Monthly Archives: January 2014

STANDARDIZED & PRIVATIZED

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Are Americans sure they want a standardized and privatized system of “public” schools? Does the public understand what is happening?

Dismantling through standardization and privatization. That is what is being done using

Hard to See. That's why they call it Hidden Privatization.

Hard to See. That’s why they call it Hidden Privatization.

the crowbar of outcome-based “reforms.”

Long ago political leaders of both parties began allowing and fostering policies that the arrogant and greedy have used to their advantage and to our detriment. We are allowing a widely recognized destructive and over-reaching federal law —No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—to go unchecked and unchanged. (As of December 2015 the name was changed to the Every Student Succeeds Act – ESSA- but it is still an outcome-based (test-based) federal law.

NCLB celebrated its 12th birthday. It is officially six years overdue for revision—according to its own statute. Why? Is it because Congress can’t get it right, or, is the law doing exactly what it was meant to do?

What we know it did:
1.    Narrowed the curriculum,
2.    Produced cheating scandals,
3.    Gave use data without real results,
4.    Diminished local control and divided communities.

What we know it did NOT do:
1.    Increase accountability for results,
2.    Narrow the achievement gap.

It appears that NCLB also opened the policy door for full standardization and privatization with policies promoted as putting “students first” and the latest new tool for undermining the system — Common Core.

The Idaho task force recommendations* rely heavily on Common Core, the Luna Laws, and outcome-based theory (upon which NCLB was based). R&D – research and development (not Republicans and Democrats) – recommends differently.

*Note: Idaho has its Governor’s “Task Force for Improving Education” putting forth 20 recommendations that the public knows little of in the way of details – but the “preview” is well written. Poised to repeat the mistakes of the past!

*****Double Note for the Nation*****Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Who controls “leadership” and school board “training”? It is in our soon to pass laws – better check yours.

This was originally written for and published in the Idaho Statesman January 30, 2014.

I’m sharing it here because I believe – we must share what we know to be the truth. Also consider, To Privatize or Not to Privatize

And for those brave enough to want to consider the global scale of this, check out Hidden Privatisation. Here’s a one page brief.

Thank you for caring….Now let’s stop this destruction!

Words Are Not Enough

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Flotsam is the wreckage of a ship or its cargo, worthless things, unemployed people.

Jetsam is that part of the cargo thrown overboard to lighten a ship in danger.

The only reason I looked those words up in a dictionary was because Martin Luther King, Jr. hit a chord with me when he spoke these words: “I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life unable to influence the unfolding of events which surround him.” Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, 1964

And knowing that the “March on Washington” in 1963 was organized to urge Congress to pass John F. Kennedy’s civil rights bill calling for equal opportunity in employment and education, I have thought long and hard about the children in this country being treated like flotsam and jetsam.

I know MLK was more focused on the unemployed adults at the time that he spoke those words, but children are people too, and much less likely to be able to influence events that can engulf them and take them under. They need us so desperately to do the right thing and stop ignoring the challenges they face that we can influence.

The March is Unfinished.

The poster says it all.

The poster says it all.

Today we celebrate his birthday of January 15, 1929. And many of his words will forever be recalled. But words are not enough.

“Let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.” April 3, 1968

RIP April 4, 1968

Indoctrination: Old Versus New

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PledgeOfAllegiance1899The older version of indoctrination in the U.S. had a common purpose — Americanization.

As James A. Michener explains in This Noble Land, after discussing how a school day always began with the Pledge of Allegiance and patriotic song, “In those days the indoctrination of children began at age six and continued daily for the next twelve years. I have often thought back on that simpler time and concluded that it is better for a child to have some strong moral and social beliefs rather than none at all, even though his indoctrination may have been chauvinistic, muddled or even erroneous. Later he can correct error, but if he has allegiance to nothing he has nothing to work on in his later reeducation.”

Maybe my humor is warped but I find his muse amusing.

I find no humor in the indoctrination that we are talking about today that holds a very different meaning. To indoctrinate is “to teach” which in the case of Americanization meant to teach foreigners English, U.S. history, government, and culture. And one reason (need, really) for compulsory free public schools was the sudden, large influx of immigrants.

Today, with Common Core and the control of curriculum being ambushed by it, but not fully and publicly being questioned nationally, indoctrination of a political point of view is what we are obligated to protect children against.

We understand the power of “knowledge”; question is, will we allow vulnerability of our public education system to be created?

2014 and The Governing of Reform

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After reading the Mike Petrilli blog about “universal proficiency by 2014,” it prompted recall of these words that are so central to our success:

“What is absolutely crucial in replication is that the assumptions, conceptions, values, and priorities undergirding what you seek to replicate are clear in your head and you take them seriously; you truly accept and believe them, they are non-negotiable starting points.”  Seymour B. Sarason

The following is an excerpt from The Crucial Voice of the People, Past and Present posted here in an attempt to clarify parts of Dr. Sarason’s statement.

CONCEPTIONS: THE GOVERNING OF REFORM
Like most words, the word “conceptions” has different meanings. When applied to the replication of effective practices in education, both a “formulation of ideas” and the “beginning of some process” (Webster’s, 1976) seem applicable.

The governing of education is legally a state responsibility. The reality is that some states do a better job fulfilling that responsibility than others. Partially, it is because of differences in the way they are governed. For example, as the result of a lawsuit against the state of Massachusetts, a ruling was made that “all children must get an adequate education” and their 1993 Education Reform Act was created. The goals were to equalize funding among districts and improve all student performance.

The state chose to use these instruments for change (as outlined by Minnesota):

  1.  increase state spending on education,
  2.  create curriculum frameworks that set high expectations for student learning,
  3.  create student performance assessments aligned with the curriculum frameworks.

But there was something else very important to Massachusetts’s success, the process. In section 3 of their law, they set up advisory councils in the following areas: early childhood education; life management skills and home economics; educational personnel; fine arts education; gifted and talented education; math and science education; racial imbalance; parent and community education and involvement; special education; bilingual education; technology education; vocational-technical education; global education; and comprehensive interdisciplinary health education and human service pro- grams. And the law specified “a reasonable balance of members,” that they should “be broadly representative of all areas,” and it described specifics for each advisory council.

We must continue to remind ourselves that we cannot take one piece of the equation for educational success or one aspect of a successful “model” without considering all the other factors that contribute to success. Summaries or “briefs” as presented here can never do justice to the bigger picture.

Massachusetts used their available experts and a broad range of interested community members to form councils that established their success factors. It couldn’t have been easy. Democratic processes never are. But “democracy is not attained through osmosis. It works because people recognize their responsibilities in it and put forth the effort to make it work through their actions” (Minzey & LeTarte, 1994, 88). And some states took note, like Minnesota, and followed suit. How their stories end, we can’t know. What we do know is that too many states are making uninformed decisions, are not using researched practices, are not using “experts,” are not adequately funding education, and are not using a democratic decision-making process. Some states fail to meet their responsibility.
*****

We must focus on the problems in order to solve them.

We must focus on the problems in order to solve them.

Today, America as a whole is not yet facing the fact that No Child Left Behind was based on faulty assumptions. We have paid a heavy price — made heavier the longer we ignore the fact that we have not been clear in demanding the best alternative for reauthorization.

Our non-negotiable starting points must guide us if we are to “get it right” (“it” being No Child Left Behind). Do we still value the ideals undergirding President Kennedy’s “twin goals”: “a new standard of excellence in education and the availability of such excellence to all who are willing and able to pursue it”?

The governing of the process by which we set —not standards, but— a standard of excellence matters. State responsibility, yes, but what of “local control”?

The Little Engine That Could

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I think we can.

I think we can.

I think we can; I know we can. The question is, will we?

We can move from test and punishment “reforms” — the No Child Left Behind prescription — to policies and practices that concentrate on helping schools improve.

To do so:

“American education, that great engine of the democracy, does not drive itself. It must be guided, not by one but by many, into a future of incalculable promise.” Francis Keppel, 1966, pg. 163 of The Necessary Revolution in American Education