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At DKos, teacherken has a rather frightening new diary (h/t dkmich), "Schools - are we headed for national tests and standards?", in which he lays out various bits of evidence, recent statements of President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan, and concludes that the answer is "yes". He then asks, what exactly will these standards aim at producing--a happy hive of worker bees?
He raises a whole host of important questions, to which I want to add one that Gerald Bracey has repeatedly pointed to, as I've noted before: the professed purpose of workforce development and increased US competitiveness is totally bogus. The US is already #1 in competitiveness, while other countries where students outscore ours--such as Japan--have worse economic problems than we do. Furthermore, we already produce a workforce that is underemployed for its skill level.
I am all in favor improved education, but (a) we need a broader concept of what education is for--as teacherken argues, and (b) we need to improve our entire economic system so that it makes full use of the workforce we already have, and has jobs for the workers of the future we are intent on educating today. These two points imply a very different approach to education and our economic future than Obama appears to have in mind--and, most troubling of all, there appears to be virtually no public discussion of these very important issues.
Quotes from teacherken and further discussion on the flip.
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teacherken:
And before I explain why I phrase the question of my title the way I do, let me offer one additional paragraph from the release:
"States have made great progress in building their longitudinal data systems, but now we need a cultural shift to build the political will and take the practical steps needed to ensure that this data is accessed, shared, and used for continuous education improvement," said Aimee Rogstad Guidera, Director of the Data Quality Campaign. "That's what the Campaign will focus on now - helping states identify and put in place the necessary policies and practices so that key stakeholders actually use longitudinal data to help students succeed."
Let me start with the last quote. to help students succeed - succeed at what? Are we going to define success as performance on the measurements, however they are established? Given the idea that this data is supposed to span from Pre-K through graduate and professional school (that is was P-20 means) and be linked to "workforce development," what are the implications for educational effort not directly geared towards the economic interests implied in such statements? Who will have voices heard, meaningful seats at the table as such standards - which remember, both Duncan and Obama have made clear, should be national - are being developed? If the people shaping the discussion on longitudinal standards does not know include the voices of professional educators, nor of those groups who have traditionally been underserved educationally and economically, do we run the risk of an imposition of one model, yet another version of the kind of one size fits all mentality that has been behind so many of our recent, and failed, attempts at educational "reform," including NCLB? Where in this model is there any provision for civic education, for the development of the individual person as something in herself, even if the things that matter to her are not valued by some important economic and political actors?
Of course, civic education and individual development are long-term mainstays of progressive visions of education. The fact that they may be shunted aside for an exclusive focus on "workforce development" is not only deeply troubling in itself, but is yet another indication of how Obama appears locked into a vision of the state that reflects only the core concerns of (a) the conservative welfare state, which seeks to maintain existing power relations, and the dominance of establihsed elites, and (b) the liberal welfare state that seeks to smooth the functioning of the market.
Beyond this question of vision--and the exclusion of needs outside the marketplace--are three other kinds of concern: First, is this even a correct diagnosis of the marketplace needs? Second, are the process under consideration capable of meeting even the needs as defined? Third, are the people involved capable and deserving of trust?
teacherken continues, directly following the quote above:
Let me return to the question of my title. I think there is no doubt that this administration has bought into the idea of national standards. The creation of national standards is sure to be a major conflict, unless dissenting voices are systematically excluded. Given the track record of Duncan in Chicago (which by the way has NOT succeeded on meeting the Illinois standards, which makes it ironic that he thinks the solution is to further raise the bar on standards), where he and his predecessor Paul Vallas and their minions systematically suppressed the voices of those who disagreed with them, whose approach was to get commitment from the major elite players and ignore the concerns expressed by others.
This is, to say the least, not a very promising prospect. Duncan is not an educator, is a believer in anti-teacher, anti-public school reform, is a believer in excluding those who disagree with him from the process, and has a record of failure even within his own paradigm.
Remind me again how this is different from the way Bush did things? Oh, yeah, it's technocratically competent, even if it isn't opertionally competent. Here's another piece of evidence teacherken cites, from a group called The Data Quality Campaign, "The Next Step: Using Longitudinal Data Systems To Improve Student Success", which outlines 10 steps they consider necessary for what they consider a model effort:
The ten action steps are:- Link state K-12 data systems with early learning, postsecondary education, workforce, social services and other critical state agency data systems.
- Create stable, sustained support for robust state longitudinal data systems.
- Develop governance structures to guide data collection, sharing and use.
- Build state data repositories (e.g. data warehouses) that integrate student, staff, financial and facility data.
- Implement systems to provide all stakeholders timely access to the information they need while protecting student privacy.
- Create progress reports with individual student data that provide information educators, parents and students can use to improve student performance.
- Create reports that include longitudinal statistics on school systems and groups of students to guide school-, district- and state-level improvement efforts.
- Develop a purposeful research agenda and collaborate with universities, researchers and intermediary groups to explore the data for useful information.
- Implement policies and promote practices, including professional development and credentialing, to ensure that educators know how to access, analyze and use data appropriately.
- Promote strategies to raise awareness of available data and ensure that all key stakeholders, including state policymakers, know how to access, analyze and use the information.
That's a really swell list if you're in the data management business, but it doesn't do a heck of a lot if you're the least bit aware of the systematic impoverishment of inner-city low-income minority-dominated schools or their rural counterparts. Unfortunately, we're not talking about a both/and approach here.
The analogy to health-care-industry-run "health care reform" is not exact, but it's far too close for comfort. And it really needn't be. There are good faith actors involved, but the process as a whole seems designed to prevent the very sort of robust debate that's both needed and morally called for:
Let me be fair - some of those elite players honestly believe they know what is best, that what they are doing is their version of noblesse oblige. One can legitimately make that argument for groups like the Gates Foundation and the Casey Foundation, and local efforts such as that in Chicago where Obama served on a board with Bill Ayers (who may have as good a track record as anyone in the nation on honestly addressing the issues of urban education, but who is now considered so toxic that when he is brought into a university to talk on that topic there are protests and attempts to cancel his appearance - this is happening at Millersville in PA, resulting in the event being closed to anyone outside the university's immediate family). But just because I believe I am correct should not legitimize my being able to impose my perspective and/or exclude the perspectives of those who may disagree with me.
What we need is what Obama promised--a chance for everyone to participate and be heard in the process of reshaping our future into a more inclusive, more inspiring, more diverse form. But that doesn't seem to be anything like what we are actually going to get. |
