Who's Behind the Curtain?

I ended up in two big educational debates this past week. One was about "clickers" - those "Classroom Response Systems" that are increasingly infiltrating our classrooms. The other, about Washington, D.C. Schools' Chancellor Michelle Rhee and "the reform agenda for schools" coming from America's financial elites.

In these debates I was abrupt, and cruel (sorry, David Brooks, I know you are only doing your job keeping Wall Street Republicans reading The New York Times, I shouldn't have gotten personal - and a very big apology to Roger Cohen, another NYT columnist, who I blamed in bizarre mix up), and perhaps, in a few moments, coherent and convincing. I read wonderful stuff from passionate people too.

But stepping back, I want to bring both these debates together, because, in the end, they are both about power, about who gets to control education in the United States (and thus who the "winners" in education will be), about who is pulling those levers from behind the curtain.

Michelle Rhee is riding the broomstick, but it is a different Wizard of Oz image I'm interested in...

We have two tidal events occurring here, but these are not natural tides, they are invented ones. And when people seek to create tides, I think we should always ask why.

So, in a higher educational establishment which, for example, has refused to even load their computers with free universal design software technologies, much less invest in those systems which might transform education for a vast array of students now failed by the system, we see broad adoption and massive spending on "clickers."

And, in a climate of broad K-12 system failure, with hundreds of fascinating alternative success examples from around the world, the US media establishment (Disney, Time-Warner, GE, Viacom, NYT Company) has declared one "leader" - a leader with no measurable accomplishments and a confrontational style which seems to drive almost everyone away - as education's messiah.

hero worship

But let's start with the "clickers." Michael Bugeja, a friend and technology in education sparring partner (and the Director of the Greenlee School of Journalism at Iowa State University) wrote a piece this past week in the Chronicle of Higher Education - a paid publication I rarely read and a paid website I rarely visit. His commentary, Classroom Clickers and the Cost of Technology, tracked the adoption pattern of these one-way communication systems on university campuses.

"Marketers seem to know our business better than we know theirs. That was apparent a few years ago, when publishers introduced infrared clickers bundled with specific textbooks or series of textbooks. In a class of 400 students, each of whom would spend $40 for a clicker, many institutions paid for the purchase and/or installation of receivers, in effect helping to sell the company's products. Companies suggested clickers for multiple-choice questions based on a book's content, an easy adaptation from previous instruction booklets with answer keys — not exactly innovative, but cost-effective, making books appear interactive overnight."

Bugeja - who I often debate regarding technology adoption in the classroom - but whom I deeply respect on the subject, even when we disagree - is concerned with the cost/benefit calculations behind the "clicker decision" as well as the key question of who is pulling the strings.

I have been "clear" about my position on clickers - calling them "Instant Anachronisms" and "Coercive Technology." Even when I see some possible benefit - bad lectures may be marginally better with clickers than without - I regard this technology as "insufficiently transformational" - that is, not worth the costs in a nation where students already can not afford higher education.

But the key issue here is "why"? Who has pushed this technology, and to what end. I joined in a fascinating debate on this at the blog of Derek Bruff, a math professor and director of the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University, and major "clicker advocate). If you follow that debate, you'll see where it leads. Why is Turning Technologies selling clicker receivers cheaply? Is it because it hopes to tie Vanderbilt's faculty to the textbooks of its partners? Those partners? Thomson Learning, Glencoe McGraw-Hill, Dell Computers, Steljes Group. Oh. The primary distributors of the $150 textbook are "giving away" (sort of) systems which will seemingly guarantee the continued sale of $150 textbooks.

Those marketing Universal Design Technologies - Freedom Scientific, Text-Help, Kurzweil, etc, can't afford to "persuade" universities this way, but Thomson Learning (or is it Cengage now?) sure can. And thus we find "clickers" everywhere, and struggle to discover transformational technologies on our campuses.

Dr. Bugeja would want me to suggest that we always follow these trails. And when I sat in a meeting with Google's Jeff Keltner regarding Google Apps for Education this semester, I heard all the questions. Why would Google give away a campus email and collaboration system (stripped of the advertising which is Google's only real revenue stream) for free? What's the catch? Keltner (as Google execs tend to be) was blunt. People who use their tools tend to use their search engine and, quote, "we're pretty good at monetizing that." And, "we see students as future leaders, if they become comfortable with our tools now, they'll tend to use them later in their lives."

Yes this is insidious seduction, it sure is, but let's consider this cost/benefit balance. What does your university (or school) spend on email? If that email system was free, could you not raise tuition? Could you hire more faculty? Could you put WYNN on more campus computers? But here's the thing, Google will seduce, but they won't bribe. They won't hand a toy to a faculty member at a conference which transforms that prof into "a techie" in the eyes of his or her peers. They won't give out free books either. So their "leverage" in campus decision making is limited. As we may deduce from observing the number of campuses spending their own and student dollars on "clickers" vs. the number cutting costs by adopting Google Apps for Education.

The Universal Design Tech companies? Without the profits from 700% textbook markups, or the alternative revenue stream of Google, they struggle to bribe or seduce. Even when their products are free, they remain of little interest to universities - despite, well, what's the cost/benefit relationship there?

Which brings us back to Michelle Rhee. Who's marketing her, and why?

Rhee is part of a broad push by America's true "old guard" to ensure that education doesn't really change. The same folks at Harvard and Penn who offer our minorities the lowest educational expectations possible through Teach for America and KIPP Academies, are selling you Rhee, and lowered expectations for all schools - except of course, for the schools attended by the children of those elites.

There is a reason the television networks and New York Times and Time-Warner love TFA and Rhee. These organizations are run by people with power, and by people who would rather not share power.

So they have adopted the ultimate in reductionist standards. "If we had even decent education - or even enough teachers of any kind - in most of the places it places its students, then [TFA] would be a step down," a commenter on this blog said yesterday. Right, so here's the standard: Teach for America, or Michelle Rhee's DC school system, is better than not having schools at all.

Rhee's own words: '"People say, 'Well, you know, test scores don't take into account creativity and the love of learning,'" she says with a drippy, grating voice, lowering her eyelids halfway. Then she snaps back to herself. "I'm like, 'You know what? I don't give a crap.' Don't get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job."'

No, she doesn't give a crap. She wants her African-American students prepared for the lowest possible jobs on the economic ladder. That way (perhaps, in her unconscious thinking) they will not threaten the success of her small minority group - a group which has found itself accepted by the powers-that-be because it isn't big enough to be threatening.

Of course I have a different view of reading than Rhee, and of language itself. First, I know that there are lots of ways "to read," and second, I know that when children are inspired to learn about things, they tend to want to learn to read (in one form or another). As opposed to the Joel Klein-Michelle Rhee-KIPP Academy-George W. Bush notion that reading is a skill which should be learned outside of the context of interest-based education.

But then, my goal is opportunity, and my belief system - not being market-capitalist in nature - doesn't think an underclass is a good idea (to hold down upward pressure on wages).

Rhee is not important, of course. She's racist in her expectations and racist in her strategies, she's not an educator at all in the real meaning of that term, she talks a great deal but has little actual impact in her job. But Rhee being hailed as the educational messiah is important.

Like those who favor TFA solutions - the Rhee idea is to NOT change US society. Yes, we'll make impoverished minority groups marginally more competent - thus improving profits at the top and reducing the cost of the dole. But no, we will not empower those groups by empowering their children. Teaching them to be creative 'will have to wait' (forever). Teaching them to find their own learning styles - thus accepting cultural change instead of social reproduction - is dangerous (as it always is for those at the top).

We lower expectations. We test meaningless things (Time: "The ability to improve test scores is clearly not the only sign of a good teacher. But it is a relatively objective measure in an industry with precious few. And in schools where kids are struggling to read and subtract, it is a prerequisite for getting anything else done." Really? Anything? You can't teach the physics of a bouncing ball to a non-reader, or the love of literature?). We strip time away from what is precious to children and force them into chanting. We enforce white majority cultural norms and deny identity. We argue that teachers should be paid according to the "short term gain" rules that worked so well for traders at Citigroup and AIG.

And this is all brought to you by the wealthiest people, and the largest old-line corporations in the country. Because, I'll say it again, they have no incentive to allow those below them to succeed.

Follow the money my friends. When information flows freely to as many people as possible, Google makes money. When information is expensive, those who sponsor "clickers" make money. When the kids in Washington, D.C. schools fail, there are fewer challenges to the children of New York Times and Time editors for slots in Ivy League schools. When Washington, D.C. schools focus on "the basics" students from there will not beat out the son of a GE exec for a spot at Carnegie-Mellon.

When you see invented trends, pull back the curtain, see who's pulling the levers. It is important.

- Ira Socol

Why Michelle Rhee is dangerous to children

I don't know why I read David Brooks' New York Times column. He is that kind of faux intellectual who mistakes travel for observation, and reading for learning, and no matter what he discusses, his conclusions drive me wild.

Today I read his love letter to "educators" Joel Klein (of New York City's school system) and Michelle Rhee (of Washington, DC). You can tell by Brooks' tone that he really wants President-Elect Obama to pick Michelle Rhee (or "Ms. Merit Pay" as we might call her) as Secretary of Education, though he is nervous about coming out and saying it, lest his dreams not come true.

Read this paragraph: "On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms."

Wow. Here's what Brooks is in favor of, the very same system that has worked so well for Wall Street this year, that "market-based solution," that has caused us to spend about $550 billion dollars to save Brooks' Manhattan and Connecticut friends and leave us with no money to save ten million manufacturing jobs.

"Merit Pay" - which brings to education the same "bonus for short term gain" strategy that enabled AIG, Bear Sterns, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, et al, to somehow misplace $7 trillion. we are already awash in the nonsense of "Scientific Research in Education" which provides studies that prove that if you do this this month the results on a perfectly matched test will improve next month (so what if the kid drops out five years later and hates reading for his lifetime?).

"Tough Accountability" - which means we offer educators incentives to teach to the test, to fake student results, to lie about what is going on in their schools, to limit what the forms of inquiry and education which are happening on in their schools. This is the same incentive system which encouraged Wall Street bond raters to claim everything was "AAA" and local real estate appraisers to claim that every house was worth double its value the previous year.



Michelle Rhee is also a graduate of the worst bit of in-nation colonialism currently being practiced, the Teach for America program. The basic assumption behind TFA is that teaching is so easy, any rich kid can do it with six weeks of preparation, but the basic philosophy is that if only poor kids had rich white kids to model themselves after, they'd be fine. No need to change education, no sir, changing education would (to use Brooks's words) be "superficial. Let's insist that the kids change instead - change into, well, yes, people just like David Brooks - white, male, wealthy, and comfortable at a cocktail party on Fifth Avenue.

And Rhee believes in compliance. It has not mattered whether schools "work" or not in DC, what matters is that her administrators follow her rules.

Yup, that's the "reform we need." That's all much less superficial than, say, funding education as if it was a national priority, or paying beginning and experienced teachers in a way which suggests the value of all the education they need to be good at their jobs (thus upping status and helping recruiting and retention - would we have gotten more out of our money if teachers had been paid like bankers and brokers this decade, and vise-versa?), or bringing global technology into our schools, or decreasing class size to allow for greater individualization, or providing better support for parents so they could spend more time with their children, or even rethinking when we teach what we teach (consider Scandinavia and literacy).

Yes, Mr. Brooks, superficial indeed.

Now I don't really know Michelle Rhee. But I do know that the depths of the challenges faced by the District of Columbia cannot be solved by schools alone, nor by the application of "market-based solutions" to a fundamental function of our society. And I know what Michelle Rhee has come to represent - another generation lost while conservatives try to prove that government doesn't - and shouldn't - work.

And I think our children, and our future, are too important for this kind of nonsense.

- Ira Socol

for reasons I can't quite explain, Roger Cohen's name was in this blog post rather than David Brooks's. While this post isn't really fair to David Brooks either, blaming another - unrelated, New York Times columnist, was surely bizarre and very wrong. I apologize to all.