses their minds over that. They seem to think that the people’s money doesn’t belong to the people. That it instead belongs to “the public,” or rather, what they really mean—government.

Two issues here. One is that it's not Washington, but your local elected-from-among-the-taxpayers school board that gets cut off at the knees by choice programs. The other is, again, the issue of whose money. Because it does in fact belong to "the public." It was collected from them for the express purpose of providing an education for everyone--a task that no choice system attempts to undertake. She is upset at the immorality of a government that says, "all yours is mine," but she does not propose an actual alternative. In the DeVosian universe, parents who want to send their kids to exclusive private religious schools still get to tell their neighbors, "I'm having the government collect money from you so that Junior can go to Straight White Academy." 

This is in addition to the same old never-addressed choice problem which is the disenfranchisement of childless taxpayers. Don't have a kid in school? Then you get no voice at all in how public tax dollars for education are spent. 

But let's move on, because DeVos would now like to attack Kids These Days.

Too many today—especially among our rising generation—don’t seem to understand the dangers of such a view. They somehow have come to believe that socialism is the cure, not the deadly disease it really is.

Tragically, it’s because no one has taught them differently. And worse, some have been indoctrinated to believe not in themselves, but in government.

Yup, it's entirely the teachers and schools, and not, say, the visible, palpable and painful ways that market based ideology has failed an entire generation. History shows us the best way to beat back socialism within this country--a robust demonstration, shared by all citizens, of the power and rewards of market capitalism. But no-- definitely socialist indoctrinators in the classroom (because teachers have so much time for that). 

And that's not all that schools can be blamed for: "America’s cities ablaze today witness a failure to teach the things that make the American experiment work."

And now, DeVos is going to go Full Trump-- They're coming for you!!

So, the unholy mob thinks our economies need redistributing. It thinks our Constitution needs rewriting. It thinks our families need restructuring. One prominent group was explicit about its desire to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”

That’s taken right from the old Marxist playbook. It admits the goal is to “[do] away with private property and [educate] children on a communal basis, and in this way [remove] the two bases of traditional marriage.”

Even Marxists know the family is it. The family is at the center of our economy, of education, of culture—and it’s under attack today.

Damn that unholy mob. She also invokes the evil attacks on Amy Coney Barrett's "big" family. Because family family family family. Which, you know, would mean more perhaps if the US weren't among the worst countries in the world for family leave to take care of newborns and this administration weren't trying hard to shred the safety net for struggling families. But the attempt to invoke the sanctity of the family loses much of its power when it is not attached to any attempts to actually help families through any means other than insuring that they have the "freedom" to sink or swim and their needs are always subordinate to the needs of business and corporations (why have they lost their faith in the free market, again?)

But DeVos-channeling-Trump is still on a tear. Conservatives are under attack everywhere in the social medias places thingies. Cancel culture! Censorship! Those who talk "tolerance" are so intolerant! And "this environment makes it harder to protect principle."

But protect them we must! Kuyper said "arrows do not exist simply to be kept in the quiver" and DeVos says not to shrink from that metaphor. "Moms know what I mean. We know what to do with an arrow when our family is under attack." Which I guess is the DeVosian 19th century version of a Trumpian call to go mess up our opponents. 

[Update: Adam Laats points out there's another layer here. 

It's WAY worse than [that]. It is about using women as "quivers" to birth new champions for Christ.

Put together with the support of Barrett's family, yeah, this is something. You may have heard the term "quiverfull" before; you can read a bunch more here.]

So, says DeVos, let's challenge the culture--with education. "Because we don't believe in retreat. We believe in redemption." Boy, I would love to sit down with her and try to unpack that. Before we can redeem people, we have to kick their asses? This mix of violent get-out-the-arrows confrontation with redemption language is--well, I was raised Methodist, and I don't recognize this language. And then:

Let’s begin by reasserting this fundamental truth: the family is the “first school.” If we recognize that, then we must also reorder everything about education around what the family wants and what the family needs.

Let's please not stop with education. Let's reorganize health care and health insurance around what families need and want. Let's reorganize business and the economy around what they need and want. Let's rewrite some of the rules so that families can share in the nation's prosperity instead of hanging on for dear life on the bottom end of the biggest income/wealth gap in the history of civilization. And, by the way, let's talk about "families" instead of "the family," thereby recognizing the many rich and varied forms that family takes in this country.

Don't check out yet. If you needed one more clear statement about what DeVos wants, she's using it for her wrap up:

We are families. Education is our sovereign sphere and we are taking it back!

"Sovereign sphere" is Kuyper, and it refers to the idea that some spheres of society should be free of government involvement. The refrain is also familiar in conservative Christian circles with the idea that schools need to be "taken back" from the government. Everything else DeVos says about education is window dressing and attempts to win the argument; at heart, that's the simple goal. 

Call Made For DeVos To Cut Off Fraudulent College Chain

Last week, an assortment of organizations signed off on a letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, from the AFT to the Feminists Majority Foundation to the Education Trust to the Young Invincibles. 

This crew came together to insist that the time has come for the department to finally cut the Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE) off from any federal money. Let me give you the short form explanation of what's going on, because among other things, it's a great demonstration of how the non-profit private school dodge is still a great way for hucksters and grifters to collect a mountain of money, much of it from the taxpayers, and how these profiteers have burrowed into the department of education.

I'm going to lean heavily on the work of one other co-signer-- attorney David Halperin, who has followed this tale for years. And I'll warn you up front--this is a twisty mess.

We can start back in 2012. Carl Barney the owner-operator of several for-profit colleges including Stevens-Haneger, CollegeAmerica, and California College. According to Patricia Cohen in 2015 at the New York Times, in 2012 Barney sold these profit schools to a Denver non-profit, the Center for Excellence in Higher Education. According to court documents, that non-profit consisted entirely of just one guy--Carl Barney. Hold onto your hat for this next part.

Barney has always been a busy guy, but only a few critics have really gone digging as much as this website--I'm going to stick to the highlights.. Born in England, he ended up in Australia in the mid-60s where he got himself involved in Scientology. He later brushed that off as dabbling, but one researcher says Barney did far more than dabble, rising through the ranks to the level of Operating Thetan and taking yacht trips with L. Ron Hubbard. By 1975 he was calling himself "Reverend Barney" and owned several dianetics franchises. In 1979 he was drummed out for operating independently of the parent organization. 

Sometime in the seventies, sometime in his late thirties, Barney discovered Ayn Rand. And sometime after that, he got into the for-profit college biz. And sometime around 2012, the regulations governing that money train started to tighten up. In a not-entirely-honest 2016 interview with that same Patricia Cohen, he portrayed the selling of his for-profits to CEHE as a great personal sacrifice. 

He founded of the Prometheus Foundation in 2014, an outgrowth of his devotion to the works and philosophy of Ayn Rand, so yes-- the world's only openly objectivist venture fund. He also "conceived, planned, and funded the Ayn Rand Institute’s ARI Campus, now Ayn Rand University." Along with John Allison and the Koch brothers, he has been one of the top funders of the ARI until 2018, when he dropped out of that field. 

There's plenty more, but you get the general picture of the guy. Barney has dealt with a long string of legal issues. 

There were lawsuits involving former employees like Debbi Potts, who resigned from one of Barney's schools after she was asked to participate in and conceal various frauds. 

In 2018, the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges put nine of CEHE's schools on probation, based on a history of reviews going back to 2012 and including a variety of bad behavior involving lying prospective students and other issues with integrity. It came down to this:

The Commission found that the record shows that the inputs, resources, and processes of CEHE schools are designed and implemented in a manner that is not designed for student success.

The CEHE model is a familiar one for these kinds of fraudsters, with all the company's resources focused on recruitment of students. The sales force--admissions office, if you will--could make six figure salaries, far more than actual faculty who made $22 per hour. Students would complete programs, and when they discovered that this qualified them only for low level jobs that didn't actually require a degree, the schools would try to sell these students an advanced degree program. These were not nice people-- the commission particularly called out "the attempt by CA-Flagstaff to blame low rates of student success on the ethnic culture of its students."

And in 2016, after the feds tried to deny CEHE non-profit status, CEHE sued the Department of Education. Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell, an Obama-era hire who was not exactly hostile to these sorts of outfits in a department that was not particularly aggressive about cracking down on predatory colleges (see: the Corinthian College saga)-- even that guy smelled a rat:

"Schools that want to convert to non-profit status need to benefit the public," said U.S. Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell in a release about the decision on Aug. 11. "If the primary beneficiary of the conversion is the owner of the for-profit school, that doesn't meet the bar. It's not even close."

In the long run, that lawsuit didn't matter, because after 2018, the Obama-era department was out, and the business-friendly Betsy DeVos was in. Among her hires were folks like Diane Auer Jones and Robert Eitel, both previously working as executives at Career Education Corp, yet another predatory fraud factory that had to settle up with 48 states' Attorney Generals (now rebranded as Perdoceo). Jones in particular has been implicated in some shady work to protect some of thes predatory outfits. All taken together, plus DeVos's widely noted reluctance to actually follow through on the rules about reimbursing defrauded students, and you get an atmosphere in which outfits like CEHE can relax. 

CEHE withdrew its lawsuit against the now-DeVos ed department, and ACCSC okayed their accreditation with some probationary rules. In October of 2018, a bevy of senators, including Dick Durbin and Elizabeth Warren, called on DeVos to take a closer look, noting among other things that CEHE has hoovered up over $1 billion in federal Title IV student aid money. Nothing came of that, but some states were not waiting for the feds to take action.

Colorado's AG took the chain to court in 2017, and this August the judge slapped them with a $3 million judgment. The decision and order takes up 160 pages. That's a lot to take in; let's just go to Halperin's summary--

The opinion meticulously documents how Barney’s schools used a detailed playbook to manipulate vulnerable students into enrolling in high-priced, low-quality programs; how the school directed admissions representatives to “enroll every student,” regardless of whether the student would likely graduate; how the schools’ recruiters and advertisements greatly overstated starting salaries that graduates could earn; how the schools falsely inflated graduation rates.

The document covers a ton of specific instances of fraud and misbehavior:

A notable witness presented by the state was a student whom CollegeAmerica managed to sign to enrollment agreements for three separate programs, including a bachelor degree in computer science, even though, it turns out, the student has a “permanent and total” cognitive disability and thus was unlikely to benefit from the programs. One of the degrees cost $56,000. This student also was presented at trial with a “Satisfactory Academic Progress” appeal that he purportedly filed with the school, asking to remain in a program he was flunking. He testified that he didn’t write it. The ex-student now works at a dishwashing job set aside for disabled people. 

Not that all tgestimony was against CEHE. Diane Auer Jones, back in 2017 and before she went to work for the USED, was paid $50K to provide some testimony that Halperin calls "absurdly implausible."

The judge also held Barney and current CEHE CEO Eric Juhlin personally liable. 

The $3 million is peanuts to an operation like this, but it sends a message and the findings make the message extra-clear. And that brings us back to the letter with which I kicked off this post.

Following the ruling in the CEHE matter, it is incumbent on the Department to take steps to protect the integrity of the student loan system by immediately terminating CEHE’s access to Title IV, by providing the full student loan relief that borrowers who attended CEHE institutions are entitled to receive, and by proceeding against CEHE and its owners in order to recover liabilities stemming from the defendants’ fraud.

At this point, it hardly seems difficult to conclude that CEHE is among the many predatory fraudster colleges that should be cut off from federal loan money, if not simply taken to court and put out of business (and perhaps in jail, because if I personally stole $1 billion from the feds, I'm betting I would be sitting some place dark and uncomfortable). 

ICYMI: Leaf Watching Edition (10/18)

 Well, it's really beautiful out in the world right now, so we've got that going for us. In the meanime, here's some reading from the week. 

There's a Better Way: Trust Based Observation   

Craig Randall guests at Peter DeWitt's EdWeek blog spot talking about a better way to handle teacher evaluations and, really, school management in general.

Separate and Unequal: School Funding in PA   

In the Pocono Record, an op-ed looking at the eternally unsolved issue of school funding in PA, by a student in Harrisburg.

School Boards, Public Schools, and Home Rule  

Accountabaloney lays out the many ways that the Florida legislature has tried to strip school boards of their power. Because Florida is just the worst.

Fix America by Undoing Decades of Privatization  

At the Atlantic, K. Sabeel Rahman puts the attack on public education in the larger context of privatization in the US.

Students Use Tik Tok to document test-taking surveillance software   

At Jezebel, a look at the software surveillance programs that are turning test taking into an unholy nightmare, and how students are fighting back.

Ohio: Who Pays for Vouchers 

Over at Diane Ravitch's blog, a look at a study showing  how the costs of vouchering in Ohio are really getting covered.

Covid Learning Loss Overhyped

Thomas Ultican has a good overview of the many folks who are trying to chicken little the heck out of the "covid slide." Guess what-- they'd all like to sell you something.

Governor Lee Calls For Suspension of Testing  

Go figure. Bill Lee of all people is standing up against the Big Standardized Test. The Tennessean has the story.

Boston students shivering in the cold  

An early look at one of the next pandemic school crises--schools that have decided to solve ventilation problems by opening windows in places where winter is a thing.

Charter Schools hitting same roadblocks as public schools    

At Chalkbeat, Kalyn Belsha and Mat Barnum counter the standard narrative on resistance to school openings ("it's those damned unions") by showing that charter schools are having similar problems.

Don't Believe the Hype  

Akil Bello explains why you can ignore the bleating of the test industry and their insistence that they provide students with opportunities.

Who's Watching This Class   

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at the substitute teacher crisis. It was already bad; the pandemic has made it far worse.

Behaviorism Won  

Audrey Watters continues to share the guest appearances she does for teachers. This time she's talking about B. F. Skinner and the ways that his ideas captured bot society and education. Probably won't make you feel better, but you'll understand a little more.

Originalism and Education  

With the coming elevation of dead hand constitutionalist Amy Barrett to the supreme court, many folks have been observing that 18th century ideas may not be the way to go with schools. Here are two good pieces-- Steven Singer brings passion and energy to his post, and Jan Resseger digs into some illuminating scholarship.

Closing Ed Schools: A Bad Omen   

Nancy Bailey reminds us that with colleges shutting down, one of the things that's being hurt is the new teacher pipeline. Uh-oh.

US Education versus Confucius

 Last Wednesday, the Education and State departments in DC announced that it was time to clamp down on Chinese influence in US classrooms.

The letter, which appears over the signatures of Betsy DeVos and Mike Pompeo, addresses the issue of the Confucius Classroom program. The program is a cultural outreach of the Chinese government; it has been around for a while and has always been viewed with suspicion in many quarters. From Associated Press coverage:

DeVos and Pompeo echoed longstanding complaints from academic groups that say schools give China too much control over what’s taught in Confucius Institute classes. Teachers who are vetted and paid by the Chinese government “can be expected to avoid discussing China’s treatment of dissidents and religious and ethnic minorities,” the officials wrote.

Conservatives have ben particularly critical. Here's Ethan Epstein, an associate editor of the Weekly Standard, digging up some quote ammunition for Politico in 2018:

 

A 2011 speech by a standing member of the Politburo in Beijing laid out the case: “The Confucius Institute is an appealing brand for expanding our culture abroad,” Li Changchun said. “It has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power. The ‘Confucius’ brand has a natural attractiveness. Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical.”

But concern extends outside the rightwing sphere. And internationally, Australia and Canada have both rescinded the Confucius Classroom welcome. 

In what is a rarity for me, I don't really disagree with DeVos or Pompeo on this one. If there's any nation that has perfected the art of pernicious political bullshit, it is the Chinese, the folks who brought world history the most horrifying and deadly demonstration of Campbell's Law ever--the Great Chinese Famine. Between 20 and 56 million people killed in a needless famine created by a government that was far more interested in appearances on paper than reality on the ground. And for years the world didn't even know. The Chinese government is bad business, even if their leader can write beautiful love letters.

There are several serious ironies here. The Trump family has proven willing to do business with the Chinese government, which I suppose is not so much irony as business as usual. 

Then there's this section of the DeVos/Pompeo letter:

While teachers in Confucius Classrooms may not appear to be engaged in ideological propaganda, those vetted and paid by the PRC can be expected to avoid discussing China’s treatment of dissidents and religious and ethnic minorities.  Indeed, some Confucius Classroom students have described their teachers’ repeated avoidance of topics perceived to be “sensitive” to or critical of the PRC.  Particularly at the high school level, this creates a troubling deficit of information in a setting supposedly focused on the study of Chinese language and culture. 

This sounds pretty much like the Chinese version of the "patriotic American" curriculum that Trump has announced for the US. Trump has called for education that focuses on everything good and beautiful and pro-American in our history. He only has two education goals, and one is "teach American exceptionalism" i.e. the reasons that we are a better nation than all others.

The letter is correct in pointing out that a nationalistic program "creates a troubling deficit of information." Your country's nationalistic propaganda is my nation's proudly patriotic education program, I suppose. Stay tuned.

Today in Teacher Depreciation

 When you're in the work, the general noise from the chorus of teacher devaluators can become a faint background buzz. And then something happens, and you're reminded suddenly, "Oh, yeah. That's a thing." 

Happened twice to me on Twitter in the past 24 hours. First, there was the noise surrounding the Trump thing on the teevee last night, including this little punch from Mercedes Schlapp, a senior advisor for the Trump/Pence campaign

Well @JoeBiden @ABCPolitics townhall feels like I am watching an episode of Mister Rodgers Neighborhood. https://t.co/bC8fIZPxHR

— Mercedes Schlapp (@mercedesschlapp) October 16, 2020

This is obviously supposed to be an insult, but I live in western Pennsylvania, right up the road from Pittsburgh, where the international airport includes a whole display/play area devoted to one of Pittsburgh's most beloved sons, Fred Rogers (she spelled his name wrong). Mr. Rogers is a national treasure and one of the few icons who hasn't been outed as some sort of secretly terrible monster. 

Why would anybody treat him as an insult punchline? Because they respect strength and cruelty and in Mr. Rogers, they see the twin "weaknesses" of being kind and gentle and of communicating with children. Rogers was a man with gift for teaching, supporting, and talking to tiny humans--so in the Trump camp's mind he must be the furthest thing from what you'd want in a political leader. 

That's a thought that was echoed in another tweet. The "How it started How it's going" meme has been around practically forever (like, a week). It started out showing relationship growth, then life in general, and then the irony set in, with the two images showing how something went to hell, which is where this next one comes in. 

How it started How it’s going pic.twitter.com/9OrTeJS3X3

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) October 16, 2020

Klippenstein is a reporter at The Nation, and just in case you thought he was unironically honoring this step up, he clarified the tweet, after an appropriate response from a well-known-ish teacher:

 

Of course it is, the joke is that a psycho striver like Beto is stuck doing normal work instead of being, oh I dunno, a McKinsey partner https://t.co/qBihI7xvc0

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) October 16, 2020

 Ouch. I know Klippenstein is taking a dig at Buttigieg's husband, but still--teaching is lower than working for Marketworld headquarters McKinsey?! It's a job you get "stuck" with? And this is a college gig, which carries a bit more status than a K-12 job, so thank God we weren't slamming O'Rourke for ending up in one of those jobs.

As always, part of what sucks is the casual way these sorts of insults are tossed off, as if everyone (even reporters for ostensibly left-tilted publications) knows that teachers are Less Than, that it's not Real Work for important Manly Men. Certainly not anything for young folks to aspire to. 

Here's hoping tomorrow's a better day.

McKinsey Has Ideas For Fixing Schools (Pandemic Edition)

McKinsey is the 800-pound consulting gorilla with its hairy hands in everything. That includes dabbling in education; they've consulted with Boston schools and shown how to slash and privatize the crap out of the district, they've made data based advanced analytics explanations of how to improve test scores, and they've made the argument for computerizing classrooms. Their world view is captured by Anand Giridharadas in the must-read Winners Take All, dubbed Marketworld. They are the kings of neo-liberal thinking-- use data, unleash markets, measure everything (especially money). 

So of course it's no surprise that they have some thoughts about how global education should respond to the whole pandemic crisis. Some of it sounds good, but it's important to pay attention to the language (probably a good motto for this blog).

Yet crises often create an opportunity for broader change, and as education systems begin to make decisions about investments for the new school year, it’s important to step back and consider the longer-term imperative to create a better system for every child beyond the pandemic.

Yeah, "investments." Because everything is an investment with these guys, and every investment needs a return.

The process starts with a key question: What are we trying to achieve, for whom, by when, and to what standards? Our research shows that top-performing school systems can vary significantly in curricula, assessments, teacher behaviors, and even desired outcomes.

Hmm. That first sentence is not bad, but notice that somewhere between the first and second sentence, we have already answered all the questions. Because if you don't know the answers to those questions, how do you know if a school is top-performing? 

The article lays out its argument about four key points, claiming that "we know from decades of study that every school system must first get these basic elements right." Then they get into how to double down on these, which is where the real money is.

Four Core 

Here are McKinsey's "what works" basics that they want to recommit to.

* Core skills and instruction. Everyone needs to be able to read and math. They cite the confused stat that students who can't "read proficiently" (aka "pass a standardized test"0 in third grade are likely to drop out of school, but as usual we skip the difference between correlation and causation. You might be surprised to learn that "research has identified the curricula, instructional materials, and teaching methods that are most effective in helping children learn." I'm pretty sure that is unsupportable baloney, but McKinsey is all about reducing a process to a proscribed procedure identified by data analytics. Just get the machine built and in place.

* High-quality teachers and teaching. "Technology," they assure us, "will never replace a great teacher." Systems need to develop and support teachers. We'll see.

* Performance measurement. Data shouldn't be used to punish, just to know current performance and what the benchmarks are. Count McKinsey among the folks who are sure that all those (highly lucrative) standardized tests are super-important in pandemic times.

* Performance level and context. We need to measure and rank school systems and provide interventions of different types depending on how bad the schools are. Poor performers need centralized control, while top performers need more autonomy. 

Their prescriptions

I know I keep forgetting to bring up the pandemic, which is ostensibly McKinsey's reason for laying all this out. But they kind of forget it, too, pointing out here that "progress in educational outcomes " (again, "test scores") has stalled in recent years. Covid-19 is a "signal," or "opportunity" to "embrace more radical innovation" (aka "disrupt") school systems. 

Here's how McKinsey wants to do that:

Harness technology to scale

All right, so they know we can't just hand out devices to students. Also, "giving lectures on a video call is rarely a substitute for face-to-face-learning" (so much for Khan Academy). But we have to get tech out there, doing magic techy stuff, like "solar powered tablets preloaded with research-based, self-paced math and literacy software" that students can use "with supervision from any adult."

Move toward mastery-based learning

Lordy. Personalized. Adaptive. Blended. Mastery-based. It's buzzword bingo time here, with no solid research base for any of it. But "technology has made the model even more compelling." No, but it has made it more profitable.

Support children holistically

This section leads off with this statement:

Previous research has outlined the correlation between mindsets and academic performance, but the shift to remote learning has put it into stark relief.

If that seems a little starkly vague, the follow-up suggests that all they mean is that students who work well on their own are doing better at distance learning. Also,sun is expected in the East tomorrow. Their point is that schools need to address the whole child and although we're dodging the term "social and emotional learning," that's what we're getting at. McKinsey does have the astounding insight that students need to "go beyond what they simply need to find work," which is exactly the kind of insight you get from people who don't actually spend any time in the classroom with actual young humans. It's just a little more ironic coming from the sector that has hammered relentlessly on how schools should focus on better preparing tomorrow's meat widgets to corporate specs. 

They're going to cite International Baccalaureate and KIPP as exemplars here, ignoring the self-selecting nature of IB and the creaming nature of KIPP, as well as skipping past the part where KIPP and other charters decide that the no excuses model they've been holistically hammering students with might be a bad idea and let's drop it.

Help students adapt to the future of work

All that stuff about going beyond job-getting? Yeah, ignore that and let's get back to producing the worker bees that corporations will want in the future. Plus, more computery stuff! McKinsey is all about automation concerns for future employment, and not so much talking about how many workers are simply under bid by peanut-waged workers in regulation-free countries. Of course, all of these trends are driven, in part, by the work of consulting forms like McKinsey that help corporations squeeze that last drop of blood out of their working turnips.

Invest in new models of teacher prep and development  

I do not disagree, but their ideas are mostly dumb, like using computer simulations to train pre-teachers. This is a dumb idea, and it's the kind of dumb idea you come up with when you start with the premise that a computer has to be part of your solution. Mind you, simulations are great; I did plenty of them in Teacher School with Dr. Schall sitting in the back of the room providing what would turn out to be highly realistic portrayals of the students I would meet in the classroom. My school also required real pre-student teaching hours spent with live human children, 

McKinsey also wants to turn technology loose in the professional development arena, though what they seem to mean is using software to assist untrained teachers, citing the Bridge International program in Liberia, providing school in a can to replace the Liberian public education system. The best they can do is claim that Bridge gave students an extra two and a half years of learning over three years, which of course just means they raised test scores.

Unbundle the role of teacher

Lot of gobbledeegook here, but it boils down to breaking the teacher job into "high-value activities" and other stuff, much in the same way that Ray Kroc broke down the business of supplying customers with food in a way that just happened to drastically lower job requirements and labor costs. 

Allocate resources equitably to support every student  

Here's a crazy thought. What if we jiggered the economic system so that the profits and rewards of successful corporations were more evenly distributed to all the workers, allowing them to accumulate greater wealth and improving everyone's station in life, thereby having the effect of reducing the number of poor communities poorly served by poor schools? 

That, of course, is not what McKinsey is talking about here. They acknowledge the disparities that exist, such as racial ones in the US. They toss out redrawing boundaries, pairing top and bottom districts, and of course this great idea--

Could systems around the world incentivize top schools to offer all their advanced classes and electives, along with mentors, resources, and other forms of help, to high-poverty neighbors? Could that start with the remote-learning instruction currently being rolled out?

The ever popular idea that we just find out what the teachers are doing at West Egg High School, and transplant those ideas to East Egg High School. Maybe even move some of the teachers. You may recall the years of being told that calling poverty a factor in the performance of high-poverty schools was just making excuses, and it was probably that the poor schools had all the crappy teachers. McKinsey's still right there. Put a pin in this subhead, because we'll be back.

Rethink school structures and policies

Here's the old "schools haven't changed in 100 years," only McKinsey is going to say 300 years. They're going to also cite the baloney about covid sliding. They're going to bring up proficiency based learning. Maybe change the calendar. Switch things up, guys!

McKinsey's Fundamental Disconnect   

Here's the thing about McKinsey--they love change and disruption for everyone except the people at the top. They will gladly suggest that education be disrupted in a hundred different ways, as long as those ways don't inconvenience rich and powerful people. So my idea about disrupting the economic system, the rules and laws that have tilted it, so that we don't have huge gaps between the rich and the poor, so that we don't have one of our current fundamental education problems, which is that people who can buy and sell entire schools for their own children get huffy about having to pay taxes to educate the children of Those People. 

Sure, come up with a program, like any computer-centered whizbang that lets some wealthy entrepreneur make a buck while bragging at cocktail parties that he's helping Those People--that's a McKinsey winner. But don't mess with the upper crust status quo.

That includes not challenging any of McKinsey's amateur-hour assumptions  about education, like the notion that test-generated "data" tell you everything you need to know.

The main author on this report is Jake Bryant (who appears to be form Pittsburgh, so, Jake, next time you're home, give me a call). He's the McKinsey help-lead guy for North American education K-12; he's an "expert in online and blended learning." He ran an investment portfolio for the Gates Foundation, and before that, says his bio, he taught middle school in the US and Japan. Check LinkedIn and you find that he graduated from Harvard with a A.B. in Social Studies (that's a BA for you non-ivies), and he taught for a whopping one year, at a KIPP school in LA. I can't confirm that he was Teach for America, but it seems not unlikely.

Emma Dorn, his co-author, is the Global Education Practice Manager for McKinsey. She's been with the company for over twenty years, with a four year break to be an independent consultant at home. She's only been in their education biz for the last six years (since returning from her break). You can catch her on youtube on a variety of topics, including how teachers can stay "nimble" during the pandemic.

Look, I really don't want to be a massive jerk about this, and I know that these are real humans trying to do a job, but the combination of hubris and we-don't-know-what-we-don't-know is troubling. Over the past few decades, education has suffered mightily from the meddling of wealthy and powerful amateurs who haven't a clue about what it's like to be a career classroom teacher, and right now, in the midst of this medical mess, the last thing education needs is to hear more from these folks--particularly when they don't want to help so much as they want to grasp the opportunity to push their half-baked uninformed ideas yet again. 

Update #1 From The Pandemic's Trailing Edge

 About a month ago, I told you that if it can work anywhere, it can work here.

I'm in Northwest PA, a rural/small town county with a little under 50,000 people. As of a month ago, we had about 70-ish confirmed cases. Schools re-opened, almost entirely face-to-face five days a week. 

Well, things have changed. Our confirmed case number has doubled in about five weeks. The norm was days with zero or one or two new cases; now we are having some days with double digits. 

In two of the local four high schools, this week we learned that there were two cases in each of two high schools. In each case, one student and one adult. One school has closed for two days for a round of deep cleaning; the other has reportedly sent 40-some students and staff into quarantine. 

If you're wondering why the responses are inconsistent, well, that's what you get when a pandemic hits at a time like now. There are no rules, and words don't mean anything, so local districts have to just figure it out themselves. At another local elementary school, a teacher has been sent home for fourteen days because her son was sent home from his school (a different one than the one where she teaches) with a fever. That determination was made by the school nurse. 

That situation highlights another feature of the area. There are four different school districts, but they share band and sports programs, and the students mix outside of school at places like local dance studios. Aggressive contact tracing might help, but the folks around here have been clear that nobody is going to get their personal private information, and if there's a vaccine they probably won't take that, either. 

Yes, this is Trump country (though based on signage, I'm guessing Biden will do better here than Clinton did four years ago), and they have plenty of unkind words for our democratic governor (who has his own communication problems because he still thinks like a CEO and not a politician). It is also a county that depends on exactly the kind of small business activity that the shutdowns have been hard on, though we have also been super-concerned about getting to play and watch high school sports. 

At any rate, since nobody is collecting information about anything, I promised I would report on the local situation so that you have one more batch of data points to follow. Right now, things are changing here. We'll see if it's a blip or the beginning of a bad trend.