Perspectives in Education

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• Tarrey Banks

The Neo-Liberal Agenda and School Reform: T. Banks

Our city and state claims that it is "the leader" in school reform. We have a host of self-proclaimed school reform "rock stars" living and working amongst us. I need not name them as they name themselves every chance they get.

But the story of our city is not unique. It is a neo-liberal narrative that is being written across the country. Neo-liberalism's influence is shaping our city's story of school reform and leading to the further neglect of our neighborhoods and our children.

Pauline Lipman, a soldier and advocate for public education describes it well in her book, The New Political Economy of Urban Education:

"Neo-liberalism is a particular, historically-generated state strategy to manage structural crisis of capitalism and provide new opportunities for capital accumulation. Put simply, neo-liberalism is an ensemble of economic and social policies, forms of governance, and discourses and ideologies that promote individual self-interest, unrestricted flows of capital, deep reductions in the cost of labor, and sharp retrenchment of the public sphere. Neoliberals champion privatization of social goods and withdraw from government from provision for social welfare on the premise that competitive markets are more effective and proficient" (p. 6).

In terms of public education, the neo-liberal agenda is the agenda of school reform.

A story has been told that says public schools are failing nationwide, that it is educators' fault this has happened, that public schools systems are incapable of the change necessary to address this crisis, and that the private sector and thus the free-market are the only way out.

The narrative of the economic crisis has become the underlying impetus for quick change in public education. Meaning, if we do not "train" this new order of students to "compete" in the global economy then we are doomed. Who better to train them than the private sector? Who better to fund the change than the private sector? To add complexity, schools, school districts, and departments of education across the country have now been running systems of schools that rely on private money just to balance budgets. Over the last 20 years it has become absurd for schools to think they could operate solely on public funding. Educators have been happily taking Gates, Walton, and Freidman Foundation money for years, and now rely on it. The economic system of education is based on this infusion of private dollars from the 1 percent just to survive.

So why is this happening and what does it look like?

áTeachers stopped fighting for what they believe in at least five years ago. Those of us who are still fighting are being replaced by new teachers trained in schools of education that are tightly coupled with corporate reformers and their agendas. Schools of education know they cannot survive if they do not get in line, thus the new teaching force believes in the neo-liberal narrative and have been trained to implement it.

* The idea of a school or system that does not include standardization or standardized tests is a ridiculous notion and has no place in public education. Schools, educators, and families that fight against standardization are deemed radicals and dismissed.

* A narrative of school reform has been written that says if you are against standardization then you are against accountability. If you are not willing to close schools then you are unwilling or unable to do the hard work of improving education.

* Public education is being "Teach for America-nized." An entire army of "teachers" is being fast tracked into our schools with the most need. This army is being indoctrinated into the neo-liberal agenda. They are trained to raise scores for the two years they are there. Any that come to the realization of the neo-liberal agenda and have other notions are gone in two years and replaced with a new "member" to pick up where they left off. They are smart, passionate people who could be catalysts for transformative education, but instead they are neo-liberal foot soldiers.

* For-profit and "non-for-profit" groups are starting networks of well-funded, mechanized, schools all over the country, especially in urban spaces, that are taking the place of local public and/or independent schools that were once serving kids. These groups are making lots of money and are politically lobbying for legislation that will further their agendas.

* Progressive education, especially in urban spaces, is dying or dead. The idea of anything that does not have an immediate (5 years or less) impact on standardized tests scores is not valued by the neo-liberal agenda and is either never allowed to exist or is extinguished in short order.

* Closing or taking over schools, often by municipalities or for-profit groups, is becoming the badge of courage in school reform. If you haven't closed a school then you are not courageous and your neo-liberal peers question you.

* The 1 percent that controls the world is controlling the education reform agenda because they are funding it.

* There is no collective and organized counter argument/agenda to confront or battle the current neo-liberal agenda of school reform.

* Especially in urban spaces, a system of educational apartheid is being created and the toughest kids are being pushed lower and lower to the bottom of the heap.

I have spent the better part of the last 16 years in public education. All but three of those years were in schools created by teachers and/or communities of teachers and families. I am exhausted but still fighting. I am searching for rationale or some sign that this is the wrong direction. When I find myself in a place of darkness I try to find those people who can pull me out. I end this with some thoughts from three very smart, activist women at the forefront of creating a counter-narrative to the neo-liberal social imaginary that is driving the current agenda.

Pauline Lipman's New Political Economy (2011):

A fundamental condition is that marginalized, oppressed, and exploited people rally together to push for liberatory agendas in a time of strong, progressive social movements, as they did in many parts of the world in the 1960s and early 1970s, and may even forge a counter hegemonic social bloc to contest for a new social order. However, in periods when dominant forces effectively reshape common sense around their program (as has been the case with the rise of neoliberalism over the past 25 years) and there is no strong counter alliance with its own agenda, options are more limited. In this context, individuals may opt to "work the system" and organized oppressed groups may tactically ally themselves with the elements of the dominant agenda in an effort to meet immediate needs. (p. 123)

Diane Ravitch, "American Schools in Crisis,"The Saturday Evening Post, August 16, 2011:

We are now at a fork in the road. If we continue on our present path of privatization and unproven market reforms, we will witness the explosive growth of a for-profit education industry and of education entrepreneurs receiving high salaries to manage nonprofit enterprises. The free market loves competition, but competition produces winners and losers, not equality of educational opportunity ...

What we will lose, if we move in that direction, is public education. Just as every neighborhood should have a good police station and firehouse, every neighborhood should also have a good public school. It is worth remembering that the reason we first established public education was to advance the common good of the community. It began in small towns, where communities agreed that all the children should be educated for the good of all and the sake of the future. Public schools have a civic mission: They are expected to prepare young people to become citizens and to share in the responsibility of maintaining our society. As political forces tear them apart, creating opportunities for entrepreneurs and for profit, it diminishes our commonwealth. That is a price we must not pay.

Deborah Meier, "On being on the edge of the possible," On Education, Aug. 12, 2012:

I see the task of folks in my camp to be largely educational–to change minds. We have to make it easy for others to identify with us and maybe join us from time to time by focusing on the issues that we have the most leverage on: too much testing, too much prepping, the narrowing of the curriculum, the abandonment of phys ed and the arts, the pressure and fear imposed on very young children (and their parents), especially those who reach specific benchmarks later, and finally a rotating teaching force with little training and constantly afraid of losing their jobs. There's another battle needed to remind folks about why unions were invented and why things are every bit as hard now as they were "then." In short, just as we know that we must start where the kids' are–taking their misconceptions and ignorance as natural and expected, so too must we start with our fellow adults. Given the relentless and misinformed (lies) attack on teachers and unions, and the hyping of private enterprise what would we expect? It's even more "natural" for adults to believe we are the crazies. That's the starting point. Accept it. To go further we need patience, and the capacity to find the metaphors that connect others to our concerns. We need to share tactics and strategies for enlarging our circle of allies. We need to be organized ... We need to set an example for the youngest of what it means to be long-distance runners.

I am a long-distance runner, but I am tired. I am not at all confident that transformative education within the current public education system is possible. I am less confident that there is a collective will to counter the neo-liberal agenda; an agenda that is as powerful and has as much momentum as it ever has before. Millions, maybe billions, of dollars are being made and invested in a calculated attack on public education. So, I'm not even confident that locally driven, public education will survive, let alone be transformative and democratic in nature. It is a dark day and it will only get darker if a large and organized group of advocates and activists for public, transformative, democratic education cannot create the public will to summon the courage of which Lipman, Meier, and Ravitch speak.

References

Ackoff, R., & Greenburg, D. (2008). Turning learning right side up: Putting education back on track. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Wharton School Publishing.

Sterling, S. (2001). Sustainability education: Revisioning learning and change. Devon, UK: Green Books.

Lipman, Pauline, (2011). The New political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis.

Ravitch, Diane, (2011). American Schools in Crisis. The Saturday Evening Post, September/October. Retrieved from: http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/08/16/in-the-magazine/trends-and-opinions/american-schools-crisis.html.

Meier, Deborah, (2011). On Being on the Edge of the Possible. Deborah Meier on Education, August. Retrieved from: http://deborahmeier.com.

Taylor, Charles, (2003). Modern social imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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• State Sen. Scott Schneider

The Common Core Standards (CCS) were developed by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Chief Council of State School Officers (CCSSO) and written by a Washington, DC non-profit called Achieve. The new standards dictate what will be taught in English and math for grades K-12.

Indiana educators had little to no input in the writing of these standards as evidenced by the list of contributors released by the developers.

Many Hoosiers, including myself, are concerned that adopting the CCS was a significant step backward from the nationally recognized education standards Indiana previously had in English and math. I am worried that CCS was pushed on Indiana without proper review of what it will mean for students and teachers, which is the impetus for Senate Bill 0193, which would prevent the Indiana State Board of Education from using any educational standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Proponents of the Common Core Standards which are being implemented in 2012-2014 for English and math promised to use international benchmarks. Indiana's former standards used this standard, but Common Core has not met this qualification.

Experts testified that CCS documents point to no country or region as the comparison country. In fact, members of the standards validation committee repeatedly asked for evidence of international benchmarking and received nothing. Therefore, five members of this committee refused to sign off on the CCS.

More than 500 people attended a Jan. 16 Senate Education Committee hearing on my bill. The committee will vote to send it to the full Senate as early as next Wednesday, Jan. 23.

While the education system in Indiana may not be perfect, solutions should come from the teachers and parents involved in the daily activities of educating our children.

But under new CCS rules, Indiana cannot change or delete any of the standards because they are copyrighted by the developers the National Governors Association and the Chief Council of State School Officers.

Historically, Indiana held sole control over our student test (I-STEP). Now, a consortium of 22 states, of which Indiana is a member, is developing a new measuring stick for students and teachers called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).

While the new CCS agreements allows states to add some material to the standards, this information would not be covered on the new PARCC test, which determines adherence to the CCS. In the world of high-stakes testing, I find it unlikely that anything that is not tested would be taught.

Little is known about what this test will look like and how it will be scored, yet its influence is evident as teachers and school districts are under tremendous pressure to meet performance standards.

The current state of education has many people feeling left out of the decision-making process. With the adoption of the CCS, distance grows between teachers, parents and local education policy makers. The topdown, centralized approach of the CCS does not allow for the voices of teachers and parents to influence decisions; this dynamic also fuels frustrations among parents and teachers about the influence of highstakes testing.

Because of the Common Core Initiative, there are now 22 states deciding how we test Indiana students, what cut scores will be, how we define students with disabilities, etc. The loss of power is enormous. Indiana elects her Superintendent of Education for a reason, so that decisions are made by someone we choose. We should never cede this control to any outside organizations.

When academic standards and high-stakes testing are no longer in the hands of the people of Indiana, we lose control over the important policies to which students and teachers are held accountable.

Improvements in our schools will only come through the local efforts of Hoosiers in the field; any measure that removes them from the decision-making process is wrong.

State Senator Scott Schneider is a Republican from Indianapolis. First elected to the State Senate in 2009, Schneider is a former member of the Indianapolis-Marion County City County Council. He is a board member for the Indiana Schools for the Blind and Visually Impaired and the recipient of School Choice Indiana's 2012 Charter School Warrior of the Year Award.

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Let's make IPS the best place in the nation to teach

By David Harris

Having a great teacher is the most critical factor in helping students to excel.

A 2005 study, which controlled for the previous test scores and demographic factors of roughly 150,000 Los Angeles students, ranked teacher performance based on the outcomes achieved with those students over a two-year period. The authors concluded in a Brookings Institute white paper that teachers who ranked among the top 25 percent in terms of student outcomes, if given four consecutive years of influence, could close the test-score gap between white and African-American students. And a 2011 study by researchers from Harvard and Columbia universities showed students taught by highly effective teachers are more likely to attend college, earn higher salaries, and save for retirement.

Outstanding teachers change lives. That's why we must do everything we can to encourage the many great teachers in Indianapolis Public Schools to remain in the district – and make IPS a magnet to attract additional education talent from across the nation.

To do that, we have to create the right conditions within every school in IPS. That means giving schools ample autonomy from district control in exchange for strong accountability for achieving top performance. That way, school leaders would be able to make critical decisions about how to run their schools, and teachers would receive the professional freedom, pay and respect they deserve.

Within IPS, a handful of schools today are granted these conditions under special circumstances.

For example, the district gave Harshman Middle School autonomy to execute a turnaround in 2009. Because of this agreement, Harshman's excellent school leader was able to assemble a high-quality teaching and leadership team, and Harshman teachers were given the freedom to deliver instruction in the way they determined would best help students to excel.

As a result, student performance skyrocketed. ISTEP scores have improved, on average, by 118 percent in English Language Arts and 104 percent in math from 2009 to 2012.

If every IPS school gave school leaders the freedom to make those kinds of management decisions, the best school leaders in IPS would remain in the district, and excellent new leaders would flock there. With top-notch school leadership in place across the board, talented teachers also would be encouraged to remain in or move to the district.

That is what The Mind Trust envisioned when we released our "Creating Opportunity Schools" report proposing a dramatic overhaul of IPS in December 2011. The key recommendation of our 160-page report is shifting control over key spending and decision-making from the district's central office to individual schools.

Under the conditions we propose, teachers would have more professional flexibility to deliver their best instruction.Today in IPS, teachers receive pacing guides designed by the central office that lay out which state standards to prioritize and how long to focus on each set of standards. That schedule also is rigidly enforced by a series of tests mandated by the district. Both of these things put guardrails on the level of creativity and innovation that teachers can unleash in delivering high-quality instruction.

Instead of this top-down structure, qualified school leaders who best know their students' needs should be empowered to set their own benchmarks for success. In turn, those leaders should be able to give teachers freedom to determine what to teach and when – in ways that teachers determine would best help their students to learn.

With most decisions and resources shifted to the school level, great teachers also likely would be paid more. School leaders would be able to assemble their own teams of teachers. To get the best teaching talent at their schools, they would likely have to offer more competitive salaries, and they could do that because they would control significantly more resources.

Those enticing conditions would make IPS a draw for excellent teachers, both those already in the system and talented newcomers. That would be a tremendous asset to our city — and a game-changer for the children who represent its future.