Where The Blog Has No Name

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.

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.

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.

Critical Education has just published its latest issue, which includes a new contribution to the CE article series “The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research”.

We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review articles and items of interest.

Critical Education
Vol 1, No 8 (2010)
Table of Contents

Articles
——–
Animals on Display: The Zoocurriculum of Museum Exhibits
Helena Pedersen

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

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled. We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review articles and items of interest.

This issue launches the Critical Education article series “A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation”, edited by Adam Renner and Doug Selwyn.

Thanks for the continuing interest in our work,

Sandra Mathison, Co-Editor
E. Wayne Ross, Co-Editor
Critical Education

Critical Education
Vol 1, No 7 (2010)
Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/18

Articles
——–
A Return to Educational Apartheid?
Adam Renner, Doug Selwyn

Abstract: Series co-editors Renner and Selwyn introduce a special series of articles focusing on the articulation of race, schools, and segregation. Each of the articles in this series will analyze the extent to which schooling may or may not be returning to a state of educational apartheid.

A Separate Education: The Segregation of American Students and Teachers
Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley

Abstract: Despite the obvious connection between the two, student and teacher segregation are rarely examined together. To help fill that gap, this essay explores what is known about the extent of interracial exposure for students and teachers in U.S. public schools. This article reviews evidence underscoring the paramount importance of school integration. A description of the legal landscape governing desegregation follows, as well as a discussion of why current patterns of racial isolation persist. The essay next describes the demographics and segregation of today’s students and teachers. In particular, the essay focuses on the growing segregation of students of color, the lingering isolation of white students, and the ways in which the overwhelmingly white teaching force reinforces patterns of student segregation. We close with a discussion of the implications of these trends.

New issue of Critical Education just published:

“Anthropocentrism’s Antidote: Reclaiming Our Indigenous Orientation to Non-human Teachers” by Don “Four Arrows” Jacobs, Jessica London Jacobs, and Sage Ryan.

This is the second article in the Critical Education series “The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research”.

The latest issue of New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry examines the corporatization of the university and resistance to it.

I’m pleased to be the co-author, along with John F. Welsh and Kevin D. Vinson, of one of the articles in the issue:

To Discipline and Enforce: Surveillance and Spectacle in State Reform of Higher Education
John F. Welsh, E. Wayne Ross, Kevin D. Vinson

Abstract

Drawing from concepts developed by the social theorists Michel Foucault and Guy Debord on the exertion of political power in contemporary society, this paper analyzes the restructuring of public higher education systems initiated by governors, legislatures and state higher education boards. The paper argues that the primary features of restructuring are (1) increased surveillance of the behaviors and attitudes of the constituents within colleges and universities by the state and (2) the spectacularization of reform by state governments. Surveillance and spectacle aim at the disciplining of individuals and enforcement of state policy and are forms of direct and ideological social control. They imply a transformation of relations between institutions and the state, particularly the subordination of the higher learning to state policy objectives.

Here’s the full table of contents:

New Proposals
Vol 3, No 2 (2010)
Universities, Corporatization and Resistance

Introduction
New Perspectives on the Business University
Sharon Roseman

Comments and Arguments
An analytical proposal for the understanding of the Higher Education European Space. A view from the University of Barcelona
Edurne Bagué, Núria Comerma, Ignasi Terradas

Resistance One-On-One: An Undergraduate Peer Tutor’s Perspective
Andrew J. Rihn

Articles
To Discipline and Enforce: Surveillance and Spectacle in State Reform of Higher Education
John F. Welsh, E. Wayne Ross, Kevin D. Vinson

Reviews and Reflections
Reflections on work and activism in the ‘university of excellence.’
Charles R. Menzies

Review of Peter Worsley, An Academic Skating on Thin Ice (Berghahn Books, 2008)
Sharon Roseman

The Exchange University: Corporatization of Academic Culture
Dianne West

A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation

A Critical Education Series

The editors of Critical Education are pleased to announce our second editorial series. This current series will focus on the articulation of race, schools, and segregation, and will analyze the extent to which schooling may or may not be returning to a state of educational apartheid.

On June 28, 2007, the Supreme Court of the US by a 5-4 margin voted to overturn Jefferson County’s four decade old desegregation plan. The Meredith case from Jefferson County was conjoined with the Parents Involved in Community Schools case from Seattle, WA, for which a group comprised primarily of white parents from two neighborhoods alleged some 200 students were not admitted to schools of their choice, based on “integration tie-breakers,” which prevented many from attending facilities nearest to their homes.

In Justice Roberts plurality opinion, he argued, “The parties and their amici debate which side is more faithful to the heritage of Brown [v. Board of Education, 1954] , but the position of the plaintiffs in Brown was spelled out in their brief and could not have been clearer: ‘The Fourteenth Amendment prevents states from according differential treatment to American children on the basis of their color or race’. What do racial classifications at issue here do, if not accord differential treatment on the basis of race?” And, later, “The way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.”

Aside from the fact that the plaintiff in the Louisville case ultimately won her appeal in the Jefferson County system, placing her white child into precisely the school she wanted based on her appeal to the district, demonstrating that the system worked, it is the goal of this series to investigate the extent to which Justice Roberts and the other concurring justices have taken steps to erode the civil rights of the racially marginalized in order to serve the interests of the dominant racial group. It took just a little over 50 years (of monumental effort) to get a case to the Supreme Court to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson. Now, has it taken just a little over 50 years to scale that decision back with the overturning of voluntary desegregation plans in Jefferson County and Seattle School District 1?

In 2003, with a different make-up, the Supreme Court foreshadowed this 2007 verdict by rendering a ‘split decision’ regarding the University of Michigan admission policies. In the Gratz v. Bollinger case, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the University of Michigan needed to modify their admission criteria, which assigned points based on race. However, in the Grutter v. Bollinger case, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to uphold the University of Michigan Law School’s ruling that race could be one of several factors when selecting students because it furthers “a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”

In Jonathan Kozol’s 2005 sobering profile of American education, Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, a lamenting follow-up to his earlier work, Savage Inequalities, he already began to illustrate the retrograde process many public school systems have undergone related to racial balance. His critique of these pre-Brown-like-segregation systems was balanced, ironically, by rather effusive praise of the Jefferson County system, which attempted to keep this balance in check. Does the 2007 decision remove this one shining example?

Though the course toward educational apartheid may not be pre-destined, what is the likelihood that the “path of least resistance” will lead toward racial separation? How does the lingering legacy of residential segregation complicate this issue? What connections can we draw to and/or how might further racial segregation exacerbate issues of poverty or unemployment? Further, where do race and class collide? And, where is a more distinct analysis necessary? Finally, what can we surmise about the ongoing achievement gap if, in fact, apartheid schooling is afoot?

Undoubtedly, at worst, this decision could prove to be a harbinger for the death of a waning democracy. Without a compelling public education that helps all our children become critical consumers and citizens, what kind of society might we imagine for ourselves? At best, though, this decision could marshal the sensibilities of a critical cadre of educators, social workers, health care workers, activists, attorneys, business leaders, etc. to stand in resistance to the injustice that is becoming our nation’s public school system.

In an LA Times opinion piece a few days before this 2007 decision, Edward Lazarus argued, “Although they may have disagreed about Brown’s parameters, most Americans coalesced around the decision as a national symbol for our belated rejection of racism and bigotry. Using Brown as a sword to outlaw affirmative action of any kind would destroy that worthy consensus and transform it into just another mirror reflecting a legal and political culture still deeply fractured over race.” As Allan Johnson (2006), in Privilege, Power, and Difference, claims, there can be no healing until the wounding stops. Likewise, paraphrasing Malcolm X’s provocation about so-called progress, he reminded us that although the knife in the back of African-Americans may once have been nine inches deep, that it has only been removed a few inches does not indicate progress. Will this decision plunge the knife further?

Series editors Adam Renner (from Louisville, KY) and Doug Selwyn (formerly of Seattle, WA) invite essays that treat any of the above questions and/or other questions that seek clarity regarding race, education, schooling, and social justice. We seek essays that explore the history of segregation, desegregation, and affirmative action in the US and abroad. While we certainly invite empirical/quantitative research regarding these issues, we also welcome more qualitative studies, as well as philosophical/theoretical work, which provide deep explorations of these phenomena. We especially invite narratives from parents or students who have front line experience of segregation and/or educational apartheid. Additionally, and importantly, we seek essays of resistance, which document the struggle for racial justice in particular locales and/or suggestions for how we might wrestle toward more equitable schooling for all children.

Please visit Critical Education for information on submitting manuscripts.

Also feel free to contact the series editors, Adam Renner (arenner@bellarmine.edu) or Doug Selwyn (dselw001@plattsburgh.edu) with any questions.

Call for Manuscripts: Special Section of Critical Education

The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research

Special Section Guest Editor:
Abraham P. DeLeon
University of Texas at San Antonio

Critical Education is seeking manuscripts that address the question of the nonhuman animal in educational research, theory and praxis. Examining the representations of nonhuman animals provides opportunities to explore ideology, discourse, and the ways in which the construction of nonhumans mirrors the representation of the human Other in contemporary and historical contexts. Schools are filled with social practices concerning nonhuman animals, whether that is the food served in the cafeteria, dissection in Science classrooms, or representations in textbooks. Linked to an agenda of social justice that has emerged in the educational literature over the past decade, the treatment of nonhuman animals needs to be addressed by critical theorists in education that seek to change structures of oppression for all of life on this planet. Traditional representations of the animal persist (unfettered desire, wild, barbaric, brutish, and savage), despite the fact that we know little outside of Western empirical science. To be animal then is to be wild and something apart from supposedly human traits of rationality, language, and logic. In turn, this allows highly exploitive and torturous industries to emerge and flourish that exploit nonhumans. However, ruptures existed that threw into question what it meant to be human, such as the case of wild people and feral children. As the category of human is often reified in educational scholarship unquestioningly, this provides a unique opportunity to deconstruct these categories and their exclusionary functions.

The recent literature surrounding eco-pedagogy and critical animal studies (Andrzejewski, et. al., 2009; Best, 2009; Bowers, 2001; Kahn, 2008; Martusewicz & Edmundson, 2005; Riley-Taylor, 2002) and the cultural politics of nature (Shukin, 2009) begs us to examine how the question of the animal is tied to the larger project of educational theory and practice. Published over a series of issues, this section will allow scholars to explore what this means for education. Some possible topics can include:

1. Have schools largely ignored nonhuman animals in historical and contemporary contexts? If so, why and in what specific ways?
2. How is the cafeteria implicated in relationships of domination over the nonhuman body?
3. What do intersecting oppressions (racism, speciesism, classism, sexism) mean for educational theory and practice?
4. Do anthropocentric ideologies emerge in educational, theory, practice, or policy? How does anthropomorphism emerge in traditional forms of curriculum or textbooks?
5. What have been the roles of nonhuman animals in schools historically?
6. How can critical educational theory respond to the paradox of the “animal”?

The guest editor seeks theoretical, conceptual, and qualitative papers addressing the central theme and any work submitted will be peer-reviewed.

Nonhuman animals need to be accounted for within the broader educational literature and this special section allows scholars to explore this important and timely topic.

Any questions can be directed to Dr. Abraham DeLeon, University of Texas at San Antonio, abraham.deleon@utsa.edu.

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Critical Education is an international peer-reviewed journal, which seeks manuscripts that critically examine contemporary education contexts and practices.

Please see, http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/index for more information and submission information.