The Nub of the Argument in Fertilizers, Pills & Magnetic Strips.
Last updated: Friday - November 14, 2008
Change in public education in America has many causes; among them, discoveries in psychology (Freud, Thorndike, Skinner, Vygotsky), decisions by courts (Brown v Board of Education), and even innovations by educationists (Direct Instruction, Success for All). But the effect of these causes is secondary to the power of some more basic influences. Not only are these basic influences to which I refer more powerful in transforming education, but other reform proposals (vouchers and other "market solutions"; various surrogates for tracking, like AP, gifted & talented; ESL & "immersion" bilingual) are mere montebanks ("A confidence trick to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretense or deception").

The fundamental influences accounting for change in public education in the last 100 years in America are 1) economic self-interest of the politically dominant social class, and 2) suspicion of or antipathy toward persons of different racial, ethnic or social groups from those of the dominant political class. Economic self-interest is driven by technological invention; racial prejudice, by demographic change.

In Fertilizers, Pills & Magnetic Strips (FPMS), I tried to make the case that the dominant political class of the past thirty years is an aging, White middle-class that increasingly feels the pressure of declining economic fortunes. The days are gone when workers were employed by one company for life and the company provided a pension for the few years remaining after retirement. (We may be witnessing the last of these retirement agreements with the demise—or government take-over—of the US auto industry.) The 401k replaced the pension, and today the average person 65 years or older with a 401k has seen its value decline to less $150,000. Against this backdrop of a powerful political block facing many years of strained economic existence, one discerns the rise of a politically weak underclass: the poor, young, and Hispanic. The latter depend on public institutions to better their lives. The former fund public institutions.

Perhaps it is not unexpected that the greatest consumer of property tax revenues—America's public schools—would be subjected to enormous pressure to both reduce its costs and provide special privileges to the families of the aging White middle-class. I argue in FPMS that the principal education reform debates today are aimed precisely at achieving those two ends: cutting costs and "quasi-privatizing" public schooling for some. One must look for the reasons that certain proposals for reform are on the agenda (e.g., charter schools, tuition tax credits, alternative certification, open enrollment, tax credits, transition from property to sales tax, high-stakes testing, school district consolidation, virtual schools, and the like) and not others (e.g., teacher professional development, pre-K education, All-Day Kindergarten) in the consideration of money and special privilege and not in the data from research on whether student achievement in greater under one set of circumstances than another. In fact, the research on how school reforms might affect student learning is virtually irrelevant to the debates about improving public education.

---

Send a Message to the Author

Your Name:	Your Email:
Comments:

---

RSS