But the idea — let alone the adoption of — a national curriculum appears as a sharp break with the foundation of the American Republic, the commitment to “state’s rights,” to decentralization and a relatively weak central government.

Thus begins the introduction of my forthcoming book, Testing for Tyranny: The Political Significance of a National Curriculum and Testing Regime in the United States.

At present, the push to implement the so-called Common Core Standards (not federal, not national, as Diane Ravitch would have it, but “common,” and so the choice of language is significant) represents a turning point in American history. There are many questions that must be answered about this initiative, the most important one being this: Whose standards are they? Whose interests do they serve?

This question is being posed from a variety of perspectives. For example, a Tea Party activist noted this:

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers (collectively, NGA Center/CCSSO), as the owners of the Common Core State Standards (College- and Career-Readiness Standards and K-12 Standards in English Language Arts and Math), grant this license to the Licensee identified below, subject to the terms set forth herein. The Common Core State Standards are protected by copyright and/or other applicable law, and any use of the Common Core State Standards other than as authorized under this License is prohibited.

And so:

As a parent, where will you go if you feel a change should be made to the ELA or math content to be taught to the students in your neighborhood and community schools? To the school? the local school board? to the state education dept or the state school board? to the federal government? Sorry, it is out their hands. They no longer have control over the content for ELA and math that is to be taught to the students in the states that have adopted the CCSS.

This line of questioning might help explain the choice of language and the administrative mechanisms used to push the standards.  If they were national, this notion of ownership would seem counter productive (who owns the American Flag)? If they were federal, clearly they are in the control of the federal government, owned by it, but presumably on behalf of the people as a whole.. But they are merely “common” — ushered in and controlled by an “association” of associations that is neither federally constituted nor bound to a state, a “public/private partnership” of government leaders and business interests; an entity that does not report to a legislature or even a defined constituency.

And now the Schlechty Center releases, Whose Standards Are They?

Offering a broad minded and thoughtful presentation of standards and their role in education, the paper is particularly significant for the guidance it provides school personnel in organizing discussions about the Common Core Standards in their schools and communities.  It offers a concrete guide for evaluating the Common Core Standards, affirming the right of communities to have a say over the nature and function of the education provided to their youth.

Asking the “who decides” question is by far the most important question to ask when examining the Common Core initiative. Discussions narrowly fixated on implementation, or even concerns about whether national standards and tests will improve education, serve to veil consideration of how contemporary education reform (such as the Common Core) serves to re-articulate governing arrangements such that the vast majority — parents, teachers, administrators, local school boards, and youth — are excluded from involvement in decisions that directly affect their lives, and their future.

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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.

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The University of Missouri system has been besieged with angry letters and phone calls, and top officials at its St. Louis campus have asked an adjunct faculty member to resign, as a result of the conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s posting videos this week that appear to show two labor-studies instructors advocating union violence.

The videos, however, were a “hatchet Job”.

Yet, “both Mr. Giljum and Ms. Ancel [the instructors] said they have been barraged with angry phone calls and letters, and Mr. Giljum said he has received explicit death threats over the phone.”

I assume the contradiction does not go unnoticed. The story continues:

If Mr. Breitbart’s Web site has broadcast a misleadingly edited video, it would hardly be the first time. The site is notorious for having put up the video that purported to show a Department of Agriculture official, Shirley Sherrod, saying she had discriminated against a white farmer, when a review of her comments in context show that she said no such thing. (Ms. Sherrod, who was forced to resign after the video came out, has sued Mr. Breitbart.)

Mr. Breitbart’s Web site also publicized the 2009 hidden-camera videos of employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, which appear to show the employees advising a pimp and prostitute on how to deceive the IRS about their activities and income. Law-enforcement officials who investigated the allegations have said the videos were edited to make it look as if the employees were actively engaged in wrongdoing when, in fact, they were not.

Mr. Breitbart had indicated in an April 18 interview on Hannity, Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, that he planned to “go after” educators and their union organizers.

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While we all make mistakes, the attached letter recruiting subjects for research is a small piece of evidence that appears to confirm our collective worst fears: for-profits are most interested in money, less interested in quality education (I have blocked out the student’s identifying information and the link to the student’s survey). Granted, many faculty, including myself, have participated on dissertation committees of students who produce less than stellar research, write poorly, etc. — and these students attend not-for-profits or publics. No doubt there is a problem with both the preparation of students and the quality of some programs.  I constantly strive to improve the quality of education for my students, but it is admittedly an ongoing challenge. But are for-profits and the model of education they trumpet helping to address these problems?

I think it is fair to single out the for-profits for several reasons. The first is the belief evident in current education policy talk that says markets and the profit motive (ignoring all the fraud, of course), will lead to greater educational access, quality and equality. I have suspected for a long time that for-profit education will at best not achieve these goals. At worst, I fear they will serve to make things much worse.

Research conducted with my colleagues has documented that for-profits receive the highest median Pell per full-time equivalent (FTE) compared to publics and non-profits for the years 1993, 2000 and 2004. This trend might be framed as another form of corporate subsidy. At the same time, for-profits continue to enroll an increasing number of minority students (my most recent research found a huge percent increase in the number of American Indian/Alaskan Natives attending for-profits, for example).

Most interesting is our finding that a smaller percentage of expenses is directed toward instruction at for-profits than non-profits. Sure, maybe for-profits are more efficient, but that line of argument doesn’t solve the problem of why this great efficiency appears to be applied aggressively toward groups that have been and continue to be subjected to discrimination and racist exclusion? Is it OK to “waste” money on rich White kids? (I don’t believe that small class sizes, and small teaching loads for faculty, with a broad range of social and cultural activities for college students, faculty and staff, and plenty of support for faculty developed curriculum and research, is “wasteful”; it just doesn’t line up with the present goals and values of the super rich who now think they reign supreme).

So, we should ask, efficient at what, for whom? Even if a particular student benefits from this type of educational opportunity that does not obliterate the real concern: does the rise of for-profits and marketization more generally herald a new kind of educational stratification, a new means for structuring inequality under the guise of accountability, access and “meeting student demands”? Since for-profits have a greater percentage of Pell eligible students, are we seeing a class bifurcation, especially as publics become less “public” (i.e., affordable)? Add to these concerns the role of for-profits in popularizing the view that education is equivalent to job training — that education has no other, broader social purpose.

Now let’s get back to the Chronicle. The only national newspaper dedicated to covering higher education has moved to sponsor — not simply advertise on their website and print edition, but endorse — email campaigns for a controversial sector of higher education. I for one expect them to cover for-profits in an unbiased fashion. Does the Chronicle of Higher Education actually endorse the for-profit model of higher education, despite the growing concerns that even for-profit PR firms have been unable to eradicate?

Well, upon receiving the first such email endorsement of for-profits, I sent a letter explaining my opposition to this practice to the Chronicle of Higher Education, and received no reply. Maybe the “efficiency” and “opportunity” and “accountability” evident in this recruitment letter will get someone’s attention!

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Let’s dissect two bold premises of Gates’ argument about US spending and student outcomes – how we’ve spent ourselves crazy for decades and how we’ve gotten nothing for it – how we spend so much more than other countries, but they kick our butts – his reasons for arguing that now is the time to flip the curve.

Read his entire post.

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Recent news confirms what we have known for a long time: change is coming, and it doesn’t look good. But a key part of contending with change — good or bad — is to step back and analyze how that change is legitimated. In the case of the attack on the right to organize, much can be learned if one examines how the matter is framed and justified.

The nature of the right to organize

Key to attacking teachers is disinformation regarding teachers and their rights. By definition, a right cannot be given or taken away. It is a valid, legitimate claim based in the existence of the holder of the claim. Rights, by their very nature, are not “granted” on the basis of performance, ability, opinion, or any other consideration. I have the right to participate in decision making about matters that affect me, like my working conditions, the condition of my community, the economy in general, etc…whether or not I’m good at math, nice to my neighbors or have friends in high places. I have that right by virtue of being a member of that community, that economy, that workplace. Whether that right is recognized is in practice quite different from whether or not it exists.

So, even if the existence of unions are shown to correlate with some malady, this correlation does not correctly justify attacking a basic right, like that of a group of people with common interests to come together to defend those interests. Does the existence of teachers unions make it harder for administrators to do their job? Sometimes. Does that justify attacking teachers’ right to organize? Absolutely not. This logic would suggest that we should throw harder to educate kids out of school because they make the school’s job harder. Rights establish the boundaries for the negotiation of contending interests, a process which should be governed by the aim of harmonizing those interests, not empowering one group of people at the expense of another as current rhetoric suggests.

So think of it this way, as the right to organize in terms of unions is not simply a matter of “labor rights” but basic to democratic rights in general. Involving all constituencies in making a decision takes longer, is probably a drain on social resources, and might even be properly rendered as “inefficient”. Should we thus abandon the hope that society can be democratically organized? Does this fact negate the claim to have a say over matters that affect our lives? If the process for firing ineffective teachers is burdensome is expanding arbitrary authority of CEO-types with their brooms and bats really a solution? I don’t believe the vast majority of Americans want to wake up in a world run by these broom and bat wielding people.

I hope that these quickly-formulated thought exercises reveal that the logic behind proposals to outlaw or at least largely emasculate collective bargaining are very dangerous. One proposal in fact appears to block teachers from having a say over education policy — so, teachers are key to improving the quality of education, but they should be barred from decision-making (collective bargaining is a decision-making arrangement) about the very thing they are to lead improving? Not convinced?

Certainly, lurking in the public mind is this retort: “yeah, but the teachers are all self interested.” And the billionaires driving school deformation strategies premised on a for-profit model which requires cheap, temporary labor are what, generous and selfless? But let’s actually be serious. What does it mean to be self interested?

Teachers working conditions are students learning conditions

The line that outlawing teachers unions is required so that school boards and parents can be empowered is lunacy. Parents are not empowered if the teachers that teach their children are treated like shit. School boards are not representing the interests of their community if they treat teachers like shit.

More to the point, the line that the problem is that teachers unions only serve the interests of teachers needs to be interrogated. Is self interest wrong? Why is it wrong or socially harmful to want higher wages, better healthcare, and small class sizes, rest and leisure and assurance of being cared for during retirement?

That sounds terrible! I’ll sign up instead for the work camp where I can salute the master every day, as my body cripples and spirit is crushed under the mighty pressure of standards gaps and evaluation evaluation assessments data driven decision-less making brain-numbing ignorance of the 6,000 pound gorilla who just got laid off, has no healthcare and is being evicted, with three children, all of whom are not meeting “benchmark” (although they might be sleeping under the bench, which is not one of the marks). (And, of course, because the gorilla is sooo big, it can’t choose to even live under the bridge, let alone the bench.)

It is a material fact that teachers working conditions are students learning conditions. That is, teachers self interest is connected to their students’ interests. Students under the tutelage of teachers who are themselves under the thumb of a broom or bat totting CEO with unbridled power to hire and fire at will and extend the working day and increase class size at will (all so they can be “empowered to strategically use resources” — i.e., cut costs) will not be served well. Period. Teachers and parents and tax payers have well over one hundred years of experience fighting for real public education. I know its tough, but we need to remember: teachers are tax payers. Teachers are parents. And teachers are mostly women.

So laid out this way, someone is going to have a hell of a time convincing the public that the self-interest of women is somehow fundamentally at odds with parents and the community, and that to counter this, we should put “students first”…because, uh, women are opposed to helping children, and benefit from, uh, illiterate, poorly educated youth?

You know what, I think its time the public eye scrutinized another collective — not teachers, or women, or parents — a much smaller collective, a collective for whom its self interest does not in fact correlate with the general interest!

Bill, Eli, are you there?

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First it was changes to pay, then evaluation systems, and then tenure laws. Now, lawmakers in several states are challenging collective bargaining, the foundation of teacher unionism.

In Idaho and Indiana, Republican leaders are proposing bills that would limit collective bargaining to wages and benefits, excluding education policy issues. And in Tennessee, a recently introduced bill would abolish altogether teachers’ ability to bargain collectively.

None of the proposals has yet passed its respective legislative chambers, but they are emerging in what may be a particularly favorable political climate, given the rightward shift in many state capitals as a result of the November elections…

At least three states have proposed bills to curtail or eliminate teacher bargaining. other states could follow suit.

IDAHO

SPONSORS: State Superintendent Tom Luna, a Republican, has proposed two bills. At press time, they awaited a sponsor and bill numbers.

One bill would limit negotiations to wages and compensation and require such negotiations to be held in open meetings. It would disallow “continuation clauses” in contracts—essentially clearing all previous policies for each negotiation. A second bill would require school districts to post copies of their current school district budgets and collective bargaining pacts on their websites.

INDIANA

SB 575: SPONSORS: Sens. Phil Boots, (R), Luke Kenley (R), Ed Charbonneau (R)

The bill would remove certain items from collective bargaining negotiations, including teacher-evaluation procedures, teacher-dismissal procedures, and school restructuring options, among others. it also would permit districts to impose certain employment terms if the teachers’ contract expires without a new one in place. contracts could not extend beyond two years.

STATUS: Passed Senate committee on Pensions and Labor, Jan. 27

HB 1337: SPONSORS: Reps. Robert Behning (R), David Frizzell (R)

Similar to the Senate bill, it also would alter the teacher-evaluation framework and allow for the dismissal of tenured teachers for performance reasons.

STATUS: Referred to house committee on Education, Jan. 13

TENNESSEE: HB 0130 — SPONSORS: Reps. Debra Maggart (R), Glen Casada (R)

The bill would prohibit teachers’ unions and other professional employees’ organizations from negotiating employment contracts with local school boards. Labor contracts signed before enactment of the bill would remain in force through their expiration.

STATUS: Filed for introduction, Jan. 18

SOURCE: Education Week

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From Teacher Blogs, Living in Dialogue

On Wednesday, listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR, I heard an expert on the auto industry, Paul Ingrassia, talk happily about the “tough love” the Obama administration had shown for auto workers. Using the device of bankruptcy to break contractual obligations to their employees, the US car makers have reduced their labor costs from 30% of the cost of a car to just 6%. Now, even though they are selling fewer cars, the car makers are raking in the billions again.

Ingrassia explained it this way:

So if we can, you know, at least address the problems of Detroit with promises, the promise of improvement, or even a cure, why can’t we apply the same tough-love methods to the federal budget deficit and the whole entitlement structure that we have in this country that has helped produce that deficit, and also to the public employee pension plans that are threatening to bankrupt many of our states? Those are huge problems that will swamp this country if they’re not addressed.

There was a very interesting op-ed piece a couple of days ago in The Wall Street Journal by a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania suggesting that Congress should pass a law that allows states to declare bankruptcy. And, you know, it’s not a bad thought. And there’s no way that GM and Chrysler would have made it through this restructuring without the ability to renounce contracts and, you know, to renounce their financial obligations that they have accumulated over the years that they could not afford to meet.

And the shoe dropped just a day later, when the New York Times reported that “Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.”

It is interesting to note Ingrassia’s use of the phrase “tough love.” In Michelle Rhee’s plan to fix the schools she simplisticly declares are, she says we must “Ensure that the government exercises discipline in pension and benefit programs.” So there must be tough love and discipline – we are being treated as if we were children bingeing on ice cream.

We are not children. We are adults who have chosen to teach, a not very well-paid profession. And those of us who have chosen to make it a career look forward to the day when we can cease grading papers and calling parents, and enjoy a few years of hard-earned rest before we go off to the teacher’s lounge in the sky. Our pensions are a form of deferred compensation. That money has already been earned, and the obligation to us is very real.

This is one more step towards the destruction of our profession. We need people to choose teaching as a career because it is complex work that deepens year after year. The first or second year intern may have good test scores, but they have a great deal to learn – as most of them will tell you. But when we make everything about test scores, and base everything – pay, hiring, evaluations – on these scores, we have lost the foundation for our profession, and any intern with a repertoire of test prep techniques is as “effective” as a seasoned veteran. This crass definition of effectiveness allows the embrace of policies that devalue experience and seniority, and things like pensions that promote career longevity, in favor of cost-cutting measures. We need a profession that creates stability in our schools, not the constant churn that makes the veteran teacher a rarity, and robs us of the dynamic mix that results when novices and veterans collaborate together to learn how innovative practices can meld with traditional ones.

But take careful note, when Mr. Ingrassia talks about the “entitlement structure we have in this country,” these are code words for Social Security, the other target in the sights of the billionaires. So we are in good company. It is not just public employees that stand to lose our pensions – it is every person who does not have an independent means of supporting themselves when they retire. And this is both the greatest danger, and our greatest hope. We need to help our fellow Americans understand – they are coming for ALL of our pensions. Teachers and other public employees are taking some big hits, but the biggest pot of gold of all is Social Security, and that will affect every wage earner in the nation. We need some good old fashioned solidarity. And we need to get ourselves into the streets for some old fashioned protests. I am headed to Washington, DC, this summer, and it looks like I have some company.

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According the article, “The three rules challenged by the career college group have also generated their share of concern among some nonprofit college officials, since they apply broadly to all institutions whose students receive federal financial aid.”

The lawsuit asks the courts to block the federal agency from enforcing three regulations that it claims “go far beyond lawful regulatory efforts.”

Federal plans to require vocationally oriented colleges to prove that they prepare students for “gainful employment” will likely be opposed in future lawsuits when those rules are released.

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http://www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au

Yesterday, the Buffalo News reported that the Buffalo Public Schools and the Buffalo Teachers Federation had negotiated a new teacher evaluation system. But what is particularly significant is that the News simultaneously reported on and endorsed the contract negotiated between Washington, D.C. teachers and administration, and promoted it as a model for Buffalo. The D.C. contract — known as IMPACT but not mentioned by name in the editorial — has, according to the Buffalo News, four key components: performance-based teacher evaluation, financial incentives to raise test scores, limits on the protections of tenure, and increased ability of the district to lay off “bad teachers” without “economic cause”. But the News is either unaware or unwilling to report facts unfriendly to its position of support.

While the News editorial characterizes the contact as one where “performance and the quality of teaching, not blind seniority, will determine who is hired and who is laid off,” it downplays the fact that “performance” and “quality of teaching” are determined by student test scores. Following adoption of the contract, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee fired 165 teachers based on lack of improvement in student test scores over one academic year. The method is said to measure the “value added” to students by their teacher.

Student test scores do not equal good teaching

Despite all the rhetoric supporting the use of scientific research to guide education reform, the amount of evidence against using test scores as a basis for teacher evaluation is very strong. President Obama, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and a host of billionaires who support Rhee are imposing this practice across the country, despite the warnings of the scientific community.

In his video Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures, professor Daniel Willingham summarizes the problems associated with what the News is promoting. But he is not alone. A recent report by the National Center for Educational Evaluation estimating the error in using test scores to classify teachers as effective or ineffective predicts that when using only one year of data, 35% of teacher classifications will be wrong (i.e., effective teachers will be classified as ineffective, and ineffective teachers will be classified as effective). For teachers in D.C., that means as many as 57 of the 165 teachers fired in DC might have been inaccurately identified as ineffective. The National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research also released a study examining the technical limits of using student test results to evaluate teachers. Among other things, the report found that different tests yield different teacher rankings.

The degrading effect of incentives

But more important than the technical limitations noted above is the philosophical underpinning of the entire system based on financial incentives to pressure educators to boost student test scores. Based on past practice, this gives rise to treating students as mere conduits of cash, leading ultimately to student abuse and debasement of public education. This is what happened under a similar system in England, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The negative results of what was known as Payment by Results were widely recognized by contemporaries, and the practice was eventually halted. It was precisely this system — one that abused teachers and pushed many competent ones to leave the profession — that contributed to teachers unionizing in Britain. And most interestingly, it was a method of teacher compensation rooted in an effort to reduce spending on public education during a time of great expenditures following the Crimean War.

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