Live Long and Prosper...

NO EXPERTS ALLOWED

In 1964, Richard Hofstadter won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life in which he traced intellect in American Life. Fifty years later we're still are surprised when "anti-intellectualism" rears its ugly head and negatively impacts public education.

The Texas State Board of Education has been fighting "experts" for years. In 2009, board chair Don McLeroy, infamously exclaimed, "Somebody's gotta stand up to experts..." because those same "experts" disagreed with his religious beliefs.

Texas Board of Education rejects plan to have academics fact-check their textbooks

Recently, the same school board voted down a proposal which called for a panel of actual content area experts to review textbooks for errors.

The push for more experts to be involved came after more than a year of controversy over board-sanctioned books' coverage of global warming, descriptions of Islamic history and terrorism and handling of the Civil War and the importance of Moses and the Ten Commandments to the Founding Fathers.

Texas SBOE: Experts? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Experts.

Ed Brayton, a blogger who favors fact over myth and anti-intellectualism, reacted with this.

The way we govern our schools in this country is absolutely asinine. No one in their right mind would suggest that textbooks for medical school be written or approved by anyone other than medical professionals, yet we somehow think that decisions on school curricula should be made by whatever random yahoos can get elected by a few hundred local yokels who don’t know [blank] about [blank]. I would be willing to bet that if you had school boards across the country take the final exams in almost any of the courses offered in the schools they govern, a very small percentage could even pass them, much less demonstrate a solid understanding of the subjects.

History curricula and textbooks should be determined by historians, chemistry by chemists, math by mathematicians, and so forth. It boggles my mind that anyone could possibly disagree with that.

IGNORING THE REAL EXPERTS

I saw this meme on Facebook the other day...


It occurred to me that education "reformers" have been doing that sort of thing for years. For the most part they have confused their experiences as students with K-12 teachers' experience and education degrees. For example, the following politicians and/or billionaires, while influential in American education policy for K-12 schools, have no education training other than what they learned as students. In other words, the last time they set foot in a K-12 public school – other than for a photo-op – was when they were students (NOTE: Arne Duncan never attended public schools. Ever).

• Michael Bloomberg – former mayor of New York City. (Johns Hopkins, Electrical Engineering: Harvard, MBA)
• Eli Broad – Philanthropist, Billionaire. (Michigan State Univ., Accounting: CPA)
• George W. Bush – 43rd President of the United States. (Yale, History: Harvard, MBA)
• Arne Duncan – Secretary of Education during the Obama Administration. (Harvard, Sociology)
• Bill Gates – Philanthropist, Billionaire. (no post-secondary degree)
• Joel Klein – Former Chancellor of New York City Schools. (Columbia B.A.: Harvard, JD)
• Wendy Kopp – Founder and CEO, Teach For America. (Princeton, Public Policy)
• Barack Obama – 44th President of the United States. (Columbia, Political Science: Harvard, JD)
• Margaret Spellings – Secretary of Education during the second term of the George W. Bush administration. (Univ. of Houston, Political Science)

These so-called experts likely ask only trained medical professionals for medical advice or call trained legal experts when they need legal advice. And I imagine they only ask licensed plumbers for advice when they have a leak or backed up drains. Yet they had/have no trouble giving advice, proposing projects, and working for laws which have damaged the nation's public education through obsessive testing and privatization.

Add in other non-education professionals such as

• TFA alums who, after 5 weeks of training and 2 years of teaching call themselves experts in education.
• Thousands of legislators and other politicians at all levels of government who introduce and pass laws to privatize public education
• Pundits and lobbyists who pontificate on public education without any experience other than their own childhood school years.

The Texas State Board of Education has just taken Anti-Intellectualism one step further. They have decided that they are the only ones who understand and will have input into the content areas which are taught to their constituents' children. Since textbooks written for Texas are also sold all over the country, the Texas State Board of Education has made content decisions for other, non-Texas students as well.

FEDERAL INTERVENTION

No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top took public education out of local hands.

Yearly testing, closing "failing" schools (aka high-poverty schools), opening charters, evaluating teachers and schools with student test scores...are just a few of the worst aspects of the federal laws and policies which have been responsible for the increasing chaos in America's public education system. None of those things have improved teaching and learning.

Closing schools doesn't help children learn. Charter schools don't perform better than public schools. Teacher evaluations using student test scores are invalid and unreliable. Grading schools based on student test scores does nothing but cause damage to schools and communities.

The Common Core State Standards – not to be confused with actual standards written by states with the input of actual working educators – are, in some cases, developmentally inappropriate, have never been field tested, and are set in stone – unchangeable.

SELLING PUBLIC EDUCATION

Teacher training is the next target. For example, Pearson has now become the "gatekeeper" for student teachers. "edTPA" is a standardized assessment for teachers working for certification. Certification is dependent on the successful completion of "edTPA."

Pearson to become the gate-keeper for student teachers in Illinois.

As the fall semester begins, all student teachers in the state will be required to pay an extra $300 (on top of the tuition they are already paying) [for edTPA] and arrange for videotaping so that they can submit a lengthy narrative that covers the planning, execution and evaluation of a series of lessons with one of their classes as well as a ten-minute video of themselves carrying out their lesson with a class.

Student teachers are required to get parent permission for their children to be video-taped.

Pearson owns the video.

Once submitted to Pearson, an “evaluator” will apply rubrics and 2-3 hours of their time to decide whether or not the student teacher “passes” and can be licensed to teach by the State of Illinois.

It's not just Illinois. California, New York, Wisconsin, Georgia, Oregon, and others are edTPA states. In addition, at least one teacher training institute in many other states also require edTPA – Indiana, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania. At $300 a pop Pearson is raking it in and getting their foot in the door of teacher training.

Imagine the future of the US public education system as a subsidiary of Pearson; They train the teachers at Pearson/edTPA College, provide the curriculum, and provide the tests. Local school boards will be unnecessary. Decisions will be made in Pearson board room in London, UK.

WHERE ARE EDUCATORS VOICES?

Where are actual educators in all of this? In the same way that Texas has denied input from academic experts for textbook adoptions, politicians and policy makers have denied input from education experts for testing, curriculum, standards, and education in general. The real education experts are the millions of teachers who teach in public schools across the country, not Bill Gates...not Arne Duncan...and not Wendy Kopp.

For the most part, over the last several decades of so-called "reform," teachers voices haven't been heard or acknowledged. School closings, changes in evaluations, and testing...have all taken place without input from the real experts in education – teachers. Instead of listening to teachers, policy makers increased high stakes testing. Instead of listening to teachers, policy makers didn't fix schools with high levels of poverty: They closed them. Instead of listening to teachers, policy makers instituted punitive evaluation procedures which hurt those who teach our hardest to teach students the most.

However, the new education bill before congress, the Every Student Succeeds Act, supposedly includes provisions for listening to actual educators. The NEA released this today.

NEA president supports the Every Student Succeeds Act

“In particular, the bill includes student and school supports in state accountability plans to create an opportunity ‘dashboard’; reduces the amount of standardized testing in schools and decouples high-stakes decision making and statewide standardized tests; and ensures that educators’ voices are part of decision making at the federal, state and local levels. [emphasis added]

After reading some analysis of the new law, it seems that it will be left up to the states to decide.

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): Some Eleventh-Hour Observations

The document continues the trend of NCLB test-heaviness. ESSA is not as punitive as NCLB, but its worn-out test-centrism will accomplish little as it prompts states to seek creative ways to retain Title I money in the face of an increasing public resistance to the very testing on which corporate reform depends.

Why many high-stakes testing foes see ‘modest’ progress in No Child Left Behind rewrite

From an assessment reform perspective, FairTest is convinced that the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA) now before the House and Senate, though far from perfect, improves on current testing policy. The bill significantly reduces federal accountability mandates and opens the door for states to overhaul their own assessment systems.

Will actual teachers have any input? We shall see...

Democrats and Republicans are both well entrenched in education "reform" (Note, however, the recent formation of Democrats for Public Education...perhaps a counter to DFER?). Democrats like Obama (through Duncan), Emanuel , Booker and Polis (among others) rival Republicans G. W. Bush (through Spellings), J. Bush, and Christie (among others) in their attack on public schools and public school teachers. Both political parties seem to agree that public education needs to be privatized and public educators need to be de-unionized and silenced.

This bipartisan effort to privatize public education and silence public educators is supported by major cable media outlets (this is not to say that other major media outlets are much different). Media Matters looked at the number of educators who were included in discussions about American education on cable news shows from January 1, 2014 through October 31, 2014.

On segments in which there was a substantial discussion of domestic education policy between January 1, 2014, and October 31, 2014, there were 185 guests total on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, only 16 of whom were educators, or 9 percent...

Rather than rely on classroom experts when discussing education policy, the media spotlights people who have no experience in the classroom, no training in child development or the art and practice of teaching, and no clue what it means to spend a career helping children learn. Perhaps one of the comments on the Media Matters page is true...

Well, most of us teachers are too swamped with grading, planning, paperwork, parent-teacher conferences, observations, and way too understaffed to take time off to appear on some show just to get tongue lashed by some pundit who thinks they know how to do the job.

More likely is the fact that teachers, as a group, are politically disrespected (the main exceptions being themselves and their students' parents) in the U.S.

ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE

Fifty years ago, Richard Hofstadter won the pulitzer prize for his exploration of America's anti-intellectualism in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Hofstadter said that the U.S. was unique among Western nations in that its citizens' resented and mistrusted those who follow "the life of the mind" - i.e. academia and education. The 50's were, according to Hofstadter, a peak in the cyclical anti-intellectual trend in the U.S. McCarthy's attacks were in large part directed against intellectuals and universities. Words like, "Ivory Tower" and "Egghead" were part of the campaign to defeat Adlai Stevenson and the "work of the mind" was held in a lower esteem than was business, industry and physical labor.

Anti-intellectualism is not unique to the 50's, though. The trend runs through American history sometimes boldly, sometimes hidden below the surface. Hofstadter discussed the cyclical nature of the trend and claimed that peaks in the cycle were due to the rise in importance of the very intellectuals who were resented...

...the resentment from which the intellectual has suffered in our time is a manifestation not of the decline in his position but of his increasing prominence.

In other words, as intellectuals become more noticeable and visible in our society, resentment and anti-intellectualism will grow.


This is one of the reasons why educators in general, and public school teachers in particular, have never had high status in the U.S. (as opposed to other western nations). Furthermore, the fact that, in the U.S., education is, by some, considered "women's work," adds to the low status. Women have yet to be fully respected in our society. While individuals may vary in their opinion of "women's work" it's clear that there is a large segment of the population who believe that women don't deserve the respect, status, and/or wages, that men do.

Low status is self-perpetuating. O. Alan Weltzien, a professor at the University of Montana, reviewed Hofstadter's book in 2008. He wrote...

The low status of schoolteachers and low opinion of teacher education programs [which Hofstadter] describes needs no additional comment. He unflinchingly states the consequences for his overall subject: "In so far as the teacher stands before his pupils as a surrogate of the intellectual life and its rewards, he unwittingly makes this life appear altogether unattractive."

NO EXPERTS NEEDED

An indication of this distrust of "experts" is the anti-science attitude of many Americans and their political representatives...in this case, most specifically, on the Republican side. A quarter of all Americans refuse to accept the science of climate change...and more than 40% of Americans believe the creationist view of human origins. [Evolution is just a "theory" after all, they say. One wonders, then, whether they deny the Germ Theory of disease or the Theory of Gravity!].

Most recently, House Republicans passed a bill (which, even if it passes the Senate, is likely to be vetoed) which forbids scientists from "influencing" the EPA with their research. Instead, "industry experts" will be allowed to advise the EPA...the proverbial fox guarding the chicken house.

Speaking on the House floor Tuesday, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., summed up what was going on: “I get it, you don’t like science,” he told bill sponsor Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah. “And you don’t like science that interferes with the interests of your corporate clients. But we need science to protect public health and the environment.” [emphasis added]

It's true that some of the motivation behind the bill isn't anti-science, but rather pro corporate profits. The point is, however, that it passed because the house is filled with a new crop of science deniers. [For an entertaining look at how John Stewart responds to science deniers in the house see HERE. This was done before the midterm elections in 2014, however, the congressmen he targets for his humor are still there.]

The dislike of public education by the political and religious right wing has never been a secret. There was a time, though, when Republicans used "improved education" and "saving tax dollars" as arguments for "choice," charters, and vouchers. Now, however, with charters and voucher accepting private schools showing no tax savings and no academic improvement over traditional public schools, the argument has become "choice for the sake of choice."

The American tendency towards anti-intellectualism is, unsurprisingly, being exploited for corporate and political advantage. Like the recent political attack on scientists within the EPA, the corporate attack on public school teachers is intended to rally anti-intellectual feelings of resentment and jealousy against teachers and the institution they represent. The pervasiveness of public school teachers in America...more than 3 million nationwide spread over every political district...means that the corporate privatizers are up against a possible huge backlash of activism and political clout. Weakening educators is necessary if privatizers want to get their hands on the billions of dollars in tax money going to public education.

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.