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TechnoratiUnions Criticize Obama's School Proposals as 'Bush III'
To the surprise of many educators who campaigned last year for change in the White House, the Obama administration's first recipe for school reform relies heavily on Bush-era ingredients and adds others that make unions gag.
![[Education Secretary Arne Duncan looks on as President Barack Obama talks to students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009.
(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/education_bushIII.jpg "education_bushIII.jpg")
Standardized testing, school accountability, performance pay, charter schools -- all are integral to President Obama's $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" grant competition to spur innovation. None is a typical Democratic crowd-pleaser.
Labor leaders, parsing the Education Department's fine print, call the proposal little more than a dressed-up version of the No Child Left Behind law enacted seven years ago under Obama's Republican predecessor.
"It looks like the only strategies they have are charter schools and measurement," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. "That's Bush III." Weingarten, who praises Obama for massive federal aid to help schools through the recession, said her 1.4 million-member union is engaged in "a constructive but tart dialogue" with the administration about reform.
Debate over Race to the Top among Democrats, education groups and others is widespread, with thousands of written comments pouring into the government since late July. It previews the clash to come when Obama and the Democratic-led Congress update No Child Left Behind. The controversial law is certain to be renamed and reworked. But those who want to scrap it entirely might be disappointed because federal education policy has been largely bipartisan for the past two decades.
"Obama's the fourth president in a row who has been in favor of standards-based reform and test-driven accountability," said Jack Jennings, a former Democratic congressional aide and president of the Center on Education Policy. "Obama's very much in a line of four consecutive presidents -- two liberals, two conservatives; two Democrats and two Republicans -- who are all in favor of the same kind of reform."
On Thursday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan told interest groups in Washington that the administration hopes to improve the 2002 federal law by raising expectations for students, giving schools more flexibility and tracking classroom gains rather than how far test scores fall short of what he called "utopian goals."
But Duncan reiterated his commitment to testing and accountability: "I will always give NCLB credit for exposing achievement gaps and for requiring that we measure our efforts to improve education by looking at outcomes rather than inputs. . . . Today, we expect districts, principals and teachers to take responsibility for the academic performance of their schools and students."
The standardized testing culture has sunk deep roots in public education under the federal mandate to assess students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. State tests are widely criticized for uneven rigor and quality, but they provide data crucial to many reform efforts. The administration has set aside funding to help develop a new generation of exams as a group of states seeks to write what could become the first nationwide academic standards. But for now, the regular state tests will feed into Race to the Top.
The administration's proposed rules for the grants challenge the education establishment on several fronts:
-- To create systems to track individual student achievement over time and link growth in scores to individual teachers and principals;
-- To use those data in part to evaluate and compensate teachers and principals;
-- To lift limits on independently operated but publicly funded charter schools, which usually are not unionized; and
-- To shake up perennially struggling schools identified through No Child Left Behind.
The proposal could be revised this fall before states apply. No money has been awarded yet. Still, details embedded within the proposal have sent shock waves through the education world.
For example, it defines an "effective teacher" as one "whose students achieve acceptable rates (e.g., at least one grade level in an academic year) of student growth" -- and it requires such growth to be measured through state test scores when applicable. To revive struggling schools, including many Duncan calls "dropout factories," the proposal urges states to sweep out their staff or management, convert them to charter schools or close them entirely, with a fourth option of "school transformation" recommended only when the more aggressive strategies "are not possible." And the proposal declares ineligible for funding any state that prohibits the linkage of student achievement data to teachers and principals for job evaluations.
California might soon repeal a statute that appears to run afoul of that provision. It is one of several states that have in recent months passed or proposed measures to position themselves to secure grants.
The comments on Race to the Top -- more than 3,700 in all, from more than 1,100 sources, according to a government official -- range from scathing to enthusiastic.
The National Education Association, with 3.2 million members, called it a "disturbing" federal intrusion. "We have been down that road before with the failures of No Child Left Behind," the union writes, "and we cannot support yet another layer of federal mandates that have little or no research base of success and that usurp state and local government's responsibilities for public education." Union affiliates from 19 states weighed in, many echoing such views.
The National School Boards Association declared itself generally supportive but worried that the program is "overly prescriptive," with an "overemphasis on charter schools and school takeovers."
Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert F. McDonnell (R) commended the administration's push for performance pay and charter schools. "Education reform is not a partisan issue," he wrote in a letter to Duncan last month.
In a joint statement, the Center for American Progress, Democrats for Education Reform, the Education Equality Project and the Education Trust called the proposal "a strong and good-faith effort" to fix education problems.
"There hasn't been enough focus by those on the left on innovation and entrepreneurship. It's ironic because it's those traits of America that have pushed this country into world leadership," Cynthia G. Brown of the Center for American Progress said in an interview. Said Brown, who was an assistant education secretary in the Carter administration: "We have to move forward and try some new ways of doing things. We need to do it in partnership with those who teach in our classrooms and those who govern our schools. But we've got to move forward."
Duncan said Thursday that he is prohibited from responding to all of the Race to the Top input as the government prepares its rules. "Great feedback," he called it.
26 Comments so far
Show AllUs citizens should understand where their country is in literacy such as the skill to read and write. They are not even in the top 50 countries. What portion of the taxes/production of the USA goes to schools and education?
I bet there are a lot more money poured in to US wars. War on poverty, war on drugs, war on weapons of mass destruction, and many more WARS. Keep them dumb and they are easier to control. Just look at the neanderthals who brought their guns to meetings where the President was present?? No critical thinking going on there. If they did this with Bush they would have been sent to GITMO for treason.
I teach developmentally disabled adolescents in a charter high school. My 10th grade students are required to take an alternative test in California, per NCLB, known as the CAPA test.
The students in my classes are working toward independent life skills. They're not on a diploma track. These are kids with severe cognitive challenges. We're working on vocational and life skills to realize the dignity of caring for one’s self. Our goal is to have each students realize the greatest level of independence each is able to achieve as an adult, (e.g., what to do when you're lost in the community; how to take public transportation; meal planning, shopping, cooking; basics of holding a job, etc.)
You've all encountered my "kids" in the community working as boxers in grocery stores and a myriad of other simple jobs that allow them to be part of our communities as contributing, valued citizens in their own right.
I called Sacramento after testing two years ago and asked what idiots wrote the test requiring retarded students to have knowledge of heavy metals on the periodic chart and was invited to Sac to meet with the committee.
When in the CAPA working group I suggested that asking a person with Down's syndrome about the eriodic chart just might border on the absurd. The room burst into laughter. As the moderator from the California Department of Education and another member from Education Testing Services dabbed at their tear-filled eyes, they explained that the representative sent from the Fed demanded it be put on the test. That person? A a young perky grad of Oral Roberts University, known as the science Nazi, who demanded that the CAPA science portion of the test include the question because it aligned with the state standard for sophomores.
Considering the fact that mindless idiots with no understanding of human development, effective teaching, or in this case, the purpose of alternative education are influencing the creation of tests is instructive.
The fact that NCLB testing was a boondoggle for the dismemberment of public education from the get-go and an absolute Kafka-esque exercise in insanity for my crowd seems lost on the public.
Advice from the working committee in Sacramento? Post a periodic chart on my wall, point to it and tell my students that it's a periodic chart to satisfy the science Nazis.
A 1950's B movie parody? Nope! The committee is composed of a frustrated group of dedicated educators who have thrown their hands in the air while trying to make the tests as least offensive as they can, given the laws that force them to continue the charade.
In 1997 the evangelical crowd packed boards of education in California and marched in lock-step with the neo-con ascendancy. They led the fight for "accountability-through-testing" in California schools. They whipped up a frenzy as they villified the liberal, Godless commmie pinko educators, targeting educators as favored whipping boys for the public and set the stage for the absurdities we’re dealing with now.
Most of the other posts in this comments stream are absolutely on the mark. NCLB in all of its manifestations is a travesty the oligarchs avoid through the very expensive schools they send their children to whilst marching hell-bent on in the strategic numbing and dumbing of America.
Now, as I face a year in which our school budget has been slashed by close to two million dollars; our physical plant deteriorates; our staff again passes on any hope of a COLA; our health insurance costs further cripple our ability to purchase materials, supplies and books, having gone up in cost to of over half a million dollars above last years costs; and the public continues to vilify teachers and administrators I can only shake my head in disbelief.
Meanwhile, we celebrate our schools continued improved test scores (API of 818), a feat accomplished by cherry-picking the best of LAUSD’s students. Fifty percent of our students come from 100 zip codes in LA. They’re chosen by lottery. We have room for about half of those who apply. The other 50% of our students come from our residence area – Brentwood and the Palisades.
What about the inpact on inner-city schools from the loss of those students?
What about the profits enjoyed by ETS in publishing and selling the mandated tests and associated cr*p that goes with it?
What about the cost in frustration to cognitively challenged kids across the country who are forced to take tests that have no relevance in their lives, do nothing to inform their instruction, and whose scores ironically add "evidence" to the true-believers that the system is failing.
Just makes me want to run right out and celebrate capitalism's contribution to the world.
Dano: Thanks for taking the time to write your very effective post! We need to hear what's happening from people who work inside the system.
You bring up so many important issues that relate to the education of our children.
Thanks for the work you do!
Dano - Excellent, richly detailed description of the mania for testing and for cooking statistics while withholding the resources that would make education work.
By the way - congratulations on what you do.
Joe
"...The Center for American Progress, Democrats for Education Reform, the Education Equality Project and the Education Trust...."
AKA a team of think tanks and/or lobbying firms.
Poor economics is believing one vote holds capital in a world where think-tank-lobbyist firms have more pull than educators.
Have you figured it out yet folks? People with a quality education are able to read well and reason critically. They have the skills to assess the sources of information and its validity. They're MUCH harder to dupe and manipulate. Why would the government want to encourage that? [sarcasm alert]
Meanwhile to equate improving scores on multiple guess tests as an indicator of quality education is in the same category as promoting McDonalds Happy Meals as a model of quality nutrition.
Let me this loud and clear, this is not a spam. Now do put in this comment-- thanks.
This is just what Greg Palast would call "No Child's Behind Left."
Yes, we in the USA can keep going down the neo con donw the road to Hell in a handbasket.
AD
I like to call it "No Child Left Without a Kick in the Behind."
I seem to have got spam filtered. This is not spam. Hell, I didn't even have any for breakfast this morning, but I'm sure the power elites had their usual fancy, smancy breakfast or brunch this morning and will have all that which so much of the working people and middle class have to do without including personal planes, primarily Lear jets, personal limousines, and al the rest for these country club, limousine riding, dry martini sucking perks of being our rulers in this oligarchy trying to pass itself off as a republic.
This is just what Greg Palast would call "No Child's Behind Left."
Yes, we in the USA can keep going down the neo con down the road to Hell in a hand basket.
AD
This is just what Greg Palast would call "No Child's Behind Left."
Yes, we in the USA can keep going down the neo con donw the road to Hell in a handbasket.
AD
As for charter schools - what is the track record of charter schools? My impression is that the results are mixed and vary widely. They come and go. Charter schools are often as underfunded and understaffed as regular schools, but may be blessed with a dedicated and visionary staff. Such a charter school will burn brightly for a little while, and then cool off as the staff is not able to maintain the extraordinary 24/7 hours and efforts required to make it work.
How do charter schools help the majority of the children who are "left behind" in regular schools? Instead, why not adequately staff and fund regular schools?
Joe
Watch out not to get sucked into a moot debate.
ALL OF PUBLIC SCHOOL WAS SOLD TO 3 MAJOR CORPORATIONS.
That's what No Child Left Without a Kick in the Behind did.
NCLB says that in 2014, a school needs to get 97% of their kids to pass the end of the year test.
No school on the face of the planet will accomplish this.
And no school was meant to pass.
The whole testing bull shit is simply a mechanism to implement a phased in take over of public education.
THIS INCLUDED CHARTER SCHOOLS.
let me know if you want to join to do something about it.
Good point. Adequate funding lays the necessary foundation, but is not sufficient. Good leadership and lack of corruption are required too. I know about gross mishandling of supplies, sweetheart contracts, lazy teachers and administrators. I am not sure how schools get that way. I assume that people at all levels of society can see an opportunity to milk a cow and if nobody is watching, they take advantage. Fixing conditions will take more than easy gimmicks, something in addition to testing the kids. I believe you can test these kids from here until Sunday and the education will not improve.
You still need to increase funding in most districts. A non-boarding student at a good private school pays up to $35,000 tuition per year. Shocking, but just a bit more than a year of prison. (We can cut down costs by eliminating horsebackriding and trips to China, in schools, not prison.) The question is how to pay for it without oppressing moderate income homeowners. But... it can be solved if we apply ourselves.
In New York, school aides who get $15,000 a year and are very helpful to teachers with large classes, are being laid off. Meanwhile, brokerage, banks and real estate firms owe back taxes in the hundreds of millions. They have also been granted tax abatements and subsidies in huge amounts, especially under Mayor Bloomberg. We need the will and determination to remedy such fundamental situations.
Joe
You raise an interesting question, which raises many other questions. Where do you get the $8000 a year figure, which is about 25% of the per pupil expenditure of a good private school? Is that the tuition, which could be subsidized by general church funds, or is it the per pupil cost?
One thing that immediately pops out is that Catholic schools, like private schools, do not have to take everyone. They can expel children who do not behave. They are not mandated to educate physically and mentally challenged children, whose education can be very expensive. They can offer subsidies to good students but not to poor students and thus tip the balance. This is something that should be studied. Maybe we can learn something.
Meanwhile, the kids are growing up fast and deserve adequate funding in the Public Schools.
Joe
Realize that No Child left Without a Kick in the Behind was a 100% sale of the entire public educational system to 3 major corporations. As the law states, in 2014, a school must get 97% of their students to pass the test. if they fail to meet the mark, then the school board gets to choose one of the 3 corporations to run the school. Obviously, no school on the planet will meet those marks, and no one was supposed to. So, watch out for getting sucked into any debate. it's all a smoke screen for the fact that the corporations stole the whole damn thing - and they're going to model education after McDonalds, just wait and see.
if you want to do something, let me know.
What three corporations are you talking about?
As an educator who has experience in both the public and private schools from pre-K through college I am sick of the mess our schools have become.
We must stop this madness and let teachers teach and not teach to a test. We are producing a generation of non-thinking, uncreative, non-questioning zombies who have no clue about the world around them.
Did you know that many subjects are now taught by teachers reading a script to keep the lessons on target as prescribed by the dept of education in each state? How mind numbing is that?
Remember how we used to scorn at the rote learning by Communist Soviet and Chinese children? Well it is happening here in our schools, especially in the lower economic school districts.
"Did you know that many subjects are now taught by teachers reading a script to keep the lessons on target as prescribed by the dept of education in each state?" -- LindaSue
I have heard about this, and at first I was surprised, and then, it made sense to me -- albeit, I don't agree with the practice. Often times, from what I understand, teachers have no choice, despite the needs of their students.
"We are producing a generation of non-thinking, uncreative, non-questioning zombies who have no clue about the world around them." -- LindaSue
I agree with the above statement. Imagination in this so-called system of education is completely stifled! However, this isn't particularly a new issue. I grew up (late 50s, 1960s) in a very conservative, very religious community, in Southwest Iowa, about 6500 people, and many of the teachers treated curiosity as according to St. Augustine, "There is another form of of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man chould not wish to learn."
Some of my teachers certainly worked hard to stamp out my natually inquisitive nature. My 9th grade math teacher even told me I shouldn't raise my hand so often, and I was one of those weird kids who loved math. I could tell other stories, too, but I'll spare you. I wasn't only curious, I was also a girl.
Elaine Brown, a former leader of the Black Panthers, believes that education in the United States, for the most part, was never set up to really educate, but instead, to indocrinate children and get them ready to enter the workforce, and to do what they are told, etc. Well, it's more complicated than that, but that's the gist of her arguments about the education system.
Not long ago, I spoke to a couple of teachers here in NYC, who told me that they were lucky -- they retired right before Bloomberg took over the school system. They also told me that today's teachers are afraid to speak out, or to criticize -- for fear of losing their jobs. I have never understood the concept of "teaching to the test," with very little else on the agenda!
Thank you for your voice of sanity. your 2 paragraphs say more truth than the entire article above.
The article misses the point.
No Child Left Without A kick in the Behind was a 100% sales of the public educational system to 3 corporations.
In 2014, a school must get 97% of their students to pass the test. If they fail to make the mark, then the local board gets to choose one of 3 corporations to run the school.
Sounds like a set up to me.
The testing is simply a mechanism to phase in the takeover.
To make money, the companies will run education like MacDonalds.
Lets get together and do something.
Like, try to decide what to do.
odoco
Reference Texas' new state guidelines passed by State Board of Ed. requiring bible literacy to be taught in schools. Few if any guidelines, few if any stated measurable objectives, just ideological dogma inserted at the expense of taxpayers - and you are correct - very similar to the communist indoctrination we accused China and the USSR of not so long ago.
Obama should send his kids to DC Public Schools. The Clintons should have sent Chelsea. Obama's solutions show an appalling indifference to life on the ground. They are gimmicks favored by the insulated. He should look at Sasha and Malia's school and see what makes it a school he would choose. That's what other kids and their teachers deserve too.
Testing is a measurement of a program. It is not a program. Testing is a measurement of a program. It is not a program. Testing is a measurement of a program. It is not a program. Testing is a measurement of a program. It is not a program. Testing is a measurement of a program. It is not a program. Testing is a measurement of a program. It is not a program.
There are many fine programs in good private and public schools throughout the country. They generally feature small class size, plenty of art, sports, music, projects and field trips. Those should be the models used by schools for poor and working class kids, not the Charles Dickens model of putting the burden on eight year olds.
Aside from the childen, much of the blame is heaped on teachers, those who are in the trenches left to deal with whatever situations the geniuses at the top create for them. It is an unspoken assumption that bad teachers are the problem, which is indicated by the emphasis of correlating specific teachers with student performance. Teachers need to improve throughout life, but there needs to be a supportinve approach.
A teacher can do a lot, but cannot compensate for an unstable and stingy system of funding education. If class sizes increase, support staff is laid off, staff development is cut, enrichment dwindles, more kids come from families facing unemployment, homelessness, and untreated chronic illness, then the teacher is abandoned to deal the best way he or she can. Drilling kids for tests does not address the cognitive and emotional needs of the students.
Teachers and educators must be involved in devising programs to fix education. We know how. Just look at Sasha and Malia's school. But it costs money. Budgets must be stable and allocated enough in advance for principals to prepare, staff and plan.
Joe
Excellent comment, Joe.
Obama's selection of non-educator Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education was a slap in the face to teachers, and continuing NCLB is a slap in the face to the poor parents who had hoped Obama would want for their kids the same kind of nurturing education Sasha and Malia receive at Georgetown Friends: small class size, plenty of art, sports, music, projects and field trips, as Joe said above.
Decades of research in education have demonstrated that the factory model of education, which Obama and Duncan support for poor kids (but not their own) is destructive.
Kids are not empty cartons that can be filled with "education" as they roll down a conveyor belt. They do not all grow or learn at a standardized rate. They do not all have the same tolerance for sitting quietly while someone talks at them. They do not all come to school from stable homes, and they do not all even get enough to eat. (Note to Obama: kids who are hungry, and kids who are worrying about whether Dad or Mom will come home alive from Iraq or Afghanistan, and kids whose families are being torn apart by poverty, don't perform well on standardized tests.)
Oddly enough, it seems to be only the education of well-off kids that requires the resources Joe mentions above (small class size, plenty of art, sports, music, projects and field trips). Poor kids, not the kids at places like Georgetown Friends, are supposed to get by without such "frills." Because our tax dollars have to go to the banks, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, weapons manufacturers, and the military. As well as to the continuing tax breaks for the richest Americans, whose kids will never have to endure the numbing and destructive "education" practices Obama plans to continue.
Thank you, you said it all so well.
I beg to differ to your point that testing is about the program.
In the case of No Child Left Without a Kick in the Behind, testing is simply THE MECHANISM THAT IMPLEMENTS THE PHASED IN TAKE OVER OF THE ENTIRE PUBLIC EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM BY THE 3 CORPORATIONS THAT BOUGHT IT.
You are responding from an honest and practicle perspective - and so on that level you are correct.
But you see, as NCLB is set up, in 2014, a school needs to get 97% of their kids to pass the test (only 10% of special needs kids get a special test). if they fail, then 1 of 3 corporations is chosen by the school board to run the school.
sound like a challenge or a set up?
So, give me that race to the top bull shit of obamas.
No school - not even a charter school will be left behind.
The corporations are scheduled to run the whole thing - 100% - by 2014.
Please pass on the word that the testing is just bull shit.
Think of that game at the fair - the dunking booth.
The test is like the dunking booth.
When a school fails, that's when the trap door opens.
Let me know if you want to join to do something about this.