EDUCATION: Two Deep Critiques Of Educational Reform

Melissa Harris-Perry Buries

The Lead Story

on National Wave of

Public School Closings

 

Thu, 01/31/2013  
 

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

When print or broadcast news outlets grab a compelling story, only to distract attention away from what the public needs to know, that's called “burying the lead.” That's what Melissa Harris-Perry did in her Jan. 26 segment on whether the nationwide wave of public school closings were “racist” or not.

 

Melissa Harris-Perry devoted an eight minute segment of her January 26 MSNBC show to the question of whether the current wave of public school closings, indisputably concentrated in poor black and brown communities across the nation, was racist. She had four panelists on the segment, only one of whom seemed connected to and knowledgeable about the issue, a New York City parent.

They batted the thing around, and all pretty much agreed that it was a dirty shame, a tragic waste closing hundreds of public schools in places like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, destructive to most ideas of community, and that yeah, it probably was indeed racist. Harris-Perry called it an “epidemic” of school closures. She noted that neighborhoods identify especially with their high schools, and closing them violates the integrity of communities.

Both Harris-Perry and the NYC parent activist brought up the proliferation of high-stakes tests which judged urban teachers and students as “failing” thus providing some of the immediate justification for the school closings, though this was something the discussion passed over rather than dwelled upon. The NYC activist declared that she and the Save Our Schools Coalition intended to be in DC during the coming week to press for recognition of the fact that school closings were racist, ask for a meeting with the president and for a national moratorium on school closures.

What Harris-Perry and her panelists failed to do was explain exactly ---- or even vaguely --- what's causing these racist school closures that are wrecking communities. Labeling them “racist” describes only a single symptom of the “epidemic” while telling us nothing about its cause. The host and panelists didn't mention the Obama administration's signature Race To The Top Program even once. For a show whose Twitter handle is #nerdland, this is a pretty significant omission.

The fact is that high-stakes testing is being forced upon states and school districts by the Obama administration as part of its Race To The Top Program. RTTT awards funding to states and school districts on the basis of four criteria --- (1) school transformations and (2) school turnarounds, in which large numbers of staff are fired and “run the school like a business consultants brought in to tie teacher salaries tightly to test scores, (3) school restarts in which public school facilities are handed over to charter operators, and (4) school closings. RTTT guidelines were written in the first place by consultants from the Eli Broad, Walton Family, Gates, and other self-interested foundations which have spent tens of millions promoting charter schools and educational privatization.

Harris-Perry is far too intelligent not to know that Obama's Race To The Top policies are deliberately, not accidentally driving the wave of school closings, or that President Obama is deep in the pocket of the charter school sugar daddies. She knows too that there are deep connections between the money spent on the warfare state and bank bailouts and the money available to support public education. And she's well aware that nobody's career has ever been harmed by supporting the policies of a sitting president, no matter how vile (or even racist) those policies might be.

The black political class, based as it is on the fiction that it “represents” an underprivileged minority defined by race, is perfectly willing to entertain a shallow discussion of whether school closings are “racist.” But explaining to her audience where the pressure for high stakes testing, for school closures, for teacher firings, for turning public schools into profitable low-cost holding tanks are coming from --- if it means disagreeing with the First Black President, it ain't gonna happen.

If corporate school reform was something Republicans and Democrats disagreed on --- if elected Republicans were doing it and elected Democrats were against it, Melissa Harris-Perry might see fit to focus real intellectual wattage on the subject, and truly inform her audience. She and her guests have no trouble cackling at evil Republicans. But when the evil is bipartisan, and a black Democrat in the White House, her career is more important than the truth. She knows the microphone and the audience ain't hers either, it's MSNBC's. If she doesn't tow the line, maybe they'll give Michael Eric Dyson a show instead, he'll know how to stay in his lane.

Like boxers instructed at the beginning of every fight to “protect yourselves at all times”, MHP knows her obligation is to protect the Democratic party elite, and the president, and to protect millions of voters who supported Barack Obama and his party from knowing what they really voted for. In this case that meant drawing attention away from the charter school profiteers and sugar daddies, and their intimate ties with this president, his secretary of education, and a whole layer of Democratic and often black politicians. So where the lead story on school closings should have on what's causing the public school closings, who's pushing and profiting from the public school closings, who is resisting those forces and how we can stop school closings and protect public education, Melissa Harris-Perry buried that lead. She just pronounced it all a hot racist mess, and hosted a rambling and pointless discussion about an “epidemic” without pointing to preventions, treatments or cures. What a waste.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and a member of the Georgia Green Party. He lives and works in Marietta GA, and can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

 

via blackagendareport.com

 

__________________________

 

Why America's Prep Schools

Aren't Following

Arne Duncan's

Public School

Education Reforms

lockers
Our public education system, with all of its admitted flaws, manages to nurture the vast majority of young people, many of whom go on to be hugely successful. But the prevailing education reform movement in the United States, premised upon market-based solutions, economics, disruption, and similar sounding corporate buzzwords, seeks to standardize curriculum, teaching, and assessment as a method of control.

Let me be clear: We are in a battle for public education and we are struggling against those who wish it to be extinct. There is no room for negotiation. If current trends continue, our education system will become entirely vocationalized—perpetuating both class-based and racial apartheid, and teachers will eventually become short-term, at-will employees without the protections available to intellectual professions.

This is not an exaggeration. Allow me to explain it further: Education reform proponents, whose backgrounds are primarily from management, finance, technology, government—and not education—are trying very hard—to the tune of billions of dollars—to sell the public a rather interesting bill of goods. You will see, among other things, the championing of common core standards, standardized assessments, data-collection systems, and an expensive technological infrastructure to make this all possible.

We are told repeatedly that this is what America’s children need, especially those in impoverished communities. “Spokes-reformers” market their wares on all major cable news networks and control the message on most mainstream print and online publications. As a teacher educator and former classroom teacher, I’m happy to provide all the proof I need that their messages, every last one of them, are destructive. But for now, I have a simpler demonstration.

Go ahead and do an online search of the country’s top prep schools, or check out this list fromForbes. Peruse some of the school websites and do a search for anything that mainstream education reformers suggest we implement in your neighborhood public school. Try, for example, common core state standards. How about data-driven instruction? Or, what about two weeks worth of mandated high-stakes, standardized state tests, preceded by weeks, if not months, of benchmarks, short-cyles, and pre-assessments?

If you think there's time for all of this, you'd be mistaken. Most social studies and science instruction ends as early as January for a March test, if it's taught at all. In some cases, it isn't. In other cases, art, music, physical education, and recess are also dropped, or at least taken away from students whose scores are lowest. I wonder if any notification of such adjustments to the academic schedule are included in the glossy brochures for the country's top prep schools. 

I have another interesting suggestion: Check out the proportion of teachers at those schools who possess advanced degrees. At Horace Mann in the Bronx—where 36 percent of students are accepted at an Ivy League school, Stanford, or MIT—94 percent of the teachers have advanced degrees. Now, who was it that said rewarding teachers with advanced degrees is a waste of money? Ah yes, our Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. How far do you think Mr. Duncan’s argument would get with parents who examine a potential school's "Ivy/MIT/Stanford pipeline" percentage score? Not very far.

The problem is the public is force-fed these ideas of standardized curriculum, teaching, and assessment as the best tactics education science has to offer. They tell us that this is how we must educate our children. Wait, whose children are we talking about? Not the kids at Trinity School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—41 percent are in that Ivy/MIT/Stanford pipeline—or Philips Exeter in New Hampshire, which educated Mark Zuckerberg. As someone with more experience in education than those whose voices are most prominent, I can also assure you that mainstream reform ideologies are not the best anyone has to offer. In fact, they are the cheapest and easiest to control. That's it.

I can already anticipate the devil’s advocate argument: Parents pay a hefty sum to send their children to Roxbury Latin, so they get what they've paid for. And on that point I would agree with you—if we were talking about, say, automobiles. Yes, the financier who pays extra for the package with the mahogany inlays and heated seats certainly deserves his or her mahogany inlays and heated seats. The one who mops the financier’s office floor, well, he or she might manage to eek out a full-sized spare, maybe some nice floor mats or something.
 
But these aren't cars; they're kids. These are kids who've had the temerity to be born and this is how we’ve resigned ourselves to discuss their education. We give all to those who can afford better and the rest get, well, they get what they get—and no one is supposed to get upset about it.

This is nonsense. If the reforms mandated by Departments of Education and fawned over by upstart think-tankers were as fantastic as advised again and again, then you can bet that every single one of the country's best prep schools would be implementing them as rapidly as possible. They're not, and you shouldn't accept them either.

This entire enterprise operates on one very powerful currency: data. Without the data, the machine ceases to operate. Educators, parents, and students are starting to understand that and are now refusing to fuel the machine. At the time of this writing, entire schools in the Seattle area are lining up to boycott high-stakes tests with overwhelming support from their local communities and are making national headlines.

I suggest that we no longer feed the machine—and that we fight back. From April 4-7, 2013, educators, community activists, parents, and students from across the nation are heading to Washington, D.C. for Occupy 2.0: The Battle for Public Schools. Prominent educators, public school advocates, and activists from around the country will be leading talks and workshops to raise awareness and resist corporate-style education reforms. If you cannot join us in Washington this April, then encourage any colleague or friend who can attend to do so. Connect with us online during our livestream of the event. Or, download our free high-stakes testing toolkit (PDF) to begin a conversation in your community.

Click here to add sharing the Opt Out Toolkit with your community to your GOOD "to-do" list.

Lockers image via Shutterstock

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