Ravitch versus the corporatists

In this Washington Post interview with Valerie Strauss, education historian Diane Ravitch takes on billionaire Bill Gates' corporatist approach to education reform.

It's an important exchange of ideas. Gates is representative of a group that apparently wants to support public education, and has the appropriate liberal credentials, yet winds up siding with right wingers whose goal is the privatization of our schools. It's an area explored by Strauss in an October column discussed in EdLog.

In her interview with Strauss, Ravitch demolishes several of Gates' canards about public education, teachers and their unions.

Answering the argument that opposing corporate reform is tantamount to endorsing the status quo, Ravitch succinctly criticizes the business model's bean counting approach:

"I don't hear any of the corporate reformers expressing concern about the
way standardized testing narrows the curriculum, the way it rewards convergent
thinking and punishes divergent thinking, the way it stamps out creativity and
originality. I don't hear any of them worried that a generation will grow up
ignorant of history and the workings of government. I don't hear any of them
putting up $100 million to make sure that every child has the chance to learn to
play a musical instrument. All I hear from them is a demand for higher test
scores and a demand to tie teachers' evaluations to those test scores. That is
not going to improve education."

Ravitch is an important truth-teller and diagnostician. The real problem with so-called "failing schools" lies in the growing gap between rich and poor in American society:

The single biggest correlate with low academic achievement (contrary
to the film Waiting for Superman) is poverty. Children who grow up in poverty
get less medical care. worse nutrition, less exposure to knowledge and
vocabulary, and are more likely to be exposed to childhood diseases, violence,
drugs, and abuse. They are more likely to have relatives who are incarcerated.
They are more likely to live in economic insecurity, not knowing if there is
enough money for a winter coat or food or housing. This affects their academic
performance. They tend to have lower attendance and to be sick more than
children whose parents are well-off.

The rich man's burden

Wealthy philanthropists have found a new cause: public education. And as the old saying goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

So as blogger Valerie Strauss writes here, the course of school reform is now being charted by billionaires who can afford to impose their preferences on cash-strapped and desperate schools. Even if their ideas don't work.

That none of their projects is grounded in any research seems not to be a
hindrance to these big donors. And they never try to explain why it is
acceptable for them to donate to other causes -- the arts, medicine, etc. --
without telling doctors and artists what to do with the money. Only educators do
they tell what to do.

Billionaire dilettantes have the capacity to dump huge sums on their quirky plans, then walk away from failure and still be welcomed when their fancy and cash stream turns to yet another school improvement scheme.

Thus, as Strauss reports, Bill Gates can spend $2 billion on an airy confection, the idea that simply building smaller schools can cure the dropout problem, bag the project when it doesn't work, and still be welcomed in the education community when he shows up with a new conceit and a sack of gold.

Meanwhile, schools trying to build success on research-based strategies that can work have to hold bake sales and other fund raisers to buy paper for their copiers.

Backlash: Critics see problems with Superman

Waiting for Superman, the current darling of the talk show circuit, passionately advocates for children but unfairly trashes public school teachers as it paints a simplistic, black-and-white picture of the state of public education in America today.

The film rehashes some predictable right-wing talking points, blaming teacher unions for protecting "bad teachers" and making overinflated claims for charter schools as the way to salvage public education. If the documentary has a villain, it is American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

But if Superman is guilty of promoting erroneous dogma, it also opens the debate and provides an opportunity for public education to defend itself against detractors, as the AFT has done in its Not Waiting for Superman Web site. Here one can find examples of the many public schools and teachers who have great success stories to share.

Fortunately, reviewers are noticing some of the documentary's shortcomings. National Public Radio's Claudio Sanchez notes in this article that the film's "blistering attack on teachers' unions is unfair and counterproductive."

Sanchez gives Weingarten a forum to say, "the fact that the movie does not portray one great public school, does not portray one great public school teacher," calls the film's credibility into question.

Even more critical of Superman is this article in The Nation by Dana Goldstein, who calls it "a "moving but vastly oversimplified brief on American educational inequality."

Goldstein points out that, while the film portrays charter schools as the best solution for poorly performing schools, it ignores "the four out of five charters that are no better, on average, than traditional neighborhood public schools (and are sometimes much worse)..."

Neither does Superman acknowledge "the millions of children who never have a chance to enter a charter school lottery (or get help with their homework or a nice breakfast) because adults simply aren't engaged in their education. These children, of course, are often the ones who are most difficult to educate, and the ones neighborhood public schools can't turn away."

Goldstein doesn't let the movie get away with blaming unionism for the ills of public education:

(I)n the Finnish education system, much cited in the film as the best in the
world, teachers are—gasp!—unionized and granted tenure, and families benefit
from a cradle-to-grave social welfare system that includes universal daycare,
preschool and healthcare, all of which are proven to help children
achieve better results at school.

The Nation article also recognizes that, under Weingarten's leadership, AFT is engaged in teacher-driven school reform that includes forging relationships with formerly anti-union advocates such as Bill Gates, who has "embraced (teacher unions) as essential players in the fight for school improvement."

The Race to the Top, Microsoft connection

Does Microsoft founder Bill Gates exercise too much influence over U.S. education policy simply because of the millions he is able to spread around? And does that influence fly in the face of what experts know to be the right path to education reform?

This article by Associated Press reporters Libby Quaid and Donna Blankinship raises those questions, saying that Gates' foundation "is taking unprecedented steps to influence education policy, spending millions to influence how the federal government distributes $5 billion in grants to overhaul public schools."

If teachers wonder why the federal Race to the Top program is heavily slanted toward charter schools and teacher evaluations based on student test scores, they need look no farther than Gates. Two of his former employees are inner circle advisers to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and have received special ethics waivers so they may continue their close association with Gates' foundation.

LFT is asking for teachers' opinions of the Race to the Top program. Please click here to answer a short survey about the issues.