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By John Thompson.

The theme of my previous post on the 2018 Network for Public Education conference was: How Was I Wrong? Let Me Count Some Ways. As I explained, the 2014 NPE conference in Austin hit a nice balance in terms of messaging and research that allowed us Davids to defeat the corporate reform Goliath. I was slow in facing hard facts about privatizers and mostly focused on civil ways to confront opponents in the search for truth.

Previously, I overestimated how much of Goliath’s failure was due to the arrogance of power. Today’s Silicon Valley Robber Barons’ hubris can match that of their 19th century counterparts, but their control of data makes them uniquely dangerous. As the latest NPE presentations enlightened me on what is working for us Davids as we successfully resist Goliath, I was mostly struck by the evidence that he only continues to exist for the purposes of privatization, profits, and the monetization of data.

Fortunately, the 2018 NPE conference was extremely positive, so I can move beyond my errors to a post which provides an overview of a) what I learned and b) some ideas on future messaging.

When kicking off the conference, Diane Ravitch recalled the height of Goliath’s political assault, and the 2008 and 2010 Time magazine covers featuring Michelle Rhee’s broomstick and “Rotten Apples,” or teachers who need to be swept from the profession. She said the NPE should create an annual “Rotten Apple” award, and how she would have nominated Arizona legislator Eddie Farnsworth for it. Farnsworth sold his charter schools for up to $30 million to a board which he named.

My Rotten Apple vote would go to the entrepreneurs who sell online learning for pre-k students.

My runner-up would be the mandate which contributed to the West Virginia walkout. Teachers were penalized $500 per year if they didn’t download an app that would count the steps they took each day.

I learned the most from Ravitch’s explanation of how school reform would collapse without the continued infusion of corporate money. She followed up with the question: Why do they keep infusing money into charters?

The answer, it is now clear, is that they are monetizing data. Pearson testing company thinks it knows more about the children they test than their parents do. As Leonie Haimson has shown, Goliath has bought 400 identifiable data points on students. And Summit Learning says it will follow your child through her entire life.

Pasi Sahlberg’s presentation on GERM, the Global Education Reform Movement, showed graphically how the corporate reform assault undermined schools around the world. He then described counter-attacks against GERM in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Liberia, Scotland, Chile, and elsewhere. Educators have a duty to reclaim our professional autonomy. But we also must be willing to state some hard truths.

Sahlberg says that people want to believe that the kids are “alright.” But, globally, they face a threat that must be explicitly addressed. The well-being of students is declining as screen time increases. Students and teachers must push back against the Goliath which profits from more eyes being glued to digital devices.

Susan Ochshorn and Denisha Jones brought this dangerous trend closer to home. They condemned children being placed in front of keyboards before they are ready. And this may be the narrative that will really take off. Silicon Valley elites don’t put their 4-year-olds in online courses.

During the previous generation, Goliath used charters that increased segregation to supposedly undo the damage done by segregation, but most voters didn’t send their children to the high-poverty schools that were targeted. So, many people didn’t understand why those corporate reforms were doomed to fail. Surely the broader public will grasp the absurdity of placing 70 students and 2 teachers in “personalized” learning to address toxic stress that is made worse by premature exposure to too many hours in front of keyboards.

Helen Gym’s account of victories in Philadelphia is also encouraging. Goliath won when they rushed implementation of policies without an open discussion of their theories. After the Reformers got so overconfident they consulted parents, they lost. In other words, to know Goliath’s agenda is to understand that they grasp very little about what students need and parents want.

Gym further explains that, “We only get what we’re organized to take.” And she takes this teamwork beyond classroom concerns. She says that educators must fight for criminal justice reform as much as music and art. Teachers need to fight against bullying as much as we battle for teacher pay.

This leads to another narrative that allows our students to be prominent. Jesse Hagopian says that we must acknowledge that schools are often failing. Even though it was reformers who forced a complete focus on remediation, as opposed to building on strengths, educators must take the lead in moving away from the deficit model. We also need to get America’s full stories back in the curriculum. To do so, we must explain that standardized testing is rooted in racism. We must then demand that all children receive meaningful instruction, not drill and kill.

We can’t deny that Goliath originally had great success in demonizing “bad teachers.” But then their test and punish reform narrative got stale. And Phyllis Bush reminds us that in her state of Indiana, 70% of people have no contact with schools, so they were open to the reform spin. Once we engage people in conversations, they become open to teachers’ accounts on what policies actually mean in schools.

On the other hand, some its most aggressive corporate reformers operate in Indianapolis and they are still experimenting with new forms of intellectually dishonest messaging. For instance, they are still having success in the sanitization of charters, by renaming them “innovation schools.”

I moved back and forth between sessions that dealt with “cultivating civil conversations in uncivil times.” Presenter Debbie Fish said we should address opponents using the words, “I want (not need) to talk with you.” We should also listen to a panel of Indiana mothers, who urged us to not over-politicize disagreements when engaging in social media but “lean on culture” when presenting our case.

Similarly, Michelle Gunderson, vice president for elementary schools of the Chicago Teachers Union, is committed to fair compensation. She stresses a message, however, which emphasizes professional autonomy. For her, the overriding theme of the resistance is ”we’ve had enough.” When Gunderson locked her classroom door as she went on strike, she said, “I was born to teach, not be a door mat.”

Also, the dignity of adults and students are intertwined. It’s bad enough that teachers have had to put up with Broad-trained administrators who show up with a clipboard, and a checklist that includes where they are in terms of the instructional pacing guide. But at a time when so many of our students need trauma-informed teaching, we need to explain to the general public how these evaluators can prioritize compliance to the mandated schedule over what it takes to really put our students first.

Education writer Jeff Bryant wraps up this theme by saying we need to tell better stories. Reformers stole our words, claiming that they are the civil rights crusaders. Then they constantly rewrite their narrative, often finding new ways to portray teachers as villains.

Bryant says that we often try to write stories without bad guys, but asks how can we do that when attacked in these ways. And then he challenges us to take back the word “reform.” But how do we reclaim the word?

I wish I could wordsmith an answer, but sooner or later someone will find a name for the new chapter of school improvement that we need.

Based on the NPE themes that jolted me – Goliath’s obsession with monetizing data, attempts at hostile takeovers of early education, and online pre-k – I believe that bringing the human touch back into all classrooms is likely to be the winning message.

What do you think? What has worked best in beating back Goliath? How can we reclaim the word “reform”? And do you have any advice to others who are being targeted by GERM?

Author

Anthony Cody

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