The Arrogance, Hubris And Pathology Of The Education Reform Movement

I want to play a game.

I'm going to list education reformers from different professions.

See if you can figure out what they all have in common:

Oligarchs: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch, Mort Zuckerman, Reed Hastings, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, various members of the Walton Family, Merryl Tisch, hedge fundies backing DFER, StudentsFirst, etc.

Politicians: Barack Obama, Andrew Cuomo, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, George W Bush, Rahm Emanuel, Harold Ford, Cory Booker, Kevin Johnson

Political functionaries: Joel Klein, John King, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Kaya Henderson, Cami Anderson, John White, David Coleman, Chris Cerf, Tony Bennett, John Deasy

Charter entrepreneurs: Eva Moskowitz, Steve Perry, David Levin, Andre Agassi, Pitbull

Celebrities who publicly identify as education reformers: Bill Cosby, John Legend, Isiah Thomas

Media members who publicly identify as education reformers: Joe Scarborough and the entire cast of the Morning Joe Clown Show, a good part of the NY Times columnist corner (Brooks, Friedman, Kristof, Bruni), Jonathan Alter, Campbell Brown

That's just a partial list above - I know there are a whole host of names of reformers from all the categories I've missed (you can add the names in the comments section of the post.)

They are all different people with different personalities and different experiences from different walks of life.

But they all share one thing besides an interest in education reform.

And that's hubris, arrogance and certitude that they are RIGHT.

What is it about education reformers that they can't ever admit to being wrong?

John King never makes mistakes at NYSED, nor Merryl Tisch at the Board of Regents, even when they hand over a charter school to a con man who has lied about everything on his resume except for his birthday.

Andrew Cuomo never makes mistakes either, not with Common Core (which he assures us is great if only the NYSED and Regents would implement it better) nor with his APPR teacher evaluation (which only needs to be "strengthened" to ensure more teachers are fired to make it better.)

Barack Obama never makes mistakes, which is why he wants his education reforms enshrined into law well past the sunset of his administration (No Child Left Behind waivers are going to try and maintain the Obama deforms into 2019.)

Eva Moskowitz is so right that she refuses to allow anybody to audit her charter network if she can help it.

David Coleman knows everything about everything.

Michael Bloomberg is so egocentric he needs to put his name on everything he owns.

Go through the list - find me a reformer who isn't arrogant or hubristic.

Then go through the list and count how many narcissists and sociopaths are on it.

When the people behind the education reform movement are such an unsavory lot of sociopaths, narcissists, and pathological know-it-all's, can there be anything good that comes from that movement?

Politics And Regents Grading

Not a lot of time to post here before I have to run off to Regents grading, but the one thing I notice every time I meet teachers from other schools sent to a central site for grading is that many teachers the system over are feeling pissed off and demoralized.

There's a certain education reform-friendly "news" blog that promotes the Gates Foundation-funded Educators4Excellence teacher group as if there are a lot of teachers who belong to it and support its education reform policies.

Most teachers I meet these days think the entire education reform movement is bullshit, the reforms Bloomberg pushed are bullshit, the Common Core (which some used to support until they had the EngageNY materials foisted on them) are bullshit, the leadership at Tweed and the state are full of shit and the governor and any other politician who hawks this stuff are full of shit.

Once again, that is what I have heard in the Regents grading room from teachers - young ones, with just a few years in, and grizzled veterans who have been through school closures.

In my work, I have met one E4E, a not-terribly bright fellow who worked at my school for one year before going off to train to be an administrator somewhere.

Educators4Excellence tried to get teachers from my school to come to a "happy hour" by bribing them with free food and drink.

No one went.

No one.

This Regents grading experience, while demoralizing because the test was designed so badly and so many students are having problems passing the Part 3 component, has been fruitful in one way.

It reminds me again that many teachers the system over are on the same page with the reform movement, the reforms, the Common Core, the APPR system, etc.

They think it's all bullshit and bad for ya.

Corporate Education Reformers Look To Buy The Next Mayor

The corporate education reform movement in New York has gotten pretty much everything they have wanted when it comes to "reforms."

In the last four years, they have gotten a lifting of the charter cap, teacher evaluations tied to test scores, and a new teacher evaluation system that essentially undercuts both seniority and tenure as all it takes to get fired these days is to come up "ineffective" on your test-based, error-riddled value-added measurement two years in a row.

They have pushed to have many public schools closed and reopened as privately-managed charter schools and have gotten reassurance at that project from both federal and city officials.

They have gotten space for their privately-managed charter schools in traditional public schools buildings, stealing both resources and students from public schools and pitting people in the community against each other

Politicians at every level - from President Obama to Governor Cuomo to Mayor Bloomberg - slam teachers as THE problem in public education and call for ways to make it easier to fire "bad teachers."

Films come out, heavily financed by computer monopolists and right wing think tanks, that suggest firing teachers can put the United States back on top as the world's #1 Superpower. The rest of the corporate media follows suit, with NBC giving over a week every year to teacher bashing (and financing that week off the money from a for-profit college) and Oprah bringing noted teacher bashers onto her show to call for mass teacher firings around the country.

And of course they have pushed through an untested new national curriculum that will be tied to dozens of new standardized tests that students across the country will take all every year.

These have been very heady days for the corporation education reformers both in New York and in the country at large.

And yet, they are worried that once Mayor Bloomberg leaves office in 2014 that the New York City public school system will not be "pro-reform" enough.

You see, having closed three hundred schools, opened hundreds of new small schools, lifted the charter cap, sent thousands of teachers to the ATR pool, redone the curriculum so that we now have a standardized national curriculum with standardized national tests, redone evaluations so that test scores make up 40% of a teacher's evaluation, undone tenure and seniority rights, and spent hundreds of millions every year to label teachers as "bad"and "failing," has NOT been enough.

They're afraid that the next NYC mayor might not be pro-reform enough to give them everything they want in 2014 and on.

And so they plan on buying the next NYC mayor:

Leaders of a national education reform movement, including Joel I. Klein and Michelle Rhee, the former schools chancellors in New York and Washington, have formed a statewide political group in New York with an eye toward being a counterweight to the powerful teachers’ union in the 2013 mayoral election.

The group, called StudentsFirstNY, is an arm of a national advocacy organization that Ms. Rhee founded in 2010. Like the national group, the state branch will promote the expansion of charter schools and the firing of ineffective schoolteachers, while opposing tenure.

Led by Micah Lasher, who is leaving his job next week as the director of state legislative affairs for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the campaign is beginning while advocates of reform have an ally in the mayor. But their eyes are focused on 2014, when a new mayor — most likely one who is more sympathetic to the teachers’ union than Mr. Bloomberg has been — enters office.

Members of the group worry that without a significant marshaling of forces, their achievements could be dismantled. Their aim is to raise $10 million annually for five years, hoping to make an imprint throughout the next mayor’s first term.

“This organization is really going to represent a redoubling of efforts, new energy and serious resources, invested in making our schools great in a climate that may not be as favorable post-Jan. 1, 2014,” Mr. Lasher said. He has been the mayor’s point person in Albany, and was involved in negotiating the recent deal creating a new teacher evaluation system.

The NY Times reports that in addition to the involvement of Rhee and Klein, Eva Moskowitz, Geoffrey Canada and Ed Koch sit on the board of StudentsFirstNY. And what's their plan?

Simple - pressure the next mayor to continue their pro-reform, pro-testing, anti-student, anti-teacher policies:

The new group is not supporting a particular candidate, nor will it necessarily endorse one, Mr. Lasher said. But he indicated that between now and the Democratic primary, the group would pressure mayoral candidates to declare their positions on education; those who have so far expressed interest in running have been silent on some elements of the reform agenda. Most of the politicians considering a run, including Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker; Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate; and Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, have been more cordial with Mr. Mulgrew than Mayor Bloomberg has.

Establishing where the next mayor stands on education is crucial for advocates, because a number of unresolved issues will fall to Mr. Bloomberg’s successor. The city’s contract with the teachers’ union, which expired in 2009, remains to be negotiated, raising questions about whether the next mayor will support the granting of individual performance bonuses for teachers — the union prefers schoolwide bonuses — or will call for teachers to be laid off if their positions are cut and they cannot find new ones.

Under Mr. Bloomberg, charter schools have been given free space in underused public school buildings, a policy that has led to disagreements across the city as parents argue with other parents over classrooms and closets.

In 2015, mayoral control of schools will come up for renewal in Albany, reviving questions about checks and balances and parents’ ability to influence school policy.

Throughout the coming negotiations, Ms. Rhee expected that her organization would push for change, however uncomfortable it might be for the city’s mayor.

The clearest indication these corporate reformers mean business comes from a quotation at the end offered by Geoffrey Canada:

Ms. Rhee and Mr. Klein have a confrontational history with teachers’ unions. But some charter school leaders and other advocates have spoken of the need to lower the temperature of the debate and have turned their focus inward on improving their own schools.

“Folks are genuinely looking for opportunities to make peace and not war,” Mr. Canada said. “And I think that’s terrific. But someone has to make war.”

That's a classy statement by Mr. Canada there - a declaration of war against traditional public schools, teachers and students.

But that's exactly what this movement is - a well-funded, well-organized, Astroturf movement that is waging war against the public, public education, students, parents and teachers.

Here in NYC, the public is overwhelmingly opposed to Bloomberg's corporate education reform policies and yet they get pushed through year after year.

StudentsFirstNY will try and continue this tradition.

And given the money they will have - money from Bill Gates, money from Rupert Murdoch, money from the Koch Brothers - and given the press they will garner from the corporate medi,, they will probably be very successful at just that.

Corporate education reformers met with Andrew Cuomo in a hotel room when Governor 1% was running for his current office and gave him a suitcase full of cash to promote a corporate education reform platform.

Which Cuomo has dutifully done.

You can be sure that StudentsFirstNY - some of whom met with Cuomo before he was elected - will look to do the same with the next NYC mayor.

As Mr. Canada said, this is war and the corporate education reformers mean to finish off the traditional public school system and create their all-privatized, all-charterized, non-unionized neo-liberal dream.

Where Are The Education Reformers On Collective Bargaining Rights?

Russo says they're either silent and hoping nobody notices or making lame one sentence comments and hoping nobody notices.

Well, of course.

Obama, Duncan, Rhee, Eduwonk, Gates, Broad - these people don't want a powerful teachers union with the right to collectively bargain.

Rather, they want a defanged union easily manipulated to "collaborate" with the feds, states and districts to enable the continued privatization and charterization of the school system.

Their silence on the Wisconsin fight - or in Obama's and Duncan's case, their essential silence since the words they issued in "support" of unions were NOT followed up by any meaningful actions - exposes them for who they are and the policies they want.

They are corporatists looking to bust the unions, disempower working and middle class people and impose their privatization and charterization policies on the entire country.

As for the DFER's "supporting" teachers rights to collectively bargain and be part of the union, well, they may SAY that's what they support, but their actions and efforts say otherwise.

I have yet to see the DFER's miss an opportunity to support the closing of a union school, the firing of unionized teachers and the replacement of both with non-unionized charter schools and help.

"Support" like the DFER's offer, unions can do without.

As for Obama and Duncan, smarmy arrogant pricks that they are, they probably think they've walked the tightrope just right here.

They undoubtedly think by issuing words of support, they have fooled the union people into thinking they're on the union side, but by taking no meaningful action to help the unions in this fight, they have signaled to the corporatists just whose side they're on.

Don't think the more discerning members of the teaching profession haven't noticed that tightrope act, boys.

We have.

And we'll be sure to remember that in 2012 and let the rest of union colleagues know as well.

One last thing I would like to say about this - I don't agree too often with deformer Mike Antonucci, but his post that this Wisconsin fight, coming during the same week that Duncan put together Collaborpalooza in which unions and districts supposedly got together at the behest of the Obama admin to find ways to collaborate on reform, is a "work of fate."

I agree.

It exposes this collaboration stuff as the jive it is.

As I noted in this post here, the Rhode Island union collaborated at every opportunity it was asked to do so - on RttT, on teacher evaluations, on school turnarounds - and got 2,000 fired teachers in Providence for its efforts.

EVERY teacher in Providence, Rhode Island got FIRED.

Collaboration did not save them.

Reformers friendly to the union while the collaboration was happening did not come out in support when they were all canned.

Duncan and Obama, cheerleaders of teacher firings in the state just last year, have been COMPLETELY silent on this horror.

That, my union friends and colleagues, is where "collaboration" gets you.

Better to take the streets, put up the barricades, and take a baseball bat to collaboration.