Tennessee, the Oligarchs' Poster State for Corporate Education Reform

Mr. Superlative, Arne Duncan, announced last week that Tennessee will likely be the first state granted a royal waiver from the child and school crushing NCLB testing targets that guarantee an 80-90 percent failure rate in most school communities across America by 2014.   I was in Tennessee at the time recovering from foot surgery when a friend there called with the news.  Having just that day been working on a book project that extends a case study of Tennessee’s valueless value-added testing scheme devised by the Dr. Strangelove/Wizard of Oz of testing, Bill Sanders, the irony was just too sweet.

Tennessee could not be better positioned to become the poster state for embracing Duncan’s federalized extortion racket aimed to bend every community to the corporatized visions of Bill Gates and Eli Broad. Bend or break, take your pick.  After all, Tennessee has its own homegrown oligarch as governor, the soft spoken Bill “Pilot Oil” Haslam, who has allowed Gates and Broad to put in charge of Tennessee schools a major cult leader from Teach for America, Kevin Huffman (former spouse of Eduwitch Michelle Rhee).  Even though one in four Tennesseeans remain illiterate, the state is and has been a fav of the corporatistas judging Race to the Top and other tax-supported ventures of the U. S. Chamber of Horrors’ Business Roundtable.  

Having just received last year the biggest chunk yet ($500 million) from the RTTT bribery scam, Tennessee is already in eager pursuit of fulfilling all the criteria required to earn a waiver from Adequate Yearly Progress demands: 1) uncapped status on charter expansion, 2) uncapped expansion of centralized pre-K to Retirement testing systems, 3) bonus pay and teacher evaluation based on test scores, and 4) embracing the worthless turnaround strategies devised by the Gates and Broad technocrats who remain clueless about schools or learning.

We shall see how many states rush to get in line to now do for no money what large RTTT bribes could not make them do before.  We shall see how many parents and teachers and students just say no to the testing madness this coming year.  The movement is born and moral action now requires the sacrifice that comes with civil disobedience and non-violent resistance.  The game is over, the talking is done.  It is time to act and demand that educators be put in charge of educating our children for the most trying time in the history of our civilization.  The fools and thieves of Wall Street have ruined the world’s economic systems—we shall not allow them to ruin our children any further.

Edu-Porn Brought to You by Freakonomics

The way sex porn works is to convincingly create simulations that have all the mechanical nuances of the real act with the soul missing.  That is how porn workers can finish their shift and then go pick up the kids and take their wives to dinner.

Same principles apply with edu-porn.  It, too, is market inspired and involves convincing simulations, just like the ones offered in the Freakanomics documentary that got shoved my way yesterday in an email.  And edu-porn, too, is looking for the most bang for the buck (never mind the pun, which, by the way, originated with the defense industry).

According to Steven Levitt, describing the plot line for the edu-porn segment of their new documentary, the "goal was to figure out can we cheaply and quickly move the needle at a school--can we get kids to achieve more as quickly as possible and spend very little money."

This, my friend, is edu-porn reform in a nutshell, so to speak.

Have a look at this clip, but I warn you it is XXX rated for sleazy exploitation of poor children, simulated alcohol consumption by minors, gambling promotion, and further destruction of the environmental conscience of minors (winners of the lottery get to ride in a stretch Hummer).  Yeah, that's right, baby. 

Duncan Bribery Turns to Blackmail and Extortion

From Firedoglake:

. . . .Race to the Top just announced their first two grant winners, Tennessee and Delaware, yesterday.

I hope we can be honest about what this actually represents: blackmail. It forces states to change their education laws to fit particular notions about how to manage public education in America. And it does so at a time of crippling state budgets, when the Race to the Top funds mean the difference between thousands of teachers laid off or kept on the job, between class sizes expanding or shrinking. Basically, Arne Duncan and the White House are leveraging crisis to make preferred changes in education policy.

And let’s be very clear about this: the changes sought are entirely at the discretion of Arne Duncan and the Education Department. These changes include ideas typically advanced by “reformers” like charter schools, merit pay for teachers and many other “market solutions” for education. You can agree with these ideas or not; I’ve heard arguments on both sides, and it’s important to note that teacher’s unions largely agreed with the changes in Tennessee’s policies that draw the Race to the Top grant. And let’s not be naive in thinking that the federal government doesn’t leverage public money to garner preferred policies in the states all the time – that’s basically how the speed limit works.

But the metrics for winning these stimulus funds comes down to “what Arne Duncan likes about education policy.” I don’t think he’s somehow all-knowing about it, or has access to the best policy prescriptions for every school district in America. The data is not conclusive about the effects of charter schools, or merit pay, or test measurement, or any of the jumble of new ideas in the education sector. It’s just not, no matter what anyone on either side tells you. We could be experiencing “declines” relative to the rest of the world on education based purely by cultural factors and more funding for education in developing nations in Asia and elsewhere. I don’t believe we have the kind of “comparative effectiveness research” to cement that certain kinds of learning environments or school structures beat others; given all the variables, I don’t know that we ever will.

What we do know is that only one side of this debate is withholding funding until their preferred policy prescriptions are enacted. And they’re doing it at a time when the biggest obstacle to education in America in the near-term can be measured in dollars and cents. Giant budget shortfalls in the states mean layoffs for teachers and worse opportunities for students, whether your state has a cap on charter schools or not. The compassionate education policy at this time is not to shock-doctrine states into changing their ways, but in allowing them the means to survive and not fail a generation of students.

The Obama Administration wants to extend the Race to the Top program for the 2011 budget. And that’s their prerogative. But let’s not pretend that’s a decision entirely borne out of a desire for students to reach their educational goals. No, that would look more like giving schools what they need to maintain their current effort.

Duncan and the Oligarchs Try to Bribe Congressmen

Bribing states into accepting corporate education reforms has been so wildly successful that the oligarchs are now planning to bribe Congressmen toward the same end. In their attempt to put renewal of NCLB, er RTTT, on the blitzkrieg track with national testing, teacher pay per score, constant data surveillance, and highly unqualified teachers as priorities,the Obama budget sweetens the bribe pot for Congressmen from starving districts with large numbers of children in poverty:

In a highly unusual move, $1 billion within the proposal is contingent on Congress renewing NCLB this year. Some of these funds would be dedicated to a new initiative under Title I -- a program that provides financial assistance to low-income students -- that rewards schools and school districts for making significant progress. The contingent clause signals President Obama's seriousness about moving forward with NCLB renewal in 2010.

ROTT: Arne Duncan's "Moon Shot" Turns into a Scud Attack

The education deformers' lapdog, Arne Duncan, has sent Newt and Rev Sharpton home for the holidays, and all is quiet around Washington except for the continued quiet counting of health industry dollars in the back rooms of the Senate Building. Even so, Duncan's inspiring rhetoric regarding his Race Over the Top (ROTT) still rings out in the messages from political prostitutes like Governor Phil Bredesen, who has called for a special one week session of the Tennessee Legislature in early January to change state law to force teacher pay and tenure to be decided by a test score.

If Tennessee lawmakers bow to the Governor's brass-knuckled tactics, it will constitute an act that defies the best scientific evidence and advice regarding the Oligarchs' unproven and reckless strategy that has almost no backing among most everyone who knows anything about schooling. Today's Ed Week piece announces, yet, another smackdown for the irresponsible, unethical, and grossly underfunded moon shot that looks every day more like a reckless Scud attack:

A Washington research group is raising questions about the wisdom of the U.S. Department of Education’s favored strategies for turning around the lowest-performing schools with stimulus funding, saying that its research shows that similar federal approaches to school restructuring have not been effective.

The questions raised by the new study were on the agenda last week as the Center on Education Policy , which issued the report, hosted a forum on its findings that included a top Education Department official. . . .

Bredesen, like many other governors hungry for cash, pushes on. From the CityPaper:

. . . .Last week, Bredesen called a surprise seven-day special session of the legislature beginning Jan. 12 to adopt this sweeping change. If lawmakers refuse to go along, the governor warns, the state will blow its opportunity to cash in on up to $400 million in federal economic stimulus money in the Race to the Top competition.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan calls it “education reform’s moon shot.” Across America, state governments are scrambling to make reforms to qualify for shares of the $4 billion available. The deadline for entries from the states is Jan. 19, the last day of the special session.

Yes, the moon shot--Arne's $4.3 billion moon shot. The real moon shot cost $25 billion in 1969 dollars, which means that in 2005 dollars, it would cost $135 billion--which is $565 billion less than the Wall Street Shot that was launched in 2008. Looks more like a mooning than a moon shot, Arne.

Obama’s initiative, Bredesen said, “has made the stars line up to create some opportunities that no one has really expected. I have a little sign on my desk. It says ‘carpe diem’ — seize the day — and that’s what I’m trying to do here with education. … There is a lot at stake here.”

Pulled in two directions

Bredesen’s high-pressure gambit — giving lawmakers one week to act, with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line — puts the statewide teachers’ union, the Tennessee Education Association, in a nearly impossible position. Either the TEA caves and accepts legislation that’s anathema to much of its membership, or the union could look like the villain in the loss of federal aid.

Teachers are complaining about strong-arm tactics from the White House all the way down to the governor’s office. On its Web site, the TEA is asking its members to complain to their state legislators. Lawmakers are themselves grousing over the speed of the special session.

The crux of the controversy is how much weight should be given to student test scores in evaluating the performance of teachers.

. . . .

The governor insists, therefore, that tests should be made the largest factor in tenure decisions and teacher evaluations. The TEA says that’s unfair and would force teachers to “teach to the test” — that is, restrict instruction to the subject matter that’s going to be tested, at the expense of all the other things students need to know. The Obama administration’s guidelines for the stimulus money are vague, asking only that tests play a significant role.

Governor plays tough

“I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say it’s heavy-handed,” TEA lobbyist Jerry Winters said of Bredesen’s call for expedited new legislation. “It’s really a lot of pressure. … Our position is we can’t sell our souls in this process. If there are some changes that we can make that will make the state eligible for $400 million, we don’t want to be viewed as the obstructionist in that process. But on the other hand, we can’t throw our members under the bus. I firmly believe that’s it’s totally unfair to take one test score, one snapshot, and base a teacher’s future on that one particular day.” . . . .

Gingrich Joins Duncan On the Unending Need to "Incent"

Would you call this pay not to play? From Raw Story:

The man who dubbed Vice President Joe Biden a socialist last September for arguing that paying taxes is "patriotic" appears to have some government redistribution ideas of his own.

Newt Gingrich, often cited as a Republican prospect for president in 2012, says the state should consider paying teenager girls not to get pregnant.

He also says that states should consider paying teenage girls who become pregnant to take prenatal vitamins to forestall paying additional health expenses for neonatal care down the road.

The remarks were made during a tour of Michigan on Wednesday. Gingrich is the founder of the Center for Health Transformation, a not-for-profit group advocating the partnership of private and public interests for health care reform.

Along with his remarks about pregnant teenagers, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives also said Wednesday that state legislators should consider paying poor children to read and individuals not to smoke.

"We need to develop a health-based health reform," Gingrich said, according to AP. "Free of the usual bureaucracy." . . . .