As President of the Lucia Mar Unified Teachers Association, I spend a lot of time thinking about education policy and the state of public schools in America. This is a challenging time.
Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, has been the architect of terrible policies, heaping injury on top of the insult of No Child Left Behind. Corporate special interests have been driving educational policy--just follow the money. Duncan's "Race to the Top" and current federal policies and incentives have been cash cows for corporate entities selling curricular materials, standardized tests, brand-name proprietary "instructional techniques", corporate conferences and trainings disguised as "professional development", and high-cost consultants. These educational "entrepreneurs" are shamelessly cashing in on limited tax-payer dollars intended for our students and classrooms.
Companies which are organized under non-profit status often fool the public--and some educators--into thinking that their "products" are being provided solely as a social good and in the public interest; but, in fact, their corporate executives are making millions in salaries from these non-profit ventures. These folks aren't stupid; many of the ideas, techniques, and resources they are selling are valuable (even snake-oil isn't all bad--no one would buy it if it were poison)--and part of the marketing strategy of these companies is to enlist teachers to defend and embrace the corporate brand-name in their eagerness to maintain the benefits of training, funding, and resources.
Why is the public paying millions in educational dollars to enrich these executives, whose business model is nothing more than repackaging good teaching techniques, with an added component of union-busting and weakening of teacher due-process rights? These corporations market their products to superintendents, who often have little classroom teaching experience. Inexperienced educators are often drawn to these professionally marketed, off-the-shelf teaching strategies because they are more easily quantifiable. As a result, teachers are evaluated not on their experience and knowledge, the effectiveness of their teaching, or their ability to adapt and differentiate instruction for the actual students in their classrooms, but rather on their adherence to a model with a checklist of quantifiable metrics (and, of course, standardized test results). This isn't necessarily good teaching. This is the mechanization of what is really a highly complex intellectual and social process, often more art than science. And these models often prefer inexperience over experience, because a seasoned teacher will rely on complex time-tested strategies and will not comply as easily with "inside-the-box" thinking and cookbook teaching techniques.
I believe that if the public really knew what was going on, they would be outraged. The "reformers" will claim that our educational system is failing. This is not true, by reliable metrics, but it will be a self-fulfilling prophesy if we continue to let these profiteers drive educational policy. It's time for all of us to organize and take back public education from those who would seek to enrich themselves with public dollars.
