I read this article by Rick Ayers at Huffington Post, and he spares no punches. That is exactly what both parties are doing right now....they are talking about educating our children using free market principles. It is not going to work.
Market-Based Dogmas Undermine Strong EducationOne of the barriers we must overcome in framing a reasonable debate on school reform is the powerful hegemony of right-wing ideology which sees free-market mechanisms as the only way to organize a large social project such as education or health care. Indeed, the notion of a public space, a democratically controlled community effort, is almost impossible to advance in the current debates. For this, we have to thank the victory of the right-wing Reagan agenda, building on the dogmas of free-market gurus such as Milton Freedman and Ayn Rand.
The current free-market religion makes such pre-Reagan Republicans as Nixon and Eisenhower look like lefties. Politicians and researchers only a generation ago, even conservatives, entertained the possibility of various models of how to organize society, different versions of liberal capitalism, which allowed for aspects of social democratic ideas -- strong social supports, medical care, public education, etc. All of these are now under attack. The ideology of American politics today makes liberals such as Obama and Duncan act like blinkered rightists.
Yes, they are acting very right wing on education. It is like they do not hear the voices of the teachers or parents. They simply ignore us.
The author states that the Obama/Duncan agenda on education has turned it into a competition. They believe "States must compete against states. Districts against districts. Schools against schools. And they are most explicit about the fact that teachers must compete against teachers."
Under this program, teachers will be pressured to gather the most promising students, to remain isolated from peers,and to cheat; principals have already been caught cheating in a desperate attempt to boost test scores. In spite of the many millions of dollars poured into expounding the scheme of paying teachers for higher student test scores (sometimes mislabeled as 'merit pay'), a new study by Vanderbilt University's National Center on Performance Incentives found that the use of merit pay for teachers in the Nashville school district produced no difference in test outcomes for students -- even according to their measure.
And, at the bottom of the heap, are the students who are told from a young age that they are in a life-and-death struggle -- against their classmates and other students -- to climb over others to the top.
Ayers is right. The power play against education did start with Ronald Reagan. He was absolutely brutal. I remember wondering why they suddenly started talking about bad our schools were when in actuality they were not. He had an agenda. He used propaganda, and it worked.
Reagan's attack on public educationAs governor of California:
And he certainly did not let up on the criticisms of campus protestors that had aided his election. Mr. Reagan's denunciations of student protesters were both frequent and particularly venomous. He called protesting students "brats," "freaks," and "cowardly fascists." And when it came to "restoring order" on unruly campuses he observed, "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more appeasement!"
Several days later four Kent State students were shot to death. In the aftermath of this tragedy Mr. Reagan declared his remark was only a "figure of speech." He added that anyone who was upset by it was "neurotic."
He appointed a "blue-ribbon" commission which put out a report called "A Nation at Risk." It was not reality, but it did not matter. The media took up the report and hammered it into the brains of Americans. From that day forward education would be said to be failing.
After "A Nation At Risk" the nation's public schools were fair game for every ambitious politician or self-important business boss in the country. Its publication prompted a flood of follow-up criticism of public education as "blue ribbon" and "high level" national commissions plus literally hundreds of state panels wrote a flood of reform reports. Most presupposed that the charges made by Mr. Reagan's handpicked panel were true. Oddly though, throughout this entire clamor, parental confidence in the school's their children attended remained remarkably high. Meanwhile Mr. Reagan was quietly halving federal aid to education.
That sums up Mr. Reagan's educational legacy. As governor and president he demagogically fanned discontent with public education, then made political hay of it. As governor and president he bashed educators and slashed education spending while professing to valued it. And as governor and president he left the nation's educators dispirited and demoralized.
I notice that Arne Duncan appears to have stopped using Newt Gingrich to travel the country to push his agenda. Maybe he heard the outrage, or maybe Gingrich is working with him more quietly.
Under a Democratic administration Newt Gingrich is getting everything he ever wanted in the field of education.
From the On the Issues website:
Gingrich on educationIntroduce competition among schools and teachers
We should apply the free enterprise system to our education system by introducing competition among schools, administrators, and teachers. Our educators should be paid based on their performance and held accountable based on clear standards with real consequences.
These ideas are designed to stimulate thinking beyond the timid “let’s do more of the same” that has greeted every call for rethinking math and science education.
Source: Gingrich Communications website, www.newt.org Dec 1, 2006
He is getting his free enterprise schools. He is getting his merit pay. More from that website.
Support charters; insist on change for failing schools
We should encourage the spread of public charter schools--one of the happiest new developments on the education scene--so parents, educators, & students working together can enjoy the maximum freedom to explore options and innovations until every child has a genuine opportunity to learn. As a corollary of this, we must identify the worst schools. We should insist on immediate change for bad schools. To start with, there should be no tenure and no binding contracts in the worst 20% of schools.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.208 Jul 2, 1998
Support charters, do away with tenure. Identify the worst schools and insist on immediate change.
He must be in hog heaven with Arne in charge of schools.
He hasn't gotten his vouchers from Arne yet, but Florida is giving them out freely now....even to private religious schools.
Private scholarships for students at hopeless schools
If there were families left without an acceptable public school, scholarships should be available for them to find a private one. I am a graduate of a public school, as are my wife and two daughters. All of us remain committed to the idea of public education. However, if the available public school is one that gives parents legitimate worry for their children’s future, there ought to be alternative to having to stand helplessly watching an incompetent bureaucracy destroy their children’s lives.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.209 Jul 2, 1998
In Rick Ayers' article he tells the harm that will come from pushing these free market schools without evidence they work.
A recent article in the Boston Globe reviewed extensive studies that have shown that "improvement goals" and an obsession with upward graph curves have often led to disaster. It points out how General Motors' single-minded focus on market share led to shoddy design and ultimate disaster. Other cases, the Ford Pinto design, the Enron collapse, and the lending practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, followed the same pattern. Bending all educational efforts to achieving higher test scores has disastrous unintended consequences. But the market fetishists will not be deterred. This is because their commitment to market-based school reform is not evidence based, it is faith based.
The corporate world has taken hold of education to make it more profitable to them. We have a Secretary of Education ready to accommodate them.
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