The War on Public Education: When Public Schools Became Disposable

[Better Believe It]

Weekend Edition March 9-11, 2012
The War on Public Education
When Public Schools Became Disposable
by HOWARD LISNOFF

For more than three decades, education at all levels in the US has been subjected to a frontal attack on the part of local, state, and federal governments. The inception of the attack came with the far-right presidency of Ronald Reagan, specifically with the publication of A Nation at Risk (1983). That document laid the groundwork for the frontal attack that has moved ahead without pause for over three decades. Like the missile gaps of the 1960s that scared the public into supporting a buildup of nuclear armaments, that publication painted a picture of public education on the verge of collapse. Schools were failing to produce a competitive workforce in the US, when in reality the US workforce was being undermined by corporations sending their work overseas. Like the destruction of the air traffic controllers union during Reagan’s presidency, public schools were put on notice that they had received a failing grade from the administration. The attack against unions, community schools, and teachers was on!

It was not until the so-called standards-based “reform” law of George W. Bush, however, codified in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, that the steamroller of anti-public education really gathered momentum. Charter schools sprang up everywhere as alternatives to public community-based schools that struggled to provide educations to those most in need. Public schools had long since been converted into social service agencies as the nation suffered from falling economic expectations culminating in The Great Recession that began in 2007. No Child Left Behind introduced high-stakes testing as the be-all and end-all of public schooling. Students, teachers, principals, and entire school districts began to be rated solely on the outcomes of standardized testing. Charters, which never have improved on public schooling, morphed exponentially! Teachers and teacher unions were demonized as selfish and not caring about the students who attended public schools, and especially public schools in economically devastated communities.

As if in a seamless choreography, the administration of Barack Obama has carried on the anti-public school legacy of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan without missing a beat. His secretary of education, Arne Ducan, is an opponent of teachers and public school unions and a shameless supporter of charter schools. Their Race to the Top (2009) is a $4.3 billion plan to continue the attacks on public schooling by a ruthless set of performance-based standards to measure teachers, principals, and the schools in which they work. It is no accident that Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, now mayor of Chicago, is carrying out the same attacks against public schooling inspired by his former boss. In a taste of the bizarre, which is often the hallmark of politics in the US, teachers were the single largest block of delegates supporting Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Talk about solidarity!

Schools have been left reeling on a very, very uneven playing field! Strange, since public schools worked well enough when a pact existed between the government, big business, and citizens. A world war was successfully fought against fascism, people were sent into outer space, science progressed and conquered many diseases and epidemics, many people lived middle-class lives, and an average work week could support a family. Schools functioned in an imperfect society to help develop successive generations with knowledge capable of taking part in democratic governance. Then entered the global economy and the attacks against workers and unions, teacher unions being one of the most visible and public of all unions. Suddenly, public schools were suspect and failing. Teachers were lazy and undereducated. Teacher unions were focused on greed as a top priority. And neighborhood public schools were just not up to snuff anymore!

Read the full article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/09/when-public-schools-became-disposable/

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Sad as it sounds,

You just can't reach this level of success in dismantling a public agency without the assistance, or because of the inactivity from the Dems.

[Igel]

2. Any claim has to be validated against the NCES annual publication.

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011015.pdf is the one for 2010.

It includes stats through 2008. A constant increase in per student spending, even through 7 years of *. A reduction in class size--and since the student population hasn't decreased, that just means more teachers and infrastructure. (This was reversed in the last couple of years, but the din of "war against public education" has gone on for far longer than that).

The NCES report shows pretty consistent average student achievement increases (up through puberty), but the results for the last couple years of high school are weak to none in many cases. It shows a drop in the "dropout status rate"--I'd have preferred seeing the actual high-school dropout rate included, as well, even if it is a number difficult to pin down.

"Public education" for many isn't academic success but the institutional power structures behind public education.

There are problems with the NCES report, but they don't reflect charter schools, per-student spending, or issues of union representation. They reflect improper data aggregation, which is a judgment call: The NCES aggregates data in ways that they think important, in ways that education departments and policy makers think are important. I don't think the data are wrong. I just think these particular data aren't the whole story.

You can get a small increase in achievement in a variety of ways: You can increase the achievement of all students equally, boost the underachievers' scores, or boost the high-achievers' scores. Similarly, you can decrease the achievement gap between ethnic cohorts by radically increasing the bottom-ranked group's scores or by having a more limited increase of their scores coupled with a flat-lining of the top-ranked group's scores. Some ways are easier than others; some are more politically or ideologically appealing. These are not always the ways best for a country's economy or technological progress.