Deducation US

One of the issues bound up with the conservatives' view of education is "commoditization, " the belief that something has become so commonplace and unremarkable that it can be mass-produced, packaged and sold, like potato chips or ten-penny nails or Windows computers. Originally the person who invented potato chips had something new and remarkable; over time the process for making them became so refined and streamlined and advanced that almost anyone could make them, and the only difference between potato chips became price. The item in question thus became a commodity. As Thomas Friedman has shown in The World is Flat, when an item becomes commoditized, it can be outsourced to Asian workers who will do it more cheaply or it can be computerized, mass-produced by algorithms that can be programmed, measured, and assessed.

In some ways it seems that education is in danger of becoming commoditized. And I'm not sure if it's a cause or an effect. Probably some of each. You see this happening already, and, even worse, in the way in which education is talked about, you have to fear that it's only going to get worse. The forces of rampant capitalism are closing in on American education.

Item: In the book Many Children Left Behind, Stan Karp makes the point that, "critics see NCLB as part of a calculated political campaign to use achievement gaps to label schools as failures" (page 54). Anyone who knows the first thing about probability and bell curves knows that in any group of people, by any measure there will be gaps. Since there will always be gaps between the best and the worst, this means there will always, inevitably, be "failures" which opens the door for "market measures, vouchers, and other other steps towards privatization" to move in and "reform" public education (58). It's either planned from the start (which I sort of doubt, knowing that at the very least Ted Kennedy was one of the co-authors of the original No Child Left Behind legislation), or a lucky break of cosmic proportions for the free-marketers. But the door is open.

Item: Blogger TeacherJay has noted that some schools are beginning to pay their students for attendance and achievement, thus making good little consumers of all their students. Get and A and earn a hundred bucks! Can there be anything that makes a clearer link between education and commoditization?

Item: Educational corporations are jumping into the NCLB game with both feet. It's getting to be big business--there's lots of money (LOTS of money) to be made by declaring some children, teachers, and schools to be failures. Special privatized schools, charter schools, commercial after-school programs--veritable cash cows.

But even worse, I think, are the pre-packaged "Pass state-mandated tests" programs, sold over the Internet and also increasingly hawked by large publishing houses. These are often the worst kinds of education imaginable, flash-cards, rote drill and kill memorization, phonics (don't get me started on the futility of phonics!). Often these are computerized, the CD version of flash cards. Mass-produced, pre-packaged education. Reading as a salable, measurable commodity: a thing.

Real education--the kind that requires attentive and informed intervention by real teachers--can't be commoditized, so it apparently must be sacrificed to mindless computer programs and state tests of trivia. For they can be commoditized. And sold at Walmart.

A new study co-sponsored by "Education Next" from Stanford's Hoover Institution and the "Program on Education Policy and Governance" at Harvard reveals some interesting insight into the turmoil surrounding the re-authorization of NCLB. The study, a survey entitled The 2007 Education Next—PEPG Survey, shows that a slim majority of surveyed Americans favor re-authorizing the NCLB with few or no changes, with the strongest support registered for "accountability" in the abstract, whatever that means. Most interesting to me, however, was the disparity in respondents' view of their own school vs. other schools: nearly all respondents graded their own school much more highly than other schools. My school is fine; all those others out there are failing. This suggests to me a kind of lurking NIMBYism.

A NIMBY, you might remember, is one who is in favor of such and such social or political reform, but Not In My Back Yard. Yes, I favor nuclear power to help solve the energy crisis, but I don't want a nuclear reactor in My Back Yard (i.e., my town). Build it, but build it somewhere else. Yes, we need to lock up more criminals, but build those prisons somewhere else. In New England right now, we are seeing the same attitude regarding the "wind farms" proposed off the coast of Cape Cod, a large collection of huge wind-powered turbines that would make a dent in our region's energy crisis. Yes, we want renewable energy sources, but Not In Our Back Yard. Build those windmills, but build them somewhere else.

I remember in the energy crisis of the 70s, when the national speed limit was reduced to 55 mph. Surveys showed that the nation was overwhelmingly in favor of the mandate (in the abstract), yet studies showed that the lower speed limit was being overwhelmingly ignored. Yes, I want all you other people to drive 55, but I don't have to. Those surveys were poorly worded: they should have asked, "Are you in favor of a national law whereby YOU will receive a speeding ticket the minute you drive over 55 mph?" Then we would see how much support there was for a national 55 mph speed limit.

But I digress, sort of.

One of the interesting tangential conclusions of the survey was that support for the NCLB's "if it breathes, test it" accountability policy rises if the phrase "NCLB" is not mentioned, just referred to generically as "federal accountability legislation." Which shows that "No Child Left Behind" is for whatever reasons beginning to lose its conservative-manufactured halo (this is good) but that "accountability" in the abstract is still a god-word. I want to make all those other schools toe the line that I set--that's the meaning of "accountability," in more concrete and understandable terms.

Another tangential finding from the survey is the disparity of results between educators and non-educators. The professionals and the competents in the field of education, those who know and understand the challenges of modern education, oppose the reauthorization of the NCLB. Those who don't know favor its re-authorization. A telling finding, I think.

But cut through the abstractions, the words with an aura around them that allows you to interpret them any way you desire, the mother-apple-pie words that mask the realities. What if the survey had asked concrete and specific questions which clearly highlighted in personal terms the impact of the NCLB? I'd like to see the Education Next-PEPG survey re-done, asking the question, "Are you in favor of re-authorizing the Federal legislation that requires that your child fail the entire grade if he or she doesn't pass a specific multiple-choice test at the end of the school year?"

Or how about, "Are you in favor of re-authorizing the Federal legislation that allows wealthier parents to remove their children from the public schools and send them to private charter schools with support from your tax dollars?" Or maybe "Are you in favor of re-authorizing the Federal legislation that may identify your school as not good enough and then withdraw federal support from your school as punishment?" Or perhaps, "Are you in favor of re-authorizing the Federal legislation that has the effect of forcing your school to lower its standards in order to keep its funding?"

Or, given that 68% of African-Americans support vouchers, ask, "Are you in favor of re-authorizing the Federal legislation that would allow students from poor black school districts to attend your child's school instead at taxpayer expense?"

Hey, wait a minute....I'd support that.