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Wild Dreams: Anonymous, Arne Duncan, and High-Stakes Testing
Last night I was re-reading a terrific little book from 1976 by Don Martin, George Overholt, and Wayne Urban: Accountability in American Education: A Critique. The book brings so many elements of the current edu-mess into focus, while giving a long view of history. What is evident in re-reading this book is that the threats to democracy that the authors feared in 1976 from the encroaching accountability juggernaut have become much scarier and much more real since then. Some would say inevitable.
The book reminds us of some of the history behind the stealing of the language of learning by social control behaviorists and the takeover of the knowledge definition by epistemological thugs who define what knowledge is and how it is measured. These moves have had crushing effects on humane pedagogy and schooling, while strengthening and centralizing the administration of schools far beyond what are now the minor functionaries of principals, boards of education, and even superintendents.
A story in a Texas Tribune story yesterday, in fact, that includes the recent epiphany by the current Texas State Superintendent, indicates clearly that he is one of many who sees the writing on the wall, and it wasn't written by him. His years of loyalty to the accountability cause have simply worked to make his job insignificant or disposable as power is moved to the ultimate corporate level, which in the end in not national but international--corporate socialism without boundaries--a fascism beyond nation states.
The three main criticisms of education accountability in Accountability. . . are now evident on a steroidal level:
Based on abstracted, or radical empiricism. Not only has the distinction disappeared between knowledge and its poor proxy of a test score, but observable experience has been reduced down to a test score measurement that now is even used to predict future earning in adulthood by examining what adults earn who had high test scores. As if standardized tests were not designed to maintain power by the privileged whose families had money and test scores to begin with.
Elitist and conservative in nature. These standardized tests, even going back to the first IQ tests, have been used as "scientific" confirmation of elitist assumptions that even precede social Darwinism. History tells us that those who are in controlling power positions are there because of a divine, an evolutionary, or a psychometric reason, and the modern the testing system has been devised to reward the privileged and the elite and to punish everyone else by keeping them in their places. (The current value-added fad adds a balm for the liberal conscience by at least acknowledging that the poor who will always be behind can at least receive smiley faces for making "progress"). Oh yes, progress.
Based on maintaining inequality. Based on a hypocritical and self-serving notion of meritocracy that embraces institutional inequality, the most able are identified as those who have the resources from birth that are needed to grow or buy the highest scores through whatever means necessary, whether it is a 30k a year pre-school, a 40k a year private school, thousand dollar tutoring sessions for the SAT, or just daily doses of an unending supply of the cultural and social capital that provide the needed boost when occasion requires it.
Decisions now about school curriculum and student assessment are handled by national consortia composed of hired academic and technical guns paid by corporations and their foundations to shape what is taught in schools based on the stupid and arrogant conceptions of a handful of oligarchs and the CEOs of the Business Roundtable. To enforce the teaching of this emerging national curriculum and national test are teachers whose jobs will depend upon how well their charges do on these tests. This is called teacher evaluation, or half of it, anyway. The other half is based an instructional catechism designed and place in a rubric (scoring guide) to incentivize the creation of miniature and identical autocracies in every classroom of America, where learning to handle knowledge (test scores) is Job #1.
And so I was thinking about all this as I drifted off to sleep last night, and I had the craziest dream. I dreamed that the hacker group, Anonymous, had shut down every data port that handles test score data and had posted these demands on the Arne Duncan's Facebook page and on every state department of education webpage:
- Stop using test data to keep students from receiving their diplomas or moving to the next grade
- Stop using test data to evaluate teacher effectiveness in any way
- Stop using test data to close down public schools
- Stop using SAT or ACT test data to make admissions decisions for college
- When students graduate from high school, all test scores and collected psychometric data will be handed to each student and all other records will be expunged from the data system.
- If these demands are met, your data systems may continue to operate. If these demands are not met, your data systems will be made useless. You have until summer vacation to make these changes at state and national levels. Welcome back to the real world.
Wow, what a dream!
19 Comments so far
Show AllThe author says "power is moved to the ultimate corporate level, which in the end in not national but international--corporate socialism without boundaries--a fascism beyond nation states."
Why the recent rash of liberal and progressive commentators trying to equate fascism with Socialism? The statements equating the two are deviously slipped in to remarks on various topics, without explanation or justification.
Socialism is not fascism. Corporate influence over and control of government is not Socialism. Socialism and fascism are polar opposites.
When you have socialized losses and private profits and you have these oligarchs writing the laws to insure them the socialized losses and also subsidies receive by the most profitable corporations in history?
Yes, Two Americas there is a line drawn.
I can't make sense of your post. If everything government does is to be called "Socialism," then the word loses all meaning.
Two Americas, I agree with your comment. One reason for the mis-use of terms is that the right is forever screaming that "entitlements" are another word for "socialism," yet these same people seem to be fine when corporations feed at the government trough. Left commentators are dragged into this conflation as a way to pull the veil off conservative talking points - by using their own rhetoric against them. I think we need to be more clear and steer away from the misnomers. Corporate controlled government is fascism, not socialism.
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Democracy in education! That's another thing Henry Wallace talked about as vice presiident. "Sure can't have that" now! "Terrible!" "No can do!"
Good article! Solid points!
Thank you, Mr. Horn, for this excellent assessment:
"Decisions now about school curriculum and student assessment are handled by national consortia composed of hired academic and technical guns paid by corporations and their foundations to shape what is taught in schools based on the stupid and arrogant conceptions of a handful of oligarchs and the CEOs of the Business Roundtable. To enforce the teaching of this emerging national curriculum and national test are teachers whose jobs will depend upon how well their charges do on these tests. This is called teacher evaluation, or half of it..."
Perhaps those who wish to see public education gutted (and thus made to fail) will recognize that it's the same corporations that are behind the decimation of QUALITY public education (emphasizing generfic tests, and the like) that are to blame for the very items they find fault with. Then, with the same twisted logic that sees libertarians railing against government, the only force strong enough to stand up to big business's trespasses, they fault public schools.
In both cases, the seamless merger of corporate interests into those assets that arguably belong to The Commons causes the erosion of each entity. Thus the matter of removing government via deregulation only "succeeds" in granting free reign to the same business interests responsible for gutting solid entities in the fist place. In other words, these rapacious for-profit interests set into motion the very flaws they later use as cause to axe the operation. They create the very pretexts necessary for decimating the institutions the public requires! How else to make the public's treasures available... for the pickings, to those who excel best as modern society's vultures? Heck, the fruits of Disaster Capitalism comes naturally to this ilk; and so it's more than disconcerting to see some faux Progressives (or voices on the alleged Left) post arguments here that essentially support the motives (since their intent aligns with that) of corporatist thieves.
Within the realm of American education, there is a 'Testocracy' as powerful there as the Military-Industrial Complex is in Washington D.C. Make no mistake, it is a powerful entrenched interest that plays for keeps and has no problems getting down and dirty to protect itself at the slightest provocation. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is merely its' latest Praetor.
The move towards corporate influence over education is intended to condition young people to support the corporate fascist state as well as a corporate economic system.
Brilliant post, Mr. Horn. (Note to Two Americas: I suspect Mr. Horn was equating socialism and fascism to make a point about the current discourse, not to be exactly politically accurate.)
I would further call on teachers and their unions (unfortunately, the NEA ship has sailed) to refuse to endorse or work for Obama unitl and unless he repudiates Race to the Top and its architect, Arne Duncan. Not likely to happen, but if we don't stand up for ourselves, who will?
BTW, today's LA Times has a great piece in the business section by MIchael Hiltzik raking Arne over the coals for shilling for educational technology in the schools and ignoring the real crisis we face. (Sorry I don't have the link.)
These two pieces almost make me think the Enlightenment wasn't in vain.
I have an issue with dream demand # 4).
If we don't use standardized testing in the university admissions process, how do we evaluate a student's qualification for admission?
An essay?
An oral exam in front of an admissions board?
Would this even be possible at the admissions rates of big state unis?
Even if it would be, isn't there still a prejudice in such tests?
The Almighty Test may be the wrong way, but what -in the real world- is the right one?
I would agree that what happens now on that one point has some validity - SAT and ACT scores are one of a whole portfolio of things used in college admissions, including essays and interviews, participation in school activities, recommendation letters and so forth. As one of a number of items by itself it's not a bad idea.
It's a good step that parts of standardized tests include essay questions, although things fall apart when trying to grade those by any objective standard.
I recall that in the one competitive college application I filled out, there was the option of either writing an essay or doing "something creative" with a piece of paper. I chose the latter and combined with standardized test scores, 4 years of grade transcipts, my interview and letters of recommendation I ended up not only with an admission but a decent scholarship package. I wish every kid could be so fortunate.
On the whole I agree with the author's main points.
Why not just give every child a high school diploma on his or her eighteenth birthday and have done with it (it will mean approximately as much as a current diploma)? Then, extend an "open admissions" policy to all state universities (open admissions = every child who graduates from HS is automaticallly in). No need for admissions tests or evaluations - after all, "every child can learn," right? Every child has a right to a university education as a birthright, just as every child has a right to a high school education. It's in the US constitution, I think, and if not there, then in the UN's declaration of human rights.
"It's in the US constitution, I think, and if not there, then in the UN's declaration of human rights."
This is a ridiculous post. The right to a university education is in neither. I'm not saying it should or shouldn't be, but you waste people's time just making stuff up.
"Article 26.
•(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit."
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
It always amazes me that people who are already on the internet will speculate about this stuff longer than it takes to find out with certainty.
Great insights by Jim. Another way to address societal problems is to assume that ideas cooked up by elites will serve only elites, at the people's expense. Develop your hypotheses out of THAT assumption as you'll reach nirvana MUCH sooner.
Jim, I like your six itemized dream-scape scenario (less the waking up part).
I would have liked to see the dream extended to include:
7) "I Just Wanna Be Average" by Mike Rose as required reading for the "CEOs of the Business Roundtable."
8) Remove the model of empire (conquering intelligence) from the learning environment.
In the early eighties when the Global Village was all abuzz, there lurked a New Messiah inseminating the print/video/air waves with his new found wisdom, (I believe he was a lawyer but not sure) that if you had a third world education you would earn a third world wage. Well it would appear that the current preemptive strike on learning is a reiteration of this same nonsense. In the end, I know money will prevail as the final edited edition hits the classroom; so we may as well participate by donating ladders of various heights to the men and women making these decisions. Praying that they fall from this higher summit may be our best chance yet.
My favorite part of this article is that the author is making requests for Anonymous! Maybe we should get in that habit and see what happens.
Anyone who taps into FBI email and is so confident that they let the the FBI know that because they're sure they'll be able to again - well, that's badass.
I feel like Anonymous is real-life superhero, fighting for the little guy. Go Anonymous go!
This article nails it in so many ways-but primarily by calling the education reform movement what it is: a means of oppression and exploitation. As an educator, I am most frustrated by the silence and complicity of my colleagues as we allowed these people into our schools to control our students, our work, and the very ideas we have about the possibilities and purpose of education. Some people, like the superintendent in Texas, are starting to wake up, but we need many more to speak out against this assault on our children. It would be great if Anonymous responded to this call. But we can shut it down ourselves if we OPT OUT of high stakes testing and continue to name the corporate beast for what it is.
http://education-radio.blogspot.com