Trump’s Victory: What American Federation of Teachers President Weingarten should say

Professor Lois Weiner dismantles Randi Weingarten’s calamitous and undemocratic decisions to back a severely flawed candidate. Decisions that, in turn, led to Trump’s victory. This brilliant essay is a must read.

Trump’s Victory: What American Federation of Teachers President Weingarten should say

WikiLeaks reveals: Hillary Clinton plotted corporate charter school colonialism for Haiti

“Worse, Clinton’s “boarding school” socialization and structure idea sounds more like assimilation than education. Shocking and scarily reminiscent of other U.S. ventures in segregating classes of “other” people. Native Americans were also thought to be in need of “education” to work differently in groups and to be in need of structure.”— Daun Kauffman

WikiLeaks released the Hillary Clinton Email Archive mid-March 2016. Many users were searching for terms like hedge fund manager, Goldman Sachs, or, as the example in the WikiLeaks boolean tutorial: "syria libya will show results…" I decided to search for familiar phases of the neoliberal corporate education reform camp. I struck pay-dirt on my first try with "charter schools." Note my excitement on the day of discovery

Imperialist #HillaryClinton schemed to inflict a colonial charter school regime on the people of Haiti https://t.co/G6pT7fAG4C #WhichHillary

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) March 31, 2016

In one thread Clinton and her cabal talk about a colonial project to remake earthquake stricken Haiti's education system using disaster capitalism, much in the way author Naomi Klein describes what happened in New Orleans:

In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans' school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New Orleans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.

Before getting to the content of the email, it's important to contextualize the Clinton's relationship with the island nation. When not facilitating the orchestration of coups in Latin America, bombing the Near East and Africa into the stone age, or providing full-throated support for apartheid states, Clinton is meddling in Haiti. Lots of good pieces on the Clintons and Haiti in publications like Counterpunch and Black Agenda Report, but this excerpt from an essay by Shadowproof's Roqayah Chamseddine is an excellent summary:

In 2010, Hillary Clinton visited Haiti as part of a public relations stunt that allowed her to see firsthand the devastation wrought by the earthquake that killed at least 100,000. This performance was primarily meant to demonstrate solidarity and show the international community that the United States would be there to help in reconstruction efforts. Yet, her visit came less than a year after the U.S. State Department, then led by Clinton, had pressured the government of Haiti into denying laborers a wage increase of $0.62.

Dan Caughlin and Kim Ives of Haïti Liberté reported the U.S. Embassy in Haiti aggressively pressured “factory owners [in Haiti] contracted by Levi’s, Hanes, and Fruit of the Loom to block a paltry minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest paid in the hemisphere.” In statements reminiscent of the Clinton campaign’s recent charges against Sanders, Deputy Chief of Mission David E. Lindwall called the proposed $5 minimum wage for Haitian assembly zone workers one which “did not take economic reality into account” but that was meant to appeal to the “unemployed and underpaid masses.”

Haiti has long been a kind of pet project for the Clintons, and they’ve often spoken of “falling in love with Haiti” during their honeymoon. But the love isn’t mutual by any means, and Haitians across the U.S. have made this increasingly clear by way of protests spotlighting the catastrophe the Clintons have left behind. Dahoud Andre, a radio host who has organized protests in New York, is quoted by the New York Times as saying that “a vote for Hillary Clinton means further corruption, further death and destruction for our people.”

Since the email I'll be discussing is accessible here, and is somewhat long, I will not reproduce it in its entirety. Rather, I'll draw excerpts from sections and discuss them. Secretary Clinton forwarded the email in question to one of her assistants, Lauren Jiloty. It was written by neoliberal corporate education reform cheerleader David Domenici in response to Clinton's wanting suggestions on how to capitalize on the Haitian disaster. Charter school profiteer Domenici has no background in pedagogy, has never worked at a public school, "worked in finance", and is a Senior Fellow for the right-wing think-tank Center for American Progress. His biography reads like those of most of his ilk: "He felt that an understanding of the law coupled with his understanding of the financial world would help frame his sense of how best to generate positive social change." It is with this profound ignorance of education and pedagogy that Domenici crafted the Clinton Colonial Education Corps plan. That former Secretary Clinton relied on a venture capitalist for education policy advice speaks volumes, and foreshadows some very frightening prospects should she capture the Presidency.

---

From: Hillary Clinton
To: Lauren Jiloty
Date: 2010-01-18 19:23
Subject: HOPE YOU ARE WELL, WHERE EVER YOU GET THIS - - BELOW ARE IDEAS RE: EDUCATION CORPS FOR HAITI THAT YOU ASKED FOR

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05772910 Date: 08/31/2015
RELEASE IN PART B6

From: H hrod17@clintonemail.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 7:23 AM
To: 'JilotyLC@state.gov'
Subject: Fw: Hope you are well, where ever you get this-- below are ideas re: education corps for Haiti that you asked for

From: David Domenici
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 7:55 PM
To: 'Mills, Cheryl D'; 'Cheryl Mills'
Subject: Hope you are well, where ever you get this-- below are ideas re: education corps for Haiti that you asked for

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05772910 Date: 08/31/2015
Hey Cheryl,

It's important to establish who was sending what to who.

Here are some quick thoughts on re-building school infrastructure in Port-au-Prince. Feel free to share with whomever you'd like.

I have little idea of the larger context here — how many schools/kids are we looking at, but one thing we've learned in the US in the last 5 years is that good teachers are the #1 lever of change in education. If we got 1,000 really great teachers into Port-au-Prince (w/ even a modicum of support and materials), they'd make a big difference and touch the lives of 30,000-60,000 kids.

Here Domenici perpetuates the most common falsehood from the reformers' talking point list, that good/great teachers are the number one factor affecting students. He's dead wrong, and this misrepresentation of fact needs correction.

It's not that teaching isn't important—quite the contrary, but teaching is a minority factor in group of factors impacting students. Even more so in the abject conditions of post-earthquake Haiti, which was already an impoverished nation due to U.S. economic imperialism. It's doubtful that Domenici or Clinton have actually read about this outside their small insular world of edreform, where policy papers are passed off as research. However, depending on which study we rely on, teachers at most comprise 10 to 20 percent of factors for achievement outcomes. The distinguished Dr. Paul L. Thomas has written on this, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has funded major studies, edreform darling Eric A. Hanushek has documented it, as have many others. Some selected sources:

Di Carlo: But in the big picture, roughly 60 percent of achievement outcomes is explained by student and family background characteristics (most are unobserved, but likely pertain to income/poverty). Observable and unobservable schooling factors explain roughly 20 percent, most of this (10-15 percent) being teacher effects. The rest of the variation (about 20 percent) is unexplained (error). In other words, though precise estimates vary, the preponderance of evidence shows that achievement differences between students are overwhelmingly attributable to factors outside of schools and classrooms (see Hanushek et al. 1998; Rockoff 2003; Goldhaber et al. 1999; Rowan et al. 2002; Nye et al. 2004).

Rothstein: The 2/3 — 1/3 breakdown between family background and school influences  was the core finding of the 1966 federal study, the “Coleman Report.”  But this interpretation of the report overstates its finding about the  influence of schools, because Coleman and his colleagues considered the  influence of a child’s schoolmates (“peer effects”) to be a school  factor, not an out-of-school factor. (Coleman, James S., and Ernest Q.  Campbell, Carol J. Hobson, James McPartland, Alexander M. Mood, Frederic  D. Weinfeld, and Rober L. York, Equality of Educational Opportunity,  Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,  Government Printing Office, 1966.) Yet the only way to affect the  composition of peers in the neighborhood schools he studied would be to  change the composition of neighborhoods, with housing integration  policies, for example. Of the in-school influences, the Coleman Report  identified teacher quality (defined by teacher characteristics such as  their educational attainment and experience) to be most important.

In the context of post-earthquake Haiti, understanding that we cannot rely on teachers alone to make up for the crushing poverty, multiple traumas, and lack of infrastructure, is critical. While we certainly want all children in Haiti to have access to education, the idea that we can ignore the rest of the issues they're facing reeks of colonialism and callousness.

I think this is totally doable, in short-order, in a magnificent way that could set the foundation for a well-educated generation of Haitians who could lead the country out of poverty, to self-sustainability, self-governance and openness.

Never mind that Haitian poverty is a result of U.S. transnational corporations depressing wages (cf Secretary Clinton's intervention in Haiti's attempt to raise minimum wage discussed supra). Pay no attention to the blatantly racist and colonialist notion that but for U.S. intervention, there would never be a "well-educated generation of Haitians". Ignore the fact that every attempt by Haitians to create self-sustainability and self-governance has been thwarted by U.S. interventions. Corporate education reform will correct all these things in "short-order" under the new Clinton Education Corps plan.

There were four goals listed for the Clinton Colonial Education Corps plan. Domenici enumerates them as:

• Goal 1: Human Capital
• Goal 2: Build a robust curriculum and teacher instruction program
• Goal 3: Build high quality, durable schools that entice families, children into education
• Goal 4: Create family, community impetus for all school age children to be in school

Goal 1: Human Capital:

Create Haiti Teacher Corps. Model loosely off of Peace Corps/Teach for America, CityYear Teacher corps (US): Recruit, train, and place 500-1000 teachers from US this spring and summer. We can do this.

* * *

o Language/culture training: TDB — find the best folks out there to train in French/Creole, and Haitian culture, current socio-political situation — 50% of the training program.

o Academic training: We'll work w/ TFA and others and develop 8 week intensive teacher training program for other 50% of program.

Being a business-finance type, Domenici is quite at home writing about how to make other people do work. This is the longest section of his piece, so only small portion will be addressed here. The most frightening thing is that he pushes the Teach for America (TFA) model, which at best is a paternalistic, colonial model. Clinton's advisor then outlines his program for "training" that is eight weeks long. At first blush, this is a vast improvement over TFA's woefully deficient standard five week model. That is until we take into account that they want these recruits "to train in French/Creole, and Haitian culture" simultaneously. While the self-congratulatory reformsters all consider themselves "elite", it's somewhat absurd that eight weeks is all that's allotted for all this content. To contextualize, at its shortest point, clown college was eight weeks. In essence, Clinton's cabal feel that the best Haitian students deserve is people with no more training than clowns.

Haiti-based: Less clear what the teacher-leader pipeline is like...but we can figure out and get whoever we can.

Clinton's advisor Domenici consistently speaks of the Haitian people as somewhat of an afterthought. They are someone you do "for" or "to", but never "with". That this wealthy, white male consistently leaves the agency of Haitians out of the equation is completely in line with the white supremacist lens that both he and Hillary Clinton see the world through.

Much of the rest of this section deals with how cheaply they'd like to see all the labor paid. Interestingly, this is in line with how Clinton's State Department kept Haitian wages low in order to sate corporate capital. Domenici asserts that there's plenty of young charter school types that are willing to make the sacrifices that neither he, nor any of his peers would ever make. The finance capitalist then turns his attentions to the next goal.

I am not a curriculum expert, but I think this is really doable, as well, so long as we get the right team […]

Clinton's fellow corporate reformer is refreshingly honest here. Not only is he not a "curriculum expert", he's not even a novice. When we look at his notions of "Backwards Mapping" and "clusters and in modules that can be swapped in and out", it's clear that Domenici is pushing what Paulo Freire termed "the banking model of pedagogy", that is, that students are vessels into which corporate reformers pour knowlege into. This model works well for maintaining oppression, and would serve to perpetuate the United States' existing historical relationship with Haiti.

Reading this section reminds one of just how profoundly ignorant neoliberal corporate eduction reform types are. This may be the one individual less knowledgeable than Arne Duncan or John King on education issues, which would likely mean a potential Clinton administration would tap him to head the Education Department. If Domenici is one thing, he's buzzword compliant. Every phrase and term for the reformy canon is on display in his missive to the Wall Street funded Presidential candidate who spent many years on Walmart's board of directors.

Consider technology and technology infrastructure as a part of the initial construction plan so it's not add-on later.

Hillary Clinton and Cheryl Mills' education "expert" would be remiss if he wasn't providing profit vectors for Reed Hastings, Bill Gates, and Pearson, PLC. The rest of his section for goal three is quite reminiscent of the Naomi Klein quote supra, where she discusses destroyed infrastructure being ignored in favor of school privatization happening with "speed and precision". Domenici does disaster capitalism with the best of them.

The corporatist's final section suggests wrap-around services, something that those of us in the social justice camp are certainly in favor of. However, Clinton's confidant can't seem to keep his paternalism in check. He asserts that if his plan is followed, that it will "be a catalyst for socio-political change". We discussed above how Haiti's problems are due to U.S. economic imperialism, and seemingly endless interventionism in the country's affairs. To suggest that their problems stem from a lack of education is that special kind of victim blaming that corporate reformers are so adept at. It also smacks of how neoliberal Democrats, as Thomas Frank so succinctly puts it, "see every economic problem as an educational problem".

Domenici is an elitist from the finance capital sector, and had been asked by a Secretary of State whose Wall Street ties are like no other to advise her on educational policy for Haiti. So it's no small wonder that he ends his email with:

Gotta run. See you shortly.

xo,

dd

It's no surprise that the woman who refers to children of color as "super-predators", insisting that "we have to bring them to heel", would search out such a racist education plan to inflict on a Haitian population decimated as much by the Clintons' free-trade deals as by natural disasters. Like the distinguished Professor Michelle Alexander says, Hillary Clinton uses "racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals." While Haiti was spared this horrific, colonial charter school plan hatched by Clinton and her corporate advisors, we can expect more of the same if she somehow comes to power again. We need to organize and prepare to fight against her racist penchant for neoliberal corporate education reform.

---

While not Hillary Clinton specific, Jesse Hagopian has an excellent piece entitled: Shock-Doctrine Schooling in Haiti: Neoliberalism Off the Richter Scale

Corporate Radio Picks On AFT Indiana

by Doug Martin 

A few days ago, WIBC 93.1’s Ray Steele and Mike Wilson, hosts of The 10 @ 10 Show, found a tweet by AFT Indiana and went into corporate bully mode. 

The AFT Indiana tweet read:  

“To all the heroes of the education world headed back to the trenches: Good luck & Thank You!” 

WIBC’s hosts were offended by the war metaphor, claiming that teachers do not do anything like engage in battle from the “trenches” and that it was “outlandish” for AFT Indiana to make such a statement. 

WIBC is owned and operated by Emmis Communications.  Emmis’ Executive Vice President is Scott Enright, a board member of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, an Indianapolis-based national privatization propaganda mill started by economist Milton Friedman and Mitch Daniels. Emmis, as I note in my book Hoosier School Heist, was paid very well by the Friedman Foundation a few years back for ads to push school privatization. 

 

With a board made up of Overstocked.com’s founder and many school privatization champions, the Friedman Foundation pays well, too.  In 2013, CEO Robert Enlow raked in over $220,000 (see page 7).  The Friedman Foundation has funded the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity (page 39) and even the Indianapolis Urban League, the latter to the tune of $20,000 in 2013 (see page 40).  

As I mention in my book, Milton Friedman knew quite a bit about war, literally war against the people.  In the 1970s after the CIA helped overthrow the democratically-elected president in Chile, Friedman aided the new brutal dictator, Augusto Pinochet, in beating into place a free-market scheme that still spurs protests in the streets.  As Naomi Klein and others have detailed, thousands of people were killed and tortured who tried to fight off Pinochet and Friedman’s assaults against humanity.  In fact, it is now believed that the great poet Pablo Neruda, a socialist, may have been killed by Pinochet.  

Friedman and his trained economists, the Chicago Boys, heaped havoc on Chile, and the disaster capitalism to steal the public infrastructure you see going on in America and across the world today starts with Friedman.  

Of course you won’t hear anything about this on WIBC or any other corporate media in Indiana or across these states.  If WIBC’s hosts want to argue metaphor, maybe they should read some Neruda.  If not, they should stick to discussing things they know something about, which is not education.  And maybe they should read a bit of real history, too. 

Hillary Clinton’s Hedge Fund Son-In-Law

By Doug Martin at Hoosier School Heist Blog

A while back, Hillary Clinton, speaking the talk of the working class as all Wall Street DC Democrats do, lashed out at top hedge fund managers for “making more than all of America’s kindergarten teachers combined.”  Hillary’s statement was mere deception. Not because it wasn't the truth; but because Hillary happens to love hedge fund managers and banksters.

Hedge fund managers seek to privatize education and steal pensions from teachers, as I detail in my book Hoosier School Heist, and wipe out what is left of the middle class.  And Hillary is all about that.

In fact, Hillary’s son-in-law, Marc Mezvinsky, is a hedge fund manager.  His fund, Eaglevale Partners, recently lost a little money in Greece, a country which cannot pay back loans to billionaires, banksters, and hedge fund managers who have set in place legalized stealing in the form of disaster capitalism.  

One of the chief structures behind disaster capitalism across the planet is the World Bank, which Hillary once wanted to lead.

As a New York Times piece noted, Eaglevale Partners is a “fund that makes trades based on global economic and political events.” Several investors in Hillary’s son-in-law’s hedge fund, as the New York Times also pointed out, have ties to the Clintons and have even funded Hillary’s campaign chest. Goldman Sachs is one of these.  As of November 2010, Goldman Sachs, through its Charter School Loan Facility, was funding 130 charter schools across the US.  Hillary’s son-in-law was once a Goldman Sachs employee.

As for Bill?  Bill Clinton has been behind the for-profit charter school movement since its inception, as many now know. Last year, he even spoke at a Nashville charter school operated by one of Chelsea’s old college sweethearts.

Recently an outfit spreading charter schools in India was honored at the Clinton Global Initiative, and Marc Mezvinsky, Clinton’s hedge fund son-in-law, was there for the photo-op.

Disaster capitalism is the leading force behind the assault on public schools.  And be sure that Hillary, hedge fund managers, Goldman Sachs, and Randi Weingarten will help further its agenda.

DC is a lost cause.  And so are the teachers unions. Sleep good at night. Focus your energy on the state level and make plans for a real revolution, before global warming kills us all off.

 

Fredrick Hess: Duplicity Personified

By Ken Derstine

June 22, 2015

Frederick Hess is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. He has a blog on Education Week called Straight Up.

On June 11, 2015 he posted this column on his blog:

5 Thoughts on Nevada’s Landmark School Choice Law

In the article Hess praises the newly enacted Nevada law that makes Education Savings Accounts (vouchers) available to all families for a hodgepodge of education choices if parents want to flee the funding and resource starved public schools. The bulk of his article sings the praises of disaster capitalism as the means to promote privatization of public schools.

He concludes his article with the astonishing statement:

“Finally, per usual, I'm puzzled as to why teachers aren't embracing this kind of reform and all the possibilities it holds for them. Instead, Nevada State Education Association president Ruben Murillo has denounced the bill, arguing that taxpayers should not be helping families to attend "private school interests. Now, I’ve met Murillo (Nevada NEA President). He knows that plenty of teachers in Nevada are frustrated with testing, disciplinary issues, teacher evaluation, accountability systems, and more. And the opportunity for families to choose the kinds of teaching and schooling that will best serve their children means more kids will be in different kinds of schools—which gives teachers opportunities to work in schools that aren’t wired into the system of state-mandated evaluations and accountability, if they wish. After all, many of those “private school interests” will offer a very different school culture and approach. Seems like a win-win to me. I hope Nevada’s educators proceed with that possibility in mind.”

On February 5, 2015 Hess moderated four hours of panels at the American Enterprise Institute. The theme of the conference was “Is the ‘new’ education philanthropy good for schools? Examining foundation-funded school reform”. The main purpose of the conference was how to promote standardized tests for teacher evaluation.

 For a synopsis of the conference, see:

 Talking to the Choir: AEI panels discuss their attack on public education

Apparently the “starve the public schools, feed the charters” tactic of corporate education reformers to make charters appealing to parents is evolving into “flee from the public schools to escape standardized testing” (which corporate education reformers initiated and are promoting).

Duplicity – deceitfulness in speech or conduct, as by speaking or acting in two different ways to different people concerning the same manner; double-dealing.

Also see:

Privatization Primer
Curmudgucation - June 20, 2015 

Investors Ready to Liquidate Public Schools
Life at the Intersections - November 9, 2014
It's over half a year old, but this article captures the corporate education reform method.  

It's Not About School Achievement, and It's Not Even About the Budget

We know now, even those among us who have been too busy working to notice, that for the past 30 years the real agenda by big money has been about privatizing public institutions, advancing fundamentalist ideology to control behavior,  and snuffing out the public space in favor of a corporate state. 

All the hype about bad schools and greedy teachers and militant gays and evil Muslims has masked the poison on the tip of spear aimed at the heart of American democracy.  It has always been, as Grover Norquist has crowed for so long, about weakening government enough so that it can dragged into the bathtub and drowned.  

As Rachel Maddow documents in the clip below (please watch both sides of the break), what is going on now is the fabrication of a crisis through the magnification of a problem that was created by the same big money that now wants to use the effects of that 2008 Wall Street heist to destroy the middle and working classes in America, while seizing permanent control of the remaining government.  It is, in effect, the Shock Doctrine in practice on a massive scale.  Examples in Maddow's report:

• Scott in Florida cuts K-12 education $1.7 billion, while slashing corporate and property taxes

• Kasich in Ohio makes draconian cuts to collective bargaining the centerpiece of his annual address (heavily heckled, by the way)

• Michigan's Rick Snyder raises taxes on seniors and poor people and those giving to public universities in the amount of $1.7 billion, while giving $1.8 billion in tax cuts to Michigan's wealthy.  Also, Snyder's cutting of state aid and bankrupting towns is accompanied by a new law that gives Snyder the power to declare any town in financial emergency, with an emergency administrator appointed by the Governor who can then strip union rights, existing contracts, and even dismiss elected officials to the point of overruling and suspending local governments.  Oh yes, these emergency administrators may be corporations hired by the Governor for this task.

Watch it, including the Naomi Klein segment.  Fortunately, the American people have awakened in time to stop the catastrophe if we will act in a determined and concerted fashion over time.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Naomi Klein and Chris Hayes: The Shock Doctrine in Wisconsin

Christie and Rhee: A Match Made in Hell

Can you imagine the sulphurous vapors in the room last Tuesday, with the broomless ex-chancellor of DC schools cheering on the morbidly-obese bully governor of NJ as he announced plans turn back the education clock in his state by a hundred years.  From the Times:

Mr. Christie already has fans, both in New Jersey and in education circles across the country. Michelle Rhee, the former Washington schools chancellor, who sat beside Mr. Christie’s wife during Tuesday’s speech in Trenton, has committed her new organization, StudentsFirst, to providing policy support for Mr. Christie’s education initiatives. “I think it’s incredibly courageous of the governor to take these issues on,” Ms. Rhee said Wednesday. “These are ones that have long been considered sacred cows.” 

Then on Thursday, Beelzeblob cost his state a half-billion dollars when he chose to amp up his disaster rhetoric that he uses to sell the Koch Brothers' snake oil, just as the NJEDA was trying to find bond buyers.  From the Wall Street Journal:

Dealers and portfolio managers said the market responded negatively to a remark Thursday by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie that health-care costs might "bankrupt" the Garden State. The comment came in a town meeting as the New Jersey Economic Development Authority was attempting to sell $1.3 billion of tax-exempt bonds. The agency ended up slashing the sale to $777.5 million on poor demand.

Jon Alter Kneels Again to "Micro-hard Hombre," Bill Gates

Tom Friedman and Jonathan Alter have a couple of things in common besides their principle concern for having others listen to them without interruption.

Both share an abiding faith in technocracy to solve the problems that technology creates, and both embrace a blithely-oppressive brand of self-consuming and human-gobbling capitalism that places Man squarely under the unholy, heavy Thumb of the Market's invisible Hand.  Their shared religion often brings them together to sit at the feet of high priest, Bill Gates, with their notepads at the ready to receive the Word on any number of problems, real or manufactured, that Gates pretends to know something about, while the millionaires at Microsoft scurry around developing the product lines to make Bill's wise solutions realizable in ways that increase market share

Gates had turned his eye toward the half-trillion dollars that Americans spend on education long before Rupert Murdoch hired the hapless Joel Klein to advise News Corporation on how to get in on the ed bonanza.  In fact, Gates's recent enthusiasms for hand-held data phasers led, I would guess, to Murdoch's ridiculously-overpriced purchase of Wireless Generation, the company that had NYC Schools as a client during Klein's lucrative tenure.  We must wonder how long it will take Microsoft to gobble up Wireless Generation if their ridiculous gadget can be made indispensable by the ed marketeers.

So combine Alter's worship of Gates with his schoolyard bully's attitude toward public education, and you have a very valuable propaganda weapon that Team Oligarch uses on a regular basis to soften up the ground ahead of new corporate ed campaigns.  Alter delivers in his most recent piece in the bankrupt Newsweek rag, with so many malicious distortions and sucker punches that it will take more than a single post to sort them out.  The first one comes in the lead paragraph as a familiar form of fearplay that predictably precedes the outright assault.  Ladies and gentlemen, the education crisis redux, once more, again:

Bill Gates is raising his arm, bent at the elbow, in the direction of the ceiling. The point he’s making is so important that he wants me and the pair of Gates Foundation staffers sitting in the hotel conference room in Louisville, Ky., to recognize the space between this thought and every lower-ranking argument. “If there’s one thing that can be done for the country, one thing,” Gates says, his normally modulated voice rising, “improving education rises so far above everything else!” He doesn’t say what the “else” is—deficit reduction? containing Iran? free trade?—but they’re way down toward the floor compared with the arm above that multibillion-dollar head. With the U.S. tumbling since 1995 from second in the world to 16th in college-graduation rates and to 24th place in math (for 15-year-olds), it was hard to argue the point. Our economic destiny is at stake.

Let's look at some facts before we go any further, rather than taking seriously Alter's distortions and lies that he uses to create the illusion of a disaster and, thus, making the Gates plan inevitable and urgently needed.  First off, a good reporter goes beyond Wikipedia to get his facts.  The U. S. is, in fact, 12th and not 16th in college graduation rates when compared with other developed nations.  And rather than "tumbling" down to the 12th spot, other countries, rather, have moved up faster percentage-wise in comparison to the U. S.  Finland, for instance, more than doubled the percentage of its population with bachelors' degrees from 1995 to 2007 (from 20% to 46%), while the U. S. moved up a single point from 33% to 34%.  We must wonder how much Finland's K12 reforms have contributed to this surge in college completion.  Perhaps there is some legitimacy to reforms built on rich curriculums with supportive and challenging schools for all, high-status professional teaching, and the elimination high-stakes standardized testing.

Even with eleven other countries leading the U. S. in percentages of college grads, this kind of statistic is highly misleading, as Bracey pointed out many times.  Finland's population is about 5.3 million souls, while the U. S. population exceeds 310 million.  When extrapolated from the entire population, Finland's 46 percent would represent about 2.4 million folks with degrees, whereas the U. S.'s 34 percent would represent 105 million individuals with degrees.  End of emergency, crisis, disaster, etc.

The 24th spot in math for 15 year olds is another distortion, when we take into consideration the actual numbers of American students scoring at the highest levels, when compared to Finland, Singapore, etc. From Bracey, December 9, 2008 at HuffPo:

Principle 23 of the "principles of data interpretation" that organize "Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered," reads "If the situation really is as alleged ask, 'So what?'" The question does not call for some smart-ass response, it calls for an evaluation of the consequences of the situation. So the U. S. is not #1 in mathematics or science testing. So what? So, very little.

First, comparing nations on average scores is a pretty silly idea. It's like ranking runners based on average shoe size or evaluating the high school football team on the basis of how fast the average senior can run the 40-yard dash. Not much link to reality. What is likely much more important is how many high performers you have. On both TIMSS math and science, the U. S. has a much higher proportion of "advanced" scorers than the international median although the proportion is much smaller than in Asian nations.

This was not true on PISA, another international comparison that tests 15-year-olds. Only 1.5% of American students scored at the highest level compared to top performing New Zealand at 4% and second place Finland at 3.9%. Yet the proportion of Americans at the highest level meant that 70,000 kids scored there compared to about 2,000 for New Zealand and Sweden. No one else even came close--Japan was second with about 33,000 top performers. These are the people who might end up creating leading edge technology in the future. Who cares if Singapore, with about the same population as the Washington Metro Area, and Hong Kong, with about twice that number, score high? There aren't many people there. (And, as journalist Fareed Zakariya found out, the Singapore kids fade as they become adults. More about that in a moment). The bad news is that the U. S., on PISA anyway, had many more students scoring at the lowest levels; these kids likely can't compete for the good jobs in the country.

Brief interruption:  The U. S. has much a higher ranking in another important category that is not on Gates's or Alter's radar screens:

According to data compiled by the OECD in 2008, the United States has a child poverty rate of 20.6%, which makes the United States rank fourth out of thirty OECD countries ranked in that category. Turkey ranks first, with a child poverty rate of 24.6%.  

(Click chart to feel sick).

Back to Bracey's beautiful rant:

Second, test scores, at least average test scores, don't seem to be related to anything important to a national economy. Japan's kids have always done well, but the economy sank into the Pacific in 1990 and has never recovered. The two Swiss-based organizations that rank nations on global competitiveness, the Institute for Management Development and the World Economic Forum, both rank the U. S. #1 and have for a number of years. The WEF examines 12 "pillars of competitiveness," only one of which is education. We do OK there, but we shine on innovation. Innovation is the only quality of competitiveness that does not show at some point diminishing returns. Building bigger and faster airplanes can only improve productivity so much. Innovation has no such limits. When Zakariya asked the Singapore Minister of Education why his high-flying students faded in after-school years, the Minister cited creativity, ambition, and a willingness to challenge existing knowledge, all of which he thought American excelled in. But, as Bob Sternberg of Tufts University has pointed out, our obsession with standardized testing has produced one of the best instruments in the nation's history for stifling creativity.

But really, does the fate of the nation rest on how well 9- and 13-year-olds bubble in answer sheets? I don't think so. Neither does British economist, S. J. Prais. We look at the test scores and worry about the nation's economic performance. Prais looks at the economic performance and worries about the validity of the test scores: "That the United States, the world's top economic performing country, was found to have school attainments that are only middling casts fundamental doubts about the value and approach of these [international assessments]."

Third, even if comparisons of average test scores were a meaningful exercise, it only looks at one dimension--the supply side. Predictably, the results gave rise to calls for more spending on science instruction. This ignores the fact that we have more scientists and engineers than we can absorb. In one study, Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University and Harold Salzman of the Urban Institute found that we mint three new engineers for every new job (this is from permanent residents and citizens, not foreigners). More disturbing was the attrition rate. While educators fret over losing 50% of teachers in 5 years (and well they should), Lowell and Salzman found that engineering loses 65% in two years. Why? Low pay, lousy working conditions, little chance for advancement. American schools of engineering are dominated by foreigners because only people from third world nations can view our jobs as attractive. In fact, long-time science writer, Dan Greenberg, invented a new position for those emerging with Ph.D.'s: post-doc emeritus.

Schools are doing a great job on the supply side. Business and industry are doing a lousy job on the demand side. The oil industry, responding to increased demand for oil exploration raised the entry-level salaries for petroleum engineers by 30-60%. The number of students lining up to be petroleum engineers has doubled and enrollment at Texas Tech has increased sixfold.

As usual in these comparisons, Americans in low-poverty schools look very good, even in mathematics. They would be ranked third in the 4th grade (among 36 nations) 6th in the 8th grade (among 47 nations). This is important because while other developed nations have poor children, the U. S. has a much higher proportion and a much weaker safety net. When UNICEF studied poverty in 22 wealthy nations, the U. S. ranked 21st.

Finally, there are some curiosities that will take some time to analyze. Critics are fond of pointing to the Czech Republic as a nation that spend much less than we do on schools but scores much higher. Not this time. The Czech Republic has seen catastrophic drops in its math scores since 1995, 54 points in 4th grade, 63 points in 8th grade and is now well below the United States in both grades.

Forty-percent of Koreans reached the highest level in 8th grade math. In PISA, only 1.1% did. Note that that is fewer than the 1.5% of American students at the highest level in PISA.

Then there are the gender differences: For some countries there are huge differences in 8th-grade mathematics---favoring females. Of the eight countries with the largest differences, only Thailand is not an Islamic nation. Does this reflect which girls get to go to school in these countries? I don't know.

P. S. Overall the U. S. did pretty well in both subjects at both grades.

To be continued . . .