The following is written by a teacher who asked that I post her essay but remain anonymous. Isn’t it sad that we live in a time where teachers feel they will get in trouble if they write about their concerns and question the establishment?
Corporate school reform breaks schools apart. While children in urban and rural areas are hurt, suburban schools face difficulties as well. Teachers watch as their schools change. They are stressed and often look for a way out. Yet their ideas are critical for good teaching to occur.
Here is the essay.
Who remembers when elementary age children’s schedules included daily periods of recess, English, social studies, science & math, with a rotation of daily enriching specials, such as art, music, gym, library, etc.?
Who remembers when change was slow and steady in school districts, because they knew children needed stability and predictability?
Who remembers when there were no charter schools siphoning public school money away from public schools?
Who remembers when public schools were a valued public service for the greater good of the country?
Who remembers school before corporate education reform? Not sure what that is?
The following excerpt is from Bill Moyer’s blog:
The “reform” movement is really a “corporate reform” movement, funded to a large degree by major foundations, Wall Street hedge fund managers, entrepreneurs and the US Department of Education. The movement is determined to cut costs and maximize competition among schools and among teachers. It seeks to eliminate the geographically based system of public education as we have known it for the past 150 years and replace it with a competitive market- based system of school choice — one that includes traditional public schools, privately managed charter schools, religious schools, voucher schools, for- profit schools, virtual schools and for- profit vendors of instruction. Lacking any geographic boundaries, these schools would compete for customers. The customers would choose to send their children and their public funding wherever they wish, based on personal preference or on information such as the schools’ test scores and a letter grade conferred by the state (based largely on test scores).
Some in the reform movement, believing that American education is obsolete and failing, think they are promoting a necessary but painful redesign of the nation’s ailing schools. Some sincerely believe they are helping poor black and brown children escape from failing public schools. Some think they are on the side of modernization and innovation. But others see an opportunity to make money in a large, risk- free, government- funded sector or an opportunity for personal advancement and power. Some — a small but important number — believe they are acting rationally by treating the public education sector as an investment opportunity
We have seen what ed. reform looks like in urban and rural public schools, but what might it look like in suburban schools?
Here are the 3 signs that your suburban school district is being affected by corporate education reform ideas:
- Constant disruptions: This has to do with cutting the arts (even a tiny bit), changing school start times, redistricting, staff & faculty churn and high absenteeism, numerous changes in programing, substitute shortages in wealthy & safe school districts, the assumption that disruption breeds innovation, and more. Anything that will unsettle the community and cause friction between neighbors will suffice.
- Using equity to cause disruption: Standardization being used as an excuse to address equity is often seen with an increase in standardized local assessments and benchmark tests, a focus on outcomes, use of ed. reform jargon by leaders, the hiring of outside consultants, 1:1 laptop programs, teachers being required to teach the same things at the same times, teacher prep time used to discuss standardized data, the use of test prep in the classroom, using benchmark tests to keep teachers on the same pace, hiring former charter school teachers, urban teachers, and Teach for America alumni in the name of equity (No disrespect towards the teachers here. The concern is the quest to hire teachers who will think that their new teaching situation is better than their last. This may be true, but it may be an effort to hire compliant, non-questioning employees.)
- Fake “Stakeholder voice”: Surveys that give the illusion of “stakeholder voice”, district committees where leaders invite volunteers and then release them to hear other “voices”, and parents who hesitate to advocate for their children in fear of retribution are big red flags. When school leaders nod their heads like they are listening, then do what they want anyway, your school district may be infiltrated by ed reform thinking.
Where do all of these ideas come from? Well, many of them are inspired by a professor at Harvard, Clayton Christensen. Read this assessment of “Disruptive Innovation”.
Consider these points,
One of the shibboleths of the corporate reformers is their belief in “creative destruction,” “innovation, and “disruption” as an end in itself. These ideas justify their efforts to tear apart traditional public school systems, replace experienced teachers with inexperienced youngsters, close schools, and experiment with charters, vouchers, and anything else that will destroy the status quo. To be sure, some are in the school reform business to make money, but others see themselves as heroes of a movement that sees itself as blowing up “failing schools” and forcing fresh innovations into a stagnant sector of the economy…
In education, we have seen the dogma of disruption in the policies of Arne Duncan, the Bloomberg administration of education in New York City (with its focus on closing schools and opening schools and closing the schools it opened), the Rahm Emanuel model (closing 50 public schools on the same day), the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and business groups. They scorn incremental change and pursue the disruptive idea–like closing schools, the Common Core, federally funded tests–that will shake up schools across the nation with a series of bold and experimental strokes.”
It looks different in the suburbs than elsewhere because higher standardized test scores correlate to family income. They couldn’t fail our kids like they did in urban and rural areas, so they turned to disruption.
Corporate education reform makes bedfellows of neoliberals and conservatives, alike. President Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is a big fan of corporate education reform. I read he even wants his old job back if the opportunity arose. President Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, hasn’t been replaced because she is doing an excellent job of destroying public education.
Do schools need to be disrupted by techniques borrowed from the business world? Do families need to be disrupted? Do communities need disruption? According to disruption theory, disruption is the precursor to success.
Do you think your community and schools need disruption to be successful?
______
By Teacher Anonymous who could be teaching in any suburban school across the country.
Spread the word! These strategies only benefit money grabbers and not kiddos…along with undermining the future of our democracy.
Thanks, Sandra.
I cannot imagine what this would have meant when I was growing up in a rural area in western Kentucky. There was one high school. Our graduating class at the height of the baby boom was 50, the largest ever. The only private school was at the Catholic church in town. It stopped at sixth grade, so they joined us after that.
My elementary building was two-stories with one long ball on each; 1-4 on the first floor and 5-8 on the second. The high school was built later, using the same parking lot and cafeteria behind the elementary.
The farmers and miners and small store owners could not have supported a charter. The cost of the buildings were fixed years earlier. There were two sections of each grade, so a fixed number of teachers.
We were integrated in the 1950s. Not reason to have separate schools for black and white with such a small population and tax base.
Pragmatism. Respect for the law. A shared belief in public education for all. Is that what’s missing?
Thanks for sharing.
School communities at their best are like a family. Who in their right minds thinks that the way to improve a family is to continually disrupt it? We don’t test our kids and call them failures when they don’t walk or talk by the prescribed benchmarks, and no one threatens to close our family down. If a child struggles, we give them extra support.
After two decades of reform nonsense, it should be clear to any honest reformer that there are some major problems with their ideas. The rest of them are just money grubbers.
Agree. Thank you. It is a strange notion.
My thanks to Diane Ravitch.
https://dianeravitch.net/2020/01/06/nancy-bailey-how-corporate-reform-is-wrecking-suburban-schools-too/
In Clayton Christensen’s book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, Chapter 8, How to Appraise Your Organization’s Capabilities and Disabilities, is excellent in helping to think about change in schools and how to support it.
All change is not bad and does not have to be disruptive to the entire school system. I will discuss what I took away from Christensen’s Chapter 8 in The Innovator’s Dilemma. So, I will begin by approaching a desired innovation in a way that says the educators in a school and district have determined that they would like to innovate in one school by including more play-based learning and project-based learning. If these changes do not align with what is currently happening across the entire district. Christensen proposes a really good way to think through how to determine whether the structures, organization, etc. needed to ensure the innovation can be successfully implemented and reasonably evaluated are there.
Chapter 8 in The Innovator’s Dilemma is not about disruptive innovation. This chapter has a really good way to evaluate what you need to innovate in a school district or corporation that has a uniform mission, values, etc. and determine whether the overarching guiding mission, values, etc. or the organization as a whole provides the capabilities to succeed with the desired innovation. He divides what needs to be examined before diving into an innovation into a review of resources, processes, and values with a discussion of what must be done after that analysis has been done.
Christensen may be a villain in terms of disruptive innovation, but what he discusses in his book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, is not about disruptive innovation and has some good guidelines for those of us who want to innovate thoughtfully and successfully.