Discussion: Putting The Trust Back In Education

Discussion for article #228252

Violent and misogynist comments are awful and those posters should be ashamed of themselves, but Conor, as far as this public school parent can tell, you’re basically a pro-charters-and-testing concern troll, and I can understand how that would make people angry.

People who care about our public schools are angry because they see an unfathomably deep-pocketed astroturf “movement,” fueled by a combination of anti-labor and anti-government ideology and commercial self-interest, privatizing K-12 public education and turning poor kids into profit centers for the charter chains and testing companies. They know there’s big money sluicing around the media-political complex to support privatization – from the Waltons, the Broad and Gates Foundations, hedge funders and VCs, etc. They see the not-incidental near-unanimity of Democratic electeds at all levels for charters and testing.

Still, I expect more out of TPM, and I’m once again disappointed to see a site I depend on for “In, not of” reporting offering a venue for this kind of one-sided (but infuriatingly, pretending at objectivity) swill.

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The larger the behemoth… The more the impersonal…

That is what we get when there are so many levels of bureaucracy, do-gooder researchers, and castle-builders in the chain.

Is Conor Williams still in the classroom? If he’s not, he’s not teaching! Allow me to quote JCS:

~OGD~


Oh and uh… Does Conor read our comments?

From his post in his blog at OrdinaryGentlemmen.com…

''I don’t really spend much time in the comments sections—whether it’s my post or someone else’s. This is mostly for two reasons: 1) I suffer from “Someone is Wrong on the Internet Syndrome.” I have a hard time walking away from online arguments, which leads to all sorts of frustrating physical (mostly lack of sleep) and psychological consequences. Comments section donnybrooks always threaten to cost me short-term sanity. 2) As a result, I rarely have time to indulge.''

~OGD~

Here is where you are off and fundamentally wrong in your argument:

Blair set clear, measurable, specific targets for various government agencies, and then largely let them work out how to reach those. Outside of the charter school movement, that flexibility is unheard of in American education.

In fact, American education is largely local: education policy is set by local school boards and at the state level. That’s why you have such a huge disparity in the quality of public education – the absolute worst schools happen to be in the right-to-work (for the lowest possible wage) states – Mississippi, Nevada, Texas, etc., and the finest schools happen to be in state with strong teacher contracts and strong dedication to teacher professional development – Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont.

To the extent the federal government has any leverage in education policy, the power they wield is just extra money. The major funding for public education comes from local property taxes. That’s why the best schools in any state are in wealthy neighborhoods and the worst schools in any state are in poor neighborhoods.

Stupid and counterproductive testing schemes like the ones you advocate aren’t going to change that stark reality. Non-profit charter schools may, in some cases, be a better choice for students in a given neighborhood, but there is no comprehensive data that makes that case.

People like Campbell Brown and the Gates are just wealthy amateurs trying to monetize public education for their own political agenda. They know nothing about the profession of teaching. They are like Wall Street banksters sitting around a mahogany conference table trying to reform the practice of neurosurgery. Fiddling around with people’s lives in order to enrich the 1% to which they belong.

One thing in indisputable: Profit-driven education is and always has been a complete and total failure. The data is clear on that, from kindergarten through university-level education, there is NO case where a for-profit school has any success. Trump University, anyone?

Prove me wrong.