The New New Federalist Plan to Crush Teachers and Public Schools

Here is the conclusion of George Will's most recent tribute to Arne Duncan for moving forward on Obama's plan to re-focus the war against teachers and public schools down to the state level, whereby Obama can then be shielded from blame for the anti-union, anti-democratic, and anti-civil rights actions that his own federal policies encourage:

Regarding grades K through 12, federal education policy — if such there must be — should permit, indeed encourage, 50 laboratories of educational experimentation. Federal policy should be confined to providing financial rewards contingent on improvements confirmed by national metrics — Duncan’s single goal post.


The Education Department sits at the foot of Capitol Hill, where many new legislators consider “federal education policy” a constitutional oxymoron. They have a point. They might, however, decide that the changes Duncan proposes — on balance, greater state flexibility in meeting national goals — make him the Obama administration’s redeeming feature. 

Take Tennessee as a prime example.  As one of the first two states to land big money ($500 million) from Race to the Trough Top,  the State set out immediately to remove the cap on charter schools and to promote them as the prime school turnaround option, to undergird its test-score analysis and archival systems, and to begin to hurriedly design a teacher evaluation system based on test scores. 

Bill Sanders, testing guru and former adjunct professor at UT, has moved back to Nashville from the SAS campus in North Carolina to be close to the action.  So far Sanders has remained mum on the fact that the National Academy of Sciences has nothing good to say about using value-added modeling for assessment of anything or anyone involving high stakes.  But, then, for some teachers don't matter--it is only the students' test scores that matter.

Now combine these developments with the corporate-funded election success by Tennessee Tea Party Republicans who now suddenly control both State Houses and the Governor's Chair, and you have a perfect storm aimed squarely at sweeping away the teaching profession, teacher preparation, collective bargaining, due process, retirement, school governance and oversight. 

In short, public education as we know it will cease to exist if these guys prevail, with the federal government doing nothing except to help the process along with huge infusions of cash.  Here is a list of pending legislation now zooming through the legislative chambers in Nashville:

HB130, abolishes teacher unions’ ability to negotiate conditions of employment with school districts.

SB102, eliminates Tennessee Education Association-selected positions on Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System board of directors.

HB159, prohibits public employees having dues deductions for either political action committees or dues, if the organization engages in political activity “in any way.”

HB145, blocks Tennessee Education Association from recommending appointees to the Tennessee Financial Literacy Commission board of directors.

These guys make Fathead Christie in New Jersey look a Deweyean progressive. 

And don't expect the new governor, Bill Haslam, to veto any of these draconian measures if they are voted through.  As CEO and majority owner of Pilot Oil (yes, the ones you see on every interstate), Haslam is the corporationist's poster boy.  Here are few of his holdings that he dumped prior to his election in order to avoid ethics questions:

The multimillionaire Knoxville mayor sold stocks of U.S. tobacco giants Lorillard Inc. and Philip Morris International, several oil companies, Canadian payday loan company Cash Store Finance Services Inc. and Amazon, the Internet retailer that refuses to collect sales taxes from customers on behalf of states such as Tennessee.

He also got rid of investments in two major state contractors, CVS Caremark, which manages state pharmacy benefits, and United Health Group, which owns TennCare contractor AmeriChoice.

Good folks.

So, yes, there is a new new federalism, or is that feudalism?  Unless people organize in every state, a piece of the national juggernaut will be show up in every state. 

Today there are signs that teachers are hitting back, suing a local school board that could not wait for the new laws crushing collective bargaining to go into effect.  That's a start.  Now if the prostisuits who run the AFT and NEA would come out their spider holes and say something, that might help.  Oh, I forgot--they're listening to Arne and Bill Gates.

George Will Blames Lyndon Johnson for NCLB

With the colossal wreckage that NCLB has wrought in America's schools now apparent to anyone not in a coma, it is fun to watch the old cons and the neocons cutting and running on Bush Co.'s grand domestic disaster, while at the same time revising history to blame someone else for setting fire to the public schools.

In looking for someone to blame for Bush's NCLB mess, Will goes all the way back past Bill Clinton, through Jimmy Carter, to Lyndon Johnson, whose support for the original ESEA in 1965 made it possible, obviously, for George Bush to totally screw it up 40 years later:

NCLB was passed in 2001 as an extension of the original mistake, President Lyndon Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which became law in the year of liberals living exuberantly -- 1965, when Great Society excesses sowed the seeds of conservatism's subsequent ascendancy. ESEA was the first large Washington intrusion into education K through 12.

Actually, George, it was President Eisenhower (R) who got the federal "intrusion" rolling in 1958 with the National Defense Education Act. And yes, 1965 was an exuberant time for anyone concerned with civil rights, human rights, and gender equality. And yes, it was the "excesses" of ESEA's dollars that enticed many a racist governor to finally desegregate public schools and to abide by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As for conservatism's subsequent ascendancy, Lyndon Johnson knew that his actions on civil rights would mean a political sea change in the South and everywhere else that racism trumped common sense. By 1980, most of the Southern Democrats who had not already had a political conversion, became Reagan Democrats for life. How do you think we ended up with an ever-poorer-and-oppressed white working class that votes consistently to those whose primary social agenda is based on tax cuts for the wealthy? Johnson knew his decision would cost him the South, but that did not stop him from doing the right thing. Such an act of courage could never happen among today's covey of political cowards.

And, of course, George Will is intent to reverse the responsibility of the Republican Congress for NCLB in 2001:

NCLB was supported by Republicans reluctant to vastly expand that intrusion but even more reluctant to oppose a new president's signature issue.

The fact is that the the Republican Congress was ecstatic when Bush came to town with his testing plan that would offer school vouchers to children in schools not making Adequate Yearly Progress, as well as a plan to redirect Title I money intended for the poor into block grants that governors could carve up as they saw fit. When these two components were struck from NCLB for the last time in 2001, it did take take some cheerleading by Bush water carriers like Sen. Judd Gregg to revive the disappointed Republicans, but in the end the corporate tutoring provision and the charter school sanction that would result from impossible performance targets were enough to assure victory for Bush. From Elizabeth Debray's book, quoting Judd Gregg:

“Well, the supplemental services [tutoring] are a foot under the door for vouchers. They’re going to show that these schools aren’t working properly, and we’ll finally be able to show that the schools aren’t doing well. The assessments are going to prove the same thing” (Debray, 2006, p. 96).

So where is George Will wanting Federal policy to go now? Backwards, of course. Now that a Blue national tidal wave is predicted for '08, George Will and the other protectors of privilege are eager once more to argue for the unassailable virtues of federalism and to get the the federal government out of the business of education reform. More block grants and tax cuts, please. As Will would seem to have it for federal policy, if you can't do anything bad, don't do anything at all.