I am sure many have read your May 2, 2011 Open Letter to teachers. I am impressed with its rhetorical slight of hand, how it gently yet forcefully pushes — with all apparent conviction — what more and more of the research community and the public is rejecting.

I presume that it is this broad and growing opposition to Race to the Top (the nearly $5 billion in discretionary monies given to the U.S. Department of Education by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) that caused you to publish your Open Letter. But I do not believe that your rhetoric, however clever, can erase from consciousness the fact that Race to the Top is anti-democratic — imposed through bribery using taxpayer money. It is an open agenda for privatization and the elimination of any last vestiges of democratic governance of and purpose for schooling. Wall Street and various monopolies are attempting total control through for-profit charters, anti-worker legislation, publishing and testing companies, private foundations, and of course, a national curriculum and privately managed testing regime aimed at workers compliance.

Given this reality, I think it is very important to examine how your letter makes its case. And while others have spoken to what is wrong with what you say, and what is wrong with what you propose, I want to focus on something that might be missed, possibly even by you: your letter’s appeal to your personal convictions and beliefs as a basis for legitimating government action.

Your letter constitutes a public sharing of your personal conviction about teaching and the teaching profession. The theory of action appears to be this: teachers believe that you are ill-willed, and have wrong-headed ideas about education. To counter, you are disclosing yourself, and we educators are to be comforted by your stated respect for teachers, and your commitment to fair evaluation systems that you believe will raise the prestige of the profession. You confess, for example, to believing that teachers actually work hard (Well, now, you must be an ally!). And you suggest, although you never really openly say so, that you oppose teaching to the test and the narrowing of curriculum that follows. I should expose the trickery in pretending to address concerns with a curriculum narrowed only to tested subjects with a plan for more frequent testing in all subjects (that is, a national curriculum and series of tests developed by CEOs of corporations, private foundations and publishing and testing companies, with no role for the public). But this is not what I find most striking.

What I find most striking is how you position your personal beliefs and experiences as criteria for the legitimacy of government action. To quote a former president of the United States, you are “the decider,” and you decide based on your beliefs. We the subjects are called upon to accept government action on account of the public expression of your beliefs.

For example, you state: “I have a deep and genuine appreciation for the work you do.” Are the completely invalid pay-per-test-score schemes being imposed in state after state as a result of your Race to the Top competition (referenced in your letter as “sophisticated assessments that measure individual student growth”) somehow now acceptable because the Holy Education Executive has uttered his genuine appreciation for the work teachers do?

Does the fact that you believe “that most teachers did not enter the profession for the money” justify pay and healthcare cuts, layoffs and terminations for those who’s students don’t show enough growth on the “sophisticated assessments” you believe in? After all, you believe the key to reform is building “an accountability system based on data we trust” — so as long as the “data” are trustworthy test hell for parents, students and educators is acceptable? If we don’t go along with “in data we trust” will Senator McCarthy rise from the dead to demand our testimony? (“Mr. Garrison, are you, or have you ever been, or have you ever been associated with, a critic of standardized testing and merit pay for teachers?”)

Equally impressive is how you position yourself as the great leader who has these personal relationships with people — “I am here to help,” you offer (if it were that simple, we could just respond, “thanks, but no thanks!”). You assert, as if it is a settled matter: “We understand that the surest way to [help America’s children] is to make sure that the 3.2 million teachers in America’s classrooms are the very best they can be.” This master lie deserves its own book, but the fact of the matter is the majority of people in America understand that poverty is a very serious and rapidly growing problem. But poverty is brazenly ignored by you and most education reformers. If you want to “help America’s children,” eliminate poverty (and I guarantee the test scores will go up too, without any test prep!).

Like the Royal Wedding which celebrated the grossest forms of inequality, you’re governing strategy is reminiscent of a period of history humanity has fought hard to leave behind: the despotic rule of kings and their royal families. During those times, the beliefs of royalty were all that mattered, and royalty were the only public officially recognized.

So, Mr. Duncan, at the end of the day, I don’t care what you believe. In a democracy, the government must represent the will of the people, not impose its beliefs on them. No one wants a patronizing government that figures its role as “helping.” Any reform that disempowers, any reform that doesn’t help realize social equality, will fail, as the corporate reforms you defend in your letter already have.

Related Posts:

• ARRA Education Funds and the Crisis of Legitimacy
• Secretary Arne Duncan Testifies Before the House Education and Labor Committee
• Mayor Bing Says Eliminating Democratic Control of Schools (“Change”) is Necessary; Ducan’s “Race to Wreck Education” Funds Used as Wedge Against Detroit Voters
• Educational Provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
• Clifford Adelman’s “White Noise of Accountability”

This piece offers a good example of countering disinformation in thinking about education. Some highlights include:

“Accountability,” a term that has been with us, late and soon. Its six syllables trip by as the background white noise in the liturgy of higher education…You know what happens with liturgies: after so many repetitions, there is no recompense. We don’t really know what we are saying. In this case, the six-syllable perfect scan, “accountability,” simply floats by as what we assume to be a self-evident reality. Even definitions wind up in circles, e.g., “In education, accountability usually means holding colleges accountable for the learning outcomes produced.” One hopes Burck Smith, whose paper containing this sentence was delivered at an American Enterprise Institute conference last November, held a firm tongue-in-cheek with the core phrase.

The 2005 report of the National Commission on Accountability in Higher Education puts “accountability” in a pinball machine where “goals” become “objectives” become “priorities” become “goals” again. One wins points along the way, but has no idea of what they represent.

In fact, all levels of education are subjected to this confusion: standards are confused with goals such that the desired outcome is confused with the indicators of the outcome, leading to the dehumanizing act of teaching to the test. Instead of teaching being driven by goals — by philosophy and a broad sense of purpose — the indicators become the goals.  This process has now morphed into the mindless repeating of pet phrases of granting agencies and other “decision makers” to show “buy in”.  I suppose it is evidence of the irrationality of marketing “group think” in addition to the decline in rationale public discourse.

Adelman continues:

So what kind of creature is this species called “accountability”? Readers who recall Joseph Burke’s introductory chapter to his Achieving Accountability in Higher Education (Wiley, 2004) will agree that I am hardly the first nearsighted crazy person to ask the question. This essay will come at the word in a different way and from a different tradition than Burke’s political theory.

I am inviting readers to join in thinking about accountability together, with the guidance of some questions that are both metaphysical and practical. Our adventure through these questions is designed as a prodding to all who use the term to tell us what they are talking about before they otherwise simply echo the white noise.

And I hope people join in; as one last excerpt:

If accountability in higher education is a contractual relationship, we’ve got problems. The “goods” or “services” to be rendered by the offeror are usually indeterminate; there is no formal statement of obligations. The institution does not pledge to students that its efforts will produce specified learning, persistence and graduation, productive labor market entry, or a good life. We don’t put low persistence or graduation rates in a folder subject to educational malpractice suits. Nor does the institution pledge to public funding authorities that it will produce X number of graduates, Y dollars of economic benefits, or Z volume of specified community services, or be subject to litigation if it fails to reach these benchmarks.

Related Posts:

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• Is Thinking a “Skill”? Values and Problems in Thinking About the “Liberal Arts”
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• Are Tests Measures of Test Taking Ability?
• The Questions of Education Reform Are Really Questions of Who Decides

Nussbaum begins by warning of a crisis in education, a crisis rooted in the quest for national profit or economic gain (interestingly enough this point is made without reference to the dramatic increase in the rise of for-profit providers of higher education and the concomitant adoption of an outlook predicated on education being a service and students consumers). She writes:

Radical changes are occurring in what democratic societies teach the young, and these changes have not been well thought through. Thirsty for national profit, nations and their systems of education are heedlessly discarding skills that are needed to keep democracies alive. If this trend continues, all over the world we will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements. The future of the world’s democracies hangs in the balance.

What is most interesting about this line of argument is its assumption that “citizens who can think for themselves” (what about resident “aliens”?), the “ability” to “criticize tradition” and “understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements”, are all skills. Is thinking a skill? Is empathy a skill?

Examining the Oxford English Dictionary, one will find that the noun skill has two distinct meanings, and I think the difference is quite significant. The first meaning listed is essentially grounded in the notion of reason, or discernment and differentiation (and given as a mental faculty of individuals, whereas now there is evidence that thinking is a social, not simply psychological, phenomenon). The second meaning moves us into the moral realm: “That which is reasonable, proper, right, or just.”

The “business community’s” emphasis on education for the development of skills suggests, at first glance, a set of functional capacities (e.g., STEM) tightly aligned with what finance capital says the market can bear and national security deems worthy (e.g., learning Arabic). Yet, it is clear to me that since the days of the development of civil service exams in China and then in the west, a composite notion of skill has pervaded our thinking, both causing confusion and covering over important developments. This confusion reigns in Nussbaum’s essay and is worth further exploration.

She writes: “Indeed, what we might call the humanistic aspects of science and social science—the imaginative, creative aspect, and the aspect of rigorous critical thought—are also losing ground.”

While the word rigorous is almost as hackneyed and misused as the word accountability (rigorous is of course derived from the notion of being inflexible, as when one dies their body becomes rigid, something I hope most can recognize as not being synonymous with notions like “advanced”), what is particularly troubling is the incessant habit of placing adjectives before words in such a manner as to reveal that the writer does not understand them. So an example is “critical thinking.” I’m just not convinced that thinking is a phenomenon that comes in varieties, such that one type of thinking is “critical” and another type is “uncritical”. I’m serious; if we don’t stop this irrationalism, we’re going to soon be offering undergraduates “uncritical thinking” as a prerequisite for courses in “critical thinking”. This reminds me of proponents of “brain-based learning,” as if we were confused as to the organ largely responsible for learning! I’m going to develop the Institute for Foot-based Learning, following in the footsteps (!) of the peripatetic philosophers of ancient Athens.

So back to the problems of skills-as-values. Anyway, what is significant about the designation of some thinking as critical is that it appears to cross over into a moral or values positions (critical means to render negative judgment), beyond any empirically based analysis of forms or types of thinking. That is to say, the kind of thinking that “critical thinking” targets is thinking that is judgmental, opinionated, and so on, and thus, the notion confuses the value and the form of the process and product of thinking. Nussbaum continues:

Given that economic growth is so eagerly sought by all nations, especially at this time of crisis, too few questions have been posed about the direction of education, and, with it, of the world’s democratic societies. With the rush to profitability in the global market, values precious for the future of democracy are in danger of getting lost.

So here we have an assumed linkage of the above mentioned skills to a set of values, which I don’t think is an accident nor a problem unique to this author’s point of view. She continues in the following paragraph thusly:

The profit motive suggests to many concerned leaders that science and technology are of crucial importance for the future health of their nations. We should have no objection to good scientific and technical education. My concern is that other abilities, equally crucial, are at risk of getting lost in the competitive flurry, abilities crucial to the health of any democracy internally, and to the creation of a world culture capable of tackling the world’s most pressing problems.

Wait! I though we were talking about the skills associated with a liberal-arts education, skills that help foster democratic governance? Yes, ability is commonly referenced by thesauruses as a synonym for skill, but is it? Ability, according the OED, is particularly focused on the notion of suitability relative to a particular purpose, or as the quality making some action possible. So, let me pull what I think is a very important observation from my book:

Sociologists point out that there have always been arrangements for formally recognizing the capacity to perform important social roles and to exercise their associated social status and power… Notice that there are in fact two capacities referenced here. The first is the capacity to perform the role itself (functional competency), and the second capacity is to exercise the role’s associated social status and power (what might be called social competency). Notions of ability, of capacity, are bound up with social roles, for ability must have a place for it to be manifest. This quality or state of being able manifests itself in the “physical, mental, or legal power to perform,” according to Webster’s. Note that ability can signify a power inhering in persons—again functional capacity—or a legal power to do something, or social capacity. It is significant, I think, that the etymology of ability is from the Middle English, suitability. In this regard, standardized test-based assessment is the judgment of worth relative to a structural slot or social position—what is deemed of value and who is deemed of value—a process abstracted as achievement or ability.

It is this dual meaning of skill and ability that must be sorted out. In the same breath, we talk about functional capacities and social capacities. In the present circumstance this leads to, among other things, blaming average individuals for what are in reality structural problems, which are covered over by those relatively few individuals who benefit from these structural arrangements.

And of course, educational institutions have been implicated in this social structuring, and the interesting fact is that “liberal arts” education was reserved for those slotted for positions afforded “social status and power”; as access to education was broadened, and the right to vote extended, more limited forms of liberal education were afforded the “masses.” “Liberal education” was the vision so graciously extended to the “masses” by enlightened bourgeois reformers and while progressive in its day and responsible for many positive developments, it imposed the limits of a bourgeois outlook (e.g., “learning is for its own sake”). It cannot move us into the future. It confounded our understanding of skills, abilities and values, and brought with it the view that education was an appropriate means for defending the ranking of humanity, thus not only distorting our understanding of the origin of extant social inequality, but also distorting the process and outcome of education by tightly aligning its acquisition with social rank.

It is thus my (admittedly underdeveloped) thesis that the current emphasis on “skills” is in fact an assignment of lower social value to a larger section of the population than has been practiced in the recent past; the problem is not that the “skills” necessary for democracy are not being “taught”, but rather that what little democracy existed prior to the current push for “accountability” is being eliminated by the reduction of education to “skills development” under the hoax of economic development.

The political arrangement that housed “liberal arts” as an educational form no longer holds sway. Put in a different manner, the aim of the emphasis on skills is not — at the macro level — in the main economically driven, but a political necessity given the extreme concentration of power and complete failure of the current political system to provide people even a modicum of say over their government and the direction of society. In vogue notions of skills are confused with notions of values, and are thus quite complex. The notion of “critical thinking” is not a banner behind which educators should readily line up in the dire hope that by adopting the business-talk of skills somehow a broad and enlightened form of education can be defended and supported.

Related Posts:

• Clever rhetoric won’t save your undemocratic reform from failure: An open letter to Arne Duncan on the occasion of teacher appreciation week
• Clifford Adelman’s “White Noise of Accountability”
• Realism and Social Change
• Are Tests Measures of Test Taking Ability?
• The Questions of Education Reform Are Really Questions of Who Decides

When you argue for social change you inevitably come up against the claims of “realism” — we can’t change this or that because to do so would be “unrealistic.” This is the argument typically favored by the incrementalists: “since we can’t change society as a whole,” they say, “let’s change little things, like the means we use to assess the quality of our public schools or the students entering college.”

My first response is this: the society is changing, and to deny that it is changing, and always changes, is unrealistic! Standardized tests are one tool being used to institutionalize and justify various changes — to curriculum, governance, and to the working conditions of teachers. The political and economic arrangements that were the conditions for the emergence of public education in the United States have been dramatically altered, and so, there is pressure on these institutions to “change” — this pressure is not simply coming from the Manhattan Institute and the Fordham Foundation … it is coming from history itself. Public schools have not been able to “equalize the conditions of man.” But to continue to apply standards of that past era, conditions that gave rise to standardized tests and their flawed assumptions, is unrealistic, and requires everyone to think creatively about alternatives. Incremental change can lead to qualitative change if the incremental change hits at what is key. So, the realism argument misses all this.

More generally, I think the realism argument needs to be to interrogated. What is established as possible (“realistic”) is itself a power play; the statement has multiple meanings. Asking for permission — “is it possible to take the day off”– is different from making an analysis of what the conditions as they exist right now make possible. For example, it is possible to eliminate hunger, in that enough food for all humans can be produced right now. Why this does not occur is mainly a political question. I say: Why limit discussion of alternatives with such talk of “realism”? Why be forced to choose between incremental and fundamental change? Why assume they are necessarily in contradiction with one another? It is only the incremental in place of or against the fundamental that I object to. So, again, I would not advocate right this minute eliminating standardized tests altogether, but I would advocate, as an incremental step, eliminating the use of tests for high stakes purposes. I oppose current merit pay schemes; I don’t oppose discussions about accountability; I do oppose discussions about accountability absent discussions about rights, for responsibilities and rights go hand in hand. I would also advocate that educators think broadly and openly debate standards for education — what kind of society do we want and what kind of education will support that aim? Without that orientation, discussions of the “incremental” will become stale, facile and uninspired. So, the big picture discussion is key to identifying what steps should be taken right now.

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• Review of “A Measure of Failure: The Political Origins of Standardized Testing”
• The Common Core: Whose Standards Are They?
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But the English language does not help the discussion of measurement, as measure can signify both a standard and the process of applying a standard for the purpose of measurement, assessment or comparison. Not all applications of standards produce measurements. Applications of legal standards do not yield measurements of criminality. So, to say that a test is the best available measure may be true if by measure one means the prediction of some performance. But prediction and measurement are not the same thing. Measurement is a very specific thing, a claim that a mathematical system corresponds with the phenomenon of interest. This is the criteria of being isomorphic. Standardized tests do not meet that criteria. And, they do not identify a precise object of measurement. Thus, claiming that one must have real knowledge of mathematics to perform “well” (high rank performance) on some math test is not the same as the claim that the math test produces a measurement of math ability. Of course one must have some related skills and general intellectual development to engage with the test in a way society renders valuable. But the outcome of that exercise does not constitute a measurement.

In the course of the discussion, it was argued that test scores are at least measures of test taking ability. My claim is that tests currently in use do not meet the criteria of measurement, and that this fact is hidden, covered over, but in reality, known to psychometricians. My claim is that these tests do not produce measurements of any kind (Walt Haney tried to convince me that they are “weak” measures, which created new problems). This is why I go to great lengths to distinguish between assessment and measurement. Standardized tests are obviously tools for making assessments. They’re just not measurements, and my claim is that this distinction is very significant.

I suppose that part of what is troubling about my argument is my strict use of the word measurement. So, for example, I would agree that a score on a standardized test is a “useful indicator” of how proficient a person is at taking standardized tests in general, but I would object to someone calling that score a measurement of test-taking ability. Creating an indices, Likert scale, etc., with the aid of numbers, may provide “useful” information, and even allow that information to be treated statistically (75% of Americans are opposed to the Iraq war) but the mere assignment of numbers to something in this manner does not in itself constitute measurement. Again, I maintain that the distinction is significant; it is significant that politicians and policy experts routinely call things measurements when the results do not meet the criteria of measurement.

The claim to measurement is made because it enables one to make claims about the origin of social trends. During the rise of intelligence testing, the claim that intelligence was being measured (even though it was known to be a mere classification) enabled reformers to link school performance to what they postulated as variation in intellectual ability (and not ineffective teaching, instruction in a language not spoken by students, or a vapid curriculum). Today, the claim to measurement is required to argue that “teaching ability” or “teaching effectiveness” is the cause of various social trends. No serious scientist believes that student performance on any academic test constitutes a measurement of teaching effectiveness. And, today, even though it is well established that is “normal” for individuals to vary in their rate and depth of learning any content or skill, the useless slogan “all children can learn” is shouted by reformers as if it represents the noblest aspirations of humanity. Even if social inequality were drastically reduced, individual (not group) performance on any valued task — intellectual, social, physical — would vary widely (and this in and of itself is not a social problem).

Finally, as seems to be common when anyone presents a challenge to standardized testing, critics are imputed with the aim of “throwing out the tests.” My book is quite clear that eliminating standardized testing as we know it — while leaving all else intact — would do little good and produce more harm. But blocking the use of high stakes tests would be a positive move. And as for being pegged an anti-tester, I’m the only one (I think) to critique the critics who say standardization is “bad”; again, my aim is to analyze these concepts and structures as they are rooted in definite social and political systems. Standardization in political terms is an advance, and part of the progressive notion of equality. In fact, the tendency now is to undermine, blow off, and ignore standard psychometric procedure (reliability, validity, etc.) and this is destructive and reflective of the larger trend of those in positions of power to act with impunity. As Gene Glass notes, most states don’t even produce the most basic test validation data.

But the actual point is that the standards adopted by a social system change as the system changes; the point is that this is a political fight, and that the fight over standards is political. By political I do not meant to narrowly refer to political parties, but rather I refer to the process by which a society decides who gets what, when, where, and how. Educators can’t wish away this political feature of standards. It is an argument that ultimately says that in order to address the flaws of standardized testing and policy that relies on testing, you have to address the major flaws of the present social system that are reflected in those tools and policies. The failure of “authentic assessment” is as much a political failure as a technical one.

Related Posts:

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• Review of “A Measure of Failure: The Political Origins of Standardized Testing”
• The Common Core: Whose Standards Are They?
• Clever rhetoric won’t save your undemocratic reform from failure: An open letter to Arne Duncan on the occasion of teacher appreciation week
• Bruce Baker: Smart Guy (Gates) makes my list of “Dumbest Stuff I’ve Ever Read!”

One of the underlying tensions of this reform revolves around central tenets of the U.S. system of governance: federalism. The question posed by the framers of the constitution was how to secure national interest without tyranny; how to share power without diluting it; how to avoid civil war among those being “federated.” Underlying the current efforts is a dramatic increase in the role and power of the federal government, especially the power unelected executive branches now exert over state and local education systems. Sometimes explicit, other times implicit, the debate is rendered as one of defending the constitutional status quo — states rights, local control, etc. — or the need to move beyond partisan politics, that this is “for the children” and is not in any way altering who is in control. In pushing for national standards, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan reportedly told state Governors: “some people may claim that a commonly created test is a threat to state control — but let’s remember who is in charge. You are. You will create these tests. You will drive the process. You will call the shots.”

So where should one stand? The experience of history yields the following conclusion: neither the past system of “local control” (and its role in defending crimes of segregation and inequalities of wealth) nor the present drive for “innovaation” in the form of “national standards,” “pay-for-performance,” “alternative certification,” and “high quality assessments” along, with a certain kind of “choice,” will serve the interests of the people as a whole.

In contending with how to move forward, what stands to take, it is important to understand that the drive for broad, universal education in the United States was very much influenced by African Americans and workers generally, beginning after the Civil War. The system that emerged was the result of a fight, one that has been continuously waged, between factions and classes over the form and function of eduation. Universal education under their auspices required no admissions tests, no fees or tuition, no “agreement” to accept draconian test-prep methods and humiliation as a basis for enrollment, no rejection of students with special needs. Most important from the point of view of the present is that this model did not adopt the notion of competition as its underlying principal. It was driven by the demand of enlightened humanity, against slavery and all forms of oppression. It was premised on the conclusion that education is a basic human right, with society responsible to ensure its universal provision as a condition for individuals and collectives to fulfill their social responsibility to society. This broad education was a key element in the vision for the advance of humanity that emerged with the end of legal slavery in the United States.

Among conditions of forced illiteracy, education activists of that time and on to the civil rights movement of the 20th century demanded an education far beyond “literacy” and “work readiness” (the limits now imposed by todays “leaders” so that they can profit from global competition). Demands for culture, political decision making and philosophy stood behind practical efforts to raise the educational levels of entire communities in record time following the civil war (whose progress was blocked from further advance by the state-organized racist gangs such as the KKK and the post-Civil War arrangements of legal segregation).

This lesson of history is that if education is to serve the public interest — is to serve the society — the people themselves must set the standards designed to govern the content and form public education is to take. That Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is outrightly bribing states and local school districts into accepting the corporate agenda for schooling by awarding federal funds to only those who comply with this agenda is itself a frank admission that the direction he is driving education is against the public will and the public interest. It is illegitimate as bribery is not a modern basis for securing the consent.

Parents, teachers, families and entire communities reject the vision handed down to them by these “reformers” that says the highest aspiration served by education is that of getting a job or being “ready” for “college” — itself now reduced to more job training. Such a standards smacks of arrangements before the Civil War, where extensive education was reserved only for the rich, with the masses receiving only that which the rich deemed necessary for them to function as workers and slaves.

Related Posts:

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• Clever rhetoric won’t save your undemocratic reform from failure: An open letter to Arne Duncan on the occasion of teacher appreciation week
• Detroit Free Press: MEAP may be replaced by national online test
• Clifford Adelman’s “White Noise of Accountability”
• Race to the Top Assessment Program: Part II – The Political Significance of Assessment Governance

Yet recent reports point to the complexity of this trend. One example involves efforts of teachers to unionize at an Illinois non-for-profit charter school, who in turn hires for-profit EMOs to run some of their campuses. In response to the formation of the union, the charter company claims they are “private” when it comes to employment law. Thus the rules of the NLRB, as opposed to state law regulating public sector unions, apply. NLRB regulations mandate a formal vote among teachers, and not just completed union cards. The election would delay union formation and provide a chance for the company to “persuade” teachers not to unionize.

Another example is found in higher education. Recent reports in the Chronicle of Higher Education point to open discussions among state legislatures, higher education executives and various think tanks about “loosening the bonds between state governments and public colleges to save money and give colleges the freedom to bolster their bottom lines in new ways.”

These examples are of interest because they highlight crossing the public/private division as a strategy used by both private and public entities to either secure or expand their position.

In the first case above, public funds are given to a private company, who wishes to be treated as a public or private entity depending on the circumstances of its choosing. It wishes to receive the benefit of public finance, but rejects public oversight as a hindrance, in this case, in the regulations of public sector unions. This feature of adopting different standards for different purposes harkens back to the feudal practice of adopting different weights and measures for buying and selling, a practice which invariably favored lords and became a symbol of arbitrary power during the period leading up to the French revolution. Standards were often the property of the reigning lord, and in that sense, privately controlled. This private control over something that so greatly affected the extant public was soon to be rejected, and this rejection of arbitrary power was fostered by the emergence of a public sphere and a self-conscious public outside the subjectivity of kings, etc.

Yet, in the second case above, public status is to be reduced as state funding is reduced: states issue budget cuts and students attending public higher education are forced to pay not only more, but also a higher percentage of the total operating cost. Privatization here is generally equated with downloading the responsibility for funding education onto individuals and their families. To “save money” and “bolster the bottom line” public higher education must break bonds with state governments, and move toward becoming private institutions, so the argument goes.

Thus, much of the debate about privatization is rendered as economic in nature. Evidence of this exists in the fixation on the economic category of efficiency, of which private, for-profit firms are unquestioningly presented as the model; talk of “the bottom line,” and other for-profit imperatives dominate the discussion.

Yet, what is significant is the confused standard for determining public or private status: institutions that receive public funds are somehow more public than those that do not. Yet, in the past, public funding was directly linked to public control. On the other hand, there is the present trend to break in thinking and practice any assumption that with a transfer of public funds, an organization is to admit public oversight.

Many things that are in fact against the public interest (such as aggressive wars or handouts to fraudulent banks) are accepted nonetheless as public because they are actions of the government, carried out with public funds. So the existence of public funds itself cannot be the criteria of what is public.

The division between public and private has historically centered on justifying who decides what in a specific context; who has what rights, both in terms of limiting the power of state, but also in terms of claims of individuals. The claim individuals have to education is premised on education being a requirement, necessary for the public well being. In order for the public/private distinction to have meaning and be able to provide coherence to discussions about education and society a standard is required that does not rely on the source of funds nor the status of government or non-government.

This standard must begin by elaborating and renewing the conception of the public good or well being. What is at stake in the current move to privatize education is not simply the increased burden for individuals or instigation of more inequality through more “choice”. What is at stake is a sharp political shift, where demarcations of private or even not-for-profit (yet private) are used to eschew public oversight of that which broadly concerns all, standing against public opinion.

Related Posts:

• Clever rhetoric won’t save your undemocratic reform from failure: An open letter to Arne Duncan on the occasion of teacher appreciation week
• Inside Higher Ed: For-Profit Colleges Open Another Front
• Alan Singer: Charter Schools Don’t Do Miracles
• Clifford Adelman’s “White Noise of Accountability”
• Is Thinking a “Skill”? Values and Problems in Thinking About the “Liberal Arts”

“If folks are playing shell games, if folks are operating in bad faith, it puts their second chance at billions of dollars in jeopardy,” he said. “We have significant carrots and sticks.” — Arne Duncan, April 15, Chicago Tribute.

In a April 1, Washington Post interview, under the banner of “New Voices of Power,” staff writer Lois Romano queries Secretary of Education Arne Duncan: “So you have all this money, but, in a sense, aren’t you a little bit powerless because, in the end, the States are going to decide how to spend the money?”

Duncan: “Well, we’re going to work very, very closely with those states, and we’ve given out–we will give out over the next couple weeks billions of dollars, but we’re going to keep billions of dollars here to really watch and monitor how states do in terms of implementing these reforms.”

“Secondly, there’s unprecedented discretionary dollars, a $5-billion Race to the Top Fund where we’re going to work exclusively with those states and those districts that are really willing to challenge the status quo and get dramatically better.”

“So we’ve never had greater resources, more carrots, but also some sticks to make sure that we’re doing the right thing by children around the country.”

Lois Romano: “You talked about carrots and sticks. What are your sticks going to be?”

Duncan: “Well, again, if states aren’t doing the right thing with the stimulus package, basically they’re going to disqualify themselves from even competing for the Race to the Top Fund, and so there’s a huge financial incentive.”

During a March 24 interview with Education Week reporters Alyson Klein, Michele McNeil, and Stephen Sawchuk, Secretary Duncan was asked the following question: “Would you ever ask for money back if you found that states didn’t use it in the way you think was intended?”

Duncan: “We want to be very, very clear: If things are not going the way we like, we are going to challenge that. But … I’m much more interested in getting it right the first time, and it is absolutely in states’ best interest … to get it right the first time.”

Again Duncan is querried: “There are a couple of states [for example South Carolina] that made news because they want to reject stimulus money, especially education money. Are you working with people in those states to figure out how to possibly still get some of that stimulus money into those states, or is it going to be a dead end for you all?”

Duncan: “We are absolutely working with folks in those states who care passionately about the care of their children’s education, and there isn’t a state in the country [that] doesn’t have tremendous unmet educational need. … And so we are actually looking to be creative and work with people who have a vision and a passion for this and want to do the right thing by children.”

The reporters push Duncan: “What can you do?”

Duncan: “Stay tuned.”

Arbitrary Power against the Public & the Crisis of Legitimacy

Since being appointed Secretary of Education by President Obama, Arne Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education have initiated a massive media campaign of interviews, speeches, and news and department press releases, a sample of which is reprinted above, which focus on how the Obama Administration will use ARRA funds to further its agenda for education, with Ducan emphasizing that “this is the President’s vision.”

Key to this campaign is the role given to “incentives” at the disposal of executives, such as Duncan, who arbitrarily use the funds to support “what they like”. “We have significant carrots and sticks,” Ducan emphasizes. This arbitrary use of large sums of the public treasury by executive and unelected officials signals a significant concentration of power and a challenge to the constitutional powers given to states. But one cannot understand the drive to increase executive power, the secretary’s emphasis on “carrots and sticks,” absent an understanding of the opposition to “the President’s vision” for education.

As outlined in speeches by both Obama and Duncan, the administration is calling for more high-stakes testing, academic sweatshops for teachers and students in the form of corporate run charter schools and more mayoral control of urban school districts against more, not less, public control over education. Yet, by the U.S. Department of Education’s own accounts, and by the accounts chronicled in decades worth of independent research on school reform, not to mention people’s own direct experience these “reforms”, none of these methods have served to improve education.

So why the continued pursuit of “reforms” that have not served the aims for which they were officially established? Why the emphasis on “carrots and sticks” or what amounts to outright bribery?

While Duncan misuses the carrot and stick idiom (as it refers to a “carrot on a stick,” where a driver would tie a carrot on a string to a long stick and dangle it in front of the donkey, just out of its reach, to induce the donkey forward) the content of bribery is clear.

To bribe means to “persuade (someone) to act in one’s favor by a gift of money or other inducement”. Importantly, bribery only makes sense in the face of a norm, standard or other basis for refusal to act in a manner desired by the person offering the bribe. What is very significant from the political point of view is that, as a form of persuasion, bribery does not rest on reasoned argument, the use of facts and logic to justify a proposed course of action. At the level of federal law and policy, bribery is a form of persuasion that rests on the open assertion of authority against public opinion: one would not need to bribe educators and locally elected officials into doing what was inherently in their interest. The use of the public treasury to bribe educators is an open admission that the path being imposed by the ruling elite cannot be justified.

Thus, the use of ARRA funds to compel educators to take up “reforms” that have already been discredited as ineffective and against voters demand for change (not more of the same Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush cooperate education agenda) signals a profound legitimacy crisis. It signals a fairly broad opposition within official organizations to the wrecking of public education. The National School Boards Association has, for example, continually opposed mayoral control as both ineffective and anti-democratic. Every major education research organization, such as the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association, has opposed in some form, to take another example, the use of high-stakes testing. Only a few weeks ago, Warrick County (Indiana) Superintendent Brad Schneider criticized the Bush-sponsored No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act as “mind-boggling” and “absurd.” And, public opinion still supports public education against privatization.

The transformation of public funds into “carrots and sticks” to be used against students, educators and parents must be rejected as an illegitimate use of power against public opinion. It must also be recognized as an admission on the part of the elite that they have no solutions to the problems in education and society. What is needed is more, not less, control over institutions that have an inherent public function.

Related Posts:

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Before addressing the political basis of this methodological project, it is important to note that the authors make the mistkae that Robert Yin suggests is all too common: research on school performance confounds schools as the proper unit of analysis with individuals; this is especially common with those obsessively turning to randomized field trials. (See Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: design and methods (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.)

I think exposing their position as emanating from political theory — rather than an thoughtless imports from the natural and sciences — might prove helpful in both evaluating the book and articulating the political significance of school choice policy more generally.

Random Trials as Opportunity Science

Of note is the book’s adoption of U.S. Department of Education, and in particular the Institute of Educational Sciences, insistence on the “gold standard” of experimental design: the “random assignment of units to experimental and control or contrast conditions (2).”

“Randomized field trials” are thus adopted as the key method for studying school choice. By studying the measurable outcomes of applicants who were lotteried into an oversubscribed charter school or voucher program to those who were lotteried out and attended a traditional public school, the influence of family background can be separated out from that of the school itself (but again, this promotes confusion regarding the unit of analysis).

According to the authors, the strength of this method and other efforts such as over time measures of “value added,” is that they help “take into account the powerful influence of families” and help “establish the separate and distinct contribution of the school to a student’s achievement.”

The postulate that experimental design is equally the gold standard for the social sciences as it is for the natural sciences is taken for granted. It presents itself as a solution to a perennial problem in school evaluation research predating even the “Coleman Report”: controlling for the influence of family characteristics on school outcomes. It seems as a rational way out of that conundrum — but only if certain things are ignored or forgotten.

What is the assumption behind the presupposition that students must be separated from their historical position, their social circumstance, in order to assess the quality of their school and the degree to which they have learned what is required of them? How does this premise inform the cultural meaning of “achievement” as distinct from student learning?

What is the political significance of the fact that this kind of “controlling” for social circumstance was largely impossible under a traditional public school model where place of residence determined school assignment for all but a tiny minority of public school students?

Irrespective of the logic justifying the “controlling” for social circumstance, is not such a project irrational? Can one “control” for social circumstances? Such efforts reveal a profound distortion and patently unscientific view of social reality. Does not the entire project of “controlling” for social circumstance — which includes everything from assumptions about “ethnicity” and parental “SES” to larger understandings of religion, culture and sub-cultures of neighborhoods — itself constitute a social circumstance and a patently normative project which serves the interests of some over others?

Political Logic of Random Selection

In beginning to answer my own question posed above (“What is the political significance…”) I am not arguing with the general logic of the controlled experiment, or the statistical reality of randomization and its utility for understanding cause and effect. What I am arguing is that this fetish of random trials pushed by the IES is derived from the following notion: that schools are successful to the degree they produce students who successfully compete in the academic marketplace (the exchange of grades and test scores for places of opportunity, praise and so on). Closing the achievement gap is an official effort to contend with the overgrowth of social inequality while simultaneously violently blocking any real effort or even discussion of reducing (let alone eliminating) social inequality. This pathology stems from the long-standing assumption of American political theory that replaces class struggle with the struggle for education. (Refer to classic quotes from Horace Mann for an elaboration, or even better, see Rush Welter’s (1962) Popular education and Democratic Thought in America.)

The underlying logic of this strand of charter school research (Berends et al.) is that charters should be promoted, not because they are necessarily proven to be better, but because they create competition — not only among schools, but among teachers, as researchers document a lower average salary, yet a larger spread in annual earnings for charter as compared to traditional public school teachers. Randomization is opportunity science speak for fair competition (e.g., no “selection bias”).

This competition is key because it allows for arrangements heretofore difficult to make, like linking student achievement with teacher pay, something the authors deem of obvious value and unproblematic. Teachers are evaluated on the degree to which they help students compete (e.g., note the language and real meaning of “high flying schools”), irrespective of the background and ability of the students. Good teachers are those whose students successfully compete in academic competitions (i.e., high stakes tests). Charter schools eschew the working class politics of union and solidarity and stand as institutions more firmly on the grounds of individual merit and competition. That is to say, good teachers are those that help liberate students from their social place through academic competition (again, there are other notions of “good teacher”) just as black and poor kids are supposed to “achieve” because in this “meritocracy,” race and class aren’t factors in determining ones place in the social order — charters are to replace public schools as the means for this liberation. Those that have a different view are deemed to have a bad attitude (“low expectations”).

The logic goes like this: pointing to realities of structural inequality and the impact “going without” has on child development (and thus “achievement”) introduces bias, just as introducing lotteries eliminates it. One could of course point out that it is quite biased to set up a social system which forces some more than others to be in positions where they need to “choose a good school.” This question has of course been forced off the agenda by advocates of “change” and “innovation”.

Randomization helps create, then, as a standardized norm-reference test does, a “fair playing field” — a free market, unencumbered by the realities of ones historical location, only “merit” rules. Like academic tests, charters, the logic goes, are the engine of a meritocracy for educational institutions, and the “best and brightest” will rise to the top, but could fall any moment, like a dot.com, if they don’t continually “strive” and “achieve”.

In this way, the research continues not because it is helping to answer questions of policy makers or the public (an admission that openly appears in the book) but because it is a mechanism for instituting more forcefully that arrangement of which charters are a part. The idea that one “lotteries” into a school not only suggests an open disregard for planning for the future of youth, a willingness to gamble on their future, but also a particular notion of fair play — rich and poor are equally selectable by the dice.

This entire view is antithetical to education as a right and signals an outright rejection of the notion that society has any responsibility to its members. Yet, successful schools are those that are not able to coach kids to the top of the heap, but prepare them for full participation in social life, in solving problems, etc.

Related Posts:

• Veteran Chicago Teacher & Former Director of Safety Speaks Out on the Impact of the Recession, Ducan Policies
• Clever rhetoric won’t save your undemocratic reform from failure: An open letter to Arne Duncan on the occasion of teacher appreciation week
• Alan Singer: Charter Schools Don’t Do Miracles
• Clifford Adelman’s “White Noise of Accountability”
• Charter Schools/Market Violence/Disruptive Innovation: Student Beating, Paying the Rich, and the Irrelevance of Facts