Reformers hurt our kids, not theirs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Education reformers are pretty picky when it comes to educating their children. No 80 days of high stakes testing for them. No mandatory grade retention or denying high school diplomas  based on a single test. For decades they have used their vast wealth and political power to impose an unforgiving, unproven and unfair education reform ideology on everyone else’s children but their own.

It’s clear that those pushing education reform are far more interested in grabbing the $600+ billion dollars spent annually by states on public education than doing what’s best for the nation’s children. It’s equally clear that these guys will use any means possible to justify their goal to privatize our public schools. Education reform is little more than a series of unfounded legislated experiments designed to cause deep suffering to our “ordinary” children, discredit their teachers and question the competency of school boards.  Reformers have zero intent of ever exposing their own “elite” children to the same unbearable fate.

They prescribe for our children a narrowed teach to the test curriculum that kills curiosity and joy. Yet their children attend schools that focus on creative hands-on learning, celebrate critical thought, place a high value on human interaction and recognize the importance of daily physical activity.

The Education reform lobby spends billions persuading state legislatures that relentless high stakes computer testing and course acceleration is a cheaper, better way to go.  This down-market vision for our children contradicts an ironic preference among the reform-minded to limit digital access for their own children.

They promote privatized K-12 virtual charters for our children as a way to “customize” learning.  They tell us that it’s better to replace our children’s so-called “ineffective” human teachers with computer screens. They know full well that too much screen time inhibits creative thinking and shortens attention spans.

The children of Reformers enjoy year round access to their libraries yet our children are routinely shut out of their own which are transformed into testing centers for as much as 60% of the school year. Across the nation legislators have repeatedly tried to overturn the will of the people and reverse constitutional class size amendments. Reformers know class size truly matters, so their children attend schools where student/teacher ratios are often 8:1, certainly no more than 15:1.

Reformers flood the media every year with “national summits” and skewed television events like Education Nation selling the virtues of top down punitive education reform.  Warnings of doom and poor performance, mixed with the mention of manipulated test score improvements, always conclude with the same notion that no gain is ever enough.

It’s this culture of disapproval that robs our children of a long list of exciting electives and robust PE, art and music programs. The very things that help children invest in learning are impossible to measure with data. These critical elements have been deemed irrelevant by the reform agenda.

Our nation’s public schools are built on the core value that every child, regardless of ethnicity, religion, circumstance or ability has the fundamental right to a free high-quality education. Reformers choose schools that are unabashedly selective, often geared only to high-performing and gifted students. Financial aid for tuition is sometimes available to the deserving, but schools reserve the right to deny applicants for any reason.

America’s public school children are hurting. They are being deliberately harmed by an education reform scheme led by politicians and vendors who want to privatize and profit from our public schools. These folks just want the money.  Our kids, their schools, teachers, superintendents, teachers unions and school boards are mere barriers to business.

What will it take for us to finally reject the dishonest intent of these so-called “reformers” who are elitist when it comes to their own children and profit driven when it comes to ours?

Big Data & critical thinkers don’t mix

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The way billionaires and ideologues use big data to drive both election outcomes and education reform is an epic warning. It’s heartbreaking to see our Democracy betrayed in one election after another. Thousands of incumbents went unchallenged in the 2014 midterms thanks to legislatively packed and stacked districts where no voter has a real choice.

During this cycle, record breaking bucks were spent to create chaos with incessant mudslinging and manufactured “breaking poll results.”  Substantive debates are off the table. The intent behind the hype is to use data to manipulate the media, make sweeping predictions and cause a disgusted 80% of all registered voters to give up their voice and stay home.

As in politics, data, testing, sorting, labeling and psychometrics are central to the education reform scheme. Both are obsessed with using data to predict outcomes, lure investors and marginalize average hard working Americans and their children. Parents and teachers know that high stakes testing, a dangerously narrowed curriculum, using test scores to justify teacher pay, alter school funding and deny high school diplomas is the result of a profoundly unfair use of data.

The fallacy behind Education Reform is the calculated rush to force small human beings at the dawn of their brilliance into mind-numbing sameness to justify a flawed social experiment.  There will never be any room in Education Reform for creativity, spontaneity, critical thought, self-determination, joy or the breathing space to make mistakes and recover.   The very things that make us human stand in direct contradiction to the use of big data to manipulate outcomes.

The same thing is true about elections. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote in Death by Data:

“Over the past decade or so, political campaigns have become more scientific. Campaign consultants use sophisticated data to micro-target specific demographic slices. Consultants select their ad buys more precisely because they know which political niche is watching which TV show. Campaigns trial test messages that push psychological buttons.

….Unfortunately, the whole thing has been a fiasco. As politics has gotten more scientific, the campaigns have gotten worse, especially for the candidates who over-rely on these techniques.

That’s because the data-driven style of politics is built on a questionable philosophy and a set of dubious assumptions. Data-driven politics is built on a philosophy you might call Impersonalism. This is the belief that what matters in politics is the reaction of populations and not the idiosyncratic judgment, moral character or creativity of individuals.

Data-driven politics assumes that demography is destiny, that the electorate is not best seen as a group of free-thinking citizens but as a collection of demographic slices.” 

So there it is. As in elections, data driven Education Reform is based on sorting children, even communities, into slices based on racial and economic demographics that somehow always reflect predicted test results. The reform boast that zip codes don’t determine destiny is disputed by the very data they collect and the outcomes they manipulate.

Big data proponents see everyone as sheep, willing to follow, easy to control. Using data in this way only benefits investors and ideologues.

The silent majority of hundreds of millions of free-thinking creative individual voters have the ability to restore our Democracy and give our children a truly powerful voice.