Obama escalates assault on public education

On Friday, President Barack Obama announced an assault on public education that would go beyond the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” program. He outlined an education “reform” that would link teacher pay to the test performance of students and force state governments to shift funding from established public schools to so-called charter schools.  Read More…

Reinventing No Child Left Behind

Enacted on January 8, 2002, the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act’s (NCLB) sponsors claimed it would close the achievement gap between inner city and rural schools and more affluent suburban ones by setting high reading and math standards, then testing to assure they’re achieved. However, the law’s real aim is to commodify public education, end government responsibility for it, and make it another business profit center.

Renewing NCLB stalled in both houses of Congress for good reason. It’s long on testing, school choice, and market-based reforms, but short on real achievement. It’s built around rote learning, standardized tests, requiring teachers to teach to the test, assessing results by Average Yearly Progress (AYP) scores, and punishing failure by firing teachers and principals, closing schools, and transforming them from public to charter or for-profit ones.

In other words, it’s a thinly veiled scheme to privatize public education, control costs, run schools by marketplace rules, decide what’s best for students based on bottom-line considerations, and end a 374 year public education tradition in America.  Read More…

US Courts – Enemies of Education?

Is there a “constitutional right to education”?

Legal scholar and civil rights advocate Erwin Chemerinsky says there is. “There has to be a right to education in the Constitution,” he declares, “and equal protection is a Constitutional imperative.”

But according to Chemerinsky, this right has been fundamentally undermined by the Supreme Court. With the retirement of Justice David Souter, and the possible retirement in the next few years of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens, the role of the court in defending the right to education will be thrust into the national spotlight. What role might their replacements play in guaranteeing education to American children, and reversing the conservative momentum of the last three decades?

Chemerinsky believes that without popular pressure and new judicial appointments that reverse the present course, the right to education will be further constricted, and even lost. Education itself in the United States is in greater danger than ever because of the steady “deconstitutionalization” of this right, he asserts. “The Supreme Court has followed a steady course over the last 35 years of undermining the right to education.”  Read More…

The Military Invades U.S. Schools: How Military Academies Are Being Used to Destroy Public Education

For the past four years, I have observed the military occupation of the high school where I teach science. Currently, Chicago’s Senn High School houses Rickover Naval Academy (RNA). I use the term “occupation” because part of our building was taken away despite student, parent, teacher and community opposition to RNA’s opening.

Senn students are made to feel like second-class citizens inside their own school, due to inequalities. The facilities and resources are better on the RNA side. RNA students are allowed to walk on the Senn side, while Senn students cannot walk on the RNA side. RNA “disenrolls” students and we accept those students who get kicked out if they live within our attendance boundaries. This practice is against Chicago policy, but goes unchecked. All of these things maintain a two-tiered system within the same school building.

This phenomenon is not restricted to Senn. Chicago has more military academies and more students in JROTC than any other city in the US. As the tentacles of school militarization reach beyond Chicago, the process used in this city seems to serve as a model of expansion. There was a Marine Academy planned for Georgia’s Dekalb County, which includes 10 percent of Atlanta. Fortunately, due to protest, the school has been postponed until 2010. Despite it being postponed, it is still useful to analyze the rhetoric used to rationalize the Marine Academy. Many of the lies and excuses used to justify school militarization in Chicago and Georgia may well be used in other cities as militarism grows.  Read More…

Detroit schools “financial czar” orders teachers to reapply for their jobs

2,600 Detroit Public School teachers, counselors and administrators from nearly 50 schools have been forced to reapply for their jobs at the schools where they teach. All of these supposedly “failed” schools are being “reconstituted” as mandated under the Bush administration’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

The punitive provisions of NCLB are being ruthlessly carried out by the Detroit Public Schools emergency financial manager, Robert Bobb, who enjoys the complete support of the Obama administration and its education secretary, Arne Duncan.  Read More…

Education and the New World Order

An organization called the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) which is an offshoot of the National Education Association and a promoter of the New World Order, has claimed power to determine what students should learn and should not learn in history, geography, government, economics, religion, psychology, etc.. These subjects were consolidated decades ago so they could be treated together under one agenda called, ‘social studies.’ The leaders of NCSS claim the right to decide what students should be taught, how they should be taught, and how achievement will be evaluated. 

The Corporatization of Public Education

Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s pledge to put more big-city mayors in charge of their school districts would exclude democratic forms of school governance and let big businesses decide the fate of public schools.

Home School Versus Public or Private Education: Which is Better?

Parents usually ask themselves if home schooling actually works, or if public schools are such a problem, maybe working to afford private schools may be a better option for their children’s education. Parents are reasonably cautious when considering something as important as their progeny’s learning environment.

Artificial Food Additives Affect Children’s Behavior

Years of research finally supports what many parents already knew: Junk foods – loaded with artificial food dyes and preservatives – cause behavioral problems in children.

Privatization Numbers Up Again

The number of public school districts that contract with private firms to provide at least one major support service increased by a rate of nearly 5 percent in the past year, according to a survey conducted by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The Center’s sixth survey showed that 42 percent of the 550 conventional public school districts surveyed contract for food, custodial or transportation services, or a combination.

California Education Cuts

A million dollars here, a million dollars there, pretty soon it adds up to real money. We know that California faces a serious budget crisis and that K-12 and higher education will face severe budget cuts. We are shocked by the governor’s proposals to cut $31.6 million from the CSU as of Oct 20, and the cut last year of 3.1 billion from K-12 education for 2008/2009.

Education: Test From a Curriculum, Not a List of Standards

What will President-elect Obama do about No Child Left Behind (NCLB)?

It has become difficult to keep track of all the things that have gone wrong with the law. States are gaming the system by lowering standards. The predicted response to “failing schools” has not come about: few students leave them, and few take advantage of tutoring services, which are, by most reports, spotty.  At least some schools have responded to the law by cutting time in science, social studies, music, and art, so as to spend more time on reading and math.

NCLB : a Diminished View of School Reform

Dear President-Elect Obama,

As one of the millions of Americans thrilled by your historic victory, I am heartened by your pledge to pay long-overdue attention to improving – and adequately funding – America’s schools.

Your comments on reforming the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have been especially welcome. As you know, the misguided use of “high-stakes” testing under this law has brought numerous unintended consequences. Not least of these is a teaching-to-the-test mentality that has impoverished the educational experience of the children it was intended to help. For poor and minority students, children with special needs, and English language learners (ELLs), the school curriculum now consists largely of mind-numbing drills in the two tested subjects, reading and math. As a result, millions are being deprived of opportunities to learn critical thinking skills, develop talents in music and art, become physically fit, and excel in science and social studies.

Pledge of Allegiance Flap Divides Vermont Town

WOODBURY — No one’s for sure when daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance fell by the wayside at Woodbury Elementary School. But efforts to restore them have erupted into a bitter dispute in this tiny town, with school officials blocking the exercise from classrooms amid concerns that it holds nonparticipating children up to scorn. Supporters say the classroom is the place for it, and the disagreement has fueled an increasingly acrimonious debate among the town’s 810 residents.

“No Zero” Middle Schools

Several middle schools in Knox County are experimenting with a new grading policy. Instead of a zero, students will get a 60 for missing or failed work. If the work is completed, the grade can be raised partially. The idea is to make success a possibility that always exists. If a student doesn’t do their work, they will not pass. Sixty is still an F. By raising the lowest grade to a 60, missed and failed work will not quickly make a student’s grade so low that it is impossible to recover. If students do the work, they are capable of passing. The lesson that if you try, you can succeed is something that must be learned before high school.

Confusing Harder With Better

Never underestimate the power of a catchy slogan and a false dichotomy. When a politician pronounces himself a supporter of “law and order” or “a strong defense,” you may protest that it’s not that simple, but even as you start to explain why, you’ve already been dismissed as soft on crime or unwilling to defend Our Way of Life.

People who attend to nuance have long been at a disadvantage in politics, where spin is out of control. Never before, however, has the same been quite so true of the public conversation about education, which is distinguished today by simplistic demands for “accountability” and “raising the bar.” Not only public officials but business groups and many journalists have played a role in reducing the available options to two: Either you’re in favor of higher standards or you are presumably content with lower standards. Choose one.

Do We Ask Too Much of Teachers?

Schools in England are already amongst the most scrutinised and accountable in the world, yet now a whole new burden of responsibilities is being heaped on them.

First, schools were told they have a responsibility to look out for any indications that their pupils are falling into the grip of extremists and fanatics.

Students Rally Against Commercialization Of Education

Victoria, BC - University of Victoria and Camosun College International students concerned with the commercialization of education gathered at the legislature for a rally today. Students for a democratic society say public education is under attack with increasing tuition fees, new standardized testing, public private partnerships and the commercialization of education.

Destroying Public Education in America

Diogenes called education “the foundation of every state.” Education reformer and “father of American education” Horace Mann went even further. He said: “The common school (meaning public ones) is the greatest discovery ever made by man.” He called it the “great equalizer” that was “common” to all, and as Massachusetts Secretary of Education founded the first board of education and teacher training college in the state where the first (1635) public school was established. Throughout the country today, privatization schemes target them and threaten to end a 373 year tradition.

Test Today, Privatize Tomorrow: Using Accountability to “Reform” Public Schools to Death

I just about fell off my desk chair the other day when I came across my own name in an essay by a conservative economist who specializes in educational issues. The reason for my astonishment is that I was described as being “dead set against any fundamental changes in the nation’s schools.” Now having been accused with some regularity of arguing for too damn many fundamental changes in the nation’s schools, I found this new criticism more than a bit puzzling. But then I remembered that, during a TV interview a couple of years ago, another author from a different right-wing think tank had labeled me a “defender of the educational status quo.”