Republicans

GOP: Lack of Insurance Revokes Sanctity of Life

Leo Gerard — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 09:14:03 -0400

In the case of fetuses and rich people, Republicans insist on the sanctity of life. But in the case of destitute people, infants who imprudently choose working-poor parents and struggling young adults – basically all riffraff unable to afford health insurance – the GOP says there’s nothing sacred about their stinking lives.

Let ’em die. The uninsured should be left to rot. To the GOP, lack of insurance revokes sanctity of life. A GOP audience at a Republican presidential candidate debate clapped and cheered that morality. More recently, GOP leaders said insuring all Americans should not be the nation’s objective.

Instead, the Republican goal is guaranteeing Americans retain the freedom to forgo health insurance.

To the GOP, “freedom” to be uninsured is more important than public health, which could be endangered by an untreated, uninsured, modern-day Typhoid Mary. To Republicans, the “freedom” to be uninsured is more important than the horror of family members watching helplessly as a loved one who foolishly failed to get insurance slowly dies in agony from untreated bone cancer.

One percenters who are members of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s elite club of quarter billionaires can afford the risk of being uninsured. If they fall off a dancing horse, they can pay the medical bills out of pocket. But the non-rich can’t afford a trip to the emergency room. For them, being uninsured isn’t a freedom. It’s bankruptcy. It’s death.

No sane non-rich American wants the liberty to be uninsured.

Despite that, the GOP has repeatedly declared its intention to force the freedom to be uninsured down the throats of unwilling non-rich Americans. Last month, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives voted for the 33^rd time to repeal or defund ObamaCare. Republicans have tried incessantly in the past two years to kill the law that will soon increase the percentage of Americans covered by health insurance from 84 to 93. If the Republicans could just get Democrats in the Senate to approve that repeal – and President Obama to sign it – 30 million Americans would continue to be “free” to choose being uninsured.

The GOP may get that opportunity early next year. Their presidential nominee Mitt Romney has vowed that his top priority “day one, job one” in the White House will be repealing ObamaCare. No matter that it’s based on RomneyCare, which Romney signed while governor of Massachusetts; no matter that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of ObamaCare; no matter that Republicans have no plan to cover the 30 million Americans who would lose the opportunity to be insured; no matter how many uninsured people would die as a result, repeal is Romney’s top national priority.

Let ’em die, Romney says. Sanctity-Schmanctity.

Similarly, six Republican governors – Rick Scott (Fla.); Rick Perry (Texas); Phil Bryant (Miss.); Nikki Haley (S.C.); Bobby Jindal (La.); and Terry Branstad (Iowa) – have announced they will refuse the ObamaCare Medicaid money that’s intended to extend insurance to the working poor – those who earn slightly too much to be covered by Medicaid now. The governors’ rejection of Medicaid expansion is expected to give at least 3 million Americans the “freedom” to continue being uninsured.

The governors said they would rebuff the money even though for the first three years, states don’t have to contribute a cent to the program. They’ll snub the money even though studies have shown expansion of Medicaid improves health and significantly reduces death.

Let ’em die, the GOP governors say. Sanctity-Schmanctity.

Last week, insurance companies that overcharged under the terms of ObamaCare returned $1.1 billion to policy holders and employers who buy coverage. ObamaCare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, requires insurers, depending on their size, to spend between 80 and 85 percent of premium dollars on actual medical care. Insurers that pay too much for fancy penthouse offices and CEO perks must rebate policyholders. This is what Republicans want to deny Americans in exchange for the “freedom” to be uninsured.

The rebate checks went into the mail just one week after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported – again – that ObamaCare will lower the nation’s budget deficit. That’s lower, as in reduce, diminish, decrease the deficit. In fact, the CBO reported that if Republicans had succeeded in getting the law repealed, that would have increased the deficit by $109 billion over nine years. Republicans want to give Americans higher deficits in exchange for the “freedom” to be uninsured.

That’s right. Republicans have voted 33 times to enlarge the deficit and take from Americans ObamaCare benefits they love – like coverage for young adults under their parents’ plans until age 26; payments to senior citizens to close the Medicare prescription donut hole; and prohibitions against insurers denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions and against dropping policyholders when they get sick.

As Americans realize benefits from ObamaCare, the law increases in popularity. Despite the GOP’s massive two-year campaign to kill it, support for ObamaCare has grown steadily, so that now, nearly half the nation backs it.

Still, Americans don’t yet love ObamaCare the way citizens of Great Britain adore their National Health Service (NHS). In Great Britain, the half-century-old NHS is so treasured that it received a tribute in the opening ceremony to the Olympics in London. The NHS, like health care in other Western European countries, covers everyone.

That’s exactly what Republicans don’t want – a system that insures all Americans. Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, put it this way when asked how to extend coverage to the nation’s uninsured:

“Let me tell you what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to turn the American health care system into a Western European system.”

Nope. He’d rather let Americans die. Sanctity-Schmanctity.

Teachers Take A Stand Against An Onslaught

Jeff Bryant — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:17:52 -0400

If you've noticed lately the tendency in car commercials to show the vehicle against a background of an empty city street, you can assume it's likely due to the abundance of empty city streets available in the place famous for being home to the major automotive companies -- Detroit.

While many of America's biggest cities are experiencing large influxes of new residents, Detroit stands in stark contrast, losing a staggering 25 percent of its population from 2000-2010.

During the day, the city's still-grand architectural feats are silent sentinels towering over sparsely populated sidewalks. At night, pockets of bright lights -- a constellation in a darkened cityscape -- mark the few destinations where families and revelers can come to dine, drink, and gamble.

This past weekend, the American Federation Teachers staged its annual convention amidst this twilight landscape.

When AFT decided to locate its meeting in Detroit -- likely some time ago -- they probably knew about the vacant buildings and empty parking lots. But it's doubtful they anticipated they'd be descending into the epicenter of the most vicious attack, so far, on American public education.

Welcome To Detroit's Education New Normal

The Huffington Post's ever-useful Joy Resmovits has the necessary background on the situation in Detroit. But the nutshell is that Detroit schools have lost 100,000 students in the past decade. The district faces a $72 million deficit due in no small part to the state's conservative governor Rick Snyder having stripped away roughly $1 billion from statewide K-12 school funding. And a state-appointed Emergency Manager -- a position conceived by Republican former governor John Engler but imbued with dictatorial new powers by Snyder -- now rules "with near carte blanche power over education," according to Resmovits.

Teachers belonging to the local AFT in Detroit find themselves caught in a powerless situation in which the current Public Schools EM, Roy Roberts, has bypassed the collective bargaining process and unilaterally determined the terms of employment for teachers. His mandates include shuttering 15 schools, laying off hundreds of teachers, and increasing class sizes in K-12 "up to 61 students each in grades 6-12 and 41 students in grades kindergarten through 3."

AFT president Randi Weingarten devoted a good chunk of the conference to confronting Roberts and demanding fair contract negotiations.

But it must be understood that what's happening to Detroit's teachers is just the most extreme example of how pressures on teachers to be more "accountable" are ratcheting up at the same time that teachers are being given fewer and fewer resources.

Teachers' objections to these circumstances have been labeled by influential reform enthusiasts, such as Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, as "self-pitying tantrums."

But the fact of the matter is that teachers and their unions are being put into an untenable place. Regardless of what politicians and Beltway pundits espouse, teachers and their unions believe themselves to be the victims of a relentless, draconian attack.

Of course there are those who contend that unions like AFT don't really represent the views of "all teachers." This is absurd. As Matt DiCarolo reasonably concludes, at his domain at the Shanker Blog, because "teachers’ unions are comprised of members who are teachers . . . when you hear 'teachers’ unions,' at least some part of you should think 'teachers.'" (emphasis original)

The Republican Assault On Public Education

So teachers in general feel under attack. In fact, if the AFT meeting was a website, a keyword search would reveal the word "attack" to be the number one search term. And the primary "attackers" were identified as Republicans.

Leading the effort to tag Republicans as education's "chief assailer in charge" was general session speaker vice president Joe Biden. Saying it plain, as he is known for, Biden declared that Republicans " don’t think public education is worth the investment."

Biden invited people who care about their children's education to, according to a reporter picked up by USA Today, to "look at Republicans' spending plans to see how much Republicans value education." A close look, in fact, would reveal that Republicans want to take a meat cleaver to education.

According to the reporter, David Jesse from The Detroit Free Press, Biden declared:

"'Don't tell me you value education and don't invest in it,' he said during his remarks, launching into a litany of spending on education he said the Republicans in Congress had voted down.
'The reason they make all these cuts . . ." is so they can afford tax cuts on the richest Americans, Biden said."

A reporter with The San Francisco Chronicle added icing to the cake by noticing that "Biden says Mitt Romney's doesn't treat public education as a priority and distrusts the hardworking teachers who struggle to create opportunity for the nation's young people."

Totally overlooked by these reporters, though, was Biden's incessant reminder that teachers hold high a commitment to the children and families they serve.

Who is there when children struggle with learning, don't have school supplies they need to participate in class, come to school without lunch money, need help with school work because their parents have to work two jobs and are rarely at home? "You!" Biden told teachers, "You . . . you . . .you!"

Teachers Have No Love Affair With Democrats Either

Despite Biden's ringing endorsement of the values teachers represent in our society, and his declaration about the Republicans' disdain for these values, it would be a mistake to assume that the AFT meeting was some kind of love fest with the Democratic party.

In fact, the day before Biden spoke, Diane Ravitch delivered a blistering critique of the current education policy enforced by the Obama administration.

With loud applause punctuating nearly every single sentence of her address, Ravitch railed against a "reform" agenda that elevates the values of high-stakes testing and diverts to testing companies and data consultants billions of dollars that should be used to reduce class size and teach well-rounded curriculum.

Declaring that teachers are under attack from people who want to turn their professionalization into testing technicians, Ravitch leveled a salvo against the Obama administration's devotion to using "junk science" to measure student education attainment, evaluate teachers, and close schools on the basis of test scores.

In resounding agreement with Ravitch, the AFT conference delegates passed a resolution objecting to the emphasis on standardized testing.

Coincidentally, while the AFT meeting was taking place, a new study came out casting even greater doubt on the accuracy of the state tests.

The study maintains there is "a glitch embedded in the DNA of the state exams that, as a result of a statistical method used to assemble them, suggests they are virtually useless at measuring the effects of classroom instruction."

Adding to this uncertainly over the validity of high stakes testing, an article appeared, in The Washington Post, recounting yet another example of an exceptional teacher being fired because of the erroneous value placed on student test scores.

Teachers Reject Cognitive Dissonance

If all this is starting to sound conflicting to you, you need to understand this:

The definition of cognitive dissonance is to simultaneously uphold two opposing propositions as if they were in agreement.

Currently, American public education policy is replete with cognitive dissonance:
* Teachers get their resources drastically cut, and then they're attacked for not delivering the services they are charged to do.
* Teachers are told that test scores are essential measures of education, determining whether students pass or fail, whether teachers get fired or paid more, whether schools get closed or stay open. Yet they are admonished to never "teach to the test."
* Teachers are told they're essential in advancing the care and wellbeing of the nation's children and youth, yet they're increasingly treated as replaceable cogs that can be judged on the basis of test "data."

What aloof Beltway pundits dismiss as "whining" is the refusal of teachers to accept this cognitive dissonance.

Teachers And The Detroit Syndrome

One wonders, given this situation, why teachers don't give up and go along quietly with "the new normal" demanded of them.

Perhaps the citizens of Detroit -- who have been thrown into a calamity every bit as difficult as the nation's teachers find themselves in -- can shed light on that.

Back in the Motor City, amidst the decay, AFT members saw signs of resiliency that are testament to why the people in this place just won't give up and leave.

On a Sunday afternoon, families strolled along a sparkling, new river walk lined by flowered gardens and outfitted with fountains and a brightly painted carrousel. At Cadillac Square, a free summer concert at a new amphitheater sent music up into the nighttime sky. Here and there, nightspots beckoned with hip-hop and jazz.

In one of those spots, the LIV Resto Lounge, in the city's Bricktown neighborhood, the bartender, Chris, gave testament of this resiliency. A statuesque African American woman with a shaved head and large, almond-shaped eyes, she explained, "People in Detroit feel very loyal to the city. If you've lived here all your life like I have, you'd understand. Some of my relatives have left, but I don't want to be one of those who gave up. It's hard to explain."

A nearby patron at the bar couldn't quite explain it either. "I had to move away to Cleveland to find a job," he confessed, "But I come back every two weeks to build up my real estate business so I can move back. I love this place"

One can call this kind of commitment irrational. But it's certainly human and essential for community and progress in the direst of circumstances.

Not everything about education can be explained either. Republicans use this as an opportunity to decimate the entire institution of public schools. And the "reform" movement elevates the value of test scores to make up for their uncertainly. Unable to fit education outcomes cleanly into a spreadsheet, economists and think tank operatives have justified their dismissal of teachers' opinions and the dismantling of our public schools with piker calculations.

Taking a stand in Detroit -- a city peopled with citizenry who refuse to be wiped off the map -- teachers are asking us to trust them based on what they know to be true -- the evidence -- and based on the values that they hold. They're asking us to take a stand for an institution that binds us together just as closely and fiercely as the citizens of Detroit hold to each other. Let's hope more Americans do.

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Critical Questions Democrats Must Ask About School Choice

Jeff Bryant — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 17:45:14 -0400

Left-leaning people everywhere recently got a hoot when the Texas Republican Party declared its opposition to the teaching of "Higher Order Thinking Skills," including "critical thinking skills," in public schools. Although a party spokesperson later back-peddled from that statement -- saying that including "critical thinking skills" in their declaration was a "mistake" -- there's little doubt that what these Republicans object to most is any sort of education that would challenge "fixed beliefs" and "authority."

Frankly, I don't see what Republicans are so worried about. Because when it comes to the subject of education, there's very little evidence that critical thinking is widespread these days, especially among the people who Republicans are supposed to worry about most -- Democrats.

Exhibit A in Democrats' inability to think critically about school policies is the recent rush by many in the party's leadership to embrace "parent trigger" laws. These are measures that allow a majority of 50 +1 parents to shut down a local school and provide an alternative that usually involves turning the school over to a private management company, instituting a privately operated charter, or getting vouchers to send children to private schools.

Among the first in line to endorse the parent trigger were the nation's mayors with prominent Democratic mayors "leading the charge." Rep. George Miller, the ranking member on the House committee controlling education legislation, has also praised the idea of the parent trigger. Numerous sources claim Education Secretary Arne Duncan is a fan. And rumors have swirled among Beltway types that the Obama campaign may be supportive.

Although parent trigger is acquiring these backers, Democrats need to understand these measures have strong backing among conservative Republicans, too. The corporate-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has written model legislation enacting the parent trigger into law, and the conservative Heartland Institute has also drafted a version of this legislation.

Democrats couch their support of parent trigger laws in the lofty rhetoric of "a civil rights fight," as former California state senator Gloria Romero, who now runs that state's branch of Democrats for Education Reform, likes to put it. But regardless of whether backers of the trigger are Democrats or Republicans, the argument for this policy idea always boils down to "choice" and the belief that the responsibility of educating the nation's children needs to shift from community to family, and parents need to be treated more like consumers in the educational marketplace.

The idea of education policy driven solely by "choice" has been pushed by Republicans since the Reagan presidency. Once upon a time Democrats opposed school choice efforts, especially when these efforts were called "vouchers." But now, not so much. Why?

At a time when Democrats, including President Obama, are challenging the fixed beliefs Republican have about tax cuts, immigration, and healthcare, why would they not at least consider the following critical questions about the benefits and pitfalls of school choice?

What Could Be Wrong With Choice?

Of course the rhetoric of "school choice" sounds really good. What could be wrong with "choice?" Well, what's so right about it?

The Pied Piper of school choice is undoubtedly Jeb Bush, who recently declared "school choice is a catalytic converter for rising student achievement" in a speech delivered to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

Like so many "signs of progress" that school "reform" enthusiasts like to crow about, Bush's recipe for "reform" is little more than a policy checklist that invariably includes instituting some form of school choice (Parent Trigger, charter schools, etc.), grading schools A-F, and evaluating teachers based on test scores.

Hardly ever do Bush and his followers connect this checklist of reforms to actual positive impacts on children -- because, in fact, they can't.

The results of Bush's program for public schools -- what he likes to refer to as "the Florida miracle" -- are very thin indeed. The "miracle" claim is derived primarily from the fact that Florida fourth graders, especially black fourth graders, out-gained the national average on the National Association of Education Progress in 2003 and 2005.

Impressive perhaps, until education researcher and testing expert Walter Haney looked into the situation. What Haney uncovered is that NAEP results for Florida fourth graders spiked because the population of fourth graders had been significantly changed.

It turns out that the scores for Florida fourth graders had improved mostly because the state suddenly started flunking large numbers of third graders, so low-achieving third graders were still in third grade when the fourth grade test was given. "With only the higher-achieving students taking the test, the scores jumped," according to an article in NEA Today.

"What’s more," the article continues, "the state flunked a much higher proportion of black than white students -- no wonder the achievement gap shrank."

Bearing out Haney's findings, sure enough, Florida's results on more recent NAEPs have shown that the gains Bush loves to cite have now stalled. So much for the "miracle."

Aside from Jeb Bush's Magical Mystery Tour, the longest running choice programs in America -- voucher programs in Milwaukee and Washington DC -- have done little to improve student achievement. Regarding Milwaukee, Diane Ravitch has pointed out that

In Milwaukee, after 21 years of vouchers, black students have among the lowest scores of any city tested, ranked at the bottom along with Detroit, Fresno, and Cleveland. Independent research has shown that the black and low-income students in Milwaukee’s voucher schools have the same low scores as the black students in the public schools. Their scores are about the same as those of poor black kids in the Deep South. Vouchers and competition did nothing for the children of Milwaukee.

The DC voucher program has had mixed results at best and likely only short term benefit to students.

Who Really Gets A "Choice"?

Nevertheless, many see choice as a panacea for underserved communities to escape the traditional public schools that are struggling with overcrowding and underfunding. Proponents of school choice maintain that it poses as a solution for families to "escape their zip codes" -- a reference to the strong tendency in this country for school quality to correlate with the relative wealth of the parents where the school is located.

But a recent article in The New York Times revealed that the benefits of school choice often accrue to the well-to-do.

The article reveals that in eight states, choice programs -- operating under the auspice of offering "scholarships" to needy students -- "have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children."

"Spreading at a time of deep cutbacks in public schools," the article notes, the programs have redirected some $350 million that would have gone into public budgets to supplement tuition paid by families who already send their kids to private and religious schools and pay administrative fees to new privately operated groups who manage the scholarships.

How many of these families are there who have the means and inclination to send their kids to private schools but will jump at the prospect of getting a tax credit or voucher to do it on the public dime? The truth is, no one knows.

But regardless of the form of school choice that policy makers choose -- vouchers, charters, parent trigger -- there's nothing in the essentials of choice that guarantee better outcomes for the least served families and every indicator that choice further enables better-off, more empowered families to game the system.

Furthermore, nothing about school choice, regardless of the form, guarantees parents get the kind of school quality they desire. Studies have shown that in a typical school choice program, the private school services that parents mostly desire -- small class sizes, well-rounded curriculum, individualized services -- will still be out of reach for most parents.

Instead, the choice that most parents will be stuck with is whether they stay in their neighborhood school -- as it is rapidly being defunded to the private sector and gradually being depopulated of the children of the most well-to-do parents -- or choose a private or charter that pays teachers much less and provides fewer services for their children and no benefits of prestigious private schools.

What Kind Of Choice Do Democrats Want?

Many of the Democrats who come out for school choice have given very little thought as to what kind of school choice they want. Even Republican backers of school choice get surprised by the consequences of the policy they so ardently campaigned for.

In Louisiana, for instance, Republicans state representative Valarie Hodges retracted her support for Gov. Bobby Jindal's choice program after realizing the voucher money that enables the program could be applied to Muslim schools.

According to an article at Huffington Post, Hodges initially supported the governor's choice program -- probably, the most radical choice program in the country -- because "she mistakenly equated 'religious' with 'Christian,' and "Jindal's reform package allows state education funds to be used to send students to religious schools."

Left-leaning people may laugh about the irony of this -- a Republican advocating to transfer taxpayer funds to religious schools, but only if they teach her religion -- but the reality of this is that Democrats have put very little thought into how they want choice initiatives to actually turn out. So far, all the faith in school choice seems to be placed in the "magic of the market." But what if the market turns out to look like this list of religious schools that the Louisiana choice program is likely to fund. Are Democrats satisfied to have taxpayer money pay for that?

Another very real outcome that Democrats are not thinking of is how choice tends to increase segregation.

In fact, a recent review conducted by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) looked at the more than two-thirds of OECD countries that have increased school choice opportunities for parents in the last 25 years. The review found that "providing full parental school choice results in further student segregation between schools, by ability, socio-economic and ethnic background, and in greater inequities across education systems."

Writing at Next New Deal, blog site for the Roosevelt Institute, Amy Baral lays out a school choice landscape that includes inter-district, intra-district, and charter schools.

Regardless of the scenario, her conclusion is that "for poor families, immigrants, or students without stable homes, the amount of engagement and information required to make an informed decision is difficult to come by." And "middle-class parents are often better equipped" and "have the education, skills, and resources necessary to make an informed choice."

Choice is no substitute for where-with-all and cannot erase the advantages of inequality. In New York City, for instance, where mayor Bloomberg promotes aggressive charter takeovers of public schools, despite parent concerns, NYC resident Diane Ravitch recently noticed that City University of New York now offers courses in how to pick a charter school for your child. The cost? -- $75. Does that sound like a leveling factor to you?

Is "School Choice" Really The Only Choice?

For years, in an education landscape dominated by No Child Left Behind, Democrats and Republicans essentially "copied each other," as veteran edu-journalist Jay Mathews recently observed on his blog at The Washington Post.

But now, education policy has moved firmly into the post-NCLB era, and technocratic approaches, like NCLB spawn Race to the Top, are growing in increasing disfavor.

As always, in times of policy confusion, Republicans, with their deep-pocketed backers, are at the ready to fill the void with rhetoric about choice, competition, and markets. But Democrats don't have to meekly fall into line.

Instead they need to understand that whether you call choice initiatives vouchers, tax credits, or parent [whatever], the intent is always the same: to turn what was once a collaborative community endeavor -- the education of our next generation of citizens and leaders -- into a competitive scramble for "me first."

In fact, if you're a parent who has ever waited in line, during the wee hours of the morning, to be first in the door to enroll your three-year old in the most prestigious pre-school program in your community, then you already know what "school choice" is all about. It sucks. Now imagine having to do that, in some form, for every child, in every grade, until they finally graduate from high school. That is, indeed, the logical consequence of school choice. So Democrats need to think critically if that is what they really want.

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Public Education's 'Shock Doctrine Summer' Rolls Out, Part 2

Jeff Bryant — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 17:23:18 -0400

With the glow of high school graduations still lingering in many American families, and analysts predicting that an"economic recovery" is on the way, this is a time when you'd expect to start hearing more positive news about the state of US public education. You'd be wrong.

In fact, not only is there no financial "recovery" in the offing for most public school systems, school year 2013 will likely be harder on our children and youth enrolled in pre-K-12 education.

Thus far, our country's political leadership is coming up short in addressing the calamity befalling our children and young people. But for progressives, the way forward is becoming clearer, if we choose to lead the way.

What Is Happening?

Last year's "Shock Doctrine Summer," rolled out much in the same way school year 2013 appears to repeat, with a litany of deep education cuts and increased pressure to transfer taxpayer funds for public schools to private interests.

This one-two punch to public schools emulates all too well the "Shock Doctrine" Naomi Klein described, in which catastrophes, in this case man made, are turned into opportunities for business interests to impose economic control on the public well-being.

For an account of the financial strife inflicted on public K-12 schools in 2012, folks at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have the numbers.

In 2012, state governments, which account for about half of all funds spent on K-12 schools, generally went cut-happy to see how low they could go in slashing the amount of money spent on every child in their schools:

Although state lawmakers blamed these cutbacks on the recent recession, the fact is that the cutting frenzy these legislators engaged in went back in time to pre-recession levels:

What these severe budget cuts produced on the ground was less access to public pre-K programs for poor children, reduced course offerings to students, fewer opportunities for students to engage in extra curricular activities and vocational pursuits, and larger and larger class sizes.

As evidence of the strife, the American Association of School Administrators found, in its annual mid-year survey of school leaders, that in order to adapt to financial constraints imposed by state governments:

required for graduation.

These kinds of cuts do direct harm to students. For instance, in New York, according to an article in The New York Times, more high school students aren't able to get into the colleges of their dreams -- not because they can't afford them -- but because "school districts are being forced to cut electives, remedial tutoring, foreign languages, and other programs and services" students need to gain admission. The same thing is happening in California.

It's Only Going To Get Worse

Unfortunately, the outlook for school year 2013 looks bleaker still. The analysis by CBPP, referenced above, shows that even though states' fiscal conditions are improving, their investment in the public continues to be far short of what's needed. In fact, given current state budgets, "it would take seven years" for states to "get back on a normal track" to funding levels for public services.

The CBPP analysis concludes, "revenues probably won’t come close to what states need to restore the programs that they cut during the recession unless states raise taxes, at least temporarily, or receive additional federal aid while the economy slowly recovers."

The survey results from AASA, cited above, flesh out this bleaker picture. School leaders say that in 2013 they anticipate more negative hits to the direct services they offer to students, including class size increases, reduced elective courses and programs, deferred purchases of textbooks and instructional materials, and reductions to field trips and extracurricular experiences.

Another financial head slap to public schools in 2013, according again to the CBPP, is that states have cut formulas that determine funding allocations to schools.

States typically distribute most of funding for public schools through formulas that guide how states fund schools unable to raise adequate revenue locally. Cuts to these formulas have very large consequences for local school districts because these districts have to either scale back the educational services they provide, raise more revenue to cover the gap, or both. The result is particularly deep cuts in aid to districts with high concentrations of low-income students.

So not only will state funds be inadequate across the board in the coming school year, the drop-off will undoubtedly hurt the poorest schools the most.

The Education Shock Doctrine Comes To Philadelphia

If you want to see first-hand results of the Education Shock Doctrine, look at Philadelphia.

In school year 2012, Pennsylvania's conservative governor Tom Corbett and state legislators enacted severe school funding cuts and unfair state funding formulas that have traumatized school districts across the state.

In the meantime, while these state lawmakers curtailed spending on neighborhood schools, they ramped up significantly the amount of funds transferred to private education providers such as cyber and charter schools, which have shown scant evidence of raising achievement.

The result of this one-two punch to public schools has been particularly crushing to Philadelphia where the local school district has been "driven to the brink of insolvency," according to a recent article appearing in AlterNet.

As detailed in another article "Who's Killing Philly Public Schools? Underfunded. Overburdened. About to be sold for scrap, " by Daniel Denvir in the City Paper, an appointed Chief Recovery Officer, a position pressed upon the district by state legislators, has announced a plan to "shutter 40 schools next year, and an additional six every year thereafter until 2017."

The design of the plan is to push the remaining 20 to 30 Philadelphia schools into "achievement networks" that public and private groups would "compete" to manage. But the admitted desired result of the plan is to ensure that "charter schools teach an estimated 40 percent of students by 2017."

"What is being proposed, in effect, is 'charterizing' the whole district," explains former Philadelphia School District superintendent David Hornbeck, "when there is a lot of evidence that at best [charters] have no positive effect on student achievement, and there is a lot of evidence they cost more."

Enter The False Promise Of School Choice

The combination of this enormous disinvestment in public schools with a tidal wave of privately provided "alternatives" -- including tax credit and voucher programs, charter schools, online academies, and cyber schools -- is increasingly being sold to the American public as "school choice."

The "choice" in this case is that political leaders are choosing to gut traditional public schools financially to the point where they can no longer offer the well-rounded education parents prefer, all the while these same leaders erect and help fund other types of schools that are not completely under the public's purview, so parents have to consider alternatives to their neighborhood schools.

Does that sound like real "choice" to you?

Choice Does Not Equal Equity

So far the political parties vying for our votes address the Education Shock Doctrine with little more than political gamesmanship.

As Kevin Welner, co-director of the National Education Policy Center, recently wrote, the differences between how the two parties address education appears to be whether we proceed slowly along the same destructive course or whether we "step on the accelerator even harder."

Welner explains that with the two parties committed to the new "status quo" of "one-upping each other" in a game of “school choice mania,” what we've come down to amounts to "experimenting on the nation’s most vulnerable children" based on a rationale that amounts to little more than "why not try this."

Progressives should know better. We know that a market based approach that forces people to compete against each other for essential goods and services invariably breeds inequity. Where has that not ever been the case?

And progressives know that real education reform must be based on increasing our children's opportunities to learn, not constricting them with deeper and more damaging rounds of cuts. That means a renewed campaign at all levels to invest in the well being of children and young people with increased direct services that must include pre-K funding, class size reductions, a well-rounded curriculum, and opportunities for individualized education.

The Very Serious People may claim that investing in our children and young people is just more of the "status quo." But the definition of "status quo" is what we have right now. And what we have right now is a pathway to catastrophe.

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Democrats Must Oppose Republicans On Education

Jeff Bryant — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:47:24 -0400

A funny thing happened on the way to the news cycle the past two weeks when the issue of education -- specifically, public schoolteachers and student loan relief -- maintained a presence on the political stage.

Because the conclusion among the Very Serious People is that the upcoming election is all about the economy, it was expected that the subject of education would quickly get the hook after last month's candidate sparring on the topic.

Yet after nearly a month in the limelight, we still see issues related to education hanging around stage left.

Education Just Won't Leave The Stage

For instance, just last week, all-but-certain Republican contender Mitt Romney bashed President Obama for "hiring more teachers." His comment was quickly affirmed and doubled-down this week when Romney surrogate, former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu, declared that there are places where we "need fewer teachers." Sununu apparently must be referring to a country other than America because where we live student population is at an all time high and will continue to grow in the near future.

Romney's pronouncement about desiring fewer schoolteachers was repeatedly rebuked by the Obama campaign on YouTube and Twitter, with Obama surrogate David Axelrod on CBS News asking "Does anybody really believe we don't need more teachers?" (Um yes, David, that is exactly what "some people" believe. So you have to name those people and counter with something stronger than a rhetorical question.)

Student loans also stayed in the headlines the last few days. With the interest rates on student higher education loans about to double, unless Congress acts before July 1, the issue has now become yet another front where Republican lawmakers in DC push back against any opportunity to advance the interests of ordinary Americans.

At a campaign stop at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, President Obama criticized Republicans for stalling on student loan relief and declared to his student audience that keeping the interest on their loans from going up was "the No. 1 thing Congress should do for you."

Republicans in Congress responded to the president's insistence on student loan relief with a raspberry this week when John Kline, who heads the House committee responsible for education, penned an op-ed at Politico declaring, basically, that all deals on student loans are off. Kline's solution for the student loan crisis -- now a $1 trillion issue, surpassing even the nation's credit card debt -- is to "take politicians out of the college-cost equation and base student loan interest rates on the free market."

These are the same Republicans, mind you, who have no problem supporting massive government subsidies to Big Oil and an Export-Import Bank that, according to The Wall Street Journal, "doles out billions of dollars of taxpayer-backed loans, loan guarantees, and insurance" to big businesses every year.

Nevertheless, with education staying stubbornly on the election front, it's clear that Republicans are going to make it yet another barb to sling at Democrats. But what's not clear is what Democrats are going to do about that.

Republicans, Democrats "Copy Each Other" On Education

Despite the recent back and forth between the political parties, differences of opinion on education are generally quite narrow.

As veteran education reporter Alyson Klein explained in the pages of Education Week, "Back in Massachusetts, then-Gov. Mitt Romney proposed ideas on turnarounds and teacher quality that closely mirror proposals that President Barack Obama put forth just a few years later."

In another blog post, Klein noted, "Romney himself praised Obama for being strong on merit pay and choice -- two issues that really rankle teachers' unions -- in an interview with People magazine."

Another seasoned edu-journalist, Jay Mathews of The Washington Post, observed that "Romney, Obama are education twins."

"Republican and Democratic presidential candidates," Mathews noted, "have been happily copying each other since a group of Democratic governors (including Bill Clinton) started the school accountability movement in the 1980s and several Republican governors (including George W. Bush) joined in."

And one may ask, "Where has that gotten us?" Not much, based on gains in student achievement, (pdf) as measured by National Assessment of Education Progress.

Regarding higher ed, the parties have chosen to square off -- not on the issue of the spiraling costs of college or the mounting levels of student loans -- but over how to "balance" student loan relief with cuts somewhere else in the federal budget.

When it comes to Pell grants, which help the most needy students pay for higher education, the argument is equally piker in scope. As Matt Miller recently observed in The Washington Post, arguments between Republicans and Democrats about "modest Pell grant boosts" are "teeny steps" and not "remotely serious" attempts to solve a huge problem.

Unfortunately, no one is arguing that relieving students of the unfair cost of higher education is an investment this country should make that should be accepted without a need to "balance" it with cuts somewhere else.

Current Education Debates Miss The Bigger Picture

In trying to identify differences between the parties on education, many have stated, as Diane Ravitch just did in The New York Review of Books, that school vouchers have become a "third rail" in the education debate that separates candidates.

Of course, Romney and the Republicans can recast "vouchers" with another name as Trip Gabriel explains in the The New York Times. In North Carolina for instance, vouchers are being reintroduced as"tax credits."

But as Ravitch points out there's a much bigger debate Democrats are refusing to engage in. For K-12, what Romney proposes can be summed up as "using taxpayer money to pay for private-school vouchers, privately-managed charters, for-profit online schools, and almost every other alternative to public schools."

For higher ed, the Romney plan, again, is to "encourage private sector involvement" by promoting for-profit colleges and letting commercial banks serve as the intermediary for federal student loans. Ravitch concludes:

Romney’s plan [for education] is animated by a reverence for the private sector. While little is said about improving or spending more on public education, which is treated as a failed institution, a great deal of enthusiasm is lavished on the innovation and progress that is supposed to occur once parents can take their federal dollars to private institutions or enroll their child in a for-profit online school.

The Real Goals Of The Romney, Republican Plan For Education

If you want to see where the Romney plan will lead us in K-12, cast your eyes upon Louisiana. Louisiana’s new voucher plan, already approved by the state legislature and poised to be signed by the supportive Governor Bobby Jindal, "directly defunds public education," according to an analysis by Kristin Rawls at AlterNet.

The Louisiana plan, Rawls explains, is "so wide in scope that it could eventually cut the state’s public education funding in half." And rather than creating more equity in the system, it will likely "increase inequality" because "the poorest students will get the same amount of tuition assistance as middle-income students. And in fact, since poorer areas of the state usually have lower per capita student spending than other parts of the state, the poorest students could receive less funding than their wealthier peers."

A recent article at Reuters describes the Louisiana plan as a "bold bid to privatize schools," siphoning taxpayer funds meant for education to " to industry trade groups, businesses, online schools and tutors, among others."

The article goes on to explain that among the likely recipients of public education funds are many small religious academies, such as New Living Word, "where students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such as chemistry or composition." Other likely recipients include the Upperroom Bible Church Academy, "a bunker-like building with no windows or playground," and Eternity Christian Academy, "where "first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains 'what God made' on each of the six days of creation."

In higher ed, Romney's plan will produce more institutions like Full Sail University and the University of Phoenix, providers that Romney has openly praised.

As the intrepid David Halperin explains at The Republic Report, the Romney plan for higher education "would allow federal financial aid -- presently about $32 billion a year -- to continue to flow to even the worst offenders in the industry, schools that lure veterans and low-income students with deceptive and coercive recruiting practices, provide low-quality programs, and leave many students with insurmountable debt and ruined lives."

Will Democrats Draw A Stark Line

Against the rapacious, greed-driven plan for education that Romney and the Republicans are pushing on the country, Obama and the Democrats are responding with . . . what? "R triple T?"

As another article from Education Week explains, the president's signature program, and other education initiatives, are very much "works in progress," at best, and "divisive" to say the least. Many of the recipients of the grant money are falling short of deadlines to impose new policies and erect grandiose structures, and none of those recipients can claim a cause-and-effect relationship of these costly new ventures to actual improved results in student achievement and well being.

For instance, this week, RTTT recipient Tennessee proclaimed its highly controversial teacher evaluation program a success. But if you read through the report, available here, it's apparent that success is defined purely on the basis of erecting the program, not on any direct services to students.

In fact, during this implementation of RTTT, Tennessee's results worsened. According to the most recent NAEP results, the state "dropped from 45th to 46th in the nation in fourth-grade math; 39th to 41st in fourth-grade reading; 43rd to 45th in eighth-grade math; and 34th to 41st in eighth-grade reading."

In the face-off between the Romney and Obama plans for education what is clear is that the Republicans are playing a long game while the Democrats settle for the scrimmage line. While Republicans plod inexorably toward the dismantling of our public education system -- K through college -- Democrats are fumbling with duct-tape-and-string measures that show little evidence of real results for children.

With this year's election turning into a "crapshoot," that's not a place where Democrats want to be, parsing "measured progress" while the fate of our children becomes more and more defined by a right wing mandate for restricting opportunity to the elite alone. Indeed, that Democrats are playing along with this ground shifting is damning to the party and deeply hurtful to the American public and its future well-being.

In the education arena, it's long past time for Democrats to go bold in their opposition to Republicans, to call them out as active agents in the dismantling of public schools, and to call for a renewed commitment to the best education that can be provided equally to children and young people everywhere.

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Teacher Depreciation Week

Jeff Bryant — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:57:04 -0400

It was Teacher Appreciation Week this week. Unfortunately, someone forgot the appreciation part.

President Obama, for one, kicked off the week by proclaiming that from now on the week would also (instead?) be forever known as National Charter Schools Week.

Declaring charters to be "incubators of innovations," the president praised charter schools for having "brought new ideas to the work of educating our sons and daughters."

Apparently, no one had sent the president the memo that charter schools are hugely controversial, particularly with teachers.

What's "Innovative" About Charter Schools?

In fact, the week before the president exuded about charter schools, a new study was presented by the National Education Policy Center revealing that one "innovation" that large charter school franchises definitely can not claim is cost savings.

The study looked at the per-pupil spending of charter schools operated by major charter management organizations (CMOs) in New York City, Texas and Ohio with district schools and found that many high profile charter network schools outspend district schools of similar size, serving the same grade levels and similar student populations.

But probably teachers' biggest beef with charter schools is that they don't have to play by the same rules that public schools do, while they loudly claim to be "innovative." As school finance analyst Bruce Baker explains:

Charter schools are limited public access in the sense that:

• They can define the number of enrollment slots they wish to make available.
• They can admit students only on an annual basis and do not have to take students mid-year.
• They can set academic, behavior and cultural standards that promote exclusion of students via attrition.

Furthermore, Baker continues, in many states, charters are allowed to operate completely outside the authority of locally elected school boards and municipal governments and can contract with private management firms and private boards that can require student disciplinary codes and parental participation regulations that would not be tolerated in a community-operated school. So in many respects, a great many charter schools -- although they receive public funds -- are not really "public" schools at all.

So it is quite likely that any supposed innovation coming from a charter school would have absolutely no applicability to a traditional public school because the student populations and set of circumstances governing those schools are so remarkably different. It's like doing a controlled experiment in which the test groups gets to change all the variables and manipulate the results.

So if President Obama had the power to choose when to honor charter schools with an unfounded proclamation about their "innovative" powers, he could not have picked a worse time to do it.

What Teachers Really Think

One wonders if the president's choice for when to proclaim National Charters Schools Week had to have come from his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Duncan is undoubtedly a big fan of charter schools. But in his kick-off address for Teacher Appreciation Week, which appeared on the Huffington Post, Duncan avoided the subject of charter school altogether and instead ticked off a list of "what teachers say they want" without ever quoting a single teacher or sourcing a survey or research study of teacher attitudes and desires.

If Secretary Duncan had bothered to look up some actual evidence of what teachers feel about their current lot in life, he would have found that they are extremely dissatisfied with how they're being treated. Which is why the Secretary's post was triggered nearly 200 comments, most of them deeply critical of him and his policies, and mostly from teachers, practicing and former. This example from Alex Messer was particularly pointed:

The truth is Arne Duncan's policies represent a destructive force to education in America. Just this past month, 3-5th graders were subjected to NINE hours of high-stakes tests in NY State alone. And this is just the beginning. Teachers have had their names published with their employee evaluations in national newspapers - which happens in NO other profession. As if this public humiliation were not enough, the new evaluation framework being agreed to in NY State - and shepherded under Duncan - will lead to teachers being fired based on faulty data with margins of error over 50%. The current trend of high-stakes testing and teacher bashing will have ramifications that people aren't quite seeing yet.

Testing Teachers' Patience

Regarding those tests, at least some portion of the ever-expanding regime of high-stakes testing mandated across the country closely followed or preceded Teacher Appreciation Week in many states, including Texas, New York, and Florida.

Teachers by and large don't think too much of these tests. According to the education trade newspaper Education Week, a new survey of more than 10,000 public school teachers has found that "only 28 percent of educators see state-required standardized tests as an essential or very important gauge of student achievement. In addition, only 26 percent of teachers say standardized tests are an accurate reflection of what students know."

What teachers would prefer instead are ongoing classroom assessments that would actually tell them something about what their students are learning while the teacher can actually do something about it. And they would much rather see class participation and performance on class assignments-- the things they see going on in their classrooms everyday -- as more important measures of student learning.

Pink-Slipped Into Attrition

Another trying experience many teachers start being put through this time of year are the annual rounds of teacher layoffs that occur in school districts across the country.

As Valerie Strauss reports from her blog at The Washington Post, " two business days before National Teacher Day, D.C. Public Schools officials sent out notices to 333 teachers saying that their jobs had effectively been eliminated." Congratulations!

DC School is not alone in executing such an ill-timed slap to its employees. California also recently issued mass teacher layoff notices -- for the fourth year in a row. Many of these teachers -- perhaps 75 percent, according to one study -- may end up employed in school when the next school year begins. But how can you be certain you're not in the 25 percent?

You don't have to imagine what this does to the morale of teachers. Just listen to them:

Somehow I thought this year would be different. It's not.
Every year for the six years since I entered education, I've been laid off. It is the same cycle. Tales of budget problems start in January. Preliminary layoff notices go out in March. Final notices are given out May 15. And until last year, every year I've gotten hired back to the same school in June or July.
I realize it is not just me. It is not just Santa Clara County; it is not just California. Across the country, this has become the norm.
[snip]
Try as I might, this year is no different. I developed a love for every one of my students. I started talking about what my colleagues and I would collaborate on next year. And so I cried on March 15 and, once again, despite my best intentions, it will hurt deeply when I get laid off for real.
Yet for the next eight weeks, I will teach my students with enthusiasm and commitment. I will stand up at Open House and greet prospective fourth-graders with excitement when they tell me how much they hope they can be in my class next year. And when my darlings are promoted and say they'll come back to see me next year, I'll tell them I can't wait to see them. And that's true.

Change Could Be Worse Than The Status Quo

With a general election coming up this fall, you would expect that the intolerable status quo of teachers would be a major point of contention for the opposition Republican party. Most seasoned observers believe that the 2012 election is "up for grabs," and Republicans know a wedge issue when they see one.

Yet prominent Republican governors -- such as Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, Virginia's Bob McDonnell, and New Jersey's Chris Christie -- are pushing education policies that are exceedingly harsher on classroom teachers, abolishing their rights to collective bargaining and due process, subjecting them to unfair and inaccurate evaluation processes, and threatening their health and retirement security.

At the national level, President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney align on a number of key issues affecting teachers. As an article at The Fiscal Times observed:

Both politicians place great store in standardized testing to evaluate teacher performance and student progress, and both generally back former President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program. Both favor charter schools as an alternative to failing public schools and merit pay to attract better teachers. And both have had their run-ins with teachers unions.

The only point of contention in regard to public schools teachers appears to be what to spend on them.

The Real Value Of Teachers

So what did classroom teachers think about all these pretty pronouncements about them this past week?

Here's how one teacher put it at the blogsite for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution's education reporter Maureen Downey:

It’s teacher appreciation week, again, and the fact that teacher morale is at the lowest it’s probably ever been shows that our nation is ignoring the reason that the week was started in the beginning. Think of it as the educational equivalent of taking the “Christ” out of Christmas. A holiday we’ll go on celebrating arbitrarily since it no longer has anything to do with teachers themselves.

A favorite bromide passed around by the political class is that the "value" of teachers is in their effects on the future earnings of the children they teach.

The data source for these fulminations is a study calculating that a "highly effective" teacher can lead to our kids earning many more thousands of dollars when they grow up.

While this conclusion may sound particularly impressive, it ultimately dehumanizes teachers, reducing their immense influence on our children's development and well-being to a mere cipher on a spreadsheet. And when teachers are treated almost exclusively as economic units -- a cost on a balance sheet to argue over its "value" in the much bigger enterprise that is America -- their immense real value will be continuously depreciated, and the greater purposes of education that certainly dwarf mere income -- goals like creativity and curiosity, responsibility and self-reliance, patriotism and active citizenry -- become diminished.

This week President Obama and many others in his administration did an immensely important and brave thing when they chose to break ranks from the stalemate on marriage equality. In doing so, they didn't talk about the dollars and cents of the matter and instead chose to talk about gay couples not as abstractions on a ledger but as human beings with feelings and rights and dignity. When are our leaders going to start talking about teachers that way?

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Republican Noise Machine Accuses President Of Politicizing 9-11

Dave Johnson — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:42:54 -0400

The full Republican media "noise" machine is rising up in a full-scale "hissy fit" because the President pointed out that Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago, under his watch. They are pretending to be absolutely outraged, accusing the President of politicizing the killing of bin Laden.

Yes, that would be the very same Republicans known for this:

Here is the 9-11 video shown at the Republican National Convention (oh, no, no politicizing here, look away, look away):

Yes, these Republicans: (Watch the whole video, and remember.)

Yes, those Republicans.

Why And How Democratic Candidates Should Talk About Education In 2012

Jeff Bryant — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:00:03 -0400

So the "general election has begun" proclaims The Hill, and the exhortations from the punditry are for candidates to either, shore up their base or move to the center.

One interesting bit of advice, coming from more than one source, is for the candidates to "talk about education." Recent research results from the College Board strongly suggest that advice may not be a bad idea. But if Democratic candidates want to take that advice to heart, they need to develop more effective education talking points than what's currently being conveyed.

Education Is "Top Tier" In 2012 Election

According to the College Board survey, "education is a top issue for voters in this year’s elections." Interesting data nuggets available in the pdf (link above) include:

• 67 percent of the responders say education will be extremely important to them personally in this year’s elections for president and Congress.
• Education ranks behind jobs and the economy (82 percent extremely important) and is on par with government spending (69 percent), health care (67 percent), and the federal budget deficit (64 percent).
• Three out of four voters say having a post-secondary degree or credential is important to achieving success in the workplace.
• Those most likely to be “education voters” in the 2012 elections are African Americans (91 percent), Hispanics (81 percent), Democrats (79 percent), and women (75 percent), especially 18- to 49-year-old women (77 percent).
• A large majority of voters believes that increased funding for education is necessary, including four in nine who say it is definitely necessary. A 55 percent majority would be willing to pay $200 more per year in taxes to provide increased funding for education.

Most importantly, the survey was conducted in the following "swing states" that many observers have identified to be crucial battlegrounds in the election: Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

So if education is a hot topic among the electorate, how is it being addressed in national elections? Barely at all, it seems.

As Huffington Post's Joy Resmovits notes, the political debate among Republican primary candidates mostly ignored education. And in a campaign speech President Obama recently gave in Vermont, he devoted all of two minutes to education in a 35-minute speech -- about a minute each to K-12 and higher ed. (View it here with the education part beginning at 16:00.)

Education issues factor more strongly in state governors races (most education spending takes place at the state level). But according to a recent article in the education trade newspaper Education Week, the role education plays in the dozen gubernatorial races taking place across the country defies "easy political categories."

From Washington state, where the candidates' proposals are "very similar," to Indiana, where outgoing governor Mitch Daniels appears to be leaving an interrupted legacy, to North Carolina, where education is likely to be viewed through the lens of a .75¢ tax increase -- the political discussion about education is a pretty watery stew.

So, education is an issue that is very much up for grabs in the 2012 elections. And according to the College Board survey, although Democrats are slightly better positioned than Republicans, the reality is that "neither party enjoys the broad support of swing state voters."

It's hard to blame political candidates alone for their inability to strike a resonate chord on education. Especially since the information available in the general media is so terrible.

Media Cluelessness On Education

Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you happen to be on, the consensus view is that press coverage on education is mostly lousy.

In a recent issue of American Journalism Review, Paul Farhi of the

Washington Post took to task prominent news outlets such as NBC and CNN for compiling "an encyclopedia of loaded rhetoric, vapid reporting, and unchallenged assumptions."

After watching numerous broadcasts and combing through the NEXIS database, he accused mainstream journalists of conveying a "shorthand" view of education -- that there's an education "crisis," that schools are "failing," teachers are "ineffective," and "reform" is the only answer. His conclusion is that American citizens are being ill-served by reporters who spread a false message about the nation's education attainment, over-simplify problems of low student achievement, and pass along popular "nostrums" like school choice and charter schools without any questioning or analysis.

Conservative pundits don't grade the state of education journalism much better. Writing from his perch at the Fordham Institute, Michael Petrille mostly agreed with Farhi's criticism. In his own analysis, Petrilli tags the mainstream journalists with peddling "false impressions" and "traveling in a pack."

So given the poor coverage education gets in the media, what's a candidate to do?

A Populist Appeal For Education

As veteran political operative Mike Lux explained recently, "there is overwhelming data to suggest that broad majorities of voters, including swing voters" are likely to respond to a populist message in 2012.

His advice is that "Democrats, especially Democratic incumbents, who are trying to win elections in times like these when the middle class is being squeezed so hard, need to be willing to take the populist torch and carry it proudly."

President Obama certainly seems to be taking this advice.

Take that campaign speech Obama delivered in Vermont. The speech is loaded with emotional rhetoric about "equal pay for women," stopping "taxpayer giveaways to banks," "fair" taxes, "jobs," and the "American promise." When he got to the education part, he stayed true to the populist appeal with exhortations to "give schools the resources they need to hire good teachers, reward great teachers," and stop Republican attempts to increase interest rates on student loans. But then there's this series of confusing statements:

I don't want folks in Washington to be bashing teachers . . . I don't want them to defend the status quo . . . I want us to grant schools the flexibility to teach with creativity and passion, and stop teaching to the test, and replace teachers who aren't helping kids learn.

Don't "bash" teachers, but we've got teachers "who aren't helping kids learn" and are "teaching to the test?" And what's this "status quo" that people need to stop defending? Aren't the teacher-bashing, budget-cutting Republicans against the status quo? I'm confused.

So given the confused treatment of education coming from the top, it's plain to see that Democrats have a long way to go in crafting a populist political message related to the issue.

Like the arguments that Democrats are planning to make about the economy -- that we have gross inequalities, a system rigged for the rich, and too few rewards coming back to the middle class and working poor -- a populist message for education should be a lot about money -- who has got it, who hasn't, and why it isn't being spread around in a fair way.

Just like there's too much economic unfairness in America today, there's also too much education unfairness -- starting at the very beginning of our children's lives.

Insist On Investing In Early Childhood Education

Just this week, the National Institute for Early Education Research looked at The State of Preschool and concluded it to be in "crisis."

A handy overview at Huffington Post recounts the carnage:

The case for investing in early childhood education is not hard to make. (I've made it again and again.) In a nutshell: Investing in quality early childhood education gives a higher return on investment than just about any other government program -- in terms of lowering juvenile delinquency and adult incarceration rates while raising grade school achievement, high school completion, college acceptance, and future economic prosperity.

The HuffPo piece concludes: "The report comes as Head Start is on the chopping block in Congress, and as states that supplement the federal government's funding are contributing less. According to the institute, 16,812 children attended Head Start programs that had state contributions last year -- a decline of 40 percent over the decade."

So when you hear Republicans calling for further cuts to Head Start and bigger tax breaks for the wealthy, just remind them that every tax break given to a millionaire -- averaging $143,000 -- could have paid for 18 more kids to get into Head Start.

Campaign For Student Choice

In a year when a lot is sure to be said about the need for "parental choice" in public education, Democrats should be talking about "Student Choice," namely the choices we provide to school children and youth in the public school system.

We all know that no two children are exactly alike, so schools need the means to differentiate learning experiences to the varied individual needs of students. Students of all ages need to be provided with a rich curriculum that allows them to grow their intellectual capacities in many ways. And schools need to have the wherewithal to provide special services to students, especially those with learning disabilities or who can't speak English that individualize education to their needs.

Funding education at "basics only" levels just isn't going to hack it.

For instance, including art and music in school offerings can, according to a recent study, help at-risk teenagers or young adults "show achievement levels closer to, and in some cases exceeding, the levels shown by the general population."

But providing a well-rounded curriculum to students is becoming increasingly difficult to do as school budgets continue to get slashed. A recent report from the US Department of Education revealed that "fewer public elementary schools are offering visual arts, dance and drama classes than a decade ago. The percentage of elementary schools with a visual arts class declined from 87 to 83 percent. In drama, the drop was larger: From 20 percent to 4 percent in the 2009-10 school year. Music at the elementary and secondary school levels remained steady, though there were declines at the nation's poorest schools."

Science programs are also increasingly being undermined by school budget cuts.

So what cutting education spending does is cut the choices available to students attending school. This robs them of learning opportunities and harms them on the long run.

Attack The Culprits Behind Rising College Costs

Once students graduate from high school and want to continue their education, they shouldn't have to incur colossal amounts of debt. President Obama is correct to point out that banks and lending firms were unfairly profiting from the student loan market. And Republicans have sided with the financiers.

But another culprit in the rising cost of higher education is conservative lawmakers themselves who have chosen to cut education supply in the face of rising demand.

In an insightful post picked up by Alternet, Laura Clawson explains that it's not public universities behind the increase in tuition rates. Tuition rates increase because "tuition plugs the gap when state appropriations fall short of covering the costs of educating students." She elaborates:

Since the 1980s, at the same time as a college degree was becoming more essential to making your way into the middle class, the cost of college was falling more on students, with tuition steadily increasing as a share of revenue for public colleges and universities.
Between 2006 and 2011, 43 states decreased per-student funding, and in 17 the drop was greater than 20 percent. During that five-year period, even with increasing tuitions, total per-student revenue dropped in 26 states. So the biggest part of the public higher education tuition story is that more people are going to college and state funding is not keeping pace.

Sure there's "waste" in the higher education system. Name a system without that. But if Republicans want to assign blame for the rising costs, they need only look in the mirror.

A Three-Part Message Democrats Can Count On

More than any other issue, education is perhaps the most local in nature. From state to state, even city to city, the flashpoints can differ a lot. But just as Republicans have made a mantra out of "choice, standards, and accountability," Democrats need a unified populist front they can spread from race to race.

In an election year in which there's evidence that education may be a defining and prominent issue, here's a three-part populist message Democratic candidates can likely rely on:
As the richest country in the world, America can afford the best system of education in the world. But we're becoming a country where the wealthy get to have the education they want for their kids and the rest of us get table scraps for ours. All of our youngest citizens deserve nothing but the best. That means:

fund early childhood education

Expand Student Choice

Make college affordable for all

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GOP Budget Guts Education Spending To Benefit The One Percent

Jeff Bryant — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:28:01 -0400

This week President Obama derided the draconian budget conceived by Rep. Paul Ryan and endorsed by the clear frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary, Mitt Romney, as “laughable,” a “radical vision,” and "nothing but thinly veiled Social Darwinism.”

But let's be clear. When it comes to how America advances the interests of school children and college students, Obama's assessment of the Ryan-Romney plan barely scratches the surface.

In fact, the budget that the GOP is preparing to put forth in the upcoming election is a scorched-earth plan for education -- from pre-K through college -- and the only "green shoots" left in the wake of its devastation will be quick cash for the moneyed class.

Clear-Cutting Early Childhood Education

The Ryan-Romney full-on assault on the nation's current generation of learners begins with the very youngest. Should this plan become the law of the land, as President Obama explained, "over 200,000 children would lose their chance to get an early education in the Head Start program." But that's just in 2014.

A recent analysis that appeared on the pages of Huffington Post just prior to the budget's passage in the House, explains that that 200,000 figure grows to over 2 million children should Romney become president and the Ryan budget become an actual governing document.

The GOP's cuts to federal funding of early childhood care and education would come at a time when states are continuing to slash funds for these services. A policy analysis appearing recently on the website for the National Women's Law Center points out that

States are continuing to make, or propose, cuts to child care. Maryland’s waiting list for child care assistance, started last year, has grown to over 14,000 children. California’s governor has proposed to reduce spending for child care and early education by $517 million, which would deprive 62,000 children of the opportunity to participate in these programs. Washington’s governor has proposed to cut funding for child care assistance by $50 million, which would result in 4,000 fewer children receiving help.

The Ryan-Romney plan to defund the well-being of the nation's youngest children is not only immediately devastating to children and families, it diminishes the social and economic future of America. As the Huffington Post article linked to above explains,

Over the last decade, as the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans has widened, researchers have demonstrated that access to pre-kindergarten education and child care can help children get into college and eventually climb out of poverty.
James Heckman, a Nobel-prize winning economist, found that every dollar invested in Head Start yields between $7 and $9 as the program's alumni enter the work force and start contributing to the economy.
"It's good not just for kids," said Yasmina Vinci, who heads the National Head Start Association. "It's good for the whole community."

The wisdom for investing in early childhood education programs has been argued persuasively by people who seem to know something about investing -- officials from the Federal Reserve. Ben Bernake himself has pointed out that "the payoffs of early childhood programs can be especially high."

The most comprehensive and definitive study on the benefits of early childhood education -- the famous Perry Preschool Program -- found that children who had been enrolled in pre-K eventually, throughout the 40-year duration of the study, resulted in adults with higher earnings, higher employment, and a lower crime rate -- giving back to society $16 for every tax dollar invested in the program.

So in the face of these positive results produced by investing in early child education -- both in education attainment to children and economic benefit to the country -- it's absurd for Republicans to call for a sweeping disinvestment.

Devastating Education For Underserved-Served School Children

Once young children age into the elementary-secondary system, the Ryan-Romney cuts to education spending continue their cruel toll, attacking those students who are the most vulnerable.

An analysis from the National Education Association lays bare the devastation:

"The Ryan budget," the NEA analysis states, "is projected to slash education funding by $115 billion over ten years -- hurting the neediest students, causing class sizes to rise even further, forcing elimination of more programs aimed at providing a well-rounded education, and putting more public servants in unemployment lines."

The cuts to federal education dollars being proposed by Republicans could not come at a worse time as states try to recover from "the largest collapse in state revenues on record," as explained by analysts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

As the CBPP analysis continues, "states are still addressing large budget shortfalls by historical standards" at a time when they "expect to educate 350,000 more K-12 students and 1.7 million more public college and university students."

Any new state revenues for education "probably won't come close to what states need to restore the programs that they cut during the recession unless states raise taxes, at least temporarily, or receive additional federal aid while the economy slowly recovers."

"The federal government has already cut non-defense discretionary spending by nine percent in real terms since 2010," the CBPP analysis points out.

And now Republicans propose to cut it even more by targeting school children who are poor and who need special education services?

Making College Unaffordable To The 99%

Should school children under the Ryan-Romney plan survive these cuts graduate high school and enter higher education, what awaits them are huge levels of debt that are almost inconceivable to recent generations of Americans.

When the New York Federal Reserve estimated last year that student loan debt would exceed $1 trillion for the first time in 2012, they undershot it by16 percent and were, instead. foretelling a level of debt that had indeed already been reached, according to a recent article appearing at the Nation of Change website.

The article goes on to report that "80 percent of bankruptcy lawyers said in a survey that they’ve seen a substantial increase in clients buried in student debt, and a recent study "shows that 'almost two-thirds of U.S. student- loan borrowers misunderstood or were surprised by aspects of their loans or the student-loan process.'"

Already, Republicans have been poised to add to the debt burden of a typical college graduate -- which recently topped $25,000, up 25 percent in 10 years --by proposing to double student loan interest rates.

And Romney has expressed open disdain for giving students any "government money" for college education (presuming "private money" is preferable?) and warned students not to "expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on."

So the Republican antipathy toward college students is well established. But the Ryan-Romney budget plan would make financing a college education even more an insurmountable task, particularly, for low-income students by cutting Pell Grants for students by $200 billion. According to Huffington Post's ever-useful education journalists Joy Resmovits, "more than 1 million students would lose Pell grants entirely over the next 10 years" under the Republican's plan,

Although the Ryan-Romney budget declares that "the Nation's students must have the opportunity to access . . . high-quality education," Resmovits explains how it actually undermines that goal:

The budget would cut Pell grant eligibility for students who attend classes on a less-than-halftime schedule -- which usually means low-income students who need to work their way through college.
And it gets worse. Sixty percent of students who receive Pell grants also take out loans -- twice the rate for college students overall -- so they might be doubly hit by the Ryan cuts: In addition to receiving less Pell money, they would have to start paying interest on their loans while still in school.

The plan put forth by the GOP also lessens the amount of college aid available for low-income students by providing for a "maximum income cap for eligibility" and setting a "sustainable maximum award, of $5,550 -- less than the current maximum Pell grant."

All these provisions of the Ryan-Romney plan add to the problem of rising student loan debt rather than lessen those burdens.

Cutting Government Budgets For Private Profits

Despite the devastating impact of the Ryan-Romney budget on pre-K through college learners, short term, and the country's success, long term, the effects of these cuts on reducing the nation's now $15 trillion debt are minimal at best and will likely do little to speed the already sluggish recovery.

In fact, as the NEA analysis linked above explains, instead of cutting spending on education, we should be doing the opposite:

When we invest in public education, lower and middle incomes grow even more than upper incomes, positively impacting businesses’ bottom line as lower-income people spend their new income on consumer goods and services. In a typical state, investing two percent more in public education generates 3,900 new jobs and $92 million in new personal income. An equal tax cut generates less than half those gains -- 1,500 new jobs and $41 million in new personal income. The real rate of return on investments in education and training programs -- in terms of payoff to lifetime earnings relative to the upfront costs -- is 5 to 15 percent per year.

Because the economic reasons for drastically cutting education spending are so unjustified, it leaves to speculation why the Ryan-Romney plan has become the Republican darling.

Some have contended, as Tom Edsall did recently in The New York Times, that Republican attacks on federally backed student loans, for instance, follow a "partisan logic" to reduce the ranks of the "well-educated" who tend to vote Democratic.

While Edsall may be correct that the Ryan-Romney attack on public education is largely a consequence of "the fight for Republican primary votes" that will be tempered with promises for "initiatives at the state level" as the general election approaches, he and other Democrats ignore a much bigger Republican plan afoot to drive education demand toward for-profit providers and increase "edu-debt" levels in all their forms for the purpose of speculating with it in the derivative casinos of Wall Street.

Despite tough economic times, America's demand for education attainment remains inelastic. Even amidst recession and slow recovery, most Americans -- 72 percent -- think the US spends "too little" on education. And even as the cost of higher education continues to soar, elite colleges continue to get record applications and increase their selectivity.

Republicans understand this and have successfully courted the for-profit college industry and funders of privately-operated charter schools (which investors like Goldman Sachs are particularly keen on) who have much to gain by weakening the supply of government funding for education.

Further, ratcheting up the debt levels related to education spending is a desirable outcome for those in the financial industry who invest in student loan asset backed securities (SLABS). According to at least one financial consulting firm:

Student Loan Asset Backed Securities (SLABS) are a prominent sector of the ABS market with more than $400 billion in assets backing various deals issued in the market. They have traditionally appealed to fixed income investors owing to their high credit quality and low spread volatility, and formed a regular fixture in all the major institutional investors’ portfolios.

Now that more parents take out loans for their children's kindergarten and high school, and debt burdens for public school districts are becoming more widespread, it's increasingly clear that the financial industry's strategy is to create an education loan burden for each American to carry from "cradle to grave." The Ryan-Romney plan simply enables this agenda.

Sure, many Democrats, including obviously President Obama, understand that the Ryan-Romney budget is basically unfair to children and youth, and they see how it undermines the American economy in the long run.

But Democrats must also grapple with the essential truth that the purpose of the Ryan-Romney plan is to promote a generally hidden endgame for the 1 percent to make money off our children and young people and to exploit their dreams for a better life by extracting greater and greater wealth from their education pursuits and saddling them with long-term debts that can be capitalized into the next financial bubble.

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Now Watch Republicans Hang Education "Reform" Around Democrats' Necks

Jeff Bryant — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:26:14 -0400

Coming in over the transom this week, the ever-vigilant bloggers at Education Week's Politics K-12 who were camped out at hearings for the House Education and the Workforce Committee tweeted out that Rep. Judy Biggert from Illinois, "a moderate Republican," is "worried" that the Obama administration's signature education policy, Race to the Top, "is taking money away from homeless kids."

The good Congresswoman had to pioneer into territory that Republicans rarely ever inhabit to come up with this one. But we are, after all, in an election season. Republicans are on the hunt for whatever they can use to damage President Obama in particular and Democrats in general. And there's growing evidence that the Obama administration's education policies will be a target of the right wing.

The Right Wing Revs Up Its Attack Machine
Indeed, at the Congressional hearing cited above, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who was in attendance to defend his program's accomplishments, got "hammered" for "continuing to pump money into competitive programs" like Race to the Top. Since when are Republicans against competition?

Tellingly, reauthorization of the federal government's chief education policy, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), is at a complete and utter stalemate.

President Obama and Republican governors are clearly at odds on spending levels for education. And the budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan that just passed the House would likely produce "an 18 percent cut to education funding" curtailing the Democrat-controlled federal government's outlay for education.

The rallying cry among the right wing is to redefine "federal" -- including "federal teachers unions" -- as a pejorative. And Republican presidential candidates are openly condemning the federal government's role in education, largely based on broad dislike of No Child Left Behind -- which was enacted in a Republican administration.

Conservative Beltway think tank operatives such the American Enterprise Institute's Rick Hess have cast serious doubts about key Obama education initiatives, such as the Common Core State Standards, which Hess claimed to resemble "a federally-inspired, politicized project."

As Democratic Rep. George Miller recently lamented, again in the pages of Education Week, "We've never had education dragged into this vortex. Education has always been above it. Now we find ourselves sitting in a partisan firefight."

Actually, partisan differences over education policy are likely a good thing, as it may be a sign of the DC crowd turning its back on the flawed logic of adopting centrism for centrism's sake. But if this is a "firefight," it's unclear what the Democrats are packing.

Democrats Show Up At A "Firefight" With What . . ?
It doesn't help Democrats that most of what the Obama administration is pushing for education is producing some really negative press on the ground. Earlier this week, reporters with the Atlanta Journal and Constitution presented a series of articles documenting a nationwide cheating scandal that calls into question the federal government's follow-up of top-down mandates on school accountability.

The newspaper's investigation "analyzed test results for 69,000 public schools and found high concentrations of suspect math or reading scores in school systems from coast to coast." The reporters note that the suspect results are particularly prone to appear in schools that "are grappling with urban blight and poverty" -- the schools that "NCLB was supposed to fix." And they lay much of the blame for the cheating on "way too much pressure" being put on schools to comply with testing mandates.

Although the AJC's reporters' broad conclusion is somewhat questionable, their report -- and others similar to it -- is likely to increase negative perceptions toward federal education policies.

Secretary Duncan, for his part, continues to struggle to distance his program from the widely reviled NCLB. He maintains that Race to the Top and other approachesare not an extension of the Bush administration's now unpopular edicts. But starting a political argument by explaining what you "are not like" is hardly firm ground.

Teachers, for instance, are not persuaded of the Secretary's good intentions. There is increasing evidence that there is very little teacher support for Obama school reform strategies among teachers -- especially among experienced teachers.

Only 7 percent of teachers believe standardized tests that are being pushed by Sec. Duncan are essential to good education. Many teachers report having to spend inordinate amounts of time -- over half their classroom time in some places -- on preparing for and administering tests, and they're understandably resentful of more time taken away from real instruction.

Many assessment experts advise against over-reliance on these tests. And grassroots parent organizations are increasingly vocal in their opposition to too much testing in public schools.

The backlash against testing is undoubtedly growing. Parents and public education advocates have started numerous "opt out" movements and actions. And now school boards in over 190 districts across the state of Texas are speaking out against the over-emphasis on testing in public schools.

Compounding Test-Resentment
Another factor that makes the Obama administration's reliance on standardized tests increasingly unpopular is the insistence on evaluating teachers based on the scores -- one of the qualifications for receiving federal grant money. The score-based evaluations are wildly unreliable and are leading to more and more cases of good teachers being treated very badly.

Incidents of highly respected teachers labeled as "ineffective" are being reported in Washington, DC, New York City, and elsewhere.

Sometimes, even whole schools that are well liked and supported in their communities are being shut down due to some poor test results that can hardly be attributed to the school's practices.

Due to the growing resentment toward testing and its applications, and other factors, an annual survey of teachers, MetLife’s Survey of the American Teacher, recently found that teachers’ job satisfaction is the lowest it's been in 20 years.

No doubt, Republican politicians will not lose any sleep over the growing dissatisfaction among teachers and parents with the Obama administration's education policies. What they will do is use it as a club to beat Democratic candidates over the head about the failure of federal education policies.

Democrats Are Following A Republican Playbook
The Republican strategy is quite clear. This week, my colleague Richard (RJ) Eskow laid it out.

Eskow observed how the dynamic of the Republican attack machine works during election season. In his commentary at ourfuture.org, he explained how right-wing agitation related to the Supreme Court hearings on the individual insurance mandate takes the peculiar turn of conservatives "viciously attacking" ideas, like mandated health insurance, that were originally developed in "right-wing think tanks."

This is the exact same strategy right-wing Republicans (now the only kind) are using with education policy. Now that ideas for education policy that were conceived primarily by right wing think tanks -- standards, NCLB, high-stakes testing -- are frimly in place, thanks in part to the cooperation of Democrats, they are now the exact points Republicans are using to attack Democrats.

Of course, as Eskow explained, "that's what you get" for compromising with the Right. Democrats continue to hew their views to right-wing proposals based on the worship of "bipartisanship." And then they get attacked for supporting the very ideas proposed by conservatives.

It's no sure thing that education will be a prominent issue in the upcoming elections. It's usually not. But with popular perceptions of the economy improving, Republicans will be searching for new fodder to stoke the assault guns.

While the Obama administration has more resources on hand to weather the assault, down-ticket Democrats have to be more careful. The right thing is for liberals to "act like liberals again" and return to insistence on education policies that are grounded in the individual well-being of students rather than standards, and justice and fairness rather than a faulty accountability tied to inaccurate measures.

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