E Wayne Ross – Page 45 – Critical Theories in Education

Rouge Forum Update: Can Rising Resistance Overcome Repression?

The core issue of our time is the promise of perpetual war and booming inequality met by the potential of mass, class-conscious, resistance.

June 12, 1963: Medgar Evers Assassinated

Little Red Schoolhouse:

CSU Bosses Demand Another Fee Hike–Students Betrayed by Rep: “The proposal would hike fees by 5% for undergraduate students and those in graduate business programs and 10% for doctoral education students. For full-time undergraduates, that translates to a $204 increase, bringing the total university fee to $4,230 for the 2010-2011 academic year. With campus fees included, the cost for an undergraduate to attend CSU would rise to $5,097. The plan also would eliminate the cap on nonresident tuition, with out-of-state students paying $16,257 for 30 semester units rather than the current $11,160…The CSU Board of Trustees will take up the proposal at a special meeting June 18. Last fall, undergraduate fees rose 32% after the board passed two separate hikes……Though students would prefer no fee hikes, a 5% raise is the best-case scenario, said Steve Dixon, president of the Cal State Student Assn.”

Detroit Mayor Moves to Take Over Schools: “Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is ready to take over city schools when Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb’s contract expires in March.
But the mayor is not going to make any such move without voter approval. A group of community activists and parents are preparing petitions to get the matter on the November ballot.

So Long Neighborhood School–Detroit Closes 32: “DPS, still the largest district in the state, has been hard-hit by continuous enrollment declines throughout the decade. District officials predict enrollment will drop from about 87,000 this year to 79,000 next year and continue to drop to below 57,000 by fall 2014.”

Denby High’s Mini-Thug Principal: “First-time principal Kenyetta Wilbourn, who is 4 foot 11, patrols the halls with a bat called “the Equalizer.” Her tactic came to light April 19 in a Detroit Free Press report. As a result, Denby High School students may venture out into the world with the perception that as a child it is not appropriate to use violence, but as an adult it is appropriate to utilize a bat to terrorize other individuals. Wilbourn’s behavior is inappropriate because it violates the school code of conduct, promotes violence, is a form of child abuse and, most of all, is illegal.”

George Washington (yes) vs Bob Bobb: “Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb said in court today he believed he had the power to forgo feedback to the school board on their academic plan and instead write his own.”

Supremes Love NCLB: “The Supreme Court has turned away a challenge by school districts — led by the Pontiac Public School District — and teacher unions to the federal No Child Left Behind law. The court said without comment Monday that it will not step into a lawsuit that questioned whether public schools have to comply with requirements of the law if the federal government doesn’t pay for them. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit and a federal appeals court split 8-8, leaving the judge’s ruling in place.” From The Detroit News:

How the Young of the Other Half Go to College: “When Allison Frisch goes shopping this summer for furnishings to decorate her freshman dorm room at Stephens College, she will be looking for a comforter for herself — and a matching doggie bed for her roommate.”

RaTT Attacked from the Right (Fish-ing–Pluralism is Crap): (Students should be brought “to see themselves as members of a heterogeneous nation . . . and a still more heterogeneous world, and to understand something of this history of the diverse groups that inhabit it.”

Read the full RF Update here.

Rouge Forum 2010 announces conference schedule

Rouge Forum 2010: Education in the Public Interest: Teaching & Learning for a Democratic Society will be held from August 2-5 on the campus of George Williams College in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. This year’s Rouge Forum conference is shaping up to be an exciting collection of diverse topics and voices.

Check out the draft conference schedule on the conference web site or download the pdf here.

Because each session is jam packed with presenters and ideas, we’re doing a call for session discussants.

The role of the discussant will be to introduce presenters, keep time, and provide closing commentary. Sessions are listed on the schedule at www.rougeforumconference.org

As soon as you volunteer, you will be sent the names and emails of the session presenters. If you like, you can contact them to request any supporting documents that will help you in your role.

Sessions in need of discussants are marked “TBA” on the conference schedule

Contact fwilson@aurora.edu to reserve a specific session.

BC Liberals speaking with forked-tongue, again. This time when it comes to “advocacy”

The Vancouver School Board is not giving in to the demands of the BC Ministry of Education to shut up and make $17 million dollars in budget cuts that will result in closed schools, cancelled programs, and teacher layoffs.

The board says it has balanced its budget, as required by law, but to do so it had to make brutal cuts to education programs because its budget of about $480 million is not sufficient to cover rising costs, including salaries, pensions and MSP payments. It estimates its shortfall is about $17 million. But Wenezenki-Yolland concluded the board has sufficient resources to deliver a quality education program but has wasted money through poor governance, a lack of strategic planning and missed opportunities. She suggested several actions to improve the bottom line — including raising rents, cancelling non-core services such as junior kindergarten and closing schools — but Bacchus said the board was already considering such actions.

One of the primary criticisms levelled at the VSB in the Comptroller General’s report is that trustees spend too much time, energy, and resources on “advocacy,” that is lobbying the government for increased funding that will improve teaching and learning conditions in Vancouver schools. The Comptroller General and Minister of Education want the trustees to make “cost containment” their number one priority.

Fiscal responsibility and advocating for adequate funding is not an “either/or” choice. VSB chair Patti Bacchus and the majority of trustees understand this. But as this piece in the Vancouver Courier makes clear, the ministry wants the trustees to act like bureaucrats and just do what they’re told. For some reason government (and at least a couple of the trustees) think there’s no place for advocacy or “politics” in education. That’s either an extremely naive or disingenuous understanding of what democracy is all about, as Paul Shaker and I point out in our comments to the the Courier.

So, BC Liberals castigate the VSB trustees for doing what many promised in their election campaigns—advocating for the district by resisting chronic underfunding of the education system and downloading of costs. While at the same time BC Liberals spend billions of taxpayer dollars on propaganda about how their neoliberal economic policies (that allow a handful of private interests to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit) are good for the rest of us. There’s more than a little irony in the decision by Elections BC that the government’s HST propaganda violates the law.

VSB v. BC Ministry of Education or how neoliberalism operates in your own backyard

“Think globally and act locally” may be trite catchphrase, but thinking globally can give us insight into the current feud between the Vancouver School Board and the Ministry of Education.

Faced with a $16 million budget shortfall, the Vancouver 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 VSB criticizes trustees for engaging in “advocacy” rather than making “cost containment” first priority. [Download the special advisor’s report here.]

What kind of governing principles demand “cost containment” as the prime concern of those charged with meeting the educational needs of our children? It’s called neoliberal globalization. It is the prevailing economic paradigm in today’s world and references something everyone is familiar with—policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit.

The main points of neoliberalism will sound familiar to anyone who has paid attention to provincial government decisions on B.C. Rail or the HST:

Rule of the market, that is, liberating free enterprise from any restrictions imposed by government, no matter the social damage that results;
Cutting public expenditures for social services;
Reduction of government regulation that might diminish profits;
Privatization, selling government-owned enterprises to private investors; and
Concepts of “the public good” or “community” are eliminated, replaced with “individual responsibility.”

The structure of the provincial funding model for education follows from these basic tenets.

The VSB, indeed all school boards and other social services in the province, are now subject to the rule of the market, thus justifying “cost containment” as the first priority of those mandated to deliver education to the public. In this context, education is treated like any other commodity. Free market competition is viewed as the route to assure a quality product. And “efficiency” or “cost containment” is prized.

In B.C., government retains its authority over public education, but no longer undertakes the responsibility of assuring the educational well-being of the public. Instead, this responsibility is devolved to individual school boards.

It is no accident that when the province appointed the special advisor to examine the Vancouver board’s budget processes, it specifically excluded the key issue raised by the trustees and every other school board in the province, the structure of the provincial funding model for education.

School boards are now expected to become part of the market by relegating the educational needs of their communities and making the financial bottom-line the first priority. The recent trend in B.C. educational policy makes this point clear. School districts have been encouraged to create business companies to sell the Dogwood diploma overseas. Lack of provincial funding has forced school and district PACs into extensive funding-raising, accounting for almost 2 per cent of district operating budgets province-wide. International student tuitions are such a major source of income growth for some school districts that government has assigned a deputy minister to coordinate the sale of B.C. education internationally.

And now the special advisor’s report recommends that the VSB close schools, cancel programs, fire teachers, and raise rental rates on non-profit organizations that provide services, such as after-school care, which are in short supply.

The clash between Vancouver trustees and the ministry of education is not “just politics.” Rather, education policy in B.C. 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.

[For an informative overview of how neoliberal globalization works in schools see: Schuetze, H. G., et al., (2010). Globalization, neoliberalism and schools: The Canadian story. In C. A. Torres, L. Olmos, R. Van Heertum (Eds.), Educating the global citizen: Globalization, education reform, and the politics of equity and inclusion. Oak Park, IL: Bentham eBooks. Ross, E. W., & Gibson, R. (2007). Neoliberalism and education reform. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.]

Rouge Forum Update: D-Day! Will Oceans of Oil Mean Rivers of Blood?

Remember the Rouge Forum Conference–August 2 to August 5!

NEA and AFT Spent Millions on the Demagogue Obama and Electoral Work: Is the Education Bailout Dead? “Janet Bass of the American Federation of Teachers says that despite these obstacles, the unions plan to keep up the pressure for passage. “We will fight for it as long as we can,” she says. “It’s not dead.” She’s right that there’s a chance the proposal could be revived next week, but betting money as Congress prepared to leave town for the Memorial Day weekend was that there just aren’t the votes to move it forward.

Drop-Out States Lead Flight From RaTT Shell Game: “About two dozen states are going back to Washington for another shot at billions in education grants under the Race to the Top program, but at least nine others with more than 7 million children are opting out of trying a second time.
For them, a chance at hundreds of millions of dollars wasn’t enough to overcome the opposition of teachers unions, the wariness of state leaders to pass laws to suit the program and fears of giving up too much local control.”

Masquerading as News, Press Attacks Teacher Benefits: “The days of teachers contributing nothing toward health care, however, may be waning. For the first time, teachers in Utica and Grosse Pointe will make monthly payments toward health care under contracts approved this spring. Livonia’s teachers agreed last year to make monthly health care payments and take furlough days. “If we didn’t accept those concessions, there would’ve been a huge cut in the educational programs for our students,” said Kenewell, head of Utica’s teachers union. “And if we protect programs for the students, we protect jobs. They’ve already cut some programs.”

How To Fix Detroit Schools? Get Rid of 2/3 of the Students: “Robert Bobb, Detroit schools emergency financial manager, said the 76,000 student Detroit district can only support 26,000 students unless it makes deep cuts in operating and long-term costs such as retirement and health care for employees.”

Ken Saltman on the “Portfolio Approach” in Urban Schools: “This perspective considers public schools to be comparable to private enterprise, with competition a key element to success. Just as businesses that cannot turn sufficient profit, schools that cannot produce test scores higher than competitors’ must be “allowed” to “go out of business.” The appeal of the portfolio district strategy is that it appears to offer an approach sufficiently radical to address longstanding and intractable problems in public schools”

Secret Regimented Standards for Imperialist War Education Revealed: “Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Lily Eskelsen, the vice president of the National Education Association, were also on hand to endorse the standards, with Ms. Weingarten calling the the AFT an “unabashed supporter.”

Ed Mcelroy, the last AFT President to file a report for an entire year (Weingarten files in Dec 2010) reported an income of $390,426.

Dennis Van Roekel, ($424,091 in 2009) NEA Boss, Backs Common Core Standards

NEA Hack Lily Eskelsen ($365,738 in 2009) on Regimented National Standards: “We believe that this initiative is a critical first step in our nation’s effort to provide every student with a comprehensive, content-rich and complete education. These standards have the potential to support teachers in achieving NEA’s purpose of preparing students preparing students to ‘thrive in a democratic society and a diverse, changing world as knowledgeable, creative and engaged citizens and lifelong learners.’”

Schools as Huge Markets Where Stealing is Commonplace: “According to the grand jury, about 75 percent of the San Diego district schools that were audited misused ASB funds for curricular and administrative purposes and for the benefit of faculty.”

Bloomberg Moves to Block NYC Teachers’ Wages: “This was not an ideal decision and it certainly does not solve all our budget issues,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement, which was released after he notified Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, about his decision. “In our conversation this morning, Michael Mulgrew and I agreed that we would go together to Albany and Washington to press our case to restore more education funding.”

CSU Stanislaus to Pay Twit $75,000 for Babble (no pole dance?): “Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will receive $75,000 to speak at Cal State Stanislaus next month, an event that has become steeped in controversy and brought the small Turlock campus worldwide attention. Much of the scrutiny has centered on the former governor’s speaking fee, which the university has refused to disclose. The fact that Palin has received up to $100,000 for other recent appearances had stoked furious speculation and the kind of cloak-and-dagger intrigue worthy of a novel.”

Walmart Education–Cradle to Grave: “Wal-Mart estimates that about 50 percent of its employees in the United States have a high school diploma or the equivalent but have not earned a college degree. With the average full-time employee being paid $11.75 an hour, it was unclear how many of them will be able to take advantage of the new program. With the work credits and tuition discount, an associate’s degree for a Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club cashier would cost about $11,700 and a bachelor’s degree about $24,000.”

The Secret Whole Language Project in San Ysidro High: “Now high schoolers such as Delgado at the top levels read the Diary of Anne Frank and talk about genocide. The idea was to challenge students sooner with tougher but still accessible readings that also sparked their interest — something that can be vexing with teens whose English is thin. Even finding books that are easy enough for English learners but interesting to teenagers is a challenge.”

Virtual Charter Schools Rule! “Nationally, there are an estimated 200,000 full-time virtual charter school students, said Susan Patrick, chief executive of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning.”

Nice Job, PhD, Now Play Online Poker to Live: “The number of full-time faculty members at universities was around 51% in 2007, down from 78% in 1970, said Jack Schuster, a senior research fellow at Claremont Graduate University. That leaves many doctoral degree candidates stuck with adjunct work, which can pay as little as $2,000 a semester.”

Read the full RF Update here.

Anarchism in the academy

Education Review has just published Cory Maly’s review of Contemporary Anarchist Studies edited by Randall Amster, Abraham DeLeon, Luis A. Fernandez, Anthony J. Nocella, and Deric Shannon.

I highly recommend the book and Maly’s review, which frames the book quite well in relation to current issues and debates on education reform. I used parts of Contemporary Anarchist Studies in my curriculum theory seminar this past year and was really pleased by the depth of debate and discussion it stimulated.

Obviously anarchism is gaining some traction among a small, but growing circle of education scholars. As evidenced by this book and several new or recently announced projects including:

Critical Education‘s series on “The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research”, which is edited by Abe DeLeon has published two articles in the past several months, with more in works.

DeLeon is also guest editing a special issue of Educational Studies titled “Anarchism…is a living force with our life…”: Anarchism, Education, and New Possibilities. Download the call for papers here.

And, Robert Haworth (U of Wisconsin, La Crosse) has recently circulated a call for chapter proposals to be included in the book, Anarchist Pedagogies to be published by PM Press

This edited book calls on international scholars (15 single authored or collectively authored chapters) in anarchist studies to critically reflect on historical and contemporary experimentations in anarchist pedagogies. Scholarly efforts will focus on what we have learned from past anarchist experiences and current transformative learning environments — where individuals are engaged in collective, participatory, voluntary and mutual efforts that contest global capitalist structures.

The edited collection responds to the need to reflect on anarchist pedagogies and will highlight three major themes. Authors in the first section will be encouraged to focus on historical discussions surrounding anarchism and education. The authors will give introspective critiques of historical practices, including theories of teaching and learning and alternatives to compulsory public schools. Authors in the second section will construct philosophical and theoretical frameworks evolving from contemporary anarchists, particularly through individuals participating in cooperatives, independent media collectives, infoshops, political zines, open source projects, DIY, direct action networks and other autonomous and cultural spaces.

Rouge Forum Update! Paris Commune! Fightbacks, War, $, Betrayals, and More!

Remember the upcoming Rouge Forum Conference:
Education in the Public Interest
August 2-5, 2010
George Williams College of Aurora University, Williams Bay, WI

Rouge Forum Update! Paris Commune! Fightbacks, War, $, Betrayals, and More!

Little Red Schoolhouse

White House Appears to Dump Teacher Bailout: “A $23 billion payout to save thousands of educators’ jobs faltered Thursday — perhaps for good — to election-year jitters among moderate Democrats over deficit spending and only lukewarm support from the White House.”

Adjuncts! File For UCB Now! “The New Faculty Majority, a national adjunct advocacy group, plans to formally announce on Monday a campaign to push more out-of-work adjuncts to file for unemployment insurance between academic terms and during summer breaks.”

Life is Good in Kalamazoo: “Jeremiah is a kindergartener in Kalamazoo Public Schools, which is working to create a college-going culture for its students starting as early as preschool. Sparking the district’s effort was the Kalamazoo Promise, a program launched in 2006 by anonymous donors that pays college tuition for high school graduates in the district.”

Schools as Huge Markets: “Detroit Public Schools on Thursday announced the kickoff of work under the $500.5-million bond that voters approved in November.”

So Long Adjunct! CSU System Down 10% Profs: “California State University lost 10% of its teaching force in the last year, a result of crippling budget cuts that reduced job opportunities on many campuses…”

The CSU System’s Programs: Home to Fear, Secrecy, Racism, Ignorance and Opportunism: The California State University sought dismissal Monday of a lawsuit seeking documents related to a campus fundraising appearance by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, arguing that it has already released more than 3,000 records about the controversial event. The request was in response to a lawsuit filed last month against Cal State Stanislaus and its private foundation by the nonprofit government watchdog group Californians Aware. The lawsuit alleges that campus officials who are state employees are violating the California Public Records Act by withholding documents related to Palin’s June 25 appearance at the university’s 50th anniversary gala. The group and other open-government advocates have been seeking details of Palin’s contract, including her speaking fee.

Underground History of the USA [pdf] by Jim Obrien and Nick Thorkelson (good stuff for teachers):

Read the full RF Update here.

Rouge Forum Update: People vs Union Bosses plus Dunkirk and Matewan! And wait! There’s More!

The Little Red Schoolhouse Front:

Company Town: by Carl Sandburg

You live in a company house
You go to a company school
You work for this company
According to the company’s rules
You all drink company water
And all use company lights
The company preacher teaches us
What the company thinks is right….

Half of Detroit Kids Poisoned by Lead–Not Good For High-Stakes Tests: “the higher the lead level, the worse a student’s scores on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program exam, or MEAP. Overall, 58% of roughly 39,000 DPS students tested — 22,755 children — had a history of lead poisoning, according to the study.Perhaps more startling: Of the 39,199 students tested as young children, only 23 had no lead in their bodies.”

Students as Money–Michigan Districts Pay Bribe for Best School Status: “he districts did not make the cut because of test scores or graduation rates but instead because they paid a marketing firm $25,000.”

Too Many Teachers; Not Enough Wars, Too Many Kiddies: “Michigan State University has pushed its 500 graduating teachers to look out of state. As local jobs have dried up, it started an internship program in Chicago, which is a four-hour drive from the East Lansing, Mich., campus. Professors now go with students to the annual campus job fair to make sure they do not hover around the Michigan tables, but walk over to, say, North Carolina, Virginia or Texas.”

The Ongoing Failure of Racist Capitalist Schooling in Detroit: “Detroit Public Schools fourth- and eighth-graders performed worst in the nation on a national reading test whose results were released this morning. Like math scores unveiled in December from the National Assessment of Education Progress, Detroit children’s reading scores are the worst in the 40-year history of the test.

Detroit Mayor Can’t Halt Barbarism: “Detroit Mayor Dave Bing acknowledged that police and city officials don’t know how to stop the crime wave.”

Who is Lying in this PBS Newshour Broadcast On Detroit Schools? Everybody. As Usual.

Bribe? What Bribe? Payoffs to Bobb Ok in Michigan Court: “Wayne Circuit Court Judge Susan Borman indicated today Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb is entitled to receive part of his pay from private foundations. The issue — challenged by the district’s school board, a civil rights group and a coalition of teachers who oppose charter schools — was whether Bobb was in conflict of interest for accepting $89,000 of his salary from a foundation that supports private and charter schools. Bobb receives $280,000 in salary and $145,000 in supplemental income from foundations for fixing the school district’s finances.”

Duncan Lies About Texas Textbook Standards Adopted May 21: “”Whatever Texas decides, I do not think there will be large ripple effects around the country,” Duncan said to CNN. “Textbook companies today have a real ability to customize textbooks.”

We Say Fightback! Front:

Puerto Rico Universities Occupied, Struck, and Shut for A Month+: “The students here have hunkered down, bringing the academic calendar to a halt. They are a month into a strike that has crippled an 11-campus system with more than 62,000 students, intent on persuading the administration to revoke austerity measures that they believe will unfairly hamper low-income students. Only one campus, for medical sciences, is operational.”

BBC on the Brit Teachers’ Test Boycott (watch the short video): “Tens of thousands of children in England are missing their Sats tests as head teachers in hundreds of schools stage a boycott. About 600,000 10 and 11-year-olds were due to take the national schools tests from Monday. But heads and deputies from two big teaching unions voted for a boycott…”

Bangkok is Burning–Tweetphotos (Rick Parkany photo)

IVAW Confronts Recruiters–War is not a Game!