Race to the Top

Once again this morning I am struggling to understand why Barack Obama as a person is so committed to the reprehensible "Race to the Top" in education policy.  I get why he might be a personal friend of Arne Duncan, who traveled in his social and political circles in Chicago.  And I get why Arne Duncan could be committed to this.  I mean Arne Duncan is a product of private schools and Harvard.  He has worked all his adult life as a high-up administrator of educational programs, positions that he obtained from the get-go because of family connections.  Arne Duncan was a terrible CEO for the Chicago schools, and I believe his policies are in part responsible for the high murder rates among Chicago teens.  So Barack chose a guy he knows personally to do this important work and that guy has continued to pursue this atrocious policy of privatization, teacher bashing and over-reliance on high-stakes testing for assessment.

But there has been a growing groundswell of opposition to this dismantling of public education.  Kids who used to love school, because it was a place to learn, now hate it, because it has become a place to drill for tests.  Career teachers, especially the best ones, with multiple options, are leaving the profession they loved and were called to.  Parents are looking up from the grades of their own children and objecting to the transition from teaching to test prep in their children's schools.  And principals are speaking up against the attacks on their teachers.

There is a second face to this, and that is the incentive to fraud.  I make no defense of people who cheat and lie.  But I will remind the reader that a policy that demands certain numerical targets, or else, is a policy that encourages people to find any way to meet those targets.  Beverly Hall, the disgraced Atlanta superintendent is probably guilty of creating an environment where cheating became rampant more than she is of orchestrating that cheating.  And Michelle Rhee, who escaped Washington without disgrace, is -- without any doubt -- guilty of the identical crimes.  As an aside, I had colleagues who were principals in Brooklyn who simply ordered their teachers to maintain a passing rate of 90%… not a target; a mandate.  This requires teachers to pass students who have not met their minimum standards and demoralizes those students who have.

Right now, some of the affluent districts in the Lower Hudson Valley, in Westchester and Rockland Counties, are opting out of Race to the Top because of concerns about the security and privacy of student data.  That's nice, but it calls my attention to the fact that this is another windfall for private companies.  InBloom, which is creating cloud-based data systems for schools nation-wide, is organized as a not-for-profit, with $100 million in startup capital from Bill and Melinda Gates.  We have seen too often in the last ten years how massive changes in public policy are instigated by billionaires who demand (and receive!) tax deductions for deforming our democratic process.

Rupert Murdoch is just selling.  Joel Klein, our former NYC chancellor, is heading up Murdoch's educational products division.  Pearson is just selling.  They have made hundreds of millions selling their poorly-written tests, and then more hundreds of millions selling prep materials to scam their own tests!

This is all unspeakable.  But it is tied with a campaign of vilification against teachers.  Any teacher who speaks up against all this is immediately regarded as a hack who just wants to protect their own mediocre work.  Let me be clear: if there are hacks, they are happily accepting the shrink-wrapped test prep materials.  It means less work for them.  No more late nights preparing lesson plans: just say what's in the script.  No more hours grading written work.  Just put the bubble sheets in the machine and get the "data" analysis.  Real  teachers are opposing this scandal because they want to teach, because they know that it is individual and despite the hard work.

And it is tied with a decades-long attack on public education that goes back before the voucher movement of the eighties to the private segregation academies of the seventies.  Some "reformers" don't like public schools because they are neo-liberals who oppose any public services, but they are smart enough to take on the schools before they demand the dismantling of public police and fire service.  Some "reformers" see a main chance, the opportunity to create for-profit schools.  (And while the public is financially supporting charters, to pay themselves surprising salaries while exploiting non-union teachers.)  And then there are those who simply don't feel like supporting the education of their neighbors' children: maybe their own children already graduated, maybe their own children go to private school, maybe they don't have children.  Or maybe they don't believe poor children should be prepared for anything but busing tables in their country clubs.

So I go back again to my question: Why does Barack Obama support this?  We know he wouldn't allow it for his girls.  They go to a very well thought-of private school.  Why is it okay for our kids?  Does he really believe in this stuff?  Does he think that he has too many contentious issues already, so he'll just go along with the right wing of the Tea Party on this?  Does he not care about education despite his protestations to the contrary?

What I know is that -- for whatever reason -- he has been at the heart of support for the most anti-children and anti-learning policies I have ever seen.  It is all very well to sit in New York and blame Bloomberg and Cuomo, who have been ardent and vocal advocates for the war on children.  But it is the policy of the Obama Department of Education, too.  The New York Times has gleefully announced that Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Fariña won't be able to stop the steamrolling of our kids, because it is THE LAW.  We have to call out the President on this, too.