Tucson Weekly: Schools, Society And Snake Oil Salesmen

[madfloridian]

One of the most frightening things to come from Arne Duncan lately, among other frightening things, is that all children can and should be able to handle honors level courses and tests. He believes that students can and should perform on cue.

This new reform item of his has led to one of the main attacks on teachers....that they do not treat special education students, poor, needy students as though they can do better. This is very unfair, it is not true. I must say there are exceptions to any rule, but most teachers can and do care for and challenge every child.

When I read this article from the Tucson Weekly, I realized that there are some people who get it. That there are still people who believe teachers care and strive to do their best for each child.

Schools, Society And Snake Oil Salesmen

Remember George Bush's line about "the soft bigotry of low expectations"? It's a beautiful phrase with at least a kernel of truth to it, but its main purpose was to bludgeon teachers and administrators who work with low income students, saying to them, "You're all a bunch of bigots who think your students are too stupid to do well in school because they're black or brown or poor! Their low test scores are your fault, because you're lousy educators who refuse to have high expectations for your students."

The leaders of the education reform/privatization movement are accomplished snake oil salesmen. Like the con men of old who used to stand on the back of wagons pitching their wares, these purveyors of educational snake oil begin by rolling out their gruesome descriptions of the aches, pains and mortal illnesses their audience is afflicted with. The only difference is, their pitch is about educational, not physical ailments. They tell horror stories about the mortal danger our country is facing due to our "failing schools" which are sapping our children of their educational potential and turning us into a second rate economic power, soon to be overwhelmed by international competition. When their audience has been sufficiently beaten down, when they've lost all hope that our system of public schooling can ever succeed, when they're ready to grasp at any solution offered up with sufficient evangelical zeal, the con men pull a bottle of magic potion off the back of the wagon and wave it in the air, guaranteeing it will cure all our educational ills. They recite the ingredients in their elixir: charter schools, vouchers, elimination of teacher tenure, elimination of teacher unions. And they promise, if the country drinks it, our educational ills will be cured.

The biggest problem with buying snake oil is, if you believe it will cure what ails you, you're likely to ignore treatments which can actually help. The con man's "magic elixir" won't make things any better, and over the long run, it could make things worse. That's the primary danger in buying the phony cure-all offered by the reform/privatization salesmen. It's not that charter schools and private schools are inherently worse than school district schools. They aren't. The vast majority of serious studies say there's little difference between the achievement of similar students in the three types of schools. The problem is, they're no better than what we already have. If we drink their reform/privatization potion and think it's going to make a difference, we'll end up running in place, going nowhere in terms of improving educational outcomes. Or worse, we'll end up dismantling the system of public education which, for all its flaws, is the best hope we have for educating our children.

And if we drink the reform/privatization snake oil, if we believe our schools can make children from poor families achieve at the same level as children from well off families, we'll ignore the fundamental truth that poverty and poor educational achievement are inextricably linked. We'll forget that if we address the root causes of poverty — even if we can lessen the adverse impacts of poverty on children — we'll raise student achievement whether or not we improve our schools. And if we work on making our schools better at the same time, we'll achieve a multiplier effect. We won't work the miracles the snake oil salesmen promise, but we're far more likely to see genuine improvement in student achievement, especially from the lowest achieving students who live in the greatest poverty.

Rule of thumb: If you want to dismantle a great American tradition like public education, you must first discredit it. You must discredit the teachers in those schools in order to be able to turn their jobs into temp type positions....getting rid of those with higher pay and hiring new ones on the cheap.

The reformers with Arne's blessing are doing a good job of it I fear.

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[daleanime]

1. K&R....

[emsimon33]

2. There are many reasons I am disappointed in Obama & Arne is high on the list!

[madfloridian]

3. So much harm is being done that it probably can't be fixed.

[liberal_at_heart]

4. what is America going to look like with no public school system?

How in the world do you have an economy with no public school system? Consumers make up 2/3 of the economy for heaven sake. No education. No job. No money to spend. Where does that leave our economy? Where does that leave our people? Where does that leave our children? I just don't understand the people who want this.

[madfloridian]

5. Neither do I.

I don't understand either.

[haele]

9. They live in their bubble and don't think beyond it.

The problem is with people in power making decisions for everyone who are making decisions that benefit themselves and their friends in the short term.

Most of these people got to their position because they were lucky enough to be born in a situation where they could leverage access to other people in power to be where they are. The lucky few who were able to "work their way up" tend to either forget all of what it took for them to get there or didn't realize what was going on. So for them, it's easy - they either were born on third base and thought they hit a home run, or they were lucky and and were the one in 500 or more that got picked up by a world-class team - that had one opening.
Of course, it appears that they were smarter or better or worked harder than everyone else - when in reality, it was not a situation where just talent or ability that got them there, but that they lucked out because that one manager "liked" the look of them and the way they talked.

It's all a game to them. They're like posturing children. They live in their own small world and that's the universe to them. They aren't smarter, or harder working, or better than anyone else, but you just can't tell people who live in that comfortable, familiar bubble made of money that there's a whole, huge tangible world outside the associations and habits they bought that has far more to do with their comfort level than the environs of their bubble.

When all else is gone, niether money or title can feed you. Without the resources and infrustructure available to support it, the nicest mansion is a hell to maintain. When an economy collapses because there's too many people fighting for resources, money holds less and less value than tangibles like access to food or shelter or warmth. When an economy collapses, all the virtual finances in the world disappear. We lost trillions of "dollars" when the housing bubble collapsed because of all the the unrealized "market value" went away - poof. Eventually, that hurts even the wealthiest idiot that has no skill other than to shuffle numbers around to pretend to be making money off.
What do you pay the mercenaries to protect you or enforce your will if you don't have possession of actual items with value other than as a gadget that needs electricity or something else to operate? Or if you don't have a skill other than making money on a computer or a ledger book?

But "powerful" people with wealth that wasn't made by producing a tangible good or service don't see that. Because they were given their power or wealth either directly or through networking, it seems to them that as it was easy for them, the hard work most other people do to make their way through the world is not "real work", and has less moral value than theirs because the result was conceptually due to a poor choice. Working people are lesser people, because....smart people don't have to work hard, good things will naturally just come to the smart and the "very serious" elite.
Calvin was a selfish idiot who is probably burning in a hell of his own making due to the corruption he pushed onto the holy book he purportedly believed in.

And sorry if it seems broad brush, but honestly, Arne Duncan and most of his ilk broad-brush people all the time. If we peons would just do what they planned, just be happy with our disposable position in the scheme of things, everything would turn out great...for them and their ideas.

Haele

[Starry Messenger]

6. k&r

[madfloridian]

7. Thanks, a last kick from way back on page 4.

So much interest.

[greatlaurel]

8. Very important post!

Thanks for the information. The idiocy that spews from the Bushes and Arne Duncan is monumental in how far wrong these people are. If they say it, you must start with the assumption that it is the opposite of what really works in education.

It just goes to show how bad journalism is these days, not one reporter bothers to actually do an internet search and bother to read real research that shows what really works. Let's start with small class sizes and see where we are in 5 years. Poor kids' education would be revolutionized without enriching the corporate tax suckers.