Eshu's Blues: Obama and Duncan's "Race to the Top"

The
Obama administration has announced its long anticipated education plan,
and it has turned out to be the usual market crapshoot approach to
public education which has long distinguished this country from every
other. The white "progressive" "Meritocracy" of the United States
ruling class, which after standing blotto at the bankruptcy of the
world by their gangster partners, now believes it has an unimpeded
right to sell off what remains of the public interest, and plans to
lend its own shiny finish to the Bush administration's test fetish
absurdity "No Child Left Behind."

Secretary
of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama call their plan "Race for
the Top." Duncan and Obama propose the expenditure of $4.3 billion
dollars that will allegedly fund a "competition" between the states for
federal grants. The hairsplitters among us (like myself) can only
marvel at the grand disparity between the amount of money offered as a
means of "incentivizing excellence" to every school in the country by
the administration, and the hundreds of billions they handed the
spectacular failures of the bankster-speculator classes last spring.
But that's not a point germane to the question at hand, say supporters
of Duncan and Obama. Any dissent with this education question is
quickly met with the admonition, "It's about the kids."

Ah yes, the kids, how best to serve them? Oh, with little things like charter schools and merit pay. Never mind that there is absolutely no
evidence that charter schools perform any more effectively than regular
public schools when both kinds of school are given every sort of
material resource they need. Never mind the absurdity of merit pay,
which will tie teacher compensation to high stakes test results, and
which belie the truth that we've known for better than a century now:
testing is only one form
of assessment, and one that can only in a certain number of situations
be reflective of the formative development of each respective learner.

No,
oh, no, we're going to continue with the social Darwinist farce, or
"competition," because we need to do for public education what the HMOS
have done for public health and what the automotive industry has done
for public transportation. The watchword of the day is "educational
excellence." Not academicproficiency,
mind you, but "excellence." Well, as Thoreau used to say, it's all very
well and good to build castles in the sky. Now place some foundation
under them. And what sort of foundation do Duncan and Obama propose?
The same game as always, or "whoever's the fastest, gets the most."
It's done such wonders for the world of finance, hasn't it? And
educational excellence
is going to be defined as the creation of semi-enlightened technocrats
who create magic academic numbers to float alongside their magic credit
market dollars and mystical overseas butcheries.

Yes,
semi-enlightened technocrats like Education Secretary Arne Duncan. In
the August/September issue of the National Education Association's
journal NEA Today,
Secretary Duncan is allowed in his "discussion" with NEA members to
make all sorts of claims which, in any "standard" academic setting, he
would be required to back up with concrete data. For example, it is
very true that there are a few schools out there wherein adequate
resource has allowed some students to thrive academically, despite the
enormous hurdles posed by communities trapped in more challenged areas
of the economy. There can be no doubt that schools like Central Park
East in East Harlem and Bread and Roses Integrated Arts High School in
Central Harlem have made enormous strides under some very trying
circumstance for many years. But this is due to the fact that many
teachers will work an extended day, volunteer many hours, and
contribute funds out of their own pockets. Students have sold candy
bars and fundraised, parents have found time to volunteer, and sometimes
financial grants are plentiful. Attrition rates have dropped,
graduation rates have risen, and students have taken incremental steps
forward.

But,
from isolated cases like these, Duncan makes the claim that there are
"extraordinary schools where 95 per cent of children live below the
poverty line, 95 per cent are graduating, and 90 per cent of those who
graduate are going on to college". Where are these "extraordinary
schools"? Where does he get those numbers? And how did they achieve these numbers? Through adults with "raised expectations".

Well,
I believe the Education Secretary is lying through his teeth with this
ninety per cent business. As an old hand with some years of dealing
with school technocrats, I know that guys like Arne often make numbers
up, and that very often, when filing school improvement paperwork,
working programs are asked to create numbers by downtown
administration. And if I know this little fact, Education Secretary
Duncan knows it. The difference between him and me, however, is that he
simply doesn't give a shit, and he doesn't give a shit because no one
is calling him on it.

It
seems to me that academic integrity is best achieved in our young by
modeling it ourselves. Even in the online extended answer to this
question as it appears in the printed NEAToday interview
Duncan is not forced to back up his claim with concrete data. So the
kind of education excellence we're getting here from Secretary Duncan
is the sort that the wealthier hustlers in U.S. society have always
practiced, that is to say, pure medicine show hokum. It's made them all
what they are today, which is pompous, broke and living off of you and
I at an even more accelerated pace and with an even more pronounced
sense of entitlement, amazingly enough.

What
else do Duncan and Obama have in their bag besides a possum? "Another
strategy involves inviting a great nonprofit to help manage a troubled
school." Well, we'll see. But the only non-profits I've seen stick
their feet in the door so far are those which have a noted aversion to
organized labor, for example, here in Seattle, scabby business groups
have attempted the use of the Technology Access Foundation to break up
a collective bargaining unit out at Rainier Beach High School in the
southwest corridor of the city. The only non-profits I've seen get
involved in public education in Seattle have a similar agenda, whether
it's the so-called "Alliance for Education," or any of the other little
birdies from the Eli Broad Foundation who speak so glibly about
Saturday schools or classes during the summer. We see their editorials
in the Seattle Times all the time out here. God forbid any section of
the U.S. Workforce be allowed to have two months off in succession,
deferred compensation, or any of the other victories that rank and file
activists in the two national teacher's unions struggled a century and
a half to achieve. No, it's about the kids, say these "non profit"
groups. It's about the kids. That's why this country kills and starves
so many children overseas. But oh yes, we're not discussing that, are
we? Those are other people's children, the esteemed education theorist Lisa Delpit be damned.

The
third part of the Duncan/Obama "race to the top" involves, in Obama's
words, a strategy for converting a "dropout factory" into a successful
charter school. "These are public schools funded by parents, teachers
and civic or community organizations with a broad leeway to innovate."
Do tell Mr. Prez. But isn't it interesting that when fully functional
comprehensive and alternative schools are created under the public
rubric, managed by educators, and create curricula which have changed
the academic performance of legions of young people, that the questions
of "scale and replicability" are then introduced? Dig that. "Scale and
replicability," a term used by former NYC Public School Chancellor Rudy
Crew, refers to the amount of product an enterprise turns out in
relation to pace and costs of production.

"Scale
and replicability." What a marvelously coarse piece of terminology to
apply to the education of human beings, a term which usually refers to
inanimate objects sold on the market. This is the triumph of the
commodity fetish in the education dialogue, read: we'll create comprehensive schools, but only if they're cost effective. And
how will we determine which programs are cost effective? Throw them all
a handful of change, and watch them scramble to decide which end of the
arts and electives programs they're cutting this year, how many extra
hours they'll work, how many weekends they'll work, how many weeks in
the summer they'll give up, and how many working class parents
volunteer their hours away from work to keep after-school programs
functioning. Duncan implies as much in his NEAToday
interview, where he suggests schools be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day,
six, seven days a week, 11 or 12 months a year. I'm not making this up.
Take a look at the article yourself (www.nea.org/duncan).

Allah
got to rest on the seventh day after forming all of creation, but
education staffs won't. What typical capitalist efficiency. Save money,
exhaust human creativity and dispense with someone else's hard won
leisure time just because wealthy business people don't know how to
live their lives away from the assembly line or the roulette wheel
anymore. Let's race to the top, fellow fools.

Now,
data which shows that public funded programs are workable, granted the
same sort of economic resource or staffing and materials the model
charter schools are allowed is
swept
from the table, and programs such as Middle College High School and the
efforts of West Seattle High School teachers to create a four period
day are dispensed with or starved out of existence. And this happens,
by and large, because such programs are created by innovative teachers.
I've long known of this sort of harassment here in Seattle and New York
City, and I've heard many a similar story from colleagues who formerly
worked in locations as diverse as Oakland, Los Angeles, Chicago,
Baltimore, and Washington D.C.

The
questions of scale and replicability are only brought up by the new
"education reformers" when successful academic programs are created and
driven by teachers and school building staff, and so it is a term that
is handy when bureaucrats want to dismiss or destroy such efforts.
"Scale and replicability" only applies where teachers have assumed
power inside of the task of building academic proficiency among our
youth, and this is mostly happening in schools which have collective
bargaining contracts. And the ruling class of the United States just
can't accept that kind of say in workplace decisions anymore.

So,
if the Secretary of Education chooses to make broad generalizations
based upon his observation of a handful of public schools here and
there, and if the Secretary of Education maintains that we'll attain
"educational excellence" through turning all of public education into
yet another level of the rat race, well then, questions of "scale and
replicability" don't apply. The house always wins, and the ruling class
of the United States owns the house. As usual, the ruling class gets to
gamble with everyone's future, and everyone else pays the house.

As
for the leadership of the NEA and the AFT, which ought to be rallying
the troops big time at this point, let's just say "Deer in the
headlights." AFT President Randi Weingarten, who never met a corporate
ass she couldn't kiss, says in the wake of the Obama education
proposals that the "era of teacher bashing is over." Oh really,
Counselor Weingarten? Anybody who remembers Randi's tenure in New York
will recall her tepid underscoring of the Giuliani admin budget for
city schools and her patronizing dismissals of the questions raised by
the UFT's Progressive Action Caucus,
whose
supporters sought to put the concerns of alternative learning programs
on the agenda during the NYC UFT election of 2001. And President Dennis
Van Roekel of the NEA takes the line that Duncan and Obama want to
"work with us, not do things to us." Right, Dennis. As advocates of
merit pay and charter schools, which have been used to bust unions,
Duncan and Obama aren't looking to do things to us. Very well, Dennis.
God be with you, since we're going to be working longer hours than you
or He do. Amen.

The
truth is that both national teacher union leaderships, like much of the
rest of the labor leadership these days, have been taken in by one of
the most dangerous enemies of working class power, old style
multi-tiered business unionism. And before this Duncan and Obama mess
has even reached high tide, we will deepen and consolidate a race and
class stratified education system, under which students who have always
done well in traditional or "standard" settings will thrive, and
students who have needed special accommodations in order to succeed
will be cut out of the picture, i.e., consigned to military schools or
the vast numbers of unemployed shut out of the economy by the military
banking complex. Schools will reflect the ongoing class stratification
of society, just as they always have. Only the depths of denial among
many teachers will become deeper. And so long as Weingarten, Van
Roekel, and other business union hacks have their place "at the table"
as consultants, that will be fine with them.

Well,
as Lyndon Johnson used to say, "I may jus' be a dumb ole country boy,
but I know the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit."