corporate education reform

Jeb Bush: Another Friedmanomic Devotee Redefines Public Schools

Deborah Duncan Owens charter schools, conservatism, corporate education reform, Cuomo, free market education reforms, Friedmanomics, local school districts, privatization of education, public school monopoly , ,

“The situation is wholly different with a socialist enterprise like the public school system, or, for that matter, a private monopoly.”  Milton Friedman

Jeb Bush is officially thinking about running for president. And, in case anyone is wondering, he has provided a video outlining his education policy agenda. Andrew Cuomo and Jeb Bush have one essential idea in common. They both think public schools are a monopoly and both want to bust that monopoly. Milton Friedman began his assault on public schools in the 1950s with his assertion that public schools were a socialist enterprise and the only solution was to privatize education and use public tax dollars to send children to private enterprise schools.

Jeb Bush has lost his patience. He just hasn’t seen the change he thinks is necessary in our education system. Of course, corporate reformers have been saying that for years. In 1995, former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner spoke at the National Governors Association and excoriated the governors for their lack of progress in education reform since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983. What was needed, according to Gerstner, was “a fundamental, bone-jarring, full-fledged, 100 percent revolution that discards the old and replaces it with a totally new performance-driven system” (in chapter 5, Origins of the Common Core). Lou Gerstner’s impatience brought us the Palisades summit of gubernatorial and corporate CEOs in 1996 — the birthplace of Achieve (who would bring us the CCSS).

Free market corporate reformers, like Andrew Cuomo, Lamar Alexander, and Jeb Bush know all too well that in order to completely free marketize our education system, we must be in a perpetual state of reform.  They also know that democracy impedes privatization efforts. Both Lamar Alexander and Jeb Bush asserted that local school boards represent a monopoly. Corporate education reformer Lou Gerstner would agree. In 2008, he proposed abolishing all local school districts, “save 70 (50 states; 20 largest cities).”

It does seem incongruent that the education policy of a purported Democrat like Andrew Cuomo would be so aligned with long time conservative Republicans like Lamar Alexander and Jeb Bush. However, as I explain in my upcoming book, we have been, at least since the Clinton administration, making policy through a third way of governance — in which corporate leaders are invited to the policy table to facilitate policy making decisions.

In New York, Zephyr Teachout and Mohammad Khan explain in a white paper how corporate free market rich billionaires are subverting America’s democratic process in their efforts to dismantle America’s locally controlled public schools, stating, “The 2014 effort, a kind of lightning war on public education, is important for many reasons: it is hasty and secretive, depending on huge speed and big money, and driven by unaccountable private individuals. It represents a new form of political power, and therefore requires a new kind of political oversight.”  This document is must read because it clearly demonstrates how corporate and governmental mutualism on a national scale impacts an individual state.

On a national scale, the efforts of these free market corporate reformers, cloaked in the disingenuous façade of saviors to American democracy, however, have not been all that secretive.  Rather, these reformers up to now have often been simply operating below the radar of public – and most importantly – media scrutiny.

What these corporate reformers and their political operatives are doing is first and foremost an exercise in distorting the democratic nature and definition of locally controlled public schools.  They do this by perversely explaining that America’s locally controlled public schools are actually a monopoly.  However, this is a distortion of history to the extreme.  As Diane Ravitch points out, America’s institution of locally controlled public schools actually reflects the true essence of American democracy.

Radically changing the historic definition of public schools and ignoring the true democratic nature of these schools is the height of chicanery.  However, all citizens who support America’s institution of public schools need to realize that this political ploy when used by individuals such as Jeb Bush, Andrew Cuomo, and a raft of others such as Lamar Alexander, is essential in realizing the education agenda of corporate free market education reformers.

 

Lamar Alexander’s Old/New Ideas for Education Reform

Deborah Duncan Owens charter schools, corporate education reform, free market education reforms

Senator Lamar Alexander will soon assume leadership within the U.S. Senate on the committee that oversees public education.  It seems like a natural fit. After all, he served as the Secretary of the Department of Education under President George H.W. Bush.  He is also a former governor of Tennessee and former president of the University of Tennessee.  Kimberly Hefling explains his plans for updating No Child Left Behind.  With the Republicans now in a position to lead efforts in the education arena, Alexander has plans to address “excessive regulation of local schools by Washington. …”   He plans to address questions … “about whether all the federally mandated annual tests are appropriate and whether states should decide how to assess their students.”

Sounds good so far, right?  He seems to be offering a glimmer of hope to those who seek to ease the testing burden on America’s school children.  That’s a good thing.  But, beyond simply promoting the conservative cause of moving education policy decisions to the states and out of the firm grip of the federal government — and addressing questions about federal mandates and standardized testing — what can we really expect of Lamar Alexander?

To answer that question, all that is required is a look back at the education policies proposed by his former boss — President H.W. Bush.  And the answer is loud and clear:  choice, choice, choice — vouchers and charter schools.  In January, 2014, Alexander spoke at an American Enterprise Institute gathering and laid out his plan for education reform quite clearly.  If you want to know what his agenda for education actually is, watch the video.  You’ll think it’s 1992 all over again.  Here are some themes that emerge from his discussion at the conservative think tank gathering:

Lamar Alexander thinks:

  1. public schools are awful;
  2. local school boards operate a monopoly over education;
  3. the federal government should offer a GI Bill for K-12 school children (H.W. Bush’s failed legislative attempt to privatize education);
  4. K-12 schools should be a “marketplace” of choice;
  5. the legislature should provide an amount comparable to 41% of the federal money for K-12 education in the U.S. to pay for a voucher plan to send children to private or public schools of their choice.;
  6. it’s perfectly acceptable to invoke the plight of low-income children as a rationale to further efforts to privatize the public school system in the U.S.;
  7. it’s a good idea for schools, under choice and voucher plans, to simply kick kids out if parents question school policy.  Public schools can’t do that; they have to work with kids and parents to resolve problems (and Alexander apparently thinks that’s a bad thing);
  8. there is a price on the head of every child in America and, therefore,  he is surprised that there isn’t more competition to get the money children bring with them to the privatization arena in education.  Don’t they see the additional money children have, as Alexander explains, “attached to their blouse or their shirt?” – and –
  9. we should all believe that teachers in charter schools have more freedom to be innovative because the children they teach “choose” to be there.

So, let there be no mistake.  Lamar Alexander is not a champion of public schools in America.  He is a champion of free market policies.  He is a champion of corporate reformers who want to capitalize on federal dollars to use in their quest to make a lot of money in the education arena.  To be sure, Milton Friedman’s ideas are alive and well!  And, let me once again reiterate the last short paragraph in my book:

“For American citizens, if there is only one thing to remember about their public schools it is this: Public schools are not government schools nor are they corporate free market schools.  Public schools belong to the public.  Public schools are citizen schools, and it is now up to citizens to reclaim what is theirs!”

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Walton Family: Don’t Worry about Walmart Employees — Just Focus on Free-Marketizing our Public School System!

Deborah Duncan Owens charter schools, corporate education reform, free market education reforms

Chris Lubienski shared an article in Forbes Magazine via Twitter about one of Sam Walton’s grandchildren who has made charter schools and the free market privatization of public schools her mission in life.  And she certainly has the financial resources to have a strong impact.  Carrie Walton Penner is the daughter of Wal-Mart company chairman, Rob Walton, and is an heir to the largest family fortune in the entire world ($165 billion — and I’m sure growing).

Of course, the Walton family would like for the world to ignore all the problems and lawsuits associated with their chain of retail stores.  Workplacefairness.org documents Wal-Mart’s dubious employee practices.  But that’s okay.  The Waltons are going to save our public schools through free market strategies and competition between charter schools and traditional public schools.  Maybe Carrie Walton Penner can invite all the governors and and big CEOs to Arkansas to set an agenda for our next phase of systemic education reform — like IBM CEO Lou Gerstner did at his headquarters in Palisades in 1996!  That meeting brought us Achieve — future creators of the CCSS.


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Obsessive Testing and Data Collection One Step Further — Genetic Testing for Children

Deborah Duncan Owens corporate education reform, education data systems, education reform, grit and education, high stakes tests , ,

I’ve been thinking and writing about our nation’s obsession with grit  and big data recently.  I almost couldn’t believe it when I read Jay Belsky’s article in the New York Times entitled “The Downside of Resilience” in which he advocates for genetic testing of young children to decide issues of disposition and, specifically, resilience.  What if it isn’t true, says Belsky, that positive interventions like preschool education have the power to help all children?  What if, instead, we were able to identify certain alleles of genes linked to seratonin and dopamine early on to decide which children are “at risk” for being less gritty?  Belsky suggests that, ethics aside, this would enable us to target “scarce intervention and service dollars” toward “at risk” ungritty “delicate orchid” children who are genetically predisposed to “whither if exposed to stress and deprivation.” Other children, who “are more like dandelions,” … “prove resilient to the negative effects of adversity” and “do not particularly benefit from positive experiences.”

Anthony Cody wrote an insightful commentary about Belsky’s article, pointing out that, if Belsky’s ideas are correct, then the education community’s belief that resilience and grit can be taught is, indeed, incorrect and any instruction in these areas is a waste of time.  And there is a darker side to the use of genetic testing to determine resource allocation.  The eugenics movement thrived in the years prior to WWII as societies looked to science to produce a better human race.  The Nazis wholeheartedly embraced eugenics and we’ve lived with that legacy ever since, vowing to never forget.  But it seems that we are forgetting.  And now, we want to impose ethically challenged ideas on our youngest members of society.

However, isn’t this a natural extension of our nation’s obsession with testing, measuring, and data collection? Genetic testing at birth is merely another form of data collection.  This truly, however, harkens back to Huxley’s Brave New World —  schools for Alphas, different schools for Betas, and Epsilons can mop their floors (no need to waste money trying to education them).

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Stopping the Corporate Raid on America’s Public Schools: Local Control Over Education

Deborah Duncan Owens corporate education reform, education reform, free market education reforms, local school districts, Uncategorized ,

Britt Dickerson wrote an insightful essay entitled “Investors Ready to Liquidate Public Schools” about the corporate raid on America’s public schools.  Dickerson writes:

“Plans are under way for investment corporations to execute the biggest conversion – some call it theft – of public schools property in U.S. history.

That is not hyperbole. Investment bankers themselves estimate that their taking over public schools is going to result in hundreds of billions of dollars in profit, if they can pull it off.”

Much has been written about the free market corporate plans to cash in on the public dollars associated with RTTT policies and the exploitation of children as profit producing capital.  However, less has been written about how to stop the freight train loaded with venture capitalists hell-bent on reaching the destination of a totally unfettered free market of education in the U.S.

Dickerson succinctly distills the solution.   Who has the power to stop the corporate raiders?

  1. Educators, parents, and concerned community members who “rally to maintain local, democratic control of public schools” … who understand that “any degree of standardization that comes from beyond the state only serves large, nation-wide investor interests.”
  2. Educators who “successfully counter the investor propaganda that parents are the only true stakeholders in a child’s education.” Only “then raiders can be opposed successfully. The oldest to the youngest and richest to poorest members of every community are the true stakeholders in public schools and public education.”
  3. Democratically elected school boards that “stay empowered to make decisions for the local public schools,” … able to resist the raider process.”
  4. Stakeholders who “successfully press legislators to listen to them instead of paid, professional lobbyists hired by large, investor-owned charter corporations… .”

The total destruction of our nation’s public school system is predicated on the elimination of local control over public schools.  Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM and current advisor to the Carlyle Group, who served as a chief architect of systemic education reform in the 90s, understood the need to wrestle control away from local school boards in order to push forward free market corporate education reforms.  Gerstner’s legacy among corporate education reformers was cemented in 1996 when he brought together the corporate world with state governors at the IBM headquarters in Palisades to establish the education reform agenda for the nation.  This meeting brought us Achieve — the organization that is credited with the development of the Common Core standards.  In 2008, Gerstner summarized what he had learned over the years as a leading voice in education reform for the The Wall Street Journal.  One of his recommendations addressed the issue of local control over public schools:

“Abolish all local school districts, save 70 (50 states; 20 largest cities). Some states may choose to leave some of the rest as community service organizations, but they would have no direct involvement in the critical task of establishing standards, selecting teachers, and developing curricula.”


Need I say more?

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Christopher Lubienski’s Review of The Origins of the Common Core: How the Free Market Became Public Education Policy

Deborah Duncan Owens Common Core Book, corporate education reform, free market education policies

I am indebted to Christopher Lubienski for taking time to review my book, The Origins of the Common Core:  How the Free Market Became Public Education Policy.  I consider his scholarship to be a valuable resource for anyone engaged in the quest to reclaim the democratic institution of public education in the U.S.  His book The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools (co-authored with Sarah Theule Lubienski) provides much needed insight into the failure of market-based education reform efforts.  Dr. Lubienski is a professor of education policy, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois.

I felt very honored to read Dr. Lubienski’s review of my book on the Palgrave Macmillian website:

“This timely book goes beyond the tired debates about the Common Core State Standards and asks instead: How did we get here, with self-appointed “reformers” casting public schools as the enemy, and unproven market models for education as the answer? This comprehensively documented treatment of that question proves that Deborah Duncan Owens is a voice to be reckoned with in education policy debates.” – Christopher Lubienski, Professor of Education Policy, University of Illinois, USA; Sir Walter Murdoch Visiting Adjunct Professor, Murdoch University, Australia; and author of The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools (2014)

Again, thank you, Dr. Lubienski!

Deb

Pondering the Term Neoliberalism

Deborah Duncan Owens corporate education reform, free market education reforms, Friedmanomics, neoliberalism ,

Friedmanomics, School Vouchers, School Choice, and the Free Market: If you understand Milton Friedman you are on the road to understanding neoliberalism!

Let me save some folk’s time and state from the outset that if you understand the term neoliberalism and how it impacts current education reform, you need not go on reading. Going on might be a waste of time most of us can ill afford!

Now, I have confession to make. First of all, many years ago when I first encountered the term “neoliberalism” I actually thought it had something to do with what was generally considered liberal in the political sense, something like Progressivism and FDR’s New Deal policies – or fighting for social justice like what I thought all good “liberals” were engaged in doing. Maybe there are some folks out there who also had this experience – and maybe there are still some folks who think neoliberalism is just another way to describe the current tension between “liberals” and “conservatives” – and neoliberalism is just another word to describe liberals! Well – as I learned a bit more – I sure was wrong on that one!

Perhaps there are some who believe – just like I did many years ago – that neoliberalism was nothing more than liberalism with three additional words added! Well – I soon discovered that neoliberalism is conservatism in an economic sense. I wonder if there are a goodly number of Americans who when they hear the word neoliberalism Do Not automatically think conservatism?

I have another confession to make. I think the study of neoliberalism is not only intellectually fascinating, but also an essential activity for anyone who supports America’s public school system and wants to understand the free market corporate ideological forces that want to dismantle that system.

And now I have to make another confession, I think studying the writings of people like Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Joel Spring, Stanley Aronowitz, Svi Shapiro, Noam Chomsky, and David Harvey – to mention only a very few who have written about neoliberalism – is always a truly enlightening and intellectually invigorating experience! (Good God, am I now a full-fledged NERD???) Nevertheless, I suggest that supporters of public schools read some of the works by individuals such as this.

However, here is the problem. They are not easy reads. That is one reason out of a number of reasons why chapter 3 titled “Friedmanomics, School Vouchers, and Choice” in the The Origins of the Common Core: How the Free Market Became Public Education Policy was written. Its accessible to folks. As chapter 2 of the book explains, the power of the conservatives since the Reagan administration was due in part to the coalescence of different factions of social, political, and economic conservative thinkers. Therefore, the book’s author, Deborah Duncan Owens, chose to use the term “conservatives” to refer to the coalesced group of pundits and policy makers who would drive education policy in the years since Reagan ascended to the presidency.

For me, understanding neoliberalism was an exercise in what the “educationsists” would – I think – call scaffolding. http://edglossary.org/scaffolding/. The term is often applied to children, but in fact as you can see from the definition we all actually learn that way. I know I had to do a good deal of scaffolding before I understood neoliberalism and I could begin to grasp what many of the authors mentioned above were talking about.

I mention all this because when I was teaching both undergraduate teacher education majors and graduate students, most of whom were practicing teachers, a lot of those folks did not really understand neoliberalism and actually were at first thinking the way I was thinking about neoliberalism those many years ago. I think many of them were quite relieved when I told them that that’s what I also originally thought neoliberalism actually meant!

However, if you want to understand the current state of the free market corporate ideological assault on America’s democratic institution of public schools, then you need to understand neoliberalism, and a good place to start is with understanding Milton Friedman and his Friedmanomic ideas.

Sometimes professionals and scholars write in a way that really marginalizes citizens. Of course, sometimes the way they write is essential in analyzing ideas within their professional context. However, sometimes people think that these writers are just being “kinda snooty” but they really are not. On the other hand, Henry Giroux explains, there is a need help citizens understand ideas like “neoliberalism” since citizens in a democracy are generally a pretty savvy group of folks! http:// www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/4349:the-public-intellectual-project

So I think a good way to begin understanding neoliberalism for those folks who find this topic rather new – or rather confusing (always remembering that I freely admit that I was one of those) might be to start here: http://www.globalissues.org/article/39/a-primer-on-neoliberalism

Then you might want to read Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

For me, after experiences like that, I actually began to understand the writings of the folks mentioned above!

And those are my thoughts about neoliberalism this Sunday morning before Thanksgiving!

The Problem with RTTT’s Big Data Banks: Garbage In Garbage Out — The Data can Simply be Wrong!

Deborah Duncan Owens A Nation at Risk, Carol Burris, corporate education reform, education data systems, Gerald Bracey, new york, NYSED, Race to the Top, Sandia Report, systemic education reform , ,

One of the RTTT mandates for states is the implementation of massive data storage and reporting systems for students that extends from preschool through their college years.  Education reformers’ devotion to the infallibility of data is misguided and troubling.  I remember a quote from my days in a college computer programming class — a long time ago now: “Garbage In Garbage Out” (GIGO).  The concept was quite simple and highly understandable and still applies today.  It is still used to explain the problems inherent when humans make decisions based on faulty or incomplete data.

Valerie Strauss shared an article by New York principal Carol Burris that illustrates just how problematic it is when big brother Orwellian data systems are used to drive education reform decisions.  The New York State Education Department released a report recently that demonstrates the problems associated with GIGO errors.  While the NYSED soon realized their mistake and notified school districts that the data was incorrect, one must wonder how many GIGO – type errors actually occur within data systems and the egregious problems that result when policy makers cite faulty or incomplete data as the rationale for policy decisions.  How many times does the data go unchallenged and, thus, uncorrected?

This most recent example of GIGO error ridden data is NYSED’s report about the number of students leaving high school to attend — and remain — in college.  Carol Burris questioned the low percentage of students graduating from her high school in 2012 that were currently successfully enrolled in college as reported by the NYSED.  She quickly realized that a number of her most successful students were left off the list entirely.  And it was chilling to see the extent of the data reported for students who were on the list: whether or not they received free or reduced lunch, their special education status, their race, the name of the college or university they attended, and sometimes their major.  Why were some students left off the list?  Because, in some cases, they did not receive financial aid or perhaps because they did not require remediation once in college.  And some colleges refuse to share data.

What was the potential fall-out of this GIGO error by the NYSED?  Once again, public schools would be blamed for not adequately preparing students to be college and career ready and, thus, a ready argument for the Common Core State Standards would be on hand.  GIGO errors like this have too often been left to stand and have been used to perpetuate the zeitgeist that all public schools are failing.

As a matter of fact, the data used by the Reagan commission that created A Nation at Risk can be cited as the GIGO error that culminated in the freight train of systemic education reform we’ve been living with since the early 1980s.  The National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) relied heavily on SAT data to draw their conclusion in 1983 that the education system in America was an abject failure. While citing statistical data that SAT scores had been dropping since the early 1960s, they ignored the very real data about the societal changes that led to these drops.  Was that data available to the NCEE?  Absolutely.  In 1977 the College Board, the organization that oversees the SATs,  published their own report explaining that the drop in scores was largely due to changes in the number and type of students who were taking the exam in preparation for attending college.  Far from being a negative phenomenon, this was a positive reflection on a nation that had for too many years excluded students of color, students from low income homes, and women from realizing the dream of higher education.  With larger numbers of diverse students taking the SAT, it was only logical that, at least for a period of time, scores would drop.  The SAT scores could not, therefore, be used as an adequate measure of school or instructional quality.  The NCEE’s lack of acknowledgement of the College Board’s findings about SAT score declines is a clear example of a GIGO data error — and one that had a disastrous impact on education policies in the U.S.  Their use of incomplete data to draw decisions and make policy recommendations in A Nation at Risk has brought public schools in the U.S. to the brink of destruction as their conclusions have gone largely unchallenged by the federal government, policy makers, and corporate education reformers who persist in declaring that our education system is a complete failure.  Even when William Turnbull, Distinguished Scholar in Residence for the Educational Testing Service, elaborated on the College Board’s findings and published his report Student Change, Program Change: Why the SAT Scores Kept Falling in 1985, his report was largely ignored by policy makers.

Federal education reformers had an opportunity again in the early 90’s to clarify their position on education quality in the U.S.  The Sandia Laboratories was commissioned to write a report about the status of the American education system by Secretary of Energy James Watkins.  Far from echoing the findings of the NCEE and A Nation at Risk, Sandia researchers found that there was no need for systemic education reform across the country, citing some of the same data the College Board and Turnbull relied on for their respectives reports.  However, by the early 1990s, the federal Department of Education was well entrenched with systemic education reformers hell-bent on radically reforming the education system and the Sandia Report could simply not be tolerated.  The report was buried.  One can only wonder the outcome for education policy in our country if the DOE had officially published the report with the same accolades as A Nation at Risk.  What a triumph of patriotism!!  The headlines could have read “Guess what, America?  New Report Says Your Education System is a Source of Pride!”

That was not to be, however.  It was best to squelch research that contradicted education reformers in their quest to free-marketize public schools and radically reform the education system.  What was needed was a steady stream of reports that labeled public schools as a total failure.  Stalwart critic of education reformers, Gerald Bracey began publishing annual reports in 1991 on the condition of public education.  His reports were an annual event for 18 years.  Bracey revealed to America the misuse of data by policy makers intent on destroying our education system and he wrote about the Sandia Report debacle.  He passed away in 2009 and his voice is missed.  He angered a lot of education reformers with his truth speaking, but he continued to speak out on behalf of supporters of public education, teachers, parents, and children.  His many books are a good place to start when questioning the GIGO data continually trotted out by education reformers.  And you may want to go to Susan Ohanian’s website to learn more about Gerald Bracey’s life and work.  Her index of tributes to Dr. Bracey is a touching reminder of his legacy.

 

Why I Wrote “The Origins of the Common Core: How the Free Market Became Public Education Policy”

Deborah Duncan Owens Common Core Book, conservatism, corporate education reform, david berliner, diane ravitch, education reform, free market education policies, high stakes tests

My book will be released next January by Palgrave Macmillan.  It represents a number years of research which began when I was an elementary public school teacher in Mississippi.  What originally began as an inquiry into the voucher movement emerged throughout the implementation of No Child Left Behind and the introduction of the Common Core State Standards and Race to the Top policies.

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-origins-of-the-common-core-deborah-duncan-owens/?isb=9781137482679

It’s Sunday morning and my husband, Thomas Fiala,  and I are listening again to an interview with David Berliner that was posted on Chalk Face radio last summer.*  Berliner has been a valuable voice in education policy for quite a number of years.  The book he wrote with Bruce Biddle in 1995, The Manufactured Crisis, is an essential read for anyone attempting to understand education policy history.  I read The Manufactured Crisis when it was first released.  It remains on my bookshelf, now highlighted, annotated, and a little worse for wear — an enduring valuable resource.

David Berliner was asked by Shaun Johnson, how do we go about having a conversation with our teacher colleagues about what’s happening in education?  Berliner basically said, by somehow getting enough people to talk about it will get the conversation going.  I found it interesting that the interview began with the notion that we need to get a conversation going, given that the blogosphere seems to be well populated with voices opposing Race to the Top policies and the Common Core.  Grassroots movements, such as the opt-out movement, have indeed been fueled by the blogs.  However, it’s hard to stop a freight train, particularly when it carries a cargo laden with millions of federal RTTT dollars and a slew of free market devotees poised to make huge profits from charter school expansion policies, creating data mining systems, publishing and administered standardized tests, and promoting Teach for America and alternate certification paths for teachers.  Well funded conservative think tanks have dominated education reform discussion for many years and they continue to fuel the education reform freight train, persevering in efforts to free-marketize and privatize public education.

The grassroots movement to address failed education policies certainly lack the financial resources of those who are actually making education policy in the U.S.  To the billionaires who have a seat in policy discussions, the blogosphere represents a swarm of mosquitoes biting at their heels, which they too often seem to easily swat away. Will grassroots efforts have an impact?  YES!!  Certainly, for example, the opt-out movement has the power to impact education policy — and it doesn’t cost a thing to simply refuse to take a standardized test.

One of my motivations in writing the Origins of the Common Core was to do my part in helping to get a meaningful conversation started.  However, I wanted to not only get teachers involved in the conversation, but to get all citizens involved who support their public schools and local control over those public schools, something that Berliner indicated was important.  I realized that what was needed was a coherent story that helped explain how we ended up in this place and time in education policy history.  On March 2, 2014, as I was completing my book, Diane Ravitch spoke at the first Network for Education conference in Texas, echoing my thoughts.  In her speech she explained, “The problem that liberals have is liberals believe that facts will persuade people.  Conservatives understand that stories persuade people, so we must have our story.  We already have the facts. … There is no question that the facts are on our side.  But we have to shape the narrative. … So its very important that we shape our narrative to say we’re defending American democracy, we’re defending the children, we’re fighting for what’s right.  We have the narrative.  We’ve got to think about our rhetoric and get the story to the public …”.**   In writing this book I have tried my best to accomplish this task.

Over the years, as I transitioned from elementary teacher to teacher educator, first at Arkansas State University and now at Elmira College in New York, I continued to try to make sense of what was happening in education policy. Why is America so convinced that our public schools are a failure?  Why were the dominant voices in education policy coming from conservative think tanks, continuously promoting school choice, high stakes standardized testing, VAM teacher accountability models, the erosion of local public school governance, and national standards?  And in spite of the voices of scholars like David Berliner, Susan Ohanian, Alfie Kohn, Patrick Shannon, Joel Spring, and Gerald Bracey, to name just a few, who for many years warned the American public that we were on the wrong track, the freight train of systemic education reform continued at break neck speed.  Nevertheless, the voices of these giants should be heeded as never before!  Seamlessly, however, from one presidential administration to the next, education policies were re-hashed, re-framed, re-named, and foisted on the American public.  I breathed a sigh of relief when Barack Obama spoke along the campaign trail about the problems associated with high stakes testing and promised to address these issues once he became president.  It soon became obvious, however, that President Obama would heed the siren song of free market ideas in the education arena.  His appointment of Arne Duncan solidified his position and, once again, the U.S. would continue its quickstep march toward free market education reform. Race to the Top policies would solidify the Obama administration’s allegiance to free market reform initiatives in education.

While much has been written about the current problems associated with the Common Core and corporate reformers, and certainly Bill Gates is being well and thoroughly blasted on the blogosphere, how is it that the Common Core so readily became the law of the land?  And why are charter schools seen as the panacea for education reform?  I set out in The Origins of the Common Core to lend my small voice in telling that story.  It was an interesting journey, leaving me to realize that our federal education policy makers acquiesced their decision making responsibilities to corporate reformers a long time ago.  Tech companies have led the way.  Bill Gates is walking, albeit with much more money at his disposal, in the footsteps of other technology corporate superstars like David Kerns and Lou Gerstner, who led the charge to revolutionize education policy through systemic free market reform education policies.  Other billionaires would lend their effort to these efforts.  Along the way, the voices of less monied education scholars were systematically silenced.  Federal policies, built on the false notion that America’s public schools were a total failure, continued to thrive in spite of documentation to the contrary.

The titles of the chapters in The Origins of the Common Core demonstrate a road map to my journey in writing the book:

  1. The Nation Was at Risk and the Public Schools Did It
  2. Public Schools: Conservative Coalescence and the Socialist Threat
  3. Friedmanomics, School Vouchers and Choice
  4. Corporate Superstars and an Inconvenient Truth
  5. Public Schools and a Third Way of Governing
  6. NCLB and the Texas Tall Tale
  7. Education Reform and the Deep State: An Alternate Universe
  8. The CCSS: Systemic Education Reform Writ Large
  9. CCSS: The Gorilla in the Room for Free Market Education Reform

*http://www.blogtalkradio.com/chalkface/2014/08/17/david-berliner-the-chalk-face

**http://www.publicschoolshakedown.org/diane-ravitch-speech-network-public-education-conference

http://www.amazon.com/The-Manufactured-Crisis-Americas-Schools/dp/0201441969

Arne Duncan Kicks the Education Can Down the Road: NCLB Waivers for 3-4 Years!

Deborah Duncan Owens Arne Duncan, Common Core, corporate education reform, ESEA, free market education reforms, NCLB Waivers, standardized tests

Arne Duncan will allow states to apply for No Child Left Behind waivers shortly that will remain in place for three or four years.  Of course, in order to receive a waiver, states are required to implement Race to the Top policies such as college and career ready standards (CCSS or a mirror image) and teacher evaluation systems largely based on student test scores.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/11/13/education-department-drops-new-no-child-left-behind-waiver-guidance

In effect, Duncan is kicking the ESEA can down the road and solidifying Obama education policies for the next few years — beyond the next presidential election cycle.  Of course, this is very good news for corporate education reformers and education entrepreneurs.  The Obama administration is sending out strong signals that he and Duncan will not be tampering with policies that maintain their ability to profit from the education field.  They can continue to operate in an unfettered free market and receive federal and state dollars to open charter schools, develop data systems to monitor school children, teachers, and schools, promote curricular material to support the CCSS, and create, administer, and score all those standardized tests!

It’s also good news for Republicans and Democrats on sides of the aisle.  They are off the hook now.  So what if they don’t get around to reauthorizing ESEA?  Heck, it hasn’t been reauthorized for a dozen years now.  No hurry.  Arne Duncan maintains a firm grip on the the noose around the public education sector and will for the next few years.  No need for messy debates in Congress about education policy.  No need for presidential candidates to debate education policy.  There’s absolutely no need to ruffle the feathers of those big foundations, corporations, and philanthropists who dominate education policy discussions.  Any threat to their stakeholder status in education may mean a reduction in their donations to political campaigns.   A grazing field of corporate profit continues to expand in America’s wild west of unproven free market education reform opportunities and initiatives.