Educators Push Back Against Obama’s "Business Model" for Schools (Deprofessionalizing teaching)

[EFerrari]

Educators Push Back Against Obama’s "Business Model" for School Reforms
Democracy Now! / Juan Gonzalez

It’s back-to-school season. As millions of children around the country begin a new school year, the Obama administration is aggressively moving forward on a number of education initiatives, from expanding charter schools to implementing new national academic standards. We talk to Karen Lewis, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, and Lois Weiner, a professor of education at New Jersey City University.

Some highlights:


LOIS WEINER: Absolutely. And I think it’s important to understand that Race to the Top is not unique to the United States, and what Arne Duncan did in Chicago is not unique to Chicago. And in fact, the contours of this program were carried out first under Pinochet in Chile. And this program was implemented by force of military dictatorships and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Latin America. And the results have been verified by researchers there. They produced increased stratification. So I think what we’re seeing right now are the results of that increased stratification, a stratification, inequality of results, because if you think about it, No Child Left Behind is almost a decade old. And what are the results? The results are a growing gap between poor minority—achievement of poor minority kids and those kids who come from prosperous families who are—who live in affluent suburbs and in those suburban schools.

snip

JUAN GONZALEZ: You’ve also taken a look at the impact of No Child Left Behind on teachers. Could you talk about that?

LOIS WEINER: Well, I think it’s important to understand that there are—No Child Left Behind is part of this global project to deprofessionalize teaching as an occupation. And the reason that it’s important in this project to deprofessionalize teaching is that the thinking is that the biggest expenditure in education is teacher salaries. And they want to cut costs. They want to diminish the amount of money that’s put into public education. And that means they have to lower teacher costs. And in order to do that, they have to deprofessionalize teaching. They have to make it a revolving door, in which we’re not going to pay teachers very much. They’re not going to stay very long. We’re going to credential them really fast. They’re going to go in. We’re going to burn them up. They’re going to leave in three, four, five years. And that’s the model that they want.

snip

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, you know, one of the—I’ve been, for several years now, looking deeply into these charter schools, and especially their tax forms. And one of the things that has struck me as I look at their various audited financial statements is that, generally speaking, the pay levels of the teachers in the charter schools are far lower than they are for normal public school teachers, but the pay of the executives at the charter schools is far higher.

snip

JUAN GONZALEZ: Let me ask you also about the intervention of other elite forces on this education reform debate—

LOIS WEINER: Right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —the right-wing foundations, the Walton Foundation, the Eli Broad Foundation, as well as all of the hedge fund and Wall Street people that have gotten involved in funding schools and creating charter networks. What do you analyze is behind this?

LOIS WEINER: Well, I mean, their effect has been, really, all-encompassing and quite pernicious. And we have a great deal of research about what’s going on with this, if we want to take a look at it. It’s never—it’s never mentioned in the popular media, in the corporate mass media. And they are controlling the education agenda. They are controlling these new core curriculum standards. And if people really looked at these core curriculum standards, I think they would be aghast. You know, vocationalization of the curriculum is beginning in first grade. They’re doing career education in first grade, if you look at these standards. What is that about? That we’re preparing kids for the workforce when they’re in first grade? And the foundations, the right-wing foundations, including the Gates Foundation, they are absolutely driving this. They’re funding it. They’re funding the media campaign to persuade people that this is necessary.

More, video, transcript at link.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/3/educators_push_back_against_obamas_business