It’s no secret that the Right wants to dismantle public education and replace it with a for-profit, private education system. They may not all admit that’s the plan, but the plan is too obvious to ignore.
At Salon, Aaron Kase writes about what the governor of Pennsylvania is doing to his state’s schools.
On Thursday the city of Philadelphia announced that it would be borrowing $50 million to give the district, just so it can open schools as planned on Sept. 9, after Superintendent William Hite threatened to keep the doors closed without a cash infusion. The schools may open without counselors, administrative staff, noon aids, nurses, librarians or even pens and paper, but hey, kids will have a place to go and sit.
The $50 million fix is just the latest band-aid for a district that is beginning to resemble a rotting bike tube, covered in old patches applied to keep it functioning just a little while longer. At some point, the entire system fails.
Things have gotten so bad that at least one school has asked parents to chip in $613 per student just so they can open with adequate services, which, if it becomes the norm, effectively defeats the purpose of equitable public education, and is entirely unreasonable to expect from the city’s poorer neighborhoods.
The needs of children are secondary, however, to a right-wing governor in Tom Corbett who remains fixated on breaking the district in order to crush the teachers union and divert money to unproven experiments like vouchers and privately run charters. If the city’s children are left uneducated and impoverished among the smoldering wreckage of a broken school system, so be it.
Do read the whole thing; it’s mind boggling. And, obviously, this boils down to (a) busting unions and (b) turning education over to profit-seeking interests. But there’s another reason, too.
Do read Bill Keller’s op ed, “War on the Core.” It’s about the right-wing backlash to the Core Curriculum.
The backlash began with a few of the usual right-wing suspects. Glenn Beck warned that under “this insidious menace to our children and to our families†students would be “indoctrinated with extreme leftist ideology.â€
(Beck also appears to believe that the plan calls for children to be fitted with bio-wristbands and little cameras so they can be monitored at all times for corporate exploitation.)
Beck’s soul mate Michelle Malkin warned that the Common Core was “about top-down control engineered through government-administered tests and left-wing textbook monopolies.†Before long, FreedomWorks — the love child of Koch brothers cash and Tea Party passion — and the American Principles Project, a religious-right lobby, had joined the cause. Opponents have mobilized Tea Partyers to barnstorm in state capitals and boiled this complex issue down to an obvious slogan, “ObamaCore!â€
(As I understand it, the Core was agreed upon by a consortium of educators in several states. Work began during the Bush administration. The Core does not prescribe what children are taught. Instead, it sets standards for what children ought to know, but leaves it to the states to decide how to get there. For example, it might say that third graders ought to be able to read a story and describe the characters, but it does not dictate what stories the children are supposed to read.)
Weighing in on Keller’s column, Paul Krugman says ,
Now, you might argue that the leaders are catering to their base. Brad DeLong likes to remind us of John Stuart Mill’s dictum:
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
Even that, however, doesn’t get you all the way there, because there are many things one could pretend to be stupid about, so you need to have some notion of why certain subjects become the subject of dumb conspiracy theories, while others don’t. And I think that the best model is, as I said the other day, the Corey Robin notion that it’s about preserving hierarchy. The idea of a common core disturbs a lot of people on the right not because they fear that it will lead to left-wing indoctrination — it’s far too bland for that — but because it could get in the way of right-wing indoctrination, which is what they believe schools should be doing.
And Corey Robin says,
After decades of “compassionate conservatism,” “a thousand points of light,” and “Morning in America,” dark talk of class warfare on the right can seem like a strange throwback. So accustomed are we to the sunny Reagan and the populist Tea Party that we’ve forgotten a basic truth about conservatism: It is a reaction to democratic movements from below, movements like Occupy Wall Street that threaten to reorder society from the bottom up, redistributing power and resources from those who have much to those who have not so much. With the roar against the ruling classes growing ever louder, the right seems to be reverting to type.
Do read all of Corey Robin, too. The article explains a lot.
Conservatives are stupid – all the way down to their core.
PA’s Governor doesn’t have any problem spending 100’s of millions of dollars on building new prisons, but no money for the education of Philadelphia’s children.
Some might actually call that pretty smart planning.
I call what they’re doing, sociopathic child-abuse.
This hits me exceptionally hard, because the father of one of my very best friends was the Chancellor of Philadelphia’s schools, back in the 80’s. He had moved up, from teacher, to Principal, to be the head of the school system. And he was very much beloved, because he put the children’s education, first, last, and everywhere in between.
He passed away 10 years ago. And as much as I miss him, I’m glad he didn’t live to see this shame – SHAME!
SHAME!!
SHAME!!!
Conservatives aren’t even trying to pretend anymore.
From that sociopathic TN Congressman, who told an 11 year-old girl (who was born here) that the law states that her immigrant father should be deported (without even an empathetic nod, or statement), to what they’re trying to do to minority voting rights, to closing down women’s health care facilities – many of which have nothing to do with providing abortions – their freak-flags are unfurled, and they’re completely unafraid of waving them in everyone’s faces.
FSM forbid, that they regain power until this sociopathic madness, the kind of violent insanity that used to result in people whose brains were damaged by syphilis being locked up, passes – if it ever does. – none of the rest of us, are safe.
They will gladly, willingly, even gleefully, look forward to President Cruz, or Paul, or Christie, making Liberalism illegal, and putting all Democrats and Liberals, into Concentration Camps.
Yes, I fear that they are THAT insane!!!
I hope this lashing out at everyone whose not part of their rancid group, are the death throes of vile Conservatism.
I, for one, can hardly wait to hear their death-rattles.
I’ve read a little on both sides about Core curriculum. Apart from
The idea of a common core disturbs a lot of people on the right not because they fear that it will lead to left-wing indoctrination — it’s far too bland for that — but because it could get in the way of right-wing indoctrination, which is what they believe schools should be doing.
– which I think is the unstated, bulls-eye reason the right hates it – it is unproven, and requires school districts to buy a lot of computer equipment. From what I remember, a lot of the material is presented through computers or at the very least, kids are scored this way. My suspicions are raised whenever Bill and Melinda Gates’ foundation is behind it, despite the good things they’ve done elsewhere in the world. Windows Uber Alles.
Any teacher who’s been on the job for more than a few years will tell you about educational fads that have come and gone, often with disastrous results. And so their concerns about the Core being unproven are well founded. As a (former) IT person, I’m very suspicious of anything that requires a massive purchase of computer equipment, which will have a high chance of being abandoned or obsolete within a few years.
moonbat — are you sure you’re thinking of the same program? I’ve been all over the Common Core website and it doesn’t say anything about computers. It’s left to the states to decide what resources they want to use and develop as teaching aids.
I haven’t looked at their website; most of what I wrote came from comments in articles that appeared in the LAT a couple months ago. Probably this one, or this one, or this couple of letters here. Some of the comments (you’ll have to filter out the usual right wing hysterics) touch on some of the stuff I wrote here.
I’m reminded of the Simpsons episode where the Table of Elements, provided by Oscar Mayer, includes the element “bolonium.”
What was good enough for the schoolboy Glenn Beck, I suppose….
I could have broken something this morning when Diane Reehm interviewed a woman who studied how foreign countries, from Iceland to Korea, are making vigorous efforts to improve their schools. In contrast, part of “our” governors election platform was how he was going to destroy education in the state (NC). No program or change in pedagogy will help when the stated goal is to break the system.
The NCGA:
Cut the budget
Cut teacher tenure
Cut extra pay for teachers with advanced degrees
(Great incentives to get people into a low-paying profession, eh?)
Additionally,
For-profit charter approval was streamlined
Charter teachers do not need even a bachelor’s degree (I kid you not)
Those are just the key points. I won’t tslk about the Wake County school board of a few years back that got national attention by trying to resegregate ( by means of manipulating bus routes). Or the part that 7th graders will be taught that abortions can cause premature births later on. Which means teachers will have to stand up and explain to the kids immediately thereafter that their esteemed state government requires teachers to tell them bald-faced lies.
Teaching kids how to think for themselves is also something the right doesn’t want American children to learn. That is what I learned from my education in the 1950s. I graduated in 1963. My parents were never liberal giants as I spent most of my life outside of school in church; but, they always told all of us (4) to get our education and to learn to think for ourselves. We didn’t have the internet; but, I learned early in life that I could find the answer to any question if I just looked for it, whether in the encyclopedia, a book in the library, a magazine, newspaper, etc. Today, I consider myself an egalitarian; but, I do not shrink from the liberal tag going as far as being a bleeding heart liberal and proud of it.
I pulled out a Property Tax Statement. I consider myself middle income, we own a modest home. The taxes we pay for schools – this includes State and Local is a total of… drum roll… $372 per year. If my school taxes increased by 30% it would be a jump of ten bucks a month. And the potential benefit to society of an educated population can’t be computed in a cash amount. Reducing the tax burden by the same ten bucks condemns our children (most of them) to ignorance. There is no financial justification for starving public schools of revenue.
The rubes may be stupid, but the plan is not. For private schools to be able to justify feeding at the public trough, they have to be able to claim that they are vastly superior to public schools. The problem is – there is no objective proof to justify a claim that they absolutely MUST to be able to spin into a populist myth. What’s worse is that Common Core standards and objective testing will reveal just how inadequate many of the schools are – and the religious schools who really want to pour on the Bible studies may be at the bottom of the heap – which will murder the excuse that ultra-conservative christian schools are better.
Setting the stage for Nehemiah Scudder. (extra points for those who recognize the character)
Tom_B and I share front-row seats here in NC to observe the Koch-inspired attempted destruction of the schools via defunding, demoralizing, and unenrolling via charter school fakery. It is a sad mess. The hotly-reported new voter ID laws are just the surface. The rest of the election “reform” package includes allowing more donations in larger amounts during non-report periods. You can donate a large chunk of cash with no reporting, then during a reporting period, donate an equal amount, proving that you can indeed purchase an NC election, no receipt required. It is along the lines of BOGO sales: buy one, get one free!
@Bill Bush: the list goes on. They made judicial elections partisan instead of non- party, so the Koch’s can funnel $$$ into neutering the judiciary more easily. My state senator quit yesterday, because, with a GOP supermajority, she thought voter mobilization was likely to be more effective than casting “nay” votes on the floor all day.
OT – the great Elmore Leonard just died, at the age of 87:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/20/showbiz/elmore-leonard-obit/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
I’m a late convert to him.
To me, he was like the literary equivalent of Bruce Springsteen, whom I didn’t like way back when because he was too popular – but now realize is one of the greatest of all time!
R.I.P. Elmore Leonard.
I’m glad I finally realized how great and funny a writer you’d been all along!
On the question of whether Common Core has anything to do with computers, yes it does. See the CCSS Official Identifiers and XML Representation page. So at one level Common Core is basically a common data structure that you could use to compare, for instance, a student’s high school transcripts to a college’s entrance requirements.
So there would be an IT aspect in the implementation of the standards, but there are two things that might mitigate the concerns moonbat raises. First, as to the cost, now that we’re in the age of cloud computing school districts can set up virtual servers at no initial cost. You do have to pay for usage, but cloud servers bring costs down dramatically. (Of course cloud computing means someone like Amazon or Microsoft, so you’re not getting away from the big companies there.)
And the other thing is that adoption of the standards would basically mean a district converting its curriculum to a data set that follows the structure defined by the standards. Once the curriculum is converted to so much data, it’s relatively easy to convert it to a different structure if the standards are changed or dropped or whatever. So the fact that you’ve got a consistent and widely shared data structure is more important than what the particular structure is.
(As you might have guessed by now, this is more or less the field I work in. XML is kind of the lingua franca of the internet, so I’ve been working on converting the documentation that I maintain to XML.)
Here’s an up and coming Repug/ bagger type. They aught to require him to read Atlas Shrugged..That might slow him up a little. I tell ya..I can spot them when they start to sprout!
http://www.today.com/books/librarian-wants-ban-5-time-reading-champ-contest-6C10960198
The CC really isn’t ant different from other standard based education that doesn’t want to specifically say what kids should know and do. They are generally so vague that you could drive a truck though the loop-holes, like our tax system. So they don’t really force any teacher to do anything too different except maybe use a different language. And if you’re a teacher who’s worth anything you’re probably already doing much of it anyway. And honestly if you’re not, there probably isn’t a whole lot of consequences for not doing it anyway. It’s kind of interesting, we have a French family that we kind of do the exchange thing with our kids (my daughter is in France now and I am hosting the two brothers, currently), but the amount of stuff that kids have to know in French schools is astounding. My own son, who is considered a very good student here, doesn’t do nearly as much as his French friend does. The main difference is that the responsibility lies with the kid in the French system, and in the American system the responsibility lies with the teacher. All of the reforms, and common core is just the next example in a long list of them, are just ways to make sure teachers are working hard. They’re just ways to make sure that teachers are earning those tax payer dollars that pay for their salaries. And as long as that continues to be the emphasis, our schools will continue as they are.