Dark Ages 3: Separation of the Classes has Begun

 The Dark Ages haven't returned quite yet, but it's like having Thanksgiving dinner on the table and getting that "heads up" phone call: your aunt, uncle and crazy cousins will be here soon. 

Okay, so I have set this one aside for awhile. Only partly done, but continually reminded of it as the presidential campaign and education reform rhetoric rolled on, and the wake left behind both rolled my raft and spilled my drink. If you have read any of my "Dark Ages" stuff, you already know where my head is at. If not, check the earlier pieces out.

Installment 1

Installment 2

     "Education reform"  is the label given to the most recent policy and profit grab executed by the united forces of business, government, and the entities that move between them. Presented as a desperately needed overhaul of a failing system, it is rooted in less benevolent goals and could have severe consequences-namely, an even wider divide in wealth, status, education and opportunity than currently exists. In effect, it could create a stagnant and largely under-educated society within the masses, ruled by a truly literate, capable and well connected upper-class: a modern day version of The Dark Ages. True literacy, knowledge, education and power will be reserved for only the most wealthy and privileged, and the opinion expressed by Mitt Romney (linking the level of education you should get to your wealth) will become policy. The bulk of our society will be educated to worker/servant standards, trained to do the jobs that support the wealth for more educated leaders-the ones who can afford true education.

     The difference between students with and without essential resources, valuable experiences, and "school readiness" skills is apparent, and numbers are increasing among students who come to school having been sustained on a diet of low-quality food, violent video games, and weak human attachments. It is true that all students can learn. It is true that students from difficult and/or poverty-stricken homes could go on to college and/or successful, responsible careers and futures. But if the home is a source of emotional and/or economic stress it is  more likely that  experiences have not provided skills or positive models of success (in business, education or in life) that would buoy the other deficits with a potential life raft path to possible success. In other words, a snotty, irresponsible, zombie killing video game junkie with a well-off family is more likely to succeed in life when compared to a similar kid from a poor single parent home.

     Reform is the big-box store of education, meant to minimize the service to and cost of educating an exploited underclass, while placing responsibility for their condition on public schools and educators. Curriculum is becoming more narrow and standardized for public school students as institutions and educators are subjugated to data-driven accountability. In this system, the complicated formula approach that allowed insiders to gut our economy is being applied to public schools. This time  the "insiders", the communities, students, and educators, are the victims and the "reformers" are the ones with the formula.    Publicly, the backers of reform policies paint their pig with words like "choice", the notion that parents can pull their students and the public money that would go with them out of a "failing school" and enroll the in a more attractive charter school.

     This is the "liberation" argument education reformers sometimes use. Traditional public schools in this narrative are not only entrenched and expensive bureaucracies, they are prisons filled with overpaid, unwilling and uncooperative workers falling short in their duties to serve their communities.To begin with, though, the "failing school" mantra is one that needs to be addressed. It implies blame for our public schools-but exactly what, how and who this "failure" includes isn't specified. Specifics have popped up occasionally, but they survive so little scrutiny that they disappear quickly and a more general fog of negative PR returns. The most revealing aspect of the education reform movement is that it seemed to have blossomed after the financial crisis hit and the banking and finance industry came under scrutiny. Clearly these industries and those who benefited need new markets to exploit, and publicly funded institutions could provide them with their new cash cow.

Phone Call campaign to end RTTT

Contact the White House weekly at 202-456-1111 on your state's designated day. Twitter hashtag for this action is #StopRttT Gail DeBonis Richmond suggests we add @edshow [@edshow #RttT? A race implies winners and losers. Aren't ALL of our children  winners? Join me in tweeting Ed. @gailDrich] Message: Give all students the same education your girls are getting! Abandon Race to the Top and stop privatizing public schools. MONDAY 1. Alabama 2. Alaska 3. Arizona 4. Arkansas 5. California 6. Colorado 7. Connecticut 8. Delaware 9. Florida 10. Georgia TUESDAY 1. Hawaii 2. Idaho 3. Illinois 4. Indiana 5. Iowa 6. Kansas 7. Kentucky 8. Louisiana 9. Maine 10. Maryland WEDNESDAY 1. Massachusetts 2. Michigan 3. Minnesota 4. Mississippi 5. Missouri 6. Montana 7. Nebraska 8. Nevada 9. New Hampshire 10. New Jersey THURSDAY 1. New Mexico 2. New York 3. North Carolina 4. North Dakota 5. Ohio 6. Oklahoma 7. Oregon 8. Pennsylvania 9. Rhode Island 10. South Carolina FRIDAY 1. South Dakota 2. Tennessee 3. Texas 4. Utah 5. Vermont 6. Virginia 7. Washington 8. West Virginia 9. Wisconsin 10. Wyoming What is “Race to the Top”? RttT is an initiative from the Obama administration that allows states to extend the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate that ALL children be working at grade level by the 2014. States that accepted RttT agreed (along with many other things) to evaluate teachers using student test scores as part of the evaluation and provide more charter schools as a parent “choice”. Just these two provisions have resulted in high stakes testing impacting America’s children and tax dollars being removed from traditional public schools to fund charter schools. A “not so coincidental” byproduct of just these two actions is a decline in the quality of education in our public schools AND corporations lining up to write tests, new curriculum, and open charter schools. If continued, RttT will ultimately destroy public schools as we now know them and continue to provide a way for the monies designated for public education to go to the accounts of corporations that are joining the education bandwagon. Not all children are accepted at charter schools. Education will become a commodity for a select few children and the rest others will be “trained” to be docile employees (google Common Core Standards for more info). Parents must speak out now! Teachers and administrators must speak out now! America must speak out now! STOP THE RACE TO THE TOP!

They are Right: It IS Class Warfare.

                No one can argue against the fact that unions can include cumbersome bureaucracy, or might sometimes protect those who shouldn't be protected.  But it is a little one-sided to continually frame the anti-union argument in terms of lousy teachers getting paid to sit in rooms awaiting disciplinary action, or public service workers with shovels and pensions that are breaking the backs of taxpayers and digging our country into a hole.  This mindset ignores both the benefit of having strong labor unions, and the personal sacrifices made by workers in these fields. It also ignores the true pirates that pillaged and plundered our economy-and continue to do so. But efforts to draw attention to the abuses of politicians and their covert backers (both well to very well-heeled) are often painted as fringe, extremism, socialism or “thuggery” (as with FOX coverage of Wisconsin and “Occupy” protests). This is simply misdirection, drawing attention and much needed conversation away from the high-finance shenanigans and corporate abandonment that did an incredible amount of damage to our country.

The workers targeted in this smear campaign are often people who provide vital services. They have already agreed, in many cases, to concessions in pay and benefits to assist in the balancing of budgets and preservation of jobs.  Their unions may have their abuse and misuse issues, but these organizations mainly serve to protect middle class workers who support, invest and spend the money they make in their home communities. Whether it’s in their own houses, or in area businesses, their money generally circulates locally-preserving their communities in a concrete and liquid (when necessary) way. When a financial crisis hits, the damage done to these Americans is immediate, local and most noticeable, since a “middle class” income offers less cushion than it once did.  Their jobs are often the jobs that maintain the vital mechanisms that preserve and maintain our communities.

On the more cushiony side of the crisis coin: when executive pay, Wall Street bonuses and expiration of Bush-era tax cuts were being considered, the response from the more privileged sector was a warning: impacting this wealthy class will hinder our recovery, because these are the people who invest, spend, create jobs and create wealth.  The argument from this side is that any limitations on their income or wealth might stifle their willingness to invest, and it could scare off talent from those high-finance jobs.  Really?  So since the Reagan years, and through the Bush-era tax cuts, as the spread between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest has grown wider, where have the jobs gone?  What have the swelling tics and fat-cats done to sustain their host? 

By jobs, I mean the kind that simply support and protect a middle class family, nothing fancy.  There is clearly a lack of talent in those with vast amounts of wealth for stimulating the American economy in a meaningful way.  Still, the profits, raises, bonuses, and payout for them far exceed anything most will ever see.

If one side of this “shared sacrifice” situation was to be considered unreasonable, you might want to consider the side that enjoys the protection of politicians and lawmakers, and still stubbornly refuses to share the sacrifice.

A Common Core of More Vital Learning Standards: You, Family, School, Community, Cooperation, Participation, Creativity, Achievement

     An education reform movement is sweeping the nation, along with the expected blow-back from our traditional institutions of learning and their educators-struggling to make their voices heard and lend vital input. Included in the reform push are changes in expectations for learners and educators in a newly repackaged and re-aligned set of standards being called the Common Core Learning Standards. It sounds important, includes some common sense good ideas, but other than a change in how content is to be aligned across grade levels and some presumptuous notions about what is important for students to know and be able to do-there isn't really much new. What the reform movement really seems to be about is taking control over paths to complete citizenship and guiding learners toward  a non-threatening status-quo, or standardization.

     What is really needed is a common core of more vital learning standards.Despite education reformers' practice of ignoring the impact of poverty and the decaying morality of our society, data proves time and time again that while academic success is encouraged with high-quality instruction, it is more correlative to outside the school influences. Poverty, the stability and security of home and family, the perceived value of education in the family...these and more are forces beyond the teacher's power to control. "No excuses" reformers like to respond dismissively to this "elephant in the room", barely stifling their disdain as they continue the misdirection  of responsibility for healing the wounds inflicted by poverty and moral decline.

     I agree with "No excuses", but I would make it "No excuses, for all involved!" Teachers have continually risen to the challenges and sacrificed to meet the increasing needs and deficits resulting from poor governance and an enabling of uber-capitalism that has left many families and children behind. A moral and economic paradigm shift is required in order to change the tide. We need to impose a greater standard for young people who will grow to lead, and need to learn how to do that, instead of submit to suspicious measures of their value or their growth in value that appear to funnel them into the chute that more efficiently feeds this already failing system.

     We need a more worthy common core that will invigorate the stagnant spirit and mobilize the bulk of our nation. We should be building society's core from the middle out, just like our economy, and for schools to truly serve communities they need a focus that meets the needs of communities not the demands of the market.

     A more appropriate and vital focus would be a simple four standard approach 1) Your Self  2) Your World  3) Your Contribution 4) Your Goals.

•     Standard 1) Your Self: A) You; B) Family
•     Standard 2) Your World: A) School; B)Community
•     Standard 3) Your Contribution: A) Cooperation; B) Participation C) Creativity
•     Standard 4) Your Goals A) Achievement

The target of this more vital core is the individual's ability to not only maximize and demonstrate their skills, but to also contribute their skills to a greater good. Achievement isn't only reached through maximizing skills, but also maximizing the positive impact they have in the community and in the world.

To come: A break down of important performance indicators in the 8 sub-categories (I don't have some fancy name I can use to make money off this stuff yet...cuz you know it's all about the money):

     You, Family, School, Community, Cooperation, Participation, Creativity, Achievement

What results have the politicians attacking our schools gotten?

     This is why I advocate for a "what's good for the goose" approach for ratings/evaluations: politicians should also be subject to termination if measures of their success are less than effective. Childhood health, poverty, employment, median income, crime, quality of life...fill in whatever is important (number of wealthy friends/supporters does not count here). 

     The claim that outside of school factors can be overcome by magical inspiring teachers is great stuff for movies and one-in-a-million stories, but even those become more rare as the reform zombies look for other ways to profit (after jobs were slaved away to Asia and the middle class home-owner market was bled dry). Stand our ground. Surely if one lonely public school teacher (charters and private schools won't have to take the most challenging kids)can be expected to climb this mountain, then a well connected politician can climb one of their own.

Schools failing to prepare kids for college?

The Educator's Room, which I follow on Facebook, had an interesting article about how students are entering college unprepared, often needing remedial courses. Some of the article and comments reflected opinions that support the "schools are doing worse and worse" point of view, ignoring the fact that the demands on schools are "more and more". Here are my comments:

     Two-fifths not prepared? I think the structure of the society that awaits students should be considered. The contrast between the 1-2% of the wealthiest Americans and the rest of the population is not actually disconnected from how schools function. We can't all be in that 1-2%. We can't all be CEO's, Wall Street lawyers, investors/hedge-fund managers, doctors, lawyers, physicists...even simple, humble school teachers. We will always need students to follow paths and grow into jobs they are suited for and hopefully pursue. When will we NOT need construction workers, butchers, truck drivers, cashiers...? There are many essential jobs that could be filled through internships, apprenticeships, and alternative education/training rather than demanding that all students be "college/career ready" when they leave high school. Critics of American public education ignore the fact that public schools are being mandated to move ALL students to a more standardized end, despite the fact that students can't be standardized.   

     Along those lines, what is called "watering down the curriculum" might be the result of pushing public schools to serve ALL students, expect them to ALL meet standard requirements, but still knowing that any progress is success in some situations and with some students. Instead of mandating, policy should ALLOW public schools to serve ALL students, and use professional judgment and collaboration (not test-n-punish/demands for college readiness) to form curriculum and course. Public schools for all: Resources for the most capable and high-achieving will appear. Watch it happen.