“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” -Albert Einstein
“I never let schooling interfere with my education.” -Mark Twain
And I say, “Don’t let politicians continue to contaminate and interfere with our children’s future by making the school system much worse than it already is.”
Steven Brill’s article, “The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand: How Obama’s Race To The Top Could Revolutionize Public Education,” published in today’s New York Times Magazine, rallied for Obama’s plan to waste billions of dollars on charter schools when the money could be better spent by being directly and evenly distributed to public schools that are already in existence.
I don’t think anyone is disputing the fact that many of these charter schools are implementing effective and innovative learning strategies for our kids. My beef with the new policies, most of which really just echo Bush’s Orwellian named “No Child Left Behind,” also falls under “accountability.” Forget test scores, the real question, Arne Duncan and Barack Obama, is how do you justify abandoning public schools who lack the resources to improve their systems?
Brill interviewed politicians and other rich, Ivy League policy pushers (including Jon Schnur who runs New Leaders for New Schools) and only two union leaders. What was missing from his article was a realistic perspective.
Though to be fair, I was pleased that he interviewed Senator Bill Perkins of New York, who was quoted in the article as saying it’s “stupid and unfair to blame unions when the reason the schools in this community are failing is that they lack resources. . . . the president is wrong.” At least there are a few good leaders who have the courage to stand up for what is right.
But how about also interviewing some actual teachers, who are on the front lines giving their lives for poverty-level wages in overcrowded, under-resourced classrooms, who are now being additionally penalized by an administration that claims to be Democratic and representative of positive change? How about interviewing the children who will now have the power to test their teachers out of a job?
These so-called reformers of education (who I will now rename “ruiners,” which appropriately misuses the noun because I am a product of public education) want to eliminate job security for teachers and only pay teachers based on the test scores of their students.
If test scores are the determining factor of school funding and whether or not teachers can keep their jobs, why aren’t these ruiners and writers of puff pieces that praise the ruiners writing about the tests or at least asking questions about them? Who makes these tests and how do they decide which multiple-choice questions could be so important that they hold the future of society?
Brill spent one sentence admitting that most people understand that tests are flawed, but he stops there. We are supposed to simply accept that these flawed tests are a great tool to improve our education system. Why would we put so much stake in something that is inherently flawed? Perhaps we are so far gone, our education system is so warped that this has become the kind of illogical reasoning that we’ve grown accustomed to. Or perhaps Princeton University wasn’t offering any classes in tests and measurements when this leading ruiner / flawed-test-lover, Jon Schnur, studied there. He’s the one who came up with “Race To The Top,” which pitted state school districts against each other to drive up flawed test scores in order for a mere two states to receive a fraction of funding.
What’s really going on here is what always happens. We don’t ask the right questions until after the disaster, when it’s too late. When will we learn from our mistakes? When will we learn? We have an administration who’s self-congratulatory and spends more time on spinning the illusion of change than actually taking action (Guantanamo, anyone?).
The occupation and destruction of Iraq is the most recent example of not asking the right questions in a timely manner. The Bush administration claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no one asked how he and his administration knew that. Now countless men, women, and children have died as a result of information that was not questioned and simply taken for granted. Are we so naïve that we simply believe words that come out of a politician’s mouth? Apparently, we are, and this is why we need to improve our education system.
For the current administration to favor charter schools and abandon our public schools that are in dire need of assistance makes me wonder how the administration will approach other urgent issues like climate change. Since they are prone to only being capable of changing the frame or spin of an issue, much like how a matador changes the angle of the red muleta before a bull (though unlike most politicians, the matador actually takes action and kills the bull – maybe a circus clown who merely distracts and entertains is a better comparison), my guess is the administration will neglect our planet by building a new and improved earth, somewhere close by where photo opps and self-praise can still make headline news, but it will be a place protected under a dome reserved for the rich only, where the rest of us suffocate while standing on the outside looking in.
Nothing would surprise me, except if someone starts asking the important questions, like what are these tests and why should they determine the livelihood of all?
Debbie, Andy, Keni, and Randy dramatizing something dramatic.
Marc and Merry
