Obama to continue No Child Left Behind
I think Obama just fucked up on education. I knew this would happen. As soon as he got elected I saw all my friends facebook statuses all over the world light up with elation. But I couldn’t help thinking about that scene in the last Star Wars movie where Obi Won Kenobi tells Darth Vader, “You were supposed to be the chosen one! You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them!”
First of all, Obama is trying to “fix” No Child Left Behind––despite the fact that everyone in America hates it. I’ve taught in three states, both red and blue and I have yet to see anyone who likes No Child Left Behind. I agree with Republicans, who say it infringes on states’ rights to set their own educational priorities, and I agree with Democrats, who say it places too much emphasis on standardized testing. When all of America is united in hating a policy, you don’t “fix it,” you destroy it. Fixing No Child Left Behind is like trying to fix a policy of “kick every puppy.”
So today I look at the New York Times and I find this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/us/politics/16educ.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
Despite the fact that virtually every American has experienced American education, and many Americans have children who in American schools, I don’t think the average American can ask the right questions about this article.
“CREDENTIALS”
First of all, the article is quick to point out that Arne Duncan, the new secretary of education is a Harvard graduate. Even if he had a master’s from the Harvard School of Education, I wouldn’t be that impressed. The program isn’t all that great. But he has no graduate degree––just a B.A. in sociology. Further down, it states that he has no teaching experience at all. So at 28, I have more formal education and more teaching experience than the Secretary of Education. I say that to say this: is Arne Duncan really the best person in America for this job? Or is he just somebody who used to play basketball with Obama in Chicago? Gosh, who was that other president that just appointed his buddies from his home state?
I can’t make enough of the fact that he has no teaching experience. The whole article goes on to describe teacher’s unions, debates over how to punish and reward teachers, etc. And the man deciding all of this has never been a teacher. A corporate model wouldn’t approve of this: stockholders wouldn’t tolerate a CEO who had never been a company man before. How can you possibly think Duncan is qualified if he’s never been a teacher?
“ACHIEVEMENT”
If you’ve never been a teacher, then you don’t know to be suspicious of phrases like “raising achievement.” I mean, really, what is “achievement?” Does it mean we have created a stronger democracy? A more informed electorate? Does it mean students have a higher quality of life because their minds are able to grasp deeper issues? Does it even mean that more poor children are going to college? Of course not. “Achievement” means that they made every child in the school take some sort of test, their scores were averaged into a single number, and this number was higher than some previous number. That’s achievement.
Now let’s assume for a moment that this is a perfect standardized test and is reflective of everything the student needs to know. If you will read my previous blogs, you will see that educating students is the least efficient way to produce this sort of “achievement.” In the school where I worked, we simply kicked the dumb kids out of school. In fact, I received hit lists of students I was to pressure to leave school. Once they got the boot, the average went up and we rejoiced in our “achievement.”
Do I know for a fact that Arne Duncan is engaged in this sort of thing? No. But I have little reason to assume that he isn’t. Reading this article, it looks like he simply places tremendous pressure on administrators, forcing them to engage in dirty work or else loose their jobs and their schools. Again, you can’t see what’s really happening unless you’ve been working on the front lines as a teacher. American teachers are like soldiers being sent into Russia by Napoleon or Hitler: all of their letters that they have no supplies and the situation is hopeless are replied with, “Onward! For the Glory of the Empire!”
“TIRED EDUCATIONAL DEBATES”
“In his last major educational speech of the campaign, Mr. Obama said: “It’s been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform. There’s partisanship and there’s bickering, but no understanding that both sides have good ideas.””
What?! There has NEVER been a real debate about education in this country except for whether inner-city schools should be under-funded or miserably under-funded. We can’t even HAVE a real debate about education in America because no one knows what’s happening. The typical American only cares about the school their child is attending and could care less about the national picture.
What makes me angry about this Obama quote is it’s empty rhetoric. Not everything should be resolved through a compromise! Not every issue has good ideas on both sides! Bush could have easily justified the war in Afghanistan by saying, “Well, conservatives want to drop nuclear weapons on Afghanistan, and liberals want to use diplomacy. I’m tired of this partisan rhetoric and both sides have good points––you we’ll just use predator drones and cluster bombs.”
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
No complaints. If you really want to close the racial achievement gap (which, by the way, is why No Child Left Behind was started in the first place) then this is where you start. The only problem is that this will not be done with additional funding: they will be taking money from remedial programs to fund early childhood education. I still think it’s a good idea, but we could spend a little more and fund both.
Obama will surely be better for education than McCain or Bush, but the continued existence of No Child Left Behind means that American education will still be in darkness or years to come. America has an educational dilemma like nowhere else in the world: we always compare ourselves to Scandinavia or China and worry that our test scores are too low. Those countries are racially and culturally homogenous! They don’t have ESL classes. They don’t have schools two miles apart stealing funding from one another over issues of race and class. We’re destined to loose if we insist on playing their game.
America needs to somehow find a way to turn our diversity into a strength instead of a weakness. This calls for a complete overhaul of what we think of as education: and finding a “sweet spot” between two imaginary partisan positions is not the way to achieve that.
