During my many years of work on ASCD at the Washington State and International levels I had the good fortune to meet many state, national, and international leaders in education. A few years ago I ran across the work of Jerry Bracey and ended up as a subscriber to his listserve, the Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency (EDDRA). Bracey was one of the giants of our time with extensive background in assessment and not afraid to call a spade a spade. EDDRA consisted of some of the top thinkers in the field of education who came together to identify and call out the misinformed, stupid, and out-and-out fraudulent information being promoted to the public. In Hemingway’s terms, we were a bunch of “crap detectors” bent on straightening things out.
I met many people through EDDRA, but one of the best analytical minds belongs to Michael Martin from Arizona. He is able to cut through the most obtuse argument to find the kernel of truth hidden within. I am amazed at his ability to read opposing views on a topic and, on the spot, develop a well thought out ten-paragraph response that reads like it was the result of hours of research and much editing.
To finally get to the point, when Mike sends me something he has written I know I had better read it carefully and pay attention to its points. I just received such a piece from him and knew right away I needed to get it to as big an audience as possible. Here is his take on what I refer to as the Federal/corporate takeover of the public schools.
Waiting For SuperFraud
By Michael T. Martin
Public schools have to fail. There is no alternative. So give up trying to argue otherwise with facts and logic.
The mockumentary Waiting For Superman made this clear. Funded by millionaires, the movie told the story of some privatized schools in Harlem portrayed as saviors of children otherwise condemned to public schools. Privatized schools mostly funded by hedge fund millionaires on Wall Street. They spent two million dollars to promote the film nationally. Another major film titled “The Lottery” told a similar tale: children in Harlem desperate to escape public schools. Funded by more millionaires.
State Senator Bill Perkins, who represents the people of Harlem, tried to put profit restrictions on these privatized schools. So the millionaires spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to run an opponent against him in the November, 2010, election. The people of Harlem voted overwhelmingly to re-elect Perkins.
One of the supposed heroes in the mockumentary was Michele Rhee, the caustic head of Washington, D.C., schools. She subsequently was the focus of the November, 2010, mayor’s election in D.C., campaigning for the existing mayor who appointed her, promising to resign if he lost. The people of D.C. voted him and her out.
The little people in Harlem and D.C. who see the truth on the ground voted against the millionaires. But the big money people still rate Rhee as a hero and keep pouring money and propaganda into charter schools. Ever wonder why? Brooklyn city councilman Charles Barron laments the situation in New York City: “Our public schools need to be in the control of parents and the community, as opposed to businessmen who see the $23 billion budget as a means to giving no-bid contracts to their cronies.”
In April, 1999, the Wall Street financiers at Merrill Lynch published a 193 page “In-depth Report” titled “The Book of Knowledge, Investing in the Growing Education and Training Industry.” Early in the report they noted: “The K-12 market is the largest segment of the education industry with approximately $360 billion spent annually or over $6,500 per year per child. Despite the size, the K-12 market is the most problematic to invest in today. Entrenched bureaucracies and personal and political interests contribute to the challenges facing this sector.”
Public schools HAVE to fail in order to crack open this egg and give these financiers access to the $360 billion they are after (estimates are that it is around $700 billion today). No matter what logic you use to explain the problems or successes of public education, it will be of no avail: public schools HAVE to fail. Whatever it takes. In a 2007 appellate court decision ruling that Merrill Lynch could not be sued by Enron stockholders for facilitating the fraud of Enron, the dissenting third member of the judicial panel wrote: “The majority immunizes a broad array of undeniably fraudulent conduct from civil liability.”
Big money wants the public schools to fail and they are quite willing to engage in “undeniably fraudulent conduct” to ensure it. One prescient book titled “The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, And The Attack On America’s Public Schools” told the tale back in 1996 but logic and facts won’t stop big money.
Back about the time NCLB was promulgated, Ron Susskind, a New York Times reporter, related a conversation with a senior aide to President George W. Bush in the summer of 2002: “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore.’”
Big money is “the way the world really works anymore.” Enough money to buy political influence. A lesson well taken from the experience of the tobacco industry in fighting the truth of lung cancer. A lesson perhaps best exemplified by the Tobacco Institute’s “Powell Memorandum” that exhorted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to establish a conspiracy to counter the environmentalism and consumerism of the public schools. The author of which was soon afterward appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The current leadership of the Republican Congress in the House and Senate both have long established economic ties to the tobacco industry. House speaker Boehner was criticized several years ago for handing out tobacco lobby checks on the floor of the House during a crucial vote on tobacco regulation. People whose self interest depends on addicting children to a poisonous product now claim to have the best interests of children in mind.
The overarching thrust of the mockumentary Waiting For Superman is that teachers’ unions are responsible for the faux failure of public schools. That teachers have their own self interest rather than that of children in mind. The teachers’ unions that have been major supporters of the Democratic Party since the Civil Rights era. So the Republican Party will stop at nothing to undermine public education.
After President Clinton was elected in the early 1990s, Reed Hundt, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (1993-97), asked H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Education Bill Bennett to support legislation that would pay for internet access in all classrooms and libraries in the country. “I asked him to support the bill in the crucial stage when we needed Republican allies. He told me he would not help, because he did not want public schools to obtain new funding, new capability, new tools for success. He wanted them, he said, to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers, charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education.”
Grover Norquist, a major political leader in the Republican conservative movement, was asked by writer Ben Adler of The New Republic “How evolution should be taught in public schools.” Norquist responded “The real problem here is that you shouldn’t have government-run schools.” Norquist is better known for his patriotic comment that he wants to shrink the federal government to where he can drown it in a bathtub. His words; somewhat evocative of drowning a child.
So there are powerful forces who will ensure that public schools fail. There is no sense arguing to the contrary, there is over $700 billion to believe otherwise. The same greed by the same people that left the U.S. economy in ruins, with millions of ordinary people unemployed and in bankruptcy, will ensure that the U.S. education system is soon in the same condition. Public education has to fail, because that is “the way the world really works anymore.”
“So there are powerful forces who will ensure that public schools fail.” You said it!
My book, “The Education and Deconstruction of Mr. Bloomberg, How the Mayor’s Education and Real Estate Development Policies Affected New Yorkers 2002-2009 Inclusive,” (available at Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and borders.com, among other online bookstores), documents it.
Sobering and reminiscent of the “Schools Aren’t As Good As They Used To Be; They Never Were.” (Maeher, Jane and Martin, “Schools Aren’t As Good As They Used To Be; They Never Were.”, Education Researcher, November 1996, vol. 25 no. 8 21-24)
Mr. Martin’s analysis is, of course, dead-on accurate. Getting folks to hear his message and those of other like-minded people who aren’t swallowing the deform Kool-Aid and other products of the Billionaire Boy’s Club.
Such a refreshing perspective. Thanks.
“I asked him to support the bill in the crucial stage when we needed Republican allies. He told me he would not help, because he did not want public schools to obtain new funding, new capability, new tools for success. He wanted them, he said, to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers, charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education.”
This is the exact assult New Jersey is under. Our Governor and the Republicans (and Democrats who aren’t really doing enough to stop him) are working to dismantle public education so they can bring in private enterprise to take over. They aren’t doing it to benefit anyone but the big money players backing them all. It’s reprehensible.
Why is the economic interest of business entities a reason to question their motivation however the economic interests of union leaders and employees is exempt from the same? Money is spent on both sides on lobbyists and supporting elected officials who promise to change or defend law to suit the spender’s desires. This piece examines but one side. Look at this statement “The teachers’ unions that have been major supporters of the Democratic Party since the Civil Rights era. So the Republican Party will stop at nothing to undermine public education.” Your conclusion is not logically derived from your premise and you ignore the logical implication of your premise that its in the economic interest of the leaders of those unions and their members to support more funding of the system. If it is not the form of outright hypocrisy it is a piece written by a man limited by the blinders of bias.
Education systems outside of the public domain are typically outside of union bargaining limitations. No public ed = no unions. No unions = less support for the Democratic values. In both senses. Though that connection is obvious to those of us in the trenches, I can see how the unfamiliar could miss it in Martin’s piece.
What seems implied by YOUR comment is that you believe unions’ interests are not aligned with what’s best for students. As we typically ask our students – can you unwrap that thought for us? Would you mind examining where a union’s interests might diverge from what helps kids learn?
Looking forward to hearing more.
Sorry to burst your bubble but the unions don’t have as much power as they or you think they do. As soon as anyone steps into the political morass, their power is decreased because they are working the system, not the problem. The more the unions try to work the system, the further away they get from the problem. The same is true for management.
My personal experience with union leadership is that they are just as interested in keeping and holding power as management. Teachers and students become secondary.
Fantastic point. My only criticism of unions is that they work only for the interest of teachers- not for the the students or the schools. Whenever I argue that unions are unwilling to compromise, I am attacked as “anti-public school” and “anti-public school teachers”. I have no doubt that most public school teachers want what is best for students, but they don’t hold the unions accountable for making THOSE changes, rather they place all of the responsibility on the government, which is entirely stymied by the teacher’s unions. It’s a vicious cycle where nothing can ever be fixed, and the unions view any change in education as a change in power. The plain and simple fact that people seem to ignore is that a union’s ONLY purpose is to protect those who it represents. Unions have no responsibility to do what is best for students. And please don’t argue that what is best for teachers is always best for students…
I have been saying this for over 13 years…people thought I was a conspiracy nut but I just follow the money!
Ditto. (You’re not paranoid if they are really out to get you.)
As others have said, this is about much more than education, its about power and control…we and our children are nothing more than livestock… We need to change the system entirely… until we do that, nothing better will happen…
http://sahilachangebringer.blogspot.com/2010/12/story-of-your-enslavement.html
http://sahilachangebringer.blogspot.com/2010/12/this-is-where-slavery-starts.html
Real progress in education is dependent on communities insisting on schools that are designed to benefit all the children in their locale. Little good will come from solutions imposed by distant outsiders or those that are designed to solve the problems of adults or enrich those who provide the materials of school.
Bob — I have posted a link to your remarks on my blog at http://www.communityandeducation.org because a friend in Pennsylvania called it to my attention. We need to keep in contact. I will also post a link to your material on the Washington State page of my Blog.
Elm – Public schools are not for-profit ventures. They are not run by unions or teachers. They are run by elected school boards and the administrators the boards hire. For that reason alone, public schools are not run in the interests of profiting unions and their members.
Obviously this is not the case for privately owned charter schools. They are schools run specifically for the purpose of making money, and whereas the bottom line for a charter school’s owners will be the profit margin, the bottom line for a public school’s cannot be. Those who “own” public schools, the taxpayers, and those who administer them, the elected school boards, cannot earn a financial profit from them.
For this reason, false is your statement that Martin’s premise holds equally true in both cases. In short, the reason is obvious why “the economic interest of business entities [is] a reason to question their motivation” whereas “union leaders and employees [are] exempt from the same.”
Business entities get to make the call in the running of their business. Unions do not.
Actually, school systems aren’t “not-for-profit ventures.” They are instead a form of local government called a special district and are described in each state’s constitution.
As local governments, they are overseen by elected representatives (aka ‘the school board’); they have jurisdiction over a specified area (aka ‘the school district’); they are supported through taxes; and they must adhere to sunshine laws that require things such as open meetings and publically accessible records.
Replacing this level of government with charters or other privatized schools ultimately means replacing government and democracy with corporations and some would say, facism (the melding of state and corporate power). It takes away the individual’s status as a citizen and replaces it with the status of a customer, a much less powerful status.
If you are not happy with what is going on in your public school district, you can ask to see its financial and other records, attend the governing body’s meetings and speak your piece there, lobby the school board, campaign for candidates you believe will represent your interests, even run for school board yourself. You do not have to have school-aged children to exercis your right to participate.
If you are unhappy with what is going on in a private school/company you can…what?
You can simply move your child to another private school. Much easier process than public school districts and the red tape of transferring a child from one school to another. It happens all the time here in L.A.
In public schools the only students who seem to have a “choice” where to go to school are the ones who are repeatedly getting expelled. In Las Vegas you have only one choice of public school-the one you are zoned for, unless you qualify for a magnet school…
I agree with Sahila.. sumptin gotta change. Having put 8 kids through both public and private [ Church] schools and colleges both iublic and private, I have a parents profound understanding of what is wrong.. seems the dumbing down to meet the average kid has forced parents to go pto the private sector where we have a voice [spelled $] and we can see that our kids will be challenged..
NEA has the voice of the teachers and they are its primary concern, esp. the dinasours who roam thru the system.
My property taxes go up and up and in my state it all is for school funding. If there is a problem in this democtratic and union controlled system it isn’t with the big corporatins trying to get ru ich off the private schools.
At the private school where I sent my kids after giving up the fight at the public schools in our town, their books were open, as were their meetings and they paid public school salaries/benefits and paid for higher education classes for the staff.
And they bought all the classroom supplies whereas several of my kids who are teachers in the public domain have to buy their own supplies if they didn’t want to use the left over, junkie materials that had been in the classroom for the last 10 years.
by the way, excuse my spelling..I guess it is because I was public school educated..
actually I am a 75 YO dyslexic and it takes forever to get something down on the line
I accept Old Ned and all his flaws.
The problem is not with the money angle. It is with the test scores that come from public schools versus charter schools. If you can cut all the deadwood from the public school system, the teachers who no longer teach but merely baby-sit, the administrators more concerned with keeping poor teachers in their jobs rather than teaching the children, then they may be able to continue.
This article totally bypasses the scores differences between public and charter schools. Therefore, I can discern the author cares little for the education of children in favor of indoctrination of children to democrat/socialist programs. “Timmy Has Two Daddies” & “Heather Has Two Mommies” are required reading at many schools, the GLSEN effort to indoctrinate our kids that homosexuality is perfectly normal. Sorry, I’d rather them learn verbs and nouns, addition and subtraction, etc. Let them get THAT education from their family.
Ernest,
Your premise that charters have higher test scores than public schools is false. In a national comparison of 5000 charter schools, (known as the CREDO study out of Stanford) 37% of charters do worse than traditional public schools, 46% had scores that were the same, and 17% had higher scores. These are results in spite of charters expelling and refusing entry to problem or special education students, low scoring students, or students who do not speak English.
That means public schools are doing a better job of educating ALL CHILDREN, including those in extreme poverty, with severe special needs, behavior disorders, or second language learners. Public schools turn no child away- that’s not so with charters.
Ned – If your property taxes are going up, you might consider checking how much of the school’s funding is allocated by the state, and how much derives from local taxes. The less the state gives, the more you are forced to pay in your locality. For instance, NJ gives less money to local districts than any state in the union. This is the single biggest reason why NJ’s property taxes are the highest in the nation. (A fact that has only been aggravated by Chris Christie’s slashing of state funding to districts. The sad part is that many, many dopes in the state can’t figure out why their property taxes are going up even while they celebrate Christie’s funding cuts. Go figure.)
I’m not surprised your kids did well at such a private school. It’s a rare private institution that benefits its teachers at the same rate as public schools, and if it offers the usual perks for teachers (smaller class sizes, more capable students, better options for discipline), I’d guess the school was able to bring in the very best on the market.
I imagine you’d be in favor of enacting a law that charter schools offer the same salary and benefits as public schools, seeing as your experience demonstrates how such financial benefits help the child.
of course, the minute you enact such a law, many of these corporations will lose any interest in running a charter. Salaries and benefits are the first targets of corporate attempts to increase the bottom line.
Ernest – What’s the problem with teaching kids about verbs and nouns by reading books like “Timmy Has Two Daddies”? Such books don’t lack verbs and nouns, after all.
In short, are you interested in teaching kids to read, write, and do math? Or are you interested in indocrinating kids in your particular moral code?
Put differently, I take it you would agree that we should stop teaching the Flag Salute and the National Anthem in schools. After all, children “can get THAT education from their family,” and you’d “rather them learn verbs and nouns, addition and subtraction,” right?
Check out the attached link for this film, “Race to Nowhere,” which hopefully, will receive widespread distribution and provide an opening for more dialogue on the very important issue regarding the nature and focus of what our expectations are for future generations of U.S. citizenry vis-a-vis education. There will be little, if any “public” left in our nation if public schools disappear. This seems to be the intent of the powerful forces at work. As a recently retired educator in the NYC Public School system for thirty years, I have seen and experienced much chickanery and shenaningans. Bloomberg’s latest administrative fiat in his appointment of Cathie Black to be the next Chancellor is another piece of evidence that the oligarchy manages to do whatever it pleases irrespective of what us “farm animals” would prefer to see take place.
http://www.racetonowhere.com/
Ernest, you are a homophobe in addition to being part of the farm animals who believe that our children are defined by test scores which, for the most part, are utterly meaningless. What do we make of the legions of great thinkers, innovators, etc. of years and centuries past who contributed to civilization long before standardized tests ever came along. Let us get real. The tests, which may have served some purpose in diagnosing how to help children improve, have been entirely co-opted by the masters of our fate to ensure that our public education system disappears with great dispatch.
This is going too far. Please keep the discussion civil.
Thanks,
management
The citizenry needs to understand that business is about profit; education is about service to children. The goals of education and business are clearly NOT the same. Much about “private” education and “charter” schools is NOT about service to ALL children, just those children who make a profit–not special education, not children with behavior or learning problems, not needing to learn English to learn.
I think I am well read, but this is the first time I have ever read anything like this. The thrust of this article, big business seeking profits, is clear as day. Why isn’t this message more prevalent?
Some of us have finally looked behind the curtain and discovered that the wizard calling the shots for public education is really just big business (as usual).
I just read through the list of comments regarding this article and was not surprised to see the normal devolving discourse as the comments continued. Perhaps it stemmed from the article’s over-simplied characterization of the corporate world being the driver of this current upheaval in public education. In fact, my b.s. light went on immediately while reading the forewarding kudos that seemed to ring Mr. Martin in a veritable halo of light before even reading one word he had written.
In short, I agree that corporate greed presents a huge problem for public education, but I also think it is a dangerous mistake to discount the many other factors that have to be considered before we can get a proper handle on things. The comments that followed the article give some indication of the complexities we face.
One of the most challenging of these is the narrow-mindedness of both conservatives and liberals. Yes, they are two ends of the same monster, and they are both annoying as hell and almost insurmountable roadblocks to any real solutions in education or anything else for that matter. As we see in the comments, the discussion very quickly went from fixing schools, to a turf war over political and religious ideology.
There probably has to be an honest discussion between these two antipodes before any real progress can be made.
First, let me make the conservative happy. I am a teacher and can attest to the fact that our public schools are dominated by liberals and liberal thinking. We have strong unions that are in denial about the reality of bad teachers. Yes! There are some really lousy teachers. Most of us have some personal experience in this. And we tend to protect these bad teachers. It takes a natural disaster to get rid of them. Having said this, I can also say that the “dead wood” is the exception and not the rule. And by the way, I have seen both old and young “dead wood.”
Mr. Conservative, you will also be thrilled to note my admission that we waste a gob of money in public education. I have personally sat through a number of one or two hour workshops now that train teachers to do a better job of administering the state test for our students so their scores improve. Things like bubbling in multiple choice answers correctly, looking for key words in essay response, etc. Please note this was not about improving instruction or learning, but how to take a test. Mr. Conservative, you will most likely be annoyed to know that there were 80 of us there for two hours at an average rate of about $40.00 an hour getting this highly beneficial training . . . and you were paying for it . . . and . . . and what will really annoy you is that it was your idea we receive the training and the generous gift of your tax donation that went towards ours as well as thousands of other schools across America. The liberals know the testing and data craze is sheer lunacy driven by conservatives like you who demand accountability, and what I have just described is one of the manifestations of your demand.
Mr. Conservative, you also made a rather popular comment about teachers who don’t teach, but rather merely “babysit.” Of even the handful of bad teachers I know, I can honestly say I don’t know any of them that like the idea of just babysitting children. Most people would go mad just babysitting 140 kids a day for 40 years. No, even bad teachers want to do something productive with these kids. The problem Mr. Conservative is that more and more kids are coming from homes that make the kids virtually unteachable. And it’s not just kids coming from poverty, abuse, and neglect; it is also the kids from prosperity and the vulgar consumption that our materialistic system thrives on. In short, many of the kids in our public schools are spoiled rotten. They have had everything. Nothing is novel, nothing new, nothing impressive, and many have never really worked in their lives. As a result, there is very often no intrinsic fire in them that drives them to behave themselves and attend to their studies. My son gave a great homework assignment to his high school English class a few weeks ago. It was rigorous and interesting. About 20% of the class turned the paper in. When he said they would fail, they replied they didn’t care. He asked me, “Dad, what would you do?” Mr. Conservative, what would you do? I would remind you that this apathy is epidemic in America, and I absolutely reject your insinuation that the root of this is in the schools. I would suggest it is much closer to home.
And now since I have absolutety delighted Mr. Liberal via my latest remarks to Mr. Conservative, I must end the liberal joy.
Mr. Liberal, it is stunning how you manage this extraordinary ability to deal in double standards with impunity. On one hand you label Mr. Conservative a “homophobe,” but on the other hand you disdain the idea of labelling people. You support gay awareness and sensitivity and advocate for their rights while smashing Mr. Conservative’s rights in the process. If the book Mr. Conservative lives by says the homosexual lifestyle is a sin, where do you come off saying his kids should be taught otherwise and that his tax dollars should support a contradiction to his faith and core values?
I mentioned earlier that American kids in general are becoming much more difficult to teach, and this has more to do with the homes than with the schools. I think most of my liberal friends would agree with this. But what they, and you, Mr. Liberal will probably not agree with is the corrosive part you have played in the destruction of those homes. When things like “love” and the keeping of vows are shoved into your relative arena, then anything goes, and one of the biggest casualties in all this has been the strong family unit that produces children who are teachable. 50% of my students come from broken homes, and they have always told me this has a huge impact on their attitudes and motivation to learn. I am certainly not laying our catastrophic divorce rate solely at the feet of liberals, but I can say that “If it feels good, do it” is much more deleterious to marraige than “Thou shall not commit adultery.”
One if the tenants of progressivism is the idea that truth is relative. This has had an insidious and completely erosive effect on the ethics of our age and our children. The conservatives, like the one you pigeon-holed with “homophobe,” are traditionalists. They have been the keepers of certain absolute ideals including an ethical code of conduct based mostly on the Ten Commandments.
Mr. Liberal, you had better realize your tendency towards the double standard, and had also better realize that at least half of this country runs around in roughly the same traditionalist ball park as Mr. Conservative. If you really want to fix education, then you might try to be a little more sensitive yourself concerning his rights and what is deep in his heart.
If only we could get these two extremes to understand one another a little more and find some common ground. I think it is possible. One of the most liberal people I have ever known was paradoxically quite conservative, and I have known a conservative who was quite liberal in many ways.
The crisis we face in American education is bigger than American education, and it is going to take a full-frontal assault from both wings of our political spectrum to fix things.
For the sake of economy, the remainder of Mr. Clemmens’ post could have simply been left out. The “liberal” vs. “conservative” dialectic is such a bore.
Regarding Mr. Clemmens’ post:
While I found your conversation with Mr. Liberal and Mr. Conservative more entertaining than Mr. Buckley did, I don’t think you addressed the point of Martin’s piece at all. His contention, that big business (private enterprise, if that’s more palatable to you) is eager to gain control of public education funding, clearly pushed buttons. It was obviously intended to – propaganda seeks to manipulate emotion.
Your response merely skirted this contention by criticizing the editorial comments and changing the subject.
I guess your point is that bridging what you see as a gap between liberals and conservatives is more important / would be more effective than fighting private enterprise (big business in my parlance). Your “us” vs. “them” is left vs. right. Martin’s is all of us vs. big business. It’s really common vs. elite.
My issue would be “how to affect change.” We all seem to agree that a change is necessary. Coming to agreement on what to do is less important than how we do it.
I was perceived to be opposed to the “change” desired by our principal. (I would argue that that perception was incorrect. I was the first department head to DO WHAT THE PRINCIPAL WANTED. Everyone else made excuse for not doing it. I has, however, rewarded for my efforts by an onslaught of bullying behaviors from my principal and the members of his mob. I was not the only one. ALL senior staff, with one exception, were subjected to bullying. We were repeatedly yelled at and threatened with poor performance reviews, were humilited in public, had teaching materials stolen from our rooms, were prevented from providing “best practices” in teaching the students. This is the short list. I have two 2″ thick three-ring binders of evidence of bullying by many people, from mob member colleagues up to and including the district superintendent.
Bullying is not the way to create a better education system. It used by disfunctional people to create chaos and havoc for those perceived to be “an impediment.” Many who are “impediments” are actually the better teachers. Bullying cannibalizes the system. If you have been bullied as a parent or as a teacher by and administrator or teacher, speak up.
I agree that time spent on Conservatives, Liberals is a waste of time. I agree that many people who have power and money would like to control everything. Having taught at the 4th grade, 16 years at 8th grade and a year at community college levels I am more interesested in what makes quality teaching. University Educations vary; I took my BA at a college that offered Professionalized Studies: these profs knew nothing about teaching skills. I learned more from my four best public school teachers. How much help you receive when you start teaching varies. At 8th grade I cashed in. Two of the finest teachers in the building invited me to observe and post discuss the lesson. One of them mentored me the first year I taught. My thoughts on learning: you must be a model of respectfulness; teach strategies and skills as well as content. Seek methods that encourage student problem solving. Remember that we learn best what we DO not what we copy or listen to. I found that helping students understand how we think and function broadened their admiration and understanding of people who were different from themselves. Parental buy in is very important. The school should be an inviting place for parents to visit and speak to staff–not just one day a year. Parents need to be available to support students as they work at home. One year my program involved students earning a portion of the grade by choosing to teach their parent something they had learned and bringing back a signed note. Parents raved about this involvement in the process. People in the teaching profession could put together an amazing list of teaching strategies. As for the state education Universities, I would challenge them to come up with a list of teaching strategies or get off the boat! The biggest problems I found in public schools came from power blocks of people wanting everyone to teach one way and from the administrators who should stay out of the classroom. Most of them have nothing constructive to add to the classroom–either teachers or students.
One need look no further than the enormous profits garnered during the Bush era “Reading First” initiative to see that K-12 education has great profit potential for private corporations. Certain publishers, claiming to provide “research based”, extremely expensive materials, were anointed during that administration to provide the sure fire cure for reading difficulties. Now we know that those programs were not particularly effective, although expensive, and those private corporations are smiling all the way to the bank. Not to mention that many in decision making positions drank the koolaid in believing that reading should be first and only. Now we have students that might be able to read (might not) but don’t know how to think and critically analyze science or government issues.
Now we are investing willy nilly in RTI, again to the great profit of publishers. By spending all of our time investing in the magic bullet curriculum or program, we continue to demonstrate the profit potential K-12 education has for private corporations. No wonder they are salivating. Should we invest in effective intervention when students demonstrate the need for that? Absolutely. Should that investment be in expensive programs and curricula? No, rather we should invest in teachers and providing them with the skills needed to be more effective.
I don’t know of one teacher in my 34 years of experience as an educator that thought, “gee I hope those kids don’t learn anything from me! I’d like to see them fail!” That is just silly. Some teachers however don’t leave college with the skills they need to be effective and they don’t receive the mentoring that can improve their practice and thus the education of their students. Take a page from Finland’s book and invest in teachers not tests (also a booming business for private corporations) and not expensive curricula and materials that are currently designed to “teacher proof” education. The result of adopting a stringent march through the manual approach (besides causing districts to invest in lots of expensive manuals), which is advocated by most publishers and thus by most educational decision makers is that the many, truly gifted teachers, are hamstrung and the poor teachers still plod along, being poor to the script.
The same thing would exist in private and charter schools only some one would make even more money from the deal (not the teachers, however!)
I’m enjoying this blog, the thinking and the argumentation. Great job.
I’m in Spokane, WA. I’ve been advocating for mathematics for four years and have gotten nearly nowhere with the district. However, I am getting somewhere with the public at large, and I’ve written a book (also named “Betrayed”) that’s coming out this month.
I’d like to take a moment to say thank you to all of the advocates, teachers, and community activists for your efforts on behalf of the students. I know you aren’t generally appreciated by those who run public education (into the ground), but I suspect you have more public support than it might seem.
Education policy makers and administrators work hard to divide us — whispering to teachers that “we just need more involved parents,” whispering to parents that “we just need more effective teachers,” whispering to board directors that “it’s the money, it’s social issues, it’s a district full of unmotivated students.”
If we could resist that and bring our commitment and expertise together, we could get somewhere — even if just by giving parents and teachers a place to go when they want to leave.
Laurie Rogers
http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com/
Author of “Betrayed: How the Education Establishment Has Betrayed America and What You Can Do about it”
wlroge@comcast.net
Thanks, Laurie. We are receiving requests from citizens (parents, teachers, and others) from around the country asking us how to set up a group like ours. It is incredibly easy on Facebook and not really hard on Yahoo or Google. The problem is in generating relevant content. In our case, I do the big picture stuff and Tom Staly handles the local. We now have affiliated with a dozen or so other groups around the country with similar purposes with whom we share resources.
I think the author makes many valid points. However…we ALL need to stop generalizing private and public schools. There are high performing public and private (charter) schools, and there are low performing public and private schools. There are highly effective and highly ineffective teachers in BOTH sectors as well. Here is the difference: If I don’t show progress or improvement as a teacher each year, my principal has every right to terminate me at his own personal discretion, just like every other job I’ve ever had. I have every incentive (outside of caring about the education of my students) to be a high performing teacher.
Here is the problem with charters: I personally work for a wonderful principal who accepts EVERY student who submits an application, whether they have been a chronic failure or recently released from incarceration. There are other charter schools (in our company) who are extremely selective and therefore have very skewed results. The same way that public schools are unhappy being compared to charter schools, we are unhappy being compared to charter schools in our own company.
And as far as rejecting students who speak only spanish and other “undesirables”, that would be preposterous. We simply have a no violence policy, and many of those same “undesirables” thrive in our charter atmosphere. The fact is that no school should be subjected to teaching students who make other students feel unsafe at school. Those dangerous students don’t belong in ANY school, public or private, once they’ve been given a number of opportunities and failed. THIS is our number one problem in the educational system, that we don’t have any means of removing students that prevent schools from being a safe and tolerant place for students to get an education.
All charters (as all public schools) are not created equal. Several studies have shown KIPP schools routinely do not accept students with language deficiencies, certain disabilities, and lack of parent support. And when the students measure up they are counseled back to their public school. This is probably not true for every KIPP school, but more than accounts for any claimed achievement gains for the franchise. The Stanford study showed that 17% of charter schools outperformed their matched pair public school while 37% of the public schools outperformed the charter school. The rest were not significantly different.
I do not have a personal objection to the charter school concept, but do strenuously object to arbitrarily closing public schools and turning over the management of the replacement charter to private,for-profit corporations.
I would like to mention to everyone that I was not aware of the “for-profit” aspect of charter schools and am currently in the process of investigating the internal workings of my charter company to see if my company is one of the companies that everyone is complaining about. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
I would also like to point out, however, that no-bid contracts are not just an instrument for private companies, but are happening in the government sector everyday.
You mean people have personal motivations involved when they engage the public education discussion? Oh my!! What are we ever supposed to do? Of course EVERYONE involved has personal motivations involved in the public school education discussion. This article throws around big scary phrases like “Billionaire Boys Club” and “Big Money” but it doesn’t really say anything that anyone has done that’s wrong. EVERYONE involved is BIG MONEY. The people who made the film are BIG MONEY. The unions are BIG MONEY. EVERYONE is BIG MONEY.
Instead of taking swipes, offer a compelling public school alternative. The whole “Rich people just want to milk us” thing will gather people who are angry. But it doesn’t really do anything. I mean, doesn’t the Tea Party use the same tactic? How is this different? Lets have less politics and more policies.
What a lame response. It’s that same old canard: If you don’t have a ready made solution, then you can’t criticize anything!
BULL. SH*T.
That little rhetorical nugget is always thrown out by the establishment when anyone questions the status-quo. You say: “More policies and less politics,” what does that even mean? We “improve” charter schools by removing regulations and red tape (policies) and yet MORE government, MORE bureaucracy, and MORE rules are your answers to the problems in public education?
Are you a product of public education? I’m guessing you are.
@QuickEMart: Take a look around our site and valetc.com. We offer plenty of alternatives that have research backing and other proposals based on learning theory and brain research. We also have examples of what other nations, such as Finland, are doing to improve learning.
For evidence regarding the intrusion into public education by the “Billionaire Boys Club” and other business interests, I suggest you contact Dora Taylor at Parents Across America, Seattle for a chart following the money. I might also suggest you follow Diane Ravitch, noted education historian, and her analysis of the issue.
My latest post on “fixing” public education:
http://sahilachangebringer.blogspot.com/2011/09/if-its-broke-dont-fix-it.html ….
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