Double down on failure

No Child Left Behind introduced the idea of high stakes education. Few today doubt it's failure.

More Americans think the No Child Left Behind Act, which has governed federal education grants to public schools for a decade, has made education worse rather than better, by 29% to 16%. Thirty-eight percent say NCLB hasn't made much of a difference, while 17% are not familiar enough with the law to rate it.

That rejection is across all demographic groups.

People know failure when they see it. But, rather than re-evaluate the consequences of pushing for ever higher stakes, corporate education reformers have doubled down.

We haven't even begun most efforts, but we've already lost the State Superintendent to scandal, have delayed critical school report cards because of an invesitgation into erasures, have an evaluation system few are going to be able to figure out - let alone implement, a voucher privatization scheme few parents have been interest in, and all in an environment of massive and reackless budget cuts, and appointments of college quarterbacks with no education background to the State Board of Education.

Is Our Students Learning? Yes.

Three mildly heretical thoughts about American education: First, given the impossible assignment we've given them -- an egalitarian mission in a nation rapidly growing more stratified by income and class -- American public schools are probably doing a better job than they ought to be. One big reason is greater professionalism among teachers. A lot has changed since I wrote a Texas Monthly article documenting the awful state of teacher education back in 1979, mostly for the better.

Despite melodramatic pronouncements to the contrary by sundry politicians, tycoons, tycoon/politicians and media-enhanced "reformers" like former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, the available evidence shows American students performing steadily better on standardized assessments of educational progress over the past 30 years.

"The only longitudinal measure of student achievement that is available to Bill Gates or anyone else," writes Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, "is the National Assessment of Educational Progress." Scores on the NAEP have trended steadily upward to where the most underprivileged African-American children do better in eighth grade reading and math today than white students did back when the measurements began in 1978. But no, they haven't caught up because white kids' scores have improved too.

This doesn't mean the United States is turning into Finland or South Korea, to mention two small, ethnically homogeneous nations education reformers like to cite as (quite contrary) examples of how to proceed, but it does indicate that much doomsday rhetoric we hear from the likes of Rhee and Education Secretary Arne Duncan is predicated upon false assumptions.

Yes, we could be doing better; no, the sky's not falling.

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Did Bill Gates Advocate privatizing public education?

Did Bill gates tip his hand to his ultimate fantasy agenda of privatizing public education?

He praises the private school model for its efficiency vis-à-vis traditional public schools, noting that the "parochial school system, per dollar spent, is an excellent school system." But the politics, he says, are just too tough right now. "We haven't chosen to get behind [vouchers] in a big way, as we have with personnel systems or charters, because the negativity about them is very, very high."

Perhaps privatizing public education is too hard because of those darn "status quo" defenders he complains about.

Teachers unions can be counted on "to stick up for the status quo," he says, but he believes they can be nudged in the right direction.

We have an email into the Gates Foundation for clarification of their position on this issue.

To whom it may concern.

In a recent Wall St. Journal article, Mr. Gates was quoted as saying: He praises the private school model for its efficiency vis-à-vis traditional public schools, noting that the "parochial school system, per dollar spent, is an excellent school system." But the politics, he says, are just too tough right now. "We haven't chosen to get behind [vouchers] in a big way, as we have with personnel systems or charters, because the negativity about them is very, very high."

Given this statement, is it the belief of the Gates Foundation that Public Education would benefit from privatization if the politics were easier?

Thanks,

You can email and ask them too, at media@gatesfoundation.org