Category Archives: Education Reform

Results don’t matter in Obama’s “Race to the Top”

Posted on June 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

The New York Times reports today on Montgomery County (MD) Schools’ highly regarded teacher evaluation system. The district’s Peer Assistance and Review program is not acceptable under Obama’s “Race to the Top” plan, because it does not make student test scores the key factor in teacher evaluation.

The program uses several hundred senior teachers to mentor both newcomers and struggling veterans. If the mentoring doesn’t work, the PAR panel — made up of eight teachers and eight principals — can vote to fire the teacher. And PAR has resulted in 500 teachers leaving their jobs over the past 11 years.

Despite a successful professional development approach to teacher evaluation as well as evidence of student learning success in the district, the program will be ditched for a new statewide scheme, which is not yet developed, but meets the Obama’s demand that all aspects of schools be marketized.

Unfortunately, federal dollars from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program are not going where Dr. Weast [Montgomery County Superintendent] and the PAR program need to go. Montgomery County schools were entitled to $12 million from Race to the Top, but Dr. Weast said he would not take the money because the grant required districts to include students’ state test results as a measure of teacher quality. “We don’t believe the tests are reliable,” he said. “You don’t want to turn your system into a test factory.”

Race to the Top aims to spur student growth by improving teacher quality, which is exactly what Montgomery County is doing. Sad to say, the district is getting the right results the wrong way [i.e., not the neoliberal way, linking test scores to teacher evaluation to federal bribes].

It does not seem to matter that 84 percent of Montgomery County students go on to college and that 63 percent earn degrees there — the very variables that President Obama has said should be the true measure of academic success. It does not seem to matter that 2.5 percent of all black children in America who pass an Advanced Placement test live in Montgomery County, more than five times its share of the nation’s black population.

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Posted in Education Reform, Social Studies, Testing

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The Rouge Forum 2011: Call for Papers

Posted on February 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

The Rouge Forum 2011: Call for Papers

Education and the State: A Critical Antidote to the Commercialized, Racist, and Militaristic Social Order

The Rouge Forum 2011 will be held at Lewis University. The University’s main campus is located in Romeoville, IL, which is 30 minutes southwest of Chicago, IL. The conference will be held May 19-22.

Proposals for papers, panels, performances, workshops, and other multimedia presentations should include title(s) and names and contact information for presenter(s). The deadline for sending proposals is March 22. The Steering Committee will email acceptance or rejection notices by April 1. The proposal formats available to the presenters are as follows:

Bringing together academic presentations and performances (from some of the most prominent voices for democratic, critical, and/or revolutionary pedagogy), panel discussions, community-building, and cultural events, this action-oriented conference will center on questions such as:

  • Transforming the notion of “saving public education” to one of creating education in the public interest, what does teaching and learning for a democratic society look like?
  • How do we educate the public and our youth to understand the implications of “saving public education” through corporate and militaristic practices, such as standardized examinations, zero-tolerance policies, charter schools, and corporate donations?
  • How will educational initiatives supported by the Obama Administration and many other politicians impact teachers, students, and communities across the US?
  • What does education for liberation look like compared to the more socially reproductive/dominating education we see in many of our nation’s schools?
  • What debts will future generations, including the students we may teach, carry because our financial, governmental, and military endeavors have not been concerned with public goods?

SUBMISSIONS
Proposal Formats

Individual Proposal: (45 minutes)
The Rouge Forum welcomes individual paper proposals, with the understanding that those accepted will be grouped together around common or overlapping themes, Presenters will have approximately 45 minutes to present or summarize their individual papers. Individual paper submissions will be considered for panels with the same topic/theme. If you would prefer to present your paper/research individually you should consider the alternative format proposal. A 300-500 word abstract of the paper will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Symposium Proposal: (90 minutes)
Presenters are also welcomed to submit proposals for a symposium. A symposium is typically composed of a chair and discussant and three to five participants who present or summarize their papers. Each symposium is organized around a common theme. Each participant will have between 15 and 45 minutes to present their papers, depending upon the number of participants involved in the symposium. A 300-500 word abstract of the symposium will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Panel Proposal: (90 minutes)
A panel discussion is another venue available presenters. A panel discussion is typically composed of three to six participants who discuss their scholarly work within the context of a dialogue or conversation on a topic or theme related to the conference theme. Typically, each panelist is given 10-15 minutes to discuss the topic, present theoretical ideas, and/or point to relevant research. A chair should be identified who introduces the panel and frames the issues and questions being addressed. In addition to the chair, we encourage (but do not require) organizers of panels to include a discussant who responds to the comments of the panelists. Individual proposal submissions will be combined into panels with the same theme/topic. A 300-500 word abstract of the panel discussion will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Alternative Format and Special Interest Groups (90 minutes)
Alternative proposals that do not fit into the above categories, such as workshops, performances, video and multimedia presentations, and round-table dialogues, are encouraged. We also welcome proposals for the organization of special interest groups. A 150-250 word abstract of the panel discussion will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Email proposals to conference coordinator Brad Porfilio porfilio16@aol.com, by March 22, 2011.

Additional information on Rouge Forum 2011 is available at rougeforumconference.org

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Posted in Democracy, Economy, Education Reform, Education theory & research, Labor, Rouge Forum Update, Social Studies, Testing, The Corporate University

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New issue of Critical Education: “Why the Standards Movement Failed: An Educational and Political Diagnosis of Its Failure and the Implications for School Reform”

Posted on January 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

Part 2 of Larry Stedman’s analysis of the failure of the standards movement, just published by Critical Education.

Why the Standards Movement Failed: An Educational and Political Diagnosis of Its Failure and the Implications for School Reform
Lawrence C. Stedman

Abstract

In the first paper, “How Well Does the Standards Movement Measure Up?,” I documented the movement’s failure in diverse areas—academic achievement, equality of opportunity, quality of learning, and graduation rates—and described its harmful effects on students and school culture.

In this paper, I diagnose the reasons for the failure and propose an alternative agenda for school reform. I link the failure of the standards movement to its faulty premises, historical myopia, and embrace of test-driven accountability. As part of the audit culture and the conservative restoration, the movement ended up pushing a data-driven, authoritarian form of schooling. Its advocates blamed educational problems on a retreat from standards, for which there was little evidence, while ignoring the long-standing, deep structure of schooling that had caused persistent achievement problems throughout the 20th century. Drawing on reproduction theories and analyses of the neoliberal reform project, I make the case for repealing NCLB and Race to the Top and outline a progressive framework for reconstructing schools.

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Posted in Education Reform, Education theory & research, Social Studies, Testing

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Critical Education: How Well Does the Standards Movement Measure Up?

Posted on December 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

Critical Education has just published its latest issue—the first of a two part examination of No Child Left Behind policies and the standards movement by Lawrence C. Stedman.

We invite you visit our web site to review this and other articles and items of interest.

Critical Education
Vol 1, No 10 (2010)
Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/21

Articles
——–
How Well Does the Standards Movement Measure Up? An Analysis of
Achievement Trends, Academic Course-taking, Student Learning, NCLB, and
Changes in School Culture and Graduation Rates
Lawrence C. Stedman

Abstract

This is the first of two papers examining the standards movement. In it, I review data from NAEP, the SAT, the international assessments, transcript studies, and NCLB assessments, as well as surveys and case studies of changes in curriculum and pedagogy. The picture is a bleak one. Over the past quarter century, achievement has stagnated, dropouts and aliteracy have grown, and large minority achievement gaps have persisted. The quality of student learning remains poor. School changes, stratified by class and race, have constricted instruction and harmed students and teachers. NCLB has made things worse, not better. Even in the two areas where the movement has achieved some success—lower grade math achievement and high school academic enrollments—the gains were largely superficial, other forces such as teaching-to-the-test and social promotion contributed, and serious deficiencies remain.

In the second paper, “Why the Standards Movement Failed,” I examine the educational and political reasons for the failure—including its misconstruction of pedagogy and links to the neoliberal reform project—and propose a progressive alternative.

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Posted in Education Reform, Education theory & research, Testing

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Update to issue 17 of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Posted on December 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

The current issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor has been updated with two new field reports.

Issue No. 17 of Workplace “Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions” is guest edited by Howard Stevenson of Lincoln University (UK).

The new field reports include:

The NEA Representative Assembly of 2010: A Longer View of Crisis and Consciousness
Rich Gibson

Abstract
Following the 2009 National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly (RA) in San Diego, new NEA president Dennis Van Roekel was hugging Arne Duncan, fawning over new President Obama, and hustling the slogan, “Hope Starts Here!” At the very close of the 2009 RA, delegates were treated to a video of themselves chanting, “Hope starts Here!” and “Hope Starts with Obama and Duncan!” The NEA poured untold millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours, into the Obama campaign. In 2009, Van Roekel promised to tighten NEA-Obama ties, despite the President’s educational policies and investment in war. What happened in the year’s interim? What was the social context of the 2010 RA?

Resisting the Common-nonsense of Neoliberalism: A Report from British Columbia
E. Wayne Ross

Abstract
Faced with a $16 million budget shortfall, the Vancouver school trustees, who have a mandate to meet the needs of their students, have lobbied for more provincial funding to avoid draconian service cuts. The government has refused the request, and its special advisor to the Vancouver School Board criticizes trustees for engaging in “advocacy” rather than making “cost containment” first priority. The clash between Vancouver trustees and the ministry of education is not “just politics.” Rather, education policy in BC reflects the key features of neoliberal globalization, not the least of which is the principle that more and more of our collective wealth is devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs. British Columbia is home to one of the most politically successful neoliberal governments in the world, but fortunately it is also a place to look for models of mass resistance to the neoliberal agenda. One of the most important examples of resistance to the common-nonsense of neoliberalism in the past decade is the British Columbia teachers’ 2005 strike, which united student, parent, and educator interests in resisting the neoliberal onslaught on education in the public interest.

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Posted in Education Reform, Labor, Miscellaneous, Social Studies

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Public education’s No. 1 enemy—capitalism

Posted on November 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

In a Z-Net commentary published yesterday, Boris Kagarlitsky describes what he sees as some of the problems with current education policy in Russia, including:

  • forcing university-bound students to take unified state exams against the strong objections of educators, students and parents;
  • removing class size limits in public schools (currently set at about 25 students/class);
  • mass school closures.

What’s interesting here are the parallels among Russian, US, and Canadian educational “deforms”.

Kagarlitsky’s analysis of the Russian education reform scene is, unfortunately, short-sighted. For Kagarlitsky, these policies can be explained by pointing to incompetent government officials (particularly Andrei Fursenko) and others, who are fearful of an educated public, when, in fact, these policies result from application of the principle that public education serves corporate/capital interests, rather than public interests.

Kagarlitsky points out that Fursenko’s policies reflect “a systematic campaign aimed at downsizing public education as if it were a noncore, unprofitable business sector within a large company” seemingly missing the point that this is exactly how public education is being managed by the executive committees of the rich (governments) world-wide.

See two recent examples of how the corporate interest principle works in the USA and Canada (there are many, many more):

As Larry Stedman concludes, in a forthcoming two-article series examining standards-based education reform for the journal Critical Education,

…the changes we have seen in schooling and school culture were not only unavoidable, but were also the desired ones. What many of us perceive as a failure is, in fact, a success in managerial terms. A proficiency-driven, command-and-control, authoritarian type of schooling was, in fact, the goal of the reforms and serves capital’s interests well.

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“Youth-Led Organizations, the Arts, and the 411 Initiative for Change in Canada: Critical Pedagogy for the 21st Century”

Posted on November 23, 2010 | Leave a comment

Critical Education has just published its latest issue:

“Youth-Led Organizations, the Arts, and the 411 Initiative for Change in Canada: Critical Pedagogy for the 21st Century”
Brad J. Porfilio, Michael Watz

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to document a group of Canadian youth activists’ and artists’ perceptions and experiences with developing and sustaining an arts-based educational initiative that “undertakes public education and the promotion of civic participation of young people on social issues that frame their development within their communities.” Through the youth activists’ and artists’ narratives, we highlight the youths’ motivation to establish this organization, the methods they use to engage their audience in social commentary and activism, how they confront and overcome barriers in schools when implementing their pedagogical initiatives, and the challenges they face in keeping their project intellectually vibrant and culturally relevant to youth. Moreover, we argue that critical pedagogues must take seriously the cultural work proffered by youth-led social justice initiatives if critical pedagogy is to remain relevant in promoting equity and social justice in schools and in society.

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Posted in Democracy, Education Reform, Education theory & research, Social Studies

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Education for Dangerous Citizenship—powerpoint slides

Posted on November 19, 2010 | 2 Comments

I had a great time at the University of Texas, San Antonio this week, where I gave a talk as part of the Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Distinguished Lecture Series.

The talk, titled “Education for Dangerous Citizenship”, drew from some of my recent work with Rich Gibson (e.g., “The Education Agenda is a War Agenda” and “No Child Left Behind and the Imperial Project”) and Kevin D. Vinson (“The Concrete Inversion of Life””: Guy Debord, the Spectacle, and Critical Social Studies Education” [pdf]). The talk covered some of the foundational ideas for a book Kevin and I are currently writing titled Dangerous Citizenship: A Theory and Practice of Contemporary Critical Pedagogy.

Thanks again to my colleague Abraham Deleon, who put things together at UTSA, and to the faculty and graduate students who participated in the seminar and came out for the lecture.

Powerpoint slides from the talk can be downloaded here.

The blurb can be found here.

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Posted in Democracy, Economy, Education Reform, Social Studies

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Chomsky on Dewey

Posted on October 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

Here’s a very brief clip that gets to the heart of John Dewey’s thought on schools and society.

YouTube Preview Image

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Posted in Education Reform, Education theory & research

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Education as Enforcement

Posted on October 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

Routledge has just published the second edition of Education as Enforcement: The Militarization and Corporatization of Schools, edited by Kenneth J. Saltman and David A. Gabbard.

I’m pleased to have contributed co-authored chapters to both editions (with Kevin D. Vinson and John F. Welsh for the second edition).

The first volume to focus on the intersections of militarization, corporations, and education, Education as Enforcement exposed the many ways schooling has become the means through which the expansion of global corporate power are enforced. Since publication of the first edition, these trends have increased to disturbing levels as a result of the extensive militarization of civil society, the implosion of the neoconservative movement, and the financial meltdown that radically called into question the basic assumptions undergirding neoliberal ideology. An understanding of the enforcement of these corporate economic imperatives remains imperative to a critical discussion of related militarized trends in schools, whether through accountability and standards, school security, or other discipline based reforms.

Education as Enforcement, Second Edition elaborates upon the central arguments of the first edition and updates readers on how recent events have reinforced their continued original relevance. In addition to substantive updates to several original chapters, this second edition includes a new foreword by Henry Giroux, a new introduction, and four new chapters that reveal the most contemporary expressions of the militarization and corporatization of education. New topics covered in this collection include zero-tolerance, foreign and second language instruction in the post-9/11 context, the rise of single-sex classrooms, and the intersection of the militarization and corporatization of schools under the Obama administration.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Governing Through Crime and the Pedagogy of Punishment, HENRY A. GIROUX

Introduction to the Second Edition, Kenneth J. Saltman & David A. Gabbard

Introduction to the First Edition, Kenneth J. Saltman

1. The Function of Schools: Subtler and Cruder Methods of Control, NOAM CHOMSKY

2. Rivers of Fire: BPAmaco’s impact on Education, KENNETH J. SALTMAN and ROBIN TRUTH GOODMAN

3. Education IS Enforcement: The Centrality of Compulsory Schooling in Market Societies, DAVID A. GABBARD

4. Cracking Down: Chicago School Policy and the Regulation of Black and Latino Youth, PAULINE LIPMAN

5. Facing Oppression: Youth Voices from the Front, PEPI LEISTYNA

6. Tased and Confused: From Social Exclusion to Shock in the War on Youth, CHRISTOPHER G. ROBBINS

7. Freedom for Some, Discipline for “Others”: The Structure of Inequity in Education, ENORA R. BROWN

8. Forceful Hegemony: A Warning and a Solution for Indian Country, FOUR ARROWS

9. From Abstraction and Militarization of Language Education to Society for Language Education: Lessons from Daisaku Ikeda and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, JASON GOULAH

10. The Proliferation of JROTC: Educational Reform or Militarization, MARVIN J. BERLOWITZ and NATHAN A. LONG

11. Combat Girls: What Single-Sex Classrooms Have To Do With the Militarization of Women’s Bodies, ROBIN TRUTH GOODMAN

12. Education for War in Israel: Preparing Children to Accept War as a Natural Factor of Life, HAGGITH GOR

13. Post-Columbine Reflections on Youth Violence as a (Trans)National Movement, JULIE WEBBER

14. Imprisoning Minds: The Violence of Neoliberal Education or “I Am Not For Sale”, SHEILA LANDERS MACRINE

15. Taking Command: The Pathology of Identity and Agency in Predatory Culture, RON SCAPP

16. Commentary on the Rhetoric of Reform: A Twenty Year Retrospective, SANDRA JACKSON

17. Securing the Corporate State: Education, Economism, and Crisis in the Age of Obama, ALEX MEANS

18. Controlling Images: Surveillance, Spectacle, and High-Stakes Testing as Social Control, KEVIN D. VINSON, E. WAYNE ROSS, and JOHN F. WELSH

19. The Politics of Compulsory Patriotism: On the Educational Meanings of September 11, MICHAEL APPLE

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