Child Urged to Take Exam From Hospital Bed

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

In a recent post I pointed out the absurdity of the California Democratic Party’s criticism of the education reform movement because of its commodification of children. As vulgar and impersonal as it may seem to sensitive, liberal ears, in purely economic and political terms students have always been commodified as a consequence of schools’ function in preparing them for their roles as future workers.

While the ed reformers have succeeded raising the influence of test scores as a measure of students’ worth, this measure preceded the current wave of ed reform, as did others, like grade point averages, participation in honors or advance placement classes, student government and athletics. However, the ed reform movement has succeeded in raising the stakes of test scores to the point that schools are punished when an insufficient percentage of their student body participates. Consequently, tests become not only a way to measure a student’s value to future employers, but a way (albeit imprecise and often inaccurate) to measure schools’ value to taxpayers. Schools that perform poorly or that cannot manage to get sufficient numbers of their students to participate are wasting state resources that could be going toward lowering taxes on the wealthy and their businesses.

Therefore, all children must take the tests, regardless of whether they are ready or willing (or even physically able).

When considered in this light, it should not be surprising that a teacher showed up Cohen Children’s Medical Center to administer a New York State exam to Joey Furlong, a 4^th-grader with life threatening epilepsy who was hooked up to machines while awaiting brain surgery, according to Valerie Strauss. Apparently, his family had already made arrangements with his school to make up the exam after he had recovered and was out of the hospital, but this was trumped by a state law requiring schools to provide instruction to children there for more than three days.

In the end, the state of New York conceded that Joey’s medical condition was even higher stakes than its trifling exam and allowed Joey to undergo his medical procedures without having to endure the additional stress of a “high stakes” test. Or, perhaps the authorities believed his test scores would improve without all the machines hooked up to his body.

Supreme Court, Labor Law and the Deskilling of Teaching

The strike is labor's most powerful weapon. It is the most direct and forceful way to pressure employers to cede to workers’ demands. Strikes have become increasingly rare over the past few decades, mostly because of unions’ increasingly dependence on political action (e.g., lobbying, voting as a block, financing campaigns). However, there have been several laws and Supreme Court decisions that have limited when and how strikes could be undertaken or that increased the risks to workers.

In 1938, the Supreme Court ruled in NLRB v. Mackay Radio (NLRB is the National Labor Relations Board) that employers had the legal right to permanently “replace” striking workers. According to a recent piece in Truth Out, there was nothing in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1934 (nor any other law) that gave employers this right. Rather, the court just figured that it was a right of bosses to can their workers when they were troublesome.

In reality, the NLRA was written to reduce labor unrest and aid employers in their quest for profits by limiting when and how strikes could occur and providing legal recourse for employers when they created too much disruption to profits. The Supreme Court merely interpreted the law in way that was consistent with that of the ruling class and that was favorable to their businesses.

Regardless of the rationale, this right of employers severely restricts workers’ right to strike under NLRA. The threat of being permanently replaced makes striking a very risky endeavor, particularly for the majority of workers who depend on their income to support their families and themselves. This threat is often sufficient to make workers think twice and choose not to strike in the first place.

However, the threat of replacing workers is only credible when two conditions can be met: replacement workers must be available and ready to work and the striking workers are not able or willing to stop them. The latter condition has typically been met through the use of force. The first condition occurs automatically for so-called unskilled work during times of high unemployment. Pretty much anyone can work a cash register, so firing all cashiers at a grocery chain is not a big risk for employers. In contrast, for “skilled” workers, like teachers, the threat is much less credible. So long as teachers are required to have a valid credential, which requires a bachelor’s degree, plus a year or two of professional training, school districts cannot permanently replace striking teachers and still keep the schools operating.

The employing class is working on a solution to this dilemma (despite the fact that teachers, like most workers, have become increasingly reluctant to strike). By deskilling the teaching profession, free market education reformers are reducing the need for highly trained, credentialed teachers. For example, pretty much anyone can proctor a standardized test or monitor a room full of children seated at computers engaged in online curriculum or distance learning. The more schools utilize such methods, the easier it becomes to replace relatively well paid, unionized professionals with low paid, non-unionized workers.

Is The Ed Tech Bubble Ready to Burst?

For anyone who still believes the Ed Deform movement is entirely motivated by compassionate individuals who just want what’s best for our children, a recent article on the burgeoning Ed Tech Bubble posted on Geekwire.com ought to set them straight.

The push to get more technology into the classroom started almost immediately with the advent of inexpensive personal computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with high tech magnet schools sprouting up in many districts. I even attended one of these early adopters in middle school and have fond memories of playing the primitive fantasy game, Adventure, during class time. However, I have no memory of learning anything practical and didn’t even own a computer until after I graduated from college. More disturbingly, this magnet school was located in a poor, African-American neighborhood with a few middle class white kids bussed in to take advantage of its new computers and science equipment. During my time at that school, it was only these middle class carpetbaggers who had access to the new technology, perhaps a consequence of the naïve assumption that only middle class students could bring profits to the tech companies who sold the equipment.

By the late 1980s and early 90s tech companies started to push for desk top computers, computer labs and internet access for all students, recognizing that all students, regardless of class, could bring them profits because the school districts, rather than individual parents, were purchasing the hardware, site licenses, tech support and software. They also started to realize that even poor people were purchasing cell phones and apps—an indication that perhaps they could also be sold education technology products for personal use.

Over the last few years, however, things have really taken off, with a plethora of companies squeezing districts for millions of dollars in service contracts, data analysis packages, communication software, online courses, ebooks and myriad other snake oils they argue will solve districts’ academic problems. They are also jumping into political campaigns, especially for school board races and state initiatives, hoping this will increase sales. For example, Bill Gates, the Walton Family and Amazon were large funders of Washington’s recent ballot initiative to increase the number of charter schools in the state, while  Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch were large funders of candidates for the Los Angeles school board race. While Gates’ connection to technology is obvious, the Waltons, Bloomberg and Murdoch are purveyors of information technology and also stand to profit from the increased use of technology in the schools. The focus on charter schools might also seem obscure. However, because they are less restricted by district regulations and procurement rules, charter schools are seen by many tech companies as an easier sell than traditional public schools, particularly with the growing number of online charter schools that rely on technology hardware and software to deliver their curricula.

Of course some of the ways technology is being incorporated into the classroom reflect its changing role in society as a whole. It would be absurd, for example, to expect students to continue using typewriters when most of the rest of the world abandoned them years ago. Similarly, communication, collaboration and inexpensive web design software facilitate communication between teachers, students and parents. However, much of the new technology is of dubious benefit to students and teachers, but immensely profitable to the people pushing it. Some school districts, for example, have purchased expensive site licenses for software that they don’t even use or that serves no purpose. Even technologies which increase efficiency (e.g., LCD projectors, which replaced overhead/transparency projectors, which in turn replaced chalkboards), do not necessarily improve learning outcomes.

Geekwire notes several indications that the bubble may be ready to burst, including a quote by Susan Wolford, Managing Director of BMO Capital Markets, who said that too much money is being spent on ideas “that should have been left to die.” According to the Geekwire piece, “record numbers of companies are receiving venture funding” for educational technology projects and the Consumer Electronics Association recently named education technology as one of five “prominent technology trends expected to influence the consumer electronics (CE) industry in the years ahead.”

Larry Cuban identifies another potential reason for the bubble to burst: the exaggerated claims or assumptions that simply dumping technology into a school will magically transform academic outcomes for students. This has contributed to massive spending on technology that rapidly becomes obsolete or that gets ignored because teachers and students find it burdensome or useless. He points to several notable cases, including instructional television in the 1960s and desktop computers in the 1980s. Even the One-Laptop-Per-Child initiative (OLPC) has failed to deliver its promised outcomes for poor children throughout the world. So far, the laptops have gone primarily to rural Peruvian children and the outcomes have been mixed, at best. According to an evaluation of the program by the World Bank, there is no evidence that OLPC has improved learning in math or language.

Michelle Rhee Joins L.A. School Board Funding Free For All

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Michelle Rhee’s organization, StudentsFirst, has contributed $250,000 to support the campaigns of incumbent Los Angeles school board president Monica Garcia, as well as those of Kate Anderson and Antonio Sanchez. The donation comes on the heels of a $1 million donation to the same candidates by New York Mayor Bloomberg, and several $100,000 donations by L.A. billionaires Eli Broad and A. Jerrold Perenchio.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Rhee believes her involvement in Los Angeles could advance her school reform agenda statewide. This agenda includes the conversion of public schools into charter schools, increasing reliance on high stakes tests, and tying teachers’ evaluations to student test scores.

Rhee is not unique in this belief. All the big outside money is intended to influence the free market school reform agenda statewide and even nationwide. One of their goals is to weaken teachers unions, both as a voting bloc and as an impediment to their money-making scams. Garcia and Anderson, for example, are outright union busters and the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) has indicated it would spend millions of dollars to defeat them. (Garcia said that if she were president of UTLA she would go on a rampage and fire all “ineffective” teachers and eliminate seniority). Sanchez has been more subtle. Consequently, he was won the support of UTLA, despite having made comments that suggest he intends to bully the union into submitting to the will of the free market reformers. For example, he said he wants to “break” the divide between unions and school choice and accountability advocates, which is just a politically strategic way of saying he wants the union to accept harmful concessions.

All three of the candidates supported by Rhee, Bloomberg and the Coalition for School Reform are backers of privatization and charter school conversions. LAUSD already has one of the largest numbers of charter schools of any district in the nation, as well as its own sordid history of charter school scandals (see here and here).

Considering LAUSD’s history of budget shortfalls, low student achievement and administrator scandals, it would seem politically irresponsible to give away even more oversight and revenue to private education management organizations which can run charter schools with only minimal district oversight and which have a track record that is no better (and often worse than traditional public schools. Then again, it should be obvious by now that promoters of charter schools, vouchers and parental “choice” have no interest in improving educational outcomes. Rather, their motivations are purely financial: increase profit-making opportunities for themselves and for the funders of their political careers.  

Teachers are Terrorists and Corporate Shills

Politicians are notorious for saying stupid, embarrassing and downright insulting and hurtful things in the quest to promote their political agendas. Michael Bloomberg’s recent comparison of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) to the National Rifle Association (NRA) ranks right up there with some of the stupidest—but here are a few other ditties (just in case you missed them):

Teachers Unions are Terrorist Organizations

In 2004, Education Secretary Rod Paige called the nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), a "terrorist organization" during a White House meeting with state governors.

Schools and Universities Should Be Blown Up

Since the teachers are a bunch of terrorists, it is justifiable to blow up the places where they hang. In line with this sort of thinking, right-wing education privatization cheerleader and Fordham Foundation President Chester E. Finn Jr. said that the best way to reform public education is to “Blow it up and start over,” while his counterpart, Reid Lyon, former Chief of Child Development and Behavior Branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, suggested we blow up the teachers’ colleges.

Deadly Disasters are Great for Capitalism (Er, Children)

Current Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that Katrina was the best thing that could have happened to the New Orleans schools. What he meant was that disasters are fantastic ways to rally popular support for otherwise unpopular ideas, in this case, a massive scheme to convert the entire district to charter schools and destroy the unions.71% of New Orleans children are now attending charter schools, the highest rate in the nation. All employees, including teachers and custodians, were fired and forced to reapply, and all union contracts were canceled. Many of the unionized teachers were replaced by Teach For America interns.

Michael Bloomberg: Teachers Unions are Like the NRA

“It’s typical of Congress, it’s typical of unions, it’s typical of companies, I guess, where a small group is really carrying the ball and the others aren’t necessarily in agreement. . . The N.R.A. is another place where the membership, if you do the polling, doesn’t agree with the leadership.” (NY Times)

The comparison is grotesque and offensive because it likens teachers—who see themselves as defenders of childhood innocence and purity (e.g., Sandy Hook) to gun nuts and corporate shills—who are seen by many as the defenders of psychotic, murderous rampages (e.g., Sandy Hook). Yet if we ignore the offensiveness of Bloomberg’s statement, perhaps substitute AMA or Bar Association for NRA, one can see that there is some truth to Bloomberg’s comments. Most unions are like these organizations in that they invest heavily in lobbying, buying politicians and attempting to buy legislation. It is true that rank and file union members are often alienated from and disagree with their leadership. And it is true that the leadership of unions often put their own needs, interests and agenda above those of their members.