Alternatives to Privatizing Public Education and Curriculum Festschrift in Honor of Dale D. Johnson 9781138903852, 9781315696638

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Alternatives to Privatizing Public Education and Curriculum

This book offers new and important research on a timely, critical, and contentious topic, the standards movement as a privatizing and profit-making venture. Representing work by respected, established, and emergent scholars from the US, Asia and Europe, it argues that emphases on accountability and performance are bad for our schools, students, teachers and communities, and offers powerful examples of resistance to these damaging trends. —Therese Quinn, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA Through conversations in honor of Dale D. Johnson, this book takes a critical view of the monoculture in curriculum and policy that has developed in education with the increase of federal funding and privatization of services for public education, and examines the shift from public interest and control to private and corporate shareholder hegemony. Most states’ educational responsibilities—assessment of constituents, curriculum development, and instructional protocols—are increasingly being outsourced to private enterprises in an effort to reduce state budgets. These enterprises have been given wide access to state resources such as public data from state-sanctioned testing results, field-testing rights to public schools, and financial assistance. Chapter authors challenge this paradigm as well as the model that has set growing premiums on accountability and performance measures. Connecting common impact between the standards movement and the privatization of education, this book lays bare the repercussions of high-stakes accountability coupled with increasing privatization. Daniel Ness is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at St. John’s University, USA. Stephen J. Farenga is Professor of Science Education at the City University of New York, Queens College, USA.

Routledge Studies in Education and Neoliberalism Series editor: Dave Hill, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford and Cambridge, England For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

4 The Developing World and State Education Neoliberal Depredation and Egalitarian Alternatives Edited by Dave Hill and Ellen Rosskam 5 The Gates Foundation and the Future of US “Public” Schools Edited by Philip E. Kovacs 6 Colonized Schooling Exposed Progressive Voices for Transformative Educational and Social Change Edited by Pierre Wilbert Orelus, Curry S. Malott, and Romina Pacheco 7 Underprivileged School Children and the Assault on Dignity Policy Challenges and Resistance Edited by Julia Hall 8 Hegemony and Education under Neoliberalism Insights from Gramsci Peter Mayo 9 Female Students and Cultures of Violence in Cities Edited by Julia Hall 10 Neoliberal Education Reform Gendered Notions in Global and Local Contexts Sarah A. Robert 11 Curriculum Epistemicide Towards an Itinerant Curriculum Theory João M. Paraskeva 12 Alternatives to Privatizing Public Education and Curriculum A Festschrift in Honor of Dale D. Johnson Edited by Daniel Ness and Stephen J. Farenga

Alternatives to Privatizing Public Education and Curriculum A Festschrift in Honor of Dale D. Johnson Edited by Daniel Ness and Stephen J. Farenga

First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of Daniel Ness and Stephen J. Farenga to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-90385-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-69663-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book is dedicated to and in honor of the memory of ­Professor Dale D. Johnson—The greatest sifter and winnower of truth we have ever known. The entire book is based on his legacy and influence on the future of education.

Contents

Dedication Foreword by Michael Sampson Note on Dale D. Johnson Acknowledgments

v xi xv xvii

SECTION I

Challenging the Audit Culture

1

  1 The Sadism of School Reform

3

WILLIAM F. PINAR

  2 Death by Numbers: The Loss of Humanity in the Age of Audit

17

PETER M. TAUBMAN

  3 Defending Teacher Education From edTPA . . . and Itself

32

TODD ALAN PRICE

  4 Disrupting U.S. Empire: Creating Subjects to Expand the “Commons” and the Public Good

59

ROBERTA AHLQUIST

  5 SCALE Down, SCALE Back!: Academic Freedom under Siege through Standards Proliferation by Para-Educational Enterprises

78

STEPHEN J. FARENGA AND DANIEL NESS

SECTION II

Contributions to Literacy and Language Development   6 We Could Teach Every Child to Read, But the Unanswered Question Is: Will We? RICHARD L. ALLINGTON

99 101

viii Contents   7 Intervention Assessment of Literacy to Inform Teaching and Increase Learning

119

JEANNE R. PARATORE AND ROSELMINA INDRISANO

  8 One Size Fits None: Re-Conceptualizing Literacy Instruction for Diverse Learners

138

EVAN ORTLIEB AND AUTUMN M. DODGE

SECTION III

Easing the Plight of Children

167

  9 “Every Day She Drunk or Gone”: Poverty, Persuasion, Peddlers and Privatization

169

BONNIE JOHNSON

10 Seduction of “East Asian” Schools

189

BARBARA S.S. HONG

11 Conditions of Success for Teenage Mothers: Revisiting School Achievement on the Margins

199

ELIZABETH CHASE

12 What’s Common in Core Curricula?

211

ISABEL NUÑEZ

13 Dehumanization and Violence: Symptoms from a Neoliberal City

221

KAY FUJIYOSHI

SECTION IV

Challenging Education Inequity in Urban Environments

233

14 The Racial Oppression of Social Justice: Inequities in Chicago Public Schools

235

CARL A. GRANT

15 Choosing a Faculty Union over Faculty Governance in Public Education: A Case Study of a Single Teacher Certification Policy in New York DAVID GERWIN

254

Contents  ix 16 The Anatomy of Dissent as Teachers Plan and Lead a Demonstration in Seattle: Intersections of Hope, Agency and Collective Action

273

RICHARD D. SAWYER

Contributor List Index

293 295

Foreword Michael Sampson

I’m pleased to write the foreword for this powerful book that honors Dale Johnson and his contributions to children, literacy, and American education. I first met Dale in the late 1970s, when I was a Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona. Dale had just written a new book, with David Pearson, on reading comprehension. It was the first major text for our field in this area. Dale was already known at that time as the leading expert and guru on vocabulary acquisition, even before he wrote his classic book Teaching Reading Vocabulary, also with David Pearson. Dale went on to an amazing career as a researcher, educator, and leader. He served as president of the International Literacy Association and is a member of the Reading Hall of Fame. He authored 18 books and more than 100 articles on literacy and social justice. His life and work live on in this volume, as we are challenged to advocate for children in this age of government interference in education and teaching. The last time I saw Dale was in 2002, when I keynoted at a literacy conference at Louisiana State University at Monroe, where Dale was Dean of the College of Education and Human Services. He was a very different Dale Johnson than I had known in the past. This Dale was focused totally on children and their education, after he encountered a Louisiana where African-American children lived in extreme poverty and were being denied a meaningful education because of poor curriculum and high-stakes testing. In fact, Dale and his co-author Bonnie Johnson had just completed the text that would become High Stakes: Children, Testing, and Failure in American Schools, which told the story of a small town in Louisiana and the failures of schools and communities. The Johnsons had moved from a focus on instructional strategies to a focus on social justice and ways in which we can impact children’s lives through better schools. This book is the next step toward that end, as we move from the evils of high-stakes testing to the evils of public monies being given to charter and private schools, and the pressures on schools to meet artificial standards that are not related to student needs, and to the Department of Education, through CAEP, dictating how teachers are trained.

xii Foreword There is no doubt—public schools and universities are under attack. Bonnie Johnson, in her chapter discusses the “sales pitch” private schools use to put down public schools and elevate their brand. She also points out how teacher preparation institutions are also under attack as they must meet artificial standards imposed by organizations like CAEP, where data collection is more important than developing outstanding teachers for schools. As I am writing this, I’m attending the CAEP conference in Washington, DC. Session after session deals with mandates to collect data and to train preservice teachers on how to collect data, but no one seems to be questioning if the data reflect truth about student learning or the negative impact on school climate that might occur. I can’t help but think of the classic tale by Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes, as I look around the room. No one here is bold enough to be the voice that calls out “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” But my colleagues make that cry quite boldly in this book. Sixteen chapters, all written by experts in their fields, discuss policy, curriculum, literacy, and teaching. The authors critically examine the monoculture that has developed in education with the increase of federal funding and privatization of services for public education, citing research and providing insightful conclusions about the damage that is being done to schools and children because the government has ceded public education to private enterprise. But let’s return to the reason this book has been written. We the friends of Dale Johnson want to honor him by shining a light on and changing policies and practices that harm public school students and university students who will be teachers. Earlier in this foreword, I mentioned that Dale in his latter days had moved from a focus on teaching children to a focus on social justice. But Dale’s heart had always been on children and their social needs. To illustrate, I’ll share this story/vignette: Those who knew Dale know that he had a big heart. When he was a public school teacher outside of Milwaukee, he changed a policy that humiliated economically poor children. The district had a band/orchestra. Those children who could not afford to buy or rent instruments were assigned instruments for no charge—old, battered tubas, for example. Everyone knew who the poor kids were by the instruments that they played. Dale had this policy changed so that all students could select their instruments and receive their choice without charge if their parents/guardians could not afford to pay. No students had access to lists of students who received free instruments; no teachers or administrators were allowed to report this information. One can only imagine the struggle that Dale went through to get the policy changed, but he did so. I hope this book will inspire all of us to do as Dale did—and serve the poor and needy who are in need of good schools, good curriculum, and good teachers. The authors of this text have identified the things we must fight against—which include external assessments of teachers like edTPA,

Foreword  xiii curriculum materials students must “do” based upon publishers seizing upon the Common Core mandates, Colleges of Education being forced to train teachers to meet “national standards” that are often not child-, community-, or teacher-centered. And the authors have identified the things we must fight for—local control of schools and curriculum, university and public school partnerships to develop teachers, and literacy strategies that are thought and child centered. I hope these chapters inspire you to join our voices and work to achieve these things that Dale Johnson dreamed of. Michael Sampson Dean and Professor St. John’s University New York, NY

Note on Dale D. Johnson

As the subtitle of this book indicates, we dedicate this edited volume in honor and memory of Professor Dale D. Johnson (1936–2012), a genuine sifter and winnower of truth. Readers might wonder what we mean by “sifter and winnower of truth.” We answer this question by affirming that Dale not only inspired us to do well—as the act of doing well relates to research and inquiry—but to do good. The act of doing good means having a moral compass and ethical character for serving populations in need and to ensure that no individual or group is alienated as a result of organizational or corporate greed, misdeed, and graft. Dale was a forerunner in this regard as he challenged numerous organizations at a time when both public and corporate self-interests gradually wriggled their way into the field of education during the last few decades of the last century. Dale possessed the foresight in anticipating self-serving bureaucratic accession of educational domains—whether it was through high-stakes testing, teacher certification, or program accreditation. Dale was a renaissance man; he was an expert in linguistics, cognition, and several of the social sciences. He completed his doctoral dissertation, entitled Factors Related to the Pronunciation of Vowel Clusters, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1970. It is interesting to note that language and literacy scholars and education specialists are often unaware that Dale was a pioneer of semantic mapping—a method that utilizes graphic representations of concepts as a means of teaching reading, vocabulary, and the decoding of symbols. Dale was past president of the International Reading Association—now called the International Literacy Association. As an international icon of literacy education, Dale was invited to speak at numerous locations on six continents. Dale served in numerous academic capacities, some of which include professor and dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisiana in Monroe, professor of education at Louisiana Tech University, professor of literacy at the University of Northern Iowa, and professor of reading at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His books demonstrate both his wealth of knowledge and his commitment to educational equity and social justice. They include, but are not limited to, Vocabulary in the Elementary and Middle

xvi  Note on Dale D. Johnson School, The Ginn Word Book for Teachers, High Stakes: Poverty, Testing, and Failure in American Schools, Trivializing Teacher Education: The Accreditation Squeeze, Stop High Stakes Testing: An Appeal to America’s Conscience, and Words: The Foundations of Literacy. Most striking about Dale, however, was his quick wit and humor and, at the same time, his unremitting humility and modesty. Dale went to great lengths to understate his encyclopedic knowledge at the expense of breaking down culturally constructed boundaries that have persisted in academia for centuries. It is our hope that the contributions in this book will demonstrate how Dale’s legacy can and will serve as a guiding light, inspiration, and call for action for educators throughout the world.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the assistance, support, and encouragement of a number of individuals who have helped make this project come to fruition. Dave Hill, Research Professor in Education at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, has been an ardent supporter of the conceptual framework of the book since its very inception. We are grateful to Karen Adler, Editor, and Katherine Tsamparlis, Editorial Assistant, at Routledge for our back-and-forth communications that led to the book’s production, and to Lisa Salonen, production manager, for preparing this volume for printing. To be sure, this book would not have been written had it not been for the exceptional contributions of the chapter authors. Thanks go to all of them. We wish to thank Judith Mangione, Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at St. John’s University, and Eleanor Armour-Thomas, Chair of the Department of Secondary Education and Youth Services at the City University of New York at Queens College. Thanks also go to the members of each of these departments who have supported us in this endeavor. We are grateful to Autumn Tooms Cyprès, Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies in the School of Education at St. John’s University for her support, and to Michael Sampson, Dean of the School of Education at St. John’s University, for sharing his remembrances of Dale Johnson and writing the Foreword to this volume. Kevin Kumashiro, Dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco, was instrumental in providing excellent feedback and introducing us to a number of experts in critical pedagogy—some of whom contributed chapters to this volume. We also wish to acknowledge Therese Quinn, University of Illinois, Chicago, Faith Agostinone Wilson, Aurora University, and Erica Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University, for providing invaluable analysis. Finally, we would like to thank Mark Diercks, Chia-ling Lin, and Eric Ness for their support and encouragement; they knew Dale personally and were witness to his humility, integrity, and inspiring knowledge and insight. No one knows this better than Dr. Bonnie Johnson—chapter author, Professor of Early Childhood Education at St. John’s University, and wife of Dale.

Section I

Challenging the Audit Culture

Dale D. Johnson is recognized internationally as one of the greatest scholars in literacy education and vocabulary development. Over time, he became equally known for his unwavering commitment to equity in education, children’s rights, and the eradication of poverty through education and literacy. To this end, Dale challenged obstacles that impeded the ability of students to learn and educators to provide the most conducive environment for children to thrive. While the underlying principles of educational reform, accreditation, and certification have sensible origins, the overall trajectory of reform efforts often have had unintended consequences that have adversely affected children’s learning and teachers’ performance in ensuring student achievement. The central focus of Chapters 1 through 5 is an indictment of contemporary obstacles in education that pose as potential challenges to children’s learning and teachers’ ability to provide learners with ideal environments for success.

1 The Sadism of School Reform William F. Pinar

Introduction Preceding and now extending beyond the demise of No Child Left Behind,1 Louisiana’s testing regime remains in place.2 Did Louisiana officials fail to read Dale Johnson and Bonnie Johnson’s damning account3 of accountability in one north Louisiana4 public school, a school they renamed “Redbud”? If they did read it, did they take pride in accountability’s apparent universality? After all, Redbud represented a “microcosm,” Johnson and Johnson (2006, xix) suggest, of what was underway nationally at the time of their writing. If Louisiana5 was ever a microcosm of anything, it is no longer, as in late 2015 in New York State, for instance, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo— “facing a parent revolt against testing”—announced his intention to reduce the testing of students and the role test scores play in teachers’ evaluations (Taylor, 2015, November 26, A29). In October 2015 President Barack Obama acknowledged that his educational policy had contributed to a “flood” of “new” and “sometimes pointless tests” (Zernike, 2015, November 13, A20). The President pledged to release states from obligations that had led to excessive testing, promising to press Congress for legislation limiting testing to no more than 2 percent of classroom time.6 Obama’s Secretary of Education—Arne Duncan7—seemed less apologetic, admitting only that the administration “had pushed a lot, fast” and that “we haven’t gotten everything right.” He promised to uphold the high standards ensured, he said, by testing, but he also acknowledged the necessity of fostering “a joy for learning” (quoted passages in Zernike, 2015, November 13, A20).8 Duncan, it seems, cannot help but patronize America’s schoolteachers. Had Duncan or Obama studied only one book—High Stakes: Poverty, Testing, and Failure in American Schools—they might have proceeded differently. As America’s students9 are under accountability, should they also be held accountable for their ignorance? Like Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 166), I too am angry and not only at the state bureaucrats and politicians who mandated Louisiana’s absurd accountability system, but also with President Obama and his former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

4  William F. Pinar Should they not too be held accountable for the suffering of students and teachers as a result of their policies? Reviewing their year in north Louisiana, Dale Johnson and Bonnie Johnson (2006, xviii) identify three major themes: 1) the “grinding effects” of acute poverty, 2) the negative consequences of accountability in the schools, and 3) the unreasonable demands imposed on teachers, stifling their “creativity” and “enthusiasm” and ushering their “exodus” from the profession. Out of respect for their project—who among us education professors has returned to the public school classroom?—and for the sake of organizing their diary-like account, I will organize my synopsis10 around these three themes, providing contextualization and commentary on the damning testimony they have provided.

Poverty11 Veteran12 teachers told Johnson and Johnson (see 2006, p. 23) that for many children, school breakfast and lunch are the only meals they eat all day. Not only is food scarce at home, so is sleep, as Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 26) discover when they read to their classes, usually just before lunch: several students fall asleep, and so soundly that awakening them for lunch is difficult. In addition to food and sleep, peacefulness is in short supply, as violence seems a constant threat (2006, p. 33). During the year, the grandmother of student is murdered (2006, p. 33). Poverty is also evident in the conditions in which students attempt to study: Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 47) report combatting cockroaches in their classrooms each morning; one day during a heat wave the school gym reached 120 degrees (2006, p. 29). Life-endangering heat alternates with life endangering cold: just before winter vacation at least one classroom had no heat (see 2006, p. 92). That deep freeze continued for several days: Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 94) report that despite wearing coats, hats, and gloves, they and the children remained so cold that concentrating on teaching and learning was impossible. Schoolbuilding security suffered too: during Thanksgiving vacation, the building was vandalized (2006, p. 81), and not only then (see 2006, p. 87). “We are becoming immune,” Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 100) admitted, “to the filth and odors in which we work,” noting that the student teachers comment frequently on the condition of the school building. Another effect of poverty is evident when the children read the storybooks that the school has adopted. These narrate family vacations taken away from home, summer camps, music lessons, and other activities with which most students have had no experience (2006, p. 100). Despite their best efforts, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 131) acknowledge they cannot possibly compensate for lost experiences and large deficits in “linguistic maturation.” They (2006, p. 78) wonder why those who create accountability systems act oblivious to or disinterested in the correlation between poverty and low test scores. Why indeed? The fact is long-established and has been reported repeatedly.13

The Sadism of School Reform  5 Standardized tests create these deficits, a fact evident during the children’s completion of a questionnaire concluding the Iowa test. Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 136) note that several questions concern 1) computers14 in students’ homes (few have them), 2) calculators (largely absent), 3) library use (Redbud has no library), and 3) attitudes toward art (largely absent at Redbud). “This is one section of the Iowa,” Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 136) write, in a rare expression of humor, that “all children can complete confidently.” Despite being forced to buy art supplies from their own funds, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 148) did manage to teach art; they found that artmaking had a soothing effect on the children. They wanted (2006, p. 104) to recommend all their students for art, but only 15 students of the 611 enrolled in Redbud Elementary were judged eligible. They spent the last few school days doing art projects with their classes (2006, p. 175). Advocates of school choice, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 109) suggest, are evidently unaware that many private schools will not want poor children as students. Not every adult, they note, welcomes working with children who have not bathed in days, wear unwashed clothes, show skin disorders, and bleed from their gums. Even more serious difficulties lie below the surface of the skin; children’s experience of trauma complicates educators’ efforts to become emotionally close to students (2006, p. 109). But the bottom line for private (and charter) schools is test scores, as those children who might lower schools’ overall test scores are denied admission or, if they have somehow slipped in, are expelled.15 But the issue is moot in Louisiana, as admission for children of poverty to private schools is unlikely, given that the proposed amount of a school voucher there—$1,500—cannot come close to covering school tuition and other costs. Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 110) wonder who will make up the difference. They know the answer to that question; the voucher system is designed to keep poor children segregated, away from the children of the middle and upper classes. Not only poor children generally but black children specifically are kept from mixing. Middle- and upper-class children are often white, especially in Louisiana and across the former slave states. In northwest Louisiana, the children of the affluent attend the private Deerborne Academy where the annual tuition (in 2000) was $3,000 to $4,000 per child per year (2006, p. 10). Like Deerborne, nearby Shady Lake Christian School enrolled mostly white children, as few African American parents could afford tuition. Safely segregated, students attending Deerborne Academy—or any private school in Louisiana—were spared the LEAP test (2006, pp. 10, 162), another outrageous instance of separate and unequal.16 Economically excluded by private schools, poor black children are left to their own devices, evident in the case of Yolande who, Johnson and Johnson (2006, pp. 118, 137) tell us, missed the first 70—90 overall—days of school, including 3 of the 5 LEAP test days and the 2 makeup days. The State Department of Education ruled that Yolande’s 0 score on the LEAP

6  William F. Pinar test must be included when calculating the overall rating of Redbud Elementary School. Despite—or perhaps due to—dire circumstances, what struck Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 147) was the humanity of their students and their parents. The assertion of humanity in conditions of material deprivation testifies to the spiritual and psychological courage of children and those who teach them. For those in power who can correct poverty but refuse to do so, for those who intensify poverty by installing standardized testing regimes that ensure academic failure, there must be accountability.

Accountability None of these tests are necessary, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 28) conclude. But at Redbud there is only continual acknowledgement of the upcoming LEAP test (2006, p. 31). At one after-school meeting a consultant tells teachers that whatever will not appear on the LEAP is “not worth teaching—it is just fluff” (quoted in 2006, p. 32). While catastrophic for children and their teachers, school reform has been good for business, as the test-grading industry has boomed (2006, p. 37).17 If the funds spent on testing, test scoring, and bureaucratic monitoring were rerouted to the schools—reducing class size, hiring paraprofessionals—the future of Louisiana, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 39) suggest, could be “rosy.” Admirable it is that well into that emotionally excruciating year that Johnson and Johnson can express such confidence. “If only more money” has been educators’ mantra forever, but I say fully fund the schools not because Louisiana’s—or the nation’s—future will become rosy, but because doing so is ethically obligatory. Make no promises, my fellow educators. Too many other factors—historical factors, as I have hinted in the endnotes— are in play that promise Louisiana no rosy future, at least not for poor children of the state. In one instance of money misspent, Johnson and Johnson (2006, 44) describe a situation that required all third- and fourth-grade teachers to attend a four-hour session after school (from 3:30PM to 7:30PM), which was designed to train the teachers to use a “new complex computer program” that would pinpoint their students’ “needs” and provide “computerized instruction addressing those needs.” The district spent $85,500 for this software. Redbud’s teachers have been working with their children for 6 weeks, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 44) point out, and what they need, big data could not possibly identify let alone provide: what children need is more personal interaction, in my terms, “subjective presence.” The reciprocity of human relationship—especially crucial for children—cannot be provided by software. Not only in Louisiana does money mysteriously find its way into the pockets of the powerful, rewards for misspending public funds, starving schools and miseducating—through enforced test prep—the children enrolled in them. One morning Redbud teachers read in the Shreveport newspaper: “State Education Superintendent Cecil J. Picard gave 18 of his top state

The Sadism of School Reform  7 Education Department administrators raises of up to 12 percent” (quoted in 2006, p. 65). Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 65) report that teachers were struck by the irony of rewarding those who heap busywork on the lowestpaid educators in the United States. Despite their dispassionate tone throughout, Johnson and Johnson on occasion express humor, as when they (2006, p. 74) note that “finally something” is accorded more attention than the LEAP test. What could that be? It was a football game. The excitement and competitiveness often associated with sports, school officials want to reroute to test-prep, and so they sanction pep rallies to intensify students’ concentration on what awaits them (2006, p. 114). There is to be a class cheer competition—for tests, not football—to be judged by the Redbud High School cheerleaders. First, second, and third graders perform cheers for success on the Iowa test; fourth graders perform cheers for victory over the LEAP. The winning cheers are to be performed at the all-school “test rally” the following week (Johnson and Johnson, 2006, p. 126). As the actual test draws near, this LEAP test frenzy intensifies (2006, p. 103). The name of the school should be changed, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 104) lament, to “Redbud Test Preparation Center.” As the LEAP test looms large, the academic curriculum shrinks. Oral language activities disappear; social studies and science can only be taught on occasion only; all are replaced by the two subjects the high-stakes tests emphasize: writing and math (2006, p. 131). At one of many after-school meetings, a consultant advises teachers: “Well, the word is, you should really only teach reading and math because of the LEAP test.” What about science, social studies, and the arts? “Well, just integrate everything through reading,” the consultant replies (quoted passages in 2006, pp. 50–51). When Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 115) wrote this remembrance, Louisiana was the only state in the United States where failing a standardized test meant failing the grade. In 2000, more than one-third of fourth and eighth graders in Louisiana failed the test. Recall that an absent Yolande also failed the test, as did several special education students who were unable to read (2006, p. 112). Even for those able to read, Johnson and Johnson (see 2006, p. 117) wonder if the tests are developmentally appropriate. Psychological tensions become somatic. A healthy student, Dario, complains of a “bad” stomachache; Carlonna also reports feeling unwell (2006, p. 126). The children become exhausted from the “skill-and-drill overkill” of the past several weeks (2006, p. 131). No longer their usual ebullient selves, the children have grown jittery and they seldom smile (2006, p. 131). There are more arguments, even physical confrontations (2006, p. 132). The teachers too begin to buckle (see 2006, p. 132). When testing finally begins, one child—Kelvin—vomits (2006, p. 133). Another, Gerard, starts crying. Teachers are unable to respond to the children’s distress as they are restricted to reading aloud only those words printed in boldface in the administrator’s manual. After the day’s testing concludes, a test coordinator collects the tests; teachers sign their names

8  William F. Pinar to testify to the event. After 5 days of LEAP testing—but still facing 3 days of Iowa testing—the children, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 137) testify, are in a bad mood. Somehow the ordeal won’t end, as the state of Louisiana then requires 2 days of LEAP test “field testing” (2006, p. 145). The rationale for this sadism is ascertaining items to include on the LEAP test for next year. Now the waiting begins. “When will we hear about the LEAP test results?” Verlin asks each day (quoted in 2006, p. 151). Like the period of preparation, the month after the test is stressful for both children and teachers (2006, p. 151). When the waiting game is finally over, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 162) learn that 54 of their 118 fourth graders have failed; they must attend summer school.18 Then they can retake the test; if they fail again they will have to repeat the fourth grade. Fourteen of the fifty-four children who failed are non-readers. Reminding readers that this trauma does not occur in private schools, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 167) describe the scene: “most of the children are crying. Those who passed are hugging those who failed and are comforting them.” It is, they (2006, p. 168) confide, a “pitiful scene.” Quietly19 they conclude that the LEAP ought to be examined more closely—“not the children and teachers of Louisiana” (2006, p. 162). Thus the school year draws to a crushing close. There is one final insult. For the rest of the nation, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 173) note, Memorial Day is a holiday marked by ceremonies, parades, and picnics—but not at Redbud Elementary, where a full school day has been scheduled. At the last minute that gets changed to half-a-day, “in recognition” of improved LEAP test scores (2006, p. 173). When they had taught children years before, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 177) recall, schools used standardized tests to see how well they were doing.20 There was, they recall, “no mania surrounding them,” as they were used as indicators of progress.21 They recall that then no one taught for the test; nor would have it occurred to any teacher to do so (2006, p. 177). During the brief period—1969–1971—I served as a high-school teacher of English, I recall the same. So much for “progress.”

Stifling Teachers’ Creativity I also recall never writing lesson plans. I made notes to myself regarding the next class, but never did I face what teachers faced at Redbud, e.g., the whole panoply of paralyzing and pointless demands made by administrators, bureaucrats, and parents, too. As parents devolve from caretakers to consumers, they project unreasonable demands on teachers (2006, p. 39). These parents tend not to be those of children at risk of failing the test: those parents are absent (2006, p. 43). But parents of any description are largely no-shows: at PTO meetings there are more teachers than parents in attendance (2006, p. 64). When parents do show up, unreasonable demands follow and school officials capitulate. On Halloween, for instance, Redbud

The Sadism of School Reform  9 enjoyed no parties or costume parades because a few parents protested on religious grounds, many of the same parents appeared to have no objection to their children watching violent, gory movies on television, the plots and details of which the children reported to the Johnsons (2006, p. 69). Early in the school year Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 30) received a packet of materials, among them a forty-two-page “curriculum grade book spreadsheet” on which were listed 326 objectives followed by “Days 1–30.” Teachers must track what they teach and when they teach it. Not only were these returning professors of education surprised, but many teachers were themselves stunned as the realization became inescapable that “school is no longer for education” (Johnson and Johnson, 2006, p. 31). School has devolved into a test-prep center as all classes must incorporate Iowa/LEAP preparation (2006, p. 12). In the teacher handbook are recorded the many rules that regulate the daily conduct of teaching (2006, p. 13).22 Aside from sadism, what could be the rationale of such panopticism? Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 15) speculate that officials imagine that specifying codes and benchmarks ensures that students will learn. What this fantasy amounts to is “busywork” for the teacher (2006, p. 15). Like all teachers, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 26) need time to prepare useful instructional activities, especially for those nonreaders who seem stymied. “Instead,” they rue, “our time will be spent looking up the codes for standards, benchmarks, activities, modifications, and assessments and attaching these codes to instructional plans” (2006, p. 26). It is not obvious from their account when in fact they found time for this busywork, as they were obligated to attend what seems like innumerable after-school meetings (2006, p. 27). Even the teaching schedule itself is structured sadistically, as teachers are scheduled no time to reflect and rest in solitude (2006, p. 22). Teachers’ only break occurs during the 25 minutes when their students take music or physical education (2006, p. 22). There are only 10 minutes scheduled for free time, but it turns out this time is not free at all but allocated to visiting what must be a busy restroom (2006, p. 22). Do prison23 inmates face such restroom restrictions? The assault on teachers is unrelenting. At yet another after-school meeting, teachers were informed that new lesson plan formats were on their way, each “two pages in length,” each following a uniform format to prevent teachers from recording their plans in different ways (2006, p. 96). At a session entitled “Teacher Collaborations” held during a professional development day24 session, presenters insulted teachers “nonstop” (2006, p. 119). Teachers were informed that they “do not possess sharing skills . . . equate avoiding collaboration with avoiding conflict, and [that they] view it [collaboration] as little more than window dressing” (quoted in 2006, p. 119). Aside from the conformity that accompanies enforced collaboration, this assertion shows how little data informed the scapegoating of teachers. Only teachers are required to make evidence-based instructional decisions; school “reformers” employ fantasy and greed.

10  William F. Pinar Teachers’ ineptitude ends not with their inability to collaborate. In fact, it is evidently endless, as students are asked after each of the four subjectmatter LEAP tests to complete a fifteen-item multiple-choice questionnaire concerning their teachers’ professional conduct. One question asked if students had received comments from their teachers regarding their writing, including specific suggestions for improving it; another asked how often their teachers explained in writing how their social studies work will be graded. The state of Louisiana, as Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 136) put it plainly, forces children “to snoop on teachers.” Is it any wonder there is a teacher shortage25 in Redbud and elsewhere in Louisiana (2006, p. 160)? Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 168) are struck that the professional judgment of teachers who, they point out, work with the children 176 days (1,232 hours) during the course of a school year, is simply ignored. They ask the obvious question of which the state is evidently oblivious: who could evaluate a student’s efforts better than a certified, experienced, onsite teacher who observes all aspects of a child’s academic work (2006, p. 168)? Teachers know their students better than any standardized tests could (2006, p. 168). Bureaucrats, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 181) conclude, must issue no more “administrative pronouncements” that stifle teachers’ creativity. Teaching requires freedom; indeed, without liberty we cannot teach.26 Even when these prerequisites are met—as they were when I taught high-school English almost 50 years ago—teaching is so intense that even 22-year-olds tell Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 182) that they fall asleep as soon as they reach home after school. Certainly I did. Hiring lunchroom supervisors and paraprofessionals, as Johnson and Johnson suggest (2006, p. 182), would help, but ending school “reform” is paramount. No sign of that, at least not in Louisiana, as when Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 219) return to the school for a visit they learn that teachers now must use a scripted program instead of “balanced reading” to teach children to read. The district hires “coordinators” to monitor this presumably “teacher-proof” instruction.

Conclusion Consistent with the dispassionate tone of their remembrance, Johnson and Johnson (2006, 188–191) make nine sensible recommendations. I want to make a supplementary recommendation that is not so dispassionate, one made in the spirit of “never again.” School “reform”—at its most ugly in the school where Johnson and Johnson taught—represents nothing less than a crime against children, and as such, a crime against humanity. I am not suggesting a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but something more akin to the Nuremburg trials. Officials ought to be brought to account for their sadism against children, their scapegoating of teachers, their self-empowering often self-profiting complicity with corporations (2006, p. 135), and, I would add as a former high-school English teacher, their Orwellian destruction of

The Sadism of School Reform  11 the language. As the phrase “no child left behind” makes explicit, many politicians endorsed reform—and standardized testing—to end, they said, the cycle of poverty. Dropping for the moment their dispassionate tone, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 168) point out that “this is nonsense.” “We think politicians should be held accountable,” Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 173) agree. It is politicians who “create the circumstances under which teachers must teach and children must learn” (2006, p. 173). No other set of professionals are held as accountable as teachers are (2006, p. 173). Unless proven guilty of malpractice, physicians are not held accountable for patients who fail to recover from their illnesses. Lawyers who fail to protect their clients from prison (or injury or rape or death in prison) are not held accountable, Johnson and Johnson note. They think of social workers who are not held accountable for clients unable to find work. Johnson and Johnson also think of dentists: are they held accountable for patients who develop cavities or gum disease? I think of priests and preachers: are they held accountable when parishioners and others fail to find the Lord? Schools are threatened with closure if standardized test scores are insufficient; why not close churches, synagogues, and mosques whose members fail those tests of moral conduct demanded in holy books? Teachers represent easy targets, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 173) know, and teacher-bashing is all too common. When schools are the target, so-called failing schools are often those, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 181) point out, with the greatest needs.27 Like all scapegoating—the United States has a long history of scapegoating Africans, women, homosexuals, Indians, Jews, Mexicans, now Muslims—this version of scapegoating is also false, as Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 173) testify: “We saw dedicated teachers work small miracles with their pupils every day we were on the faculty at Redbud Elementary School.” They add: “Would it hurt the people in power to say, ‘teachers, you have done an excellent job bringing these children along as far as you have’?” Here their understatement—that dispassion, as noted earlier—is rhetorically effective, as its humility underscores the sadism of those to whom the question is posed. More pointed questions follow, as Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 187) ask how many lawmakers, state superintendents of education, or members of a state board of education or department of education have ever taught full time in one of the elementary schools under their jurisdiction? Have policymakers and lawmakers ever taught in underfunded schools? Have they have spent any significant amount of time in schools such as Redbud where they could listen to those incarcerated there?28 Have executive directors and officers of associations such as NCATE ever taught in the public schools? If so, when? Under what conditions did they teach? When and for how long? “It is high time,” Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 187) conclude, these officials abandon their “well-appointed, air-conditioned offices,” suspend their expense accounts and junkets, and teach full time in public schools for a year “so that they can acquaint themselves with life in schools today.”

12  William F. Pinar These questions are the right questions to ask, but they seem to me to imply that only ignorance disables officials from appreciating the realities Johnson and Johnson report. Ignorance of the law is no excuse in courts of law. I suggest those education officials—state and federal, including Arne Duncan himself—who directed school reform be subpoenaed to answer questions concerning what they knew and when they knew it. If school reform represents a crime against children—as Johnson and Johnson make acutely clear it does—should not the World Court or the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child29 initiate if not a Nuremberg-style trial, then an investigation that results in if not fines and imprisonment, at least public shaming? Do not the children Johnson and Johnson describe— a relative few given the numbers of poor children suffering under school reform—deserve justice? Do children’s lives matter?

Notes  1 No Child Left Behind was passed with “overwhelming bipartisan support in 2001,” but, Rich (2015, November 20, p. A21) reported, but became “an albatross” that led to overly punitive standardized testing. The law expired in 2007 but Congress was unable to come to agreement concerning its replacement. Employing the same Orwellian language as Congress in 2001, the law’s successor is named the Every Student Succeeds Act (Kirp, 2015, December 10, p. A35).   2  See www.louisianabelieves.com/resources/library/practice-tests accessed 12.31.15   3  There is a tradition of such damning autobiographical accounts: see, for instance, Kozol.    4  Living in Louisiana 1985–2005, I became very aware of the cultural and political divide between North and South, including north and south Louisiana. Interstate 10 seemed the dividing line: north was Mississippi and Arkansas, south a catholic often cosmopolitan culture that was as much Caribbean as it was mainland America. Lynching, for instance, was more common north than south, including that of W. C. Williams, 19 years old, lynched in broad daylight on October 13, 1938, near Ruston, with hundreds of enthusiastic spectators (Fairclough, 1999, p. 29). Between 1889 and 1922, the north Louisiana parishes of Caddo, Ouachita, and Morehouse, “all overwhelmingly Protestant,” Fairclough (1999, p. 9) notes, witnessed more lynchings than any other countries in the nation. Over half the lynchings that occurred in Louisiana between 1900 and 1931 took place in seven parishes, all of them mainly Protestant, and all but one in the northern part of the state.   5  While Louisiana’s cultural distinctiveness is widely celebrated, its role as “projective screen” for the rest of the nation is less discussed, however obvious it is during Mardi Gras, when holiday revelers imagine Louisiana as a place where they can conduct themselves as they dare not anywhere else. From the outset, American have been projecting onto Louisiana opportunities of numerous kinds. In slaveholding Virginia, for instance, the Louisiana Purchase aroused interest within the legislature; in 1804 and 1805 both houses adopted resolutions removing all those of African descent (Jordan, 1974, p. 211). The latter resolution instructed Virginia's congressmen to “press for a portion of the Louisiana Territory for settlement of Negroes already free, freed in the future, and those who became dangerous to society” (1974, p. 212). The conjunction of those three categories—black, free, and dangerous—represent projections themselves, fantasies Virginians were evidently eager to relocate geographically.

The Sadism of School Reform  13   6  A recent study made by the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) documented that the “typical” student in sixty-six of the country’s large urban districts takes about eight standardized tests a year, two of which are required by the federal government. On average, students are required to take 112 standardized tests between prekindergarten and twelfth grade. The CGCS report found that more test time does not result in improved learning as measured by student performance on the federally backed math and reading exam known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (The New York Times, 2015, October 29, p. A30).   7  Duncan resigned in December, replaced (as Acting Secretary of Education) by John B. King, Jr., the deputy education secretary and a former commissioner of education in New York State (Harris and Rich, 2015, October 3, p. A11).   8  Duncan made these remarks on November 12, 2015, in Boston in a speech at Jeremiah E. Burke High School, a once failing school in one of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods (Zernike, 2015, November 13, p. A20). The recipient of both Race to the Top money and a so-called School Improvement Grant in 2011, the school test scores have improved. How that happened—some schools expel academically weak students just before testing—and what it means—what does testing have to do with learning?—were not addressed.   9  The lack of “background knowledge,” Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 72) point out, penalize students on standardized tests. Their students could pronounce the word harp, but they had no reason to know what the word means. Happily, the dictionary provided an illustration. There were other words with which their students had no occasion to know: Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 73) reference “recital” and “opera.” 10  Synopsis has played a primary role in curriculum studies, as it enacts not only that abridgement teachers are expected to make when teaching topics; the concept also invites teachers’ and students’ commentary on the topic, encouraging expressivity and emphasizing communication (see Pinar, 2006). 11  The former Confederate states cover-up the enforced continuation of economic inequality with concepts such as “pro-growth,” concepts that rationalize low taxes to high-income earners and tax waivers to encourage business. The total estimated costs of tax waivers to the Louisiana school systems of Louisiana, Berliner, and Biddle (1995, p. 84) reported 20 years ago, was 1 billion dollars; for the public schools in each of the sixty-four parishes of the state, this amounts to an average loss of tax revenues of about 1.5 million dollars per year. Berliner and Biddle (1995, pp. 84–85) remind that Louisiana was ranked last among the fifty states in its number of high school graduates, forty-ninth in its poverty rate, forty-seventh in its rate of adult illiteracy, and forty-sixth in its rate of teen pregnancy. It was rated fourth in the nation for hazardous waste generation, seventh in crime rate, ninth in rate of bridges that need repair, and forty-fifth for health coverage. 12  The use of this term—often associated with military personnel—is not inappropriate given the moral courage and psychological–physical stamina required to engage in what too often feels like a losing battle. “Each morning when we arrive at school,” Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 109) note, “we see the cars of the veteran teachers . . . [who] can work no harder than they now do.” 13  “Different upbringings,” Miller (2015, December 18, pp. A1, A3) reports—as if this were still news—“set children on different paths and can deepen socioeconomic divisions, especially because education is strongly linked to earnings.” She quotes Sean F. Reardon, a professor at Stanford University: “Early childhood experiences can be very consequential for children’s long-term social, emotion and cognitive development. And because those influences educational success and later earnings, early childhood experiences cast a lifelong shadow” (quoted in Miller, 2015, December 18, p. A3). “The real task facing America,” Berliner

14  William F. Pinar and Biddle (1996, p. 59) knew, “is to find ways to improve the education and lives of America’s poorest and most neglected citizens.” 14  Evidently there are school computers, but these remained unconnected to the internet until 5 weeks before the end of the school year (2006, p. 150). 15 Charter schools’ practice of expelling students who might impact test scores negatively was even acknowledged in the 2016 Presidential campaign. At a town meeting in South Carolina in November 2015, candidate Hillary Clinton complained about those charter schools that expelled children who proved difficult to educate (Layton, 2015, November 12, p. 7A). “Thankfully,” she said, the public schools “take everybody, and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education” (quoted in Layton, 2015, November 12, p. 7A). 16  Separate and unequal has a long history in the United States of course, including in Louisiana. In 1940, for instance, the amount allocated for each black child amounted to 24 percent of the amount allocated to whites; black teachers were paid, on average, 64 percent less than white teachers; the average school year in black schools was 37 days shorter than in white schools (Fairclough, 1999, p. 36). “The crowded conditions in these schools is appalling,” noted a 1939–40 survey of the Baton Rouge Negro community. “In many rooms there were more than sixty pupils, all under the direction of one teacher” (Fairclough, 1999, p. 36). 17 Schools have long been targeted to serve non-educational interests. Invoking Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning to the nation, James B. Macdonald (1995 [1971], p. 41) wrote: “Thus, the schools are directly serving the militaryindustrial complex in our social system. A careful examination of this allegation suggests that it is overly simple, yet how can many of our reporting, grading, and testing practices, our authoritarian relationships, and our prizing of docility, punctuality, and attendance be more readily explained?” The military element has faded from public view, but the current emphasis on technology is not only for profit-driven innovation—as Williamson’s (2013) analysis suggests—but also for defense, given the growing threats of international hacking and internetbased terrorism. 18  “Why take away the children’s summer,” Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 167) ask, “and make them sit through the test again when the results mean nothing?” 19 On occasion their dispassionate tone disappears, as when describing one inservice program as “nonsense” (2006, p. 20). 20  That is a dangerous phrase, as it implies that standardized testing actually reflects what students learned. Worse, it implies that the quality of teaching depends on the extent to which students learn what is taught. The throat-constricting grip of the objective-outcomes nexus remains. The concept of study loosens it (see Pinar, 2015, pp. 11–24). 21  Again, I dispute any association between testing and student “progress.” 22 In her study of the teaching of William E. Doll, Jr., Hongyu Wang (2016) reports that “Later when Doll was headmaster in Baltimore, he took away teachers’ manuals so that they could not rely on them in teaching, but had to build relationships with students who were interacting with subjects and the world around them.” That relationships matter is affirmed in the Johnson and Johnson account. 23  In Louisiana, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 106) report, there are teachers who would rather teach inside a prison than inside a public school. 24  Other euphemisms are used too, such as “professional growth folders” (2006, p. 54). 25 Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 219) report that only three of the ten thirdand fourth-grade teachers still are teaching at Redbud Elementary; the administrators also took jobs elsewhere. Now with tenure gone (see Dillon, 2008,

The Sadism of School Reform  15 November 13, p. 4), teaching’s political vulnerability only intensifies, evident in Louisiana’s insistence that science teachers be permitted to question evolution (McWhirter, 2012, April 6, p. A3). 26  Pinar (2009, p. 54). 27 “Perhaps this is because they are easy targets that lack the means of fighting back” (2006, p. 181), a likely explanation why other categories of scapegoating are also targeted. 28  As if in disbelief, Johnson and Johnson (2006, p. 102) wonder why politicians, state department officials, and high-level administrators fail to “listen” to teachers, pointing out that teachers are the ones working with children 5 days a week. It is teachers who could convey to them the superfluous stress created by tests: preparing for them, taking them, suffering the consequences of failing them. Teachers know that the “curriculum has been gutted of meaningful learning experiences such as art, oral expression, and other aspects of an education that can’t be measured with a paper-and-pencil test” (2006, p. 102). 29  I would add teachers’ professional associations and unions but they have these past 6 decades demonstrated little moral or political courage in combatting school reform. Even the “court” of education professors is nowhere to seek justice, as many are enthusiastic supporters of school reform.

Bibliography Berliner, D. C., and Biddle, B. J. (1995). The manufactured crisis: Myths, fraud, and the attack on America’s public schools. Cambridge, MA: Perseus. Dillon, S. (2008, November 13). A school chief takes on tenure, stirring a fight. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytmes.com/2008/11/13/education/ 13tenure.html?emc Fairclough, A. (1999). Race and democracy: The civil rights struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Harris, G., and Rich, M. (2015, October 2). Arne Duncan, education secretary, to step down in December. New York Times. Johnson, D. D., and Johnson, B. (2006). High stakes: Poverty, testing, and failure in American schools. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Jordan, W. D. (1974). The white man’s burden: Historical origins of racism in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Kirp, D. L. (2015, December 10). Left behind no longer. New York Times CLXV, No. 57, 076, A35. Layton, L. (2015, November 12). Clinton enters schools debate. The Bellingham Herald, A7. Macdonald, J. B. (1995 [1971]). The school as a double agent. In J. Bradley (Ed.), Theory as a prayerful act: The collected essays of James B. Macdonald (pp. 37–47). Macdonald, NY: Peter Lang. McWhirter, C. (2012, April 6). Tennessee is lab for national clash over science class. The Wall Street Journal CCLIX, No. 80, A3. Miller, C. C. (2015, December 18). Class divisions growing worse, from cradle on. New York Times CLXV, No. 57, 084, A1, A3. New York Times. (2015, October 29). Dialing back on school testing. New York Times CLXV, No. 57, 034, A30. Pinar, W. F. (2006). The synoptic text today and other essays: Curriculum development after the reconceptualization. New York: Peter Lang.

16  William F. Pinar Pinar, W. F. (2009). The worldliness of a cosmopolitan education: Passionate lives in public service. New York: Routledge. Pinar, W. F. (2015). Educational experience as lived: Knowledge, history, alterity: The selected works of William F. Pinar. New York: Routledge. Rich, M. (2015, November 20). Negotiators reach agreement to revise No Child Left Behind. New York Times CLXV, No. 57, 056, A21. Taylor, K. (2015, November 26). Cuomo is said to shift view on tests’ role in evaluations. New York Times CLXV, No. 57, 062, A29–30. Wang, H. (2016). From the parade child to the king of Chaos: The complex journey of William Doll, teacher education. New York: Peter Lang. Williamson, B. (2013). The future of the curriculum: School knowledge in the digital age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Zernike, K. (2015, November 13). Departing education secretary extols improvement in schools. New York Times CLXV, No. 57, 049, A20.

2 Death by Numbers The Loss of Humanity in the Age of Audit1 Peter M. Taubman

Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another. They know this and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety. —Sigmund Freud (1930, 145)

It would be a mistake to think this culture [of neoliberalism] creates dead zones only in the ocean. It creates dead zone in our hearts and minds. —Tim Jensen (2014)

When one is dead, one fears aliveness. —Michael Eigen (1996, 8)

Introduction Approximately one-third of the way into his controversial essay, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” in which Freud introduces us to the death drive, he states “What follows is speculation, often far-fetched speculation.” (1920, 24). This essay is also speculative, perhaps even far-fetched, and in it I, too, shall be exploring the concept of the death drive, a concept that has troubled psychoanalysis since Freud first proposed it. To offer an orientation or preview of this essay, let me say that I shall be speculating about this concept of the death drive in terms of its relationship to neoliberal education, under whose reign we are witnessing the erasure of history, the withering of feelings, and the dismissal of subjectivity. I’ll be exploring how certain aspects of corporate driven reform, for example its language of audit and its quantification of the life world, diminish our humanity, and both channel and are fueled by the death drive.2 I’ll conclude with some thoughts about Eros.

18  Peter M. Taubman

4 A.M. Four a.m. can be a devastating hour; “the dark night of the soul,” F. Scott Fitzgerald called it. It’s when I wake and think about death and growing old, and worry my life is a fraud or meaningless. For the first time in years I feel anxious that whatever I offer in the classroom no longer has relevance to the new demands placed on teachers and schools. I despair at the state of education. I know I’m not alone in these feelings. Many of my colleagues in departments of education at the university or who are teaching in K–12 schools in the United States share my malaise. They tend to attribute their unease to the relentless surveillance they experience at work. Some resent being pushed to become entrepreneurs or being measured by the number of citations their articles generate. Some rightly fear that the spread of online education reduces the art of teaching to telemarketing. Others bemoan the loss of their autonomy because they are compelled to prepare students for tests or assessments, such as edTPA, which outsources the evaluation of student teachers and the determination of their certification to employees hired by Pearson, Inc. The auditees whom Michael Power years ago described as “depressed, exhausted and cynical,” and who “despair that they are not trusted as experts” (199–200), and whom Rosalind Gill described in 2009 as stressed out from the intensification and extensification of work, are today even more depressed and anxious. I have wondered at times if we are not simply suffering from what Benjamin called Left-wing Melancholy. He used the term to describe those who were attached more to a particular political analysis or ideal—even to the failure of that ideal—than to seizing possibilities for radical change in the present. I have written elsewhere about the role melancholia has played in teachers’ embrace of education reforms,3 as well as its political potential,4 but I don’t think melancholia captures the state I’m sketching, although it certainly has something to do with it. Perhaps it is hyperbolic to say that we teachers, vulnerable, rendered expendable, and seemingly stripped of political significance, are increasingly rendered in terms of what Giorgio Agamben defined as bare life, but there is something of that in what I’m trying to get at. My sense is that we are, with greater or lesser degrees of awareness, responding not only to the suffocating straightjackets of neoliberal education reforms, but also to the loss of the power to symbolize beyond numbers and scientism. Our lives seem increasingly devoid of the very thing without which William Carlos Williams said we’d die—poetry. Clichés about learning environments, grit, and diversity freeze our ability to think, and allow little room to explore dimensions of experience outside standards, rubrics, and numbers. I also think our malaise results from a profound alienation of Eros. Because the demand for accountability presumes all human connections are untrustworthy, human relationships—already fragile—grow more suspect

Death by Numbers  19 and tenuous. And because that demand assumes that for experience to be recognized or to matter, it must be rendered literally countable—remember if it can’t be measured it doesn’t exist—subjectivity, that is, our inner life, appears superfluous and meaningless. All that counts, so to speak, is performance. It seems that the depression, anxiety, and rage we are experiencing may well result from what appears to be an increasing drive to turn ourselves and others into numbers, even into machines, that is into inert matter. Or, to put it differently, we are driving ourselves and others to death.

The Death Drive Freud’s speculations about a death drive began with his consternation over the pleasure principle, which he tended to define in terms of the release of built-up tension or excitation and the avoidance of unpleasure. If, as he seemed to argue in most of his early work, we pursue pleasure—even our dreams, for example, fulfill a disguised wish—how then, he asked, can we account for our own sabotaging of such pleasure? Why do we return to traumatic events in our dreams? Why do we sustain destructive patterns, that is, repeat behaviors or experiences that bring us pain? Why do we resist perspectives that might interrupt these dangerous or damaging repetitive patterns? And what, he struggled to understand, could account for the atrocities humans inflicted on one another? These questions prompted Freud’s speculations in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” There he wrote that based upon his observations of behavior in the transference and upon the life-histories of men and women, he was forced to conclude that “there really does exist in the mind a compulsion to repeat [painful experiences] which overrides the pleasure principle” (22). This compulsion to repeat, he wrote, “gives the appearance of some daemonic force at work” (35). Freud labeled this “daemonic force” the “death drive,” although he would also refer to it variously as a “destructive drive,” “death instinct,” and “aggressive instinct” and theorize it as having different components. However described, Freud speculated that this “daemonic force” emerges in, is revealed by, and offers an explanation for our compulsion to repeat painful experiences. It is also, as Freud suggested in his later writings, responsible for the destructive forces that threaten our civilization. Given our collective non-response to the threat of species extinction and the horrifying spread of global violence, it would certainly seem there exists such a force, but I am not going to focus on global warming or global violence, although both also keep me awake at 4 A.M. and have in part led to my speculations today. Nor am I going to offer another close reading of Freud’s complicated, at times contradictory, formulation of the death drive. I recommend Richard Boothby’s Death and Desire, a Lacanian reading of the death drive, as well Stephen Frosh’s Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly Transmissions, Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive and Leo Bersani’s

20  Peter M. Taubman The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art for particularly astute readings of Freud’s death drive and Lacan’s reformulation of it. All these writers grapple with some of the more perplexing questions inherent in Freud’s ideas about the death drive. I want, rather, to focus on three claims Freud makes in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” and that he elaborates in later work. These are the claim that the death drive compels us to return to an inanimate or inert state (38), the claim that the death drive is “historically determined” (37), and the claim that Eros opposes the death drive and is “the preserver of life” (52). I want to explore the first two claims together, in that I’ll consider how particular corporate-driven education reforms determine or condition, provoke and shape the death drive.

First and Second Claims: The Death Drive Compels Us to Return to an Inanimate State and It Is Historically Determined Freud’s initial claim was that the death drive compels us to return to an inanimate or inert state (38). What if we were to read the death drive not in the literal sense but rather in the figurative sense, as a drive to put an end to memory, and history and therefore to feelings? What if the death drive kills that which, in fact, makes us human? What if we have within us as individuals or groups a drive that, provoked and shaped by particular constellations of social and historical forces or by particular conditions, impels us to create psychic dead zones, to render ourselves and others less than human? As Michael Eigen said in one of the opening quotes, “When one is dead, one fears being alive.” One could, of course, analyze such a drive in terms of the savagery of market capitalism itself, which works to convert the life world into profit, commodities, and human capital. Certainly, as Wendy Brown has written, “neoliberal rationality configures all aspects of existence in economic terms” (17). I’m more curious, however, to pursue what if anything this proposed death drive might offer to our understanding of the way neoliberal education de-humanizes us, beyond the conversion of education into just another market. After all, cultures of accountability and audit do not only import vocabularies from the worlds of business and finance; they are heavily dependent on the discourses of the learning sciences. And while corporate-driven reforms continue to eat up public education, what Milton Friedman called “the last island of socialism in a free market sea” (154), the malaise I’ve referred to is not simply a response to privatization. I want to explore how neoliberal education reforms provide conditions beyond economic ones that provoke and shape a drive to psychic deadness. Let me speculate then about these psychic dead zones beginning with what appears to be the death of memory and history.

Death by Numbers  21 The Death of History If repetition results from not remembering or is a form of remembering without working through, if it is a way, as Adam Phillips (2000) suggests of “making memory impossible,” of “determinedly wishing not to know,” (73) or creating “states of mind in which there is nothing left to remember” (37), then can we not read the death drive in terms of a force that destroys history and memory? Might not the compulsion to repeat, in which Freud initially located the death drive, be seen in the repetition compulsion of education, returning again and again to the same purported panaceas as a way to avoid the trauma of its inherent impossibility? “To be locked in the past,” James Baldwin wrote, “means that one has no past, since one can never assess it, or use it, and if one cannot use the past, one has no present” (383). One, is, Baldwin warns, stuck in a perpetual youth, a corrupt innocence. Can we not see such corrupt innocence in education reform’s insistence on its newness, its certainty, and its “nowness”? Anyone who opposes education reform is cast as living in a dead past. Can we not see this blind innocence in the failure of some countries and individuals to work through their histories and dreams of and dependence on, for example, white supremacy or misogyny? Certainly in the United States, the inability to face the trauma of race and the resistance to looking at the role of white supremacy in the formation of identities, fortunes, and, education policies create psychic dead zones and reveal the workings of a death drive. If we, in the U.S., fail, as Stephen Dillon writes, “to see the spirit of slavery in the spectacles of violence and death, or recognize it in the operations that go by the names of freedom, humanity, and democracy,” (115) or to see it in the racial profiling occurring when predominantly black schools are shut down, or in the use of testing to brand black and brown bodies, then the past does more than repeat; it deadens us and others. As TaNehisi Coates, writes, the “tenacious dream of white, straight, male exceptionalism that thrives on generalization, limiting questions, and privileging immediate answers,” (50) numbs memory and erases history. In the United States, the trauma of the impossibility of education is coupled then with the trauma of race in shaping education policy. Black students, for example, disappear into categories that lack any depth, yet at the very moment they disappear the discourse of education reform seems to make them most visible. The more reformers talk about saving children of color, the more invisible race becomes. The actual real human beings who come together in classrooms everyday disappear, as their histories of racial oppression and resistance, which their lives, in part, reflect, are ignored. So, for example, when ex- U.S. Secretary of Education Duncan (2009) touted education reform as the civil rights issue of our day, not mass incarceration, not the impoverishment of millions of African Americans, not classinflected police violence, not institutional racism, not the failure to institute

22  Peter M. Taubman reparations, and certainly not segregation, the actual histories of black and brown students disappeared. This drive to forget, to not remember, is evident, too, in the contention by education reformers in the United States that the history of education is irrelevant to becoming a teacher and in the denigration of foundation courses in teacher education. If history is offered, it is as what Horkheimer and Adorno referred to as a “fixed order of time,” not something living but transformed into the “material to be used for the ideology of progress” (25–26). When education reformers offer medicine, engineering, and architecture as analogies for teaching, or when they base their views of teaching in the learning sciences, they effectively remove teaching from the world of history. When ex-Secretary of Education Duncan (2012) warned, “If you are not moving forward, you are moving backwards,” he may well have been running from a past that would put into question the entire reform movement. There is only relentless progress in the present conceived as an already-here-and-now future, progress which repeats what it has failed to look at. The Death of Feelings But if memory and history disappear, what happens to feelings? Let us follow Brian Massumi (2002) and take feelings to be both personal and biographical. They are, he writes, body-based sensations, checked against remembered experiences that emerge in language. What will happen to feelings if memory and history vanish and the language in which feelings take form diminishes? Perhaps we can find a clue in a statement made by Sir Michael Barber’s friend, David Coleman, who now heads the largest testing service in the United States and is the architect of the Common Core. When asked about students’ making self-to-text connections, Coleman (2011) exclaimed, “People don’t give a shit about what you feel!” If the language of education reform increasingly constricts the symbolic— I imagine many of us have had the experience of feeling suffocated or flattened by that language at meetings—and if it makes relationships suspect—I imagine, too, we’ve all felt interpersonal exchanges rushed, diminished, or mistrusted under the glare of audit—might we not also venture that such language diminishes the world of feelings? The vocabularies that now press in on us and shape our consciousness offer minimal ways to express the affect that surges and flows through and around us. If, as some Lacanians have said, speech dries up or falls empty in the face of the one supposed to know—and the language of reform always assumes it knows—then we increasingly fall silent before it. If, as Bollas (1992) suggested, we descend into cliché in the face of trauma—and the traumas of race and the impossibility of education are ignored in the language of reform—then do we not wind up speaking in the clichés offered us by education reform?

Death by Numbers  23 Certainly we know that education reform culls its language from the worlds of finance and business, which reduce all behavior to the bottom line, from the learning sciences, which renders knowledge and wisdom as information and insists on predictability and replicability, from the military, with its focus on command and control, and from the world of sports, which knows only winners and losers. These worlds offer no language for feelings, other than various inspirational injunctions, such as “Be happy!”, “Stay positive!”, “Enjoy!”, and “Go for it!” or various substitutes such as “executive functioning,” the “limbic system,” or “information-processing mechanisms.” The language of these worlds evacuates our subjectivity, except in so far as it demands we endlessly monitor, control, and improve ourselves and others. This demand for constant improvement, a kind of super-ego of education reform, lacerates us with the harsh and narrow language of failure, substituting, as Adam Phillips (2015) suggests, imperious judgement for conversation and submitting our lives to one often cruel, “correct” interpretation (100). While Freud would locate the death drive in the super ego, I’m more interested in the language we use to police ourselves: “I’m stupid or lazy,” “I’m a failure,” “I’m a terrible teacher, or son or daughter or parent,”—the list is endless but reveals the paltriness and pettiness of the language. There is no dialogue, no poetry, no interpretive flexibility. There is only the one right answer, and we are reduced to an object whipped and rendered inert, left with only depression or, turned outward, rage, and a lingering anxiety, affect provoked by the constrictions of deadened identities and numbed or numbered selves.5 Can we not see the work of the death drive in the way teachers and students are articulated as bundles of skills, lists of rules and procedures, and scripts written, designed, and packaged somewhere else. It’s no wonder that education reformers talk so much of “building” a better teacher. Through various vocabularies and practices of quantification, we are rendered and render ourselves as machines: efficient, predictable, and easily programmed, machines that elicit and process numerical data. To take one example, the vocabulary of “best practices,” which is so widespread in the United States, suggests a value-free technical knowledge, unaffected by context or human subjectivity, as opposed to knowledge that is contentious, value laden, and contingent. It transforms social critique into self-critique, because it assumes that, given so-called best practices, student failure can only mean the teacher has failed to use them properly, and therefore must repeat them until they are performed exactly, mechanically. The language of best practices reduces relationship to manipulation and replaces feelings with observable behaviors. The impoverishment of language results not only from the barrage of terms culled from the worlds of business, the learning sciences, the military, and sports, but also from education reform’s fascination with and promotion of technology, what Adorno called “the fetishizing of technology.” Sherry Turkle, a professor at M.I.T., has perhaps written most persuasively

24  Peter M. Taubman about the role of technology in the transformation of our feeling life. She is particularly worried about the decline in empathy among young people and the blurring of boundaries between machines and humans, as robots come to be programmed to give the appearance of feeling. “We are” she suggests, “increasingly connected to each other but oddly more alone” (19). We also, she writes, have more and more information about the past available to us but seem to be swept along at increasing speed in an ahistorical present. Without memory or history, whither feelings? And if feelings disappear or emerge only in terms of spatial descriptions— I feel high, low, flat, as Fredric Jameson so many years ago claimed was happening in our postmodern state—what happens to thought? Deprived of feeling does not thought, itself, dry up? Bound by rules of statistical evidence, empirical verifiability, experimental design, and linear sequential logic, rendered always in terms of cognitive operations or in terms of Bloom’s taxonomy, thinking hardens. The rigor so insisted on by education reformers becomes rigor mortis. It’s no wonder that the Common Core asks teachers to focus on non-fiction rather than fiction—the former offers a priori answers, while the latter, as Deborah Britzman has so beautifully stated, offers affective knowledge whose meaning we cannot know in advance. As Milan Kundera said, “The totalitarian world is a world of answers,” (quoted in Januus, 231) and that is certainly the world of education today. It’s not surprising that students are increasingly asked to repeat information in unison rather than make meaning of it or write rubricized essays that can be graded by Scantrons. If repetition compulsion signals the presence of the death drive, then perhaps we can say that such repetition is indeed in the service of an ultimately deadening psychic stasis, of numbing feelings. Even the addict who would seem to be seeking the rush of affect and who is certainly caught in a repetition compulsion is trying hard not to feel. It’s why recovery can be so hard—too many feelings. Is it possible then that all the various defenses we erect serve to defend against feelings, to achieve psychic numbness? Are they perhaps all really minions of the death drive? Can we read the death drive in Adorno’s manipulative character, who is “distinguished by a rage for organization and a certain lack of emotion and one who is obsessed with doing things as well as becoming a thing,” (27) or Christopher Bollas’ (1987) normotic, who “fails to symbolize in language his subjective states of mind” and is “inclined to reflect on the thingness of objects, on their material reality, or on ‘data’ that relates to material phenomena” (136)? Perhaps what is really beyond the pleasure principle is in fact this drive for numbness, for forgetting, for psychic deadness. This death drive, as I’m speculating it might be interpreted, is perhaps be best captured by ex-Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan’s (2010a,b) comment that the best thing that ever happened to New Orleans schools was Hurricane Katrina, a comment recently echoed by a Chicago Tribune reporter who said Chicago could use a Hurricane Katrina so the schools

Death by Numbers  25 could be improved. While it’s easy to read in these comments the workings of a death drive understood as pure destructive energy, I’m raising the possibility that this force within us strives not to destroy but to deaden memory, history, and feelings. Could anyone who knew the history of New Orleans or Chicago and their African American communities have made such a comment? Such astonishing views are justified by an appeal to a purported rise in test scores in New Orleans. Numbers on tests justify statistics on the numbers of lives lost, a number which erases the lives of all those dead and displaced. If the death drive is a drive to psychically numb or number ourselves and neoliberalism provides conditions under which this drive grows in intensity or finds free rein, what hope is there? This Freud (1930) felt was the “fateful question” (145). He offered as a response that hope lay in “the other of the two ‘Heavenly Powers,’ eternal Eros” (145). Perhaps our work then is to engage in a project of remembering and feeling or at least creating the conditions such that these are possible. This brings me to Freud’s third claim that Eros is the preserver of life.

Third Claim: Eros For Freud Eros “endeavors to combine what exists into ever greater unities” (1937, 246), and as he wrote to Einstein, it “encourages the growth of emotional ties” (1933b, 212). While Freud theorized that the death drive and Eros were at times fused or alloyed and at other times separate, he offered no answers about the conditions under which “such combinations grew looser or broke up.” He did maintain that Eros consisted of or was synonymous with libido or as he put it, sexual instincts “understood in the widest (1933a, 103) sense” (New Introductory Lectures 103). This claim has led some critics, Leo Bersani for one, to accuse Freud of domesticating sexuality by broadening its scope. I am sympathetic to that charge. I too, think there is a shattering otherness in sexuality, but, just as race is both visible and invisible today, I think sexuality is also both visible—every conceivable sexual act is one swipe away on your smartphone—and invisible—any discussion of feelings and idiosyncratic experiences of sex are verboten. What I think is shattering today, is not sex, as much as the possibility of love, and thus I want to offer an alternative reading of Eros. I want to suggest that Eros, rather than being a force for unification, can be associated with “destabilizing intensities” (Bersani, 63). My suggestion that Eros destabilizes6 would seem to fly in the face of Freud’s contention repeated in several of his works that Eros is a unifying force (1920, 52). I want to raise the possibility that Eros destabilizes exactly what the death drive mummifies. I want to suggest that it is Eros that can melt or water or revive deadened psyches, recover history and memory, revive feelings. In other words, perhaps Eros can break up psychic dead zones, much in the way a book for Kafka “breaks the frozen sea within us.” I want to speculate

26  Peter M. Taubman that the description Lacan offers of the death drive: “the urge to be something other, to burst the boundaries of its being, which an entity experiences as limiting and frustrating—to destroy its actual state in becoming something better” (79), actually describes Eros. What are exploded are psychic dead zones, mummified thought, repetition compulsions that have become who we are or that have created dead zones in our souls. And what explodes these we might think of as Eros or even love. At a conference a year ago in New York, which brought together close to 500 teachers, parents, and teacher educators as well as organizers from United Opt Out and Black Lives Matter, I facilitated one session, and in the afternoon attended another. In the two sessions, both of which were emotionally intense and attended largely by parents, teachers, and organizers of color, one word kept surfacing: “Love.” I was immediately on guard. Was this a defense against the aggressive feelings in the rooms? When a few people mentioned it in terms of liberation theology and spirituality, I suspected hidden religious agendas—particularly Christian ones. Having been immersed in writing this essay, I was much more inclined to dwell on the transferential nature of love, to try to fathom the riptides and origins of desire, and to trace the multiplicities of sexualities and how aggressiveness, as Freud (1930) wrote, “forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people” (113). What might love have to do with reviving dead psyches, or responding to the murder of so many young black people at the hands of the police, or resisting policies that kill schools and turn students and teachers into numbers? What would it mean to rethink Eros as a force to waken the dead? I am going to speculate that what those parents and teachers who were talking about love for their children and themselves were gesturing toward without actually saying it was the love for a being that included personality but exceeded it, a being that given the right circumstances was in the process of becoming more than itself. Let me try to explain. In Intimacies, written with Adam Phillips, Leo Bersani asks whether “the power of evil, that is the death drive, might be defeated . . . by the power of love” (76). He realizes, as he says, “that such a question ominously echoes the hypocritical cant [sic] of those who never tire of telling us that love can save the world” (76). Nevertheless, Bersani goes on to answer it in the affirmative. He suggests that we might find a way to use our own narcissistic self-love to embrace others in what he refers to as their “virtual being,” “their universal singularity” (86). He writes If we were able to relate to others according to this model of impersonal narcissism, what is different about others . . . could be thought of as merely the envelope of the more profound . . . part of themselves which is our sameness. (86)

Death by Numbers  27 The only “guide to the virtual being that continuously becomes” is language through which “that virtual being becomes more like itself” (87). I take this universal singularity to be a kind of universality that in fact psychoanalysis points toward. As James Penney writes in After Queer Theory, psychoanalysis is grounded in the idea that “all subjects have in common the fact that they have mistakenly taken themselves to correspond with the markers of social identity with which they have chosen to affiliate” (186). Love, according to Bersani, is love of a kind of Platonic ideal within each of us, one that is, however, always in movement and comes into being under varied and particular circumstances. There is something here suggestive of Badiou’s notion of the subject and his comment that communism is the concern for what we have in common and also of Eric Santner’s thought that the ethics of love requires us to recognize that each of us has an unconscious. Such a view also brings to mind a love that as Santner writes, “is no longer tied to a representation,” (133) a form of love that interpellates us in something beyond ideological interpellation. I am reminded, too, of James Baldwin’s statement, “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” (375) I want to extend Bersani’s speculation, however, and even Baldwin’s claim. I want to suggest that it is not simply about finding in others our own becoming self that exceeds or is beyond our always provisional identities and personalities, nor is it a matter of tenderly allowing the face beneath the mask to emerge. I think love also entails embracing or perhaps just accepting the very murkiness and provisionality of our and others’ identities, personalities, quirks, tastes, and tics and our and others’ masks. Such love, which we perhaps can direct toward both ourselves and others, accepts as a motto Becket’s credo in Worstword Ho! “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” In other words such love for ourselves may for a brief moment or perhaps longer keep us from whipping ourselves with the impoverished vocabulary of a voracious and cruel super-ego, our internal police state, Phillips (2015) calls it, a state, like the neoliberal state, that keeps us from knowing ourselves or others. Such a love, however vulnerable, and faltering may also allow us to explore our own histories and those of others. And it may keep us from numbering or numbing ourselves and others. I wonder though, what language and conditions make it possible for such love to melt or explode those numbed or dead psychic spaces, to enable us to recover histories and revive feelings, to embrace life wherever it is found. Under what conditions does Eros do its work? I suspect the conditions have to do with providing opportunities for creativity, play, imaginative work, celebration, intellectual curiosity, and even particular forms of political organizing and spiritual practice, but I’m not sure. The question of how we bring Eros or love back into education and our treatment of ourselves and one another is rarely raised today? It seems to me that, to paraphrase James Baldwin, our lives and the lives of our species “to an extent literally

28  Peter M. Taubman unimaginable, depend on how vividly this question lives in our minds” (384) and on how willing we are to explore it.

Notes   1  Much of the content in this chapter was published previously in Peter Taubman, “Death by Numbers: A Response to Backer, Sarigianides, and Stillwaggon,” Educational Theory 67, no. 1 (2017): 95–104.   2  Several scholars have taken up the way that neoliberalism affects the psyche, produces particular structures of feeling, and creates a specific subjectivity. For example, Jodi Dean had described how neoliberalism “establishes the possibilities through which we narrate our relation to enjoyment.” She writes that, “Communicative capitalism relies on networks that generate and amplify enjoyment. People enjoy the circulation of affect that presents itself as contemporary communication” (21), and she suggests our relationship to social media offers us a jouissance that results from the drive to find or feel something that never achieves its end but becomes itself the aim. Barbara Erenreich has analyzed how neoliberalism demands cheerfulness because “the key to getting a job in today’s corporate world is . . . having a positive attitude.” (34) Those theorists of affect such as Lisa Duggan, Lauren Berlant, and Ann Cvetkovich who are associated with the Feel Tank Project of Chicago and Pathogeographies, analyze as they put it, “the emotional investments, temperatures, traumas, pleasures, and ephemeral experiences circulating throughout the political and cultural landscape.” Queer theorists such as Eve Sedgewick, Sara Ahmed, and Wayne Koestenbaum, recuperate abjected feeling states, such as shame, failure, guilt, sadness, humiliation, and hopelessness that they view as both intensified and pathologized under neoliberalism. Several writers, such as Judith Butler, have suggested that the demands of neoliberalism create and intensify economic and emotional vulnerability, that is, precarity, which leads to an explosion in anxiety. Others trying to make sense of why the 99 percent keep supporting policies favoring the 1percent, have proposed that at the unconscious level, the 99 percent shares in the fantasy that there are only winners and losers and that, if they try hard enough, they can be a winner, and if they are not, they have no one to blame but themselves. And finally, although I am sure there are many I am leaving out, are those theorists such as Slavoj Žižek and Todd McGowan who suggest the neoliberal subject is a “pathological narcissist,” and focus their analysis on the injunction uttered by the superego of neoliberal capitalism to Enjoy!  3 See Taubman, Teaching by Numbers  4 See “Making Nothing Happen” in Lynn Yates and Madeleune Grumet (eds.) Curriculum in Today’s World: Configuring Knowledge, Identities, Work and Politics. New York: Routledge, 2011.   5  This death drive I am sketching does not only compel individuals and groups to forget. It also works to armor the psyche. In destroying memory and history, in anesthetizing feelings, do we also not turn ourselves into highly bounded, predictable because repetitive, objects that we mistake for who we are? I am reminded of Lacan’s statement that “the madman who takes himself for a king is no less mad than the king who takes himself for one.” We tell ourselves we are a particular person or kind of person or teacher and then punish or congratulate ourselves for being that way. We hold onto identities and selves that not only limit our vision but freeze us, objectify us. I’m suggesting that the very fixing of identity or self through repetition reveals the work of the death drive and brings into existence the object of our aggression, resulting in depression or rage.

Death by Numbers  29 While Freud speculated that the death-drive-turned-inwards made masochists of us all, I am suggesting that perhaps the death drive is not in itself a form of masochism, but rather renders us as an object upon which we lay the lash of our inner judge. Only when one is an object can one focus destructive energy toward that object. The self we flagellate is an objectified one, as is the ideal self we compare ourselves to. The super-ego—that stuck record that endlessly reiterates its scathing criticism in its impoverished vocabulary—first turns us into an object by telling us who we are before it unleashes its scorn on us. Such a mummification of the self, or such a deadening of the psyche can provoke shame—we discover we are not the fixed recognizable person we thought we were or wanted to be—or guilt, the dismay that the self we take ourselves for doesn’t measure up to that ego ideal, an ideal which becomes a carapace when it emerges as an object for our own judgement. Caught up by the death drive, we experience the anger directed inwards as depression or outward as rage. We ferociously resist efforts to interrupt the repetition compulsion, our drive to become inert, psychically dead. We struggle against the danger of analysis, questioning, or taking in anything that will disturb our fixed selves or egos. We want to preserve our unfeeling state, and our historical amnesia. While the death drive led Freud to suggest sadism was primary masochism projected outward, perhaps we might say that the impulse to turn ourselves into objects, to become inanimate, to be psychically dead, is also projected outwards in the form of objectifying or commodifying others, or simply treating them as targets for violence or as garbage. In other words before an aggressive or destructive impulse is realized or perhaps co-terminus with it, must there not be the deadening of oneself or the other? Do not all hate crimes begin with the denigrating stereotypes of those later slaughtered? Perhaps, and here, we can think of Lacan’s early formulation of the death drive as emerging in the mirror stage, aggression and the impulse to destruction emerge after the death drive has done its work of turning ourselves or others into objects, that is into corpses before physical death arrives.  6 Certainly jouissance, as Lacan indicated accompanies such a drive, but it is a drive that makes us inert, or renders us masochists and sadists. And it is not an instinct. It is a drive that is socially made out of pulsations, intensities that are blocked and channeled. I want to argue that it is neoliberalism that today structures that drive as a way of life that turns the world into a war zone and all of us into refugees or combatants.

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30  Peter M. Taubman Bersani, L. (1986). The Freudian body: Psychoanalysis and art. New York: Columbia University Press. Bersani, L., and Phillips, A. (2008). Intimacies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bollas, C. (1987). The shadow of the object: Psychoanalysis of the unthought known. New York: Columbia University Press. Bollas, C. (1992). Being a character: Psychoanalysis and self experience. New York: Hill and Wang. Boothby, R. (1991). Death and desire: Psychoanalytic theory in Lacan’s return to the Freud. New York: Routledge. Britzman, D. (2006). Novel education: Psychoanalytic studies of learning and not learning. New York: Peter Lang Press. Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. New York: Zone Books. Butler. J. (2004). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. New York: Verso Press. Coates, T. N. (2015). Between the world and me. New York: Speigel and Grau. Coleman, D. (2011). Bringing the common core to life. Retrieved from https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=Pu6lin88YXU. Cvetkovitch, A. (2012). Depression: A public feeling. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Dean, J. (2010). Blog-theory: Feedback and capture in the currents of drive. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Dillon, S. (2012). Possessed by death: The neoliberal-carceral state, black feminism, and the afterlife of slavery. Radical History Review, 2012(112): 113–125. Duggan, L (2003). The twilight of equality: Neoliberalism, cultural politics and the attack on democracy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Duncan, A. (2009, October 22). Teacher preparation: Reforming the uncertain profession. Remarks at Teachers College Columbia University. Retrieved from www. ed.gov/news/speeches/2009/10/1022009.html. Duncan, A. (2010a). “Was hurricane Katrina ‘the best thing that ever happened’?” On Washington Watch with Roland Martin. Available: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wtLB8MNRimQ. Duncan, A. (2010b). Washington watch with Roland Martin, quoted in the Washington Post. Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2010/01/29/AR2010012903259.html. Duncan, A. (2012). Moving forward, staying focused. Remarks delivered to the National Press Club. Retrieved from www.ed.gov/news/speeches/moving-forwardstaying-focused. Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Bright-sided: How positive thinking is undermining America. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books. Eigen, M. (1996). Psychic deadness. New York: Jason Aronson. Fitzgerald, F. S. (1945). The Crack-Up. New York, NY: New Directions Press. Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE 18, 3–64. Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and its discontents. SE 21, 64–157. Freud, S. (1933a [1932]). New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. SE 22, 5–182. Freud, S. (1933b [1932]). Why war? (Einstein and Freud). SE 22, 199–215. Freud, S. (1937). Analysis terminable and interminable. SE 23, 216–253. Freud, S. (1940 [1938]). An outline of psycho-analysis. SE 23, 144–207. Friedman, M. (1980). Free to choose: A personal statement. New York, NY: Janovich.

Death by Numbers  31 Frosch, S. (2013). Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and ghostly transmissions. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Gill, R. (2009). Breaking the silence: The hidden injuries of neo-liberal academia. In R. Flood and R. Gill (Eds.), Secrecy and silence in the research process: Feminist reflections (pp. 228–244). London: Routledge. Horkheimer, M., and Adorno, T. (2002). The dialectics of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism or the cultural logic of late capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Januus, M. (1996). “Kundera, Lacan: Drive, desire and oneiric narration.” In W. Appollon and R. Feldstein (Eds.), Lacan, politics, aesthetics. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Jensen, T. (2014). The emotional terrain of neoliberalism. The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Retrieved from www.joaap.org/issue8/jensen.htm Koestenbaum, W. (2011). Humiliation. New York, NY: Picador Press. Kundera, M. (1986). The art of the novel. New York: Grove Press. Lacan, J. (1988). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The ego in Freud’s theory and the technique of psychoanalysis 1954–1955. Jacques Alain-Miller (Ed.). Trans. Sylvanna Tomaselli. New York, NY: Norton Press. Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McGowan, T. (2016). Capitalism and desire: The psychic cost of free markets. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. McQueary, K. (2015). “Chicago, New Orleans, and rebirth.” Chicago Tribune, August 13. Penney, J. (2014). After queer theory: The limits of sexual politics. New York: Pluto Press. Phillips, A. (2000). Darwin’s worms: On life stories and death stories. New York: Perseus Books. Phillips, A. (2015). Unforbidden pleasures. New York, NY: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. Power, M. (2003). Evaluating the audit explosion. Law and Policy, 25(3): 185–202. Santner, E. (2005). Miracles happen. In S. Zizek, E. Santner, and K. Reinhard (Eds.), The neighbor: Three inquiries in political theory (pp. 76–133). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sedgewick, E. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Taubman, P. (2009). Teaching by numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability. New York: Routledge. Taubman, P. (2010). Disavowed knowledge: Psychoanalysis, education and teaching. New York: Routledge. Taubman, P. (2011). Making nothing happen. In L. Yates and M. Grumet (Eds.), Curriculum in today’s world: Configuring knowledge, identities, work and politics (pp. 155–173). New York: Routledge. Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic Books. Williams, W.C. (1985). Selected poems. New York, NY: New Directions Press. Zizek, S. (2000). “Melancholy and the act.” Critical Inquiry, 26. 4: 657–681.

3 Defending Teacher Education From edTPA . . . and Itself Todd Alan Price

It is striking how current education policy researchers seem to indicate that teacher education is changing, while “expert” mainstream media opinion makers indicate that not much is happening, arguing “teacher education needs to be more rigorous” (How to make a good teacher, 2016). But little remains understood by the public about what exactly are the genuine changes in teacher education, and how these changes—indeed occurring— are brought about largely due to increasing, external pressure. Following on the heels of federal government hearings a decade past,1 a steady stream of control, surveillance, and monitoring measures have bubbled up. This stream has in 2016 become a powerful current. Responses take the form of accommodation, resistance, and—rarely—critical analysis. Key policy actors over time have taken great relish in publicly flogging first the teachers and then teacher education, declaring the system unaccountable and in need of repair. The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) glibly argues that teachers and teacher education prior to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) were “not taking care of business” (Walsh, 2006). Their advocates in the Obama administration saw increased federal oversight as a needed remedy and therefore ratcheted up—via the Department of Education (ED)—regulations for Teacher Preparation Programs. Still others push for changes in educational communications technology (ECT) for delivering course content. Often these technologists become edupreneurs and cite as evidence of their reform efforts the waterfalls of creative and innovative disruption2 of traditional education. Critical scholars, however, remain a singularly skeptical group, noting that all too frequently the federal government overreaches—as do the hightech corporations who operate in the background behind the latest educational technology fads. Too often the feds make promises they can’t keep, and the fads placed by the for-profit organizations fail to live up to their promise. Furthermore, the same process that has steered billions of dollars to high-tech companies and edupreneurs can also be directed toward clamping down on teaching and learning, thus increasing the surveillance and monitoring of students and teachers alike. While high-tech, high-stakes standardized testing has swamped the PK-20 education milieu for several

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  33 years, teacher education seems to be next in line for encroachment to occur by a cadre of accompanying education reformers. Given this bleak scenario, the edTPA is merely the latest ECT tool. Designed to measure performance, it places teaching and learning under the audit culture and teachers and students under tighter surveillance and control. To administrative progressives these must seem like the best of times but not so for pedagogical progressives. The controversial decision to require edTPA puts into stark contrast the traditional process of a university program’s evaluation of a teacher’s readiness on the one hand, and a process whereby the evaluation of teacher performance is outsourced on the other. In the edTPA scenario, parents are pressed into giving permission to have their children videotaped and sent to a third party vendor. Indeed, often the very teacher education faculty who require teacher candidates to videotape other people’s children “opt out” their own children from being videotaped. Most assuredly, the increasingly intrusive processes, tools, and regulations that the education reformers push for and often profit from, align perfectly with the slogan of “data-based decision making” and fit snugly within the “slogan system” (Apple, 2007) sweeping the teacher education profession that promotes fealty to one value: evidence. Technologies like edTPA pre-determine what counts as official evidence, placing the otherwise expansive, liberating act of education under microscopic view. Thus, we arrive at the pre-eminent feature of modern day teacher education: to blissfully labor under the audit culture, conceived of by others3 and devised to serve not students and teachers but accountability.

2015: The Year that edTPA Became Consequential During the 2015–16 school year, three events signaled a sea change in teacher education in the state of Illinois, foretelling major disruption for teaching and learning in the years ahead. These events paint an unadulterated picture of a new teacher education era, one that relegates the complex process of teacher preparation to the single-minded focus of teacher licensure, and passage forthwith of the Teacher Performance Assessment or the edTPA. All teacher candidates are now required to pass a performance assessment and the Illinois State Board of Education chose the edTPA as that assessment. Subsequently, edTPA was made “consequential” by the Illinois State Legislature, September 1, 2015. As a result, educator preparation programs (EPP) are in a state of reactionary reform, some (myself amongst them) would say shock. Various responses to “consequential edTPA” can be documented, shedding light on the nature of this new teacher education milieu and on faculty working conditions in the institutions of higher education (IHE). These responses coalesce around fairly discrete sociological forms and discernible psychological archetypes, and include

34  Todd Alan Price 1) Accommodation. Accommodation of the profession to the fact that edTPA passage is now a matter of law subsequently results in an increase in professional development to meet the terms of the new gatekeeper. Accordingly, several assorted, shared, small groups and large assembly workshops led by a handful of edTPA advocates and experts accrue. 2) Resistance. Various faculty and related constituents including teachers, parents, and others—including education scholars—continue to resist edTPA in ways that challenge their profession and their colleagues. These teacher educator activists aim to—if not end edTPA, since it is already a legal and program requirement—at least change the terms and conditions under which edTPA is implemented. Hence a struggle for the soul of teacher education spearheaded by groups such as The Illinois Coalition for edTPA Rule Change and by dedicated teacher educator activists has emerged. 3) Critical analysis. Preliminary, critical forums regarding edTPA as a cultural phenomenon are growing. Some educators are making strident claims that edTPA is a workplace imposition and intrusion; others say it is even harmful to children, parents, and schools. Others take a different view, and while considering edTPA to be problematic, also see the reform as a step forward beyond scripted curriculum, a complex yet growth-inducing opportunity. A panel composed of both newly constituted teachers-of-record and teacher educators at DePaul University—critical-practitioners—have launched this conversation. While these sociological forms and psychological archetypical responses are neither exhaustive nor inclusive, they fairly well represent—from my unique vantage point as a curricularist and educational foundations faculty, and not as a teacher education methods clinician—what appears to be occurring to the culture of teaching and learning with edTPA deployment. These events, I assert must be correlated with other major phenomena: an ongoing budget impasse, devastating cuts to under-resourced inner city and rural schools and school districts, declining teacher morale accompanied by spirited strikes, and lest we forget, the continual restructuring of teacher colleges based on academic prioritization and market feasibility. These are all described in this chapter within a context of teacher education in perpetual, existential crises. Three distinct events tell the story through a careful selection of generalized and excerpted narratives. As Ferdinand Braudel (1980) instructs, official history is a function of who does the writing, and how what is chosen to be written about (historiography) determines what matters for the official record. Hence my interest in writing here is upending that official record, and sustaining the tradition of an unofficial history, perhaps even a “people’s history” (Zinn, 2003) so that generations of teachers and teacher educators in the future know that there were several different reactions to edTPA, and not everyone was on board with this reform, nor went along silently.

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  35 Complimenting this effort at naming the un-nameable, the controversial history of edTPA as consequential tool, or that which the official rendering would prefer to make invisible, Pierre Bourdieu (1984) describes power as flowing through and between processes and procedures that legitimate some forms of knowledge and marginalize others. EPPs and IHEs already determine who gets to be teacher; their otherwise taken-for-granted processes and procedures4 classify and are classified, and as such legitimate certain ways of knowing, performing, and being. The edTPA, and responses to it, are alternately a series of reflections and expressions of the interests of particular groups of people who seek power (habitus) over others, and, in particular, wish to predetermine who gets to be the teacher. The examples selected depict educators largely operating as particular groups with shared interests of one sort or another, educators who strive to make meaning out of what appears—to my curricular lens—to be working within an existential crises. When we as educators speak of teacher education, teaching and learning, and education, what is it really all about? Given the wildly varied and variegated power relations on display in EPPs and IHEs across this poorly functioning democracy, this highly unequal country, whose knowledge is of most worth? It seems quite advantageous in the current teacher education preparation configuration to dismiss such troubling questions, and, on the contrary, loudly proclaim allegiance to evidence, accountability, and assessment, extolling the virtues of edTPA. To do so is surely beneficial personally and professionally in a profession under heavy scrutiny by the federal and state government, external professional organizations, the mainstream press, and the public at large. To do otherwise and call into question whether edTPA was needed is to risk being a pariah and outcast from the supposedly neutral and objective evidence-seeking world. Rounding off this theoretical perspective, it is as if Antonio Gramsci (Gramsci, Hoare, and Nowell-Smith, 1972) would say, this is a condition of hegemony, with edTPA values ascendant, and all others in recession. It is harmless under the present conditions to embrace edTPA, and risky not to do so. In each response that follows of accommodation, resistance, and critical analysis, a “curricular lens” describes the story beneath “consequential” edTPA.

Who Gets to Be Teacher? PEARSON Knows During an Illinois State Education Professional Licensure Board (SEPLB) meeting convened in 2012, at issue was the new teacher education paradigm. The influence of PEARSON Inc. was prominent. Company representatives attending the meeting not only explained the expected educational process but also provided a full presentation of their pilot study findings, which involved 300 candidates. Additionally, these representatives played a significant role informing SEPLB members what the cut score should be. This cut score assumed various attributes for what would constitute the

36  Todd Alan Price “Just Acceptable Qualified Candidate” (JAQC), an acronym for the new teacher education era, as recorded in the minutes of this meeting:

Definition of The Just Acceptable Qualified Candidate (JAQC) Characteristics of the JAQC:

• • • • • • • •

Always gets to class on time Is well prepared Knows how to problem solve Writes clearly for multiple audiences Has excellent grammar skills Presents well-written assignments Is in the top half of the class at their college or university Is an A or B student.

When reading, the JAQC is able to

• • • •

Recognize cause and effect relationships Draw conclusions from passages read Use context to determine meaning Interpret content to determine a writer’s point of view.

When writing, the JAQC is able to

• Articulate ideas clearly • Use excellent grammar • Use excellent sentence structure. The JAQC uses math skills to

• • • •

Solve problems using number concepts and geometric principles Understand fundamental statistical concepts Solve word problems Determine percentages and fractions.

Summary—The JAQC

• Is an A or B student • Is in the top half of all college or university students in his or her class • Articulates ideas clearly in writing and uses excellent grammar and sen• •

tence structure Uses math skills to solve problems and interpret data Is able to read and comprehend college textbooks.

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  37 SEPLB-selected statisticians and research experts weighed in as well, pointing out their validity and reliability concerns. Some of the SEPLB members argued that the cut score should be set low in order that minority teacher candidates would not be disproportionately impacted. Their supposition was that minority teacher candidates had typically scored lower on the test; several members worried about the impact fewer teachers of color would have on students of color who increasingly populate the state’s public schools. Subsequently, the plan required a cut score of 35 out of 70 possible points, with increases to be introduced at various intervals over the upcoming years. This display of fiduciary and proprietary issues coupled with the political machinations and the racial prognostications left me wondering: how could the use of edTPA be characterized as scientific? Would this heralded tool truly move the profession forward as claimed?

Background to the edTPA: Pseudoscience and Ideology Supporters of edTPA nonetheless laud its supposed scientific foundation. They proclaim as an evidentiary warrant that edTPA was made by the profession, for the profession. The development, dissemination, and implementation of edTPA was indeed facilitated by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE). But coming from this elite, private institution hardly qualifies such a tool as being made by everyone for everyone let alone answers conclusively the question(s) of who funds, manages, owns, participates, and benefits with edTPA. Consider first how this tool is supposed to be used. SCALE basically intended edTPA to be a formative assessment, but Illinois colleges of education appear dead set on using edTPA as a high stakes, standardized, summative assessment. Further still, Illinois politicians have their own ideas how this tool is to be used and it seems to accord with the general idea of auditing institutions of higher education for effectiveness. Not even the edTPA advocates claim this as their goal. A case in point, at one of the statewide professional development days held at my own university, an accomplished quantitative researcher from SCALE argued that edTPA was not the ultimate answer to teacher effectiveness. Although he worked for the organization that created edTPA and sang praises to its use, this SCALE researcher cautioned the college administration and faculty gathered to use it wisely. edTPA, he offered, was only one among many of the multiple assessments to be placed in consideration when determining what counts as evidence of good teaching. Clinical hours and classroom observations conducted by university supervisors and cooperating teachers, for example, are equally determinative and important. Furthermore, this SCALE researcher confirmed that edTPA is intended for use as a formative assessment, not as a high stakes assessment. It should not be the sole gatekeeper for determining whether candidates move forward or

38  Todd Alan Price stop out. He even went so far as to point out how early rollout of such high stakes assessments in other states . . . had flopped. They mistakenly made their assessments consequential before thoroughly testing the tool. This critical point was apparently lost on the leadership of the teacher education institutions—and was essentially ignored by the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois State Legislature. The edTPA became consequential on September 1, 2015, effectively becoming the gatekeeper that the SCALE researcher had warned against. Nearly verbatim, I documented the testimonials from those gathered that day, among them a Wisconsin private college of education administrator who, with marked enthusiasm, claimed that edTPA covered the same knowledge(s), skills, and dispositions that her educator preparation program already taught. To her the strategy for the EPPs should be to embrace the challenge and “rock the standards!” (Price, 2014a).

Pedagogical Stance: Stories of Accommodation, Resistance and Critical Analysis In what follows, I attempt to display several of the testimonials, the responses to consequential edTPA. In the first instance, faculty and educational administrators use accommodation as a response to consequential edTPA. While this group includes edTPA supporters/advocates, it also includes those who might otherwise oppose the tool but necessarily go along anyway; they accept that consequential edTPA is now a mandate, and seek to give it the attention needed. Within the accommodation group as a whole, several faculty/ individuals appear to embrace a range of creative approaches as possible. Some faculty in the accommodation group subscribe to a supporter/advocate approach and argue that not only is edTPA a needed improvement over past teacher candidate assessments and evaluations, but that edTPA serves a social justice end, insuring that the product—highly effective teachers in every school and classroom—will be guaranteed. This social justice end subscribes, not ironically, to the curricular strand of social efficiency and is a common, oft cited meme, well replicated by contemporary teacher education faculty. edTPA to this group is more efficient, critical, and even progressive. Other accommodation group faculty adopt a decidedly more pragmatic approach, arguing that faculty may indeed need to just go along to get along with the education reform movement. This approach recognizes that the education reform movement makes consequential edTPA, data-based decision making, value-added models (VAM), and/or evidence-based measures normative or part of the current common sense.4 What is most assuredly shared between the supporter/advocate approach and the pragmatic approach is the belief that the only goal for teacher education is to create the highly effective teacher (HET), as defined by the state. There is apparent consensus around the idea that under resourced schools

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  39 do not have enough of these teachers, and hence the state and edTPA need to step in to ensure that highly effective teachers are produced to fill those hard to staff slots. Indeed, while the two approaches mentioned above share the same end, they differ in terms of tone. The faculty in the pragmatic approach largely soldier on, making the best they can with the tools and resources they have. Faculty using the supporter/advocate approach appear quite moralistic in tone, evoking social justice as a rationale and suggesting with certain incredulity that those faculty in another group altogether, the resistance group, are either lacking in their dedication, reasoning, or work ethic. How could teacher education faculty find fault with such an obviously well-meaning and seriously well thought out evaluation tool? To this point, and exemplified in the second instance, teacher education activists have emerged forming a resistance group, populated by veteran teachers, clinical practitioners, and professors in curriculum and instruction. This resistance group finds consequential edTPA and all of the standardized, high-stakes assessment measures to be cut from the same cloth, yet another general affront to their professional expertise. This group— analogous to the supporter/advocate approach—also takes a moralistic tone, calling for authentic assessment, meaning observations and evaluation of teaching in practice, internal to the teacher education college and amidst faculty whose lives are dedicated to the profession of placing great teachers into public schools. This group further views with disdain the external value-added methods, the staggering over-reliance on data-based decision making, and the seemingly endless rubrics, assessments, and performance evaluations—edTPA and other similar measures included—not only as an affront to their profession, but a strategic one, whose aim is the base reductionism of teacher education. They detest the instrumental rationality and excessive quantification of the curriculum, and the predetermination of the means and ends of teaching and learning. In a slight twist, foundations faculty (similar to myself) are suspect of “method” in general5 and decry aligning teaching and learning to an endless set of standards and a myriad of rubrics or “proxies” that such standards (not the curriculum itself) produce. Indeed rubrics seem to have taken over the nation (Burns, 2015), capturing the imagination of all of the teacher education colleges and occupying—like a foreign, invading force—the curriculum, making the supposed critical thinking outcomes and theory-based practice that edTPA espouses seem not only predetermined, but scripted and fallacious. In a third instance, and perhaps between the support and resist spectrum are educators whose aim is to critically analyze the curriculum and at times reflect more deeply upon their own teaching and learning circumstances in order to make meaning. A significant panel convened to this end, to critically evaluate consequential edTPA during the 2015–16 school year. These critical practitioners offered keen and detailed insight(s) into edTPA implementation and the intrusion on their practice. They largely arrived at consensus

40  Todd Alan Price that edTPA was complicated and an unwarranted intrusion on teaching and learning. They also—sharing the pragmatic approach—soldiered on to get through the process and meet the mandate’s requirements. This group as a whole—while acknowledging and criticizing privatization and corporatization—did not deconstruct the broader social justice implications of teacher education under audit (Price, 2014b), nor did they speak of the impact of neoliberalism on the working conditions of teachers, teacher educators, and the entire education workforce. It was only one faculty who—having taught for 30+ years in K–12 public education and was now working as a teacher education methodologist—argued that edTPA was a violation of academic freedom.

The Three Responses Given this overarching backdrop, I draw upon three events beginning with the Illinois Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium (IL•TPAC). This organization hosted Moving Forward: The IL•TPAC Annual State edTPA Conference on Friday, September 11, 2015 at the ISU Alumni Center in Normal, Illinois. This event brought together teacher preparation programs from across the state of Illinois to go over the details, tasks, strategies, and other parts of edTPA. The conference offered professional development on managing edTPA tasks—the planning, teaching, and evaluation—through a series of strategic workshops. The second event I describe is The Illinois House Elementary & Secondary Education: School Curriculum & Policies Committee-Subject Matter Hearing on the edTPA. This hearing was convened on a Tuesday morning, November 10, 2015 at 10:30 A.M. in the State Capitol Building in Springfield. The third and final event was the DePaul College of Education Winter Forum-Taking a Critical Look at the edTPA: High Stakes Test for New Teachers held February 18, 2016, at the Lincoln Park Student Center. Included in the promotional flyer for this gathering was the following language: “Our winter forum will take a critical look at this process from the perspectives of student teachers, university clinical supervisors, academic researchers, education professors and parents.”

Moving Forward: The IL•TPAC Annual State edTPA Conference On September 11, 2015, a group of faculty from Illinois teacher preparation institutions gathered to discuss the implementation of the edTPA. This was neither the first, nor would it be the last of such meetings, but it had a different tone because it was the first statewide meeting since the state of Illinois made edTPA consequential for securing teacher licensure. The description of this first event is my attempt to make transparent the complexity and the

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  41 complicity of teacher education under this new milieu, what I have called “the audit culture,” a working definition drawing from the critical curricular foundations laid out by scholars before me (Apple, 2007; Taubman, 2009). An Illinois administrator opened, discussing “where we’ve been” as a teacher preparation field: “lots of rubrics, but not enough information coming back!” One of the tools used by several of the teacher preparation institutions was/is the teacher graduate survey. While this provided some useful information, she believed that “historically, teacher preparation programs have been working on their own.” She explained the purpose of the edTPA to measure “performance at different levels” and “eliminate extraneous types of prompts” in lieu of specific feedback that only the edTPA presumably provides. She then went on to describe several groups interested in the results of teacher preparation efforts: 1) the Illinois Association for Colleges of Teacher Education licensure committee (IACTE), 2) the Illinois Association for Deans of Public Colleges of Education (IADPCE), 3) the Illinois Association for Teacher Education in Private Colleges (IACTE), and 4) the Council of Chicago Area Deans of Education (CCADE). So, edTPA is indeed a change initiative, she noted, but “change is learning” and she argued that we the representatives from teacher education colleges across Illinois might consider the question “What am I going to learn about my practice as a result?” The issue of consequentiality was addressed, and since September 1, 2015, edTPA counts for licensure. I wondered what wouldn’t be measured, and whether that missing information might otherwise count for even more. Student feedback on learning was also discussed. The Illinois administrator argued that we (IHEs) might consider reframing our approach, how we worked together, and what might be learned during this new process. She offered that this could be a scholarly process, citing two critical readings that informed her own work. With The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Berger and Luckman, 1966) she urged us to “take responsibility for the effects of that construction.” The other reference was Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire (1970). She argued that the change we were embarking upon was tantamount to a movement for social justice. She noted that edTPA is now consequential for our candidates. Illinois Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium (IL-TPAC) “was convened to review the scored reports” and discuss what we find with respect to our candidates. Preliminary reports are coming in from some of the institutions that have been piloting edTPA. She mentioned an interest in finding out “what happened with the videotaping”. She presented to at least eight organizations in the state. The “edTPA has become a catalyst for intercampus collaboration, problem identification and problem solving.” She then went on to provide a laundry list of items that IL-TPAC would be thinking about and discussing at this conference today. That list included academic language; targeted

42  Todd Alan Price student learning; videotaping; “where are we going” with assessment practice; mutually developed, strong, rigorous insight; common assessments vetted by the profession; establishing priorities; monitoring progress; and finally moving to the next priority. Her main emphasis was that through collaboration efforts we would be engaged in “sharing out what we learn . . . obviously protecting student anonymity.” Becoming Official Scorers Next, an Illinois faculty member described preliminary results using the tool. In 2012–13 her college implemented edTPA for the first year and conducted a pilot in the second, 2013–14. “All the teachers submitted for official scoring. We did a curriculum map with additional focus on academic language.” She continued, “All our full time faculty members are official scorers”. This was the takeaway, for faculty to become scorers. An Early Childhood Education department chair who followed said that her school “started talking about it in 2013” and then began to have more intense discussion, “incorporating the jargon, articulating a little bit better . . . you can’t put it on, fake it . . . [you] need to bring it into a repertoire of skills.” The faculty clearly spent much time preparing themselves and their students/teacher candidates for edTPA. One example was creating online modules and matching the preparation work with “concurrent field experiences.” They worked through their assessment courses aiming to “fine tune some of our course assessments” and conducted a 2010 small pilot, backwards mapping it into their programs. Given this early implementation, a faculty member proudly incurred that her college was “full onboard” by 2013. The faculty mentioned that two-thirds of the students by 2014 were working on their portfolios. The discussion in this workshop included presenters describing how the implementation of edTPA was faring with retake support. One institution described having an edTPA prep course. A presenter made the case that the edTPA should be an “authentic” experience . . . “let’s see what you learned from students.” Summer workshops were slated for another institution with the purpose of “helping to understand, how do we support student teaching as we have always done . . . and pass edTPA?” Another faculty recalled, “all [students] did the pilot, they all knew that it would be consequential soon” but “they only did the literacy.” The presenter from my institution pointed out a few of the genuine differences our faculty and students had to contemplate. She noted that our institution (located on five campuses) catered to the “adult learner” and that due to our schedule “edTPA and student teaching is very fast.” To be certain, we started in 2013. With the information we piloted in 2014, using backwards design, in 2015 “we had 78 candidates in urban teacher residency” aimed for high need schools. It was noted that 23 of these students went through

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  43 the edTPA preparation process in a year. “We didn’t have content expertise” for the one who failed. It was noted in this presentation that 25 CCADE institutions had posted averages; these institutions were interested in looking at “minority scores” and “how we compared to Chicago schools.” edTPA Academic Language Other workshops were even more specific to different parts or “tasks” of edTPA. One workshop discussed academic language, and the presenter took a generally open view to what counts as “discourse.” She noted that, for example, the discourse in dance is in performing the dance itself. “You have to understand what the definitions are . . . how do students express the language function?” She noted that there is the written, the verbal, and other ways to demonstrate language. You could “create a graph” that is the language function for algebra; it is the “create” and the need to know the x and y axis, through the “analyze the graph” exercise. She further discussed, “it is going to be written up” . . . “two different language functions” and that the syntax is “what are the conventions for organizing symbols, words and phrases together into structures” . . . “you need to know where x and y goes.” An example she provided was “in haiku the syntax is the haiku itself 5 . . . 7 . . . 5.” Venn diagrams were another example: “These are not alike, these are alike . . . that is the syntax.” Essentially, she noted, “We are talking about similarities and differences, compare and contrast for the language function.” The presenter continued, using a worksheet to describe the parts (provide examples of comparing and contrasting historical and/or geographical locations and/or ideas toward anti-oppression) to lead to understanding the first point. She then suggested teachers draw from an associated vocabulary: she next provided a list of words including Apartheid and associated these words with the Civil Rights Movement in the states and human rights abroad. “A Venn diagram could be a method of discourse . . . I considered creating a word map/brain storm, inspiration program.” The associated syntax included: what are the rules of the Venn diagram? The workshop began to conclude with discussion concerning “planned supports” and that faculty would “have to have a support for the students to know what to do.” The presenter said that the key to edTPA was to have effective implementation intentionally done to support these actions, “using this to support that . . . it is about the intentionality” behind the tool. We were left with eight strategies for teaching academic language from the Edutopia website. Policies and Procedures: “Creating an edTPA Tool Box” The conference broke into small groups building resources. The idea during this lunch discussion was to start to develop a databank of portfolio

44  Todd Alan Price scores in order to guide candidates in what they must retake and what tasks to focus on. The facilitator at my table stated that “formative assessment involves doing a retake of the lowest score.” Questions that followed were “How do we guide the students through the process of deciding what type of retake they need? What will teacher candidates need to submit?” The discussion involved speculation concerning the number of required tasks that a candidate could resubmit and whether faculty members would monitor the resubmission. One consideration offered by a faculty member was “What are their developmental needs? How did the candidate perform on other student teaching assessments? What timelines are involved?” Stated another way, the issue or concern was “If they are struggling with stuff, perhaps a repeat in student teaching” would be best. The observation was made that this is the high stakes part; if they are doing a full retake it is going to be another year before they take [edTPA] again. The retake plans—it was affirmed by several faculty—are very versatile depending on the student. Rubric 12 Providing Feedback for Your Students; Rubric 13 Student Use of Feedback; Rubric 14 Student Use of Academic Language Discussion next turned to the rubrics, which are used to measure the intended learning outcomes of the teacher candidates. Feedback plays a major role in edTPA implementation. Feedback is also one of the points of some contention: how much is enough? What is permissible? At one point the Illinois administrator suggested thinking about the process as one analogous to a dissertation, which I personally appreciated, a sliver of hope. As a doctoral faculty member who routinely works closely with candidates and provides that candidate with several helpful insights, knowledge, and walking them through the process . . . but does not of course write the dissertation . . . I thought this metaphor would be helpful. She followed saying the teacher candidate could be coached but would receive no support during the examination or portfolio preparation. Closing Thoughts on Moving Forward So these were the upbeat suggestions from this first post-consequential edTPA conference and set of workshops. But as well planned and organized as it was, for many, the idea of moving forward with this tool still fell flat. Only a few months later, several letters were sent to a scheduled hearing at the Springfield, Illinois State Capitol voicing very different positions concerning the pragmatic approach of “moving forward.” A rural education administrator even threatened to opt out of the process taking student teachers in

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  45 Our district will not, for several reasons, accept student teachers while edTPA is part of the teacher education process. While I’m sure those decision makers that support edTPA have sincere intentions to improve student teaching and teachers in general, this is not the answer. I urge you to simplify the student teaching process while not compromising the integrity of the program. Teacher candidates are already hard to find for rural schools and now college graduates are even less likely to enter a teaching program knowing that at the whim of edTPA their entire educational preparation could be tossed to the wind in the final hours. Another letter writer, a special education teacher wrote that edTPA is a poor fit for special needs students: My current fall edTPA sessions were in no way devoted to teaching the competencies every special education teacher new to the field should know. Our program faculty has been doing that for decades and I would like to think we have been doing it well. We already use eight different key program assessments, the majority performance-based, to track our candidates’ instructional competencies. Our assessment of dispositions and professional behaviors has teeth and we do counsel candidates out of our programs. Instead the summer and this fall’s course was spent preparing our candidates to convey what they already learned in a way that fit within the narrow construct of special education practice as exemplified in the edTPA scoring rubrics. So much for multiple assessments, said an elementary teacher educator from my own university: In the past, we have used multiple measures to determine our candidates’ readiness to teach. It now appears that only a single, high stakes assessment will determine licensure in Illinois. In addition, it is not the assessment by the IHE but outside scorers who determine the success or failure of candidates completing their teacher preparation programs. Last but not least, a member of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) wrote that edTPA is culturally insensitive: As currently constructed, the edTPA does not require pre-service teachers to demonstrate sufficient competence in helping English Learners become successful. The language of instruction, in the current edTPA guide, is assumed to be entirely in English, with no assessment of how well prepared a teacher candidate is to address the needs of multilingual learners in the classroom.

46  Todd Alan Price Further, it is not clear in the current format of the edTPA how preservice teachers should work in the primary language of the students, a pedagogical approach that has proven to improve academic progress and cognitive skills. Consequently, the skillful use of the students’ primary language for instruction in bilingual classrooms is not addressed in this high stakes assessment. Trying to find something redeeming from the edTPA professional development sessions, I clung to the dissertation metaphor provided by the Illinois administrator/conference organizer that afternoon. I talked further with methods faculty about the issue of feedback; surely the faculty role to play was in helping his students craft a philosophy, curricular unit, and lesson plans. Substantial feedback is provided to dissertation students. Was this what is needed? Perhaps edTPA feedback would be similar to that provided for a master’s thesis. This discussion thread following the Moving Forward conference abruptly stopped after one of our faculty members suggested that the dissertation analogy wasn’t a good one. Thus the issue of feedback was quashed. Feedback continues in my estimation to be the most controversial problem and point of contention within edTPA. My question(s) remain who determines what is allowed? To what ends?

The Illinois House Elementary & Secondary Education: School Curriculum and Policies Committee-Subject Matter Hearing on the edTPA On November 10, 2015 the discussion and deliberation at this contested hearing were scintillating for several reasons. First, it was a remarkable accomplishment to get this hearing scheduled in the first place, and the credit goes to the Illinois Coalition for edTPA Rule Change who coordinated the heroic effort and a sympathetic legislator who moved to get the question of edTPA onto the schedule. Also remarkable was the hearing’s focus and scope, but it was all too brief as the two hours were insufficient to get at the heart of the struggle: the outsourcing of teacher education evaluation. Beginning the hearing was an ISBE official who adroitly led with a statement explaining edTPA as the state-sanctioned licensure tool and meticulously described the process of implementation. To be fair, he balanced these statements with other social concerns, showing sympathy to the plight of teachers, schools, and students who are struggling with a range of problems. This ISBE official represented what appeared to me to be less of a bureaucrat, and more of a classic archetype of a company man with a philanthropic conscience. He reflected the interests, as he is paid to do, of the institution of ISBE while acknowledging social justice issues and imperatives. Recognizing the concerns of the legislators and those who gathered to support or

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  47 challenge the ISBE teacher licensure course of action, he pointed out how teachers struggled in the state of Illinois. He began by explaining that “edTPA replaces the APT Assessment of Professional Teaching” assuring the body assembled that “people like me would score them, there is rigorous training.” One of the first legislators to speak was unconvinced that things were sailing smoothly: “We train a lot of teachers, yet we have a lot of them leave for other states” and “We have a lot of empty positions.” He essentially wanted to know: Why is that? The ISBE official took the bait and argued regarding “school finances” that “there is no parity.” He also argued that paying tribute to the teachers who leave was due to “a portion of that” to “the perception of media; we don’t hear celebrations” of their “day in and day out work.” He noted the growth in alternative teacher training but argued that, having been a teacher himself, “It is hard work.” The first legislator thanked him for his frank response and followed with “How does our assessment compare with other states for classroom students” and followed with “Do we test more than other states?” The ISBE official stated simply “I don’t know.” The first legislator summarized, “So we have a video test as a capstone for the preparation” and wondered what else determined the teacher candidate’s readiness to work? The ISBE official listed clinical practice and other measurements of student growth. The legislator asked about the edTPA training and the length of the video to which ISBE official explained “depending on the handbook, 15 minutes.” Then the first legislator turned to a more practical question: “What other fees do our students have to pay to become a teacher?” The ISBE official pointed to the content test ($120, he speculated), basic skills test ($120, he thought), the fee for background check (between $25 and I’ve heard as high as $150), “and of course tuition: room and board.” The first legislator gestured that these are “often barriers for students of low income to become teachers.” Following that episode, the first legislator asked about results: “So when you look at the results, how does that compare with the results of the previous test?” The ISBE official pointed out that since the “beginning of administration, 2013, 87% passed . . . in September of 2014, 83–84% passed.” Thereupon what commenced was some back and forth exchange about teachers coming in to the state “so if they meet the edTPA passing score, they can teach in our state.” The ISBE official took the initiative to explain—as was evident from the first pilot results I reported on at the SEPLB meeting three years prior—that the passing score is intentionally low: ISBE official: Our passing score is currently one error of measurement below and we did that deliberately knowing that this is new and wanting—with addition to the two-year pilot period—to give people the opportunity to become comfortable with the assessment.

48  Todd Alan Price

PEARSON: Always Earning In the next round of statements and questions, the next legislator openly criticized the tool and claimed to be really struggling with the cost and the expectations of this new educational reform: Second legislator: I have a couple of questions. And I’ve heard from multiple teachers about this, not just today but in the past. My first question is: if the technology video part is required, what kind of free training is offered to the student teachers and their supervisors? ISBE official: That depends on the institution. I’ve been told of institutions that they fold this into their coursework. So earlier clinical experiences . . . there might be a video component where they . . . want the student . . . is required . . . to teach a lesson and so they want it videotaped so they make sure that the student understands not only how to use the technology but that also if they are editing the clip . . . you know if it is a fifteen minute lesson but the assignment only requires 25 minutes . . . that they would learn how to use editing software . . . This second legislator did not appreciate that colleges and universities were being expected to train for this tool, and foot the bill . . . “so if you mean by institution . . . do you mean the university?” she asked incredulously. The ISBE official nodded. She then went on to criticize the tool and its proprietor: Second legislator: So, my feeling is that if we’re going to expect student teachers and their supervising teachers to do a video for Pearson to evaluate them from, then Pearson should be offering them how they want them to use their video equipment. The teachers that I have talked to . . . I know of one specific example where . . . and this is a teacher that I have observed personally for probably twelve years, and she’s an outstanding teacher . . . and they tried it five different times and they had their first graders redo the lesson five times. And every time there was a technology glitch so they had to keep asking the kids to pretend that it was the first time they did it and I don’t think that’s a fair judgment. I feel that if Pearson is willing to make $300 per student teacher that they should share technology [costs and training] . . . This second legislator pushed on, querying about the technology component: Second legislator: I just don’t feel with this testing that student teachers are able to put their best foot forward . . . there’s too much pressure on them. The video technology part . . . those issues totally derail from the focus of teaching, now the focus is on operating a machine. The state is broke, the university can’t afford it. They should not put this burden on

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  49 the universities; if we insist on video Pearson is the one making money on it they should pay for it. Are they willing to do that, have they been asked? ISBE official: They’ve not been asked, and I certainly cannot answer for them. To one point of your question and I’ve heard similar concerns thank you for sharing them . . . all of the training for the scorers is developed by Stanford University and their teacher education faculty. A third legislator then stepped up to the conversation, seemingly defending edTPA as a needed reform. His comments were reflective of the advocate/supporter approach, expressing incredulity that this tool would be criticized: Third legislator: So a couple of things: it is my understanding that APT is also administered by Pearson, so I want to say that obviously there are some things that can be improved. We should talk to Pearson about profit margins, we should talk about how things are administered, currently administered by computers so I would say there are some things technology being done right now. But I want to hear from you sir or anybody else on future panels whether or not we should be going back to the APT. Because it seems like a standardized test. What’s ironic to me about many who are opposed to this, who would say that parents and teachers are more than a score, is that currently we don’t have the type of evaluation that edTPA puts in place. Parents and teachers would say we need to go in and do more classroom observation. edTPA is effectively saying ‘let’s have a video whereby we can see our teachers teaching in the classroom’ to make sure a portfolio of work is being submitted such that we can see actual student growth over time and lesson planning that reflects student growth. In the final critical analysis of these civil, yet tense episodes, several remarkable observations can be made. One concerns the ISBE official’s role, which was to implement the law and explain to the satisfaction of the lawmakers assembled the fidelity of edTPA as a solution to a perceived educational problem. At the same time, this official was keen to point out the inherent and chronic problems of the education profession, a situation it is crucial to note that was at the time of the hearing could hardly be worse, was very dire with a budget impasse and teacher morale lower than at any other time. A second observation was of the irritation expressed by all three of the legislators . . . for apparently different reasons and different points of view (it is worth considering that each of these views reflects a genuine pedagogical stance). The first legislator reflected a skepticism of new educational reform efforts, wondering out loud and through his questions what would be the ramification of adopting this new tool, especially given the point that

50  Todd Alan Price he made of “teachers leaving the state.” His was a traditional view, doubting that progress had been made in improving teacher education. The second legislator was obviously outraged about the brazen outsourcing of teacher education to Pearson Inc. and expressed in no uncertain terms how she was having trouble with the explanations or rationalizations for moving in this direction, given the lack of resources (again reflecting the dire budget impasse period where she argued that “the state is broke”). Hers was definitely a position that aligned with the colleagues gathered who essentially were education activists, or resisters. The third legislator was equally compelling, for he argued essentially that the questioning of the privatization by Pearson was overblown, and that the edTPA was actually a better tool than what had been used during the immediate past (reliance on the APT). His view reflects what is an interesting/disturbing trend, that of administrative progressives making the case for edTPA, dismissing privatization as a trivial issue. This observation was all the more compelling with this third legislator’s closing comments that suggested “the bigotry of low expectations” in ISBE’s action to lower passing scores out of a perceived deference to information that in so doing, teachers of color would be minimally impacted. It is quite staggering that an argument would be made that edTPA would actually serve a civil rights agenda in placing highly effective teachers into inner city, underserved schools and could be coupled with the idea that low expectations were keeping students of color out of the teaching profession. Launched in such a way this is the character of such a position: edTPA is a better tool for producing highly effective teachers, and “we” the teacher education profession all know that inner city, underserved schools and children all deserve excellent teachers, so we should embrace edTPA. But one of those Illinois teacher educator professors questioned the logic of consequential edTPA’s supposed social justice value: Illinois’ edTPA mandate undermines the educative potential of the student teaching process. As a high stakes, complicated assessment (the instruction manual, or handbook, itself is 50 pages long), edTPA distracts candidates from other elements of learning to teach. edTPA focuses the majority of candidates’ student teaching process on the preparation and implementation of just 3–5 lessons in a single class. The high stakes of the assessment transform student teaching from an extended, applied learning experience to a prematurely evaluative one. Illinois’ edTPA mandate raises significant concerns related to equity. In addition to the high cost and technology requirements of the assessment, which privilege candidates from certain subgroups, edTPA’s structure and scoring process carry a tremendous risk of bias. The National Association for Multicultural Education is just one of many social justice organizations opposed to edTPA for its implications for

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  51 equity, diversity and social justice in our schools. Developers and advocates have not released any information regarding scoring trends among racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse candidates in Illinois, nor information regarding how Illinois candidates’ scores vary according to the urbanicity of their school placement. Illinois’ edTPA mandate does not reflect the needs and priorities of Illinois communities. As an externally designed, privately operated assessment, edTPA shifts the evaluation of Illinois candidates from local teachers and faculty members with a deep understanding of the unique needs of our communities to anonymous online scorers. Anyone who has a teaching license is eligible to score edTPA after just 19–24 hours of online training (the content of which Pearson will not release). There is no information to suggest these scorers are more qualified than Illinois teachers and teacher educators, nor data regarding the racial or linguistic diversity of the pool of scorers. Furthermore, if we were to carry the edTPA logic to an absurd conclusion, why not improve this portfolio process by demanding another video, or two, three, or four videos later on in the process, and compare them? Why stop there, why not videotape the entire sequence, every day, every minute of every child in the classroom, to document the total student experience with the teacher(s)?

DePaul College of Education Winter Forum-Taking a Critical Look at the edTPA: High Stakes Test for New Teachers Michael Apple argues that education is both reflective of and impactful upon broader society. Hence if broader society is under an audit culture, should we be surprised by the degree to which schools, teachers and colleges of education are part and parcel of these phenomena? Education is a site of struggle and compromise. It serves as a proxy as well for larger battles over what our institutions should do, whom they should serve, and who should make these decisions. And yet, by itself education is one of the major arenas in which resources, power, and ideology specific to policy, finance, curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation in education are worked through. Thus, education is both cause and effect, determining and determined. (p. 213) Thus it was encouraging that one college of education, DePaul, opted to consider with a critical view the breadth and depth of this reform on those who would be impacted the most: the K–12 students, their teachers, schools, and community.

52  Todd Alan Price A teacher educator and author of several articles critical of edTPA asked the fundamental question: What is a good teacher? She began this panel explaining in specific, unequivocal detail the very crux of what it means to be a real teacher, that is, to ask the key question: We are engaging in the critical inquiry that we value when we ask ‘what is a good teacher?’ How might you answer that differently as a principal, teacher educator, or parent? A lot is to be gained by thinking about what it means to be a good teacher. As we engage in dialogue about what it means to be effective, these are the kinds of conversations our field needs to be having . . . and these are the conversations that edTPA is silencing. edTPA asks for an external vision, based on the premise that good teaching can and should be standardized. This is profoundly problematic . . . who gets to decide? I’m [also] curious about the ways we walk the tightrope between what is right for our students and what is required by the edTPA. Having done just that, reviewing the edTPA handbook and being required to walk her students through the process, the teacher educator drew from a question in the text to make her point: Given the central focus describe how the standards and learning objectives within your learning segment address student’s abilities to use the textual [prompts/references] to construct meaning from, interpret or respond to complex text, and create a written product interpreting or responding to complex features of the text . . . Others followed, including a parent in the “Raise your Hand” and the “More than a Score” opt out movement(s). Her argument on behalf of the other parents was to call out the high-stakes testing regime for diverting time away from student’s use of “the playhouse” and other developmentally appropriate teaching and learning resources to test-prep. She and her organization called out the tool for violating data privacy. She argued that edTPA pits parents against student teachers who need their permission to complete the videotaped teaching segment. edTPA for us as an organization is really another instance of high-stakes standardized testing that’s inappropriately sharing student data beyond the classroom and in fact the school building with a for-profit company. And its also another instance of standardized test scores being used for a high-stakes decision one where just that score alone can prevent you from becoming a teacher. We see the same sort of problem where just one score can prevent you from being promoted to the next grade. In

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  53 terms of teacher evaluation it can mean being fired. For schools it means that you’re school is on the closure list and ultimately closed. This parent’s testimony paints perhaps the grimmest picture of our schools, our children, and our communities being preyed upon by privatization and big business interests, all in the name of creating “highly effective teachers” (see Johnson and Johnson, 2006). Diverting resources and responsibilities from “the public realm” where officials and institutions are answerable “to the ballot box” . . . by using edTPA we are instead putting these decisions “in the hands of private interests.” The organization that is funding it is a multinational conglomerate, not a public agency. It’s designing and selling and administrating and supporting these tests and that’s not a public agency. We see the same issues in the state . . . PEARSON also has the contract for the TAP test, and then they don’t just control the future of teachers, they also have the GED contract in Illinois now. On top of that, since last year they are in charge of the PAARC, so Illinois has a contract with PEARSON for the PAARC, which is now the state mandated testing for 3–8 grades and in high school. That alone is a $160 million contract over four years and on top of that, Illinois state board of supervisor is asking for PEARSON next year because they don’t just want to [do] summative testing, they want to do three years of high school testing, they want to do formative testing and on top of that PEARSON gets paid to store the data for all of these tests.

Conclusion: Neoliberal Conditions and Teacher Education under Audit In an era of “sacrifice and austerity,” higher education finds itself subject to increasingly stringent, punitive, and irrational requirements. Declining state revenues coupled with market discipline characterize this period. It is critical to point out that the sacrifice and austerity is aimed almost exclusively at those institutions that serve the public good. Revealingly, those corporations and banks that plunged the economy into the Great Recession have largely received special treatment, not least of which included the bailout at taxpayer’s expense, and continuing advantages in securing low interest loans. This is the political economy in education and elsewhere—the golden rule: he/she who own the gold, make the rules. A sterling example of the neoliberal special treatment for educators is depicted in the Obama administration’s release of The President’s Plan for a Strong Middle Class and a Strong America (2013), ostensibly penned in response to rising student tuition. To ensure the quality of higher education offerings, the noble sounding white paper aims to sanction those teacher

54  Todd Alan Price education institutions that lack evidence of teacher effectiveness and fail to demonstrate growth in K–12 public education student achievement. In another related example, the Department of Education (ED) is driving a post-No Child Left Behind proliferation of measurement, surveillance, and auditing. Having succeeded in getting states to literally change their constitutions to accommodate the expansion of charter schools, to drive performance-based compensation and flimsy bonus ploys, to accept mayoral takeover schemes, and to adopt national standards with questionable reliability and validity for meeting student and community need, ED proposes to place more audits and measures on teacher education. To appear to compete globally ED now supports the idea of doubling down on higher education. With the implementation of a system of evidentiary warrants (Cochran-Smith and Fries, 2001) such as value-added models (VAM) and the teacher performance assessment (edTPA) and by ratcheting up the monitoring of the “value, affordability, and student outcomes” all will soon be well (Obama, 2013). Essentially this agenda, including the latest ESSA (2015) inclusion of “teaching academies” flags for all public institutions that if ED has their way, the days of teacher education are numbered. Teacher colleges will either keep or lose their financial aid dependent upon whether their own graduate students are successful in—among other things—landing high paying jobs. A great message for public servants, like teachers, whose mission in life is to serve children, different from hedge fund managers. Teachers in the field, aspiring teacher candidates, and the teacher education college faculty suffer under such a commoditized and monetized paradigm, are held in contempt by the current administration. Under this RTT for higher education, faculty are considered suspect: Create a “College Scorecard” for all degree-granting institutions that will present clear information for students and families to help them choose a college that is priced affordably and that is best suited to meet their needs and help them attain their career and educational goals (Race to the Top: College Affordability and Completion, 2013). In particular, an increase in the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) monitoring of faculty load and Carnegie credit hours (seat time) determines whether teacher education institutions stay open. Value-added models (VAM) are currently being deployed throughout public schools in order to determine whether K-12 teachers retain their positions. And the evaluation of teacher candidates by the edTPA tool, owned by Pearson Inc., becomes— as explained—more than a formative assessment, but consequential to the lives of teacher candidates. Yet of even greater concern, ED partners with the National Council on Teaching Quality (NCTQ)—the organization that distrusts teacher education altogether. NCTQ rates teacher education institutions (NCTQ, 2014)

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  55 using less than scientific means; similarly, ED sought to rate teacher education institutions and create a “College Scorecard” imposing onerous conditions in order to challenge teacher education institutional accreditation, while simultaneously crafting an alternative regulatory system “based on performance and results” (Obama, 2013) and comprised of for-profit competitors. ED had previously offered RTT funding—and in many cases No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers—to those states that signed on to value-added models, such as “pay for performance.” Apart from the blatant ideological manipulation such conditions impart, there are also scientific concerns raised by statisticians and researchers who point out that the VAM is imprecise, with a large margin of error (NEPC/Rothstein, 2011; Stuit, Berends, Austin, and Gerdeman, 2014). In recent years, the Tennessee Education Association publicly criticized the Tennessee Value-added Assessment System (TVAAS) for this very reason; it is neither reliable nor valid for determining teacher effectiveness. TVAAS was subsequently removed as a continuing certification tool in a rare bipartisan effort by the state legislature. This is significant, given that Tennessee was one of the two original RTT recipients, and with Louisiana claimed to have a program that could “track the academic growth of a teacher’s P-12 students back to the preparation program from which that teacher graduated” (U.S. Department of Education, 2011). Nonetheless, in a reversal of the current trend of skepticism toward VAM the value-added model principle was upheld in Florida “unfair but not unconstitutional.” In a stunning decision, the Vergara case, removing tenure in California in relation to teacher retention was initially supported in a lower court (Gerson and Lisbon, 2014). Resistance to another value-added measure, the teacher performance assessment (edTPA) is growing. To reiterate, in order for teacher candidates to be licensed by the state they must videotape a segment of their teaching/ pedagogical work and demonstrate several specific, prescribed standards. The video is essentially mailed to an “external” reviewer who works effectively for a major oligopoly. Stanford University created the edTPA process and PEARSON Inc. provided the materials and platform for a profit. SCALE trains the scorers to use the rubric. The teachers must pay $300 directly to PEARSON Inc. to determine their career fate. Even those who support edTPA argue that it should not be “consequential.” Several who oppose it begrudgingly argue that edTPA should only be one part of a broader portfolio. Others flat out oppose edTPA and all forms of high stakes testing and call for a boycott. Teacher educators continue to go about doing their job, caught between the complexity and complicity—the complexity of a profession, teacher education and K-12 public education more generally, under siege by for-profit ventures whether PEARSON or other corporate entity and the complicity of a profession where our own colleagues and administrations and professional organizations carry water for this great takeover of the common

56  Todd Alan Price good. The teacher educator gets the final word, relaying the facts as she sees them in the struggle to take back teaching and learning in the state of Illinois and across the country. I couldn’t be more critical of this mandate.

Notes 1. As documented in A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education, A Report of the Commission Appointed by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, September, 2006. 2. For example, See Leon and Price (2016) On the Cutting Edge: Movements and Institutional Examples of Technological Disruption for a more comprehensive discussion concerning the specific promises and pitfalls of technology as higher education change agent. The emergence of competency-based online programs, open source materials, and flipped classrooms suggest altogether different approaches to teaching and learning. 3. As Pinar wryly notes, these are good times for accountants, given the current state of education reform. 4. See the problem associated with common sense education reforms in curricularist Kevin Kumashiro’s and Pauline Lipman’s respective works, cited at the end of this chapter. 5. See Doll (2012), for an elaborate discussion on the history of method.

Bibliography Amrein-Beardsley, A. (2014). VAMboozled: Vergara v. California: Concerns beyond teachers. National Education Policy Center. Retrieved June 22, 2014, from http:// nepc/colorado.edu/blog/vergara-v-california-concerns. Apple, M. W. (2007). Education, markets, and an audit culture. International Journal of Educational Policies, 1(1): 4–19. Berger, P. L., and Luckman, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. London: Anchor Books. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Braudel, F. (1980). On history. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Burns, L. D. (2015). Rubric nation: Critical inquiries on the impact of rubrics in education. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Cochran-Smith, M., and Fries, M. K. (2001). Sticks, stones, and ideology: The discourse of reform in teacher education. Educational Researcher, 30(8): 3–15. Doll, W. E. (2012). Complexity and the culture of curriculum. In Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 9(1): 10–29. Doll, W. E., and Trueit, D. (2012). Pragmatism, postmodernism, and complexity theory: The “fascinating imaginative realm” of William E. Doll, Jr. New York: Routledge. Every Student Succeeds Act (2015). Transitioning to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Washington, DC: US Department of Education. Foucault, M., Burchell, G., Gordon, C., and Miller, P. (1991). The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality: With two lectures by and an interview with Michel Foucault. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Defending Teacher Education From edTPA  57 Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Gerson, J., and Lisbon, A. (2014, June 18). An appeal for action seniority, tenure, and the Vergara decision. Counterpunch. Website: www.counterpunch.org/ 2014/06/18/seniority-tenure-and-the-vergara-decision/. Gramsci, A., Hoare, Q., and Nowell-Smith, G. (1972). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York: International Publishers. Hirsch, E. D., Ravitch, D., Walsh, K., Finn, C. E., Bracey, G. W., Doyle, D. P., Cortese, T., . . . Thomas, B. Fordham Foundation. (2006). Checkers and me: Beyond the basics. Oconomowoc, WI: On the Earth Productions. Johnson, D. D., and Johnson, B. (2006). High stakes: Poverty, testing, and failure in American schools. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Kumashiro, K. K. (2004). Against common sense: Teaching and learning toward social justice. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Leon, M. R. and Price, T. A. (2016). On the cutting edge: Movements and institutional examples of technological disruption. In M. Andrade (Ed.), New directions for higher education, 2016(173), 97–107. Lipman, P. (2004). High stakes education: Inequality, globalization, and urban school reform. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. LLC. (2016, June 11). How to make a good teacher. The Economist, 419(8993): 13. National Council on Teacher Quality (2014). 2014 teacher prep review: A review of the nation’s teacher preparation programs. Washington, DC: Author. Obama, B. (2013). The president’s plan for a strong middle class and a strong America. The White House. Washington, DC. Retrieved from www.whitehouse.gov. Pinar, W. (Summer 1992). “Dreamt into existence by others”: Curriculum theory and school reform. Theory into Practice, 31(3): 228–235. Price, T. A. (2014a). Complexity and complicity: Quality(s) and/or effectiveness in teacher education. European Journal of Curriculum Studies, 1(2). Retrieved from http://pages.ie.uminho.pt/ejcs/index.php/ejcs/article/view/51. Price, T. A. (December 2014b). Teacher education under audit: Value-added measures, TVAAS, EdTPA and evidence-based theory. Citizenship, Social and Economics Education, 13(3): 211–225. Price, T. A., Duffy, J., and Giordani, T. (2013). Defending public education from corporate takeover. Lanham, MD: University Press. Rothstein, J. (2011). Review of “learning about teaching: Initial findings from the measures of effective teaching project.” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved June 19, 2016, from http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/ review-learning-about-teaching. Spellings, M.. (2006). A test of leadership: Charting the future of U.S. higher education. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) (2016). Retrieved from https://scale.stanford.edu. Stuit, D., Berends, M., Austin, M. J., and Gerdeman, R. D. (2014). Comparing estimates of teacher value-added based on criterion- and norm-referenced tests (REL 2014–004). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs. Taubman, P. M. (2009). Teaching by numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in education. New York: Routledge.

58  Todd Alan Price U.S. Department of Education. (2011). Our future, our teachers: The Obama administration’s plan for teacher education reform and improvement. Washington, DC: Author. Walsh, K. (2006). Teacher education: Coming up empty. Arresting Insights in Education, 3(1): 1–6. Zinn, H. (2003). A people’s history of the United States: 1492–2001. New York, London: The New Press.

4 Disrupting U.S. Empire Creating Subjects to Expand the “Commons” and the Public Good Roberta Ahlquist

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about reform. —Susan B. Anthony

We are living at the end of Western Empire at a time of crisis on many levels, politically, socially, economically, and militarily. Naomi Klein calls it “shock doctrine” capitalism—finance capital and corporations merging with the state (2007). Chris Hedges uses Wolin’s term, “inverted totalitarianism,” where corporations unite with the state to control the public sphere, a form of neo-fascism, effectively demobilizing the citizenry. The object is to demobilize the citizenry, to render it apathetic, to convince the citizen that all political activity that does not take place within the narrow boundaries defined by the corporate state is futile. This is a message hammered into public consciousness by the corporate media, which serve as highly paid courtiers to the corporate elites. It is championed by the two parties that offer up fear of the ‘other’ as their primary political platform. (Wolin quoted by Hedges, 2016) How to disrupt this power and control? The U.S. white settler, neo-colonial corporate state became even more economically constrained after the collapse of Wall Street in 2008 (Ahlquist, 2014). We live in one of the richest, most highly unequal, corrupt, cronycapitalist, racist, classist, police states in the world, where regular surveillance of citizens has become the norm. Many people have lost faith in the system. This is the state of the nation. Society is being driven by the politics of fear. Because of increased surveillance, greater inequality, and militarization of the police, there is much justifiable fear and violence in society (Alexander, 2010; Saltman, 2009). Since 9/11, this fear has been used to incapacitate and to more strongly control the public sphere, the “Commons,” and more specifically new immigrants, particularly Muslims living in this country

60  Roberta Ahlquist (Alexander, 2011). The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world (www.visionsofhumanity.org). Fear, anger, trauma, amnesia, and apathy all lead to forms of paralysis. This enables white hegemonic power to more easily rule. For people of color this fear is deeply embedded in their minds and bodies. Fear and trauma are extremely effective forms of control (Coates, 2015; Robin, 2004). So, what does it mean today to be an American? Of course it depends on where you are situated in the power hierarchy, but for increasing numbers of people, life is far more insecure than ever before. Today, for the majority of us, it means living in a state of constant anxiety. Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his 2014 memoir to his 15-year-old son, argues that race and institutionalized racism are implicit products of U.S. “democracy,” the origins of which come out of slavery (Coates, 2015). Today we continue to observe the brutality of bodies not raised to be white, videotaped lying on the streets of far too many cities. Colorblindness is on the rise (Wise, 2010). U.S. Empire has been built on illusory notions of race, which have served to divide, segregate, and devalue ethnically/ racially diverse people, creating murder and brutal havoc for non-whites and other ethnic groups. Further, Islamophobia is blatantly present in the acts of individual violence against Muslims, as well as in the rants of politicians seeking to prohibit Muslims from even entering the country. To be a Muslim is near to being a terrorist. Bernie Sanders, advocating for a political revolution, argues that we no longer have a genuine form of democracy. A democracy requires some connection to freedom. But where is the freedom? Where is democracy? Too many people feel disenfranchised and fearful of striking back. We have runaway inequality in the United States as well as globally. Sixty-nine billionaires own more than over 50 percent of the world population. Statistics for the U.S. economic condition are stark: “Half of all public school children live in near poverty” (Layton, 2015). “In 2015, 16 million children received food stamps and 90 percent of Black children will be on food stamps at some point during childhood.” The National Center on Family Homelessness reports that, “One in 45 children experience homelessness in America each year.” That is over 1.6 million children. [Moreover] while homeless, they experience high rates of acute and chronic health problems. The constant barrage of stressful and traumatic experiences also has profound effects on their development and ability to learn (NCFH, 2015). Yet the government resists a national healthcare program. Sadly, these statistics barely scratch the surface of the dire and deep-seated problems facing many people in the richest country in the world, a state of affairs that provokes too little public outrage. “We the people” is a hollow euphemism and the “common good” has been replaced with a form of “individual responsibility”; it’s all about me, my, and I. It’s the best democracy that money can buy. Education counts in a democracy. It cannot be isolated from the cultural and social reality in which we live. We need public intellectuals to promote progressive ideas and actions. The university counts in a democracy (Giroux, 2015). We have a serious role to play.

Disrupting U.S. Empire  61 Yet, it’s hard to organize a democratic movement to save and promote the public trust or common good, or to keep the public in public schooling, with people full of fear. Fear is one of the most important aspects of the Black experience”, states Ta-Nehisi Coates (2016, 4/19/16, Hard Knock Radio). Yet there is much happening in small pockets of society to counter the assault on the public, unions, and public schooling that is not being covered in your local newspaper, or any spectacle-oriented corporate press. You’ll find much of it on social media, in blogs, and in the independent press. Schooling is the last institution to be privatized. Privatization functions on the idea of short-term gains over long-term policies. Nonetheless we still have time to organize bottom-up, to educate, and to act in the interests of keeping the public in public schooling. Today the U.S. corporate state is experiencing a pronounced radical rightwing insurgency against the body politic. There has been a corporate coup d’état. (Hedges, 2013). All things have been commodified, including people. Just look for a few minutes at the spectacle of the upcoming Presidential elections. We observed the drama of Republican candidates vociferously vying for their chances. We have a candidate running against billionaires and a billionaire, who somehow, has captured the minds of some of the working and middle class. Blatant, blustery Trump is “Carnavalesque” as he shouts in slanderous display, not unlike Mussolini, pontificating about what’s wrong with everyone else but himself. Advocating that Muslins not be admitted to the country is yet one example of his racism and traumatic Islamophobia. At best he is a sociopath, but currently this is the presumptive Republican candidate for president. What strange, confusing, and often contradictory tales we hear through the corporate media. How can people make sense of it? Many cannot, and stumble to the ballot box as their token responsibility to “democracy” to vote too often for a candidate who, clearly, doesn’t represent their interests. Myths such as “we live in a democracy”, “we live in a meritocracy,” and from too many in the working class, “Trump will make America rich,” and “hierarchies are fine” abound. This radical-right wing movement promotes a form of cultural conservatism and an exclusionary nativism, including direct attacks on multiculturalism, teachers, and unions (Ahlquist, 2011). Superficial, often racist, sexist, misogynist, and increasingly grossly inaccurate trivia has become the main content of the corporate media. Where does this come from? How can we counter it? Yet there are pockets of sanity in all of this. Finding those pockets is key for people who want a non-racist, more equitable and fair society. We need to organize serious-minded activists, mainly social-justice oriented people. But now to frame the context of the corporatization/ privatization movement and the contradictions we face. First, we need to offer a brief review of neoliberalism, for those who might not know about its impact. The purpose is to establish the context for an analysis of ways to counter the privatization of the public good, what I call the Commons. Neoliberalism has been around for over 50 years. It

62  Roberta Ahlquist is a concentrated form of global capitalism, or globalization, whereby all countries are interconnected by the rule of the market. The global financial elite control our lives, and most politicians are under their power. For a deeper analysis see David Harvey’s (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism on YouTube, (July 2006) or his book. There are five major points: 1. Rule of the market, which places corporate profits before people 2. Government deregulation, where national and state intervention is minimized 3. Privatization of all that can be privatized, beyond keeping the government out of the corporate agenda to privatize all that it can, including parks, water, even the air we breathe 4. The elimination of the Commons, the public good 5. Cutting public expenditures for any social services and reducing the social service safety net for poor people, another example of deficit ideology or “just pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality. (Harvey, 2005; National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights, 2008). It is important to point out that the military industrial complex fundamentally drives the U.S. economy. The military budget is over $156 billion per year. How to undermine this reality is a critically important challenge. But since Franklin. D. Roosevelt “saved” the country from socialism, with his welfare reform programs, such as Social Security and food stamps, the corporate elite has been at work to turn all this back and to privatize the public good (Zinn Education Project, 2016). Until we put a stop to the unending wars across the globe, there will be less money for the many needed social reform programs (Solomon, 2005). This fact gets little corporate press, but it is critically important to dismantling the war machine. Here is what privatization entails. Privatization is the transfer of public assets and services—owned and performed by the nation, state or local government—to corporations and individuals in the private sector. These are taken-for-granted basic services that people have depended upon for years, public services provided for the benefit of all. They include the Commons: public schools, local and national parks, healthcare clinics, federally subsidized housing, police and fire protection, postal services, water, sanitation, etc. Privatizing these public entities shifts responsibility from government or community funds to specific private entities. Within the institution of schooling, privatization brings about more serious, deep divisions and inequalities between students, teachers, parents, between schools, and resources. The “opportunity gap,” rather than the achievement gap, merely a standardized test score, is a result of serious racial and class divisions (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Over the past 30 years the radical right has ascended to undermine the Commons. The market mentality has replaced the Commons. During this period, the Koch brothers have been

Disrupting U.S. Empire  63 engaged in an unconscionable attack on public schools (Mayer, 2016). If privatization through vouchers or the charterization of public schools replaces the public good, then public participation and institutional responsibility and accountability are driven solely by a profit motive. This negatively impacts the human rights of all of us, but particularly the majority of people, the working and middle classes and the poor, especially women and poor people of color and poor whites. Privatization functions on the idea of short-term monetary gains over long-term policies. Today nearly all the institutions in the nation have been privatized. Schooling is the last institution under fire. The federal government spends $600 billion on education and the corporate hedge-fund managers and others are vying to access this money. So, much of the Commons has already been privatized (Ahlquist, 2014).

Defining the Commons The global Commons includes everything not made by humans: the oceans, space, the atmosphere, shared natural resources. What are the U.S. Commons? These Commons are the cultural and natural public resources and spaces accessible free for all people in our society. Today’s Commons include not only public lands, but nature, as well as the services that are developed for the welfare and trust of the entire community in which they exist. Our Commons are vast; they include social service programs, bridges, the post office, Social Security, police and fire protection, public clinics, transportation, public museums, housing, public schools, and natural resources such as water, air, and a habitable environment. These resources were gained from hard won fights over time, and should be available and enjoyed by and for all, yet now they are being taken away or privatized. They are being stolen from future generations and shifted from public to private property (otherworldsarepossible.org). The forces we need to fight to keep the Commons in our schools are formidable. It may be we are quite late in keeping the corporate world out of our curriculum, our teaching, tests, our exchanges with students and parents, but we can certainly fight back and offer parents, students, and teachers alternatives to the consumerist-driven and dumbeddown, one-size-fits all forms of charter schools, corporate driven curriculum, and high-stakes standardized tests that we are being coerced to accept by the venture philanthropists and their friends. The object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, but it is to make carpenters men. —W.E.B. DuBois We have been educated to believe that ever since Horace Mann argued that U.S. society would be advantaged by public schooling that would serve

64  Roberta Ahlquist the needs of all of society, many have fought to provide for better education for ALL of our children. Yet, ever since the origins of public schooling in the United States, capitalism required that schools actively contribute to the reproduction of the society’s socio-economic and political hierarchies, with their deeply ingrained inequities and inequalities (Bowles and Gintis, 2002; Brayboy, 2005; Ravitch, 2014; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010). Most of us are products of a public school system of “banking,” filling our minds with status quo, hegemonic Eurocentric ideas, values, and beliefs. Freire, among many others, advocated a problem-posing, liberatory curriculum (Freire, 1970). This approach to teaching and learning would benefit not only our society, but also global society. The contradictions exist, as a primary goal of capitalist public schooling has been to socialize students through a process Gramsci (1971) termed “hegemony” to become docile, patriotic citizens, and to prepare young people to fit into the corporate, global economy. Hegemonic race, class, and whiteness narratives result in our agreeing, usually tacitly, to certain dominant ideas, values, and beliefs that reproduce asymmetrical power relationships as normal or common sense (Bell, 2005), and to “manufacture consent” to inequitable, hierarchical, social orders (Chomsky, 1993). Hegemony shapes the views of those who benefit from dominant institutional and cultural arrangements and those who are oppressed by them. As a result of hegemony, many who are committed to working for social justice actively but unconsciously promote the status quo. It is critically important for teacher educators to teach teachers and parents about the role that both hegemony and reproduction theory play in society, and especially in education, because teachers are in a unique position to counter these hegemonic class and racial hierarchies among schools, teachers, and the children that they will teach (Lea, 2014). If we look at the proliferation of charter schools, we can see how the public is being undermined. Far too many charter schools around the country are creating an unequal, unjust multi-tiered system based upon racial/ class and language privilege. (Ravitch, 2014). So, it is important to consider the impact of the dramatic rise in venture philanthropy’s influence upon public schools in the United States. Their efforts to “charterize” and privatize public schools have been enormous. Who is responsible, and who is to blame for the major shifts away from deep, critical, problem-posing public school curricula and towards superficial, standardized, high-stakes tests? Let’s look a bit at the role that philanthropy has played in our society, particularly in our schools. Philanthropy in education is not new. As Lipman (2011a) observed [it] has played a significant role in shaping U.S. education to serve capital accumulation, social control, we must consider the long-term effects of un-checked and increasing influence of venture philanthropists upon public schooling in the U.S. (Kumashiro, 2012; Lipman, 2011b; Saltman, 2009)

Disrupting U.S. Empire  65 Pearson Testing is making billions on these new tests and curricula. Blogger and education activist Susan O’Hanian argues that the Business Roundtable was working on both privatizing and high stakes testing in the 1980s. “I’d caution that most people are busy complaining about Pearson and not looking at the fact that all this started with the Business Roundtable agenda in the late 1980’s” (O’Hanian). Here is how Obama defines his major goal regarding schooling. In 2013 Obama was bold in his State of the Union address: Tonight, I’m announcing a new challenge, to redesign America’s high schools so they better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy. And we’ll reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers, and create classes that focus on science, technology, engineering and math, the skills today’s employers are looking for to fill the jobs that are there right now and will be there in the future. (The White House Office of the Press Secretary, 2013, Feb. 12) Unfortunately, Obama’s proposed public-private partnerships went far beyond public school classrooms. They also included the country’s most essential infrastructure: roads, bridges, rails, and even the energy grid. Yet in 2016 the United States has one of the most unequal and resegregated school systems in the world (Ravich, 2014). We also have the most economic inequality of the advanced capitalist countries (Reich, 2010). Furthermore, imperialism is flourishing across the globe. Even in a small, homogenous, white country like Finland, where equity is the bottom-line in social services and public schooling, outsourcing and concomitant unemployment is constricting the safety net for its citizens. In great part, because “no country is an island,” refugees are flooding to countries where they might have a better chance to live. Thus, Finnish taxes are increasing, there is an increase in unemployment, Finland has had to cut back on social services, pensions are delayed; these are current mandates. Finland has had some of the highest standardized Program for International Student Assessment scores in the world (www.oecd.org/pisa/). Pasi Sahlberg in Finnish Lessons, argues that the U.S. school system is doing just the opposite of what the Finns are doing (Sahlberg, 2011). The most significant difference is that the Finns value equity and equality more than success as measured by standardized test scores in their schools (Partanen, 2011). Yet, no country is an island in the globalized world economy. Thus, the small northern European countries are being economically stretched like never before. For example, because Nokia was partially bought out by Microsoft, most Finnish workers were laid off and now the unemployment rate in some Finnish cities is around 10 percent. Pensions are being reduced, inflation is increasing, and large numbers of war refugees are entering Finland and other northern European countries. How this will affect their educational system is not clear.

66  Roberta Ahlquist

Venture Philanthropy and Privatization The major players, the venture philanthropists involved in restructuring public education are not easily identified in the corporate press. Joel Spring has exposed these major players in his book, Political Agendas, (Fifth Edition, 2014). They include Bill and Melinda Gates, Eli Broad, and Walton Foundations, Pearson Testing Company, and the American Enterprise Institute, founded by the Charles and David Koch, for starters. Investment bankers, major for-profit companies, and servants of power like Obama, Arne Duncan, Joe Klein, Michelle Rhee, Wendy Kopp, and those most involved with building Teach for America, to name a few, are fundamentally reshaping public schooling. Philanthropy in education is not new. As Lipman (2011a) observes, “. . . [it] has played a significant role in shaping U.S. education to serve capital accumulation, social control, and White supremacy” (Watkins, 2001). An article in Educational Researcher (Reckhow and Snyder, 2014) provides important social network analysis of the expanding role of philanthropy in education politics: “Our analyses show growing support for national-level advocacy organizations . . . foundations increasingly fund organizations that operate as ‘jurisdictional challengers’ by competing with traditional public sector institutions.” Yet the article gives little analysis or attention to the neoliberal agenda (Giroux, 2004; Harvey, 2005; Lipman, 2011a) that many, if not most, of these organizations support. The reader is offered minimal historical, political, or social justice context within which to understand the expansion of venture philanthropy, only mentioned in passing is the fact that The tenor of the conversation about education philanthropy has changed greatly in the past 10 years. Criticism about ineffectiveness has been replaced by criticism that foundations are too powerful and are attempting to privatize public education from their lofty headquarters. (Ravitch, 2010) These philanthropist entrepreneurs shamelessly frame their goals and mandates as merely “neutral aide” for our “failing” schools. But by excluding contexts (historical, political, racial, sociological, and geographical) and the social justice and participatory commitments of teachers and others, plus the implications for those of us concerned about the future of public education and participatory democracy, this verges on the criminal. Jane Mayer’s new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right is a powerful expose and analysis of the 35 plus years in which Charles and David Koch have been organizing to privatize public schooling across the nation (Mayer, 2016). Researchers and teachers need to illuminate a multiplicity of perspectives of this power struggle to consider critically the long-term implications of un-checked and recently dramatically increasing influence by these venture/vulture “philanthropists,” (deMarrais, 2006; Kumashiro, 2012; Lipman, 2011a; Saltman,

Disrupting U.S. Empire  67 2009, 2010) upon public education in the United States, and given the workings of globalization, the world.

A Deeper Look at Venture Philanthropy and School Privatization Venture philanthropy? What is it you ask? Are you sure you don’t mean “adventure philanthropy”? Or perhaps more accurately, it is vulture philanthropy. Some questions to consider: What are the goals of the biggest education-oriented venture/vulture philanthropists, venture capitalists, anyway? What are their interests as related to public schooling? Furthermore, people keep using the term hegemony. What does that look like? What are some of the implications of philanthropic funding? What are the costs and benefits? What kinds of strings are attached? Why are schools significantly more segregated now, on both class and racial lines, than before Brown vs. the Board of Education? What kinds of schooling do poor students, especially poor students of color and English-language learners have in most public schools? Why is there such a push for Common Core standards, and who is promoting this one-size-fits-all curriculum? Who is served by it? Who is not served? Why are so many public schools being charterized? If we find serious problems with these reforms, what can we do to push back? Venture philanthropy has a long history in U.S. education. As a form of hegemonic class control, it has played a major role in reproducing the capitalist system, including white supremacy (Lipman, 2011a). Hegemony is a tool to “manufacture consent” (Chomsky, 1993) over what the corporate class deems is in their specific interest. Contributing to capitalist reproduction of the system, neoliberalism, over the past 40–50 years, has served as a concentrated, globalizing function, and venture capitalists, like the Koch brothers, who founded ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit organization that draws in legislators, politicians, and many of the corporate elite to serve as a national forum of regressive reform. They develop and pass legislation to serve corporate interests. They promote school board members who are supportive of charter schools and vouchers. This conservative organization has become more directly involved in playing an overt role in fundamentally reshaping schooling to serve the interests of the capitalist class. This privatization movement is not only occurring nationally, but globally. The U.S. “superpower” provides models for global capitalism, including schooling. So, why is it that billionaires are running our schools? (Kumishiro, 2012). Whose interest is served by privatizing schooling in the United States? These questions need to be answered.

Unmasking and Disrupting Hegemony There are many hegemonic mechanisms of power and control that are being used to keep people uninformed, silent and “in order”, under the thumb of the corporate class. We have become a compliant and depoliticized country.

68  Roberta Ahlquist Hegemony shapes the views of those who benefit from dominant institutional and cultural arrangements and those who are oppressed by them. As a result of hegemony, many who are committed to working for social justice actively but unconsciously promote the status quo. It is critically important to teach teachers and parents about the role that both hegemony and reproduction theory play in society, and especially in education, because teachers are in a unique position to promote progressive social transformation of class and racial hierarchies not only by affecting the students in our classes, but also the children that they will teach. Let’s look at a few of these mechanisms of power and control as they relate to schooling. These are ways in which consent is manufactured. First, the corporate media keeps us ignorant of all but the acceptable news that the powers that be want us to know. Standardization, in the form of high-stakes standardized tests and as a Eurocentric curriculum, is another example of hegemonic control. Colorblindness/color muteness is a mechanism of power and control. The militarization of schools and the school-to-prison pipeline are yet other forms of control. Increasing surveillance and categorizing people into narrow, stereotypical boxes is hegemonic (Lea, 2014). Either/ or dualistic thinking is also an example of hegemonic thinking. There is a broad range of answers to questions, and seldom is “no or yes” or “good or bad” sufficient. Exposing the neoliberal hegemonic agenda of the political right wing machine, including the Democrats, and the role of venture capitalists like the Koch brothers, is critically important. Elimination of the idea of “the public good” and “community,” is being replaced with the concept of “individual responsibility.” This concept is an aspect of deficit ideology, also called “blaming the victim.” Deficit thinking is very prevalent in our society. We are socialized to believe that people on the downside of power are “less than.” That includes poor people, people of color, English-language learners, and new immigrants from certain countries. Educating students, parents, and others to challenge the rigid hegemonic hierarchy of schools and society is a crucial goal of a democratic agenda.

Countering Privatization and Creating Subjects for Transformative Change A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

What kind of lives do we want our children to live in this society? How do we wish them to be connected to the larger global society? We are not islands. Meaning-making and investing in the future generations is not overtly addressed in our schooling. Education should be about the practice

Disrupting U.S. Empire  69 of freedom. Figuring out who we are and what we want to do with our lives is a critical goal of schooling. It needs to be a fundamental piece of what a good education is about. Public schooling provides free equal access to educational opportunities for ALL of our children, hopefully for more than “the basics,” but also to learn, critique, grow, and learn to embrace the great diversity that is part of this country. Learning how to be critically conscious of the world in which we live is an aspect of a quality public education. Teachers and parents need to critically question the longterm implications of the un-checked impact on the Commons, our public sphere, and particularly public schooling, by venture philanthropists. Such uncontested influence severely constrains possibilities of social justice for all students in our public schools and obstructs the preparation of students as powerful, transformative citizens committed to a more democratic society. Privatization of public schools takes away from the public, the common good for all. As a form of white hegemony, it commodifies learning and kids, and shapes students into the corporate world’s agenda for the workplace. It also limits what kids learn about life and their opportunities and contributions to society. It limits access to a variety of rich, culturally and linguistically important experiences, to diverse ethnic, racial, class, and cultural backgrounds of students, and to diverse perspectives. We need to secure public schooling as a covenant, a contract, and a guarantee for the future. If we want to maintain the Commons for the public good, what role can teachers play? Where do we begin? How can teachers, activists, and community members justifiably put the “public” back into our schools and our society? First, we can challenge the public funding in the charter school movement so that funding for public schools is not being drained away from public schools. Public spaces, public water, air, schools; these are all our basic, fundamental rights as citizens. It is our challenge to interrupt and disrupt taken-for-granted notions of public and private space, and to push for more growth and reclamation of the Commons. We can educate the public about the role of organized labor. It serves as the only barrier to corporate tyranny (Chomsky, 2016, 4/17/KPFA program). Short- and long-term goals: We need to expose and unhinge the vulture philanthropists’ attack on public schools as a way of having more control over the curriculum, assessments, and the future lives of our students. There needs to be a massive multi-focused collation to educate parents, teachers, and the larger community about the corporate media and alternatives to it. The corporate media has bought into promoting charter schools. We must expose the problems with charter schools, especially the vast sums of money being drained from public schools to support them (Helig et al., 2016). Privatization severely constrains possibilities of social justice for all students in our public schools and obstructs the preparation of students as powerful and effective citizens committed to social justice and social democracy. In addition, this influence, tied as much of it is to the neoliberal agenda

70  Roberta Ahlquist of privatization, threatens the increasingly fragile existence of the public sphere, the Commons, in democratic life. Parents, administrators, community activists, and teachers need to learn about the importance of the public sphere and how most charter schools don’t serve the broader purpose of an equitable society, a sustainable world. We should enlist as many allies as possible to work in coalition against the agenda of the vulture philanthropists.

Swimming against the Tide There are several critical actions we can take for long-term change: Most important we need to develop and expand mass movements, with coalitions of activists, from the bottom-up. The Occupy movement was a start, as was Idle No More. Equally important is the fight to control climate change and stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We need to take steps to build a critical consciousness that challenges the war machine, the status quo, taken-for-granted assumptions about the future of our planet, and who has power and control, and develop ways to disrupt the unequal power relations in the current social order. We need to envision critical inter-connected movements for social and political transformation towards an authentic social democracy. We also need to develop solutions to major crises in the society and the world. Climate change and nuclear proliferation are two of these important crises. Instead of unrelated, decontextualized content, why not begin with the major problems and issues of the day in the society and world? If we can relearn how to challenge and question, reimagine rather than submissively accept the banking content of the standardized curriculum, we are on the right track to transformative change. Here are some specific topics that we can address within the context of public schools and society in general.

Ways to Participate in Mass Movements to Counter Privatization I can understand pessimism, but I don’t believe in it. It’s not simply a matter of faith, but of historical evidence. Not overwhelming evidence, just enough to give hope, because for hope we don’t need certainty, only possibility. —Howard Zinn

1 Climate change and nuclear proliferation: Join in support of global climate change activists. Develop a nuclear weapons free zone. If we don’t push back against climate change and nuclear arms, we won’t have an earth to live on. So, this is the umbrella group under which all other organizing should take place. Decide where you want to place your energy and time. We all need to take active steps within at least one of these five major areas. Just one of many such organizations, 350.org is

Disrupting U.S. Empire  71 fighting to make people aware of the serious condition of the health and sustainability of the earth. 2 Black Lives Matter: Supporting local groups who are facing police violence is imperative. Follow this group online. Racism is on the rise across the country. This group is involved in countering the school-to-prison pipeline as well. 3 The immigrant crisis, political refugees, “Dreamers,” and Idle No More: All have common concerns that need to be linked as coalitions are built. We need to look at the power relations and how these groups can work in coalition. Some say that the Syrian refugee crisis was created because “they are coming here because we were there.” There are many small groups across the country that are fighting for equal rights. Find out who is organizing in your community, your state. War Made Easy, by Norman Solomon (2005) is a good start at being better informed about the unending wars that the United States has begun and supports. 4 Bottom-up-union movements for livable wages as well as supporting teacher union movements around the country, combined with a new workers’ party: Critiquing the economy is a way of seeing how capitalism is unsustainable in the long haul. Currently, many people in the working class have been duped into voting against their own selfinterests. Contact local teacher union activists and related community groups to become educated, educate and support others. 5 Public education, raising consciousness as we do our work: The oneparty system of “Republicrats” no longer represents or supports the needs of the working class, nor the middle class. We need to improve the social, economic, and cultural conditions in public schools and seek funding for public schools from sources other than property taxes. Building class alliances across differences is key to transforming the institutions in our society. The efforts to privatize schooling include countering the high-stakes testing movement. Teachers and parents need to learn about and join the parentsacrossamerica.com program to opt-out of these regressive tests. Again, there are many parents and teacher groups who are working to eliminate high stakes testing. We need to think of counter-intuitive ideas and specific ways to address conflict and cognitive dissonance as we learn to overcome our anxieties and fears. The critical issues for the future are not single issues but are interrelated. Educating the public about the role that the oligarchy, the government, and corporate leadership has taken in the interests of the 1 percent. We also need to learn and teach others to become effective, democratic leaders as we subvert top-down educational reform mandates. The need to be willing to commit to something bigger than oneself is critical as we move towards a post-capitalist system. It will take massive civil disobedience to alert the general public to the serious state we are in.

72  Roberta Ahlquist We need to grow and support bottom up democratic actions, and become actors, subjects in the world, not objects to be acted upon (Freire, 1993). Can the existing system tolerate this? If not, the system needs to be changed. But without a broad-based, mass political movement that would serve the diverse needs of our students, our communities, our society, the gross inequality will only continue and a totalitarian regime will be needed to maintain control. We should learn to live with uncomfortability, with rebellious ideas and actions, acts that may somewhat threaten our worldview, but will better serve the needs of more socially just communities. North Dakota, for example, is the only state with a publicly owned bank. The Bank of North Dakota’s mission is to serve the people of the state in many constructive ways. It supports local banks and credit unions. Student loans, loans for farmers and local industry are kept at reasonable rates (BND, 7/2/2015 ilsr. org/rule/bank-of-north-dakota-2). Mortgage interest is not gobbled up by Wall Street, but kept within the state. Founded in 1919, prior to the Great Depression, it helped farmers, small owners, and ordinary people survive the economic hardships of the Depression.

How to Educate the Public, Parents, the School Boards, and Administrators Why keep the “public” in public schools? Privatization perverts the goals of schooling. Education is not a product, but a process of learning and engaging with others to learn more about how to more equitably function and contribute to a more humane world. Privatization also functions on the idea of short-term test score gains over long-term policies. Studies have shown that charter schools have not improved the education of most students, especially poor students, poor students of color, and those from Englishlearner backgrounds (Credo Stanford Study). Public schools are held to higher accountability and more open transparency. Venture capitalists in the education industry want the money that is invested in public schools. In order to wrest control of that money they want to change the education paradigm to a viable business model, arguing that public schools are failing kids, and in doing that, they have unfairly discredited public education. The vast majority of teachers go into teaching to serve their students. Check out the wages and status of schoolteachers in the country. Only recently have unions been successful in slightly improving the wages, while working conditions have deteriorated for the vast majority of schools that serve working class kids, poor kids of color, and new immigrants. Now teachers are being subjected to punishments if kids fail the high stakes standardized tests, so the quality of instruction has been driven down. These superficial, standardized tests are failing our kids, our society. Teachers are becoming glorified test-givers at the expense of teaching them how to think, challenge unequal power relations, and become more informed, responsible, active citizens, with knowledge, and power to act. High test scores have no relationship, no correlation to these goals. Trusting teachers more and vulture capitalists less is a baseline for constructive change. Who

Disrupting U.S. Empire  73 knows more about your children than their teachers? Yet the top-down federal reforms have taken away teacher power, demonized teachers, stifled their sense of integrity and responsibility, and repressed their authenticity and self-efficacy. Teacher unions have been unfairly attacked as they attempt to push back on the privatization/charter reform movement (Montano and Cruz, in press; Saltman, 2010). Charter schools are sucking billions of taxpayer monies from the public schools. One example of this is happening in the Los Angeles School District (NEA, 2016). Betsy DeVos, the new Department of Education Nominee, has a long history of destroying the public by charterizing schools. We must push back against this agenda. Public monies should not be used to subsidize vouchers or charter schools, see CTA/ NEA article online (http://educationvotes.nea. org/2016/05/14/new-report-la-charters-siphon-away-almost-half-a-billionfrom-public-school-students). This takes away from the public and makes such schooling even more unequal. High-quality public schools with caring teachers give all of our children a chance to become active citizens of society. Actions for change: efforts to build bottom-up mass movements, coalitions of activists, such as the Occupy Education movement are a start. Idle No More and Standing Rock Sioux are contributing to increasing awareness of what is needed for Native Americans to be affirmed by the general public, the community, and against the corporate world. Black Lives Matter is another important national community group to work within coalitions. How do we stop the school-to-prison pipeline that has sent thousands of young men of color to prison over minor transgressions? (Alexander, 2010). We need to teach students to develop critical questions and solve real social problems that contribute to improving our lives. Teaching for a critical consciousness that challenges the status quo, taken-for-granted assumptions about how people are treated, schooled, cared for, how the country works, who has power and control, and exposing the unequal power relations in the current social order and specific ways to make our society more fair and egalitarian are significant goals for public schooling. Teachers should openly teach about extreme capitalism, fascism, class interests, oligarchy, and hegemony and raise questions about how the working class has been fooled into voting against their own self-interests. Teachers and parents should collaborate with other groups who are working to make the society a healthier, more equitable, place to live and work. There are many groups working for constructive change. Whether it is climate change, equitable schools, challenging racism and other forms of oppression, we must work together. Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders’ campaign for social, economic, racial, and environmental justice is a beacon of light, and has much potential for a whole range of progressive policies. His campaign and its continuing movement, is a step in the direction of challenging the illusions of democracy and exposing the grossly unequal capitalist system. He has raised the level of awareness of just how unequal, corrupt, and undemocratic the system is. His advocacy for free public education through college is a program we need to promote as a popular mandate for the country. Sanders has created

74  Roberta Ahlquist spaces for us to push a progressive agenda forward. We must take advantage of this platform, and this should be a major focus of educational justice that progressives promote now that Trump is in power. Sanders himself has said that this is about a movement, not about a man. Millions of people voted for him and organized with him, including vast numbers of millennials who were spurred into action because of his social justice agenda. We need to actively engage these people in a broader, longterm progressive movement for the long haul. We need many more bottomup Sanders campaigns to join together to counter the neoliberal agenda. In July 2016 there were several national groups organizing to keep the public schools alive. In Washington, DC there was a Peoples’ March for Public Education, Save Our Schools Activists Conference, and a Coalition Summit and Organizing Session (see Rethinkingschools.org for more information). There are many groups organizing for racial, economic, political justice, and fundamental change in our society. A local school district in Seattle, Washington, for example, recently decided to reject the Common Core standards. Oregon has added climate change to their curriculum, as a required part of public school content. Many states have opted out of some of the high stakes tests. There are many examples of students and teachers across the country that are taking back their curriculum, expanding arts and music courses, and promoting ethnic studies history courses. Together we can be a powerful force for change. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will. —Frederick Douglass With Trump’s “win,” the neoliberal right wing reform movement has severely constrained possibilities of social justice for all students in our public schools and has threatened the preparation of students as powerful and effective citizens committed to radical democracy. We must build a progressive movement across class and racial lines, with alliances that will support and sustain us. If we commit to challenge the oligarchy, and to make this social justice transformation, it will bring us closer to becoming more humane citizens of the world. For the long haul, it is in all of our interests and the interests of our planet, to work to educate about the serious chaos we face and the failure of capitalism to solve our problems—racism, poverty, unending wars, inadequate healthcare, severe housing shortages, etc. We desperately need a major transformational movement to radically change the economic system that is absurd: brutal, corrupting, sick, and lethal (McChesney and Foster, 2010). Only then will we have a chance at a future for the next generations. This will not happen without a huge change in how people understand the severity of the problem and a strong desire to act to build a viable, humane, and sustainable world.

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76  Roberta Ahlquist Kumashiro, K. K. (2012). When billionaires become educational experts. Academe, 98(3): 0–16. Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in US schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7): 3–12. Layton, L. (2015, January 16). Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty. Washington Post. Retrieved January 22, 2014, from www.washingtonpost.com. Lea, V. (2014). Constructing critical consciousness: Narratives that unmask hegemony, and ideas for creating greater equity in education. New York: Peter Lang. Lipman, P. (2011a). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. New York: Routledge. Lipman, P. (July 2011b). Neoliberal education restructuring dangers and opportunities of the present crisis. Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, 63(3): 114–127. Mayer, J. (2016). Dark money: The hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. New York: Doubleday. McChesney, R., and Foster, J. B. (2010). Capitalism, the absurd system: A view from the United States. Monthly Review, 62(2): 1–16. Montano, T., and Cruz, M. (in press). Educate, agitate and organize: One union’s response to the teacher shortage and union bashing. In R. Ahlquist, P. Gorski, and T. Montano (Eds.), Assault on kids and teachers: Countering privatization, deficit ideologies and standardization in U.S. schools. New York: Peter Lang. National Center for Farmworker Health (2015). 2015 Midwest stream farmworker health forum. Buda, TX: Author. National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (2008). Over-raided, under siege: US immigration laws and enforcement destroy the rights of immigrants. Oakland, CA: Author. OECD. (2016). Programme for international student assessment. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/pisa/. Other Worlds Are Possible. (2016). Haiti. Retrieved from http://otherworldsare possible.org. Partanen, A. (2011). What Americans keep ignoring about Finland’s school success. Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved December 29, 2011, from www.theatlantic.com/ national/archive/2011/ . . . /250564/. Privatization. Retrieved from www.salon.com/2014/02/19/4_ways_privatization_ is_ruining_our_education_system_partner/. Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great American school system. New York: Basic Books. Ravitch, D. (2014). Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America’s public schools. New York: Vintage Press. Reckhow, S., and Snyder, J. W. (2014). The expanding role of philanthropy in education politics. Educational Researcher, 43(4): 186–195. Reich, R. B. (2010). The work of nations: Preparing ourselves for 21st Century capitalism. New York: Vintage. Robin, C. (2004). Fear: The history of a political idea. New York: Oxford University Press. Sahlberg, P. (2011). Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? New York: Teachers College Press. Saltman, K. (2009). The rise of venture philanthropy and the ongoing assault on public education: The Eli and Edythe broad foundation. Workplace, 15: 53–72.

Disrupting U.S. Empire  77 Saltman, K. (2010). The gift of education: Public education and venture philanthropy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Solomon, N. (2005). War made easy: How presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Spring, J. (2014). Political agendas for education (5th ed). New York: Routledge. Sundas, S. F. (2015). American Muslim voice founder, classroom presentation. San Jose, CA: San Jose State University. Washington, B. (2016). New report: LA charters siphon away almost half a billion from public school students. Washington, DC: NEA. Watkins, W. (2001). The white architects of black education: Ideology and power in American, 1865–1954. New York: Teachers College Press. The White House Office of the Press Secretary (2013, Feb. 12). Remarks by the president in the State of the Union address. Author. Website: https://www.whitehouse. gov/the-press-office/2013/02/12/remarks-president-state-union-address. Wilkinson, R., and Pickett, K. (2010). The spirit level: Why greater equality makes societies stronger: The spirit level. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Wise, T. (2010). Colorblind: The rise of post-racial politics and the retreat from racial equity. San Francisco: City Lights Books. Zinn Education Project (2016). Teaching a people’s history. Website: https://zinned project.org/.

5 SCALE Down, SCALE Back! Academic Freedom under Siege through Standards Proliferation by Para-Educational Enterprises Stephen J. Farenga and Daniel Ness Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.” In support, Mark Twain wrote, “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Closer to our time, Maya Angelou stated: “We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.” Our dear friend and colleague Dale D. Johnson embraced all of these sentiments when he frequently would assert that “One must sift and winnow to find the truth.” It is the spirit and meaning of these words that exemplify the philosophy Dale had imbued upon us. Since the practitioner-based element of education is primarily a political enterprise, Dale has taught us to scratch the surface of what policymakers tell us and look beyond what we have been told, examine the claims and forms of evidence as a way to carefully identify the facts and draw valid conclusions. He was careful to note that facts were not context-free and that the information to which individuals are exposed is often revealed through nuance. In this chapter, we continue Dale’s legacy as we sift and winnow explanations as to why public education seems to benefit the coffers of private enterprises and not schoolchildren.

From Oz to Race to the Top In marketing discourse, the term pseudo-event is often used to indicate the implementation of contrived or fabricated events, places, or ideas for one’s public support and political gain. The last event held at the Emerald City by the Wizard of Oz, the eponymous character in L. Frank Baum’s popular American fairy tale, where the Scarecrow is supposed to get a brain, the Tin Man a heart, the Cowardly Lion courage, and Dorothy and Toto are supposed to return to Kansas, is a prime example of what is referred to by critics of the marketing profession as a pseudo-event, in other words, events that are either trumped up to an extent that little, if anything, is either factually accurate or valid, or those that have never occurred to begin with (Boorstin, 1987). The irony is that the Wizard of Oz is truly not a wizard, but a man who rules by proclamation. As one who hides behind the smoke

SCALE Down, SCALE Back!  79 and mirrors, he appears to have the power to bestow intelligence, feeling, and courage. There are many parallels that can be drawn between the Wizard and past U.S. Secretaries of Education and their assertions of achievement, high standards, and “better” measures of assessment. So, when the curtain is pulled open, the Wizard and the secretaries resemble carnival barkers whose true skill is to grab one’s attention in order to distract from the realities of the moment. Upon reflecting on over a decade of our work examining education policy, we are concerned that the adverse influences of market-based education reform in addition to the corporatizing of teacher accreditation and its impact on the academy have not waned. To be sure, while the academy has been passive and dormant in terms of its stakes in teacher preparation, corporate enterprises have been active in their quest in making public education private. The Wizard’s deception can serve as a perspicuous precedent to contemporary issues in education where educational enterprises and policy makers have used pseudo-events—propagandistic techniques—as a means of altering public perception about the everyday realities of education and the students served. We use the Land of Oz as an analogy to current phenomena in the U.S. system of education. Three of the more notable phenomena are 1) the implementation of a national education accreditation agency and its vacuous claims of recognition and achievement; 2) the sanctioning of authority to professional subject area organizations and their regulation of knowledge domains through the continuous promulgation of standards (Farenga, Ness, and Sawyer, 2015; Ness, Farenga, Shah, and Garofalo, 2016); and 3) the market-based national standards movement through the introduction and inculcation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Federal funding serves as the common thread that has linked accreditation agencies, educational testing agencies, professional organizations, and national standards. It appears that each of these mandates has become more punitive beginning with the Clinton era’s Goals 2000, followed by the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind Act, and continuing with the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top Initiative. The Oz analogy can be applied to the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP, formerly NCATE) and its intimate relationship with the U.S. Department of Education. CAEP’s actions have precedent in NCATE, the former national accreditor (Johnson, Johnson, Farenga, and Ness, 2005, 2008). We contend that CAEP’s alignment within these organizations has destructive consequences for education policy and the academy by establishing a monopoly on the accreditation process. Because it maintains a federal link supported and mandated by federal policy initiatives, CAEP assumes a central role in our analysis. NCLB and Race to the Top provisions have required states to adopt some form of the CCSS in addition to mandating the accreditation of teacher education programs by a national accreditor—at present, only CAEP—as a means to require state departments of education to comply with regulations in the federal mandates.

80  Stephen J. Farenga and Daniel Ness In examining of the records from the new federal education policy that requires the regulation of schools of education by an accreditor, such as CAEP, we have identified a number of major concerns in meeting these regulations. Six overarching concerns include the following: 1 Federal overreach 2 Unfunded mandates that are a burden on schools of education and state departments of education 3 Over-emphasis and reliance on student outcomes from assessments that have not been validated 4 Adverse impact on schools in high-needs communities 5 Adverse impact on STEM disciplines 6 Redundancy of federal, state, and accreditor regulations. Despite its past standing as an authoritative body whose unrelenting authority was bereft of checks and balances—due in part to the unilateral actions of NCLB and the Race to the Top Initiative—CAEP has not necessarily been the only suspect in the move toward the implicit privatizing of teacher education and curriculum. The problem is much more systemic; CAEP serves not as the focal point, but as the umbrella organization for a much broader group of organizations involved in the usurpation of teacher education and the nationalization of standards. We refer to these organizations as para-educational enterprises. We argue that through the use of standards and its alliances in collusion with professional associations, testing companies, and state education departments, CAEP and the US Department of Education Race to the Top initiative has thwarted progress in terms of student achievement, creativity, and social justice. We also contend that the use of standards has become a wide-scale surrogate for curriculum, creativity, broad field knowledge, and assessment. The combined effect of these standards delimits the academy’s ability to foster diverse curriculum, social justice, and academic freedom (Mcguire, 2015). Further, the unprecedented amount of private money, in addition to public funds, has only increased educational pandering.

Current Climate in American Education If governments can sell national parks, interstate highways, and other related publicly owned infrastructures, the sale of the academy and public education might not be far behind. The actions of the Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix and other for-profit educational enterprises, demonstrates the public’s willingness to attend for-profit institutions of higher education. At its height, the University of Phoenix had an enrollment of approximately 500,000 students. As a result of the economic downturn, questions regarding the effectiveness of its programs and college placement, and misappropriation of federal aid, the current enrollment of the University of Phoenix is approximately 250,000. Although the institution has enrolled half of its enrollment since 2008, most universities would welcome this

SCALE Down, SCALE Back!  81 number of admission applications. What had begun as a push to destabilize one of the professional arms of the academy will end as a full-scale assault to transform the mission of non-profit higher education (Aronowitz, 2015; Giroux, 2005, 2014; Giroux and Giroux, 2006). In terms of methods of accountability, dicta by Margaret Spellings and Arne Duncan, former U.S. Secretaries of Education, represent clear evidence of this assault. The Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education discussed the apparent need for transparency and accountability across colleges and universities. The Commission suggested that this can be accomplished by standardized assessments that would purport to measure what has been learned in college (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). Arne Duncan was appointed the Secretary of Education by the Obama Administration in 2009. The major reforms and policies under his leadership included the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), an increase in the number of charter schools, Value Added Models (VAM) to evaluate teachers, and the use of funds from Race to the Top initiatives in an effort to coerce states into changing the manner in which teacher evaluations were conducted and weaken tenure laws for teachers. While it is clear that Duncan was successful in implementing change, the success of his reforms appears ineffective and highly suspect (Brown, Eilperin, and Layton, 2015; Mcguire, 2015). Duncan’s efforts emphasized an unprecedented use of standardized testing to assess students’ knowledge and to use those results in the evaluation and possible scapegoating of their teachers. Duncan’s policy initiatives quickly put him at odds with teacher unions, certain parent groups, and some academics. Duncan’s stance was similar to that of prior education secretaries, whose main objectives were to close the achievement gap and to ensure equitable funding for all children. Duncan believed that this could be accomplished by his push for high standards through the implementation of the CCSS, which is a code word for “national standards” and “improved teacher quality.” His goal was to implement high standards in order to measure effectiveness of teachers and thereby incriminate them for poor student performance. Overall, the results from states that have adopted CCSS have not shown significant improvement in test scores as measured by National Assessment of Educational Progress (henceforth NAEP, 2015). In fact, states such as Iowa, that have traditionally demonstrated improvement, have either shown a decline or have remained flat in language arts and mathematics. In addition, the equity promised by lessening the achievement gap is not evidenced by the test results. These outcomes are persistent and parallel the results for the majority of states that have adopted CCSS and participated in the NAEP assessments. In fact, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Utah have dispensed with CCSS. Other states, such as New York and Ohio, have reversed the emphasis on standardized testing, while Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia never adopted CCSS to begin with. So, what has changed with our new assessments? It should be noted that many of these assessments in the past were state products. That is, the tests and the grading were completed under the auspices of state education

82  Stephen J. Farenga and Daniel Ness departments. Today, many of these assessments have been outsourced to private enterprises; the key role of state education departments in the assessment process is to send out the contracts to private companies and pay the bill. The state of Texas serves as a prime example. Texas alone will pay Pearson Education $500 million (one-half-billion dollars) for its testing contract (Quinton and McGee, 2013). The appeal of CCSS was to establish one set of standards for all fifty states and to provide a legitimate way to compare student test scores across states. It is our belief that these test scores were to be used as a proxy for measuring and achieving equity. This is a much more economical method to achieve equity; test scores are much more malleable than the students themselves (Farenga, Ness, Johnson, and Johnson, 2008; Farenga, Ness, and Sawyer, 2015). In addition, national standards make it much easier for testing companies to develop assessment instruments that can be used in all fifty states and territories. The initial introduction to the CCSS was supported by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. However, questions soon appeared about the funding and the content associated with the new set of standards. According to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website, over $200 million was given in 2013 to support the CCSS. As of the writing of this chapter, the Gates Foundation continues to invest in the CCSS. Diane Ravitch (2014) suggests the CCSS would not have been possible without the unprecedented support of the Gates Foundation, a suggestion that is corroborated by Brown (2015) and Brown, Eilperin, and Layton (2015). In spite of the vast amount of money that had been contributed to policymakers, think tanks, universities, and The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the CCSS became so unpopular that some states halted their implementation beyond language arts and mathematics. Education policymakers in other disciplines, such as science, were careful to distance themselves and not to call the new standards that were developed “Common Core State Standards.” Instead, a new title was presented, and the “Common Core State Science Standards” became the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Due to the poor rollout, policymakers in states such as New York have halted the introduction of NGSS, and will rebrand the standards in order to camouflage them as their own state initiatives. In keeping with the Race to the Top Initiative, Duncan’s efforts in New Orleans made it clear that he was a firm supporter of charter schools. Interestingly, charter schools found support from conservatives and liberals for vastly different reasons. However, when charter schools are not permitted to eliminate select members of a population, their student performance data are no different from those of traditional public schools. The greatest impact on public schools from the proliferation of charter schools is the transfer of taxpayer funds to, in many cases, private entities. What remains then are unfunded public schools with an even smaller tax-base to support their operations (Johnson, Johnson, Farenga, and Ness, 2008).While the growth of charter schools has been offered as a panacea to replace the perception of failing public schools (Berliner and Biddle, 1995), there seems to be no great achievement gap between charter and public schools.

SCALE Down, SCALE Back!  83 In 2008 and 2009, while states were cash strapped by the Great Recession, the Obama Administration announced a $4.35 billion Race to the Top initiative (Brown, Eilperin, and Layton, 2015; Mcguire, 2015). State departments of education were encouraged to submit transformative education proposals, a specific emphasis was placed on changes to teacher evaluations and other Race to the Top mandates that required the adoption of CCSS in some format. A catchphrase for adopting CCSS was the term “college-to-career readiness.” The new powerful role of the federal government’s intervention into state education policy was supported by grants from foundations such as the Gates Foundation and the $4.35 billion in federal funding. Probably one of the most controversial proposals that Duncan initiated was the Value Added Model (VAM). The VAM measure assumes that all the confounding variables surrounding an individual student’s test scores can be isolated in order to obtain a true measure of a teacher’s effectiveness. As a vocal opponent of the use of VAM, the American Statistical Association (ASA), along with a number of other assessment expert groups, assert that VAM is not a valid or reliable method of evaluating a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom (ASA, 2014; Brown, Eilperin, and Layton, 2015; Ravitch, 2014). In New York, there have been a number of instances where teachers who were “highly effective” one year suddenly found themselves “ineffective” the following year. In fact, this issue has been moved beyond public opinion to the courts. The outcomes from litigation show that the courts have ruled in favor of teachers, and labeled the VAM assessment method arbitrary and capricious (Lederman v. Commissioner, New York State Education Department, 2016). In support of the Lederman ruling, similar court cases that use a VAM for measuring teacher effectiveness have been filed in Florida, Texas, and Tennessee. The consensus of critical opinion from measurement experts, legal analysts, and educators is that measures relying on standardized test scores do not directly measure the full range of a teacher’s contribution to what a student has actually learned. Further, it appears that many administrators and policy makers have ignored a basic statistical premise that correlation is not proof of causation. In other words, if two things are related to each other, one is not necessarily the cause of the other. Hidden from public view, the new assessments that evaluated both teachers and students were developed by outside consortia that had deep interests in assessment and evaluation. In fact, Gene Wilhoit, former executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), spearheaded the CCSS along with David Coleman, who is now the President of the College Board, the organization that administers the SAT examination. It does not appear to be a coincidence, then, that the redesigned 2016 SAT format is based on the CCSS. Therefore, both the SAT and ACT have shifted focus from higher education assessment to K–12 assessment. This move provided the College Board and the American College Testing Program with the opportunity to hawk their new versions of the SAT and ACT examinations to every school district in the United States as an outcome measure of K–12 learning and college readiness.

84  Stephen J. Farenga and Daniel Ness So where is the deception? The public was assured that the CCSS standards were vetted in two ways: 1) The first was that the CCSS were internationally benchmarked; and 2) the second was that the CCSS were research based. Neither of these claims appears to be supported. Further, the only two subject specialists on the CCSS Validation Committee, Dr. R. James Milgram (Professor of Mathematics, Stanford University) and Dr. Sandra Stotsky (Professor emerita the University of Arkansas), mathematics and English specialists, respectively, each stated that they knew of no evidence to support the validation claims for the CCSS (Farris, Smith, Stephens, and Reid, 2014). This lack of evidence should not come as too much of a surprise since the time from initial development to implementation for the CCSS was approximately 2 years, thus allowing no time for field testing or establishing project pilots in any of the forty states that immediately adopted the CCSS. To evaluate the efficacy of the CCSS, a new generation of assessments were required. The two organizations that delivered the assessments and received major funding to develop the next generation assessments were Smart Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC). One cannot help notice that the message implied by the names of each organization invokes the idea of benevolence. However, the rollout of these next generation assessments was fraught with complications and the Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education questioned the true effectiveness of the new assessments. Further, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, and Pennsylvania have stopped using the PARCC or SBAC assessments and have developed alternative assessments. These so called next generation assessments were fully supported by Duncan, who brought $360 million in federal funds to support SBAC and PARCC. In addition, money from the Gates Foundation, and monies from other private interests, supported SBAC and PARCC as well. College and university teacher education programs have not been immune from Duncan’s reach (US Department of Education, 2009). There are winners and losers with all federal administrations. In this case, under Secretary Duncan, traditional college-based teacher education programs were the losers and the alternative programs such as Teach for America (TFA) were the winners. Programs such as TFA took recent graduates and provided them with a 5-week boot camp, and then placed them into high-needs schools. It has been reported in the organization’s 2014 Form 990 that the TFA program has assets of $493,569,971 (nearly half a billion dollars) and has revenues of $331,103,489 (Guidestar, 2016c). The majority of TFA financial support is from government grants, corporate donations, and foundations. It is intriguing to note that in some states, candidates from alternative teacher certification programs such as TFA were not required to demonstrate the same fundamental competencies that were required of graduates from traditional teacher education programs upon initially entering the field. There have been a number of additional criticisms leveled at programs such as TFA. One of these criticisms is that candidates do not remain

SCALE Down, SCALE Back!  85 teaching beyond their agreed-upon commitment. A second is the limited training prior to entering the field that does not provide them with substantial pedagogical content knowledge. And finally, TFA has had difficulty in recruiting the required number of candidates for the high-needs schools that it is intended to serve (Brewer and deMarrias, 2015; Cepeda, 2015). Duncan’s address to Teachers College, Columbia University made it clear that he believed that poor teacher preparation was the driving force behind student failure. Here is an all too familiar scenario of blaming teachers and those who prepare teachers for the lack of student achievement. Are teachers really responsible when students do not come to school on a consistent basis? Are teachers responsible for students who do not have ample supplies or the resources to obtain extra help? Are teachers responsible for students who require medical and dental care? And finally, are teachers required to ensure that at the most basic level of human need, students have housing or are provided proper nutrition? There are gross inequities in society between the haves and the have nots, and no level of teacher training or next generation of standardized tests will ameliorate these conditions and lessen the present level of inequity. The final assault that has come from the Duncan Administration has to do with states’ rights, which have been tested with each passing Education Secretary. The CCSS have served as the catalyst that has threatened the authority of each state, at least in the area of curriculum and assessment. The power behind the CCSS was the Race to the Top funding that followed CCSS implementation. What was unexpected was the sharp pushback at the grassroots level from parents, teachers, and administrators, who eventually reached politicians and policymakers. What is most intriguing about many of the new initiatives proposed by the Duncan Administration is the use of the terms “researched based” or “scientifically supported” methods. As we discussed above, there was no field testing or establishment of a pilot project for CCSS. Therefore, the use of the terms “research-based” and “scientifically supported” standards can only be interpreted as a purposeful effort to mislead the public. When these terms precede the introduction of a curriculum or a program, one needs to look more carefully at the evidence. Duncan’s positions have clearly ignored the current research on the science of learning. His Value Added Models for teacher evaluation based on student test scores, support for larger class sizes to improve efficiency, support for longer school days to increase achievement, the championing of charter schools to advance students’ success, and finally, the favoring of alternative teacher education programs over traditional college based programs have all demonstrated a reckless disregard for evidence. Combined, all of these positions that have been promulgated by the Office of the Secretary of Education under Duncan lend support for the remaining arguments that we put forth in this chapter—mainly that traditional teacher education programs, teachers, and their students are being exposed to unsubstantiated assessments and evaluation techniques that are driven by a number of private agendas outside the purview of the traditional public sphere.

86  Stephen J. Farenga and Daniel Ness

Market-Based Reform Smaller non-profit institutions of higher education have already begun the transition of maximizing profit margins by outsourcing work, increasing the number of part-time employees, and developing outreach educational centers, which market educational programs that might seem a bit unsightly for the mainstream academy. That some members of the academy believe in the lack of market influence on their profession seems to be a struthious position. However, one only need observe the growth and success (at least monetarily) of the University of Phoenix to know that education is profitable. The private, for-profit motive in higher education can be demonstrated by the establishment of Trump University and the Trump Entrepreneur Institute. The objective of Trump University was to provide business related coursework in real-estate investment. The supposed draw was to learn the inside techniques of the real-estate entrepreneur for whom the university was named. In an article on June 9, 2016, Eric Schneiderman, New York State Attorney General, concludes that “Trump University is just a scam,” and, on March 1, 2016, the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, held that the State Attorney General is authorized to bring a cause of action for fraud. Schneiderman’s decision to indict Trump University was further supported unanimously by a four-judge panel. The legal settlement from the Trump University case led to an outcome where “. . . every victim will receive restitution and that Donald Trump will pay up to $1 million in penalties to the State of New York for violating state education laws . . .” (Schneiderman, 2016). Cases such as Trump University are part of a larger failure of for-profit enterprises in education. On April 27, 2015, for-profit Corinthian Colleges Inc. closed its doors leaving 16,000 students stranded. This action left the U.S. government with the debt of loan forgiveness to students who were enrolled at the institutions that have made up Corinthian Colleges. Further, on September 6, 2016, ITT Tech announced immediately that it would close 100 campuses throughout the country, leaving more than 35,000 students with massive loan debt, no degrees, and minimal alternatives to transfer credit to established institutions of higher education. The gross failure of for-profit institutions calls to question regulatory oversight. Clearly, when compared to for-profit higher education institutions, traditional higher education institutions have been governed by more stringent control by regulatory agencies (which we refer to in the next section as paraeducational change enterprises). These agencies exist as professional associations, teacher unions, state education departments, and education accreditors, and non-profit testing organizations. Those who are skeptical that the market has had an effect on the practices of higher education need only look at the sale of credits. Moreover, curricula that have been traditionally taught over the course of a semester can now be compressed into months, weeks, or even days (Aronowitz, 2015; Bourdieu, 1999). Literally, colleges and universities are selling credits by hourly seat time to compete with the offerings of paraeducational enterprises. Unfortunately, these new higher education practices

SCALE Down, SCALE Back!  87 will only be exacerbated by the last few years of lower college and university enrollments (National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 2016). To address declining enrollments, a number of nonprofit colleges and universities have begun to adopt recruitment strategies used by for-profit colleges. Any faculty member involved with enrollment services has probably noticed a change in language when discussing potential recruits. Students are now commonly referred to as “leads,” “starts,” and “business” (Rufalo Noel Levitz, 2016). Campus recruiters have also enlisted the assistance of “lead generators” to provide lists of potential student candidates. Lead generators are middlemen who sometimes use questionable tactics to solicit and gather personal information from unsuspecting high-school students, college transfer students, and graduate students. The general method of operation is through the Internet where the lead generator uses pop-up ads promising some important information or a career opportunity, but only after a potential student answers a few questions. The personal data that are obtained is aggregated and then sold to third parties such as colleges and universities. The compiled lists of potential students can then be sold for $22 to $125 per name for consumer leads that match a college’s enrollment requirements. The amount spent by higher education institutions to recruit students varies depending on the institution’s classification: 1) private, nonprofit colleges and universities: $2,232; 2) public universities: $578; and 3) community colleges: $118 (Rufalo Noel Levitz, 2016). A number of companies (Expand Inc., also doing business as Gigats, EducationMatch and SoftRock Inc., and Ayman A. Difrawi, also known as Alec Difrawi and Ayman El-Difrawi) that obtain and aggregate personal information of potential students has come to the attention of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). As a result, the FTC announced its first enforcement action against an education lead generator—operators of Gigats.com—for deceptive lead generation tactics. The parties agreed to a settlement of $360,000 to be paid by Gigats.com (FTC, 2016). What may come as more of a surprise is that 40 percent of first-year college freshmen drop out and do not return to college in their sophomore year (National Student Clearing Research Center, 2016). The arithmetic here is simple: each student who does not return equates to 3 years of lost revenue that impacts the institution’s financial health. Clearly, the landscape of the academy has changed and it is evident that the market-driven forces have placed new pressures on each corner of the college quad.

Para-educational Change Enterprises Para-educational enterprises are constituents that operate outside the mainstream of higher education. They are non-governmental enterprises that have usurped control of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and accreditation from the academy. These enterprises are either autonomous non-profit or for-profit corporations that parallel the functions of traditional institutions of higher education. Moreover, many para-educational enterprises serve as semi-regulatory organizations that impose standards, curriculum,

88  Stephen J. Farenga and Daniel Ness and requirements for accreditation, licensure, and assessment. It should be emphasized that none of these enterprises are an official government entity. One can easily recognize para-educational enterprises through the myriad of acronyms used to describe them. Examples include teacher union related enterprises (the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)); accreditation enterprises (CAEP); intergovernmental enterprises (Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), Interstate New Teacher and Assessment Support Consortium (INTASC), and National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS)); educational testing enterprises (Educational Testing Service (ETS), the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB), and American College Testing (ACT)); and specialized professional association (SPA) enterprises (e.g., International Literacy Association (ILA), National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI), and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)). What follows is an examination of non-profit curriculum and instruction organizations, which include teacher unions like the NEA and AFT, and how they have formed symbiotic relationships with other para-educational gatekeepers, such as CAEP and the specialized professional agencies (SPAs). Nonprofit assessment regulators such as the Educational Testing Service or The College Board, which have positioned themselves as part of the educational establishment, both politically and publicly, are then discussed. Following the testing enterprises, the third and final category of para-educational agencies— for-profit educational enterprises and their exponentially increasing influence on the American educational foundation, such as Pearson—are considered.

Non-Profit Curriculum and Instruction Players The Johns Hopkins Conceptual Framework for Non-Profits suggests that non-profits can be recognized as having a formal structure independent from governmental agencies. Further, non-profit organizations are those that do not distribute profits to individuals with control over the organization, such as members, officers, directors, and trustees. However, non-profits are able to pay salaries for services rendered or expenses incurred on behalf of the organization. One should not associate “non-profit” with “not making a profit” or not paying out high salaries to executive directors and others associated with the organization. In fact, data reported to the IRS for 2013 (ETS) and 2014 (College Board) demonstrate that the combined revenue of services surpassed $1.978 billion (GuideStar, 2016a). Many of the nonprofit educational organizations that academics serve have a common goal of self-preservation and advancement at the expense of the autonomy of the academy. These numbers should come as no surprise since “the fact is that the College Board is just a business intent on making a buck and keeping its market share” (Greene, 2014).

SCALE Down, SCALE Back!  89 To take this a step further, one need only examine teachers unions (such as the NEA or AFT), which have similar motives of expanding beyond the realm of collective bargaining to deal with issues of curriculum, assessment, professional development, and teacher training. The main point is that a number of these organizations has worked together to monopolize and usurp control of teacher education, credentialing, licensure, or professional development. The tools that they have used to accomplish this feat are standards. Each organization has developed a series of standards that college and university teacher education programs must adhere to if they wish to remain relevant (See Figure 5.1). However, teacher education programs have had no input in the development of any of the standards by which their programs are to be evaluated. These non-regulatory organizations are performing regulatory functions by controlling the curriculum in higher education institutions, thus usurping the authority of colleges and universities throughout the country. They achieve their regulatory roles through the standards-based reform and accountability movement. Ironically, this movement had begun as a result of purported failing primary and secondary schools (Boyer, 1983; A Nation

Model for the Reformatting of the Control of Teacher Education Academic Freedom

Traditional Non-profit Colleges/Universities

Established Standards and Certification

Teacher Education

Curriculum Expertise Educational Reform and Professional Development

Usurpation of Teacher Education by Para-Educational Enterprises for Control and Profit

Standards

NEA/AFT

Consolidate Control

Move beyond collective bargaining

Monetary Benefits

For-Profit Companies Pearson Publishers / Consultants / For-Profit Educational Companies

Gatekeepers

SPAs Control of Content

NBPTS Individual Certifiers

CAEP Accreditors

Non-Profit Testing Enterprises ETS / College Board / ACT

Figure 5.1  Model for Market-Based Reformatting and Control of Teacher Education Note: This model provides a suggested path that demonstrates the confluence of interest by semi-regulatory educational organizations.

90  Stephen J. Farenga and Daniel Ness at Risk, 1983; Sizer, 1984). At present, the movement has encroached upon institutions of higher education (U.S. Department of Education, 2015).

Tools for Exploitation: Standards Standards are powerful tools for exploitation. The standards from nongovernmental agencies are given authority by a form of third-party proxy arrangement with federal and state governments. An example of this thirdparty proxyship is CAEP and the U.S. Department of Education. CAEP, as a non-government organization (NGO), is free to develop its own criteria for accreditation. The five CAEP unit standards, developed by consensus of so-called experts, emanated from the six NCATE standards. These standards, like those developed by the SPAs, are not supported by empirical investigation. However, the recognition of CAEP or any other body as an accrediting agency by the Department of Education places the federal government’s imprimatur on both the organization and its standards and lends credibility to their authority. A second example is that the CCSS Validation Committee did not have cut-off scores or scaled scores prior to any of the new assessments being proposed in order to measure both the effectiveness of the CCSS and expected levels of student achievement. It is incredulous to think that 40 states adopted new standards and new assessments without field testing or a pilot study. What is even more perplexing for the research community is that while they cannot administer a survey without going through an internal review board (IRB), federal government policymakers have required state lawmakers to administer assessments that have not been fully vetted for validity and reliability. In fact, cut-off scores and scaling procedures were only being conducted after wide-scale administrations. Freire (1970/1996) and Illich (1972) provide a theoretical explanation and perspective on the present standards movement in education. The use of bureaucratic standards and criteria may be viewed as a means to which an enterprise gains control of a given situation. Illich went as far as to challenge the necessity of credentials and certifications. For Illich, schooling devoted to achieving consensus-driven benchmarks (i.e., standards) perpetuates hopelessness for the underprivileged, and, based on the 2015 NAEP results, he was correct. Illich labeled the additional certifications for teachers, which intensified the credentialing process, as “subversive blasphemy” (p. 7). The credentialing process, he believed, allowed bureaucracies to monopolize political and financial control over what was deemed important. An analysis of the contemporary context places CAEP, the SPAs, and the educational testing enterprises at the heart of what Illich would refer to as the most culpable of the bureaucratic enterprises. Gatekeeping is therefore achieved by requiring accreditation and certification. The gatekeepers can regulate the numbers of programs of study and the number of students who can enter these programs. Illich noted, “Certification constitutes a form of market manipulation and is plausible only to a schooled mind” (p. 12). Extending

SCALE Down, SCALE Back!  91 on Illich’s position, credentialing only serves to balkanize and not unite the population. The SPAs are responsible for approving program standards and overseeing the program review process for CAEP. This is essentially the key to their power: SPAs obtain their power by controlling the gate to national recognition of a program. They attempt to audit the college’s or university’s coursework for what they believe to be the appropriate curricula, objectives, and standards. This audit culture has outright extirpated the college or university faculty member’s role as expert (Taubman, 2010). Colleges and universities are required to alter syllabi or create new course syllabi to demonstrate adherence and conformity to these requirements. The college or university programs must provide evidence from assessments that have not been fully vetted or established as valid measures of teacher performance. In fact, teacher education programs in New York were barred from using any of these assessments such as the Academic Literacy and Skills Test (ALST), as an entrance requirement for teacher education programs, even at the graduate level. It should be noted that these tests, which supposedly measure literacy skills, were barred from entrance requirements; instead, they were supposedly required for exit requirements, and used as measures of program effectiveness. Why would states want candidates in teacher education programs who did not have sufficient literacy skills upon entrance? Do individuals in state certification departments believe that graduate programs should be designed to teach reading and writing? Or, are candidates supposed to have the necessary literacy skills upon entering the program? New York had required teacher candidates to take a series of qualifying examinations to demonstrate their teaching proficiency. However, these examinations were only to be administered at the end of a program. The results from these examinations, such as the Content Specialty Tests, Educating All Students examination, Academic Literacy Skills Test, and the Education Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA), which was developed by The Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE), are all reported as part of the program’s demonstration of candidate competency and program effectiveness. It is troubling that several states have adopted similar measures that are all privately administered; however, the evidence for the use of these measures has not been fully documented. Further, these examinations have revealed major flaws in their design to accurately measure and identify qualified teacher candidates. Evidence of these flaws has been demonstrated by a New York State Department of Education addendum whereby lawmakers have issued safety nets and lowered baseline scores on a number of these assessments. What is more egregious is that assessments, such as the edTPA, require a full portfolio in addition to videotaping of a candidate’s teaching performance to be replaced with a multiplechoice assessment, namely, the Assessment of Teaching Skills—Written (ATS-W). To demonstrate privatization of public education, candidates must first take and fail the $300 edTPA portfolio assessment in order to

92  Stephen J. Farenga and Daniel Ness take the $119 ATS-W. This calls into question the ethics of federal and state lawmakers who require student teacher candidates to pay for a sanctioned portfolio assessment owned by a private enterprise (Pearson). Table 5.1 lists the required teacher certification examinations and their respective costs. Table 5.2 lists the required teacher certification workshops and fingerprinting costs. Note that the minimum that a student-teacher candidate must pay for merely applying of certification is slightly under $1,000. A program that does not meet the standards established by the SPA fails to receive national recognition, regardless of a program’s reputation in the field. SPAs are silent collaborators in promoting the myth of the failing American schools in an effort to promote their own agendas to obtain power and control at the expense of the autonomy of institutions of higher education. Many of these organizations applied for federal funding to develop standards, which were to serve as the remedy of the ailing American public school system (Ness, Farenga, Shah, and Garofalo, 2016). Few members of professional educational organizations questioned the conventional wisdom and instead ignored the major causes of low achievement by having failed to address pressing concerns of poverty, lack of opportunity, and the unequal funding of public education in the United States. (Johnson, Johnson, Farenga, and Ness, 2008; Skandera and Sousa, 2003). In short, the passing of the federal government’s policies is an attempt to exculpate legislators, education policymakers, and para-educational agency administrators and staff from responsibility of social inequalities by scapegoating schools, teachers, and the professional programs that prepare educators. The federal solution has become known as the promise of standards-based reform. In actuality, however, the standards are the tools for exploitation of academic freedom of both individuals’ and states’ rights and are generally ineffective, vague concepts of what students and teachers should be able to do. The standards serve as the structures to support domination over programs, disciplines, faculty, and students. After critical analysis of the standards, questions of academic freedom and liberation fill the void of critical consciousness caused by the uncritical acceptance of standards. The standards and their prescriptions have contributed to what Freire (1970/1996) refers to as “the culture of silence” (p. 12), which is characterized by economic, social, and political domination, and is supported by the false notion that the reason for poor achievement is predicated on the development of poorly trained teachers. Since the publication of A Nation at Risk (1983), the public has putatively accepted this perception. Those whose interests are served by this myth have ignored the escalating culture of poverty that exists in this country and instead have persistently intimidated the academic community over reports of a population’s poor performance. The erroneous and immoral stentorian message of the intersection of the neo-conservative and neo-liberal education agenda is consistent and clear: Poorly trained teachers produce students with poor academic achievement. Moreover, it has been

Table 5.1  Costs of Teacher Certification Examinations and Performance Assessment in New York State Assessment

Intended Purpose

Cost

Graduate Record Examination (GRE)

To measure critical reading, analytical, and quantitative skills To measure critical reading and writing skills To measure students’ ability to differentiate curricula To measure students’ knowledge of pedagogical classroom practices To measure students’ content knowledge of various school subjects To measure candidates’ knowledge of specific subject areas To measure knowledge and skills in reading, writing, and mathematics To measure teacher candidate performance in the classroom Candidates may request that their test be rescored or they may resubmit based on the number of sections that were not passed Withdrawal from specific test Additional copy of test results, test rescoring, and fee to clear an account Minimum without safety net Minimum with safety net

$205

Academic Literacy Skills Test Educating All Students Assessment of Teaching Skills—Written (ATS-W)* Multi-Subject Content Specialty Tests Content Specialty Test Communication and Quantitative Skills Test (CQST) edTPA edTPA Rescore/ Resubmission

Fees for Withdrawal from a Specific Test Additional Service Fees

Total 1: Total 2:

$131 $102 $119

$199 $149 $119 $300 $200

$75-$110 $20–$70

$887** $1,006***

* The ATS-W can be used as a safety net to replace the failing score of an initial administration of the edTPA. ** This fee assumes that all examinations have been passed on the first administration and also assumes only one area of certification. This amount also does not include students taking multi-subject CSTs. *** This total fee assumes that the edTPA was taken and not passed. The ATS-W is used in place of the edTPA, thus serving as a safety net.

Table 5.2  Costs of Teacher Certification Workshops and Fingerprinting in New York State Workshop Requirement

Intended Purpose

Cost

Child Abuse, Prevention and Intervention

To identify physical and behavioral indicators of maltreatment, physical, or sexual abuse; behavioral and environmental characteristics of abusive parents or caretakers; and identification of responsibility for reporting child maltreatment or abuse, and when and how to do it The identification of warning signs relating to violence and other troubling behaviors in children; statutes, regulations, and policies relating to a safe, nonviolent school climate; To review school safety plans, fire and life safety drills, bomb threats, intruder drills, student suicide awareness, crisis intervention plans, sexual harassment, gang awareness, bullying prevention, and abducted students Topics include youth drug experimentation, teacher responsibilities, youth drug trends, tobacco use, alcohol use—binge drinking, marijuana use, inhalant use, hallucinogens, club drugs, methamphetamines, overthe-counter drugs, and prescription medications To make one aware of the social patterns of harassment, bullying and discrimination, understanding of how school climate and culture affect student achievement and behavior

$55

School Violence Prevention and Intervention

School Safety (which consists of Fire and Arson, Child Abduction, and Safety on the Highways)

Alcohol and Substance Abuse

Dignity for All Students Act Seminar— Harassment, Bullying, and Discrimination Prevention and Intervention

$55

$55

$55

$110

SCALE Down, SCALE Back!  95 Workshop Requirement

Intended Purpose

Cost

Autism Students Seminar for New York State*

The class begins with the history of autism, its causes, characteristics, definitions, and prevalence in children by age and gender State law requires every employee of the New York City public schools to be fingerprinted and undergo a background check before beginning work

$55

Fingerprinting

Total Total with Autism Workshop*

$135

$465 $520

* The Autism Students Seminar for New York State workshop must be taken by education majors concentrating in special education.

suggested that this underachievement can be corrected by achievement of standards and the corporatizing and privatizing of education. Numerous policies promoted by federal mandates have ignored seminal issues that adversely affect school achievement. Tragically, school segregation and childhood poverty are two inextricably linked national crises. National education organizations, which perpetually have ignored these problems and instead mustered support in favor of teacher and school accountability, are part of the problem, not the solution (Berliner and Biddle, 1995; Johnson and Johnson, 2006). These organizations continually ignore the difficult and controversial conversations that are associated with the inequality in the United States. The outward appearance of accreditation agencies, professional organizations, and national standards is one of educational benevolence; after all, who would oppose high standards, professional associations, or stringent accreditation? Beneath the surface, however, are bureaucratic interests of professional organizations with a hidden agenda by privatizing education, controlling the curriculum, and limiting academic freedom of the academy while ignoring the core inequities related to poverty.

Conclusion We close this chapter with a postlude in which we share how Dale Johnson inspired us to become leaders for promoting justice in education for all. Our first joint project with Dale and Bonnie Johnson, Trivializing Teacher Education: The Accreditation Squeeze, had us questioning the value of national accreditation from a rather small liberal arts institution. Back in 2002–2005,

96  Stephen J. Farenga and Daniel Ness our position placed each of us and our institution in a precarious position, since a number of larger, more established colleges and universities remained relatively silent. Today, there are a number of individuals—such as Diane Ravitch—who have changed their positions on high-stakes tests and the accreditation process. And so, we now see people throughout the country protesting against high-stakes tests for both K–12 students and student teacher candidates. We find this revival in questioning redundant and punitive education mandates promising. But still much more needs to be done. In this chapter, we reviewed our stance on national accreditation and Common Core State Standards as a means of revisiting the current state of affairs in education policy. Dale worked tirelessly to call attention to and eliminate many of the inequities that we have identified in this chapter. Dale not only wrote extensively about these issues from the safety of a college campus, but took time out from the academy to work in Redbud School in Redbud, Louisiana, one of the poorest schools in the United States. On a personal note, Dale taught us to never be afraid of the hard questions or of spending the time needed to collect the data necessary to appropriately answer the question at hand, which, most of the time, led to difficult conversations that some individuals would not discuss in a “polite” society. These questions were the messy questions that involved race, gender, poverty, violence, and gross inequality. Clearly, a good education can, at the very least, ameliorate some of these struggles in order to improve the everyday wellbeing of underserved populations.

Bibliography American Statistical Association. (2014). ASA Statement on using value-added models for educational assessment. Alexandria, VA: Author. Aronowitz, S. (2015). Against schooling: For an education that matters. London: Routledge. Berliner, D. C., and Biddle, B. J. (1995). The manufactured crisis: Myths, fraud, and the attack on America’s public schools. Cambridge, MA: Perseus. Boorstin, D. (1987). The image: A guide to pseudo-events. New York: Athenaeum. Bourdieu, P. (1999). Acts of resistance. New York: New Press. Boyer, E. (1983). High school: A report on secondary education in America. New York: Harper & Row. Brewer, T. J., and DeMarrais, K. B. (2015). Teach for America counter-narratives: Alumni speak up and speak out. New York: Peter Lang. Brown, E. (2015, December 17). Days from leaving office, Education Secretary Arne Duncan talks about successes, failures. Washington Post. Retrieved from https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/12/17/days-from-leavingoffice-education-secretary-arne-duncan-talks-about-successes-failures/. Brown, E., Eilperin, J., and Layton, L. (2015, October 2). U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to step down at end of year. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/10/02/educationsecretary-arne-duncan-reportedly-will-step-down-at-end-of-year/.

SCALE Down, SCALE Back!  97 Cepeda. E. (2015, September 11). Alumni cast aspersions on Teach for America. Las Vegas Review-Journal. Retrieved from www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/ esther-cepeda/alumni-cast-aspersions-teach-america. Farenga, S. J., Ness, D., and Sawyer, R. (2015). Avoiding equivalence by leveling: Challenging the consensus-driven curriculum that defines students as ‘average.’ Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 30(3): 8–27. Farris, M., and Smith, J. M. (Executive Producers), Stephens, S. (Producer), and Reid, I. A. (Director). (2014). Building the machine: The Common core documentary [Documentary]. United States of America: HSLDA. Federal Trade Commission. (2016, April 28). FTC charges education lead generator with tricking job seekers by claiming to represent hiring employers. U.S. Government. Retrieved from https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/04/ ftc-charges-education-lead-generator-tricking-job-seekers. Freire, P. (1996 [1970]). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Giroux, H. A. (2005). Academic entrepreneurs: The corporate takeover of higher education. Tikkun, (March/April): 18–22, 28. Giroux, H. A. (2014). Neoliberalism’s war on higher education. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Giroux, H. A., and Giroux, S. S. (2006). Take back higher education: Race, youth, and the crisis of democracy in the post-civil rights era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Greene, P. (2014). AP A-OK? Retrieved from http://curmudgucation.blogspot. com/2014/05/ap-ok.html. Guidestar. (2016a). 2013 report from Form 990 of Educational Testing Service. Retrieved from www.guidestar.org/profile/21–0634479. Guidestar. (2016b). 2014 report from Form 990 of The College Entrance Examination Board. Retrieved from www.guidestar.org/profile/13–1623965. Guidestar. (2016c). 2014 report from Form 990 of Teach for America, Inc. Retrieved from www.guidestar.org/profile/13–3541913 Illich, I. (1972). Deschooling society. New York: Boyars. Johnson, D. D., and Johnson, B. (2006). High stakes: Poverty, testing, and failure in American schools. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Johnson, D. D., Johnson, B., Farenga, S. J., and Ness, D. (2005). Trivializing teacher education: The accreditation squeeze. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Johnson, D. D., Johnson, B., Farenga, S. J., and Ness, D. (2008). Stop high-stakes testing: An appeal to America’s conscience. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Lederman v. Commissioner, New York State Education Department, 01–14-ST6183 (New York State Supreme Court, 2016). Mcguire, P. (2015, October 5). Arne Duncan’s legacy: The top-down approach to education. Hechinger Report. Retrieved from http://hechingerreport.org/arneduncans-legacy-the-top-down-approach-to-education/. National Assessment of Educational Progress. (2015). 2015 mathematics and reading assessments. Washington, DC: Author. Website: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreport card/about/. National Commission of Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. (2016). Current term enrollment estimates: Spring 2016. Herndon, VA: Author.

98  Stephen J. Farenga and Daniel Ness Ness, D., Farenga, S. J., Shah, V., and Garofalo, S. G. (2016). Repositioning science reform efforts: Four practical recommendations from the field. Improving Schools, 19(3), 258–266. Quinton, L., and McGee, K. (2013, July 16). What’s in Texas’ $500 million testing contract with Pearson? Retrieved from http://kut.org/post/what-s-texas500-million-testing-contract-pearson. Ravitch, D. (2014). Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America’s public schools. New York: Vintage Press. Ravitch, D. (2016, July 30). The nation: The edu-business legacy of Arne Duncan. Diane Ravitch’s Blog. Retrieved from https://dianeravitch.net/2016/07/30/thenation-the-edu-business-legacy-of-arne-duncan/. Ruffalo, N. L. (2016). Undergraduate enrollment trends 2016 report: Cost of recruiting an undergraduate student for four-year and two-year institutions. Greenwood Village, CO: Author. Schneiderman, E. (2016, June 9). How Trump University ran the scam: Attorney General Eric Schneiderman explains why he’s prosecuting Donald Trump’s real estate “Education” operation for fraud. New York Daily News. Retrieved from www.nydailynews.com/opinion/eric-schneiderman-trump-university-ran-scamarticle-1.2666389. Scheiderman, E. (2016, November 18). Statement by A. G. Schniederman on $25 million settlement agreement reached in Trump University case. Albany, NY: New York State Office of the Attorney General. Sizer, T. R. (1984). Horace’s compromise. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Skandera, H., and Sousa, R. (2003). School figures: The data behind the debate. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Taubman, P. (2010). Teaching by numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in education. London: Routledge. U.S. Department of Education. (2006). A test of leadership: Charting the future of U. S. higher education. Washington, DC: Author. U.S. Department of Education. (2009, October 22). U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says colleges of education must improve for reforms to succeed. Retrieved from www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-secretary-education-arneduncan-says-colleges-education-must-improve-reforms-succeed. U.S. Department of Education. (2015). The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Washington, DC: Author.

Section II

Contributions to Literacy and Language Development As an academic, Dale Johnson was an expert in literacy and language development. His research can be found in university libraries and classrooms around the world. As a literacy education scholar, Dale was the author and co-author of 18 books and 60 basal textbooks for elementary school, middle school, high school, and higher education learners. He is also the coauthor of an instructional game and instructional software. Dale lectured in numerous countries and was a past president of the International Reading Association (now International Literacy Association). Chapters 6, 7, and 8 showcase Dale’s commitment to literacy and language development.

6 We Could Teach Every Child to Read, But the Unanswered Question Is: Will We? Richard L. Allington

Dr. Dale Johnson lived a productive, scholarly life. However, while some of his earliest writing is well known in academic circles (for instance his paper on skills management systems co-authored with P. David Pearson and published in Reading Teacher in 1975 and his co-authored 1972 book, also co-authored with Pearson, on teaching reading comprehension), it seems to me that his later work (two later books, for instance, High Stakes (coauthored with Bonnie Johnson and published by Rowan and Littlefield in 2002) and Trivializing Teacher Education (co-authored with Bonnie Johnson, S. J. Farenga, and D. Ness also published by Rowan and Littlefield in 2005) demonstrate how Dale evolved as a scholar and critical observer of education in the United States. These latter two texts, unlike the first two noted above, go well beyond detailing what we know about effective reading instruction and instead explore the substantial difficulties this nation has providing high-quality, research-based reading instruction and in providing the preparation for offering such reading instruction. This chapter is written in the spirit of the latter two books, noted above, that Dale published since the turn of the last century. We know a lot about how to help all children become successful readers! In fact, I’ll mark the beginning of this new era with the publication of the first large-scale study that demonstrated that all that was really needed was a commitment to ensuring that all beginning readers had access to high-quality reading instruction if the goal was having virtually every child become a successful reader (Vellutino, Scanlon, Sipay, Small, Pratt, Chen and Denckla, 1996). The publication date of that study is now 20 years old, although 20 years later virtually no school system in the United States has implemented the kindergarten and first-grade interventions that produced the impressive results. Scanlon, Vellutino, and their colleagues have since demonstrated that effective extensive professional development for kindergarten and firstgrade teachers can result in even more children reading successfully than was the case with their earlier one-to-one expert tutoring beyond the classroom (Gelzheiser, Scanlon et al., 2011; Scanlon, Gelzheiser et al., 2008). Dale’s co-authored book (with Bonnie Johnson), High Stakes, offers an account of the year that he and Bonnie left university life and returned as

102  Richard L. Allington classroom teachers to a high-poverty elementary school, Redbud Elementary School, in Louisiana. If you have not read this book, I encourage you to do so. It is a heartbreaking expose of life in a southern high-poverty school. A school where neither the heating system nor the air conditioning system actually work. Thus, children and their teachers wear their outer garments in the winter and create handheld fans for cooling off when it again turns hot. A school with neither hot water nor playground equipment. A school with four toilets for over 600 students. Where 80 percent of the students are African-American and where 88 percent qualify for free and reduced-price meals. A school where there are no trade books and an insufficient supply of textbooks. However, the salary bonus for the district superintendent resulting from improved test scores is larger than a beginning teacher’s annual salary. The district spent the equivalent of four beginning teacher salaries to purchase a computerized skill and drill program but it routinely crashed, and classroom teachers soon stopped scheduling children for its use. My point here is that it wasn’t the case that this school, filled with children from low-income families, was actually resource-poor, but rather that other district folks made decisions to invest in things that have never been shown to have much of an effect on student achievement. I urge everyone to read Dale and Bonnie’s book about their year teaching in Redbud Elementary School. It is a sad, terrifying story about just one school that enrolls mostly poor and mostly black students. But it depicts the sort of difficulties that too many American teachers face every day. What I think will also strike you is that almost nothing purchased, mandated, and implemented by the school district had any evidence that supported the products as a way to improve instruction and raise student achievement. Nonetheless, teachers received training on how to post the state’s English/ Language Arts standard that is the focus of each lesson. They also received training on using running records for recording oral reading performances (running records are one piece of the Reading Recovery program). Then 2 days later they began 2 days of training on using the state mandated Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) and its scheme for recording oral reading performances. Thus, it wasn’t that the teachers at this school received no training but, rather, that they received training that seemed uninformed by a system-wide plan for developing teacher expertise for offering higher quality reading lessons. At the same time mandates required implementing reading lessons that followed the state plan, including the required posting of the ELA objective and page number of the objective so that classroom observers would understand what it was being taught in any observed lesson. I’ve gone into some detail on what was happening in this southern highpoverty elementary school. I’ve done this if only because so much of what is detailed in the book can be found in hundreds (if not thousands) of American elementary schools. However, there are a few American elementary

We Could Teach Every Child to Read  103 schools where the situation is quite different because someone has invested in much professional development and classroom teachers are superbly prepared to effectively teach children to read. There are many more American teachers who have developed their expertise largely on their own. Stuhlman and Pianta (2009), using a national sample of first-grade teachers, found that only 31 percent of the first-grade teachers they observed provided reading instruction that ranked high on both the emotional climate and the quality of the reading instruction. In neither the few schools providing high-quality reading instruction nor the vastly larger number of American classroom teachers who provide such reading instruction is there much of an emphasis on core reading programs, state sponsored reading curriculum frameworks (nor much evidence of the recent national Common Core reading framework), or frequent testing of students to determine which students are making adequate progress. It isn’t that our effective schools and effective teachers have wholly rejected commercial curriculum materials, state sponsored reading schemes, or assessment as a way to track student academic development, but that the effective schools and effective teachers have put them in their place as advisories that may prove useful for some teachers when some lessons are to be offered to some children (Allington and Johnston, 2002; Pressley, Allington, Wharton-McDonald, Block, and Morrow, 2001). One thing that is clear about effective teachers is that they do have a keen understanding of the progress that individual children are making (Broikou, 1992; Johnston, Woodside-Jiron, and Day, 2001). As Pressley, Wharton-McDonald, and Mistretta (1998) explained, the most salient feature of instruction for exemplary teachers was their students, not theory, materials, or curriculum plans. The finding of Pressley et al. (1998) mirrors that of Broikou (1992) who reported that teachers who knew their students better and who expressed greater personal professional responsibility for student outcomes were less likely to refer students for special education referrals than those teachers who offered less personalized student information and who indicated lower levels of personal professional responsibility for their students. All of these studies suggest that there is a potential for teacher characteristics as a primary source for the presence of the large numbers of students in America who are designated as pupils with disabilities (PWD). We have observed elementary schools where over one-third of all students were identified as PWD and participating in special education programs. The principal of one of those schools explained to us how referrals to special education worked in his high-poverty school (McGill-Franzen and Allington, 1993). As he candidly told us, he informed second-grade teachers that they were to provide him with a listing of all students they felt would be unlikely to pass the state’s third-grade reading examination the following school year. He said all of those children listed by the teachers were then either retained in second-grade or referred for an evaluation for identification as students with disabilities. This process resulted in almost two-thirds

104  Richard L. Allington of all students being removed from the state third-grade testing scheme. This study was completed prior to the change in federal rules that today requires all students, including PWD to participate in state accountability testing. At the same time, students who have been retained in grade prior to third-grade remain untested during their fourth year in school when without retention they would have been members of the third-grade cohort being tested. The scheme the principal of this urban elementary school that served primarily African-American students from low-income families resulted in the removal of roughly 60 percent of all children from the testing that was central to the state’s accountability plan that was initiated during the students’ fourth year of schooling (third-grade). Of course, the school flew a federal “highachieving school” banner on its flagpole. That banner was awarded to all schools in the state when the majority of their students met the achievement standards set by the state. What we found most egregious here was that the principal noted that retention and special education services helped very few of the children who were struggling academically, but, at the same time, he remarked that having the high-achieving school banner flying outside convinced the public and, perhaps even more appropriately for him, convinced those folks in the district’s central office that his school was doing a good job. One might wonder, as we did, how a school that has removed over half of their students from the state accountability scheme might earn the highachieving school banner that flew outside. The answer was simple enough. This principal had learned how to game the system and have a high-achieving banner flying outside even though he did not consider his a high-achieving school. As he told us, “Once you learn the rules of the game you use what you know to make yourself look as good as you can.” Nowhere during our interviews with the principal did he suggest that evidence-based educational practices were central to his thinking or problem-solving. Rather than engaging in planning to improve the instructional quality in the classrooms of his school, he engaged in planning how to game the system and make his school look as though it was a high-performing school. We compared three schools’ responses to low-achieving children and found incredibly different patterns of dealing with low-achieving primary grade (K–2) children. We gathered data for each of the three elementary schools on cumulative rates of retention and special education placements in grades K–2. Cumulative retention rates varied, with 7, 15 and 40 percent of the cohorts retained before third grade. Special education placements also varied with 6, 10, and 20 percent of the cohorts identified as handicapped before third grade. When cumulative retentions and special education placements are added together for each cohort we find that 13, 25, and, incredibly, 60 percent of the original kindergarten cohorts were removed from the statewide accountability testing stream! (Allington and McGill-Franzen, 1993, 202)

We Could Teach Every Child to Read  105 Perhaps the unintended lesson these data provide is that flunking and placement in special education support is a good idea. I say this because the school I presented above was the school that removed 60 percent of the children from the accountability scheme and that school flew a “highachieving” school banner, while the school with the lowest rates of retention and special education placements was listed by their state education agency as a “low-achieving” school and was enduring a variety of state-mandated reforms, reforms that ultimately led to a greater use of retention in grade and an increased number of students identified as PWD. It was almost as though the state plan was to expand the numbers of schools that gamed the system, rather than increasing the numbers of schools where high-quality reading instruction was provided. Some teachers make few referrals to special education and recommend few, if any, students for retention in grade. Broikou (1992) provides evidence of the clear differences in teacher beliefs and practices of highreferral and flunking teachers and low-referral and flunking teachers in a large urban school district. As one high-referral teacher reported, “I do not have reading groups. I do total group instruction because my kids can’t work independently. They do not know how, they bother each other” (p. 168). Another high-referral teacher says, “Our scores have always been the lowest . . . the scores reflect what the population is and there’s not much you can do” (p. 169). However, a low-referral colleague said, “I think when kids start having trouble, the biggest impact is the classroom teacher” (p. 169). Another low-referral teacher noted, “Kids who perform better or worse on the tests, it wasn’t due to potential, it was due to bad teaching, the inability to teach well, which I really feel accounts for a lot of our problems” (p. 170). The key question, however, is how high-referral and flunking and lowreferral and flunking teachers develop these different beliefs systems and practices? I do not have an answer to that question, just the data that indicates that such differences exist. My hunch about the development of the differences in teacher beliefs and practices is that the actions of school principals and, in many cases, the actions of district administrators develop teachers who either believe that teachers are the reason that some children learn to read and other children have difficulties learning to read. I will acknowledge that teaching in a high-poverty school makes it more difficult for teachers to achieve high-performing students. More difficult but not impossible. What I also believe is that we could develop high-achieving, high-poverty schools but I also believe this is largely a view not commonly found among the folks who work in or with high-poverty schools. Instead, the extra funding provided high-poverty schools through the federal Title 1 program seems rarely used in ways that enhance the reading instruction offered to the children enrolled in high-poverty schools (Allington and McGill-Franzen, 1989a).

106  Richard L. Allington

What Do Schools Provide Children Who Struggle with Learning to Read? What we do know is that neither the extra federal Title 1 funding available for high-poverty schools nor the extra funding the federal government provides to schools for every child identified as a PWD routinely improves reading instruction for children who participate in programs funded by either source of extra instructional dollars. This was our key finding in a study of the services provided low-achieving children in eight schools in six school districts (Allington and McGill-Franzen, 1989b). This 1989 paper reported an observational study of students from districts that represented rural, suburban, and urban settings. Half of the subjects were identified as pupils with disabilities receiving special education services and half were receiving remedial reading under the federal Title 1 program. The student observation instrument we used offered structured coding categories describing the instructional environment within a time recording system. Key contrasts we examined were the reading lessons that students from the two groups participated in, both in their general education classrooms and in the targeted pullout reading programs (Title 1 remediation or special education services). One key finding was that pupils with disabilities received significantly less reading/language arts instruction than did Title 1 students (95 minutes per day vs. 110 minutes), primarily because the pupils with disabilities often had classroom reading lessons replaced by special education resource room instruction. Additionally, pupils with disabilities received less active teaching and more undifferentiated seatwork activity than Title 1 students, both in the classroom and resource room. In fact, the Title 1 students received roughly twice as much active teaching during their reading lessons. However, both groups of struggling readers (PWD and Title 1) did little actual reading during their remedial and special education support classes. Much like an earlier study (Allington, Stuezel, Shake, and Lamarche, 1986), we found that support programs (Title 1 and special education) provided little actual opportunity to read. For every 10 hours of support instruction observed, roughly 90 minutes of reading of paragraph length or longer examples of reading connected text was observed. However, three-and-one-half hours out of the 10 hours of support instruction had the students engaged in non-academic activity. The dominant instructional activity, the sort of activity that used the remaining 5 hours of support instructional time, was skills worksheet completion activities following an “assign, monitor, correct and assign some more” lesson model. Notice that the skills worksheet model typically provided little in the way of actual instruction. Instead, the support lessons regularly expected students to fill in the blanks on a variety of worksheets with no instructional guidance. Curricular fragmentation was typically observed with the types of tasks, specific skills, and nature

We Could Teach Every Child to Read  107 of instructional materials used in the Title 1 remedial and special education support instruction more often differing from rather than matching the nature of the lessons that were offered during classroom reading lessons. The reading lessons in the two settings (classroom reading lessons and Title 1 remediation or special education) were generally independent of each other, even in the in-classroom remediation models. I’ll return to this subject shortly. It seems safe to say that studies of the nature of the support reading lessons offered in Title 1 and special education support programs leaves much to be desired. It also seems safe to assert that the lack of effective reading lessons we observed explains why neither the federal Title 1 remedial nor the special education programs have ever had much of a positive effect on the reading proficiency of participating students. Borman and D’Agostino (2001) reported that participation in the federally funded Title 1 ­remedial programs produced a small effect size on reading achievement of d=0.15. That is roughly equivalent to improving participating students’ reading achievement by 2 months per year. Unfortunately, this small improvement still leaves the participating students falling farther and farther behind their achieving peers. In other words, participating in the federally funded Title 1 remedial program never produces sufficient gains that would allow children to escape eligibility for continuing participation in the program. Another way to think about this is that children who participated in Title 1 programs reduced how much they were falling behind but they continued to fall farther behind year after year. Without Title 1 instructional support services, those same children would simply have lagged even farther behind their peers than was the case with the small gains the Title 1 program produced. The wholly unsatisfactory outcomes for Title 1 programs actually look good when compared to the outcomes for children who participate in special education programs. Bentum and Aaron (2003) report on their analyses of the records of roughly 400 special education students drawn from six school districts. They report that, on average, pupils with disabilities produced little evidence of academic gains resulting from their participation in special education. The results of present study indicate that elementary students with LD, who are instructed in resource rooms, fail to make significant gains in the areas of word recognition, reading comprehension, and spelling . . . [such] that in the long run, placement and instruction in resource rooms can actually have a deleterious effect on spelling and verbal intelligence scores. (Bentum and Aaron, 2003, p. 379) This meant to the authors that, “It is apparent that the LD programs, as practiced today, do not have much to write home about” (p. 381).

108  Richard L. Allington As G. Reid Lyon and his colleagues (2001) have written, “Historically, schools have opted to address persistent reading difficulties through the provision of remedial and special education services typically beginning in second grade and beyond. Yet the majority of children provided such services fail to become skilled readers” (p. 272). If you have followed the observational research reporting on the nature of the reading instruction provided to remedial and special education students, then you know why so few struggling readers ever become achieving readers. If you are largely unfamiliar with that body of research, I shall provide you a short summary of what we know about the reading lessons offered in the instructional support programs, programs that were intended to enhance both the quality and quantity of reading instruction in both the classroom and the reading instruction provided in Title 1 and special education instructional support programs.

Do American Instructional Support Programs Provide Additional Reading Instruction to Participating Students? A longstanding rule of thumb for evaluating instructional support programs has been to ask how much additional instruction was added through these programs. Unfortunately, the answers to this longstanding question have all fallen into the “not very much, if at all” category. It would take a booklength manuscript to detail all of the studies and evaluations that found little if any expansion of reading instructional time for either Title 1 or special education instructional support programs. Our research (Allington and McGill-Franzen, 1989b) was one of the few “bright spots” in this line of research. We found that participants in Title 1 programs were offered reading instruction support for 15 minutes of additional reading lessons per day than was the case for special education students. In too many other studies participants in these federally funded instructional support programs participated in fewer minutes of reading lessons if only because travel time and instructional set-up simply used up minutes that could have been instructional minutes. In too many schools, instructional time for reading was reduced when struggling readers participated in the federal supported programs. Instructional time was reduced because participating children were often provided the instructional support services during the time scheduled in the classroom for reading instruction. No matter how you look at it, offering struggling readers fewer minutes of reading lessons daily has few supporters. Nonetheless, the evidence available suggest that when struggling readers are lucky they participate in roughly the same number of minutes of reading each day as normally developing readers do, when you combine both the time they spend in both classroom and support reading instruction. Neither Title 1 remedial reading programs nor special education programs for PWD actually expand the volume of reading instruction that struggling readers receive.

We Could Teach Every Child to Read  109

The Quality of Reading Instruction Offered through Instructional Support Programs We would hope that Title 1 reading teachers and special education teachers are both well prepared to provide high-quality reading lessons. Unfortunately, much of reading instruction provided by both types of support programs fails to meet this expectation. This result is largely related to the fact that in both Title 1 remedial programs and special education programs paraprofessionals deliver much of the support instruction provided. We also have too much evidence that most paraprofessionals are quite inexpert when it comes to providing high-quality reading instruction (McGill-­ Franzen and Allington, 1990; Rowan and Guthrie, 1989; Vaughn, Moody, and Schumm, 1998). The situation is not much improved when observations of reading lessons offered by reading and special education teachers are analyzed. For any number of reasons, but especially because of the high cost, there are few reports of one-to-one tutoring in either remedial or special education programs. What seems most common is whole group instruction, as in instruction of all kids who arrive in the support classroom at the same time. In many cases in both remedial and special programs the children that arrive together for instruction were not necessarily selected for participation because of similar instructional levels. Typically, somewhere between five and eight children arrive for an instructional support session. Also, typically, these struggling readers vary widely in reading proficiencies and motivation for learning to read. Nonetheless, in the typical reading instructional support session, whether serving remedial or special education students, a daily lesson involves very little reading activity during these instructional sessions (and almost no silent reading was observed), but a wealth of skills worksheets seemed always present to be completed by the students (McGillFranzen and Allington, 1990). However, rarely did we observe instructional sessions targeted at developing whatever skills were necessary to complete the worksheets successfully. This same focus seems true in special education classrooms (Moody, Vaughn, Hughes, and Fischer, 2000; Vaughn, Moody, and Schumm, 1998). If there is a short summary concerning the quality of reading lessons offered in the instructional support programs targeting struggling readers it is this: Don’t expect to see high-quality, engaging reading instruction in these settings. Instead, expect to see one-size-fits-all reading instruction even though it almost never fits all students and too often fits none of the students if we are concerned with reading activities well matched to student reading proficiency levels or well matched to students’ instructional needs. This is a sad conclusion drawn from the research that has examined the nature of reading lessons provided in these instructional support programs. Given this finding it becomes clear why few struggling readers ever become achieving readers.

110  Richard L. Allington Finally, in my view reading lessons, provided these two reading instructional support programs, fail further by also being largely unrelated to the classroom reading lessons these students experience every day in addition to their participation in the instructional support lessons. We have argued that it makes no sense when classroom reading lessons and instructional support reading lessons are not well coordinated (Johnston, Allington, and Afflerbach, 1985). After interviewing classroom and remedial reading teachers who served the same struggling readers we found little coordination between the reading lessons offered struggling readers. In fact, we invented the term “planned fragmentation” to describe the situation we typically found. Fragmented reading instruction meant that literally nothing that was told to us by classroom teachers and by reading teachers led to what we called curriculum coordination. In other words, what we heard from these two separate teachers could have led us to believe that they worked with different children and even worked in different schools. What we found was two-thirds of the reading specialists were unable to identify the reading instructional materials (core program) their students were using in the regular classroom. At the same time, fewer than one in ten classroom teachers could name the materials or method used in the remedial setting. Little agreement between classroom and reading specialists on either the needs or the instructional goals of the children they both taught. This was a case of the left hand not having a clue about what the right hand was doing. There was no concern that the two reading lessons offered the struggling readers each day were more often cases of curriculum conflict, not just curricular fragmentation, which the struggling readers experienced. For instance, when the classroom reading lessons were drawn from a popular core reading series such as Houghton-Mifflin (H-M) and the remedial or special education reading lessons were drawn from SRA Reading Mastery (RM). Thus, struggling readers had to master reading as taught by two quite different reading programs. While one (RM) has a fairly rigid scheme for linking decoding lessons with the texts to be read, the other (H-M) offers a different scheme for trying to ensure that decoding lessons are useful in reading the texts assigned. Each program has a unique scheme for introducing letter-sound relationships, and the two schemes again differ. The role assigned to reading comprehension also differs between these two reading series. Imagine, instead, if the classroom and support reading programs were drawn from the same framework. Thus, instead of learning different letters and different sounds each day in the two fragmented reading programs, struggling readers could be participating in a double dose of high-quality reading lessons focused on the identical skills, words, and understandings. We have been unable to track down the origin of the widely adopted plan for curricular fragmentation and the best reason I’ve been given is that two programs means teachers have their own responsibilities and because of this will be less likely to interfere with whatever it is the other teacher is doing.

We Could Teach Every Child to Read  111 Others have argued that struggling readers need a program with a stronger decoding strand than is typically available. However, given that struggling readers in both programs spend substantial time involved with developing decoding proficiencies, an emphasis that has not improved their reading achievement (Torgeson and Hudson, 2006), it seems an unlikely rationale for selecting a decoding emphasis program of study. One thing seems true and that is struggling readers need to read more frequently than achieving readers if we expect them to demonstrate the accelerated reading development necessary to close their current reading achievement gap. However, current school district plans for struggling readers rarely set goals for expanding reading volume. What we also know is that schools that enroll many children from low-income families (thereby providing the school with a steady supply of struggling readers) are the very schools that are least likely to employ a school librarian, the most likely to have a library collection that is considerably smaller than is typically found in American schools that enroll few children from low-income families (Neuman and Celano, 2001), and the most likely to put substantial restrictions on movement of school books from the school building.

Do Struggling Readers Read Enough to Become Good Readers? Struggling readers read far less than do American achieving readers (Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding, 1988). As Anderson and his colleagues report, the differences in the volume of out of school independent reading activity between readers of differing reading achievement levels are stunningly large. They reported that There is a strong, direct correlation between the amount of independent reading students do and their percentile rank on standardized tests. For example, students scoring in the 98th percentile read independently an average of 67 minutes per day while students who score in the 10th percentile read independently for an average of less than 10 minutes per day. (p. 301) Most American children read voluntarily for a greater number of minutes each day than the time they spend reading during lessons. For our best readers, the volume of independent readers is four times greater than the reading done for instructional purposes. Even our least effective readers read voluntarily for almost as many minutes each day as they spend reading during their reading lessons! Of course many struggling readers have learned to literally hate to engage in reading activity. They have learned to hate reading activity after years of remedial and special education services and their continued failure to

112  Richard L. Allington become a proficient reader. Too many times they have learned to hate reading activity because they have had a reading diet of paragraphs on skills sheets and a diet loaded with artificial books written to readability formulas. The texts these struggling readers typically are familiar with are not texts that you will usually find in school libraries. These are texts not written to raise the hair on the back of your neck nor were they written in a manner intended to leave you laughing hilariously at some story event or character quirk. Worst of all, someone else, typically one of your teachers, decides what texts you will read in instructional settings. The volume of reading activity that is mostly ignored is the design on remedial and special education interventions where the goal is improving actual reading proficiency (Allington, 2009, 2014). Torgeson and Hudson (2006) argue, “The most important factor [in addressing interventions for struggling readers] appears to involve . . . making up for the huge deficits in accurate reading practice the older struggling readers have accumulated by the time they reached later elementary school . . .” (p. 147). An individual’s volume of reading is related to the personal motivation to become a reader. But motivation to read is undermined by limited access to a variety of books. What we know and what may have stimulated the argument set forth by Torgeson and Hudson is the fact that poor children own virtually no books and attend schools where there many fewer books per child than is the case in schools populated by more economically advantaged children. In addition, the neighborhoods where poor children live almost never include a bookstore while the middle-class child invariably lives in a neighborhood where stores, including bookstores, offer a selection of children’s books for purchase (Neuman, 2013). Mol and Bus (2011) conducted a meta-analysis with ninety-nine studies focused on voluntary reading. They found that moderate associations of print exposure with academic achievement indicate that frequent readers are more successful students. Interestingly, poor readers also appear to benefit from independent leisure time reading. Leisure time reading is especially important for low-ability readers. We found that the basic reading skills of children in primary and middle school with a lower ability level were more strongly related to print exposure as compared with higher ability readers. (Mol and Bus, 2011, 271) In other words, when planning academic intervention programs for struggling readers, educators must include consideration of whether the planned program reliably and significantly increases the amount of actual reading that struggling readers engage in. The most commonly used tools for guiding the classroom reading lessons all children receive are the core reading programs available in the marketplace. But one aspect of core reading program design, limited material to be

We Could Teach Every Child to Read  113 read, suggests one reason so many children never become proficient readers. Brenner and Hiebert (2010) analyzed the text that would be read if teachers used one of the six major core reading programs. They report that their analysis of the core reading programs found that teachers’ editions outlined an elementary school reading block that allocated less than onequarter of the typical 90-minute period for students to read (Brenner and Hiebert, 2010). Time allocated for reading in the different third-grade core reading programs ranged from 10.2 minutes to 24.4 minutes, depending on which core reading program was analyzed, with an average of 15 minutes of reading per day. Thus, the typical American reading lesson allocates 75 minutes for other student activities and 15 minutes for actual reading. Is it any wonder that independent reading completed outside of the school day is such an influential factor in the development of reading proficiency? Imagine what might happen if we reversed the daily time allocations for reading lessons. We would create lessons where children read for 75 minutes and did worksheets and such for 15 minutes each day. We’ve long known that time spent working on workbook pages contributes largely wasted minutes when it comes to generating growth in reading proficiency (Cunningham, 1984), while time spent reading during reading lessons is tightly linked to growth of a student’s reading proficiency (Foorman, Schatschnieder, Eakins, Fletcher, Moats, and Francis, 2006). Nonetheless, in American classrooms today one is more likely to observe children completing workbook pages than observe children reading. I think we may have adopted precisely the wrong formula for building proficient readers. Rather than design core reading programs and daily lessons such that children are substantially less likely to be engaged in a powerful and productive educational activity, we could and should redesign the core reading programs and the lessons we offer so that American children spend most of every reading lesson actually engaged in reading. What we do know is that choice, as in selection of one’s own reading material, is a powerful force in motivating readers. It seems we too often forget that once these struggling readers leave the schooling process it will be up to each of them to decide to read and, if so decided, to then select for themselves the text that will be read. Lindsay (2013) notes that allowing children to self-select the books they will read produced a positive effect size on reading achievement that was almost twice as large as was produced when children were simply given books (often matched to the readers reading level). Likewise, children’s motivation for reading also benefited when self-selection of the books to be read was the plan in place. We also know quite about summer reading loss that accounts for almost all of the reading achievement gap that exists between children from highand low-income families (Allington and McGill-Franzen, in press). Summer reading loss is a bit like a leaky faucet in that children from low-income families tend to lose about 2 months of reading development during the summer months while children from middle-class families tend to gain about a month

114  Richard L. Allington of reading development during the summers when school is not in session. This two-month gap is small and so largely has escaped much attention. At the same time the two-month gap for poor children when combined with the one-month gain of middle-class children means that every 3 years of schooling means poor children fall a year further behind. By ninth grade, summer reading loss has been the source of loss of 3 years’ worth of reading growth. Thus, even when the teachers in high-poverty schools are effective at closing off summer reading loss, which occurs when the children are not in school, this still leaves poor children as underachieving high school students. We have recently demonstrated that improving access to books for children from low-income families largely mitigates summer reading loss. Each year for 3 years we gave twelve self-selected summer books to children from low-income families enrolled in seventeen high-poverty schools. Children were not required to read the books nor were they required to complete quizzes or to write book reports. “Just read the books,” we said, “and enjoy them and enjoy your summer vacation.” What we learned was that improving poor children’s access to books they really wanted to read was a success—differential gains in reading achievement between the books kids and the control group children (who received no summer books) was quite substantial and was statistically significant (Allington, McGill-Franzen, Camilli, Williams, Graff, Zeig, Zmach, and Nowak, 2010). Summer books kids made almost a year’s greater growth over those three summers that we supplied the books they had to read. The summer books program eliminated summer reading loss and added a bit more reading growth as well. America is too rich a nation to have some children go all summer without anything to read. The development of reading proficiency is too critical a goal to not spend the money needed to purchase the twelve books for every child every year. Our cost for the twelve paperback books we distributed to poor children was about $150 per child across the full 3 years of the project. So the question is this: What else can you spend $50 on that will produce almost three-months’ annual growth in reading proficiency? If you don’t have an answer, then I’ll suggest that you replace something you currently have that costs roughly $50 per child per year and begin to allocate that money to support running free book fairs every summer.

Summary We have learned much in the past 40 years about solving the problems presented by struggling readers. Unfortunately, most of what we have learned has yet to appear as common practice in American schools. The evidence that the children who typically struggle when learning to read are readily identified upon kindergarten entry. Vellutino, Scanlon, and their collaborators argue that a simple test of letter identification provides valid evidence of which children are entering kindergarten already behind. A test of letter name knowledge is the tool they use to identify which kindergarteners are at risk of reading difficulties. Those children with low alphabet knowledge

We Could Teach Every Child to Read  115 upon kindergarten entry are the children who qualify for one-to-one tutoring or very small group (n=3 students) intervention. The research supports such early intervention as one central aspect of effective schools. It makes sense that intervening early and effectively produces so many more proficient readers. Early intervention typically derails the all too common occurrence of having kids at-risk of failure actually achieve failure. Rather than creating a new pool of struggling readers that is the product of ignoring the needs of kindergarteners at risk of early reading failure, effective early intervention educational services primarily produce readers. Some school staff have told us that they would like to provide such early intervention services but that they don’t have the funding that is needed to support the intervention. My response is simple to such naysayers. I simply point out that early intervention seems to be the least expensive solution to the problem of struggling readers. The least expensive solution in large part because solving problems some children have learning to read and solving that problem so that almost no students remain that are still struggling with reading acquisition. When classroom teachers plan and deliver high-quality early literacy lessons and also plan to spend more instructional time with children experiencing difficulties with reading acquisition (a lot more instructional time in some instances, and organize their daily lessons such that all children are engaged in substantially more minutes of daily reading), the outcome is fewer, typically, far fewer children who experience difficulties in learning to read. Linked to such outcomes is ensuring that all children but especially poor children have easy access to a wide range of appropriate books. With this easy access, allow children to choose most of the books they will read for each day’s reading lesson. With a large supply of children’s books there is no longer any reason for not allowing every child to take one or more books every afternoon. Finally, when schools have a large number of children’s books it becomes easier to send ten to twelve books home with every student during the summer months. Distributing books for summer voluntary reading will work to close, if not eliminate, the differences in the achievement between rich and poor children. It is possible to teach every child to read but to achieve this goal means that educators will have to attend to changing the design of reading lessons such that all children read much more than is now the case. Accomplishing this does not require a rocket scientist. But it does require that someone pay attention to what we have learned about creating schools where every child becomes a reader.

Bibliography Allington, R. L. (2009). If they don’t read much . . . 30 years later. In E. H. Hiebert (Ed.), Reading more, reading better (pp. 30–54). New York: Guilford Publishers. Allington, R. L. (2014). How reading volume affects both reading fluency and reading achievement. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 7(1): 13–26.

116  Richard L. Allington Allington, R. L., Gaskins, R., Broikou. K., Jachym, N., and King, S. (1990). Curriculum coherence: Improving school programs for at-risk learners through instructional coordination. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 1(2): 123–136. Allington, R. L., and Johnston, P. H. (1989). Coordination, collaboration, and consistency: The redesign of compensatory and special education interventions. In R. Slavin, N. Karweit and N. Malden (Eds.), Effective programs for students at risk (pp. 320–354). Boston, MA: Allyn-Bacon. Allington, R. L., and Johnston, P. H. (2002). Reading to learn: Lessons from exemplary 4th grade classrooms. New York: Guilford. Allington, R. L., and McGill-Franzen, A. (1989a). Different programs, indifferent instruction. In A. Gartner and D. Lipsky (Eds.), Beyond separate education: Quality education for all (pp. 75–98). Baltimore, MD: Brookes. Allington, R. L., and McGill-Franzen, A. (1989b). School response to reading failure: Chapter 1 and special education students in grades 2, 4, and 8. Elementary School Journal, 89(5): 529–542. Allington, R. L., and. McGill-Franzen, A. (1993). Placing children at risk: Schools respond to reading problems. In R. Donmeyer and R. Kos (Eds.), At-risk students: Portraits, policies, programs, and practices (pp. 197–218). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Allington, R. L., and McGill-Franzen (in press). Summer reading loss is the basis of almost all the rich/poor reading gap. In R. Horowitz and S. J. Samuels (Eds.), The achievement gap in reading: Complex causes, persistent issues, and possible solutions. New York: Routledge. Allington, R. L., McGill-Franzen, A., Camilli, G., Williams, L., Graff, J., Zeig, J., Zmach, C., and Nowak, R. (2010). Addressing summer reading setback among economically disadvantaged elementary students. Reading Psychology, 31(5): 411–427. Allington, R. L., and Shake, M. C. (1986). Remedial reading: Achieving curricular congruence in classroom and clinic. Reading Teacher, 39: 648–654. Allington, R. L., Stuetzel, H., Shake, M., and Lamarche, S. (1986). What is remedial reading? A descriptive study. Reading Research and Instruction, 26(1): 15–30. Anderson, R. C., Wilson, P. T., and Fielding, L. G. (1988). Growth in reading and how children spend their time outside of school. Reading Research Quarterly, 23: 285–303. Bentum, K. E., and Aaron, P. G. (2003). Does reading instruction in learning disability rooms really work? A longitudinal study. Reading Psychology, 24: 361–382. Borman, G. D., and D’Agostino, J. V. (2001). Title 1 and student achievement: A quantitative synthesis. In G. D. Borman, S. C. Stringfield, and R. E. Slavin (Eds.), Title 1: Compensatory education at the crossroads (pp. 25–57). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Brenner, D., and Hiebert, E. H. (2010). If I follow the teachers’ editions, isn’t that enough? Analyzing reading volume in six core reading programs. Elementary School Journal, 110(3): 347–363. Broikou, K. A. (1992). Understanding primary grade classroom teachers’ special education referral practices. Doctoral dissertation, School of Education, Department of Reading, University at Albany, State University of New York. Cunningham, P. M. (1984).What would make workbooks worthwhile? In R. Anderson, J. Osborn and R. Tierney (Eds.), Learning to read in American schools: Basal readers and content texts (pp. 113–120). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

We Could Teach Every Child to Read  117 Foorman, B. R., Schatschneider, C., Eakins, M. N., Fletcher, J. M., Moats, L., and Francis, D. J. (2006). The impact of instructional practices in grades 1 and 2 on reading and spelling achievement in high poverty schools. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 31(1): 1–29. Gelzheiser, L. M., Scanlon, D. M., Vellutino, F. R., Hallgren-Flynn, L., and Schatschneider, C. (2011). Effects of the interactive strategies approach—­ Extended. Elementary School Journal, 112(2): 280–306. Johnson, D. D., and Johnson, B. (2002). High Stakes: Children, testing, and failure in American schools. New York: Rowan & Littlefield. Johnson, D. D., Johnson, B., Farenga, S. J., and Ness, D. (2005). Trivializing teacher education: The accreditation squeeze. New York: Rowan & Littlefield. Johnson, D. D., and Pearson, P. D. (1975). Skills management systems: A critique. Reading Teacher, 28(8): 757–764. Johnston, P. H., Allington, R. L., and Afflerbach, P. (1985). The congruence of classroom and remedial reading instruction. Elementary School Journal, 85: 465–478. Johnston, P. H., Woodside-Jiron, H., and Day, J. (2001). Teaching and learning literate epistemologies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(1): 223–233. Lindsay, J. J. (2013). Impacts of interventions that increase children’s access to print material. In R. L. Allington and A. McGill-Franzen (Eds.), Summer reading: Closing the rich/poor reading achievement gap (pp. 20–38). New York: Teachers College Press. Lyon, G. R., Fletcher, J., Shaywitz, S. E., Shaywitz, B. A., Torgeson, J. K., Wood, F. B., Schulte, A., and Olson, R. (2001). In J. C. E. Finn, R. A. J. Rotherham and J. C. R. Hokanson (Eds.), Rethinking learning disabilities: Rethinking special education for a new century (pp. 259–288). Washington, DC: Progressive Policy Institute and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. McGill-Franzen, A., and Allington, R. L. (1990). Comprehension and coherence: Neglected elements of literacy instruction in remedial and resource room services. Journal of Reading, Writing, and Learning Disabilities, 6(2): 149–182. McGill-Franzen, A., and Allington, R. L. (1993). Flunk’em or get them classified: The contamination of primary grade accountability data. Educational Researcher, 22(1): 19–22. Mol, S. E., and Bus, A. G. (2011). To read or not to read: A meta-analysis of print exposure from infancy to early adulthood. Psychological Bulletin, 137(2): 267–296. Moody, S. W., Vaughn, S. R., Hughes, R. M., and Fischer, M. (2000). Reading instruction in the resource room: Set up for failure. Exceptional Children, 16: 305–316. Neuman, S. B. (2013). The American dream: Slipping away? Phi Delta Kappan, 70(8): 18–22. Neuman, S., and Celano, D. (2001). Access to print in low-income and middleincome communities. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(1): 8–26. Pearson, P. D., and Johnson, D. D. (1972). Teaching reading comprehension. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Pressley, M., Allington, R. L., Wharton-McDonald, R., Block, C. C., and Morrow, L. (2001). Learning to read: Lessons from exemplary first-grade classrooms. New York: Guilford. Pressley, M., Wharton-McDonald, R., and Mistretta, J. (1998). Effective beginning literacy instruction: Dialectal, scaffolded, and contextualized. In J. L. Metsala and L. C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 357–373). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

118  Richard L. Allington Rowan, B., and Guthrie, L. F. (1989). The quality of Chapter I instruction: Results from a study of twenty-four schools. In R. E. Slavin, N. Karweit, and N. Madden (Eds.), Effective programs for students at risk (pp. 195–219). Boston, MA: Allyn-Bacon. Scanlon, D. M., Gelzheiser, L. M., Vellutino, Schatschneider, C., and Sweeney, J. M. (2008). Reducing the incidence of early reading difficulties: Professional development for classroom teachers versus direct interventions for children. Learning and Individual Differences, 18(3): 346–359. Stuhlman, M. W., and Pianta, R. C. (2009). Profiles of educational quality in first grade. Elementary School Journal, 109(4): 323–342. Torgesen, J. K., and Hudson, R. F. (2006). Reading fluency: Critical issues for struggling readers. In S. J. Samuels and A. E. Farstrup (Eds.), What research has to say about fluency instruction (pp. 130–158). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Vaughn, S., Moody, S. W., and Schumm, J. S. (1998). Broken promises: Reading instruction in the resource room. Exceptional Children, 64: 211–225. Vellutino, F. R., Scanlon, D. M., Sipay, E. R., Small, S. G., Pratt, A., Chen, R., and Denckla, M. B. (1996). Cognitive profiles of difficult-to-remediate and readily remediated poor readers: Early intervention as a vehicle for distinguishing between cognitive and experiential deficits as basic causes of specific reading disability. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88(4): 601–638. Ysseldyke, J. E., and Algozzine, B. (1983). Where to begin in diagnosing reading problems. Topics in Learning and Learning Disabilities, 2(1): 60–69. Ysseldyke, J. E., Thurlow, M. L., Meckenlenburg, C., and Graden, J. (1984). Opportunity to learn for regular and special education students during reading instruction. Remedial and Special Education, 5(1): 29–37.

7 Intervention Assessment of Literacy to Inform Teaching and Increase Learning Jeanne R. Paratore and Roselmina Indrisano

More than 25 years ago, the authors developed Intervention Assessment (IA) (Paratore and Indrisano, 1987), a recursive process that combines assessment and instruction and is intended to discover a learner’s capacity for success when the most effective intervention is provided. At that time, we described IA as different in that its fundamental purpose was not to discover the text level at which a student succeeds; but rather, to determine the instructional conditions that supported a student’s success when reading various types of text. As such, IA represented a substantially different approach to meeting individual needs. Rather than attempting to identify the text that best fits a student’s abilities, we sought to find a way to search for the best match between a student’s needs relative to a particular text and the instructional strategies that would ensure success. Now, in response to the welcome invitation to honor our friend Professor Dale Johnson and his commitment to equal opportunity for success for all learners, we revisited IA and considered how advances in literacy theory, research, and practice over the last several years might further inform the approach. In this chapter, we review and update the theoretical and empirical foundations of IA, describe current implementation procedures, and provide examples of the ways the strategies used in IA can guide teachers and other professionals to increase learning for students who are challenged by literacy. While we continue to use the term intervention, we acknowledge that, at present, intervention often refers to a specific program. As a result, the term mediation will be used interchangeably with intervention to refer to the instructional actions taken by the teacher. On a national level, the Common Core State Standards [CCSS] (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices [NGACBP] and Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO] (2010) have gained prominence in schools and classrooms; and a particular focus has been the expectation that all students will read and respond to “grade level text with purpose and understanding” (n. p.). With this as a standard, implementation of the instructional strategies that bring difficult texts within the range of struggling readers is of fundamental importance.

120  Jeanne R. Paratore and Roselmina Indrisano

The Theoretical/Research Framework Our original work on IA drew on models of diagnostic teaching (Harris, 1974; Lipson and Wixson, 1986) and dynamic assessment (Feurerstein, Rand, and Hoffman, 1979). These models have in common with each other the use of a recursive process of assessment and instruction that is designed to yield an understanding of the learner’s capabilities when provided with effective instruction. The theories of learning that informed the early work were centered on four ideas: (1) optimal growth occurs when individuals are challenged to work within the “zone of proximal development,” i.e., the space in which learners complete challenging tasks “under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky, 1978, 86); (2) metacognitive awareness, an understanding of one’s own learning, contributes to success (Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, and Campione, 1983); (3) instruction that provides a “gradual release of responsibility” from teacher to student supports learning for all types of students (Pearson and Gallagher, 1983); and (4) reading volume contributes to success, beginning at the earliest levels of acquisition (Stanovich, 1986). The revised model relies, as well, on the concepts of authentic assessment (Paris et al., 1992), performance assessment (Afflerbach, 2007), and inquiryoriented assessment (Valencia, 2007). Refinements in instructional interventions were informed by recent research on effective practice (e.g., Afflerbach, Pearson, and Paris, 2008; Duke and Pearson, 2002, Nagy and Scott, 2000), and motivation and engagement (Lutz, Guthrie, and Davis, 2006). Four principles continue to guide IA: (1) the learners are active participants who provide and receive information about their learning; (2) the assessment focuses on literacy processes used for authentic purposes; (3) the process is recursive and designed to discover the possibilities for success when effective, appropriate mediation is provided; and (4) the insights and outcomes gained through the assessment inform instruction. Fundamental to implementation of each of these principles is Wiggins’ (1993) imperative: “Assessment should be designed to improve performance, not just monitor it” (p. 6).

An Alternative to Traditional Assessment Traditional assessment helps teachers to identify two types of reading levels, first, the independent level at which students read easily and comfortably without help from a teacher or another capable reader; this level guides students toward selecting books for independent reading. The second is the level at which students read texts with relatively little instructional support. This level has long been labeled the instructional level and, at present, is recommended for selecting texts for small-group reading, often labeled as guided reading (Fountas and Pinnell, 1996). Identifying these two reading levels helps teachers make important curriculum-related decisions: selecting and displaying texts for students to read on their own and selecting and

Intervention Assessment of Literacy  121 assigning texts for students to read in contexts in which they will receive relatively little teacher support. However, some evidence indicates that limiting students’ reading to diagnosed instructional and independent levels may limit their rate of reading growth. For example, Morgan, Wilcox, and Eldredge (2000) studied second-grade delayed readers who participated in dyad reading in three different groups: one group read texts at their instructional reading level; one group read texts two levels above their instructional reading level; and one group read texts four levels above their instructional reading level. All groups made gains (affirming the benefit of dyad reading); however, the gains made by the two groups reading texts above their instructional level exceeded those of the group reading instructional level text. Moreover, the students who read two levels above their instructional level achieved the highest gains, and these gains were significantly greater than those of students who read instructional level text. In another study, O’Connor, Swanson, and Geraghty (2010) examined reading growth when second- and fourth-grade struggling readers read texts at their independent level (92–100 percent word reading accuracy) or at a difficult level (80–90 percent word reading accuracy). They found no significant differences in reading gains as a function of text difficulty, although students who read difficult texts achieved a slightly higher growth rate. There were no differences in achievement in word level skills, vocabulary, or comprehension. The researchers noted that the strong gains made by struggling readers when reading difficult texts suggest that the widespread assumption that classroom teachers must seek and assign easy texts to lowperforming readers may not be valid. In yet another study, Shany and Biemiller (1995) identified twenty-nine struggling third- and fourth-grade students (reading at about the mid-firstgrade level) and formed three groups, two treatment groups and one control group. In each treatment condition, children read, with assistance, texts that were identified as frustration level (children answered fewer than half of the comprehension questions correctly at the specified grade level at pretest). In one condition, the students read aloud to an adult who pronounced unknown words the student encountered (with no attempt to teach word identification strategies). In the other condition, the students read along with an audio recording of the text. In the control group, children received “normal classroom instruction” (p. 387). Over a 16-week period, each treatment group student accumulated a total of 32 practice hours. Volume of reading by students in the treatment and control groups varied substantially, with students in the treatment groups reading five to ten times the number of words read by control group students over the 16-week period. In addition, students in the tape-assisted condition read almost 70 percent more units than their peers in the teacher-assisted condition, where students more often relied on teacher support. Students in both treatment groups made significantly greater gains in reading and listening comprehension than their

122  Jeanne R. Paratore and Roselmina Indrisano control group peers. Children in both treatment groups also significantly outperformed the control group on measures of reading speed and accuracy when reading in context; however, there were no differences on listbased measures of decoding knowledge. Both treatment groups gained 1.7 grade-equivalent years on the reading measure (Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty) compared to a gain of 0.6 year for the control group. There were no significant differences between the treatment groups on any of the measures. Shany and Biemiller interpreted these outcomes as evidence of two important previous findings: first, a high volume of reading will lead to greater reading competence; and second, low-performing readers can manage increases in text difficulty at a much more brisk pace than that which typically characterizes instruction for low-performing readers. Finally, Hindin and Paratore (2007) also studied students reading at least 2 years below grade level, but they examined the effects of rereading difficult text at home rather than at school. In this study, parents of ten second graders who were reading at least 2 years below grade level listened to their children reread a selection from the classroom curriculum that teachers had taught the previous week, but on which the children continued to demonstrate low levels of comprehension and fluency. Children reread each selection four times, and each rereading was audiotaped. Analysis of the audio recordings indicated these children, whose parents reported no home reading of any sort prior to the study, substantially increased their reading volume as they participated in the study, reading a total, on average, of 24,457 words (ranging from 10,629 to 37,548 words). Of the ten participants, all gained at least one full grade level (as measured by the QRI), and eight of the ten achieved at or near grade-level performance criteria. Students also achieved substantial gains in word-reading accuracy and reading rate. Notably, in each of these studies, students were not expected to contend with difficult texts on their own. Rather, children received assistance pronouncing the unknown word from a teacher, a parent, or an audio recording. As such, none of these studies undermines evidence that students benefit from high-accuracy reading (e.g., Allington, 2002; Juel, 1988). Instead, the combined evidence suggests that there are alternative approaches to achieving high levels of reading accuracy. As we considered this evidence in light of the expectation in the CCSS (NGACBP and CCSSO, 2010) that every student will be prepared to read complex texts, we concluded that teachers must know not only the types of texts students can read on their own or with relatively little help, but also, the types of instructional strategies that bring challenging texts within their students’ reading range.

The Focus of Intervention Assessment While the IA process can be used with learners at all levels of education, this chapter focuses on IA as it would be used with primary- and intermediategrade students. Like traditional assessment IA is based on the assumption

Intervention Assessment of Literacy  123 that teachers will, at times, assign students to read texts independently or with little instructional support, and in these contexts they will need to discover the “right” text level for each student. However, unlike traditional assessment, in IA it is assumed that as teachers work to prepare their students to achieve the CCSS, at least at times, they will use common (usually grade-level) texts, not only for listening, but also for reading. If students who are reading below grade level are to succeed in this context, teachers need to know the instructional strategies that will bring the texts within a student’s range of reading ability. Consistent with this need, IA is designed to help teachers discover the conditions for success—the instructional contexts and teaching actions—that enable a student to read accurately and respond meaningfully to texts that would otherwise be too difficult. The complete IA process, then, includes the determination of students’ (a) independent reading level (i.e., the level at which students read texts with at least 95 percent word reading accuracy and 90 percent comprehension); (b) instructional level (i.e., the level at which students read texts with at least approximately 90 percent word reading accuracy and approximately 85 percent comprehension); and (c) the types of instructional contexts and teaching interactions that bring challenging texts (i.e., those outside the students’ assessed independent and instructional levels) within the range of students’ reading ability. Because procedures to assess students’ independent and instructional reading levels have been widely described (e.g., Clay, 1993) we focus here only on the third purpose of IA—the determination of conditions that support success when students are confronted with challenging texts. To uncover these conditions, IA first considers students’ metacognitive awareness. Then the assessment centers on skill and strategy knowledge and competence (including reading stamina) related to silent reading, comprehension (through retelling and answering questions), summary writing (informational text), and word reading accuracy and fluency (through oral rereading). In our original article, we defined a strategy as “a systematic plan consciously adapted and monitored, to improve one’s performance in learning” (Harris and Hodges, 1995, p. 244). The more recent refined definitions developed by Afflerbach, Pearson, and Paris (2008) guide our current work. In their words, reading skills are “automatic activities that result in decoding and comprehension with speed, efficiency, and fluency and usually occur without awareness of the components or control involved” (p. 368). Reading strategies are “deliberate, goal-directed attempts to control and modify the reader’s efforts to decode text, understand words, and construct meanings of text” (p. 368).

Intervention Assessment: The Process A metacognitive conversation initiates the process. In this conversation, the teacher and the student offer the perspectives of two types of experts, the student on the self as learner and the teacher on learning and teaching reading and writing. Following this conversation, the domains of silent reading, comprehension (through retelling and answering questions), summary

124  Jeanne R. Paratore and Roselmina Indrisano writing (at the intermediate level), and word reading accuracy and fluency (through oral rereading) are assessed using a similar process. For each domain, the teacher begins by explaining the purpose of the task, followed by an independent effort by students during which the teacher takes notes on the performance recording strengths and needs (see the Appendix). If students experience difficulty, the teacher intervenes at three successive levels as appropriate: (1) explaining a useful strategy (E), (2) modeling the strategy accompanied by thinking aloud (M), or (3) guiding the use of the strategy by decreasing instructional scaffolding as demonstrated competence increases (S). The teacher notes the level of intervention that was required for success (E. M, or S). In the following sections, these procedures are described with adaptations to each assessment domain. The criteria that guide the level of intervention are (1) reading with no help (independent level, 95 percent word reading accuracy and 90 percent comprehension); (2) reading with a little help (instructional level, 90 percent word reading accuracy and 85 percent comprehension); or (3) reading with substantial help (challenging level, less than 90 percent word reading accuracy and 85 percent comprehension). At this level, the necessary mediation is provided but decreases in explicitness as competence increases. The final step is reviewing the strategy and describing when and how to use it again.

A Metacognitive Conversation Studies indicate that metacognition, the awareness of one’s own thinking, is an important factor in learning, including learning to become a strategic reader (Afflerbach, Cho, Kim, Crassas, and Doyle, 2013; Bransford, Brown, and Coching, 2000; Byrd and Gholson, 1985; Paris, Lipson, and Wixson, 1983). Guided by earlier findings and confirmed by more recent research, the metacognitive conversation provides insight into a student’s awareness of literacy preferences, strengths, and needs. As noted, in IA, students are considered to be experts on their own learning, and the conversation is initiated with an explanation that, together, the expertise of the student and the teacher will make it possible to develop a learning plan that is right for the student. In addition, the student is informed that the assessment tasks will be familiar and unfamiliar, easy and difficult. When tasks are difficult, the teacher will provide support to help the student to succeed and in the process, determine the types of support that are most helpful. Finally, the student is reminded that this is shared work so feedback, questions, and comments are welcome. To reinforce the collaborative nature of the process, the conversation concludes with the teacher informing the student that, following their work together, the teacher will prepare and explain a graph that shows the student’s strengths and needs and the ways the strengths will be used to meet the needs. Throughout the remainder of the IA, the teacher refers to the identified strengths that become evident in the student’s reading and writing. The questions that guide the conversation are presented in Figure 7.1.

The first questions are about the ways you learn Of all you have learned how to do, in school and at home, what do you do best? How did you learn to do this? (I admire you for being able to . . . I wish I could learn to . . .) What would you like to learn to do better? When you are working with a teacher or another student, what does that person do that helps you most? What else would you like me to know about how you learn best?

These questions are about the ways you read and write What do you like to read/ write about? Where do you find the kinds of texts you like to read? Outside of school, how often do you read for fun or to find information? When you are reading and you come to a word you don’t know, what do you do? When you want to write a word and you don’t know how to spell it, what do you do? When you don’t understand what you are reading, what do you do? Do you like to read printed texts or do you like to read on a computer? Tell me about the ways you read and write on a computer, and if you have them, on your phone, iPad, or notebook. How are reading and writing on a computer and other devices the same or different from the kinds of reading and writing you are asked to do in your classroom?

These questions are about the ways you read and write What do you do to get ready to read? What do you do to help you to remember what you have read? If a young child who hasn’t learned to read yet asks you to how to read, what would you tell him/ her to do? What do you to get ready to write? What do you do to write so your readers will understand? If a young child who hasn’t learned to write yet, asked you to how to write a story, what would you tell him/ her to do? Is there anything else you want me to know about you or your reading and writing? Figure 7.1  Questions to Guide the Metacognitive Conversation

126  Jeanne R. Paratore and Roselmina Indrisano Insights gained during the metacognitive conversation are used to guide the teacher’s observations during later parts of the assessment. For example, if a student has indicated a preference for a particular text genre or topic, as each text is introduced, the teacher attends to the actions and behaviors that might suggest differences in motivation, engagement, and strategy use when reading a text, a text genre, or topic that is inconsistent with expressed interests or preferences.

Phase 1: Assessment without Intervention At the outset, the teacher assesses the capacity to read a collection of topically-related texts without any support or assistance. There are six ­ parts to this assessment phase: preparing to read, reading the text, recalling important information, answering questions, summary writing, and oral rereading. In preparation for the assessment, the teacher selects the text, guided by the following considerations. Selecting the Text Since the goal is to understand the conditions for success as students read and respond to texts in the general education curriculum, selected texts that are typical of those students will be read in the classroom, for ­example, a book used in the instructional reading program or a text used in a disciplinary context (e.g., social studies or science). Since text authenticity is a critical factor in reading motivation and engagement (Gambrell, 2011), text selection is limited to those that meet the definition of authentic text, that is, texts written in “natural” language to convey ideas and information. Although they may conform to specific grade or readability levels, selected texts were not written with a controlled vocabulary or rewritten to achieve a particular readability score (Routman, 1991). Both narrative and informational texts are used, as are texts on topics of ­interest. Consistent with current understanding of the importance of reading stamina (Hiebert, 2014) and curricular coherence (e.g., Newmann, Smith, Allensworth, and Bryk, 2001), students read a topically related text set comprising three to four texts of approximately 250 words each. After selecting the text, the teacher prepares three types of questions: textually explicit, textually implicit, and scriptally implicit (Pearson and Johnson, 1978). Preparing to Read Studies have suggested that capable readers set a purpose for reading and activate prior knowledge before they begin to read (Duke and Pearson, 2002), and that this step contributes to text comprehension. To help understand

Intervention Assessment of Literacy  127 how students prepare to read, a text is provided, and the following explanation is given: I will ask you to read a part of this book to yourself, but first I’d like to know what you do to get ready to read. So tell me or show me what you think about and what you do to get ready to read. The teacher observes or listens for evidence of actions that support comprehension: setting a purpose for reading, activating prior knowledge, or using strategies that help to discern text structure. For example, as evidence of purpose-setting behaviors, students may say that they read to understand how the character will solve a problem (narrative text) or to learn new information (informational text). Cues to eliciting prior knowledge as a prereading strategy include noting that they have previously read a text on the same topic or by the same author or illustrator, or mentioning other ­topically-related texts and experiences (e.g., videos, magazines, blogs, websites). Awareness of or attention to text structure or text features might be gleaned from students’ reading the title and looking at the illustrations in a narrative text or noticing text features (e.g., bolded words, subheadings, or graphic displays) in an informational text. Reading the Text This part of the assessment begins with directions for independent silent reading. The teacher explains that this text may be difficult but asks students to read “as well you can” to allow the teacher to know what can be done without help. Students are told that after this first reading, the teacher will provide help as needed. During the reading the teacher observes eye movements for cues to uninterrupted reading or a focus on illustrations or graphic displays as cues to word reading or comprehension. The teacher also observes facial expressions for cues that suggest engagement or discouragement, confidence or confusion. Reading stamina is assessed by attending to three particular patterns reported by Hiebert (2014): (1) not starting to read at all if the text is judged to be too challenging; (2) reading rapidly with little or no comprehension; (3) persisting when the text is difficult, maintaining high levels of engagement with low comprehension. Recalling Information This segment begins with the teacher providing a simple prompt: “Tell me what you think was most important in this text.” Recall is assessed on the basis of the significance of the ideas that were elicited. In this part of the assessment, teachers look for evidence that students are aware of and use the text structure to support recall and understanding. For example, if a

128  Jeanne R. Paratore and Roselmina Indrisano narrative text was read, the retelling should include the essential parts of a story (i.e., setting, problem, solution, consequence). For informational text, the retelling should map onto the dominant text structure (i.e., cause/effect, comparison/contrast, problem/solution, chronology, description). Responding to Questions Using the three types of questions previously prepared (textually explicit, textually implicit, scriptally implicit), the teacher assesses students’ ability to consider a question or idea and respond by drawing on information in the text and perhaps, also, on their own background knowledge. Teachers look for evidence that students are aware of text-based evidence, as well as the importance of joining text-based and background knowledge to draw inferences and make logical conclusions. Summary Writing At grades four and beyond, students are asked to write a summary which is assessed on four essential criteria: (1) begins or ends with a topic sentence; (2) reflects the author’s text structure (e.g., cause/effect, comparison/contrast); (3) eliminates trivial or redundant information; and (4) superordinate/subordinate ideas (Brown and Day, 1981). Oral Rereading Since our original article was published, research has shown that fluency is an important factor in effective oral and silent reading (Kuhn and Stahl, 2003). Although fluency is defined in various ways, we have adopted the definition provided by Kuhn, Schwanenflugel, and Meisinger (2010). Fluency combines accuracy, automaticity, and oral reading prosody, which, taken together, facilitate the reader’s construction of meaning. It is demonstrated during oral reading through ease of word recognition, appropriate pacing, phrasing, and intonation. It is a factor in both oral and silent reading that can limit or support comprehension (p. 240). Fluency can be assessed during oral or silent reading, but for the purposes of IA, it is recommended that the teacher observe accuracy, automaticity, and prosody during oral reading when fluency is most evident. The IA procedures for oral reading and comprehension are suitable for assessing and assisting with fluency, but in the longer term, Kuhn and Levy’s (2015) suggestions for procedures for improving fluency are recommended. Students are asked to read aloud a segment of the target text that is at least 100 words in length; the teacher notes three measures of fluency: word reading accuracy, prosody, and rate. The teacher uses a coding scheme (e.g., Clay, 1993) to mark the oral reading errors; however, given the need to attend closely to students to provide the appropriate intervention, the oral reading might be recorded and the coding delayed until after the session has ended. The results

Intervention Assessment of Literacy  129 of the oral rereading will serve as a guide to word-study instruction and to the type of mediation that will be provided during the intervention phase of the assessment, and in turn, during classroom instruction of complex text.

Phase 2: Assessment with Intervention In phase 2, the same domains are assessed, but this time, the teacher uses various interventions to enable students to construct meaning from difficult texts. Within each assessed domain, mediation comprises the following procedures: (1) explain the purpose of the task, (2) provide intervention, as needed, (explain, model, scaffold), and (3) review the strategy that was taught and describe when and how to use it again. Selecting the Text Text selection is guided by the same considerations previously described for the non-intervention assessment, including the development of three types of text-related questions. Preparing to Read In this segment of the assessment, the teacher mediates text difficulty by prompting students to implement pre-reading strategies that were not observed during the non-intervention phase. The teacher explains that one way to improve reading comprehension is to get ready to read by thinking about the topic and by recalling and connecting information that is already known. Next, the text to be read is shown, and the teacher points out the title and the cover illustration. Students are asked to predict what information a reader might expect to learn from this book. If there is no response or if the response is sparse, the teacher provides a model. For example, using the text, Weather, by Seymour Simon, a teacher might read the title and look at the cover illustration and say something like this: When I read the title and look at the cover illustration, I know that this book is going to be about weather. I see the different cloud formations, and I’m hoping that as I read this book I might learn more about how scientists use cloud patterns to forecast the weather. What about you? What does the title and cover illustration make you think of? What would you like to learn about weather as your read this book? As the students respond, the teacher notes evidence of helpful strategies, for example, using relevant background knowledge or text structure to set a purpose and/or make logical predictions. If students again give little or no response, the teacher provides a brief explanation of relevant background knowledge and also gives a purpose for reading the text and an example of a logical prediction.

130  Jeanne R. Paratore and Roselmina Indrisano Reading the Text This part of the intervention focuses on the strategies that are used by effective readers during and after reading (Duke and Pearson, 2002; Flood and Lapp, 1990). However, because students will read text that may be outside their range of word-reading ability, based on their performance during the oral rereading segment of the non-intervention assessment, students will read the text in one of three ways.

• Silent reading by students who reread the non-intervention text with at least 95 percent word reading accuracy

• Oral reading with teacher assistance on unknown words by students who reread with 75 to 90 percent accuracy

• Listening to the teacher read and rereading the text in whole or in part

by students who reread the text with less than 75 percent word reading accuracy. During this rereading the teacher provides assistance on unknown words.

The teacher begins by explaining that students will read or listen to the text (as described above), and then the teacher and students will discuss the story or the information. Recalling Information After the reading has been completed with appropriate levels of intervention to ensure that students can access the text, students are asked to recall important information. If students read narrative texts, the teacher notes recall of essential story elements (beginning, middle, and end, or setting and characters, problem and solution). The teacher notes, as well, whether the major events in the plot have been retold in sequence. If students’ recall is incomplete, a useful intervention is a story map used as a graphic organizer (Indrisano and Paratore, 1992). As in other domains of IA, the teacher might first explain why a story map is helpful, model its use in recalling one of the essential elements, and then support students as they complete the rest of the task. In addition to the graphic organizer, the teacher might provide additional support by prompting the student to look back at the text to find the additional story elements. If students read informational text, the same steps are followed, but the graphic organizer is based on the structure of the text (e.g., cause/effect, comparison/contrast, problem/solution, chronology, description). Responding to Questions Following students’ recall of important information, the teacher assesses students’ ability to retrieve information in response to the previously prepared questions. If students are unable to answer a question or offer an

Intervention Assessment of Literacy  131 incomplete or erroneous response, the teacher returns to the appropriate part of the text and provides an intervention (e.g., directs the student to a page, paragraph, or sentence to find textually- explicit information; or prompts or models how to use evidence in the text or background knowledge to make an inference) that will enable students to comprehend and recall the text. For students who continue to have difficulty responding to specific questions, it may be helpful to ask the questions in advance to serve as a guide; it may also be helpful to provide explicit instruction in Question Answer Relationships (Raphael and Au, 2011). Summary Writing At grades four and beyond, students are asked to write a summary which is assessed on four essential criteria: (1) begins or ends with a topic sentence; (2) reflects the author’s text structure (e.g., cause/effect, comparison/contrast); (3) eliminates trivial or redundant information; (4) includes superordinate/subordinate ideas (Brown and Day, 1981). If students’ summaries do not reflect these elements, the teacher intervenes with a graphic organizer that helps to structure students’ recall and use of this essential information. The student then uses the information on the graphic organizer to compose a summary. The teacher can also use the written summary to note students’ attention to the conventions of writing, including spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. A more authentic writing sample that is the result of the full recursive cycle of writing: planning, drafting, revising, and editing will be required for a more complete IA of the writing process (see Hayes, 2000). Oral Rereading The same procedures used during the non-intervention phase are repeated after students read silently and respond to the intervention text.

Recording the Outcomes of IA The Appendix provides a model of a form for recording the outcomes of mediations used in an IA with an intermediate-grade student. The focal processes are preparing to read, reading the text, recalling information, answering questions, summary writing, and oral rereading.

Reflecting on the Intervention Assessment Each part of the IA closes with the teacher and the student discussing the following questions: What did you do well today? What would you like to learn to do better? What did you learn about yourself as a reader or

132  Jeanne R. Paratore and Roselmina Indrisano writer? What would you like a teacher to know about you as a reader, a writer, a learner? These reflections are considered when the report for the student and the report for teachers and other professionals are prepared. The reports are described in the next section.

The Reports to Learners and to Teachers and Other Professionals The purpose of IA is to inform the learner and the teachers and other professionals who work with the student of the outcomes of various types and levels of mediation. In each report, attention is given to strengths and needs and to the ways strengths can be used to meet the needs by providing instruction that is informed by the IA. As noted, the report to the learner is in the form of a graph that will be explained by the teacher with whom the student completed the IA. While the teacher should consider the student’s capacity to understand the format and language of the graph, we have found that a line graph is a familiar or easily explained format. We also select labels that will be readily understood or explained, for example, reading words, understanding the story, writing a summary. The report for teachers and other professionals who will work with students also describes the types of mediations that constituted the conditions for success at a particular independent and instructional level, along with the needs to be addressed in the future. The ultimate goal of this report is to provide a coherent, cohesive, and continuous plan for instruction and ongoing monitoring of progress. Informed learners also remain a critical part of the plan. The graph for the learner also provides a model for continuing this process into the future.

Conditions for Success In this final section, two examples of interventions that are designed to ensure success are presented, the first of a primary-grade student and the second of an intermediate-grade student. Each plan responds to the IA that suggested that the highest level of mediation would be required for success.

A Primary-Grade Student Who Achieved Below 75 Percent in Word Accuracy, Fluency and Comprehension The intervention is composed of the following instructional processes:

• Display two narrative texts of approximately 250 words on a topic of • • •

interest to the student. Invite the student to select a text and discuss a purpose for reading. Model how to preview the selected text. Read the text aloud as the student listens.

Intervention Assessment of Literacy  133

• Discuss the text using words that may present challenges to identification or understanding.

• Ask the student to read the text. If the student experiences difficulty, read the text and have the student echo read each sentence.

• Ask the student to read the text independently. If the student cannot

identify a word read the word to avoid interruptions that interfere with comprehension. Discuss the text returning to the purpose set for reading and review why and how to set a purpose for reading.

Consistent with the principle of the gradual release of responsibility (Gallagher and Pearson, 1989), subsequent instruction will reduce the support provided by the teacher, for example, giving the student greater responsibility for setting the purpose or eliminating assisted echo reading.

An Intermediate-Grade Student Who Achieved Below 75 Percent in Word Accuracy, Fluency and Comprehension This intervention is composed of the following processes:

• Display two informational texts of approximately 250 words on a topic of interest to the student.

• Invite the student to select a text and ask the student to read the title and discuss a purpose for reading.

• Ask the following sequence of questions: What information or ideas do you think the author might include in a selection with this title? What do you already know about this topic? What questions would you like the author to answer?

• Call the student’s attention to the illustrations, the parts of the book

• • • •

•

(e.g., the title page, the table of contents, the index), the graphic displays (e.g., charts, maps); and the organization of text on a page, including the headings and subheadings. Pre-teach key vocabulary and concepts that are essential to understanding the text. Ask the student to read the text and to let you know when there is difficulty in reading a word or phrase. Read the word or phrase with minimum interruption to the reading. Ask the student to define a summary. If the student cannot, provide a definition and an example. Ask the student to underline ideas in the text that should be included in the summary. If the student cannot, demonstrate how to use the headings and subheadings as cues; guide students to do this with a different page of the text. Ask the student to compose a summary using the underlined page as a guide.

134  Jeanne R. Paratore and Roselmina Indrisano

• Select another text excerpt (at least 100 words in length). Ask the student to read silently and reread orally.

• Ask the student to compose a summary of the important ideas in the selection.

• Review why and how to write a summary. As in the previous intervention, the student’s progress will inform the teacher of the level of intervention required for success.

Postscript We conclude our chapter as we began, by honoring the memory of Professor Dale Johnson, and we express our gratitude for the ways his scholarship contributed to Intervention Assessment. We hope that teachers who use IA to inform their teaching of literacy will succeed in increasing the literacy learning of their students, as the testimonies of Professor Johnson’s students attest this gifted teacher did for them.

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136  Jeanne R. Paratore and Roselmina Indrisano Newmann, F. M., Smith, B., Allensworth, E., and Bryk, A. S. (2001). Instructional program coherence and why it should guide school improvement. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(4): 297–321. O’Connor, R. E., Swanson, H. L., and Geraghty, C. (2010). Improvement in reading rate under independent and difficult text levels: Influences on word and comprehension skills. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(1): l–19. Paratore, J. R., and Indrisano, R. (1987). Intervention assessment of reading comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 40(8): 778–783. Paris, S. G., Calfee, R. C., Filby, N., Hiebert, E. H., Pearson, P. D., and Wolf, K. P. (1992). A framework for authentic literacy assessment. The Reading Teacher, 46(2): 88–98. Paris, S. G., Lipson, M. Y., and Wixson, K. (1983). Becoming a strategic reader. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3): 293–316. Pearson, P. D., and Gallagher, G. (1983). The gradual release of responsibility model of instruction. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3): 112–123. Pearson, P. D., and Johnson, D. (1978). Teaching reading comprehension. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston. Raphael, T. E., and Au, K. (2011). Accessible comprehension instruction through question-answer relationships. In J. R. Paratore and R. L. McCormack (Eds.), After early intervention, then what? Teaching struggling readers in grades 3 and beyond (pp. 115–136). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Routman, R. (1991). Invitations: Changing as teachers and learners K-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Shany, M., and Biemiller, A. (1995). Individual differences in reading comprehension gains from assisted reading practice: Pre-existing conditions, vocabulary acquisition, and amounts of practice. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 23(9): 1071–1083. Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(4): 360–407. Valencia, S. (2007). Inquiry-oriented assessment. In J. R. Paratore and R. L. McCormack (Eds.), Classroom literacy assessment: Making sense of what students know and do (pp. 3–20). New York: Guilford. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner and E. Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wiggins, G. P. (1993). Assessing student performance: Exploring the purpose and limits of testing. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Literature Cited Simon, S. (2006). Weather. New York: Harper Collins. Jeanne R. Paratore is professor of literacy and director of the Literacy/ Reading Education Program at Boston University School of Education. Professor Paratore can be reached at [email protected]. Roselmina Indrisano is professor emerita and Editor of the Journal of Education at Boston University School of Education. Professor Indrisano can be reached at [email protected].

Intervention Assessment of Literacy  137

Appendix Intervention Assessment Record Student__________________________ Grade________ Date___________ Instructional level (without intervention): ________  Text read: __________ Independent level (without intervention): ________  Text read: __________ Record the mediating strategies (i.e., interventions) tried and the effect on student performance. Text Read: _______________________________________________________

Mediating strategies (i.e., interventions) tried

Effect on student performance

Preparing to read Reading the text Recalling information Answering questions Summary writing Oral rereading

Possible mediation strategies:

• Access important background knowledge and set purpose • Engage in read aloud, assisted reading, choral reading, or partner reading

• Use graphic organizers to focus on relationships between and among ideas • •

As an advanced organizer As a note-taking aide

• Use targeted “close readings” • • •

Reread text with question in mind Specify important page, paragraph, or sentence Specify important word or phrase

• Support summarization • Elicit or provide summary definition • Ask (or assist as necessary) student to underline important ideas in text • Use underlined pages or graphic organizer to compose a summary

8 One Size Fits None Re-Conceptualizing Literacy Instruction for Diverse Learners Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge

Current Climate Conducting science experiments, competing in spelling bees, and running around at recess in the playground—those memories of school in childhood and youth remain, even though the focus of schools today looks drastically ­different—in some ways at least. Current school contexts are often void of opportunities for authentic socialization, outlets to expend energy and creativity, and time for self-expression and engagement. The more we learn about best practices in pedagogy and the need for viewing students through humanistic and compassionate lenses, the further away that schools and classrooms resemble these conceptual places that are supposed to be conducive to learning. What has been made clear over the last 50 years of governmental oversight and mandates is that standardization is valued. In previous decades, it was math and science so that we could be on the forefront of scientific discovery and innovation. Now it is math and literacy as they are the core of learning and essential components of communicating across the curriculum. But with these foci, other content areas have been placed on the metaphorical backburner and only given attention if and when time permits. Imagine learning mathematics and literacy removed from context—difficult to envision but it is exactly how some students are taught today with skill emphasis in workbook activities and test preparation in an atmosphere ridden by metatesting. Increasing high expectations is noteworthy, but the extent to which teachers are pedagogically capable of bolstering all children to read at or above grade level standards is highly questionable. The history of legislation related to standards over the last 50 years is summarized in the following table. Table 8.1  Fifty-Year History of Legislation Related to Educational Standards Year

Legislation

1965 2001 2011 2015

Elementary and Secondary Education Act No Child Left Behind Act Common Core State Standards Elementary and Secondary Education Act- re-authorization, also known as Every Student Succeeds Act

One Size Fits None  139 These educational acts had various aims and objectives. Take for instance, the No Child Left Behind Act, which aimed to provide educational reform with four tenets in mind: “stronger accountability for results, expanded flexibility and local control, expanded options for parents, and an emphasis on teaching methods that have been to proven to work” (NCLB, 2002). The climate of what constituted “literacy class” was forever changed in part based on funding tied to particular evidence-based curriculums; those schools that agreed to adopt one of these curriculums were provided extra funding from the federal government. So let’s take a look at the results of those four aims. 1

Stronger accountability for results was definitely achieved as the literacy landscape today has many states opting for teacher pay raises to be tied to student performance. 2 Many schools that have not demonstrated improvement are being taken over, or students are given options to attend charter schools, which achieved objective two—expanding the flexibility of educational offerings. 3 In terms of expanding options for parents, perhaps options are expanded in terms of the schools they can send their children to but not in terms of building formidable partnerships that co-construct literacies within the student population. 4 And finally, focusing on teaching methods that have a proven track record. That was accomplished by requiring schools to adopt materials developed on the five pillars of reading instruction purported to be integral to any literacy program by the National Reading Panel (2000). Though these aims were achieved in large part, the proficiencies and abilities of students to critically read, respond, write, create, and apply their literacy skills has not drastically improved from 15 years ago. But why? Were the objectives misconstrued? What should they have been? Timothy Shanahan, amongst others, has recently argued that differentiating instruction for all students in class is an unattainable feat. Essentially, trying to teach, tutor, and transform twenty-five learners at differing levels and with divergent background experiences, interests, attitudes, and motivations is extremely challenging, to put it mildly. The ways in which teachers can reach students do not start with increasing standards and related legislative acts though; in contrast, getting to know one’s students is required to craft lessons that not only cover content but also connect with the learner. In an effort to decrease the gap between minority and majority factions, NCLB failed by not providing ways in which to do so. Were they calling for us to only increase minority literacy scores? Decrease majority literacy scores? Or through what other means would the gap decrease, as more capable learners typically develop literacy skills and content knowledge faster and make significantly more content connections (Stanovich, 1986)? Rich Milner (2015) in an address at the Harvard Graduate School of Education argued that we

140  Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge don’t actually have an achievement gap at all. He argued we have a teacher quality gap, a teacher training gap, an effective leadership gap, a challenging curriculum gap, a school funding gap, a digital divide gap, a school counseling gap, and a wealth and income gap. Further, he suggested that until we address these ever-present divides, we will continue to find ourselves in a holding pattern. These societal wide issues underpin school literacy success. So what are teachers to do in their classrooms? While they aren’t legislators capable of easily making systemic change, it is teachers that make the difference (Reutzel, 2014). This notion provides an impetus to examine literacy access and instruction from a historical perspective to see what has worked and what can work for the ever-increasing diverse population of literacy learners today.

History of Literacy and Literacy Instruction: For Only a Select Few In the ages of Western civilization from which reading and writing emerged in the forms of traditional texts that we know today, literacy was a tool, skill, and practice of groups in power, used to control those with less power—the masses. Books and the ability to read and write were for elite groups; the masses were illiterate. We trace Western concepts of reading and literacy to AD 600–1400, in which priests, monks, and religious scribes transcribed oral narratives by hand and controlled the transference of that knowledge. A significant moment in the history of literacy was in 1446 with the Gutenberg printing press and what is contentiously referred to as the Gutenberg Bible. The Gutenberg press prompted an increase in the publication and distribution of books for the literate population in Western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Shifting to Colonial America in the 1600s, we note similarities in how early America is also controlled along lines of race and gender. For instance, precedent was established with the first African slaves being prohibited from reading or writing, as maintaining their illiteracy would minimize insurrection and communication with abolitionists not to mention questioning authority and gaining empowerment. Still, some slaves took initiative. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about finding ways to learn to read and write; moreover, Frederick Douglas talked about seeing literacy as the pathway from slavery to freedom—a mantra we still espouse today. In Colonial America, girls were taught to read and write but could only go on to higher education if there were placements left after boys enrolled; women were often in girls-only schools and classes taught were in line with the enforced gender roles of the time (homemakers, mothers, cooking, sewing, etc.). Indeed, while wealthy girls and women were likely taught to read and write, they read a canon of Western literature composed of male thinkers and writers and their own writing was generally not seen as worthwhile. It isn’t until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that we see women argue

One Size Fits None  141 for a reframing of the literary canon and a valuing of women thinkers and writers. To be sure, nineteenth century feminism and the highlights of Jane Austen and Kate Chopin and others prompted calls in the twentieth century for a dismantling of the gender-based power in literacy and literature wielded against women. Early colonial schooling revolved heavily around moral and ethical teachings. Despite advancements in exploration and industry, education for the elite prevailed—continuing the long-standing tradition of class-based power hierarchies. Even with the introduction of child labor laws and compulsory education in the early twentieth century, the poor could not afford to send their children to school and children were more suited to particular tasks in industry than they were to school and literacy. One of the foremost cultural principles in the United States is the “bootstraps” narrative, and it’s one we trace to Horatio Alger’s pop novels featuring bootblacks, other service, and otherwise homeless boys of the turn of the century. The stories feature illiterate but plucky boys raising themselves up to respectability through diligence, luck, and literacy. No doubt this aspirational and optimistic narrative has influenced U.S. culture, but the early twentieth century remained fraught with barriers to literacy for the poor, girls, and minority factions. Major points in U.S. literacy occurred in the second half of the twentieth century. Perhaps the most critical juncture is the massive increase in university attendance post-WWII, based largely on the G.I. bill. That movement promoted a boon in a literate United States, which bolstered the country and the economy into the iconic and idyllic 1950s. But the 1950s also laid the groundwork related to literacy and education equity that would expand in the 1960s with second-wave feminism and the Civil Rights Movement. The monumental 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case “Brown vs. the Board of Education” ordered the dismantling of segregated schooling, for instance, and yet the iconic conflict in Arkansas of the “Little Rock Nine” (1957) embodied the lack of support or direction for its integration. The 1960s and 1970s would see attention expand for democratizing literacy. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), while founded in 1911, would join the National Reading Conference, the International Reading Association, and the College Reading Association, as well as other groups in promoting literacy. In the 1950s, Flesch’s (1955) influential Why Johnny Can’t Read and What You Can Do About It prompted educators to think about phonics. Trends in the 1960s stressed skills and mastery learning. By the 1970s, educators and researchers were attending to basals, linguistics, and phonics, and later in that decade, to diagnosis/remediation, the medical model for reading (e.g., Klenk & Kibby, 2000), and a transition from phonics to the whole word reading. Paulo Freire’s (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated to English in 1970, and prompted educators to again consider the power dynamics in literacy. Similarly, the Bilingual Education Act (1968) and the 1974 the case of “Lau vs. Nichols” asserted the rights of language minority

142  Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge students (students for whom English is not a native language). By 1979, these efforts culminated in the Oakland Ebonics movement—the California Board of Education adopts SEP “Black Language: Proficiency in Standard English for Speakers of Black Language.” Advocacy for the inclusion of (what was then termed) Ebonics and other “non-standard” varieties of English, including through Geneva Smitherman’s excellent Talkin and Testifyin (1977), prompted a massive controversy into the late 80s and 90s. In 1998, California passed Proposition 227, or “English in Public Schools”, banning bilingual education. Arizona followed suit in 2000 with Massachusetts not far behind in 2002. Issues of nonstandard Englishes, especially related to literacy instruction and gatekeeping of culture, continue today (cf: Boutte and Johnson, 2013; Delpit, 1995; Dyson & Smitherman, 2009). Tensions in the 80s and 90s included the flashpoint of “A Nation at Risk,” the Regan-era report on the state of education in the United States. The findings and rhetoric of that report continue to echo from the inception National Assessment of Educational Progress in 1992 to today. Stymied literacy achievement and the preponderance of difficulties in reading and writing, especially for culturally and linguistically diverse learners, paint a contextual picture that, despite legislative acts, high-stakes assessments, and for-profit curricular materials used in conjunction with federal educational funding, little progress has been made when it comes to preparing diverse literacy learners for academic and career success. Diverse students’ abilities to develop disciplinary literacy skills that underpin all academic achievement are dependent upon new ways of thinking about literacy improvement and can never be improved through dated models of deficit ideology.

Intelligence vs. Reading Ability Improving the state of literacy starts with changing our perception of diverse learners and the challenges they face. Struggling to read does not equate to having low intelligence. The complexities involved in reading processes (e.g., pronouncing words, vocabulary knowledge, understanding syntax) and products (e.g., critical comprehension, understanding, application) make it common for almost all to struggle some of the time, whether from content complexity, unfamiliarity, or lack of skill and strategy usage. As such, any child or adult has the potential to be labeled as a struggling reader. So what do these labels accomplish? If everyone can improve their literacy proficiencies, perhaps the focus is misguided on what is wrong with the reader rather than what the reader can do and share with others. If we zoom out from the confines of the classroom, we can see a world of experts—dentists, comedians, actors, writers, photographers, coders, and historians. These professionals have relative areas of strength that they capitalize on and share with others who are continually intrigued by their skills. What we don’t do is say, “Oh, why can’t you understand Tolstoy’s (1878) Anna Karenina, Dr. Smith, D.D.S.?” If we did, she might be placed in the blue bird reading group.

One Size Fits None  143 Intellect is generally defined as being able to determine what is true, and how to solve problems. One of the central-most tenets to this process is dissection, or examining the nuisances associated with multiple perspectives from various angles. When we think of a sunset, we generally picture the line of horizon with the sky above and the ground below. However, a sunset can be viewed from space, from ground level, from a mountain, or from even inside a building. Point being, there are numerous vantage points to all phenomena including human beings and their educational needs and offerings. High schoolers often read Banks’ (1991) The Sweet Hereafter, in which a deadly bus accident impacts the entire community. When students engage in a debate about whether or not seat belts should be required on school buses, an intellectual investigation would require the gathering of information related to manufacturers’ recommendations, medical experts’ advice regarding head injuries, consultations with those previously in bus accidents, independent tests, etc. Still, there are additional considerations that would broaden the perspective of the literacy learner by investigating cultural norms, geographic location, financial means, driver training, fatality statistics, governmental policy, and even alternative forms of transportation. Contextualizing the issue is critical to addressing the needs of all students to position them to learn from and with others. We purport that in most classroom settings the students who challenge the status quo, who seek out alternative solutions, and who thrive when faced with opposition are the ones who are best prepared for academic and career success. Those who are resilient through reading struggles in any content area have a depth of perspective otherwise unattainable. In addition, change does not start with the student; change starts at the system level and within teacher education programs. By and large, there have not been drastic shifts in teacher education over the last 50 years. These programs tend to mirror popular reading instruction of the era. So whether whole language, skills-based teaching, or balanced literacy, educators are prepared to deliver literacy instruction to students who are expected to behave in certain ways, have pre-identified methods to combat particular “reading problems”, etc. This is how we were trained too. If a student struggles to pronounce each sound in a word, use Elkonin boxes. If a student doesn’t read all the way through the words, use a modified cloze procedure. These concepts are not bad to learn; the problem lies in failing to contextualize or connect these teaching strategies with an individual’s amazing repertoire of existing knowledge, experiences, and interests. Looking at multiple theories in relation to diverse learners may offer insight into how educators can provide optimal literacy instruction for diverse learners.

Theories for Diverse Learners In this section, we present two frameworks for thinking about diverse learners and pedagogy for literacy learners that take into account the experiences

144  Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge and positions of diverse learners derived from home, school, and community; tenants of culturally relevant pedagogy and teaching and learning for social justice; and instructional practices that use multiple entry points and modalities to spark interest among students from diverse backgrounds and learning needs, which invoke schema and background knowledge as a launching pad for knowledge development. Both socio-cultural and cognitive theoretical frameworks of reading are discussed in an innovative manner that focuses on engaging readers first, then developing their literacy competencies. Engaged readers are internally motivated to read (Doepker & Ortlieb, 2011) and possess self-efficacy and social dispositions for interacting in collaborative literacy activities. Engaged readers are also cognitively active as they use strategies in search of linking old knowledge to new information in texts. Finally, the engaged reader is active in task participation that is both meaningful to their ways of learning and cultural backgrounds as well as those that critically evaluate content from multiple perspectives. These motivational, cognitive, and socio-cultural variables correlate substantially in reading activities (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000) and are widely known to impact reading success. This theoretical discussion is followed by a practical framework and exemplars for guiding teachers through curricular planning and delivery in an effort to reconceptualize instruction for diverse literacy learners.

Complexities for Culture and Schooling Any conversation about meeting the needs of diverse learners in the classroom cannot begin without acknowledging that schools are political institutions that reflect the practices and values of those in positions of privilege and power in society (e.g., Apple, 1985; Cochran-Smith, 2004; Nieto, 2006). Schools replicate the social hierarchies outside their walls. Accepting this, we can move forward in a discussion of how to move past literacy for a select few (who reflect the dominant majority culture) to literacy for all (inclusive of those who are often marginalized in school and society). Further, understanding schools as political spaces means that we need to reconceptualize schools and literacy instruction in a way that positions diverse learners, their cultures, and their communities as assets in the classroom. Beyond this, literacy instruction must have multiple entry points and content that is accessible and of interest to students from varied backgrounds and learning styles. Many teachers may design such content and implement instruction that reflects these goals. However, they may be confused or frustrated when some students don’t engage with, show interest in, and/ or push back against certain classroom practices, or don’t reach the levels of academic performance teachers expect. Understanding the dynamics behind such situations can be elucidated by theories that consider the ways culture, language, race, and ethnicity interact with literacy and the culture of schooling (and other political institutions) that are built around the values of the

One Size Fits None  145 dominant majority in society. Decades of theory and research have examined the relationships between school, language, culture, race, and literacy more specifically. The purpose of this chapter isn’t to offer a complete review of such work. However, examining some seminal theory and research as well as current discussions of the complexities, challenges, and promises of serving diverse literacy learners in our schools is important. As noted above, the Oakland Ebonics Debate of the late 1980s and early 1990s in California prompted discussion of how schools privileged and validated the language of majority, white students while it discredited the language often used by members of the African-American community, considering these students as deficient and their language “non-standard.” This sparked critical discourse by linguists, educators, and others who worked to bring a conversation of the ways minority individuals’ languages and cultures are denigrated by and often forbidden in schools (cf: Richardson, 1998; Rickford, 1999). Even today, states like Arizona persist in “English only” policies and pass legislation forbidding the teaching of indigenous history in the classroom (Iddings, Combs, & Moll, 2012). School and curricular practices that marginalize diverse students aren’t always as visible but still impact the ways diverse learners see their identities unacknowledged or devalued in the classroom. Examples range from lack of multicultural literature in the classroom (e.g., Shohat & Stam, 2014) to approaches to diversity that tokenize as opposed to integrate culture and diversity in the school through cultural dress or ethnic food days (e.g., Nieto, 2010). Even the ways that teachers and schools conceptualize constructs like motivation, engagement, self-efficacy, and creativity may reflect an emic, Westernized view of such constructs (Crutcher & Dodge, 2014) resulting in negative comparisons between diverse learners and learners who reflect the “mainstream” culture. The literacy and language practices, values, and goals of diverse learners may differ from those expected by schools; indeed, schools may represent the oppressive practices of dominant society for diverse communities who have experienced marginalization and discrimination across decades or longer. Cultural Ecology Theory Ogbu and colleagues (Ogbu, 1987, 1992; Ogbu & Simons, 1998) forwarded cultural ecology theory, which offered explanations for why certain minority groups may perceive schools and classroom practices in varied ways and may demonstrate (dis)engagement reflective of such views. Cultural ecology theory asserts that students may develop oppositional identities in schools and literacy practices that reflect the dominant society. Cultural ecology theory can help teachers examine and understand why and how minority groups may perceive schools and, often, the teachers standing in front of the class environment as embodying white oppressive, dominant culture—one that is opposition to their own. Teachers need to understand the differences

146  Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge among their minority background students—not all minorities are the same—and the varied ways different minorities may situate and view themselves in relation to (and often in opposition to) the school environment. Cultural ecology theory suggests minority groups can be categorized as autonomous, voluntary immigrants or involuntary, nonimmigrant minorities (Ogbu & Simons, 1998, 164). Autonomous, voluntary immigrants are those that, largely, came to the United States to make a better life (e.g., Mexican and Chinese immigrants), while involuntary, nonimmigrant minorities are those who came to the United States against their will (e.g., slaves from Africa). These statuses apply to the descendants of such groups (e.g., African Americans; Mexican Americans; American-born Chinese). Ogbu and Simons (1998) state that, to understand why minority groups differ among themselves in school performance we have to know two things: the first is their own responses to their history of incorporation into U.S. society and their subsequent treatment or mistreatment by white Americans. The second is how their responses to that history and treatment affect their perceptions of and responses to schooling. (p. 158) Autonomous, voluntary immigrant minorities may perceive and experience varied types of discrimination but largely see their opportunities in the U.S. as better than in their home country and see schooling as a way to get ahead and forge a better lives for themselves and their families. According to Ogbu and Simons (1998), nonimmigrant, involuntary minorities, however, are more likely to see schools as one of many societal institutions that has consistently devalued and threatened their culture, language, and community. They may form oppositional identities in school or they may take on “white ways” to succeed in a space that doesn’t value their own identity (e.g., Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Ogbu, 2004). Oppositional identities may be a minority group’s way of preserving a racial, cultural, or linguistic community that they persevere to maintain in the face of dominant white society (e.g., African American Vernacular English or African-American Language). SES and In- and Out-of-School Literacy Practices While the work of Ogbu and colleagues has been formative to discussions of minorities and schooling and their work continues and is of importance today, other seminal and current theory and research examines factors beyond culture and race, extending discussion to examine challenges faced by students from working class or lower socio-economic communities and families whose community and home literacy practices may not reflect the ways of doing literacy in school or the goals schools set for students. Heath’s seminal ethnographic work Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in

One Size Fits None  147 Communities and Classrooms (1983) and “What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School” (1982) detail multiple communities’ divergent socio-economic statuses and home literacy practices to show how children who come from communities and homes whose literacy practices and values differ from those privileged in school are at a serious disadvantage from the moment they step into the classroom. Francis’s (1999) study of “lads” in Britain examined how young men’s “laddish” (or oppositional) behavior related to academic underachievement and how they constructed their gender identity in the context of what they saw as their future educational and occupational pathways (which didn’t necessarily align with that of traditional schooling). Smith and Wilhelm’s (2000) seminal Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys chronicled how 49 diverse young middle to high school men’s literacy activities outside of school were not reflected or valued in school. Smith and Wilhelm’s work helped them see how and why these young men either embraced or developed oppositional identities in the face of school and how traditional teaching methods didn’t provide meaningful content or instructional practices that were responsive to their needs. Purcell-Gates’s (1997) seminal Other People’s Words chronicles one of ­ Appalachia’s “invisible” urban poor families who she describes not as illiterate but low-literate; she suggests their access to literacy was impeded by persisting views of their deficiencies in language ability, motivation, valuing of education, parenting skills (p. 3). Indeed, “from the level of policymaking to the individual classroom, such deficit-ridden views of children who come from poor and minority homes continue to have an impact on the education to which they are exposed” (Purcell-Gates, 1997, p. 3). Smith and Wilhelm and Purcell-Gates called for pedagogies that discard deficit views of diverse learners and develop those that are responsive to their unique needs. Funds of Knowledge The work of Moll and colleagues (e.g., Moll, 1992; Moll & Gonzalez, 1994; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) emphasizes the necessity of bringing the wealth of knowledge possessed by diverse learners into the classroom. In an ethnographic study of households in communities between the Mexico and U.S. border, Moll, Amanti, Neff, and Gonzalez (1992) found students had extensive knowledge of agriculture and mining, economics, medicine and folk medicine, household management, religion, and scientific and material knowledge (p. 133). Moll et al. (1992) refer to this as students’ “funds of knowledge,” which they define as “historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household and individual functioning and well-being” (p. 133). They suggest that without an understanding of a student’s funds of knowledge, a teacher will not know or understand the whole child and therefore cannot see the child’s potential in the classroom or the potential utility of the child’s knowledge (Moll et al., 1992, p. 134). Today, the term “funds of knowledge” is used broadly

148  Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge to include cultural, linguistic, ethnic, community knowledges, literacy practices, and more. Gee (2014) uses the term “Discourses” to capture the ways of speaking, thinking, communicating, etc., specific to a culture, community, or other group; the discourses and funds of knowledge of a diverse learner’s culture and community may not be the same as the discourse and ways of knowing in the school. Developing an understanding of students’ funds of knowledge and discourses allows schools and teachers to move away from a deficit perspective and instead see the wealth of knowledge diverse learners bring to the classroom. The classroom can be seen a space where discourses and funds of knowledge are appreciated, exchanged, built upon, and expanded among students and teachers from all backgrounds—curriculum and instruction should be relevant to diverse learners. Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Ladson-Billings (1995) discusses culturally relevant pedagogy as an approach that brings in minority students’ cultures and community practices and tailors instruction to build on students’ strengths. Culturally relevant pedagogy reflects tenants of Ogbu and Simons’s (1998) cultural ecology theory and the work of Moll et al. (1992) and others on funds of knowledge. For example, while Ogbu and Simons (1998) don’t offer instructional strategies, they offer suggestions based on their theorizing: “Build trust, provide culturally responsive instruction, explicitly deal with opposition/ambivalence, be and provide role models, hold students to high standards, and encourage parental and communal involvement” (p. 183). In their study, Moll et al. (1992) found that building relationships between teachers, students, families, and the community and viewing parents and students as active participants and knowledge experts built mutual trust. Ladson-Billings suggests that culturally responsive pedagogy should do all of these things as well as help students interrogate cultural and social inequities. If the classroom is a space where students feel safe and respected, there can be open and frank discussion about the social inequality and discrimination that can result in the kind of opposition and ambivalence students may have to schooling. Delpit (1988, 1995) suggests that teachers can have conversations with students about the gate-keeping mechanisms that exist while still holding students to high standards and in-school literacy practices of schools today. Too often, culturally relevant pedagogy in schools is simply conceived of as a way to bridge the space between “us” (mainstream, dominant culture) and “them” (minority students) (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1995; Levine-Raskey, 2000). Teachers need ways to disrupt the binary view of “us” and “them” and develop practices that are generative and relevant to diverse learners. Hybridity and Third Space Theory Theories of hybridity and third spaces address the complexities of negotiating students’ multiple funds of knowledge and discourses. “Hybridity theory

One Size Fits None  149 posits that that people in any given community draw on multiple resources or funds to make sense of the world” and how “being ‘in-between’ (Bhabha, 1994, p. 1) several different funds of knowledge and discourse can be both productive and constraining in terms of one’s literate, social, and cultural practices—and, ultimately, one’s identity development” (Moje, Ciechanowski, Kramer, Ellis, Carrillo, & Collazo, 2004, p. 42). Third space theory suggests that what are often positioned as opposing literacy practices should not be seen as at odds but instead “can actually work together to generate new knowledges, new discourses, and new forms of literacy” (Moje et al., 2004, 42). Moje et al. (2004) explain: A commitment to third space demands a suspicion of binaries; it demands that when one reads phrases such as ‘academic versus everyday literacies or knowledge,’ one wonders about other ways of being literate that are not acknowledged in such simple binary positions. One also wonders about how and when these forms of literacy overlap and whether everyday practices might, at times, look more like academic literacies than they do like everyday literacies. (p. 42) Moje and colleagues (2004) used hybridity and third space theories to frame their study of Latinx youth in science classes and how the youths’ everyday funds of knowledge about science connected to the science of the classroom. The findings of their study reflected the work of Moll and colleagues. One important finding of their study was that despite the wealth of knowledge students possessed from their own cultures, they rarely volunteered their knowledge and experiences in the classroom—they had to be invited to do so. However, “when students were explicitly asked to describe experiences, they did so with enthusiasm” (p. 64). This suggests that as teachers, we have to actively pursue knowledge of our diverse learners’ funds of knowledge and explicitly work to elicit their expertise in the classroom. We pursue such approaches in the framework and exemplars for re-conceptualizing literacy practices for diverse learners.

Attraction Theory Valuing diversity and using diversity as an advantage is critical towards making educational progress. For instance, the bevy of experiences that diverse literacy learners bring with them to school each day should serve as a precursor towards their content learning; assembling a puzzle of knowledge requires assembling information together (both lived and unlived). After all, experiences foster recall and understanding and those are precisely what the best teachers provide for their learners—rich experiences that cause perturbation, challenge existing perspectives, and promote active discovery within content and culture. Literacy lessons must continually attract students’ attention each day. Vygotsky (1956) voiced that effective

150  Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge pedagogy “awakens and rouses to life those functions which are in a stage of maturing” (p. 278). Unfortunately, too many times lessons are developed with attention given to content without a genuine connection or clear purpose for why students should be concerned with the content. Without a stimulus learning is unlikely to occur. It is as if we, as teachers, forget how we felt as students—we wanted excitement, hands-on activities, provocative literature, and diverse learning experiences to read, write, and explore current and historically relevant topics. Attraction theory (Ortlieb, 2014) provides a framework for addressing culturally and linguistically diverse literacy learners, which is becoming increasingly emphasized in teacher professional standards (International Reading Association, 2014). As the United States continues to become more culturally diverse, teacher pedagogies must acknowledge, embrace, and build from plurilingualism (Clyne, 2008). Concurrently, many teachers do not feel confident in their abilities to teach English to non-native speakers (Kayi-Aydar, 2015) and as a result, children can miss opportunities to develop language skills and content knowledge. Multimodal teacher pedagogies offer a host of benefits to all students, including the capacity to enrich students’ existing knowledge of language and culture through initial attraction and into ongoing deep learning experiences (De Jong & Harper, 2010; Doyle & Reinhardt, 1992). These adaptive and culturally responsive practices are sensitive to the local context, meet the needs of diverse students, and positively affirm students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Just as language matters (Ortlieb and Majors, 2016) so does perspective. Viewing diversity as an advantage (Rennie & Ortlieb, 2013) has immense benefits in educational circles as it does in business. Take highly successful companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook for instance. They hire the brightest diverse minds and assemble individuals in teams to envision, research, field test, and create. Find an expert and you will quickly discern an interest. We must do the same for and with our students. This philosophy can be fostered in inclusive classroom spaces through attracting students to learning. Without this requisite consideration, hope for lifelong learning is lost. Reimagining pedagogies of empowerment requires moving away from filling in gaps in students’ knowledge and towards a reorganization of what we value as knowledge, ability, and worth, and to whom we give voice, preference, and mentoring. Only then can we provide the foundation to develop diverse literacy learners and their academic achievement.

Six Components Regardless of level of achievement, concern for literacy learning in the classroom context has to be fostered and maintained to bring forth systemic development. The first of six components of attraction theory is to target

One Size Fits None  151 an emotional response in the learner (see Figure 8.1). Taking tips from the world of advertising and marketing, potential buyer’s decisions are swayed based on a variety of tactics that play on their emotions; students are no different. Whereas a buyer is influenced by product placement, appearance, profound words, and image, a student is attracted to the presentation of the content. Begin with a jolt to students’ current level of understanding; this can be facilitated by but not limited to multisensory stimuli. “The potential of video for providing the context, or a starting point, for learning has been promoted by many educators and researchers” (Karppinen, 2005, p. 241). Generative learning environments involve in-context learning organized around authentic tasks for diverse learners and, in turn, anchor knowledge formation. Subjective experiences of emotion from autonomic arousal to external stimuli impinge on the sensory system (Kusenbach and Loseke, 2013). Memory of past experiences and appraisal of current situations lead to curiosity (Nislev, 2015). The dynamic nature of some concepts seems best portrayed through the process-oriented, interactive nature of videography (Ortlieb, McVee, & Shanahan, 2015; Ortlieb, Shanahan, and McVee, 2015). Videos have the capacity to depict speakers using linguistic devices and accents, which often provide language learners with additional information beyond the words spoken (White, Easton, & Anderson, 2000). Though not restricted to videos, jolts are particularly well suited for transcendent purposes, that is transcending time and space. Whether reading about historical sites, scientific discoveries, or cultural events and places not easily accessible or nearby, videos have inherent benefits for educational usage (Prensky, 2001). Using a National Geographic YouTube video, for instance, entitled Fish That Walk will likely cause an internal response and ensuing thought processing (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLh4ODMBGJE). The following transcription comes from the National Geographic video: Mudskippers, which can be found in the Mangrove forests from West Africa to New Guinea, are fish that spend most of their time out of the water. They walk, eat, and court on land. They are the only fish to do all this on land instead of in the big drink. They carry water in their large gill chambers, which they use in the exact opposite way you

jolt

counter example retrieve explanation

curiosity

Figure 8.1  Attraction Theory

clarification

embedding within schemata

152  Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge use scuba gear—you carry air to breathe in water; they carry water to breathe in the air. Since their eyes stick out on top of their heads, they act kind of like a periscope on a submarine. They have an amazing field of vision, made even greater because their eyes can act independently of each other. When their eyes dry out, they can roll them back into waterfilled skin folds that remoisten them. One other thing mudskippers do on land, they fight each other over it. When a mudskipper shows its fins, that means it is about to mudwrestle over its piece of mud. For this jolt to be successful, teachers will have to consider: What preparation will individual learners need? What kind of interaction best facilitates connective learning? What kind of questions will I ask? What kind of learning tasks should extend from the video (Fawkes, 1999)? The jolt causes the learner to react; in turn, the students will be curious because this jolt disrupts their previous understanding. Instances of perturbation involve questioning, contradicting, and challenging (Duit & Treagust, 1998) previously held beliefs, understandings, and assumptions. The essence of constructivist learning is fitting new ideas into existing knowledge; yet, the original jolt is counter to one’s existing understanding. Thus, meaning making, or making sense of the world, is a process and product of “puzzlement, perturbation, expectation violations, curiosity, or cognitive dissonance” (Jonassen, 2002, p. 45). Imagine the possibilities in a classroom where students are from diverse geographic locations, socioeconomic statuses, racial backgrounds, religious beliefs, and political perspectives. Learning from and with one another in provocative ways should be inevitable in an environment of so much difference; these opportunities must not be truncated. We must see students as diverse experts and as not only learners but teachers giving them voice and worth, solidifying their place in the classroom as active contributors. Abbott and Ryan (1999) proclaim that young people become deeply engaged when confronted with tasks that fascinate them. Their inquisitiveness is what drives their search for new knowledge to answer their own questions. This constant search for answers only incites more unanswered questions. Instruction that begins with something that sparks initial curiosity within students is necessary for deep contextualization and for challenging what is already known. Curious children ask questions; teachers must provide avenues for students to retrieve explanations for newly introduced information through internet searches, guided questions, social discussions in groups, and questions that challenge their previous understandings and often times narrow-minded preconceptions. In accordance with Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development theory, children do not merely rely upon internal mediation to seek answers. They can also inquire of more competent individuals (Gal’perin, 1969), which depicts the shifting relationship between self-directed and other-directed learning. In this phase, the

One Size Fits None  153 retrieving of explanations is coded and contextualized into that which is meaningful to the individual learner, whether in real-world applications or simulated environments. Hence, technology can play a vital role in proffering innumerable opportunities to retrieve explanations for the curious mind. A three-prong system underpins the utility of technology as a learning tool in this phase of attraction theory:

• representing and simulating real-world situations, problems, or contexts; • representing the beliefs, perspectives, and stories of others; and • supporting discourse among pupils (Jonassen, 2000, pp. 8–9). Only through active teacher planning and instruction can meaningful instruction and learning prosper. Just like high quality writing, high quality preparation is critical to successful differentiated literacy instruction. The importance of showing examples is well known and established in extant literature, but there is also a necessity to show counter examples for students to clearly delineate between what is and what isn’t. Counter-examples will be found as students proceed in their quest to better understand the mudskipper (e.g., not all fish live on land; some fish do and they are known as amphibious fishes). The transition between seeing a counter example and seeking clarifications revolves around knowledge monitoring and may differ greatly between diverse learners. Distinguishing what is known from what is not known relies upon metacognition, according to. Subsequently, culturally and linguistically diverse learners can solidify their unique understandings as the content is embedded within their schemata. First introduced by Flavell (1976), metacognition was a term used to illustrate how children acquire the ability to reflect, organize, elaborate, and control one’s memory processes (Kreutzer, Leonard, & Flavell, 1975). This monitoring is related to both prior knowledge and new learning (Pintrich, Wolters, & Baxter, 2000). Other research findings suggest that metacognitive knowledge monitoring may be domain specific (Tobais & Everson, 2002) and that accurate knowledge monitoring is correlated to achievement in reading, mathematics, and academic grades. McKeown and Beck (2009) wrote extensively on the role of metacognition towards supporting reading comprehension, saying that piecemeal strategy instruction does not lead to lasting success in reading. Instead, tactics like questioning what you read as you read it carry forward to subsequent reading, providing active processing of knowledge construction during the process of reading and not just afterwards, which is the basis for many comprehension acquisition strategies.

Practically Speaking Theoretical and conceptual frameworks are necessary to guide curricular design and consideration but characterizing what these look like in practice

154  Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge is critical for application, whether considering funds of knowledge, third space theory, attraction theory, or any other. What follows is a how-to guide for integrating theories of diversity and learning and attraction theory towards providing culturally responsive pedagogies for a seventh grade language arts lesson on determining a theme from a literary selection and analyzing its development throughout the book. The following description is the original lesson pulled from a university partnership school this year. After the lesson overview, we will detail how the lesson can be re-conceptualized and reinvigorated to provide culturally responsive and meaningful instruction.

Procedure: • Read article from Action Magazine on “Two days with no phone?” as a class • Check in with students to facilitate discussions about key ideas and important vocabulary • Continue with vocabulary activities • Play “evidence or no evidence” game

Differentiation: • Students needing clarification will receive it • Passage will be scaffolded as needed with vocabulary reviewed through partner rereading if necessary

Assessment: • Re-read passage at home • Answer questions, providing textual evidence to support your claims on the worksheet

What this lesson needs is a starting point that welcomes diverse literacy learners to the topic, which captivates their attention, and prompts a curiosity and motivation to learn. Below we provide two examples of how this might be done. For each, we suggest ways to contextualize the lesson, pairing the original lesson’s text with current informational and multimodal texts that extend and deepen the topic and thinking. One leverages culture and social justice as its focus while the other focuses on situating communication technology globally in the past, present, and future. In each case, we provide ideas for work in small groups with a return to whole class discussion, as well as whole class configurations. Examples of process and cumulating products are provided. Differentiation is also crucial and recommendations are highlighted in each example.

One Size Fits None  155

Rethinking the Lesson Revised Lesson 1 Contextualize Following our discussion above, it is essential for teachers to examine lessons that are initially presented without attention toward situating the text or accompanying activities in culturally relevant ways and reimagine them in ways that do so and that offer learning entry points that spark the attention of all learners. The example above on the topic of cell phones presents a good case. The lesson seems to have originated from Common Core Scholastic as part of the “Common Core Tool Kit #1: Citing Text Evidence” lesson (Common Core Scholastic, 2013), which includes the articles “Two Days with No Phone” and “Teens and Texting” from Scholastic Action Magazine. Theories for diverse learners tell us that to engage with learning in a school context, students need to see some connection to the content of the text/lesson and be able to see connections to their own lives and/or cultures. In today’s society where cell phones and social media are ubiquitous, there are ample opportunities for students to make such connections. Instead of starting with a focus on vocabulary, tenets of attraction theory suggest we could start with a jolt that captures students’ attention, elicits their schemata and background experiences, and readies them for engagement with the current context. The short video 10 Signs You’re Addicted to Your Phone is a hilarious clip that demonstrates two male teens who are obsessed with their cell phones with deleterious effects (https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=KVVdgs9JedQ). The 10 captions overlaying the different scenes in the video are previews of some of the words students would encounter in the core lesson articles above (e.g., anxiety) and visually depict some of the content about which students will read (e.g., “sleep texting”). Once students read the article, instead of immediately focusing on comprehension questioning, students could discuss which of the teens in the article “Two Days with No Phone” (and/or video) they most identify. For example, a student might see a connection to the article’s Kenny who has urges to “sleep text”; another student might identify with Franchesca’s anxiety about wanting to always feeling connected; another, the experience of walking into an object while texting like the teen in the video. The teacher could survey students to see the role that cell phones play in their lives and all the different ways they use cell phones across the day. How many hours do they spend on their cell phones? Students could discuss whether they could have made it through the two-day challenge. Teachers could ask students questions about what they believe communication is and what they value in communicating with others. Contrasting theses beliefs with their cell phone communication practices could reveal contradictions that can spark perturbation and lead students to construct new ideas about the topics at hand. Students’ reading and discussion of the article would surely illuminate the way our lives currently revolve around our technologies like cell

156  Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge phones. Research in literacy has shown that dialogue among students about what they’ve read deepens their comprehension and allows the teacher to assess their understanding (Palinscar, 2012). Challenge Oppression, Think Globally Moving toward a larger understanding of technology and its more far reaching impacts, the teacher could prompt students to think about the way cell phones impact others around the world, perhaps in ways that aren’t positive nor often highlighted in our world. The teacher could pair the “Two Days with No Phone” article with another informational text article that highlights the human rights issues that accompany the technologies we are so attached to and take so much for granted. Moving the lesson from the personal and immediate to a focus on social justice and global awareness, the teacher could have students read the short (634 words) article “Is Your Cell Phone Powered by Child Labor?” by Hope King (http://money.cnn. com/2016/01/18/technology/smartphone-child-labor-cobalt/) published in January 2016 on CNN Money (King, 2016). The presentation of this article could be preceded by a video hook. The short video Your Cell Phone Might Be Powered by Child Labor available on YouTube.com (https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=qjnFZtX_-V4) provides entry to the content of the CNN Money article. This video corresponds to the pictures featured in the article showing children working in cobalt mines, which can be paired with the beginning quote from the article “The abundance of electronics and gadgets makes it easy to forget what it takes to bring them to market. The manufacturing process begins with mining essential elements and is far less beautiful than anything we unwrap and use.” The pairing of the Scholastic Action Magazine articles with the CNN Money article on the dark shadows behind our fancy technology creates a lesson that is attentive to issues of global cultural awareness and social justice. Differentiating Instruction The pairing of the two texts allows for students to make different connections to their own experiences and knowledge. Some students may have prior knowledge of issues of child labor or the dire environmental consequences of our technologies. This topic can also move students beyond just engagement with texts and citing textual evidence for academic purposes towards spurring them to societal action. The teacher could have students create fliers, posters, short video advertisements, and pamphlets that raise awareness about the injustices behind cell phones. Students could write letters to cell phone manufacturers like Samsung or Apple. Students would need to incorporate vocabulary learned through the readings and cite their assertions with textual evidence. Such an assignment would be authentic in scope and intended audience, providing students with autonomy and individual

One Size Fits None  157 purpose. Students can use their own background experiences, personal beliefs, and learning styles to build on the reading and class discussion. Teachers can use multiple approaches for differentiating this lesson. The CNN Money article could be chunked which allows different student groups to read smaller chunks closely. Groups could be homogeneous or heterogeneous depending on differentiated needs. Advanced readers or students who prefer to read independently could do so and then join the class in discussion following the small group readings. The use of the video accompanied by text is a helpful scaffold for English Language Learners. The video provides ELLs with some background knowledge and visual clues that they can bring to the upcoming reading. Breaking down the article into manageable chunks can help facilitate understanding for ELLs. The teacher can highlight important vocabulary and provide ELLs with definitions for new or complex words. Following small group engagement with smaller chunks of text, groups can share back what they learned. This could be followed by the teacher reading the text aloud to the class—a much under-utilized instructional approach that research has showed benefits not only younger students but older students as well (Trelease, 2006). Discussion can follow and move from application of understanding to creation of multimedia texts (e.g., posters, pamphlets, video advertisements) that allow students to use multiple literacy skills reflecting their comprehension of both texts used in the lesson. Revised Lesson 2 Contextualize The existing goals of the original lesson are incredibly general and not context/topic/culturally connected. There is no explicit connection to previously learned topics or previously introduced skills. No consideration to students’ skill sets is mentioned or delivered. It is assumed that students can read the words, understand their meanings, and comprehend story elements. The learner is not positioned in an active stance, which is where s/he is held responsible immediately following the read. The linear outline is minimalist on paper, but insufficient in nature. Instead, we recommend starting with how Nikola Tesla envisioned cellular communication devices back in 1926. This starting point could begin with a jolt that takes students back in history and how Tesla who foresaw our “connected” future (students aren’t often immediately drawn in or excited by history). The following video clip gives a short introduction to Tesla through a brief upbeat video from AOL News (www.aol. com/article/2015/07/10/nikola-tesla-predicted-smartphones-89-yearsago/21208008/). It tells not only about Tesla’s vision of phones but other inventions he created and envisioned as well as his relationships with others like Edison. The 3:11 minute video could be followed by brief discussion.

158  Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge Students could share about their own knowledge of Tesla or knowledge of some of the things he created. The teacher could then introduce the following text from Collier’s Magazine when Tesla discussed his telephone vision: When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket. We shall be able to witness and hear events—the inauguration of a President, the playing of a World Series game, the havoc of an earthquake or the terror of a battle—just as though we were present. When the wireless transmission of power is made commercial, transport and transmission will be revolutionized. Already motion pictures have been transmitted by wireless over a short distance. Later the distance will be illimitable, and by later I mean only a few years hence. Pictures are transmitted over wires—they were telegraphed successfully through the point system thirty years ago. When wireless transmission of power becomes general, these methods will be as crude as is the steam locomotive compared with the electric train. Historical, Global, Economic Connections Pairing the “Two Days with No Phone” article with the video about and primary text by Tesla allows the teacher to contextualize that reading from the original lesson within a historical, global, and economic context. Following the reading, students could partake in any number of activities that would have them directly engaging with seeking out further knowledge and making connections beyond just the text and the classroom. For example, students could work in stations. One group could look more in-depth at cell phone use around the world. They could start from a resource like the one from the World Bank Data Site, which provides statistics on mobile cell phone use for countries in the world (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ IT.CEL.SETS.P2). The data can be inspected in table, map, or graph form, allowing students to conceptualize the information in multiple ways. Students could do further investigating using classroom technology. Another group could look at the changing physical nature and capabilities of cell phones. This group could start from the strong visual afforded by a quick entry of “history of cell phones” into Google and selecting “Images.” The images available present an immediate rendering of the evolution of our oldest most clunky mobile devices to the sleek devices we hold in our hands

One Size Fits None  159 today (interestingly the size of the first mobile phones and our largest smart phones today is pretty similar)—this image is immediate and vivid: https:// newwritingtechnogenesis.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/evolution-of-cellphones-technology.jpg This group could do more research on how the features and power of cellular phones has changed across time. Another group could investigate the economic and career implications of mobile phones. For example, students could start from a 2012 U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation article discussing the relationship between cellular data use and per capita Gross Domestic Product increase (https://www. uschamberfoundation.org/blog/post/new-study-cell-phones-encourageeconomic-growth/34285). Younger students might not remember when upgrading from 2G to 3G was a big deal. Based on the statistics provided in this brief article, students could look at the accompanying graph and think about how the move of almost all cellular carriers to 4G, with 5G on the horizon, has and will continue to impact our GDP. They could to further research on how mobile technology is changing economies in poorer countries. For example, 2015 Brookings Institute Article provides a starting place to explore implications of mobile phones in Africa (www.brookings.edu/ blogs/future-development/posts/2015/03/18-africa-mobile-connectivityhandjiski). Small groups could do additional brief readings, gather information, and share back with the class. Alternatively, one of these topics could be examined in-depth by the entire class. Students could cumulate their explorations in multiple ways. Students could make timelines, maps, and/ or graphs accompanied by a written paragraph summarizing the content explored. Another activity that would capture the interest and creativity of students—and would draw upon the learning and researching they did with prior activities—would be formulations of hypotheses of what “Cell Phone 2.0” might look like. Where will we be with cell phones in 2030? 2050? 2080? What will be the limits of this technology? How will it change our lives, the economy, and the planet? It should be noted that these two lessons we offer would not have to exist in isolation. The use of child labor and environmentally damaging origins of the components of cell phones are part and parcel of the history, global reach, economic, and future impact of cell phones and their exponentially growing use. Lessons like these that spark student interest, curiosity, engagement, application, and activism move the literacy event—reading, researching, writing, communicating—beyond the classroom walls; they draw upon more than just students’ existing literacy skills. Instead, they draw upon students’ existing knowledge, beliefs, experiences, and quandaries. Students’ varied funds of knowledge, learning styles and needs, favored modes of expression, and more are given space to bloom in curriculums that embrace diversity and attract students’ diverse interests. At the same time, fundamental skills and skills demanded by the Common Core and needed for college and career readiness are central to the literacy activities that drive these lessons forward.

160  Evan Ortlieb and Autumn M. Dodge Differentiating Instruction Across the texts and activities above, multiple means of differentiation can be offered for ELLs or other students needing additional scaffolding. Sentence frames could be provided to facilitate their composition. For writing assignments, students would need to cite textual evidence from across multiple texts for their composition and would need to incorporate key vocabulary. As an additional scaffold, prior to setting students up for the writing task, the teacher could elicit student feedback on the most important words from their reading. Vocabulary could be posted on the board or a Word Wall for students’ reference. Other iterations of the Word Wall could be offered for students. Words accompanied by visuals can be helpful for ELLs (and use of visuals solidifies new knowledge in schema for all learners). Across both lessons and all instruction, activities and all forms of assessment should also be multifaceted and consider students’ cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge, unique experiences, and specific needs. If students’ individual backgrounds and strengths are determined and updated on an ongoing basis, teachers can integrate this information into their curricular, planning, and instruction.

Thoughts for the Future This chapter opened with a call to re-conceptualize literacy practices for diverse learners. We challenge the notion that diverse learners can be generalized as a one group or that one form of instruction can reach all learners. Mindsets that conceptualize diverse learners as one student profile can easily fall prey to deficit views and literacy practices that pigeonhole diverse learners as opposed to illuminating the multifaceted types of diversity and potentials in the classroom. Schools and teachers that view diverse learners as possessing a wealth of knowledge, experiences, and literacy practices can contribute to and enrich “traditional” literacy practices, challenging prevalent notions of proficiency and achievement. If we conceptualize achievement not as test scores or rote memorization of content but instead as cultivation of new and deep understandings, relevant content, and engaged and active learning, we can create an environment for true literacy learning, not only for our diverse learners but for all learners in our classrooms. Researchers are currently involved in important work to address the needs of diverse literacy learners, with much attention to the cultural and linguistic literacy practices of diverse learners and how to best make those assets in the classroom and incorporate students’ funds of knowledge (e.g., González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Moje et al., 2004; Powers, 2002). An ongoing challenge for research and theory on diverse learners is the conceptualization of diversity as rich with intersectionality. Learning more about the complex ways that multiple types of diversity influence students’ background knowledge, interests, family and community funds of knowledge, literacy practices, and attitudes toward and purposes for schooling is important

One Size Fits None  161 for educators who are working to develop pedagogies that can best serve diverse students. With the growing focus on and importance of disciplinary literacy emphasized in the CCSS, more research is needed on how various types of diverse learners interact with complex disciplinary texts to develop the habits of mind of science, history, language arts, etc. The work of Moll et al. (1992) and Moje et al. (2004) shows us that the ways that science is conceptualized and used in some communities may differ from the content taught (and privileged) in school. The content presented in history texts in public schools may silence and make invisible the rich histories, contributions, and experiences of minority groups; such texts may omit or water down of oppression of certain groups. What do classrooms, student interaction, literacy practices and achievement, and school culture look like in a curriculum where students’ cultural and linguistic histories are made a central part of content and practice? What specific pedagogies and instructional materials do/would teachers use? Such questions offer a multitude of rich opportunities for research. Further work can be pursued to expand and enhance existing CCSS curriculum and instructional materials so that it offers opportunities for diverse learners to build from their existing literacies and content knowledge. The progression from resistance to acceptance is just the beginning; nurturing the development of diverse literacy learners and valuing who they are in the classroom requires dutiful consideration alongside compassionate and dedicated educators. More research is needed to provide insight into those teachers’ practices that use diversity as an advantage, capitalizing on students’ varied strengths and abilities in productive ways. Examining new theoretical frameworks also offers novel ways to re-conceptualize and provide equitable literacy instruction for all learners.

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Section III

Easing the Plight of Children

Much of Dale Johnson’s work involved advocacy for those who are less empowered as a result of poverty and the exponential evolution of highstakes testing. Dale’s actions matched his words. This was most evident when he took time from professional life as a professor and dean in the School of Education at the University of Louisiana in Monroe to teach in one of the nation’s most poor school districts. Dale was clear about the need to level the playing field for children of poverty with regard to the uneven disparities in standardized testing. With his wife, Bonnie, Dale spent an entire year teaching fourth grade in an elementary school that had poorly running water, problems with rodent and insect infestation, and deteriorated infrastructure. This chronicle of their experiences as third- and fourthgrade teachers, which is evident in their book High Stakes (2006), shows how the current fascination with assessment, standards, and accountability has failed children in poverty. Chapters 9 through 13 extend Dale’s experiences in helping improve the plight of children.

9 “Every Day She Drunk or Gone” Poverty, Persuasion, Peddlers and Privatization Bonnie Johnson Talent, Money, Opportunity In his seventieth birthday speech in 1905, Mark Twain told a tale about a financially well-off aspiring author who sent Twain a sample of his writing and inquired about the best diet for a writer. The young author referred to the work of a Harvard faculty member, Professor Agassiz, who recommended fish as a “good brain food.” Twain responded to the man’s query: Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brain. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat—at least not with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. (Ayres, 1987, pp. 58–59) We do not know the identity of the person who was willing to nourish his brain to become a successful author, but we can surmise that Twain was not impressed with the youth’s socio-economic status or his knowledge of a Harvard professor’s research. The anecdote might call to mind the proverb, “A poet is born, not made.” Poeta nascitur, non fit—the poet is born, not made, is attributed to the Roman writer Publius Annius Florus (c.70–c.140) (Fletcher, 1893). Florus initially had a rough go-of-it as an author; he was on the oratorical ­traveling-show circuit while seeking a patron. It is thought that through family connections, Florus eventually found favor with Rome’s new emperor, Hadrian. They wrote poetry to each other, so the relationship must have been somewhat close. Florus to Hadrian: I don’t want to be Caesar, please To tramp around the Britons, weak at the knees,

170  Bonnie Johnson [one line lost] In the Scythian frost to freeze. The Emperor Hadrian to Florus: I don’t want to be Florus, please, to tramp round pubs, into bars to squeeze, to lurk about eating pies and peas, to get myself infested with fleas. (Livius.org, 2015; translation by A. Birley) It appears that the person who wrote A poet is born, not made had some powerful help with his ambitions. What do a wealthy aspiring writer in the early 1900s and a poet/ orator from antiquity have to do with the subheading of this chapter? They illustrate that money cannot buy talent, but connections don’t hurt, and readers can rest assured that Twain’s correspondent would not have gone hungry if his writing didn’t sell.

Redbud Elementary School The children at Redbud Elementary had neither a financial cushion nor family connections to help them. It was over 15 years ago when Dale Johnson, for whom this Festschrift has been published, and I took leaves-of-absence from our university positions and taught full time in an underfunded rural Louisiana school. Dale taught fourth grade, I taught third grade. Our doctoral students told us that education had changed since we had been public school classroom teachers, so we decided to have a look. We signed on at Redbud Elementary School (pseudonym). The school serves mostly African-American children from prekindergarten through fourth grade. The eager acceptance of our applications should have been a tip-off that Redbud was not a school where most adults would choose to spend time. The conditions were startling. There was no hot water, no playground equipment, and no library. Our classrooms were infested with jumbo roaches, swift spiders, and odd-looking insects that we could not identify. When I looked in a cupboard under my classroom sink, I saw an active rat’s nest. Our classroom supplies were sparse; most materials were outdated. My dictionaries had copyright dates of 1945 and 1952. I still can smell them as I type these words—pages saturated with mildew and age. Technology consisted of temperamental overhead projectors and antiquated computers—equipment clunky enough to be in a Smithsonian museum. There were no art classes, and music classes ceased the year after we left. Many of our pupils were hungry; they licked their free breakfast and free lunch trays. Most had not been to a dentist, and some had decayed teeth. Pupils had witnessed beatings and shootings. The father of one of Dale’s students was serving a life sentence in Angola State Penitentiary for murder.

“Every Day She Drunk or Gone”  171 There were children who lived with relatives, some who were “given away,” and a few who were homeless. We saw sick children. Some had skin rashes; many had childhood illnesses that were not treated because their parents or guardians were members of the working poor without adequate health insurance. We had a school nurse, one morning a week, for 611 pupils. Children who were ill could not lie down—there was no “nurse’s room.” Most could not go home because no one was there. One of my 8-year-old pupils told me that “every day” his mother was “drunk or gone.” Teachers brought blankets from home to cover the sick children as they sat in their desks with their heads down. Despite all of the deprivations in the children’s lives, they were a joy to teach. We found them eager to learn, kind to one another, and anxious to please. They all lived with a looming fear that troubled them more than the abominable conditions around them. That was the fear of failing the state’s high-stakes test. Louisiana was the first state to base grade promotion on standardized test performance, and our children of poverty were some of the policy’s victims. Only a handful of children in our classes read on grade-level. I had three third-graders who could not recite the alphabet. One of my third-graders was 12 years old; he repeatedly failed grades, but no extra help was available to him. Teachers’ after-school time was filled with foolish sessions from “experts” on how to raise test scores. There was a reading specialist in the building, but her time with groups of pupils was too brief to help much—so many were so far behind. Parents and guardians barely could put food on their tables let alone pay for tutors. In November 2013 the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education issued a press release. It announced that “a new performancebased assessment to measure the classroom readiness of teachers now is fully operational and ready for use across the country” (p. 1). The assessment, which in the second paragraph of the press release carries a trademark, “was developed by hundreds of teachers and teacher educators in a process orchestrated by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE), with support from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)” (p. 1). The assessment is edTPA. The subheading of the press release stated, “edTPA [sic] Helps Determine Whether Aspiring Teachers are [sic] Ready to Teach from Day One.” That depends on where the beginning teacher lands on “Day One.” As a veteran elementary classroom teacher, I unconditionally can state that nothing could have prepared me for what I encountered when I taught in a public school that serves children of poverty. The only preparation that might have aided in this heartbreaking, demanding assignment was to have grown up in a similar neighborhood and attended the school, or one like it, as a child. My lessons plans and delivery were solid and my classroom management skills practiced because of the number of years that I had spent as a public

172  Bonnie Johnson school teacher, but little of that mattered when a child’s relative was murdered or a pupil’s parent was sent to jail for brawling or for a drug-related offense. These situations are the realities that some teachers face daily and no “new assessment” will prepare them from day one to the end of their careers for the outright cruelty of poverty. If only as much emphasis and money were placed on feeding little stomachs instead of on assessing children and preservice teachers. Today high-stakes standardized tests are commonplace. In some states, teachers’ evaluations are tied to the students’ test scores. School and district test results routinely are published in local newspapers in what might be viewed as a public shaming of teachers, principals, and indirectly their pupils. Any cursory investigation will reveal that schools who do not achieve top labels such as “above proficiency,” “four stars,” “school of academic distinction” are those schools that have large populations of economically poor children—many of whom speak English as a second language. Souto-Manning (2014) referred to contemporary teachers as “technicians” who work with standardized curricula rather than as professionals who have opportunities for innovation in their work. She stated, “After their work is devalued to a deadening uniformity, teachers are then evaluated based on students’ test scores” (p. 1). In addition to being technicians, teachers in some districts are reduced to human glow sticks and drill sergeants as a part of test pep rallies for children who are about to take their state’s high-stakes exams. Such antics are performed so that students can “blow off steam” before the tests are administered. A decade ago, the notion of test pep rallies for young children would have seemed preposterous to some, disturbing to others. Now the rallies are commonplace. An electronic search will produce numerous ideas for test-prep skits, songs, and more. Public school educators have not been successful in expressing the taxing, increasingly humiliating, and sometimes dangerous demands of the job. In contemporary classrooms—even adequately funded ones—there is more to teaching than what Jackson (1990) referred to as “The Daily Grind” (p. 1). Perhaps teachers are just too weary to tell their stories, and people with big hearts are not known for their PR skills. Their schools are ripe for a takeover.

Privatizing American Schools The privatization of American schools might begin with the following steps: 1. Study the literature on persuasion and consumer behavior. 2. Use newspaper headlines as proof of failing schools. 3. Enlist “peddlers at podia” and accreditors to directly or indirectly support the private school model. 4. Use what happened to the children of Redbud Elementary as an example of a failing school.

“Every Day She Drunk or Gone”  173 Step 1 to Privatization: Study the Literature on Persuasion and Consumer Behavior Over half a century ago, motivational analysts studied prompts that encouraged people to make particular choices. They found that the packaging of an idea is key. The goods or services should offer the consumer “considerably more than the actual item involved,” the analysts determined (Packard, 1957, p. 8). Consumers buy hopes and promises along with their purchases: a particular shoe will help them run faster, a brand of truck will make them more daring, and a beverage will make them more attractive and popular. Private schools will make children smarter, better able to compete for a high-paying job, and perhaps more welcome in a higher social class. Such notions about private schools would fulfill what Schiffman and Wisenblit (2015) described as a consumer’s trio of needs: power, affiliation, and achievement. The power need is the consumer’s “desire to control his or her environment,” the affiliation need is the “desire for friendship, acceptance, and belonging,” and the achievement need is the wish to “overcome obstacles,” and “do things better than others” (pp. 62, 64). In a public schools takeover campaign, private schools could be promoted as a way for parents and guardians to take charge of their children’s education à la the home-school paradigm but without parents doing any of the actual teaching. Hints of parental control of school curriculum might be offered as a teaser. This would partially fulfill a consumer power need. The acceptance and belonging needs would be satisfied by “consumer tribe” membership where members share an allegiance to a set of beliefs or a product (Solomon, 2015, p. 371). That belief might be “private schools are better.” The achievement need partially would be satisfied simply by being accepted into a private school based on the aforementioned consumer-tribe belief A tactic that has been used by businesses for decades is to instill fear that a good or service has outlived its usefulness. Shrewd marketers must create a notion of “psychological obsolescence” so that “better” goods or services can be sold. Packard (1957) wrote: By the mid-fifties merchandisers of many different products were being urged by psychological counselors to become “merchants of discontent.” One ad executive exclaimed with fervor: “What makes this country great is the creation of wants and desires, the creation of dissatisfaction with the old and outmoded.” (p. 22) Common schools (i.e., free public schools) were established in 1830s (Powell, 2012). This is an ample amount of time to have given public schools a chance, critics might argue.

174  Bonnie Johnson Attitudes Can Be Changed Experts in consumer behavior and marketing strategies agree that attitudes towards goods and services can be changed, so it makes sense that kindly attitudes towards public schools can be changed. Kotler and Armstrong (1996) referred to Honda’s efforts to market its motorcycles in the U.S. during the late 1950s. During those years, American consumers thought of motorcyclists as leather-wearing, knife-wielding shady characters. Kotler and Armstrong wrote: “It [Honda] launched a major campaign to position motorcycles as good clean fun. Its theme ‘You meet the nicest people on a Honda’ worked well, and many people adopted a new attitude toward motorcycles” (p. 159). Kotler and Armstrong noted Honda’s successful efforts to change attitudes again in the 1990s when the market was returning to negative attitudes toward motorcycles. They wrote, “It [Honda] unveiled a new ‘Come Ride with Us’ campaign to reestablish the wholesomeness of motorcycling and to position it as fun and exciting for everyone” (p. 159). Canned tuna producers were faced with a need to change consumer attitudes several years ago when the FDA became concerned about tuna’s mercury levels. Tuna sales slumped, and a positive campaign clearly was needed. Schiffman and Wisenblit (2015) reported: The theme of the campaign was “Tuna the Wonderfish,” and through TV and online commercials, print ads, digital screens, posters, and materials placed in gyms and health clubs, it humorously portrayed that eating tuna is fun. Online, “tunathewonderfish.com” featured recipes and wacky characters called “the tuna lovers,” and sang the praises of tuna with slogans such as “tuna is good for your heart,” “part of a healthy diet,” and “great on the go.” These messages were designed to restore consumers’ confidence in tuna by telling them that eating tuna is not only healthy, but fun. (p. 157) It apparently does not take much more than small signs to change attitudes. Schiffman and Wisenblit (2015) pointed out that when hotels use signs that encourage guests to reuse towels (in an ostensible effort the save the environment), 25 percent more people reuse them. An even larger percentage of guests reuse towels when a lengthier “social norm” message is used on a sign such as “Most of the guests who have stayed in this room reused their towels. Please help us save the environment and reuse yours” (p. 208). Since the 1950s those who study motivation and persuasion refer to the use of certain words, word triggers, to shape perceptions (Packard, 1957). Even descriptors that seem mundane, such as those that appear on restaurant menus, can affect our perceptions. Wansink (2006), for example, found that when the menu item Seafood Fillet was renamed Succulent Italian Seafood

“Every Day She Drunk or Gone”  175 Fillet, restaurants had a 27 percent increase in sales of the item even though the chefs did nothing to the fillet but change the menu name. Just two words made the difference. Subjects in Wansink’s studies also reported that foods with more descriptive names tasted better than those with plainer names even though the dishes were identical in all other ways. The term failing schools harks back to the inception of the public school accountability movement. The National Commission on Excellence in Education’s (1983) publication A Nation at Risk and the No Child Left Behind Act set the stage for the now prevalent use of the term. Emery and Ohanian (2004) stated that “you can’t hear public schools without thinking they are failing and need to be fixed. This language works: ordinary people without an ax to grind, people who haven’t set foot in a school for thirty years or more, will testify to failing public schools” (p. 6). Although failing schools has not yet gained collocation status such as hermetically sealed and torrential downpour, with enough repetition it could be on its way. Scholars who study persuasion tactics know that language can generate fear (see Jowett and O’Donnell, 2015, p. 328). If public schools are failing, how will we compete in a global market? Will even more of our jobs be outsourced? Who will contribute paycheck monies to support us as we age? The Branding of Private Schools Private schools that want to establish themselves need a brand—an image. When establishing a brand, market analysts examine the capabilities of the competition. Hawkins and Mothersbaugh (2013) wrote that the following questions about competitors must be answered before marketing action is undertaken: 1. If we are successful, which firms will be hurt (lose sales or sales opportunities)? 2. Of those firms that are injured, which have the capability (financial resources, marketing strengths) to respond? 3. How are they likely to respond (reduce prices, increase advertising, introduce a new product)? 4. Is our strategy (planned action) robust enough to withstand the likely actions of our competitors, or do we need additional contingency plans? (p. 13) In a push for private schools, public schools are hurt through lost dollars (fewer pupils) and less parental involvement (fewer parents). Injured public schools have few or no financial resources directed toward marketing. Without marketing budgets, responses from public schools are limited, and marketing strategies against public schools can be robust enough to withstand any public school attempts to compete with private PR pros. Besides, to make public schools more appealing to consumers, a full-blown product

176  Bonnie Johnson repositioning (i.e., a strategy to change the way consumers view a service) would need to be designed and delivered. (See Hawkins and Mothersbaugh, 2013, pp. 338–339 for a discussion about this strategy.) In any marketing endeavor, brand awareness and familiarity are essential. Baker (2015) stated that brand-name imprinting is critical; a brand must have “a niche in memory” (p. 210). Hawkins and Mothersbaugh (2013) used the term brand image, the “schematic memory of a brand . . . what people think of and feel when they hear or see a brand name” (335). The word choice is a watchword of anti-public school supporters and is critical in promoting the privatization brand. It is a word that is shrewd in its selection. Freedom of choice is listed as an “American Core Cultural Value” by experts in marketing (Schiffman and Wisenblit, 2015, pp. 279–280). Some students that purportedly would benefit from attending schools of “choice” had better have miracle workers or fairy godmothers available to help them gain admittance to such schools. The pupils whom Dale and I taught were street smart. Their vocabularies included terms such as blackmoll (a plastic-tipped cigar with “weed” taking the place of tobacco) and 40-ouncers (a large quantity of beer in single bottles). Isn’t this kind of background knowledge why some people send their children to private schools in the first place—to get away from Redbud-type families? And what’s to prevent private schools from raising their costs to a level that vouchers would not cover? I found a private school application on-line. There was a misspelling and an incorrect use of an apostrophe on the form. In addition to these mistakes that might eradicate any initial notion of “better,” there was information that easily could identify the social class of a child (e.g., parents’ occupations). Questions about past disciplinary problems and special social/emotional conditions of the applicant needed to be explained. There was no blank or check-off item for race/ethnicity, but that could be pegged in street addresses or names that might signal a particular ethnic/ racial group. It should not go unstated that group pictures of children in some private schools are suspiciously all White even though children from other racial groups live in the area. Consumer behavior and marketing strategy research are rife with the effects of repetition on individuals. Solomon (2015) wrote: “Repeated exposures—repetition—increase the strength of stimulus-response associations and prevent the decay of these associations in memory” (p. 209). Wise marketers are careful to avoid advertising wearout. Hawkins and Mothersbaugh (2013) stated: One strategy for avoiding wearout is to utilize variations on a common theme. For example, ads for Target continually emphasize core brand themes and the “red dot” symbol. However, they have done so over time in different and interesting ways including roaming animated spokescharacters, a white dog with a red dot around one eye, and so on. (p. 331)

“Every Day She Drunk or Gone”  177 Advertising wearout in belittling public schools easily can be avoided by using different terms to get the “failure” message across (e.g., “schools in need of improvement,” “one-star [out of four] schools,” “broken schools,” “struggling schools”). Step 2 to Privatization: Use Newspaper Headlines as Proof of Failing Schools Newspapers have been around for centuries. The first newspapers (circa 323 B.C.), written in Greek on papyrus, were not dailies but they did boast of having city and rural subscribers. The first daily newspaper, Acta Diurna (Action Journal), was published in Rome circa 59 B.C. It resembled contemporary newspapers because it carried not only news but births and obituaries, sports (i.e., events for the masses), court reports, and so on. The paper was started by Julius Caesar and was under government control; however, Acta Diurna had the first “newsroom” of actuarii—reporters and copy editors. In the United States, the first recognized independent newspaper, the New York Herald, was founded in 1835 by James Gordon Bennett who disdained partisan influence in reporting the news. Some believed that his newspaper was in response to President Andrew Jackson’s 60 journalists who were on the federal government dole (Panati, 1984; Richardson, 1998). There were newspapers prior to Bennett’s—an impressive 70 during the Revolutionary War. Scholars of propaganda view them as one-sided which made good sense when a population of colonists planned to take on the British Empire (Jowett and O’Donnell, 2015). Advertisers know that newspapers, whether in hard-copy or on-line format, have advantages despite their oft-predicted demise. The number of morning daily newspapers actually has increased since 1940 (Jowett and O’Donnell, 2015). Altstiel and Grow (2006) listed the benefits of newspapers: widespread circulation, convenience, and believability. Solomon (2015) noted that public opinion on a topic “can shift by as much as 2 percent when the New York Times (but not the National Enquirer) runs an article about it” (p. 318). Circulation of the daily and Sunday print and digital New York Times runs in the millions (The New York Times Company, 2014), so 2 percent is an appreciable percentage. In The Image, Boorstin (1961) wrote that a successful newspaper reporter is expected to find a “story” even if there are no startling, newsworthy events that occurred on that day. These stories, which Boorstin referred to as “pseudo-events,” are planned or planted, and their successes are measured by the amount of coverage that they receive. He stated, “Fact or fantasy, the image becomes the thing. Its very purpose is to overshadow reality” (p. 197). Pseudo-events are seen as true because their promoters say that they are true. Jowett and O’Donnell (2015) noted the “agenda-setting influence” that news sources, including on-line newspapers, have on readers. News

178  Bonnie Johnson stories significantly can alter readers’ perceptions of the world with “longlasting” and “wide-ranging” effects (Jowett and O’Donnell, 2015, p. 205). The notion of “school choice” is not recent. More than three decades ago, economist Milton Friedman recommended school vouchers; in the 1980s and 1990s, school choice supported by tax monies was heralded by politicians on both sides of the aisle (Skolnick and Currie, 2000). The choice movement has been brought to the forefront of American education policy, however, by Boorstin’s notion of pseudo-events and by media reports. If one were to design a strategy to convince the public that schools were not doing their jobs, one could do no better than what has, perhaps in some instances unwittingly, taken place through America’s newspapers. There is no need for private school advocates to spend money on advertising—many newspapers are doing that for them free of charge. Headline styles, headline categories, “magic words” in headlines, and headline evaluation, are topics of entire chapters in advertising and marketing textbooks. Headlines are written to gain attention, to entice readers to continue reading copy, to pique curiosity, to label, to stir emotions, to hornblow, and to compare (Altstiel and Grow, 2006). Several headlines that refer to “failing schools” are below. Newspaper and Date: San Antonio Express-News, January 10, 2014 Headline: “List of state’s failing schools lengthens with new test” Newspaper and Date: The Tuscaloosa News, January 16, 2014 Headline: “State releases new failing schools list” Newspaper and Date: Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee), January 7, 2015 Headline: “GOP bill would make failing public schools charters” Newspaper and Date: The Clarion Ledger (Jackson), July 12, 2015 Headline: “Mississippi eyes options for failing schools” Newspaper and Date: The Denver Post, October 7, 2015 Headline: “Report: Aurora Public Schools failing, students lagging behind” Newspaper and Date: Montgomery Advertiser, February 6, 2015 Headline: “7 Montgomery schools make Alabama’s failing schools list” Newspaper and Date: Chicago Tribune, October 21, 2011 Headline: “Record percentage of Illinois schools fail to meet federal targets” Newspaper and Date: Wyoming Tribune Eagle, October 1, 2015 Headline: “Wyo. Schools get “F” grade” Newspaper and Date: The Salt Lake Tribune, January 16, 2015 Headline: “Bill would turn failing schools into state-run charters” The headlines span many years (e.g., Newspaper and Date: Memphis Flyer, October 10, 2001; Headline: “Our Failing Schools”), and there are enough similar headlines written throughout the years to fill a lengthy chapter for

“Every Day She Drunk or Gone”  179 this volume. Such headlines, repeated enough times, could convince those who do not work in these schools that something is amiss. Eitzen, Zinn, and Smith (2009) stated, “The evidence that educational performance is linked to socioeconomic background is clear and irrefutable . . .” (p. 491). The following “headlines” refer to incidents that occurred during our year at Redbud Elementary. The school continues to earn Ds and Fs on School Report Cards. “Rodents Repeatedly Chew through Classroom Computer Cables” “Temperature Soars to 109o but No Working Drinking Fountains for Pupils” “Fourth-Grader’s Brother Dead—Gunshot Wound” “Third-Graders Fear Ku Klux Klan” “ ‘Weed, Cocaine Cooking’ Appear on Children’s Drug Awareness Posters” “Children Cannot Pay $2.50 to Attend Play at High School” “Father Attempts to Burn Down Family Home” “Third-Grader’s Mother Jailed for Fighting” “Book Fair Held—Only One Child Has Money for a Purchase” “Third-Graders’ Advice for Ringworm Cure: ‘Drink a Beer’ ” “Child Returns to Classroom; Has Now Attended 5 Schools in 3 Months” “Second Coldest Winter since 1895—Some Classrooms without Heat” “Third-Grader’s Grandmother Brutally Murdered” “Three Redbud Third- and Fourth-Graders Lose All in House Fires this Year” “Mother of Redbud Pupil ‘Is in the Pen for Drugs’ ” “Third Grader: ‘My Real Dad Choked and Kicked My Mama’ ” “Redbud Family Living in Pop-Up Trailer: No Running Water, No Electricity” (see Johnson and Johnson, 2006 for details). No fiddling with numbers, no value-added models (VAMs) can compensate for the stories behind these “headlines” or similar ones that could be written by teachers in the Redbud Elementary Schools across the country. Step 3 to Privatization: Enlist “Peddlers at Podia” and Accreditors to Directly or Indirectly Support the Private School Model Veterans of annual conferences, especially those of specialized professional associations, know the shtick. “Regulars” on the convention circuit take the stage and begin a speech with something similar to “When I taught _____ grade, my principal, Mrs./Ms./Mr. _____ told us. . . .” This opening lets the audience know that speakers are “one of them,” that they have been in teachers’ shoes. The use of “Mrs.” suggests that the speakers have been

180  Bonnie Johnson in education for a respectable amount of time. Healthy doses of flattery, aimed toward other speakers who also are circuit riders, are de rigueur. Then the personalities take more serious tones as they support assessments, or a particular set of standards, or other buzz-worthy topics of the year. Well-practiced, often self-deprecating humor is sprinkled throughout the sessions. No mentions are made that the speakers represent a publishing house or that their names can be found in the front matter of teacher editions or on electronic instructional materials. Cagier peddlers don’t take strong positions on particular topics. They sit on the fence so as not to ruffle moneyed feathers. Lucas (2001) wrote, “Because public speaking is a form of power, it carries with it heavy ethical responsibilities” (p. 49). The peddlers usually do not tell the audience precisely how many years they were employed as classroom teachers or how long ago or in what types of schools; they rely on audience etiquette to not be asked about such things. Lucas refers to “ethical lapses” of public speaking, and the omission of speakers’ commercial affiliations and pertinent background information, if they purport to be like audience members, qualify as ethical lapses. If peddlers are hired to speak in favor of the privatization of schools—and there is no reason to expect that they won’t be or already are—economic influences on learning will be given short shrift. In a discussion of “personalities at podia,” Johnson (2014) stated, “If ‘poor kids’ are mentioned in live presentations, YouTube segments, or written pieces, they seem to be ­afterthoughts—something tacked on as obligatory nods to do-gooders” (p. 2). The personalities promote their wares—careful to avoid attaching poverty to any product or set of standards or service. They want their audiences to feel good, to complete complimentary speaker evaluations, so that the companies or services that they work for keep the royalties or fees-for-service coming. As Harrington (1962), credited with initiating the War on Poverty wrote, no corporation or service “is attracted by the smell of defeat” (p. 32), and no corporation will continue to support spokespeople who do not overtly or covertly tell audiences that their products, schools, standards or whatever else they are getting paid to promote will “help kids learn.” Mountains of Standards No words on paper or those delivered electronically, without human and monetary support, will improve the education of anyone. There are mountains of standards, but where are the data that all of the time and money spent on the development and implementation of any set of standards within the past decade have had positive impacts on student learning—regardless of how student learning is measured? Some standards, such as the International Literacy Association’s (formerly International Reading Association) Standards for Reading Professionals, Standards 2010 (Revised): Standard 2, Element 2.1 asks “Pre-K and Elementary Classroom Teacher Candidates”

“Every Day She Drunk or Gone”  181 to relate “the reading and writing curriculum” to other (i.e., “local, state, national and professional”) standards (International Literacy Association, p. 3). “Middle and High School Content Classroom Teacher Candidates” are asked to “Explain how reading and writing relate to their content areas and to local, state, national and professional standards” (p. 3). “Administrator Candidates” are not left out of the picture. The same Standard 2, Element 2.1 states, in part, “Monitor instruction to determine that local, state, and national standards are met” (p. 5). There are the 10 InTASC (Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium) Standards (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2013). The Consortium’s Standard #2: Learning Differences, includes statements such as “The teacher makes appropriate and timely provisions (e.g., pacing for individual rates of growth, task demands, communication, assessment, and response modes) for individual students with particular learning differences or needs” (“Performances, 2(b),” p. 17). “The teacher understands that learners bring assets for learning based on their individual experiences, abilities, talents, prior learning, and peer and social group interactions, as well as language, culture, family, and community values” (“Essential Knowledge, 2(j),” p.17). “The teacher respects learners as individuals with differing personal and family backgrounds and various skills, abilities, perspectives, talents, and interests” (“Critical Dispositions, 2(m),” p. 17). These “delineations” of Standard #2 sound noble if not commonsensical, but there is a standards-related buddy lurking in the background: high-stakes standardized testing. When one measure is used to determine children’s learning proficiencies, the nobility in intentions is hollow. [M]any people almost automatically think that having standards (decided by whom?) and testing them rigorously will lead to higher achievement, especially among our most disadvantaged children. By in essence holding schools,’ teachers,’ and teacher education institutions’ feet to the fire, so to speak, there will be steady improvement in achievement. Yet, the empirical evidence for this assertion is weak at best. Indeed, a considerable amount of international literature should make us very cautious about assuming that this will be the case. Such policies have been shown to just as often stratify even more powerfully by class and race, no matter what the rhetorical artifice used to justify them. (Apple, 2005, p. xiii) Will the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) (2009–2010), and its standardized tests which are sure to follow, contribute to the stratification by socioeconomic status to which Apple refers? It appears that in at least one element, class stratification will be reinforced. Within the English Language Arts Standards for Kindergarten, Vocabulary Acquisition and Use, pupils are to “Distinguish shades of meaning among verbs describing the same general action (e.g., walk, march, strut, prance) by acting out the meanings.” These

182  Bonnie Johnson word “nuances” are to be accomplished by five-year-olds “With guidance and support from adults.” Six-year-olds are asked, “With guidance and support from adults,” to “Distinguish shades of meaning among verbs differing in manner (e.g., look, peak, glance, stare, glare, scowl) and adjectives differing in intensity (e.g., large, gigantic [sic]) by defining or choosing them or by acting out the meanings.” Synonymy is a sophisticated vocabulary component that requires repeated exposure to words with similar meanings. Funny, for example, is a word familiar to kindergarteners and first graders. It would be challenging, however, even for older students to “act out” or define or choose the correct synonym for funny when presented with amusing, silly, jocose, waggish, witty, comical, humorous, and others. How would a first grader define, choose, or “act out” the difference between stare and glare? Kindergarteners and first graders know the words talk and hide. Are they capable of “acting out,” “defining” or “choosing” appropriate synonyms in context for converse, state, utter, communicate and shroud, conceal, obfuscate, harbor? Many children in kindergarten and some in first grade still believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. Why would we ask them to perform such difficult linguistic exercises? How can a busy early childhood teacher convey the subtlety of synonymous verbs and adjectives? How will these be tested, for certainly each element in the Common Core will be tested, and five- and ­six-year-olds are not known for their long attention spans? Johnson and Johnson (2011) wrote, “Synonyms take on subtly different meanings in different contexts” (p. 71). When would a speaker or writer used trim instead of slender? Doubtful instead of dubious? Risky instead of hazardous? Even if a kindergarten- or first-grade teacher used an adjective such as little (which would seem less difficult than a verb for these ages because it is concrete), young children would have problems “acting out,” defining, or choosing the correct synonym for little among the choices of tiny, wee, mini, slight, diminutive and others. Only those children who have heard synonyms repeatedly at home or other environments where they spend ample time will remember the shades of meanings of particular words. Johnson (2014), in a discussion on synonymy and the Common Core, wrote: The teacher can assist pupils in acting out words ad infinitum, but children who hear the vocabulary of the school, the vocabulary of instructional materials, the vocabulary of children’s literature, and the vocabulary used in well-off homes have tremendous advantages over children whom I have taught who came to school and didn’t know color names, had no computers or books in their homes, and never had been outside their neighborhoods, many of these locales characterized by violence. (pp. 17–18) Johnson and Johnson (2006) discussed the importance of prior knowledge and attendant vocabularies to reading comprehension and stated that

“Every Day She Drunk or Gone”  183 those without such knowledge are at a major disadvantage in literacy gains. Johnson, Johnson, Farenga, and Ness (2008) conducted informal interviews with middle-school students from affluent families on Long Island and pupils of the same age from low-income families. The researchers found that the children of means could not define food stamps (e.g., “Aren’t they the little stickers they put on apples and bananas?”) but all of the children from low-income families could define the term (e.g., “a form a coupon money for people in poverty”). Orthodontist, passport, and boarding pass correctly were defined by children of affluence, but no child from low-income families could define any of the words. My Redbud pupils taught me an additional meaning of roast. I knew four meanings of the word: to cook with little moisture, a cut of meat, to become overheated, to poke fun at someone in a good-natured way. I will roast the corn; he served a beef roast; the office was so hot, I thought I’d roast; the reporters will roast the politician at the black-tie event. My class of thirdgraders taught me that to get hit with a long, wide strap hard enough to cause bruising was another meaning of roast. He got roast last Saturday. Even my third-graders, most of whom were eight or nine years old, knew the importance of prior knowledge of vocabulary words in text comprehension. When encountering paragraphs about a harp recital, my pupils were baffled. None had heard of a harp. “I can sound it out,” said one child, “but I don’t know what it means.” No child had heard of a recital. Children who participate in dance recitals or some types of music recitals and children who have attended a musical performance where a harp was a part of the orchestra clearly would have an advantage in comprehending a passage that contained the two words. I could not “pre-teach” the words because we were practicing for a standardized test. In reference to the Common Core State Standards, Pearson stated, “I think people want a little breathing room, a little flexibility, a little prerogative in implementation. . . . If they’re savvy about it, [educators] can find that in the standards themselves” (Hall, 2014, p. 18). Mr. Pearson, where can there be “a little flexibility” in the implementation of the vocabulary element discussed above? In word choices? Will there be “breathing room,” “flexibility” when all children, including ELL pupils, are tested on the vocabulary element and when evaluations of educators, including the savvy ones, are based, in part, on test results? A character in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls said, “Paper bleeds little.” Standards followed by more standards, written on traditional or electronic paper, don’t bleed at all. The mouths of children of Redbud bled, though, because of poor nutrition and because there was no money for dental care. Proponents of the latest standards or other “rigorous” notions should witness such pitiful scenes and examine where all of this accountability and all of its standards have gotten us before they give sweeping endorsements for such things with nary a mention of helping children of poverty catch up. Standards- and standardized-test promoters should be the ones who have to tell children like our Redbud pupils that they did not pass

184  Bonnie Johnson the end-of-year test and must repeat the entire grade regardless of their academic performances throughout the year. They should have to witness the heartrending scenes of children crying when they hear the news. I have been asked, “Don’t you want high standards for kids like those you taught at Redbud?” Yes, but not unless they are given what other children and standards-writers and promoters take for granted: three meals a day (including weekends), after-school and summer enrichment activities, a curriculum not based on test-prep, preschool that is more than child care, adequate health care, dental check-ups and repairs, clothing without multiple holes that let in icy winds, shoes that are the correct size for tiny feet— for starters. Accreditors Imig (1999) wrote, “Why can’t schools, colleges, and departments of education (SCDEs) be valued and loved and respected like other professional schools? What is it about teacher education that makes SCDEs a pariah on so many campuses?” (p. 369). In more than a decade there has been no perceptible rise in the status of education schools or departments. Perhaps that is because so many teacher educators have had to spend inordinate amounts of time on accountability measures. Today’s education professors are inundated with demands from accreditors and state departments of education. Much of these professors’ time is now relegated to busywork in preparation for some type of inspection by some outside body. In states such as Louisiana and New York, NCATE—now a part of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP)— accreditation is mandatory. Johnson, Johnson, Farenga, and Ness (2005), in their critical analysis of NCATE, interviewed faculty at NACTE-accredited institutions. Respondents included all ranks in education and in the arts and sciences. There was fear only among the education professors that their names would “get back to NCATE” or that there would be repercussions from state departments of education or from university administrators. All respondents expressed disgust over the enormous amount of time and money spent on this additional accreditation. There were those who reported having to make a choice between scholarship or “doing NCATE” (p. 39). Others spoke of demeaning “dog and pony shows” replete with “banners,” and “buttons,” produced for the sole purpose of impressing NCATE examiners. The interviewees saw no benefits of NCATE accreditation, and one professor said, “We have a good program in spite of, not because of NCATE” (p. 46). Teacher educators know the arm-twisting and fawning required to solicit volunteers from other disciplines to engage in accreditor demands. A professor in the sciences stated, “We try to develop a culture of discovery—of impassioned inquiry in our filed. We can’t pigeonhole students in the same mold. . . . We don’t have time for this minutiae. . . . Their [i.e., the accreditor’s] ‘rigor’ amounts to nothing more than bean counting” (Johnson,

“Every Day She Drunk or Gone”  185 Johnson, Farenga, and Ness, 2005, pp. 39–40). The bean counting can be a lucrative endeavor for those who give advice on how the beans will be counted. Johnson, Johnson, Farenga, and Ness (2005) discussed the costly workshops and consultants’ fees that accrue if an institution wants to be or is required to be accredited by an organization such as NCATE. There are at least two facets of CAEP accreditation that are pertinent to a discussion of privatization of public education. At the National Association for Alternative Certification (NAAC) conference in March 2013, a CAEP slide show began with “CAEP WELCOMES ALL EDUCATOR PREPARATION PROVIDERS” [boldface and uppercase in original] (NAAC, 2013). On another slide, “Include all providers” [boldface in original] is listed as one of the “4 Leverage Points in the Commission’s Standards” [boldface in original]. The CAEP Commission Recommendations to the CAEP Board of Directors (capenet.org, 2013) defined “Provider” as: “Educator preparation provider (EEP)—An inclusive term referring to the sponsoring organization for preparation, whether it is an institution of higher education, a districtor state-sponsored program, or an alternative pathway organization” (p. 11 in original copy). For-profit providers concerned about bottom lines presumably could be accredited by CAEP. CAEP’s Standards 2, 4, and 5 refer to candidates’ and EEP program completers’ “impact” and “positive impact” on “P-12 student” (or “students’ ”) “learning and development” (capenet.org, 2015). What if a teacher candidate has completed coursework from more than one “educator preparation provider”? If preparation is evaluated, in part, by candidates’ impacts on student learning, why would any teacher educator or teacher candidate go near an underfunded school such as Redbud Elementary? As of this writing, it appears that CAEP has made a splash among Middle Eastern providers. The Kingdom of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the State of Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are listed on their “Accredited Provider & Recognized Program Search” pull-down menu (capenet.org, 2015). Step 4 to Privatization: Use What Happened to the Children of Redbud Elementary as an Example of a Failing School As the years have come and gone, many of our former third- and fourthgrade Redbud pupils have not fared well. Two are deceased—victims of Redbud neighborhood violence. Some ended up behind bars. Their drug offenses, thefts, and acts of violence have been and continue to be reported in the local newspaper. Two of Dale’s pupils went to college and proudly wrote to tell him of their accomplishments. There should have been so many more. It sickens me to think of the wasted talent, and it should disturb even those who think only in economic terms. We repeatedly hear that Americans throw a lot of money at the public schools with nothing to show for it. I have taught in underfunded public

186  Bonnie Johnson schools and well-funded public schools, and I got a lot more money for my classrooms in the well-funded schools. My science equipment at Redbud Elementary consisted of a plastic beaker and a broken-down cardboard box labeled “Rocks” with most of the rocks and identifiers missing. The Teacher Editions of textbooks that I did have were torn, stained, and missing several pages. If there was money, I never saw it. I figuratively saw the total dollars spent on test-prep materials—an astonishing expenditure of money that could have been put toward pupil learning. One morning when Dale and I arrived at Redbud, we were greeted by a woman who clearly had been in a physical altercation. She had a swollen left eye and other contusions. The woman asked us if we knew how her child could be enrolled in preschool. Redbud had a preschool classroom, but it was filled to capacity. She and her thin child, ill-dressed for the cold morning, were turned away. Preschool should be available to all; the money from standards-development and all of the funds associated with testing these standards surely could be directed toward prekindergarten classes— probably with enough funds left over to support small libraries in schools such as Redbud Elementary. This book is a tribute to Dale. He was a scholar who was generous with his time and humble about his accomplishments. Researchers who do their homework know that Dale D. Johnson introduced semantic mapping, semantic feature analysis, and other vocabulary development strategies to the world of literacy. Dale was not afraid to speak up for children who did not pass high-stakes standardized tests through no faults of their own. He had an unwavering fidelity to fairness, remarkable wit, and a sense of fun. I still can see him leading a line of his pupils from the free-lunch room in a silent version of “Follow the Leader.” I can see him singing rousing versions of familiar songs with the children of Redbud. I can see him reading stories to his pupils and patiently explaining words in storybooks—brought from our home—that the children had not heard. One of Dale’s pupils, whose father was absent from the child’s life, made him a card on his birthday. Dale kept it these years; I still have it. The ragged piece of paper says in blue crayon, “You is just like a father to me.” The card also has five more words on it that speak to Dale’s life: “You is a good man.”

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“Every Day She Drunk or Gone”  187 Ayers, A. (Ed.). (1987). The wit and wisdom of Mark Twain. New York: Meridian. Baker, W. E. (2015). CB as I see it. In M. R. Solomon (Ed.), Consumer behavior: Buying, having and being (p. 210). New York: Pearson. Boorstin, D. J. (1961). The image: A guide to pseudo-events in America. New York: Vintage Books. Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2009–2010). Retrieved from www. corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/L/K; www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/L/1. Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). (2015). Commission on standards and performance reporting, standards, providers. Retrieved from www.capenet.org/standards/commission-on-standards; www.capenet.org/standards www.capenet.org/provider-search. Council of Chief State School Officers. (2013, April). Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) model core teaching standards and learning progressions for teachers. Washington, DC: Author. Eitzen, D. S., Zinn, M. B., and Smith, K. E. (2009). Social problems (11th ed.). New York: Pearson. Emery, K., and Ohanian, S. (2004). Why is corporate America bashing our public schools? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Fletcher, R. (1893). The poet—is he born, not made? The American Anthropologist, 6(2): 117–136. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com Hall, A. (2014, November/December). Beyond the noise. Reading Today, 32(3): 18–21. Harrington, M. (1962). The other America: Poverty in the United States. New York: Touchstone. Hawkins, D. I., and Mothersbaugh, D. L. (2013). Consumer behavior: Building marketing strategy (12th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Imig, D. G. (1999). Whither schools of education? A reaction: For all the wrong reasons. Journal of Teacher Education, 50(5): 369. International Literacy (Reading) Association. (Rev. 2010). Standards for reading professionals. Retrieved from www.literacyworldwide.org/get-resources/standards. Jackson, P. W. (1990). Life in classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. Johnson, B. (2014). Poverty, vocabulary acquisition, and the Common Core State Standards. The e-Journal of Literacy and Social Responsibility (ISSN 2305–963X), 7(1): 8–19. Johnson, D. D., and Johnson, B. (2006). High stakes: Poverty, testing, and failure in American schools (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Johnson, D. D., and Johnson, B. (2011). Words: The foundation of literacy. Boulder, CO: Westview/Perseus. Johnson, D. D., Johnson, B., Farenga, S. J., and Ness, D. (2005). Trivializing teacher education: The accreditation squeeze. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Johnson, D. D., Johnson, B., Farenga, S. J., and Ness, D. (2008). Stop high stakes testing: An appeal to America’s conscience. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Jowett, G. S., and O’Donnell, V. (2015). Propaganda & persuasion (6th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Kotler, P., and Armstrong, G. (1996). Principles of marketing (7th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Livius.org. (2015, July 29). P. Annius Florus. Retrieved from http://livius.org/articles/ person/annius-florus/ Lucas, S. E. (2001). The art of public speaking (7th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.

188  Bonnie Johnson National Association for Alternative Certification (NAAC). (2013, March). CAEP welcomes all education preparation providers. Presentation at the National Association for Alternative Certification, Los Angeles, CA. National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. The New York Times Company. (2014, May 1). The New York Times announces solid circulation gains. Retrieved from http://investors.nytco.com/press/press-releases. Packard, V. (1957). The hidden persuaders. New York: David McKay. Panati, C. (1984). Panati’s browser’s book of beginnings. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Powell, S. D. (2012). Your introduction to education: Explorations in teaching (2nd ed.). New York: Pearson. Richardson, M. (1998). Whose bright idea was that? Great firsts of world history. New York: Kodansha International. Schiffman, L. G., and Wisenblit, J. (2015). Consumer behavior (11th ed.). New York: Pearson. Skolnick, J. H., and Currie, E. (2000). Crisis in American institutions (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Solomon, M. R. (2015). Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being (11th ed.). New York: Pearson. Souto-Manning, M. (2014, September 11). The teaching profession provides little room for growth [Opinion]. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes. com. Wansink, B. (2006). Mindless eating. New York: Bantam.

10 Seduction of “East Asian” Schools Barbara S.S. Hong

It is problematic and, honestly, gullible and superficial, on the part of Westerners to posit that the American education system should emulate those in East Asian countries as the model of successful schools. Policy makers and researchers go further to propound that if we could replicate what these East Asian countries have instituted—namely Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, and China—then American students would likely zip right to the top of the chart with their East Asian counterparts. The troubling question is, why is the United States, a nation with the highest number of Nobel Prize winners (353 out of 800 laureates in the last 104 years),1 idolizing East Asian countries as academic “royalty”?

The “East Asian School” Myth Not long ago when I was at a major education conference where the keynote speaker—an internationally renowned educator, emerita faculty member from Stanford University, and former candidate for the United States Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration—declared, “If we could take Singapore’s model and place it right here in America, then our teachers would be so much happier and our students would be so successful.” I tried to listen to her words with an open mind, but as she continued, she sounded more and more as though she was “selling” Singapore’s schools to the audience than disseminating evidence-based research on building effective schools. Later, during a smaller chat session, this renowned keynote speaker continued with her adoration of Singapore’s educational system and its pristine methods of creating world-class scholars through prime training from primary school. About 15 minutes into the discussion, I could not hold my silence any more. I politely interjected, “Do you think the children in Singapore are happy?” Perplexed, she paused, turned to her left, and responded, “What has that got to do with education?” My eyes widened as I composed myself and sat up straight, thinking maybe I have misunderstood what she was trying to say.

190  Barbara S.S. Hong “What’s so wonderful about Singapore’s schools,” she resumed, “is that there is no such thing as special education. All kids are integrated into the public schools and classrooms are so well managed . . . parents are extremely supportive . . . students are free to study whatever they want at the university, there are no restrictions, lots of choices on what you want to do. . . .” I was astounded by her misinformed understanding of the Singapore’s educational system. Even more egregious is the fact that she has undoubtedly used this inaccurate information as a means to convince others that all is well in East Asian schools—as if to make the public believe that education in East Asian countries is a monolithic enterprise. This distorted view promoted by the Stanford professor emerita is gross misconception of reality, a record that really needs to be set straight, especially by well-known keynote speakers.

The Myth Exposed Having grown up in Singapore and later coming to the United States in my early twenties, I have gone through the entire school system from kindergarten through high school. Now, having been educated in the U.S. as a professor of education and mother of four, I vowed I’d never put any of my children through the Singapore school system. To me, it is the antithesis of what education should be about, which is to develop self-concept, encourage creativity, cultivate lifelong learning, and transform lives—a philosophy that my colleague and friend, Dale Johnson, espoused dearly. In theory, these East Asian countries appear to be the gold standard on how schools should operate. Judging from the quality of teacher training, rigor of curriculum standards, centralization of policy administration, and standardization of accountability system, it is not surprising that Western educators crave to mimic such an academic regime. However, beneath that surface is a harsh reality to which many outsiders may find it hard to relate. The relentless focus of these East Asian countries on high level rigidity, conformity, standardization, and ranking has brought many unintended consequences. The greatest of all is the generating of an “all-work, no-play” culture for many of these children, starting from birth. Every competition has a prize and many of these East Asian countries are paying the top price for this honor. As they consistently earn their trophies as top-performing countries in international competitions like the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), they are also paying top dollar to see academic success continue through to the forthcoming generation. Meanwhile, we should be asking ourselves: Are test scores really the prime measure of one’s greatness? The World Health Organization placed many of these East Asian countries as having the highest rate of suicide at 15.0 per 100,000 people compared to U.S at 10.1.2 In 2005, South Korea held the highest suicide rate worldwide,

Seduction of “East Asian” Schools  191 at 24.7 suicides a year per 100,000 people.3 In Hong Kong, one in every three teens has suicidal thoughts by the time they finish fourth grade.4 These statistics cannot be dismissed. Even as happiness plummets among these students, Western educators still gaze upon these East Asian schools with adulation. The truth of the matter is that East Asian children are pushed to the edge and have nowhere to escape. Not everyone can survive such a regime; for every prodigy produced there is a failing student seeking to end his or her own life. Many see no way out, and each suicide applies more pressure to parents, teachers, government, and society to stop pushing them beyond exasperation. Learning has become a burden, a tragedy, a destruction of the mind and spirit. In this system, PISA and TIMSS scores have become the ultimate goal of education. While East Asian students may have achieved success effectively, it has not always been done humanely. The pressure to be number one is instilled from birth. Like the Hunger Games, schooling is a scheme to fight to the death at any cost. There is no end to this dystopian society because, unless a dramatic paradigm shift occurs, the game must be played. In Singapore, there is even a local vernacular to describe such lunacy, called, kiasu or being afraid to lose. Kiasuism entails someone resorting to unscrupulous means to gain the upper hand, and is perceived as rude, egomaniacal and self-serving. The entire country is addicted to the entertainment of kiasuism when it comes to reckless competition in academic achievement. Therein lies the generational journey into perdition. A recent headline read, “S’pore Straight ‘A’ Student Commits Suicide After Getting ‘B’ in O-Level.”5 A 16-year-old girl received two Bs (English and Math) on the General Certificate of Education (GCE) Ordinary-Level exam and “Distinction,” or A+, in all the other subjects. (Passing the GCE in Singapore is comparable to passing a grade in high school in the U.S., only more stressful and rigorous.) Months after her death, the victim’s mother, stricken with grief and guilt for pressurizing her only child to get into medical school, plummeted to her own death. This double tragedy has left the father mentally unstable and the grandmother devastated. How could a system that is so exemplary in appearance become so blighted on the inside? Somewhere on the road to educational excellence, things have gone astray. The final note the victim left her parents reads, “Mum, I am sorry for being a disappointment. I should have done better. Dad, I am sorry that you will not have the chance to walk me down the aisle to give me away.” Who has failed in this case? Certainly not the child, but the school system. According to the Singapore Institute of Mental Health (IMH), children as young as six are being treated for aggression, suicide, and hallucination.6 From 2005 to 2010, the number of school-aged children in Singapore who have been placed in wards or hospitalized jumped by 35 percent and the number of youths seeking psychiatric help increased by 16 percent. Half were elementary-aged children.7 Another 2007 study revealed that 12.5 percent of Singaporean children exhibited emotional and behavioral

192  Barbara S.S. Hong problems including symptomatic withdrawal, criminal delinquency, oppositional defiance, and clinical depression.8 The surreal part is that researchers believe this is an underestimate of the prevalence of childhood mental health issues in Singapore given that reporting is not encouraged, permitted, or acknowledged.9 Another disturbing issue is the large amount of time, often 14 hours a day, that students spend in a highly competitive environment cramming for exams. This stressful condition has resulted in immensely high rates of bullying and self-abuse in East Asian schools.10 In 2002, TIME magazine reported a story about a 14-year-old Japanese boy named Kobe.11 One afternoon, after being suspended from school for fighting, he lured an 11-yearold boy to a quiet area and strangled him. Then he sawed off his head, placed it in a plastic bag, and dropped it at the gate of the school. In it was a message that read, “[This is] revenge against the compulsory education system and the society that created it.” Two years after the Kobe incident, another Japanese teenager stabbed and killed a 7-year-old boy on a school playground. One year later, a 17-year-old boy began bashing strangers with a baseball bat on one of Japan’s busiest streets. Over in South Korea, a 16-year-old boy walked into his social studies class and stabbed a boy to death who had been bullying him. If this is not evidence of the educational plights of East Asian schools, I don’t know what is. When Japan’s director of the Ministry of Education, Hiroshi Yoshimoto, was asked what could be done about this pandemic outbreak, he conceded, “Something has gone very wrong with our schools. We all know we have to reform—yesterday.”12 Not all deviant behaviors are a result of the school environment, but there is no denying the impact of such a pressure-cooker society on students’ stress levels. Using excessive anxiety and terror threats as a tool to cultivate innovation, resilience, grit, and tenacity is nonsensical. Yet schools across THAT continent still cling to fear, competition, and survival as their instruments of choice. The allure of ranking can grossly shield one from the reality of schooling in these East Asian countries. For example, in Singapore, from kindergarten through the university level, each student is ranked as students compete tirelessly for positioning. For both the student and the school, such an obsession is, at once, naïve and dangerous. Ranking is a façade providing merely an illusion of quality and excellence. But for these schools, the focus is far from a cultivation of authentic growth, development, and learning.

An Inconvenient Truth about School Children in East Asian Countries Let’s turn back to the international speaker and Stanford University Emerita from the beginning of this chapter, who professed, “Teachers are much nicer now. The government is much more sensitive now and things have changed since you went to school there.”

Seduction of “East Asian” Schools  193 I left Singapore some twenty years ago but my family is still there. Every couple of years, I am invited to return and speak on various educational issues, particularly concerning students who are struggling or who have a disability. On one of my trips there, my six-year-old niece came home with the results on a weekly test and she had scored 98 percent, just one incorrect subject-verb agreement. Her mother (my sister) was so furious because it was not a perfect score and the mistake was too careless. Immediately, she swept up the bamboo stick from the corner and began caning her. “Mom, stop, please stop,” her daughter begged with unstoppable tears, “I promise I won’t make that mistake again. I will study harder; I won’t be careless next time. Stop mom, please stop.” My heart was broken. I had to intervene. “Stop it. It’s just a test! Hitting doesn’t do anything. It was just a mistake.” My sister stopped and sat on the white armchair, still holding tight to the bamboo cane, shivering unsteadily. “If you don’t hit her, she will never learn,” she yelled in her Singlish (Singapore English), “I’ve reminded her so many times not to be careless. She’s so stupid and lazy. You see, the more I beat her, the more she’ll remember.” This so-called pedagogical caning has been the panacea for educational ailments in many East Asian countries. It is a time-honored belief that the harder a child is caned, the harder he or she will study and not be lazy. Lazy? What does lazy have to do with making a grammatical error? The last thing these children should be seen as is lazy. For the first time, I realized not much had changed in the past two decades. If anything, the attitudes, expectations, and shaming have reached well beyond their boiling point. When researchers asked American children what is their greatest fear, they said, “losing a friend” or “the death of their parents.” But when the same question was posted to Singaporean children, their response was, “getting a poor grade.”13 It is hard not to dismiss the fact that one generation has passed on their negative school experiences to the next while demanding even greater competition, attrition, and perfection. If only the Western world could witness the hidden costs paid by these children and families, we would stop deifying East these Asian schools and wake up to reality. Punishments have been modified but still remain a fabric within society. Caning may have been eradicated in schools, but not in homes. Similarly, teachers may be “nicer,” but parents continue to push their kids to

194  Barbara S.S. Hong transcend beyond delusions of excellence. Schooling in many of these East Asian countries is collectively a punitive undertaking associated with physical, mental, and emotional sting rather than a self-rewarding endeavor of enlightened discovery, passionate aspiration, and self-actualization. Neither happiness nor lifelong learning is part of the equation. It is hard to dissociate oneself from these fast-paced, cosmopolitan societies as those found in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, or South Korea. The intoxicating pace of life within these countries adds to one’s societal pressure: to excel at every single undertaking. This pressure never holds more true than within the realm of education. The more serious question we should be asking is: Why, in this modern era, countries heralded as some of the most advanced and richest per capita in the world, have to resort to such antiquated and pathological methods of educating children? In 2012, the Gallup Poll examined 150 countries over a three-year period and asked residents to make a list of their happy and unhappy moments during the day. Results revealed that Singaporeans are among the most emotionless people in the world.14 This finding is not a surprise. Whether it is playing the piano, taking ballet lessons, swimming, or art classes, the mentality of Singaporeans is about winning, competing, and stepping over others so as to reach the top; anything less would be a waste of time and effort. According to John Clifton, the director of the Gallup Government Group, “The implications for an emotionless society are significant. . . . This culture has won historically, but it will not move to the next level until its leadership takes wellbeing seriously.”15 He continued, “Singaporeans are the least likely in the world to report feeling any emotions at all.”16 Could it be a cultural trait? Could it be human nature? Could it be mere insanity? Regardless of the reason, is this the prototype society Americans aspire to be? When Nel Noddings17 announced that she was writing a book about happiness and education, her fans were bewildered, exclaiming, “But they don’t go together!” Noddings is concerned that there is a blatant disconnect in schools among happiness, misery, boredom, and learning. She says, “Happiness and education are, properly, intimately related: Happiness should be an aim of education, and a good education should contribute significantly to personal and collective happiness.” Since 2012, the United Nation has encouraged countries to use the happiness index as a guide in public policies. This index employs a more holistic standard for measuring a country’s wellbeing than the GDP or Gross Domestic Product indicator. The happiness index takes into account a nation’s social, economic, and environmental factors and its ability to sustain harmonious improvement for its people and the future. In particular, the report highlights the neuroscience of happiness with regards to one’s level of positive emotions, recovery from negative emotions, mindfulness, empathy, altruism, and pro-social behavior. These life factors are often neglected and

Seduction of “East Asian” Schools  195 undermined at the cost of attaining the outward rewards of monetary and social status, or in the case of East Asian schooling, academic ranking. Another interesting factor included in the 2015 World Happiness Report18 has to do with the happiness of children. The report highlighted longitudinal research arguing that children’s happiness matters just as much, if not more, than adults’ happiness because they are the ones heading the future generation. Of the variables identified (academic, behavioral, emotional), academic achievement was found to be the worst predictor of satisfaction, while mental health was found to be the key determinant of life satisfaction by the World Health Report.19 More than half of the 200 million children worldwide suffer from mental health ailments and show chronic signs of depression by the time they are 15. Mental health problems have become a global crisis and the pressure to excel and exceed academically year after year is undoubtedly a chief contributing influence.

Redirecting Our Focus to Creativity, Freedom, Opportunity and Equality Let us again return to the scene of the international speaker and Stanford University Emerita, who said, “Do you know what’s the best part about Singapore’s education system? There is no such thing as special education.” I took a deep breath and lamented, “When was the last time you visited a school for children with special needs?” “But there’s no special needs children so how can there be any special needs schools?” defended the speaker. “Of course there are children with special needs,” I counter-argued, “Singaporeans or Americans—every country has children with special needs. No country is immune to disabilities.” The international speaker and Stanford University emerita then huffed arrogantly, “Well, I’ve never seen any special needs kids while I was there, and if there are any, then they must take very good care of them because even kids with special needs excel in school.” I was speechless. The seduction of East Asian schools could blind even the most well-intentioned educators in the world. The truth is, in East Asian countries if you have any special needs or are merely average in class, then you are doomed to be stigmatized your whole life and be bullied both by teachers and classmates, and often by your own over-zealous parents the rooted belief is that if you are not excelling academically, it is because you are not pushing yourself hard enough. There is no such thing as learning disabilities, attention deficit, or emotional disturbances. The student is either “lazy” or “stupid.” There can be no other rationale for his or her failure. If the student is “lazy,” then he or she needs to be more disciplined,

196  Barbara S.S. Hong punished, and humiliated in order to revive that academic drive. If the student is “stupid,” then he or she should not be in school at all. In short, students who cannot meet the high demands of the public education system are either placed in private facilities that are not under the direct jurisdiction of the government or they drop out of school.20 There are simply no special education interventions within the public schools and general education teachers are not trained to make adaptations to help students who are struggling. There is only one goal every teacher is trained to achieve in these public schools, that is, to score high on standardized tests, particularly those that are internationally ranked like the PISA or TIMSS. Likewise, there is only one reason for learning: to get accepted into the top local universities (in Singapore, there are only two). To accomplish this, many parents begin to prepare their toddlers from as young as 15 months old to master sight words and memorize times tables. I once had a friend in Singapore who bragged about how her two-year older can read all the first 100 sight words by the time he was two. My son who was three years old at that time was still playing with trucks and building sandcastles. In Hong Kong, an interviewing process was even put in place to sift out the bright and not-so-bright children in a nursery program.21 Parents camp outside the schools for two nights for a mere application form. Private companies are even offering training to prepare toddlers for such interviews. On top of all this fuss, parents are asked to put together a portfolio of their child’s life, listing their classes, playgroups, and the places they have visited in just 18 months of life—as if 18-month-old children can narrate all the places they have been and all the experiences they have encountered up to that point in time. So much for the realities of early-childhood amnesia with respect to toddlers from Hong Kong. In Singapore, the local newspaper recently reported the phenomenon of parents searching for tuition centers to start their three-year-old toddlers on first grade math and English. Parents are obsessed with this notion that they are not just raising another child anymore, they have to raise a prodigy in order to get ahead.22 What has become of such a society when learning is about competing for a spot in a nursery? The scarier notion is what will become of these toddlers in five, 10, or 50 years’ time. Is this really the kind of childhood deprivation Americans wish upon their future generation? Americans need to stop comparing their children to those of other nations, presuming that the grass is greener elsewhere. What Americans need to know is that underneath all the bravado exhibited in these East Asian schools are mostly scared terrified children and unnerving parents, traumatized by the very system they idolize and perpetuate. Falling prey to the seduction of East Asians’ approach of education will not only poison the very fabric of what learning ought to be about, but will betray the very core of the American our values, which are creativity, freedom, and opportunity, and equality. Comparatively speaking, America has its own problems to deal with, such as redundant, and oftentimes unethical, teacher preparation reforms, a high poverty rate with an ever-present and enormous economic

Seduction of “East Asian” Schools  197 disparity between the wealthy and the poor, a shrinking middle class, and a lack of parental involvement. Despite all these obstacles, Americans should seek not to mimic any other educational systems, but instead look for ways to surpass them and redefine new trajectories for bold changes.

Notes   1  “Top 30 Countries with Nobel Prize Winners.” World Atlas. October 30, 2015. Accessed May 09, 2016. www.worldatlas.com/articles/top-30-countries-withnobel-prize-winners.html   * East Asian countries here particularly refers to Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, China, Taiwan, and Japan.   2 “Suicide Data.” WHO. January 1, 2014. Accessed January 25, 2016. www.who. int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/.  3 June, D. “World Suicide Rates by Country.” Washington Post. January 1, 2005. Accessed January 25, 2016. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/­ suiciderate.html.   4  Beech, H. “School Daze.” April 15, 2002. Accessed May 9, 2016. www.mailarchive.com/[email protected]/msg03426.html.   5 Farhan. “S’pore Straight “A” Student Commits Suicide After Getting “B” in O Levels.” All Singapore Stuff. July 27, 2015. Accessed May 10, 2016. www.allsingaporestuff.com/article/spore-straight-student-commits-suicide-after-getting-b-o-levels.   6 Tan, C., and Huifen Huang. “Under 12 and Stressed Out.” November 7, 2010. Accessed May 10, 2016. www.healthxchange.com.sg/News/Pages/under-12and-stressed-out.aspx.  7 “Why Do We Do This to Our Children?” Welcome to the Singapore Democrats. May 6, 2014. Accessed May 10, 2016. http://yoursdp.org/news/ why_do_we_do_this_to_our_children/2014–05–06–5810.   8 See footnote 6.   9 “Latest Study Sheds Light on the State of Mental Health in Singapore.” Institute of Mental Health. October 10, 2013. www.imh.com.sg/uploadedFiles/Newsroom/ News_Releases/SMHS news release.pdf. 10 Smith, C. “Bullying in South Korea.” Asia Pundits. February 12, 2013. Accessed March 15, 2015. www.asiapundits.com/bullying-in-south-korea/. 11 See footnote 4. 12 Beech, Hannah, “School Daze: Cramming. Bullies. Rote Lessons. East Asia’s Schools Are Failing Their Students. Big Changes Are Planned, But Will They Come Soon Enough?” Time International. 15 April 2002, Expanded Academic, online. 13 “Why Do We Do This to Our Children?” Welcome to the Singapore Democrats. May 6, 2014. Accessed May 10, 2016. http://yoursdp.org/news/ why_do_we_do_this_to_our_children/2014–05–06–5810. 14 Yuan, Elizabeth. “Wealthy Singapore Ranks as World’s Most Stoic Nation.” CNN. November 23, 2012. Accessed May 11, 2016. www.cnn.com/2012/11/23/ world/asia/singapore-emotions-gallup/. 15 Clifton, Jon. “What Singapore’s Leaders May Not Know.” Gallup.com. November 21, 2012. Accessed May 12, 2016. www.gallup.com/businessjournal/ 158762/singapore-leaders-may-not-know.aspx 16 Clifton, Jon. “Singapore Ranks as Least Emotional Country in the World.” Gallup.com. November 21, 2012. Accessed May 12, 2016. www.gallup.com/ poll/158882/singapore-ranks-least-emotional-country-world.aspx.

198  Barbara S.S. Hong 17 Noddings, Nel. Happiness and Education. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 18 Helliwell, John, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs. “World Happiness Report 2015.” 2015. Accessed May 11, 2016. http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/ uploads/sites/2/2015/04/WHR15.pdf. 19 See footnote 17. 20 Hong, Barbara. “Why Schools in America Should not Be Like Schools in Singapore.” SOURCEAASA Journal of Scholarship & Practice, 4th ser., 10, no. 4 (January 2014): 43–48. EBSCO. 21 Cheung, Helier. “Toddlers Prepare for Their First Big Interview.” BBC News. April 23, 2015. Accessed May 14, 2016. www.bbc.com/news/magazine32040752. 22 Varma, Anita. “More Primary and Secondary School Students Are Getting Private Tuition Years in Advance of Their Grade in School.” The Straits Times. May 15, 2016. Accessed May 16, 2016. www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/moreprimary-and-secondary-school-students-are-getting-private-tuition-years-inadvance-of.

11 Conditions of Success for Teenage Mothers1 Revisiting School Achievement on the Margins Elizabeth Chase The question of achievement for various groups of students is one that has dominated the educational landscape for decades. In some ways, it feels that we are no further along in our quest for equitable schooling than we were before the Civil Rights era, haunted—as we still are—by the country’s failure to educate all of its students in equitable ways. Dale and Bonnie Johnson painted a searing portrait of this inequity at Redbud Elementary School in High Stakes, their full-length account of a year spent in classrooms where accountability systems ruled from on high, manipulating the lives of teachers and students in painful ways. This chapter, though written on a different focus population, is a tribute to Dr. Dale D. Johnson and his passionate commitment to speaking out against standardization, high-stakes exams, and the associated regulations that seem intended to drive teachers and students to frustration and fury. In this chapter, I examine issues of achievement and regulation for teenage mothers in high school. I seek to paint a portrait—through the narrative of one young mother—of the stakes that surround teenage mothers in high school and create the metanarrative about their achievement. In particular, I draw attention to the myriad challenges that young mothers face as they work for degrees and independence. Further, this chapter illustrates how one young mother crafted spaces of achievement for herself amid a sea of marginalization. Considerable literature has demonstrated how teenage mothers have, in the main, been presented as embodiments of failure and defeat (Kelly, 2000; Luttrell, 2003; Nathanson, 1991; Pillow, 2004; Solinger, 2000; Vinovskis, 1988). This chapter attempts a more balanced— and positive—conceptualization of achievement for teenage mothers. In so doing, I offer implications for how we understand success for young mothers in particular, and perhaps, on a broader scale, this chapter opens possibilities for thinking differently about achievement for the other groups of students who are similarly labeled “at risk.”

Act I: Within the School Walls When I first met Bianca, a mother of three who identified as Latina, I was struck by how upbeat she was. Never using our time together to unload

200  Elizabeth Chase about the stresses and demands of her daily life, Bianca spent most of our conversations sharing ways she had demonstrated strength in the face of adversity. Bianca and I were partners, as participant and researcher, in a study about the schooling experiences of young mothers. Over the course of a year, we met frequently, first for in-depth life history interviews, then for the shared writing of a narrative portrait that we created together to present her school and life stories (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Hoffmann Davis, 1997). Bianca had graduated from high school as a teenage mother and was willing to share her experiences with me as I worked on a dissertation about the counter narratives of success and failure from the perspective of young mothers. I loved talking with Bianca because she was funny and wise, honest and reflective. And though she was decidedly upbeat, she was also frank about the challenges that she had faced over the years. Bianca’s school story involved ups and downs, departures and re-entries, achievements and stresses. Ultimately, it was marked by her graduation from high school—an accomplishment of which Bianca remains extremely proud—and an unwavering commitment to her daughters throughout the entire experience. In the section that follows, I share an excerpt from Bianca’s co-written narrative that details some of her experiences while she was in school. Following the excerpt, I provide an analysis of the unique aspects of Bianca’s story that challenge the metanarrative on achievement for young mothers. Before Bianca became pregnant, she had high hopes for her time in high school. Already a strong student and a good athlete, she entered high school with the goal of joining the volleyball team and attending college after graduation. Her career goal was to be a social worker because she “love[s] to help and [is] a very giving person” (B1, 7/9/14). But all of those aspirations were reevaluated once she became pregnant. Reflecting on her goals after finding out about her pregnancy, Bianca said, “All I wanted was my diploma. I didn’t think about college or anything else” (B1, 7/9/14). She shared that when she found out she was pregnant, one of her earliest and primary concerns was that she not be labeled a teenage mom who could not finish high school. She said: I didn’t want to be like everyone else. I didn’t want to be labeled a teenage mom who couldn’t make it because she had a kid and wasn’t thinking and was stupid. I didn’t want Natalie to label me as that either. I wanted to be a strong example for her. (B3, 9/11/14) Having missed a year of school after giving birth in her sophomore year of high school, Bianca was unsure about her next steps, but she and her mother found out that her original high school also offered childcare and parent support services through a center on campus. Bianca, with

Conditions of Success for Teenage Mothers  201 her mother’s support, re-enrolled in school the following year. Of her reasons for re-enrolling, she recalled: My mom kept saying that she didn’t want me to be a statistic. She didn’t want me to be like everyone else, and I didn’t want that for me either. Even though I messed up, and I was young and got pregnant, I didn’t want to be like everyone else. I wanted to finish high school and just do my best. (B1, 7/9/14) When Bianca re-enrolled in high school, she was an entire year behind her original class. To make up the time she lost, Bianca said, “I did anything I could to finish in advance and try to get my credits back as fast as possible” (B2, 8/1/14). She went to night school and summer school in order to accrue missed credits and shared that the added pressure made her want “to give up a million times” but she said: I didn’t give up! I told myself, you have to do this for your child, for a better future for yourself, you have to push yourself through the whole thing. And at the end, that feeling I got when I got the diploma and showed it to my mom and when they showed it to everyone in my family, was amazing. (B1, 7/9/14) In order to achieve her goal of graduation, Bianca also had to figure out how to manage her new life financially. She could not focus on high school graduation alone because she needed income in order to support a new baby. Her mother was employed, and Bianca lived in her house with the baby, but she needed additional income to buy food and clothing for Natalie. Bianca received a small amount of monthly childcare support from Natalie’s father but this sum only covered a few packages of diapers. To afford the expenses, Bianca took on part-time jobs in high school so that she would have a small income, working first in the mailroom of a large investment banking firm, then as a hostess at a restaurant, and then at a large retail chain. This income was particularly important because Bianca never received government support beyond WIC, the program that offers supplemental food supplies to new mothers and children under 5 years old. Bianca used her income to buy diapers “because [she] didn’t get food stamps and wasn’t on welfare” (B1, 7/9/14). Given that WIC was the only program from which Bianca received assistance, supplemental income was a necessity. As a result, Bianca had to work. And while she might have desired more free time during high school, she had to embrace being an employee while she was a high school student.

202  Elizabeth Chase While financial concerns were managed by Bianca’s jobs and her mother’s support, there were other aspects of high school that were difficult for Bianca as a new mother, and they mainly had to do with socialization. Bianca recalled: It was tough for me when all my friends were outside of school and they were just looking like they were having the best time of their lives, and I had to be in school. I had to be in school before them, so I didn’t get to socialize with anybody. And I didn’t get a lunch break, so I couldn’t hang out with anyone either. (B1, 7/9/14) Bianca felt an internal pressure to stay connected to her peer group throughout high school. It was difficult to maintain her friendships because Natalie’s father broke off his relationship with Bianca while she was pregnant. The loss of the relationship with Natalie’s father, the lack of support she received from him, and the pain of having to experience this betrayal so publicly in high school were upsetting for her. She grew wary of certain friends, concerned that they knew about his infidelity before she did and concerned that she could not trust people in the same way she had before. Bianca’s school story—while told here only in part—reveals three trends that are worth further consideration. First, it is difficult to maintain former school aspirations after having a child. While Bianca did graduate from high school, she shared that after having her daughter she concentrated her efforts on graduating from high school and her prior ambitions of becoming a social worker diminished. Roughly one in three young women becoming pregnant before reaching the age of 20, and of those women, only half remain in high school and fewer than 2 percent earn a college degree by the age of 30 (Hamilton and Ventura, 2012; Karp, 1997). These statistics illustrate a complicated situation for schools. Given the low rate of graduation, programs that support teenage mothers’ efforts to graduate would seem wise. And yet, focusing on high school graduation as the primary need for young mothers inscribes it as a problem that requires administrative and vocational intervention to achieve a basic goal rather than first-rate academic support to achieve an ambitious goal (Lesko, 1995; Pillow, 2006). Further, it constrains the discussion of personal and academic success to the realm of high school, ignoring the years afterwards in which young mothers must negotiate employment, housing, higher education, and personal/family relationships. Second, Bianca’s narrative points to a desire to make up for lost time. Having missed a year of school after the birth of her daughter, Bianca felt pressured to regain that time. She did so by attending night school and summer school so that she could graduate nearer to her original graduation

Conditions of Success for Teenage Mothers  203 date. In this way, Bianca manipulated lost time and also reified a portion of the achievement matrix that outlines that high school be completed in four years. It is the social construction of time that marked Bianca as nonnormative and caused her to feel that she lost time. Bianca mitigated this feeling of lost time by manipulating it on her own and bending time to meet her new demands. In a way, Bianca bent time because of her child: with her eyes more solidly trained on her future and with a need to think beyond herself, she worked around the constraints of time that were imposed on her to craft new realities and new measures of success that were not bound by conventional school chronologies. Third, as is evident in Bianca’s narrative, school is not just school. Young mothers face a host of financial issues, social issues, employment concerns and family concerns, to name just a few (Burdell, 1998; Kelly, 2000). Though this narrative only sheds light on one young woman’s story, it perhaps opens lines of inquiry for the multitude of issues that face groups of students who have been labeled as “at risk.” In particular, and most pressing in Bianca’s narrative, is the fact that achievement in school is not restricted to graduation or a diploma when a student is managing a variety of concerns. With so many other issues at play, it becomes clear that finances, employment, support, socialization and the like are important aspects of school-going and cannot be ignored in the march towards graduation.

Act II: Beyond the School Walls Challenges within the school walls abound for students who are marginalized in some way. Students may experience marginalization because they do not conform to static notions of gender or sexuality, because they are repeating a grade, because their families struggle to maintain consistent housing, because their meals are not guaranteed, because their home language is not welcomed—never mind spoken—at school, because they face employment and financial responsibilities in addition to school, and the list goes on. Bianca experienced marginalization when she became a mother early into her high school career, when she departed from and then returned to school, and when her financial responsibilities required her to generate an income while still a student. While her school story involved a number of challenges within the school walls, she was also tasked with a significant number of adult responsibilities beyond the school walls. This excerpt illustrates how these responsibilities and challenges coalesced into a housing dilemma, illustrating the multiple demands that she faced as she navigated high school and motherhood together. Bianca’s narrative sheds light on the ways that a student could experience multiple housing interruptions and problems within the span of a few years. All through high school, Bianca lived with her first child in her mother’s house. After high school, she wanted to move into an

204  Elizabeth Chase apartment of her own but was not able to do that until she saved enough money. But saving was challenging because her employment situation was difficult. Out of high school, she worked as a cashier at a retail drugstore and as a warehouse worker for a large clothing company. However, she was caught in the frustrating position of being overqualified for service industry positions and underqualified for entry-level white collar positions. She explained, “No one would hire me. I was overqualified to work in a fast-food restaurant, but when I went to work in an office, I didn’t have a [college] degree” (B2, 8/1/14). Being alternately too qualified and not qualified enough left Bianca without viable job options. As a result of unemployment, Bianca was forced to enter the shelter system when she was unable to find work and could not pay her rent on the income she received from her unemployment benefits. She moved into a shelter in order to take advantage of a program that “helps you pay the rent and helps you find a job” (B2, 8/1/14). Her goal was to “get to the shelter and get into the program” (B2, 8/1/14) as a springboard to independent living but the shelter system presented its own significant challenges. The two biggest concerns were cleanliness and safety, but they were outweighed by the main advantage of the shelter system: the job location program. After five months in the shelter, Bianca had secured a job working for a large retail store. With the income from the job and a public assistance program that helped with rental payments, Bianca moved out of the shelter and into her own apartment. While exciting and new, it was also challenging as she was working very hard to afford “a $1200 a month rent on a minimum wage salary” (B2, 8/1/14). But six months after she moved out of the shelter, Bianca began receiving letters stating that the rental assistance benefit would no longer be continued. At that point, Bianca asked her social worker for assistance. As she recalled: I said I’m working and I’m going to college, can you guys help me without me having this program. They said that in order to help me, I would need to quit my job. I was like, no way, I’m not going back into the system. Because all of the appointments and the programs . . . everybody there were crackheads, bums . . . it was disgusting. (B2, 8/1/14) In short, Bianca was told that in order for her to obtain more financial support, she would have to re-enter the shelter system, and in order for her to re-enter the shelter system, she would have to quit her job. The gravity of the situation hit Bianca when she realized how limited her options were. She was steadfast in her determination not to re-enter the shelter system. She said, “I cried and told my mom, I’m not going

Conditions of Success for Teenage Mothers  205 into the system again. I did it already and look what I got . . . they’re still not helping me figure it out” (B2, 8/1/14). But she also knew that she had limited options: with a minimum wage salary and inconsistent supplementary assistance, Bianca did not have many choices for her independent housing. She was working long hours in a service industry position, but the salary was not enough to support independent housing. Bianca was frustrated and disappointed with a system that she felt was supposed to help her but had actually just pushed her into a lowlevel position that did not meet the financial demands of her life. Ultimately, she decided to move back in with her mother and save money in order to afford her own rent. However, the irony of her situation was cruel: the shelter system worked to impede her success by requiring her to quit her job and re-enter the system in order to receive the help that would have allowed her to maintain independence. While Bianca’s particular housing dilemma was unique, many students experience impasses of some kind. Her example demonstrates the windy road towards housing independence, and it also illustrates how a system that is designed to help struggling citizens can trap them in a no-win situation. Ultimately, her situation illustrates how difficult it is to talk about school success in isolation. School—and the support received or not received while there—is connected to so many other things, chief among them are finances, employment, and housing. This creates complexity in response to the question of what achievement really looks like for students facing multiple life responsibilities while still in high school. For Bianca, achievement was non-normative and looked very different: it consisted of an effort to find stable housing, paid employment, and consistent support for her daughter all while working towards her high school degree. Burdell (1995) argues that pregnancy alone is not the cause of school failure; rather, there are multiple antecedents at play in any young mother’s experience of high school. And Harris’ (2004) discussion of the sociocultural narrative of teenage pregnancy posits that the image of a poor, undereducated young woman making bad choices and carrying on incompetent family practices is perpetuated by one-dimensional conversations about teenage mothers. The full story of a young mother’s experience cannot be told, they argue, without full consideration of the conditions and structural disadvantages that restrict options and choices for teenage mothers. The conditions around housing, finances, and support structures that Bianca shared are those structural disadvantages. Her experiences in and out of school, the support or lack of support she dealt with, and the challenges of her housing and financial situations showed the complexity of the disadvantages that she experienced. They also provide a lens for understanding achievement differently. Achievement for Bianca did not translate to a seamless journey through high school with a degree at the end of four years. Rather, Bianca’s achievements, as she shared them, centered on managing a

206  Elizabeth Chase frustrating housing situation, moving beyond a no-win situation of underemployment, and finding alternative solutions when circumstances became very difficult.

Act III: Life after School Beyond school, there were numerous successes and challenges that impacted how Bianca experienced school itself. Mostly, the issues she discussed related to financial and employment demands, which stands to reason given the enormous set of challenges that young parents face in working to support themselves and their children. But there were also concerns that were distinct from financial matters; those were the ones that related to dreams and aspirations. Reading Bianca’s narrative, one wonders what kinds of academic supports are necessary to support young mothers in pursuing their dreams rather than simply pushing them along to graduation and exiting them from school. When Bianca re-enrolled in high school, she had missed her entire sophomore year and was one year behind the rest of her peers. Because it was important to her to make up that time, she chose to enroll in night school and summer school in order to acquire extra credits. Ultimately, she graduated from high school only one semester behind her class even though she took an entire year off from school when she had her daughter. Earning her diploma “was huge” for Bianca and felt like a “trophy” (B1, 7/9/14). The accomplishment was particularly meaningful because there were detractors who said that she would not make it through high school. She shared, “I saw myself as a really strong person. Someone who was going to do good and graduate and get that diploma and say, I made it, even with an infant” (B3, 9/11/14). When Bianca reflected back on her high school days she talked about the conflicting demands of being a mother and a student with resolve and determination. She recalled: I always said, this is what I chose. I wanted to have this daughter so this is the responsibility that I have to deal with. These are the decisions of my life. I just had to swallow it. (B2, 8/1/14) This determination in the face of shifting relationships, finances, and housing accommodations carried her through some difficult circumstances. On advice that she would share with young mothers in high school, she offered: I would let them know that times will get hard. You will cry, you will feel bad. You will go through a roller coaster of emotions, but do not

Conditions of Success for Teenage Mothers  207 give up. You can make it. You can do everything else and be just like other normal kids without a child. Just don’t give up. (B2, 8/1/14) Continuing on, Bianca talked about being focused on the future as a way to persevere: I just kept looking at the future like ok, when my daughter grows up she can say her mom didn’t give up. Her mom got her diploma and didn’t give up. She kept going to school and didn’t quit at 9th grade. I just kept pushing myself like that and I wanted my daughter to be proud of me. That’s what kept me going, the fact that I didn’t want my daughter to see me as a bad example. Like, my mom didn’t get her diploma so why should I? I didn’t want her to talk like that. (B2, 8/1/14) Bianca’s focus on the future was closely interwoven with the desire she had to “do right” (B2, 8/1/14) by both of her daughters. Her commitment to graduation and her hope that her situation would improve was not just a desire for herself but also a desire to improve the quality of life for her children. When reflecting on how she managed the difficulty of moving into the shelter and struggling to maintain consistent employment along with independent housing, Bianca recalled: Sometimes you just have to stay strong and positive . . . you’re going to hit rock bottom, and things are going to feel heavy, and you’re going to feel a lot of pressure. But at the end of the road you’re going to finish, and you’re going to finish happy, and it’s all worth it. (B1, 7/9/14) Even of her days living in the shelter, which she recalled as the hardest period of her life, Bianca said, “My life hit a lot of rocks, but I’m still positive. We’ve always been happy. Even in the shelter, we were always happy people” (B2, 8/1/14). Bianca dreams of opening her own day care center because it would allow her to work from her home and to help families by caring for their children, which is important to her. She was working towards that goal with an application for independent licensing by the state agencies that accredit daycare centers. It was, in her mind, a perfect goal because it would allow her to be self-employed, to support other parents looking for excellent daycare, and to be near her own children during the day. An undercurrent in Bianca’s narrative is the need for progress and achievement, but on her terms. This is expressed in her words to “do right” by her

208  Elizabeth Chase children, to persist beyond “rock bottom,” and to be an example for her children through her commitment and positive attitude. Her definition of achievement seems to be connected to a desire for financial independence, consistent housing, and well-paid employment. These goals are easiest to achieve with college degrees. Given the close connections between advanced educational attainment and financial independence, Bianca’s narrative calls to question the lack of first-rate academic support that she received. Oddly, the status quo for teenage mothers is to graduate them as quickly as possible and enter them into the “pink-collar ghetto of wages” (Lesko, 1995, p. 197). While public supports are needed and appreciated—such as the free, onsite daycare that Bianca used at her high school—her narrative calls into question the lack of financial support for first-rate academic supports for young mothers. So long as the achievement discourse rests on graduating from high school as the culminating feat, higher education opportunities become the exception and not the norm.

Concluding Thoughts In this chapter, I chose to revisit achievement through the lens of someone who experienced it very differently than it is normatively prescribed. Bianca’s situation is one that is often described and positioned as marginal: at best, teenage mothers should be invisible, at worst, they should be sidelined. Their achievement is often marked by their ability to graduate from high school, avoid a subsequent pregnancy, and maintain adequate employment (Burns and Torre, 2004; Fine, 1988). Balancing success for teenage mothers on the fulcrum of high school graduation is the easiest and the most confined way to define it. Achievement can then be addressed within the walls of a school and can be measured with a particular and visible outcome. However, while graduation was hugely important to Bianca, it was but one element of a broader set of needs, desires, rationales, and expectations that Bianca shared for her life and her daughter’s life. While high school graduation is a significant marker of achievement, Bianca’s narrative spoke to many other factors, among them welfare of her children, educational aspirations, future employment, economic stability, and housing stability. In this way, it becomes clear how narrow and limiting it is to constrain the discussion of achievement in any particular way. This chapter illustrates the wide variety of stresses and concerns that one young mother faced as she worked towards high school graduation. It also shows the numerous spaces of achievement that can—and should—be crafted for young mothers who are placed within a sea of marginalization. Most importantly, Bianca voiced alternate dimensions of achievement that should be considered in any discussion of young mothers in high school. “Doing right” by her children, maintaining positivity in response to difficult situations, and negotiating independent housing and meaningful employment were all important aspects of Bianca’s definition of achievement. These

Conditions of Success for Teenage Mothers  209 do not fit neatly in the category of school success as it is typically described for young mothers but it illustrates how wide-ranging the concerns and responsibilities are for any young parent. As a society, we would be wise to listen to young mothers’ own narratives to help us better understand what achievement could look like on a broad scale and how it might extend beyond the walls of the school. With the dismal average of 2 out of 100 young mothers attending college, and the connections between higher education and employment so important, one can look to Bianca’s narrative as an example of how to rethink public support with regard to first-rate academic options. Bianca’s desire to earn her diploma and attain financial and housing independence propelled her to finish high school amid challenging circumstances. And yet, her narrative illustrates the challenges she faced in being underqualified for professional employment and unable to subsist on low-paying positions. First-rate academic support should be a gold standard for young mothers, and all groups of students who are similarly labeled as “at risk” in some way. Without a wide array of academic options, students are correspondingly denied a wide array of employment and fiscal options. Expanding the territory of academic supports would be a step in lifting some of the limits have been imposed on young mothers for so long. Ultimately, achievement looked very different to Bianca than it has traditionally been drawn for young mothers. We could go farther in supporting young mothers—and in achieving Dale Johnson’s passionate call for equity, empathy, and support—if we continue to ask and answer the question of how to understand success differently.

Note   1. All names within this text are pseudonyms.

Bibliography Burdell, P. (1995). Teen mothers in high school: Tracking their curriculum. Review of Research in Education, 21: 163–208. Burdell, P. (1998). Young mothers as high school students: Moving toward a new century. Education and Urban Society, 30(2): 207–223. Burns, A., and Torre, M. E. (2004). Shifting desires: Discourses of accountability in abstinence-only education in the United States. In A. Harris (Ed.), All about the girl: Culture, power, and identity (pp. 127–137). New York: Routledge. Fine, M. (1988). Sexuality, schooling, and adolescent females: The missing discourse of desire. Harvard Educational Review, 58(1): 29–53. Hamilton, B. E., and Ventura, S. J. (2012). Birth rates for females aged 15–19 years, by race/ethnicity. United States: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6142a8. htm?s_cid=mm6142a8_e. Harris, A. (2004). Future girl: Young women in the 21st century. New York: Routledge.

210  Elizabeth Chase Karp, N. (1997). School-based and school-linked programs for pregnant and parenting teens and their children. Washington, DC. Kelly, D. M. (2000). Pregnant with meaning: Teen mothers and the politics of inclusive schooling. New York: Peter Lang. Lawrence-Lightfoot, S., and Hoffmann Davis, J. (1997). The art and science of portraiture. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Lesko, N. (1995). The “leaky needs” of school-aged mothers: An examination of U.S. programs and policies. Curriculum Inquiry, 25(2): 177–205. Luttrell, W. (2003). Pregnant bodies, fertile minds: Gender, race, and the schooling of pregnant teens. New York: Routledge. Nathanson, C. A. (1991). Dangerous passage: The social control of sexuality in women’s adolescence. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Pillow, W. S. (2004). Unfit subjects: Educational policy and the teen mother. New York: Routledge. Pillow, W. S. (2006). Teen pregnancy and education: Politics of knowledge, research, and practice. Educational Policy, 20(1): 59–84. Solinger, R. (2000). Wake up little Susie: Single pregnancy and race before Roe v. Wade. New York: Routledge. Vinovskis, M. A. (1988). An “epidemic” of adolescent pregnancy? Some historical and policy considerations. New York: Oxford University Press.

12 What’s Common in Core Curricula? Isabel Nuñez

A Narrative Prelude I began my teaching career on an “emergency credential” in Southern California in the mid-1990s. I had been rather disillusioned by law school, and I was substitute teaching in the district where I had gone to school, in southeast Los Angeles County. One Thursday afternoon in early October I received a call from the principal at a school where I substituted regularly. She explained that there had been an unexpected influx of English-speaking first graders and that a new class was needed. She asked if I could start with a group of students on Monday. With the fearlessness only possible for a person in their 20s, I agreed. A classroom that had been used for storage was cleaned out for me, and Monday morning I sat before 20 six-year-old children in a space with a rug, a teachers’ desk, student tables, and not much else. It was a tough first year. On my first observation form, a signed copy of which is still filed away in my office, my principal asks, “Did you notice Santos jumping over the table instead of walking around it? What would you have done if you had?” And, no, I had not noticed a child jumping over a table while my principal was in the room to observe me. I think I went home with a headache every day for a month. My challenges with classroom management (of only 20 students!), however, were not the most difficult part of that year. The worst thing was that I did not know what to teach. I did obtain some teaching materials in the weeks to come, and the room grew less bare. We had consumable math workbooks, basal readers, and science texts. For some subjects I had teachers’ guides, but we never did get the big, boxed curriculum sets with, say, leveled readers, homework masters, materials for enrichment, and materials for remediation. I went to garage sales and thrift stores regularly, trying to stock our classroom library and shelves. I visited teacher supply stores and hounded my colleagues for copies of whatever they were using in class. Still, planning was a struggle. These were the days before standardization; they were the days before standards. At the time, for curricular guidance in California we had the State Frameworks. These are lovely documents which I also still have in my office: the California State Frameworks for Mathematics, the California

212  Isabel Nuñez State Frameworks for Social Studies, and so forth. Each describes a beautifully spiraling curriculum organized around broad questions or themes to be explored over a band of grade levels. For someone educated to be a teacher, someone who had taken, for instance, child development and had some idea of what a six-year-old was supposed to be able to do, the Frameworks would have been a rich source of inspiration for unit and lesson planning. For me, they were no help at all. Every day, I agonized over what my students and I would spend our time doing. If someone had offered me a standardized curriculum in that first year, I would have been so grateful that I probably would have offered them my car—no small thing for a SoCal native. I felt like Scarlett O’Hara at the end of that tough first year, vowing “As God as my witness, I’ll never have a year like that again!” When packing up my room, I kept out a copy of every text and every activity, made a list of every title in the library, and brought it all home with me along with a roll of butcher paper and a yardstick. On the concrete floor of my loft space, I spread out all my materials, unrolled a stretch of paper, and, with pencil, drew a large grid. Across the top row I listed all of the subject areas I wanted my students to explore, in as many categories as I could think to list them. Instead of a row for reading, I had separate rows for reading comprehension strategies, for phonemic awareness and phonics, for the stories in the basal reader, for the children’s literature I wanted to share, and other measures as well. In the far left column I divided the year into broad periods of time. Then, I planned my year. I tried to ensure the foundational knowledge in each subject came first, but also that, wherever possible, concepts that could enrich understandings in other disciplines were scheduled in a way to allow this. For example, when we explored the molecular nature of matter in science, we also studied pointillism (from the art appreciation column) and made pictures out of dots using thin-point, felt-tip markers (from the art production column). This way, students could experience how a big thing might be made up of teeny, tiny little things. When we studied fish, we read Leo Lionni’s Swimmy and played ‘School of Fish’ tag during the physical education period. (The “shark” was it.) In my second year teaching, and for the rest of the years. I taught first grade in Los Angeles, we no longer had separate periods for math time or social studies time; we had everything (or at least multiple things) all the time. I described my main curricular objective as a comprehensive integrated worldview. I wanted my six-year-old students to understand that all knowledge is interrelated. I hadn’t yet read any John Dewey, but when I later come across these words, I recognized what I wanted my young charges to understand, and how I wanted to organize my instruction: We do not have a series of stratified earths, one of which is mathematical, another physical, another historical, and so on. We should not be able to live very long in any one taken by itself. We live in a world where

What’s Common in Core Curricula?  213 all sides are bound together. All studies grow out of relations in the one great common world. When the child lives in varied but concrete and active relationship to this common world, his studies are naturally unified. (Dewey, 1980/1899, p. 54) The remainder of my time in that first-grade classroom was as joyful as the first year was painful. The classroom management issues worked themselves out, as they often do. What I loved most about teaching, though, was just what I had found so initially challenging: the creative intellectual work of curriculum design.

Democratic Conceptions of the Core Curriculum As a result, I came into my Ph.D. program in Curriculum Studies with the idea that my understanding of the topic was pretty sophisticated. I soon realized that my comprehensively integrated planning, which I thought made me such an innovative educator, was far from the most enlightened approach to instructional design, even 50 years prior. I was excited and chagrined to learn that Harold Alberty in 1953 had outlined a progression of program models for high school academics that placed mine closer to the middle. The six types of core curricula that Alberty defined range from traditionally distinct disciplines to a curriculum created in collaboration with a particular group of students (Alberty, 1953/1994). My interdisciplinary instructional program was merely a “type four.” I could have done much more for my first graders in Los Angeles! I kept reading about the “core curriculum.” In another text, Alberty and Alberty (1962) presented proposals for revamping the high-school curriculum, first describing the various approaches taken in designing general instructional programs for high school students. Unlike the earlier piece, however, here there are only five types of core described. The first, type-one core, is what I remember from high school: separate subjects taught by specially trained teachers for 45-minute sessions in different classrooms (pp. 204–206). Type-two core points out the relationships among two or more subjects. Though course schedules might remain as above, the teachers of, say, English and history could choose to focus on the same period and region. Or the math and science teachers could agree to point out where the practical applications of the concepts they are studying meet in the real world (pp. 207–208). My approach to teaching first grade is here called a type-three core curriculum, subject-area fusion. Type three is considered by the Albertys to be a significant improvement over the first two types, despite the fact that the themes they employ “are merely vehicles for teaching conventional subject matter” (p. 216). Type-four curricula move beyond traditionally prescribed content to address developmental needs. Subject area knowledge and skills

214  Isabel Nuñez are not abandoned, but they are not organizationally prioritized. “No preconceived bodies of subject matter are set up to be ‘covered’ ” (p. 217). Instead, disciplines are utilized in the service of solving the real-life problems common to the youth of our society. There is no mandatory list of academic topics to be covered, though there are guidelines regarding the developmental issues to be addressed (pp. 216–217). The final level of curriculum integration envisioned by the Albertys does away with preplanned structure altogether, in the type-five core. Here the teacher and students collaborate on the design of their program, from topics and themes to activities and assignments. While students undoubtedly gain knowledge, skills and competencies, the emphasis is on learning the democratic process (pp. 222–224). I continued to read on core, turning to Roland Faunce and Nelson Bossing’s (1958) Developing the Core Curriculum. They trace definitions of curriculum from the subjects taught through all school experiences and finally to “all of the experiences which the learner has, irrespective of their character or when or where these experiences take place” (p. 50). Core curriculum is described as experiential, based on real-world problems, and cooperatively planned, and it is distinguished from simple subject area fusion or block scheduling (pp. 59–60). Like the Albertys, Faunce and Bossing see the core curriculum as the educational approach that best reflects their philosophical commitment to democracy as a dynamic, living system (pp. 90–94). The authors argue that this model is the most responsive to individual differences in learners and greatly improves motivation and discipline (pp. 116–125). The most important role of the teacher in a core curriculum classroom is providing guidance and leading the group through the various stages of self-direction (pp. 220–223). A synoptic text, Fundamentals of Curriculum Development (Smith, Stanley, and Shores, 1957), provides a slightly different definition of the term core from that of Faunce and Bossing—which is itself much narrower than the Albertys. The term “core curriculum” is reserved by Smith, Stanley and Shores for the model that uses the cooperative and student-driven approach above with the addition of a focus on social purpose (pp. 314–319). Programs that are based on traditional content are denied the appellation “core” outright (pp. 337–343)—even my interdisciplinary first grade, while those organized around adolescent needs are considered more appropriately termed activity curricula (pp. 358–362). True core curricula are those that address social issues and problems in a critical way (pp. 362–381). In reflecting on the curriculum books from the 1950s, Schubert, Schubert, Thomas, and Carroll (2002) suggest the possibility “that the core represented an attempt to correct pervasive misinterpretations of Dewey in the practitioner literature” as having advocated methods that were “preoccupied with the caprice and whims of young people” (p. 118). The core curriculum is certainly philosophically consistent with the perspectives in the writings of John Dewey. As regards basic terms, the proponents of core do seem to reflect Dewey’s language. Faunce and Bossing’s (1958) definition

What’s Common in Core Curricula?  215 of curriculum as experience as opposed to content (p. 50) echoes Dewey’s (1997/1938) assertion that “education is a development within, by and for experience,” the main task of which is “to select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences” (p. 27). The Albertys (1962) interaction-based theory of learning (p. 101) recalls the following explanation from Dewey (1997/1938) on the individual and the environment in education: “The word ‘interaction’ . . . expresses the second chief principle [after continuity] for interpreting the experience in its educational function and force. It assigns equal rights to both factors in experience— objective and internal conditions” (p. 39). Another conclusion, regarding content, shared by Dewey and the midcentury writers on core is that there should be no firm requirements. Alberty and Alberty (1962) list this as a feature for type four and up (p. 216); Faunce and Bossing (1958) approach disciplines solely as resources (p. 250); and Smith, Stanley, and Shores (1957) make this a prerequisite of even the lesser activity curriculum. Dewey (1997/1938) expresses the principle succinctly: “There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract” (p. 46), so there can be no basis for pre-establishing instructional goals. Without traditional guidelines regarding content, there remains the question of just what the students will learn. Again, the core model and Dewey respond very similarly. Like Alberty and Alberty (1962), Dewey (1997/1938) rejects educational goals based on preparation for college or career. He presents the argument beautifully: The ideal of using the present simply to get ready for the future contradicts itself. It omits, and even shuts out, the very conditions by which a person can be prepared for the future. We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything. (p. 49) Faunce and Bossing (1958) and the Albertys (1962) sound very Deweyan when discussing how to go about determining what those present experiences should be. All of these thinkers advocate starting with the interests of the child. The Albertys highest level of core integration is student-directed, and this is a prerequisite for Faunce and Bossing’s core. Dewey (1997/1938) emphasizes beginning with what is familiar to a child, which is also where their interests are likely to be found: “Anything which can be called a study, whether arithmetic, history, geography or one of the natural sciences, must be derived from materials which at the outset fall within the scope of ordinary life experience” (p. 73). Finally, writing on the core curriculum and the educational thought of John Dewey share a vital concern with democracy. Alberty and Alberty

216  Isabel Nuñez (1962) hope to make the schools a shining example of democratic life (p. 51). Faunce and Bossing (1958) consider the core curriculum to be education’s best contribution to the vibrancy of our country’s political system (pp. 90–94). Smith, Stanley, and Shores (1957) list as the first requirement for a critical core curriculum “[t]he belief that the moral authority of the teacher ultimately rests upon the democratic tradition regarded as a growing and developing ideal” (p. 634). Dewey (1997/1938) similarly begins with “the belief that democratic social arrangements promote a better quality of human experience” and notes progressive education’s “kinship to democracy” (pp. 34–35).

Core Knowledge and Cultural Preservation The term “core” has shifted significantly from the central concern with democracy and student-directed learning of the midcentury writers. The notion of core curriculum as a preset body of required learning, organized by distinct subject areas, has been stubbornly pervasive. Even at the time that the Albertys (1962) were writing, they estimated that 87 percent of high schools used such curricula (p. 206), which they termed type-one core. Tellingly, the scholar who would eventually re-popularize the term, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (1985), initially did not want his work associated with the rigidity the word connoted to many in the education community. In an article somewhat defensively titled “ ‘Cultural Literacy’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Core Curriculum,’ ” Hirsch responds to a critic of his newly minted concept by denying that “it would lead to ‘a rigid, tradition-based book list’ that would be ‘too elitist, too exclusionary’ ” (p. 47)—what he refers to as core curriculum! Interestingly, the last line of the article gives rise to the suspicion that his critic was not so far off the mark in her concerns: If an otherwise equal choice is to be made between a text that literate people tend to know and a text they don’t, then cultural literacy might sometimes tilt teachers toward the familiar work. For the future literacy of our students, that would be all to the good. (p. 49) Two years later, Hirsch (1987) published Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. The book sparked a good deal of public discussion and debate, and with Alan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, also published in 1987, came to define one side in the “culture wars.” Bloom was the “bad cop” of the duo, bemoaning the intellectual decline brought about by cultural “relativism” in U.S. schools. Hirsch played “good cop,” proactively seeking to empower all children of future generations with the knowledge that would allow unfettered access to cultural allusions and full participation in public life. The other side, like Hirsch’s (1985) early critic, feared that their prescribed emphasis on shared background knowledge

What’s Common in Core Curricula?  217 would result in a curriculum “so traditionally Anglo-Saxon that we would lose the values of cultural diversity” (p. 47). Perhaps it was the galvanizing impact of the debate, called the “culture wars” rather than, say, the “culture controversy” for a reason, that shifted Hirsch’s view of the “ ‘tradition-based book list’ ” (p. 47). Whatever the impetus, Hirsch came to embrace both the term “core” and its connotation of curricular prescription, founding the Core Knowledge Foundation and publishing various dictionaries of cultural literacy, as well as multiple editions of the individual pre-K-8 volumes of the Core Knowledge Sequence, which include, for example, What Your First Grader Needs to Know (Hirsch, 2014). Hirsch did not hesitate, in these books, to create lists of canonical texts, persons and other cultural phenomena. In short order, the term ‘core curriculum’ came to be associated with a philosophical approach to education described as “intellectual traditionalism” by William Schubert (1996) and far removed from the Deweyan ideas it had previously conveyed. By the 1990s, the core curriculum was likely to be understood as very nearly the opposite of what it meant to curriculum scholars in the middle of the twentieth century: prescriptive rather than collaborative, focused on the past rather than on the present, dedicated to cultural preservation rather than social reconstruction, and derived by experts who know better than students what those students need.

Common Core State Standards From there it was not a large conceptual leap to the most common way of understanding the term “core” in education today. In fact, many credit Hirsch for inspiring the underlying vision for the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Proponents are quick to point out that the Standards are not a curriculum, and critics are just as quick to reply that they will surely lead to one (Brooks and Dietz, 2013; Porter, McMaken, Hwang, and Yong, 2011). Regardless of whether we eventually end up with a Common Core Curriculum, the CCSS will have profound implications for the work of teachers and students in schools. While the standards may not yet be a curriculum, they can certainly limit the possibilities for what a curriculum might be. Published in 2010, the CCSS have been adopted by nearly all of the states (a number that varies as states adopt, partially adopt, and withdraw) and the District of Columbia. The standards are not a federal initiative (which would be Constitutionally suspect), but were developed by the states with the support of a variety of disparate groups, including teachers’ unions, civil rights organizations, think tanks, business groups, and private foundations (McDonnell and Weatherford, 2013), with the private foundations as a significant source of funding. The CCSS were promoted as a means of raising the level of educational expectation and achievement in U.S. schools, but the state standards they replaced varied too widely to make this a universal claim (Porter, McMaken, Hwang, and Yong, 2011). Supporters

218  Isabel Nuñez also promised that the CCSS would promote equity among various student demographics, but concerns have been raised that standard expectations without equalization of resources will further disadvantage the students with the highest needs (Kornhaber, Griffith, and Tyler, 2014). There is no debate about the benefits of the Common Core for the educational publishing industry. The profit-making that a nearly nationwide set of standards offers is undisputed. Mass market curricula have been driving instruction in most schools for many years, but until the CCSS, such programs were aligned to state-level standards. Large states like California and Texas had a disproportionate influence on what appeared in textbooks in the rest of the country, but there was a degree of diversity and local relevance built into the system. With students across the country being held accountable for mastery of the same set of standards, publishers of curriculum resources and assessments can achieve unprecedented economies of scale (Stedman, 2014). My biggest concern with regard to the Common Core State Standards is that they take the creative intellectual work of curriculum design out of the vocation of teachers. This is bad for teachers, for their joy and fulfillment in the work. But worse, it is bad for students, who know the difference between a teacher who is sharing his or her loving, passionate relationship with a subject area and someone who is delivering someone else’s curriculum. College students will confront an instructor who they suspect did not write the syllabus for a course, but the younger the students are, the more intuitive they are. They feel the lack of coherence on a deeper level, even if they can’t articulate what it is that is wrong. We are far indeed from the idea of core curriculum described by the curriculum scholars of the 50s and 60s. Examining each of the components of the midcentury core—experiential pedagogy, flexibility of content, student directedness, democratic process—we find that the Common Core State Standards work exactly counter to these aims. The “rigor” of the CCSS leaves little time for real-world interaction with subject matter; content is pre-determined on a national level; students have no more say in what they are learning than the teachers do; and the whole process is imposed and monitored from on high. Even my interdisciplinary first grade program— not quite core—would be more challenging to construct under the strictures of the new national standards. As difficult as it is to design a curriculum—and if done well it is always difficult—it is a struggle that has value; it is in fact necessary. As a teacher, this is the only way to arrive at a curriculum that one can be—ideally one that students and teacher can be together. The stated aim of the Common Core State Standards is for students to graduate from high school “college and career ready.” John Dewey in Moral Principles in Education wrote of the impossibility of preparing students for the world of work, with technology and the marketplace changing so rapidly—in 1909! To constrain curriculum to the co-opted idea of core—static, moribund—is not only

What’s Common in Core Curricula?  219 dehumanizing and disempowering to teachers and students, it doesn’t even serve our stated—and highly suspect—aims in education.

Postscript: In Honor of Dale D. Johnson I never had the pleasure of meeting Professor Johnson, much less discussing the (d)evolution of the term “core” over the recent history of the curriculum field. Still, I suspect that his preferred conceptualization of the core curriculum was the one drawn from the Deweyan ideal of an experientialist, learner-centered, and democratic education. He, along with the editors of this volume, fought valiantly to protect professors’ curricular control of the teacher education classroom from the threat of nationwide standards and external monitoring, publishing a scathing critique of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) while teaching at an NCATE-accredited institution (Johnson, Johnson, Farenga, and Ness, 2005). In other writings, Johnson directly defended the work of teachers in pre-K-12 schools (Johnson and Johnson, 2006). Following his lead and example, whether or not we can reclaim the term “core,” we will continue to fight for a meaningful curriculum and a democratic educational experience for our nation’s young people.

Bibliography Alberty, H. B. (1994). Designing programs to meet the common needs of youth. In G. Willis, W. H. Schubert, R. V. Bullough, Jr., C. Kridel and J. T. Holton (Eds.), The American curriculum: A documentary history (pp. 333–353). Westport, CT: Praeger. (Original work published in 1953). Alberty, H. B., and Alberty, E. J. (1962). Reorganizing the high school curriculum (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan. Brooks, J., and Dietz, M. E. (2013). The dangers and opportunities of the Common Core. Educational Leadership, 70(4): 64–67. Dewey, J. (1909). Moral principles in education. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Dewey, J. (1980). The school and society. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. (Original work published in 1899). Dewey, J. (1997). Experience and education. New York: Touchstone. (Original work published in 1938). Faunce, R. C., and Bossing, N. L. (1958). Developing the core curriculum (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (1985). “Cultural literacy” doesn’t mean “core curriculum.” English Journal, 74(6): 47–49. Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin. Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (Ed.). (2014). What your first grader needs to know: Fundamentals of a good first grade education (rev. and updated). New York: Random House. Johnson, D. D., and Johnson, B. (2006). High stakes: Poverty, testing and failure in American schools. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

220  Isabel Nuñez Johnson, D. D., Johnson, B., Farenga, S. J., and Ness, D. (2005). Trivializing teacher education: The accreditation squeeze. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Kornhaber, M., Griffith, K., and Tyler, A. (2014). It’s not education by zip code ­anymore—but what is it? Conceptions of equity under the Common Core. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22(4): 1–26. McDonnell, L. M., and Weatherford, M. S. (2013). Organized interests and the common core. Educational Researcher, 42(9): 488–497. Porter, A., McMaken, J., Hwang, J., and Yong, R. (2011). Common Core standards: The new U.S. intended curriculum. Educational Researcher, 40(3): 103–116. Schubert, W. H. (1996, Summer). Perspectives on four curriculum traditions. Educational Horizons, 74(4): 169–176. Schubert, W. L., Schubert, A. L. L., Thomas, T. P., and Carroll, W. M. (2002). Curriculum books: The first hundred years (2nd ed.). New York: Peter Lang. Smith, B. O., Stanley, W. O., and Shores, J. H. (1957). Fundamentals of curriculum development. Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: World Book Co. Stedman, L. C. (2014). Subverting learning and undermining democracy: A structural and political economy analysis of the standards movement. In J. L. DeVitis and K. Teitelbaum (Eds.), School reform critics: The struggle for democratic schooling (pp. 45–57). New York: Peter Lang.

13 Dehumanization and Violence Symptoms from a Neoliberal City Kay Fujiyoshi

this is the 21st century and we need to redefine r/evolution. this planet needs a people’s r/evolution. a humanist r/evolution. r/evolution is not about bloodshed or about going to the mountains and fighting. we will fight if we are forced to but the fundamental goal of r/evolution must be peace. we need a r/evolution of the mind. we need a r/evolution of the heart. we need a r/evolution of the spirit. the power of the people is stronger than any weapon. a people’s r/evolution can’t be stopped. we need to be weapons of mass construction. weapons of mass love. it’s not enough just to change the system. we need to change ourselves. we have got to make this world user friendly. user friendly. are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger. to sacrifice to end colonialism. to end neo-colonialism. to end racism. to end sexism. r/evolution means the end of exploitation. r/evolution means respecting people from other cultures. r/evolution is creative. r/evolution means treating your mate as a friend and an equal. r/evolution is sexy. r/evolution means respecting and learning from your children. r/evolution is beautiful. r/evolution means protecting the people. the plants. the animals. the air. the water. r/evolution means saving this planet. r/evolution is love. —Assata Shakur

Introduction—Childhood, Interrupted Chicago—my home. A place I love for all it has been, is now, and what it can be. A place that provided job opportunities and possibility for my family after Japanese American Internment, a backdrop to my childhood full of wonderful memories—riding the L train past the Marina Towers that looked like corn on the cob, exploring the museums with my family, playing at the park, and taking in the lake. Chicago is rich in community history, is the home to havens of ethnic enclaves, a place that held the dreams of my childhood and a place that I still dream towards. But Chicago is not romance. It is. But it is also the stage for nightmares and heartache.

222  Kay Fujiyoshi This year, I attended the funeral of a child. An eighth grade boy who was shot and killed, no shooter identified, no one to hold accountable. He was not out after hours, he wasn’t alone, he wasn’t at the wrong place at the wrong time; he was a child, walking down the street with some friends, and his life was taken. He was not the only child who was killed this year. The pews of St. Sabina, a church on Chicago’s South Side, have been filled one too many times by families, teachers, and children saying goodbye. How do you say goodbye to someone whose life barely started? How do you sit with the excruciating pain of losing a child? How are children witnessing the impacts of violence processing very traumatic events and situations? Can the city of Chicago work towards protecting children, by any means necessary? For all those who bear witness to the ways violence has disrupted communities, it can be hard to encourage children to dream and have hope for their future when it feels like those dreams and hopes are being snatched away. As a mother, to hear the pain of another mother’s loss is to hear dreams shattering—a hurt and an ache unbearable. There is no way to describe the sound of a mother’s loss, it’s the wail that comes from the deepest part of the soul that questions the existence God, that refuses to accept and let go, it is a vibration that resonates in the pit of your gut, one that leaves a scar on your soul for you to remember. It is living a nightmare. It’s feeling heart break in shattered, unmendable pieces. Losing love like that creates the conditions for wounds to harbor and fester anger, hatred, and hopelessness. This isn’t an experience I would wish upon anyone, yet it is becoming a common experience. Dreams aren’t just deferred in Chicago, they’re destroyed.

The Ideology of Moral Bankruptcy Destabilizing communities through economic blight, joblessness, unemployment, lack of affordable housing, and closing public schools, the message in Chicago is clear—certain communities and people are disposable. The history of segregation and systemic racism thrives in the treatment of African American and Latino communities, exacerbated by neoliberal policies that have taken manufacturing work abroad, closed public housing, mental health clinics, and schools, and continue to work towards the privatization of public services through a seductive narrative of choice. The violence is a symptom of the instability of neoliberalism and death should be reason enough to find alternatives. However, with continued budget cuts to public services and the threat of a 39 percent decrease in funding for Chicago Public Schools, I believe neoliberalism not only thrives on an unregulated free market economy but on the moral bankruptcy of human beings. David Harvey describes neoliberalism as an ideology that takes the view that individual liberty and freedom are the high point of civilization and can best be protected and achieved through deregulation, preserving private property rights, and the institutions of the free market (2005). Pauline Lipman describes it as a state strategy to manage the structural crisis

Dehumanization and Violence  223 of capitalism and to provide new opportunities for capital accumulation (2011). Neoliberalism creates new markets for capital growth, which basically makes a commodity out of anything and corrupts our system of values. For instance, privatizing education creates the possibility for new contracts for management, building infrastructure, food services, curriculum, test prep materials, and staffing. Messages are sent to parents and children that choice is available and creates market competition. Privatization of the public sector is supported through the belief that market competition creates more effective and efficient ways of living. Therefore, the privatization of social goods and the withdrawal of government from providing and supporting social welfare should create better conditions when left to the market. Neoliberalism coordinates economic and social policies, governance, and discourses and ideologies that promote individual self-interest, unrestricted flows of capital, deep reductions in the cost of labor, and sharp retrenchment of the public sphere (Lipman, 2011). The policies and processes of private interests control as many aspects of social life as possible in order to maximize personal profit. Personal responsibility, entrepreneurial initiative and consumer choice drive the economy and government should only participate when in support of initiatives for capital gain. Examples of these policies and initiatives permeate through Chicago’s transformation from a post-industrial to a global city. As a result, dismantling unions, privatizing education, and eliminating social welfare programs are rationalized because they threaten the workings of the free market and corporate domination of society. Chicago is a prime example of an expanding education market by providing “options” through charter schools and vilifying and closing openenrollment neighborhood public schools. Mayoral control and appointed CEOs of the public school system pushed the closing of “failing” public schools and transferred them into the hands of corporate entities while promoting school choice in the charter school models. In 1995 the governing arrangements of the Chicago Public Schools shifted power into the hands of the mayor (Wong and Sunderman, 2001). This reform focused on academic achievement and accountability and gave the CEO, the board, and school principals the authority to enforce higher academic standards by any means necessary while allowing those in power to operate without accountability and transparency (Fujiyoshi, 2013). Decision makers are void of personal responsibility and accountability to the ways in which policies are limiting the human capacity of individuals to reach their full human potential. But should decision makers be exempt from personal responsibility when making decisions for the public? Chicago’s 1995 reform policies rated and labeled schools which made it easy for policies like Renaissance 2010 (Ren2010), sponsored by the Commercial Club of Chicago, to enhance Chicago’s ‘productivity’ as a global city. Ren2010 aimed at serving those who live in impoverished neighborhoods by creating better opportunities, yet school closings have displaced

224  Kay Fujiyoshi children all over the city and transitioned them into schools that did not necessarily perform better (Lipman and Haines, 2007). African American students compose the majority of Chicago Public Schools enrollment and historically were more likely than any other racial/ethnic group to be retained under CPS accountability policies. They made up 90 percent of the students who have been impacted by school closures. Low-income African American communities of Chicago lack jobs, affordable housing, and are systematically segregated and disinvested (Anyon, 2005). Layering a racialized discourse of failure, probation, and lack of effort constructs African American and Latino schools and communities as prime targets for privatization (Lipman and Haines, 2007). In 2013, Chicago experienced the largest public school closure in the history of our nation (Fujiyoshi, 2013). However, the rationale for closing schools was not based on test scores but through a model of underutilization. School buildings were labeled an inefficient use of space based on a ratio of students to classrooms. Populations of English language learners and students with special needs were not taken into consideration so the smaller class sizes of these students worked to the detriment of the school. Spaces that were used for parent and community resources and indoor activities for students were also counted against the school. In particular communities with high rates of violence and shootings, schools would use their space to keep children indoors for recess. When schools were closed, the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research found that the district’s criteria of a good school did not take into consideration the school proximity to the home. Safety concerns mattered most to families. One might assume that before a district closes the largest number of public schools in history, that an investigative research committee might be formed to aid families and children in their transitions. Neoliberalism has taught me never to assume good intentions. Policies are rooted in capital accumulation; values are determined by dollars; human beings are collateral damage. In a city like Chicago, how do you not consider safety when closing schools in the neighborhoods that are experiencing higher rates of violence? It isn’t rocket science. It’s intentional. Urban schools are incredibly complicated spaces. They are not easy to navigate. If you can see beneath the surface of what takes place on a daily basis, it can be a mind blowing, paralyzing experience. Urban school systems are set in conditions that systematically segregate, divide, and select who is afforded the right to reach their fullest human potential. It is the conditions of this system that have allowed violence to breed in disinvested and disenfranchised communities, and it is the ideological underpinnings that allow it to continue. When we think about re-invisioning an education that will better our communities and our society we must be realistic about what is actually happening in the lives of young people because Bandaid solutions will never heal deep wounds. Neighborhoods that experience violence, drug addiction, homelessness, and poverty are dealing with a lot

Dehumanization and Violence  225 of issues that schools are not equipped to address. How are schools and teachers equipped to lose a young member of their community as a result of manifestations of violence?

Teaching and Learning in these Times The paradigm of school reform is directed at changing regulations and rules under which schools operate so that the neoliberal agenda of privatization and expanding education markets can flourish. Pauline Lipman poignantly follows the trickle down effect of neoliberalism and its impact on teaching: On the assumption that the private sector is more efficient and productive than the public sector, neoliberal policy promotes education markets and privatization. Privately operated but publicly funded charter schools, private school vouchers, and privatized education services have opened up a whole new arena for capital accumulation (Burch, 2009; Saltman, 2007). School administration is geared to management techniques designed to meet production targets such as test scores. Teaching and learning are driven by performance indicators such as benchmark scores, narrowing the curriculum and producing a new regulatory culture of “performativity and fabrication” (Ball, 2004). Teacher unions are also under attack. The result is a “global assault on teaching, teachers, and their unions” (Compton and Weiner, 2008) and on public education. (2011, pp. 32–33) Geared towards high stakes testing and measurable standards, teaching reverts back to archaic methods of treating the student as a depository and teacher as the depositor. Teaching becomes a task geared towards meeting annual yearly performance goals and many times defaults to teaching directly towards the tests that measure performance. Teachers must then “fill” students with the contents of her narration of knowledge and content becomes detached from reality and disconnected from the totality of what could be liberating (Freire, 1970). The teacher becomes a narrator of knowledge, which leads students to rote memorization and mechanical recordings of these narratives. Increased test scores and the praise awarded to teachers who are able to show improvement exemplifies this banking system of compliance and control. Violence is embedded in Chicago. Paulo Freire said, “Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change them into objects” (1970, p. 85). Teachers are asked to make compromises over time to cater to administration, school culture, and larger state mandates. At times they are bullied into these compromises with job security dangled

226  Kay Fujiyoshi in front of them, threats of budget cuts, and school closings. Students are forced to produce rather than think. They are asked to perform rather than be their authentic self. On April 1, 2016 the Chicago Teachers Union protested against the current educational budget in Illinois. Currently, the system is facing a 39 percent budget cut that will greatly impact school resources, teaching positions, classroom sizes, and the quality of education. Schools, teachers, and students are not objects to be manipulated and yet the state controls the infrastructure that enables the cultivation of future generations. The state inflicts this type of violence on our children’s prospective futures and teachers are bullied into making unreasonable compromises that lead to their dehumanization and burnout. Neoliberal accountability shifted the responsibility for educational improvement from the state to the teachers and schools but narrowed the scope of improvement by instituting technocratic measures which gave them less control over goals, curriculum, and pedagogy which stripped them of their professional judgments. Sanctions placed on schools on academic probation, saturated the school in test preparation culture including regular test practice, formulaic instruction, emphasis on tested skills, and test preparation curricula. High stakes accountability is exhausting teachers with increased stress, demoralization, and exit from the profession (Valli and Buese, 2007 cited in Lipman, 2011). Mandates for technical and drill and kill teaching ultimately pushed out teachers who exemplified independent professional judgment. Some left teaching altogether while others looked for work in neighboring districts and charter schools where they hoped to find opportunities that allowed them to practice their profession with dignity. Furthering the attack on teachers, a piece of propaganda sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and written for the Center for American Progress entitled “A Stronger Accountability Model for Teacher Education” (2010) threatens the free spaces for thinking to take place in universities. In this report, the argument for a redesigned accountability system was situated in what the Crowe (2010) identified as the two main problems in teacher education: program quality and state oversight. Crowe criticizes and blames states for not holding teacher education programs accountable, snapping the mug shots of educational institutions for irresponsibly and haphazardly preparing deficient teachers who have failed the schools and students. An accountability system based on neoliberal principles calling for empirically based, measurable indicators dependent on a few outcomes, is a symbol for the technocratic, positivistic reform agenda. The one-size-fits-all model proposed for teacher education supports the “teaching the same content to all students” position upheld by those who have resources to place them at an advantage in the public sphere (Gay, 2005). Supporting this position are individuals holding governmental offices, philanthropic organizations, and business officials. These individuals and organizations influence the production of common sense by using their position and power to construct the narratives that will further their self-interest.

Dehumanization and Violence  227 Counter to the attack on teacher education, current research does not support an increase in teacher effectiveness based on standardized tests (Gay, 2005) nor can it prove individuals, who score low on tests or do not pass, fail to become good teachers (Gitomer and Latham, 1999). Teachers may be held accountable for their content knowledge or pedagogical skill, but the research does not prove those are the two determining characteristics in being a successful instructor. Ingersoll asks why there is a need to continuously prove that teaching is a highly complex craft that requires ability and advanced training in order to do well (2001). To assert that increased accountability through standardized testing will improve how teachers are prepared undermines the complex nature of teacher’s work. Understanding content or pedagogy are only a few tools necessary to creating successful learning experiences. The list of possible attributes and characteristics is endless yet neoliberal reform agendas simplify the work of teachers by limiting the scope of improving urban teacher education. Schools should be spaces to help kids love learning. Unfortunately, schools can be sites of containment, being locked up for seven hours a day slowly losing your autonomy, creativity, intelligence, and sanity. Teaching to a test is equivalent to force-feeding information to children and slowly diminishing the ability of children to think for themselves. This banking method undermines the idea of education for social mobility and human development and students become the products of carefully controlled educational processes to fulfill the desired outcomes based on the interest of the state. Not only does the banking method undermine the educational process, but it is dehumanizing to the teacher and the students who need to be prepared to inherit the future. Freire (1970) said: For apart from inquiry apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry, human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. (p. 72) Education plays a big part of the process of dehumanization and the breakdown of humanity. While the students are often the victims of this cyclical model of this dehumanization, we must acknowledge that it was the teacher who was first dehumanized. Current attacks on teacher education look to ensure the process continues.

Preparing Teachers towards the Future In my current practice as a teacher educator I am conflicted. I am conflicted by preparing people to enter a system I lost faith in and I struggle with finding hope in the current situation we have in Chicago. Part of me believes

228  Kay Fujiyoshi that as we prepare teachers to do the good work of teaching, nurturing curiosity, imagination, and critical thinking while building learning communities of respectful, kind, and loving human beings. At the same time, we must also prepare them for heartache. Chicago is situated in a reality in which teachers are asked to compromise their beliefs and ideals to cater to neoliberal policies while simultaneously responsively teaching children who are growing up in war zones. I don’t think it is realistic anymore to think that the mission of schools should be to educate citizens to compete in the global economy. Today, the disparities between the have and have-nots illuminate the failure of the global economy to be a just system for the majority of the population. The way the world operates now does not make sense. The vast disparities are inhumane and yet we allow ourselves to stay asleep. We must awaken a generation of people to move forward beyond our current structures and systems of living and free the minds that have been enslaved by miseducation. Are we too trusting of those in power to make the right and just decisions for the people? Or has the system created a legion of drones to comply and service the machine? Steve Biko said in a speech in 1971, and later included in print (2015), “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” (p. 68). And he is right. The system is set up to limit the imaginations of people from revolting and constructs a power structure to keep specific people from getting ahead or limiting the number of the ones who can. Those who have the power have a common way of thinking that perpetuates the system. It is a system based on the selfish desires and needs of a few, who have been corrupted by the spoils of the earth, and have an insatiable lust for consumption by any means necessary. Why do we teach children to measure their self-worth based on their ability to score well on tests, get into college, obtain a degree and get “good” jobs? We live in a society where the value of a human life is captured through the measurements of a very limited knowledge set. Intellect is solely defined through the subjects of math, science, reading, and history and compartmentalizes the wealth of knowledge we each develop through our human experiences. One of the many problems with the education system of today is that schools infect children by miseducating them into believing their selfworth is determined by the product they become. The value placed on test scores has not just corrupted the future but reduced teachers to the role of an SS officer carrying out the duties of those seated in power all the while taking part in the genocide of our own humanity. Situated in the community context of destabilization, genocide happens economically, intellectually, emotionally, and physically.

Moving the Status Quo The naturalization of neoliberalism created an epidemic of people suffering from what Jason Hackworth calls the TINA syndrome, an acronym

Dehumanization and Violence  229 for “there is no alternative” (2007). The difficulty in refuting neoliberalism and falling victim to the TINA syndrome is a result of a dialectical treatment of global economic processes. Hackworth states, “Neoliberalism gets transformed from a political movement into something that is natural, democratically chosen, or completely predictable” (2007, p. 200). Neoliberal capitalism is often framed as natural, inevitable, or tending toward some higher-order equilibrium (Marcuse and van Kempen, 2000). The media, controlled by corporations, share the same ideological commitments of the core capitalist elite who also control most of the economy and the state. Thus, ideas are produced for consumption and alignment with the dominant ideology of the ruling class. A system of conformity creates a narrow spectrum of opinion expressed and a narrow interpretation of current history, which will conform to that of the state propaganda system (Herman and Chomsky, 1988). Neoliberalism becomes hegemonic in its ability to become common sense, which seems to debilitate the envisioning of alternatives. Again, Hackworth points out that “Neoliberalism is hegemonic not because it ‘won’ in a democratic, intellectual, or moral sense. It ‘won’ because its powerful institutions and individual proponents organized enough people and interests to believe that there is no alternative; as with all hegemonic orders, its ‘victor’ is always incomplete, contestable, and in flux” (2007, p. 201). Richard Peet and Elaine Hartwick (1999) claim economic theory in isolation cannot explain socio-political outcomes and must be critiqued before they become universalized. Peet and Hartwick’s critique states that economics relies on simplistic assumptions that are taken as given for all times. They state, “Economics develops in an intellectual vacuum of high mathematics and unrealistic models, isolates itself from fundamental critiques, and reaches precarious conclusions which, while they affect everyone, are conspicuously lacking in democratic input” (p. 117). The mathematical and scientific aspects of economics treat it as a fixed system, giving it the illusion that there are given truths and do not allow the interference of multiple realities. However, the narratives created through economics are damaging because they omit the experiences of those suffering the impacts of policies that have destabilized communities, commodified education, created a false sense of choice, and worsened the conditions of particular populations. Learning is a tool that deconstructs our unrealistic perceptions of a static world and is a process of applying knowledge towards the invention of what is not yet.

(R)Evolution Challenging the status quo will lead to engaging in a process of wrestling with knowledge that is disruptive, discomforting, and problematizing (Kumashiro, 2004). Learning is a disarming process that allows us to escape the uncritical complacency of repetition. Entering into states of crisis in our knowledge can help us change the status quo, work towards conditions that

230  Kay Fujiyoshi honor our humanity and our earth, and strengthen our audacity to fight for something greater. Everyone must engage in critical thinking so that we can transform ourselves and the world as we know it. The more completely we accept our passive roles as receptacles, the more we adapt to that fragmented, compartmentalized view of reality (Freire, 1970). In order for the goals of neoliberal policies to be achieved we must first liberate ourselves and then our students from this banking method we have defaulted to. Education for liberation is rooted in praxis. Freire defines praxis as “the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (1970, p. 79). If teachers are truly committed to education, then liberation from mechanical banking methods must be dismissed and alternative ways of addressing policy mandates must be rethought. This profession is not just about transferring knowledge, but allowing children to develop wisdom by providing learning experiences. Freire said: Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. (1970, p. 34) Being a teacher is being able to model learning and working with students towards a common future. We need new criteria for what the world should be like and reimagine schools as spaces to prepare the children with the tools and skills they need to build the dreams of their future. As teachers, it is our job to help students along their paths to greatness. But first, we must get free. Under the current paradigm of education, students are indoctrinated to understand knowledge through a narrow lens of neoliberal ideology. This paradigm must shift in order to build a solid foundation for students to “make sense” of the new and rethink the old regime. Knowledge is rarely imparted as newly constructed but we need to allow the individual to develop their power to critically perceive their positionality in the world in which they find themselves. This process will be a reinvention of the world not as a static reality but as a reality in process, always in a state of transformation. Their actions will then be a function of how they perceive themselves in the world. It affirms individuals in the process of becoming, not dependent upon a fixed reality, feeling trapped without alternatives. Education can be a process of empowering and building the capacity of individuals to transform their realities. In this particular moment, we must create alternatives. The world must transform to be a place that considers the ways in which we live and we must be strong enough to call out the

Dehumanization and Violence  231 policies that construct the conditions of the places we call home and the values placed on our humanity. I don’t want to live in fear. The number of people shot, wounded, or killed every weekend is too sad. What has become of our humanity? This is a real problem and our children are part of that solution. They have the intelligence, courage, and energy to do amazing things in the world. Schools and teachers must remember to fight for the values we hold in preparing our future so that we can equip children with knowledge, skills, and tools and we teach them to believe in themselves. Our future depends on it.

Bibliography Anyon, J. (2005). Radical possibilities: Public policy, urban education, and a new social movement. New York: Routledge. Ball, P. (2004). Critical mass: How one thing leads to another. New York: Macmillan. Biko, S. (2015). I write what I like: Selected writings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Burch, P. (2009). Hidden markets: The new education privatization. New York: Routledge. Compton, M., and Weiner, L. (2008). The global assault on teachers, teaching, and teacher unions. In M. Compton and L. Weiner (Eds.), The global assault on teaching, teachers, and their unions stories for resistance (pp. 3–9). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Crowe, E. (2010). Measuring what matters: A stronger accountability model for teacher education. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Fujiyoshi K. (2013). Ride or get rode on: Battling for the soul of public education. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 29(2): 102–112. Gay, G. (2005). Politics of multicultural teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 56(3): 221–228. Gitomer, D. H., and Latham, A. (1999). The academic quality of prospective teachers: The impact of admission and licensure testing. Princeton, NJ: Education Testing Service. Hackworth, J. (2007). The neoliberal city: Governance, ideology, and development in American urbanism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberlism. New York: Oxford University. Herman, E., and Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Random House. Ingersoll, R. M. (2001). Teacher turnover and teacher shortage: An organizational analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 38(3): 499–534. Kumashiro, K. (2004). Against common sense. New York: Routledge. Lipman, P. (2011). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. New York: Routledge. Lipman, P., and Haines, N. (2007). From education accountability to privatization and African American exclusion Chicago’s renaissance 2010. Educational Policy, 21(3): 471–502. Marcuse, P., and van Kempen, R. (2000). Globalizing cities: A new spatial order? Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

232  Kay Fujiyoshi Peet, R., and Hartwick, E. (1999). Theories of development. New York: Guilford Press. Saltman, K. J. (2007). Education as enforcement: Militarization and corporatization of schools. Race, Poverty and the Environment, 14(2): 28–30. Schmich, M. (2015, November 3). Children killed in Chicago names we cannot forget. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from www.chicagotribune.com. Wong, K. K. (2011). Redesigning urban distrcts in the USA: Mayoral accountability and the diverse provider model. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 39(4): 486–500. Wong, K. K., and Sunderman, G. L. (2001). How bureaucratic are big-city school systems? Peabody Journal of Education, 76(3–4): 14–40.

Section IV

Challenging Education Inequity in Urban Environments Dale Johnson’s unswerving commitment to language development and educational fairness underscores a sense of hope and anticipation of a bright future for all children and the teachers who serve them. Thus, the overall thread that links the first thirteen chapters with Chapters 14, 15, and 16 is equity in an age of educational corporatization. These chapters provide an overview of the corporatization of public education, standards, the agenda by a number of corporate and political factions to crush teacher unions, and the outsourcing of curriculum, instruction, and assessment to private organizations—areas that, not long ago, were within the purview of educators, but which are alarmingly disappearing from their influence.

14 The Racial Oppression of Social Justice Inequities in Chicago Public Schools Carl A. Grant Rosa Parks stated “Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others” (Congressional Record, 2005/n.d.). The memory of Dale Johnson’s giving life, his outstanding work and caring deeds continues with many, especially those of us who are contributors to this book published in his honor. Dale was a great colleague, who became a friend and someone who I admired because of his moral compass and the respect he demonstrated for everyone. I became a member of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1974. After completing my Ph. D. at Madison in 1972, the campus was still recovering from the racial unrest of the 1968–1969 school year and the students’ mandates from protests and sit-ins. Dale was among one of my new colleagues who embraced the change on campus and fully welcomed me as a colleague. In 1977, Dale was assigned to chair my tenure committee and was responsible for shepherding me from assistant professor to associate professor. When we initially met to discuss tenure procedures in his office, Dale greeted my warmly and proceeded to discuss the procedure in a matter of fact way. We discussed my publications, teaching and service, and scholars who knew my work and would be willing to write letters to support my tenure case. I could tell, Dale wanted to make certain I was as relaxed as one could be under the circumstances. I communicated to Dale, without saying it directly, that I was all right and not worried. I did say to him before I left his office that I was very pleased to have him as Chair of my Tenure Committee; and I was. To this day, when I chair a tenure committee, Dale’s warm and caring professionalism serves as my model. During our meeting, Dale talked confidently about my chances for success. I trusted Dale because I knew him to be one of the few White faces in the early 1970s who seemed to get what my scholarship on multicultural education was all about. He was supportive of my multicultural teaching practices and encouraged me not to be dismayed with the anti-social justice attitude of some of the students and the silences of the University. My tenure was successful and Dale and I continued with our collegial relationship, which developed during my tenure process. Dale was a good shepherd, so when Daniel Ness and Stephen J. Farenga invited me to

236  Carl A. Grant contribute to a book that would honor Dale’s life and work, my response was a dramatic and happy: “Yes!” After, my “yes,” I was faced with questions about what to write about. Daniel and Stephen’s invitation included the following two sentences: “The main thrust of the book concerns policy, curriculum, and teaching—three areas that Dale was no doubt passionate about. Much of Dale’s work involved advocacy for those who are less empowered and do not have a voice at the table. His actions matched his words, and this was most evident when he took time from his professional life to teach in one of the nation’s most poverty-stricken elementary schools.” I agree completely with Daniel and Stephen’s observation about Dale’s “advocacy for those who are less empowered and do not have a voice at the table” and the example that I immediately thought of that expressed it was Dale and Bonnie’s book: High Stakes: Poverty, Testing, and Failure in American Schools (2006). I have used High Stakes in my “Introduction to Education” class for several years in order to help students in their first year of the Teacher Education program become teachers. My students not only wanted to learn about testing, standards, and accountability and the negative impact it can have on children, but also the stories behind testing, including the excessive demand by states and the Bully Pulpit. When teacher-candidates say that they want to teach kids because: “I love them” or “I want to help them,” Dale and Bonnie’s book takes them into a teaching situation where the sincerity of “because I love them” is tested and “I want to help them” is challenged. I became familiar with High Stakes in a very special and surprising way. One day, when High Stakes was in the pre-publication stage, I received a call from the publisher who briefly informed me about the book and who the authors were. He invited me to write the book’s foreword. I was honored and surprised. Honored because it was Dale and surprised because at that point Dale had left Madison years before and our paths rarely, if ever, crossed. One day, a number of years after Dale left Madison, he and I did bump into each other in San Francisco and chatted for a few minutes. That chat, however, dealt with generalities: “Hey, how are you doing . . . it’s great to see you. . . .” We then went our own ways. However as I walked on for the next few blocks, the picturesque city by the Golden Gate did not take over my mind. I thought about Dale. My mind flashed back to pleasant memories of a fair and caring shepherd, the informative meetings, and his constant reassurance that I would not have any problems. I was a bit annoyed with myself for not asking if he would have time for coffee, so we could catch-up. Also, we had not squeezed in any “shop talk,” or new project discussion. We were like two trains passing in the night going in opposite directions. I will probably never know why Dale recommended me to write the foreword for High Stakes, but that is “okay” as I am comfortable with not knowing; for who questions the good Shepherd? When High Stakes arrived,

The Racial Oppression of Social Justice  237 it was a weekday, I placed it on the couch where I do my serious reading and told myself that reading it was my work for the upcoming Saturday morning. With a hot cup of Café Verona in hand, I began reading the book. Two hours later, I had read every word that Dale and Bonnie had written and was talking aloud to myself about High Stakes and marveling at the realistic and vivid description of the horrors of high stakes testing that Dale and Bonnie provide as well as their unselfish commitment to social justice research. I was a bit surprised that I had completed the book so fast, but I poured through it with a sense of urgency, of wanting to know “what’s next?” I wrote in the foreword the following: “High Stakes enables us to feel, see, and experience first-hand the oppression of high stakes testing. The Johnsons explain how and why there is daily suppression of real teaching and learning. The heartache and the dehumanization that come with poverty. The voices of the children—their struggle, their desire to only want a fair shot in life—that the Johnsons taught remain with you long after you close their book.” Since the thrust of High Stakes deals with the tyranny of testing and the oppression of African American students in a school in Redbud, Louisiana, I have decided that my contribution to this volume honoring Dale will be a discussion of the oppression of social justice of African American students in the public schools of Chicago, my home town. In the discussion, I draw from work and ideas in which I have been engaged, particularly with several graduate students at the University of Wisconsin—Madison who are pleased to take part in the recognition of Dale Johnson: Alexandra Allweiss, Anna Floch, Anne Konrad, Karla Manning, and Mary Swenson.

Introduction, Definitions, and Organization In the following pages, I give attention to policy, curriculum, and teaching as I discuss the racialized repression of social justice in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). In doing so, I present both historical and contemporary information. Within the historical discussion, I give attention to CPS ignoring State mandates to integrate schools and combat segregation and overcrowding in African American schools. Within this contemporary discussion, I give attention to the impact of neoliberal educational and social policies in Chicago on black communities and the negative branding of black students and offer my argument on why the education of black students continues to be poor. I begin by discussing the concepts of racialized oppression and social justice, since they are often used as catchall terms (Grant, 2012).

Racial Oppression and Social Justice The definition of “racial oppression” used in this paper is straightforward and easily located on most websites. Here are two, which both deal with an

238  Carl A. Grant entire group of people, instead of “individualized racial oppression” which is personal prejudice and discrimination (Urban Missionary, 2012). 1) “Burdening a specific race with unjust or cruel restraints or imposition that may be social, systematic, institutionalized or internalized” (Ask. Com); 2) “Poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race, the belief that some races of people are better than others” (Merriam-Webster, n. d.). In the face of rampant inequalities and oppression, social justice has to do with the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within society. In 1926, W. E. B. Du Bois argued that the justice that black people wanted went beyond the distribution of material good. Du Bois (1926) claimed the need for the humanity of African Americans to be accepted by all Americans and for the US to become a place where there is plenty of hard work and where they realize themselves and enjoy life. Du Bois (1926) said: If you tonight suddenly should become full-fledged Americans; if your color faded, or the color line here in Chicago was miraculously forgotten; suppose, too, you became at the same time rich and powerful;—what is it that you would want? What would you immediately seek? . . . Would you buy the most powerful of motor cars and outrace Cook County? Would you buy the most elaborate estate on the North Shore? . . . Would you wear the most striking clothes, give the richest dinners. . . ? Even as you visualize such ideals you know in your hearts that these are not the things you really want . . . [we]want to live in a world where men know, where men create, where they realize themselves and where they enjoy life . . . and where people enjoy life. (p. 2) Similarly, Smith (1994) posits “Social justice is concerned with how people should be treated in particular circumstances, by other people directly or within the human creation of institutions whereby behavior is regulated” (p. 27). Smith’s beliefs challenge or at least call into question practices associated with so-called “school choice.” Social justice is what the students of Redbud needed and deserved, but racial oppression manifested in testing, dirty schools, and families structured into cycles of poverty is what they received.

CPS: A Legacy of Social Injustice Four years ago, along with my brother, Shelby, I wrote a book: The Moment: Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, and the Firestorm at Trinity United Church of Christ. The Moment tells the inside story of Trinity UCC (Obama’s church) during the 2008 presidential election. Writing The Moment caused me to go back and examine the history of black life in Chicago, such as African American migration to the Windy City from 1915 to 1930, black-white community formation, city politics, decades

The Racial Oppression of Social Justice  239 of housing and school segregation, racist curriculum, and my growing up in Chicago. It also caused me to visit the geographical space on the Southside of Chicago that African Americans were ushered into when they began arriving in the city, an area known as the Black Belt or now Bronzeville. This space symbolizes the segregation and neglect of Blacks from and by other ethnic groups. At the same time, Bronzeville expresses the history and culture of Black people including art, music, politics and religion; it expresses the resilience and agency of a people. My research for The Moment took me to artifacts that informed school segregation and reintroduced me to the racist curriculum I had as a student years ago—a curriculum that was extremely vivid for my three brothers and me, as well as our friends, when we were students in CPS school, namely, that black enslaved people were happy and ignorant and White people were the superior race. Between 1920 and 1930, the black population in Chicago increased from 109,458 to 233,903; the number of African American students in segregated schools doubled; and the number of segregated schools grew from six to 26 (Homel, 1984). Much of the present-day ideology and arguments about the poor quality of schooling on Chicago’s south and west sides where African Americans live and attend school can be traced back to policies and practices of the 1920s and 1930s and the attitude of White leadership in the Mayor and School Superintendent’s office (Pinderhughes, 1987). Sustar (2013) states: From the first attempts to steer the growing Black population into segregated schools in the 1930s to days more sophisticated, corporatebacked “education reformers,” Chicago politicians and school authorities have carried out a persistent effort to keep Black students in segregated, inferior schools. In the 1920s and 30s that meant channeling the city’s booming African American population into ghettoes [on the south side]. (p. 2) In 1965, Martin Luther King argued that “Chicago was far from being the promise land.” When King came to Chicago, I was teaching eighthgrade science at Wadsworth, a K–8 grade African American school on the Southside of the city. In some classrooms, forty to fifty black children were sitting wherever they could find space to place a desk and chair. The first and second grade teachers at Wadsworth were teaching a “double-shift” due to classroom overcrowding; however, schools with vacant desks and low student enrollment in White neighborhoods were only three miles away. Taylor (2012), writing about the history of that time, explains: By late 1950s, Chicago was undergoing “neighborhood change”; Whites were moving out of the city by the tens of thousands, and African Americans were moving into the city by the hundreds of thousands. In 1939, the historian A. N. Knupfer (2006) cited the Chicago Defender, which reported that “78% of

240  Carl A. Grant Negro children spend 40% less time in school than do children outside of the colored communities in Chicago.” At Wadsworth, three classrooms of first- and second-grade students attended school from 8 am to 11:30 am and a second group of first, second, and third graders attended school from 11:45 am to 3:15 pm. Whereas the students received the minimum number of contact hour necessary to receive money from the State, their education suffered as they were herded in and out, art and music classes were cut short, and teachers had minimum time to talk with parents. My wife, Gloria, was one of the two first-grade teachers and she often spoke to me about not having enough time because of the “double shift” to give the students the extra attention they needed. There was no lunch hour to work with students who could use a few more minutes of instruction. Time allocated for correcting the many papers in order to give students immediate feedback was cut short. In addition, the teachers were exhausted as a result of the additional hustle and bustle of searching for misplaced gloves, shoes that need tying, and staying at the very top of their game in order to be that person children rushed to see the next morning. Teachers knew that the overall quality of the education for the students was suffering.

CPS: Education Injustice, Today To this day, segregation and unequal education continue in CPS, in spite of the 1980 lawsuit by the U.S. federal government against Chicago Public Schools for discriminating against black and Hispanic students. Ashley Crossman (June 10, 2015) reports, “In an elementary school in Chicago, there are two working bathrooms for 700 students and the toilet paper and paper towels are rationed” (p. 1). In addition, CPS are in bad financial shape. Chicago faces a 1.1 billion-dollar deficit and is on the State of Illinois’ financial watch list. Because of the financial “crisis,” this year CPS cut 200 million dollars from the budget and laid off 62 staffers, three furlough days were instituted for teachers, and school was cancelled one day for students. This action comes three years after 50 public schools were closed in black and Latino communities (Barnum and Nix, 4/5/16). CPS, Neoliberalism and Charter Schools Since the 1990s, CPS has undergone a series of radical institutional reforms consistent with a neoliberal agenda for urban development. Chicago has become an “entrepreneurial city” and the propagation of neoliberal discourses, policies, and subjectivities have given rise to neoliberal urbanism (Leitner, Sheppard, Sziarto, and Maringanti, 2007). Neoliberalism promotes “individualism and entrepreneurialism, equating individual freedom with self-interested choices, making individuals responsible for their own well-being, and redefining citizens as consumers and clients” (Leitner,

The Racial Oppression of Social Justice  241 Sheppard, Sziarto, and Maringanti, 2007, p. 2). Neoliberal policies and practices value business growth and profit over the quality of people’s lives and their communities. Constituents of neoliberalism contend that they are color-blind, while, at the same time, engage in economic restructuring that devastates [black] communities—a practice that leads to increased poverty, decline in housing, and poor living and social conditions. “Under neoliberalism, individual freedom is redefined as the capacity for self-realization and freedom from bureaucracy rather than freedom from want, with human behavior reconceptualized along economic lines. Individuals are encouraged to actively make self-interested choices and are made responsible for acting in this way to advance both their well-being and that of society” (Leitener, Sheppard, Sziarto, and Maringanti, 2007). The Chicago mayor’s office and the business community painted CPS, and public education in general, as out of step for an “entrepreneurial city.” CPS’s modus operandi were viewed as archaic, inefficient and corrupt, and thus incapable of providing the quality of educational innovation necessary to serve the demands of the global economy (Means, 2008). Means (2008) contends that the agenda, Renaissance 2010, which was passed into law in 2004, works “to clear the ground for corporate development through privatization and school closures, while undermining educational quality” (p. 1). A discourse of school reform grounded in deregulation, dismantlement and public-private partnership is in keeping with an “entrepreneurial city” and promotes “school choice.” One of the strategies of the “entrepreneurial city” was to initiate school closings. In 2013, 49 schools and 61 building were closed (Anthony, 2014). The schools predominately served African Americans and Latino students, who represent the majority of students in CPS. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, school closings affected 87 percent of CPS students of color in the academic year 2010–2011. Within a short period of time after the closing of the 49 schools mostly in black and brown communities, reutilized buildings began housing increased numbers of charter schools that brought with them increased segregation. To that point, Beals (2016) observes “Building closures a few years ago were meant as a budgetary haircut, but parents questioned the formula that decided which schools would close at the same time that a bigger slice of a tight budget was directed toward charter-school expansion.” This neoliberal effort in the form of a “school choice movement” ignores—and wants black parents to ignore—the history of earlier racist social, political, and institutional arrangements. At the same time, this effort compromises without openly and directly dealing with these arrangements. Pattillo (2015) contends that, for many students in the city’s most challenged neighborhoods, choices are illusory because issues of safety, financial and travel limitations, as well as the complexities of the application process limits schooling options for poor and working-class black parents. In addition, Pattillo (2015) reports that black parents experience numerous

242  Carl A. Grant barriers with school choice: being chosen rather than choosing, the lack of transparency, uncertainty, and the burden of choice. One of the policy recommendations by the Institute of Metropolitan Opportunity to CPS and the State of Illinois is for the expansion of charter schools to come to a halt so that expansion does “not deepen racial segregation” and that a “researchbased review of the potential effects of charters on segregation and student performance” be conducted (p. 2). In writing about neoliberalism, education, and urbanization in Chicago, Means (2008) borrows a phrase from Henry Giroux (2006), namely, “politics of disposability,” to argue that Renaissance 2010 and the accompanying school choice movement represent a “politics where the imperative of the market comes at the expense of public life, democracy, and responsibility of the future” (p. 3). CPS and Racial Oppression and Branding of Black Children The “warmth of other suns” after the long and hopeful journey north would not be realized for black children who came to Chicago in search of a better life including the opportunity for a good education. Black children traveled from the South to Chicago with a desire to learn and to become men and women whose humanity was respected. In the hush harbor during enslavement, Schools for Freedmen during Reconstruction, and during the Great Migration North, black children held on to the spirit and agency of Frederick Douglass: his love of learning and his insistence on knowing the “letters.” Some knew of his statement: “Once you learn to read you will be forever free” (Quoted in Congressional Record, 2000, p. 5777). Book knowledge and schooling was a black child’s path to freedom. Throughout their journey to Chicago, black children listened to the stories told to them about how their great grandparents had rushed to the Freedman schools established immediately after the Civil War with a thirst for knowledge. Black children who came from Georgia had heard the story that when freedom came to the enslaved people of their state, their immediate demand was for formal education. And, when the schools were constructed in early 1865, they overflowed with the young and old (Butchart, 2016). These children were some of the children who arrived in Chicago during the Great Migration; however, upon arrival in Chicago, black children and their families were faced with the unjust and cruel restraints of racism that was manifest in the social and institutional fabric and internalized by a people who despised them. Richard Wright (1941), in 12 Million Black Voices, powerfully describes the debilitating life for African Americans who arrived in Chicago during the great migration; black people lived in areas where the housing was old, run down and rarely repaired. Black people who Wright (1941) interviewed said “We live in crowded, barnlike rooms, in old rotting buildings . . . because they say our presence in their neighborhoods lowers the value of their property” (p. 103). The air in the so-called “transition areas” was often consumed by a pall of smoke

The Racial Oppression of Social Justice  243 from the stacks of American industry, which hurt the migrants’ eyes and entered into their lungs. The severity of the living conditions led to high rates of infant mortality, high general death rates, and high incident of disease (Drake and Cayton, 1945). Living in the transition areas, Blacks observed poor White immigrants— Turks, Czechs, Croats, Finns, and Greeks—come and leave with an opportunity for a bright future and the expectation of all rights and privileges upon acquiring American citizenship. America lifted its “lamp beside the golden door” (Lazarus, 1883) and welcomed these White immigrants to Chicago for opportunity and a new life. But, black people born in the shanties or in the cotton and tobacco fields of Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and other southern states, who had turned the American economy around and made the United States powerful and rich as they worked as enslaved people under the hot plantation sun and felt the lash of the whip and other human indignities, did not receive the same welcoming. No caring woman with a torch raised high welcomed them. Black people were told that the primary jobs open to them were as maids, porters, janitors, cooks and general servants—the same types of jobs as the ones they held when they were enslaved. They were forced into accepting these menial jobs, usually at a wage less than Whites were receiving in order to feed their family and stay alive (Wright, 1941). And, about black children who had come to Chicago holding high Frederick Douglass’ value of learning, Wright says: We watch strange moods fill our children, and our hearts swell with pain. . . . We cannot keep them in school. . . . We fall upon our knees and pray for them, but in vain. The city has beaten us, evaded us; but they, with their young bodies filled with warm blood, feel bitter and frustrated at the sight of the alluring hope and prizes denied them. It is not their eagerness to fight that makes us afraid, but they go to death on the city pavement faster than even disease and starvation can take them. (p. 136) Wright’s (1941) words, written 75 years ago, describe Chicago in the Twenty-First Century for black children. “[T]he courts and the morgues become crowed with our lost children, the heart of the officials of the city grow cold toward us” (p. 36). Over the decades, Chicago has fine-tuned its racial oppression against black children systematically (e.g., maintaining racial segregation across schools and within schools; treating African American children as less capable than their White counterparts in school curriculum; maintaining an unequal distribution of resources, and a lack of school building upkeep) and institutionally (e.g., racialized governance of schools through the position of the Superintendent of schools with Benjamin Willis, and the Mayor’s office through Mayor Richard J. Daley and Rahm Emanuel). Ben Joravsky (2013),

244  Carl A. Grant recalling one moment out of many in CPS’s systemic and institutional racist history, observes: The city’s all-powerful mayor was ignoring their pleas, so the public students of Chicago . . . walked out of school and march in protest. They were protesting the segregation policy of cramming hundreds of students from city’s then-burgeoning black population into rickety trailers rather than putting them in white schools with plenty of room. . . . Everyone knew he [Daley] was aiming to appease white voters terrified or enraged by the thought of integration. (p. 2) Du Bois (1920/1999) asks, “But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it? Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!” (p. 18). Du Bois then comments on how American democracy is prosecuted: “Instead of standing as a great example of the success of democracy and the possibility of human brotherhood, America has taken her place as an awful example of its pitfalls and failures, so far as black and brown and yellow peoples are concerned” (p. 18). Black students over decades have been placed in schools that lack sufficient resources, are short on experienced teachers, and hold low expectations for students. In addition, black students experience education focused solely on basic skills and standardized test performance, emphasizing rote memorization, formulaic thinking, and behavioral compliance over critical thinking, creativity, and engagement (McNeil, 2000; Oakes, 2005; Valli et al., 2008). Added to the lack of a basic sound educational structure that wets their learning curiosity, black students are confronted with a chorus of negative labels that blame and that brand them and their families (Grant, Manning, and Allweiss, 2014). Over the decades, the branding of black students as “culturally deprived” (Orr, 1987; Riessman, 1962), “culturally different” (Baratz and Baratz, 1970), “culturally disadvantaged” (Johnson, 1970), “at-risk” (National Commission on Excellence, 1983), and “disadvantaged students” (Loretan and Umans, 1996) have become normalized and the push-back by CPS to the stereotypical label and negative branding has been weak, ineffective, or lacking.

Branding As I have discussed, public schools in Chicago have been pushed toward a corporatized model of schools, with students seen as “products.” With this move, corporatized notions such as “branding” are important. The authors of the website Cleverism (2015) state that “branding” is more than the process of choosing a unique name or image for a product. It actually involves embedding that unique name and image in the minds of the customers [American public] through various strategies and techniques, such as

The Racial Oppression of Social Justice  245 advertising campaigns [reports in the media] and other marketing programs [Renaissance 2010]. The authors of Cleverism (2015) argue that if a company, in this case CPS, wanted to change the perception the public has about its product (African American students) it must ask itself two questions: How does the public perceive your brand? (ACTUAL) How do you want the public to perceive your brand? (IDEAL) In the case of CPS, the question “How does the public perceive your brand?” can be read as “how do White people in Chicago perceive black students and their families?” There have been numerous studies reporting on Whites’ attitudes toward black people. According to Mcelwee (2015), Spencer Piston of the Campbell Institute at Syracuse University examined how young Whites ranked the intelligence and work ethic of Whites to Blacks. Piston reports that 51 percent of Whites between the ages of 17 and 34 rate Blacks as lazier than Whites, and 43 percent say Blacks are less intelligent. In addition, Whites and Blacks have different perception of race in Chicago and the US along several different perspectives. Results from Pew Research conclude: “If responses to all seven items are added together, half of whites (49%) do not see unfair treatment in any of the seven areas, compared with 13% of Blacks who say this. On the other hand, 58% of Blacks say at least four of these community institutions are unfair, compared with just 14% of whites” (p. 2). Whites see societal institutions, such as public schools and the health care system as places where they receive fair treatment; however, Blacks see unfairness in their treatment in most of these “realms of community life.” The branding of African American students with a label implying that their humanity is less than the humanity of White people is an old narrative that was set in place when black enslaved people arrived in this country. It is a narrative that has taken many twists and turns throughout the centuries and has been presented in different manners or forms (e.g., books, movies, films, speech, museum exhibits, media reports, scholarly reports, Supreme Court decisions). In the business world, or in a market-driven society, a company with a negative image takes steps to bring about change. Some people in positions of authority at CPS would argue that they have engaged in this process when they changed the leadership and placed control of CPS under the auspices of the Mayor’s office, transitioned from Superintendent of School to CEO, and demanded greater accountability from middle management [principals], staff, [teachers], and clients [students]. Such moves do not and have not been responsive to the negative labeling of black students, nor to the inferior quality of education that black students are receiving.

Addressing False Narratives Edward E. Baptist (2015) offers a theory of why white Americans since the 1600s worked relentlessly to keep their foot on the neck of black Americans that I find useful in my discussion of racial oppression. Baptist argues that

246  Carl A. Grant white Americans have used the arguments that the enslavement of Blacks had little to do with the US position as a political and economic world power, and that, even with an education, Blacks would remain intellectually inferior to Whites. While these arguments have been promulgated, popularized, and accepted for centuries, they are incorrect or a complete lie. Baptist (2015) corrects the master narrative that slavery was not economically efficient and that it played an insignificant role in the growth of American capitalism. Slavery was woven inextricably into the fabric US society as evidenced in its inclusion in our country’s founding documents. Baptist (2015) states, “Slavery continues to have an impact on America in the most basic economic sense.” And, “We [White Americans] don’t want to hear that at its roots, the economic growth depends to a large extent on slavery” (p. 145). Reviewers of Baptist’s book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, gave him stunning reviews and contend that he brings to light histories that have been kept from White and Black Americans. Baptist’s (2015) work also provides an important account of why and how this American narrative was crafted and perpetuated and the ideologies, policies, and practices set in place to keep it strong and on-going. Baptist (2015) states that within 50 years after the Civil War, the children of White Union and Confederate soldiers united against ­African-Americans and reified white supremacy as a dominant structure and ideology, including segregation, Jim Crow, and lynchings to disfranchise African-Americans constitutionally, socially, and politically. Next, false scientific claims were used to extend the existing pseudo-scientific narratives that Blacks were biologically inferior to Whites, who, therefore, should control Blacks because they are unfit to govern. The superiority thesis eased the minds of the emphatic white supremacists, and provided a narrative that historians in the 1900s could use to justify the exclusions of the physical brutality heaped on Blacks and develop a kind and gentle master mythology. Historians told of a reunified White nation where slavery was a premodern institution that was not profit-seeking, and was a drag on the explosive growth of the United States. Academic researchers in the early 1900s supported the argument that slavery was separate from the economic and social transformations of the Western world. Most in the South and many in the North were pleased, and supported an openly racist history profession, for it served a white public obsessed with racial control and the South’s desire to whitewash slavery in the past, and maintain segregation now and forever (Baptist, 2015). However, in the 1990s, a different version of the enslavement story was introduced. No longer did history describe enslavement as “a school in which patient masters and mistresses trained irresponsible savages for futures of perpetual servitude” (Baptist (2015, p. 148). Some histories featured African Americans as assertive rebels. However, Baptist (2015) points out that it is an uncomfortable corollary because it situates assertive resistance as undermining enslavers’ power and leads some to believe

The Racial Oppression of Social Justice  247 that enslaved people actually managed to prevent Whites from successfully exploiting their own labor. Also, in the telling of the history of America, Baptist argues that the value of those who picked cotton and performed hard labor was marginalized in favor of that of White immigrants and clever inventors. Thus, history books make it seem as if enslaved Blacks had little long-term influence on the rise of the United States during the nineteenth century from being a minor European trading partner to becoming the world’s largest economy. Another version of US history is that enslavement at best was an inconvenience to African Americans because it denied them their democratic rights. In this narration, many deaths of Black people, the destruction of families, and the day-to-day brutality enslaved people suffered was silenced. Such story telling of US history, Baptist (2015) argues, leads to the conclusion that “If slavery was not implicated in US growth, success, power, and wealth, none of the massive quantities of wealth and treasure piled by that economic growth is owed to African Americans” (p. 215). Baptist’s book is illuminating as it points out that From 1783 at the end of the American Revolution to 1861, the number of slaves in the United States increased five times over, and . . . slavery’s expansion shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and politics of the new nation. . . . The idea that the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich is not an idea that people necessarily are happy to hear. Yet it is the truth. And that truth was the half of the story that survived mostly in the custodianship of those who survived slavery’s expansion . . . the expansion of slavery in many ways shaped the story of everything in the pre-Civil War United States. (Baptist, 2015, p. xxi) In recent decades, academics and everyday people searching family roots have come across documents that show the bookkeeping—the business of enslavement: sales and purchase of Black people, the costs of slave labor camps, and the commodities produced based on size of land and numbers of enslaved people. Bookkeeping documents also reveal how White people bought and sold other humans for profit and the dramatic violence and human degradation that went into the practice. In addition, the participation and collusion of northern merchants, bankers, and factory owners expose how these groups planned to make a profit from enslavement and its increased expansion (Baptist, 2015). Another point that is often ignored when discussing Black people is “cultural recognition,” a significance aspect of social justice. Baptist tells a story set within the Civil War of the successful escape to a Union fort of two enslaved black men, Frank Baker and James Townsend, from the person who enslaved them, Charles Mallory. A few days later, Mallory went to the fort and demanded that the commanding federal officer, Benjamin Butler,

248  Carl A. Grant return his property, Baker and Townsend, to him. Butler informed Mallory that if the men were Mallory’s property, and he was using them to wage war against the US government, then logically the men were therefore contraband of war. This incident led to the inscription of hundreds of thousands of enslaved persons to fight on the side of the Union. It “weakened the Confederate war effort and made it easier for President Lincoln to avow mass emancipation as a tool of war . . .—and those African-American soldiers would make the difference between victory and defeat for the North” (my emphasis) (Baptist, 2015, p. 245).

Conclusion The whole history of the United States comes walking over the hill behind a line of people in chains. (Baptist, 2015, p. 250)

I framed this chapter using Du Bois’ definition of social justice for Black people to structure my arguments as to how social justice has been denied to African American students in Chicago. Oppression, I argue, seeks to deprive, to mute or silence personal and group agency, advocacy, and action, and it seeks to stifle the involvement or interest of democratic influences. I have discussed and provided examples of racial inequities in CPS over many decades including the time I was a teacher. Additionally, I explain how neoliberal practices of promoting student testing and teacher accountability, CPS school closures with charter school replacement is continuing the racial oppression of black students in CPS today. I then turn to the “branding” of Black students to present my argument for why racial oppression of Black students and people continues in general and specifically in education. I drew on the work of Edward E. Baptist (2015) whose scholarship discusses a narrative that many white Americans have worked to keep silent: black enslaved people’s dominant contribution to the historical rise of the United States and its place as an economic and political superpower. Baptist (2015) states, “Enslaved African Americans built the modern United States, and indeed the entire modern world, in ways both obvious and hidden” (p. 260). As I come to the final lines of “The Racial Oppression of Social Justice: Inequities in Chicago Public Schools,” where Dale and Bonnie have served as my muse, I hope I have done at least fairly well by the Good Shepherd. I will continue to require High Stakes on my reading list when I teach because it is a magnificent example that illustrates how numbers (test scores), lack of in-school resources, structural racism, and poverty have repressed the possibilities for social justice for an entire school of Black children. Dale was not only a teacher and researcher; he was a devoted advocate against oppression of and the lack of social justice. In going to Redbud school and spending a year teaching, Dale and Bonnie acted on theories of

The Racial Oppression of Social Justice  249 social justice. They informed the US, especially those responsible for public education—policy makers, curriculum developers and teachers—about how high stake testing was abusing the lives of children. What they illustrated and what they learned did not go unheard. Reviews of High Stakes were outstanding: American School Board Journal stated: “A book so compelling that it just might become a classic” and The Louisiana Weekly posited: “High Stakes is a poignant look at the reality of public schools today.” These two statements, especially the words “classic” and “reality” are significant and meaningful in describing the contribution of High Stakes to the public, illustrating the oppression of social justices, and pointing out how inequities toward Black children take place. Over the years, my work has followed the social justice path that Dale was on: “advocacy for those who are less empowered and do not have a voice at the table.” In a recent article, I argued, that children want to be and need to be more included in democracy and want their voices heard. “They [children] contend that they are much, much more than human capital to be controlled by markets. They want to assert their presence in the struggle against neoliberal policies that would reduce their humanity to numbers and labels” (Grant, 2016, p. 40). Equally as important, we need their participation. Rosa Parks had it right, “Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.” Thanks Dale. Your work was an inspiration and exceptional to me, and your deeds to humanity were selfless and caring. Your life is very much admired, “Rest in peace” Good Shepherd.

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The Racial Oppression of Social Justice  253 Sustar, L. (2013, March 26). Behind the racist school closings agenda. Socialistworker.org. Retrieved from http://socialistworker.org/2013/03/26/behindthe-racist-school-closings-agenda. Taylor, K. Y. (2012). Challenging Jim Crow schools in Chicago. Socialistworker.org. Retrieved from https://socialistworker.org/2012/02/22/jim-crow-schools-in-chicago. Urban Missionary. (2012). Understanding the scope of racial oppression. Retrieved from http://urban-missionary.blogspot.com/2012/12/racial-oppression.html. Wilkerson, I. (2010). The warmth of other suns: The epic story of America’s great migration New York: Random House. Valli, L., Crpmomger, R. G., Chambliss, M. J., Graeber, A. O., and Buese, D. (2008). Test-driven: High—stakes accountability in elementary schools. New York: Teacher College Press. Wright, J. Jr. (2003). Sermon video presents Obama’s former pastor in his own words. Discoverthenetworks.org. Retrieved from www.discoverthenetworks.org/ individualProfile.asp?indid=2307. Wheatley, P. (1773). On being brought from Africa. Phillis Wheatley Poems. Retrieved from www.google.com/#q=phillis+wheatley+poems. Wright, R. (1941). 12 million Black Voices. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press. Young, R. D. (2013). Chicago school closings provide parents’ confusion, anger. Huffpost Chicago. Retrieved from www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/27/chicagoschool-closings_n_2957343.html.

15 Choosing a Faculty Union over Faculty Governance in Public Education A Case Study of a Single Teacher Certification Policy in New York David Gerwin Chicago State University (CSU) sent dismissal notices to all 900 employees in February 2016, and on April 30 fired 300 people. Faculty contracts expire in August, and similar large-scale layoffs are expected (Ihejirika, 2016). The university, serving largely black and minority students, reached this point because a budget standoff between Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, a Republican, and the Democratic-majority state legislature, resulted in a failure to sign into law any appropriations bills beyond funding for K–12 schooling for the 2015–16 fiscal year. State offices remained open pursuant to a court order. Higher education received no funding. Absent the $36 million dollars of public funding it receives each year that makes up a third of the budget, and the $5 million in state aid to roughly half of the 4500 enrolled students, most of whom are minorities, CSU asked employees to turn in their keys. It cancelled spring break and held graduation on April 28. The university president has announced that the school will not close, but will run a purely tuition-based summer and fall semester with fewer faculty, larger classes, and larger teaching loads (Clauss and Francis, 2016). Students are skeptical that, absent state funding, the school can remain open and let them finish their degrees (Schutz, 2016). Across Illinois, state university employees have taken pay-cuts and furloughs, but CSU has a smaller endowment and receives a greater share of its budget from state funding, while more of its students rely on state aid for tuition. What seems an unthinkable act of destruction that would force a budget compromise was acceptable collateral damage through March 2016. In April an emergency appropriation of $600 million for public higher education provided partial funding—for CSU $21 million of the $37 million that it would have received through the regular budget process, with similar partial payments to other universities. For ten months the needs of 4500 students and hundreds of faculty and staff at this one institution, or at the other public colleges and universities with enough of a cushion that they were only cutting salaries, payments and maintenance rather than shutting down, were not sufficiently compelling to the elected officials to make a deal; when they did act the emergency appropriation was an underpayment.

Faculty Union over Faculty Governance  255 Although CSU and other Illinois universities pose an extreme case, they are emblematic of a national disinvestment in public higher education. U.S. Secretary of Education Duncan noted in 2013 that compared to a generation ago, states are spending 25 percent less per Full-Time Equivalent student (or “FTE”, the common measure of student enrollment in higher education since not all students take a full-time “load” of classes). This pace accelerated after the recession of 2008 and had not recovered even when states ran budget surpluses. The federal Pell Grant program for low-income students is, for the next decade, running about a $50 billion shortfall (Duncan, 2013). The budget standoff in Illinois compresses in time what has been happening more slowly across the country as states have dramatically cut their support for even their flagship institutions (Newfield, 2008). Illinois was not the only state in 2016 that assaulted public higher education through the budgeting process. In January 2016, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed a 2016– 17 state budget that reduced spending on the senior colleges of the City University of New York by $485 million. The Republican majority in the NYS Senate upheld those cuts in their non-binding budget resolution, citing concerns about anti-Semitic speech and acts on some CUNY campuses. The final state budget froze tuition for students, but didn’t appropriate funds to replace the expected tuition income, or to fund contract settlements with the faculty and staff who had been without a contract for five years and a raise for six years, or the clerical workers whose last contract and raise came seven years ago. Although those cuts were not enacted, the ease with which the Governor proposed them and the State Senate accepted them, and the overall inadequate appropriation, demonstrates the tenuous nature of public funding for the 285,000 mostly minority and immigrant students in the CUNY system. The CUNY colleges that grant bachelors and masters degrees, referred to within the system as “senior” colleges to distinguish them from the community colleges, are cutting their budgets by 3 percent for 2016–17, after a 3 percent cut last year, for a budget reduction of 6 percent from 2014–15, despite a Democratic governor, Democratic controlled state assembly, and a state budget surplus. In an age of defunding, the most basic decisions about university life, reflected in these funding debates, are made in state legislatures and city councils. Faculty behavior does not yet reflect these realities. While the United States and each of the fifty states defund public higher education, university faculty members continue teaching, researching, and publishing. This work is, after all, what they trained for in graduate school, and these are the passions that led them to seek university careers. When not teaching, researching or publishing, faculty spend time advising students, and sitting in departmental, divisional, and institution-wide committee meetings, making faculty governance work. With the tremendous rise in adjuncts, and the decrease in the number of full-time faculty, and the work involved in

256  David Gerwin hiring and supporting adjuncts, full-time faculty are trying to fill all of the governance roles created during the post-WWII era, when there were twice as many full-time faculty, and fewer students. However, faculty governance mechanisms have no influence on the state or city budgetary and administrative processes that shape their universities, both their working lives and the learning opportunities afforded or denied to their students. Faculty governance still matters, but in the present it also functions as a shell game absorbing faculty attention while the “pea” of funding and other consequential matters has been palmed and is beyond the reach of faculty no matter how much time they invest in committees. In contrast to formal governance, for faculty members working in public institutions in states that allow unionization and collective bargaining, the unions provide the most direct avenue for influencing consequential state policy. The firings taking place at CSU and the defeated proposal to cut one third of the CUNY senior college budget illustrate this point, since neither were sent to faculty senates or department meetings for deliberation or approval. CSU has a unionized faculty, so a union is no guarantee of protection. Unions can lose fights. But unions can and do fight political battles around education, and at least provide faculty a voice in the debates that most shape their institutions. In this chapter, I pursue this argument through a case study of a single teacher certification policy in New York. Teacher certification policies have budget implications, but this case is not a funding issue; it is a policy issue that matters to education departments. In the name of governance, many faculty members in education departments are largely responsible for accreditation tasks and compliance with state certification requirements. These governance tasks absorb large quantities of faculty time without giving faculty a voice in developing these requirements. By contrast, faculty unions advocate to legislators and administrative policy makers about funding and about education policy. This chapter follows the introduction of the “education Teacher Performance Assessment” (edTPA) as a requirement for state certification, and advances the claims that unions rather than governance mechanisms allow faculty a direct say in the policies that shape their institutions and most affect their students. Designed by Stanford faculty (Stanford Center for Assessment Learning and Equity- SCALE), the edTPA is intended to strengthen teacher professionalism by codifying a knowledge-base for teaching, and requiring teacher candidates to demonstrate mastery of that knowledge by reflecting on (in secondary social sciences) 11 classroom artifacts (lesson plans, classroom video, student work) in response to prompts associated with 15 rubrics covering planning (including for the specific classroom context, the social science phenomenon, and general and disciplinary specific literacy goals), instruction, and assessment. Passing scores are set individually in each state that adopts it, may differ by subject areas, or have local variations from the national pattern. The edTPA may be a licensure requirement in some states, as it currently is in NYS making it a “high stakes” assessment here, or it may

Faculty Union over Faculty Governance  257 provide external feedback for teacher candidates and teacher education programs and additional information for hiring committees in states where it is used but not a certification requirement (http://edtpa.aacte.org/). In terms of time, this chapter focuses on the period when the New York State Education Department (NYSED) introduced the edTPA to teacher educators, from December 2012 through May of 2014. It explains how the union opposed, with some success, the unilateral introduction of the edTPA for “consequential” use. The decision to adopt the edTPA has its roots in New York States’ 2009 application for funding under the federal “Race to the Top” education program, which dealt broadly with policies aimed at improving teaching and learning in P-12 schools, including adoption of the Common Core and related testing policies, so this narrative will touch on those broader debates. The New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) headquarters includes some staff who follow policy proposals in the state education department and the state legislature. NYSUT contacted me and a number of other teacher educators in 2009 as the NYSED provided notice of these proposed changes. NYSUT, the umbrella organization for all state teachers unions, as well as the faculty unions of CUNY, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) and the State University of New York (SUNY), the United University Professors (UUP), is in a unique position to consider the impacts of P-12 and teacher education policies on school districts and schools of education. In Fall 2009 the NYS Commissioner of Education released his blueprint for the Race to the Top application and the NYS Regents, charged with setting education policy, endorsed the plan in principle. On December 9, 2009, NYSUT held a meeting in Albany with teacher education faculty from across NYS to review the proposals and formulate a response to the state, which was sent as a letter to Commissioner of Education Steiner on December 18 (Neira, Bowen, and Smith, 2009). I attended that meeting. Although I did nothing further either directly within the union or through the union with either NYSED or the state legislature, I learned more about the state proposals than any other faculty I knew. At CUNY, resistance by faculty to the edTPA took place within the faculty union, rather than the normal organs of academic governance such as departments and faculty senates. Why? Years of accommodating assessment demands, and a belief in working “within channels,” along with some faculty support for edTPA, left departments and divisions unable to serve as sites of resistance. The faculty union, despite some unfamiliarity with teacher education, understood the language of privatization and educational reform, and provided crucial resources for voicing and mobilizing protest. Too, the CUNY faculty union is an affiliate of the statewide New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) and nationally with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). These larger unions are primarily K-12 teacher unions, and so they had resources available to help CUNY union leaders understand the implications of teacher education policies in ways that would not be

258  David Gerwin possible had the CUNY union affiliated with, for example, the United Auto Workers. Deans and faculty working with them did not accept the original state plan to impose the edTPA on teacher certification candidates without any resources for education programs or examples. They wrung money from New York State and forced the creators of the edTPA to provide workshops featuring actual scored portfolios. The argument of this chapter is that, while worthwhile, these victories aided faculty compliance with state policies. Only the union supported faculty in advocating for a vision of a different future for teacher education. The chapter contrasts the role of faculty governance versus the role of the union in responding to the edTPA within the City University of New York. Although recounting current events, this narrative draws upon the author’s training as a historian to work with documents and interviews to reconstruct past events, and seeks to identify structures that limit individual’s freedom of action, and also places where actors possess agency and make choices. While the methodology draws upon the discipline of history, the form of the chapter harks back to a much older American genre: the conversion narrative. A few moments are portrayed as pivotal to my awakening to the role a faculty union can play. Since this chapter recounts events I have lived through, interjects my subjective experience of them into the broader chronology, and the thesis reflects my conversion to union-based activism, readers should scrutinize the claims with the same care and skepticism as a committee of Puritans considering the narrative of a church applicant who claimed to be saved.1

∞∞∞ Non-Disclosure On Wednesday morning, January 23, 2013, I was settling into my chair in a large room at City College, one of the 18 campuses of the City University of New York. I teach Secondary Education at Queens College, and I was in a roomful of faculty colleagues from across CUNY. We had gathered for a presentation by employees of the Stanford Center for Assessment Learning and Equity (SCALE) that was to feature actual scored portfolio material from California teachers drawn from a pre-cursor to the edTPA. Most education faculty only learned about the edTPA in the spring of 2012. Although NYS did indicate in 2009 that it would pursue performance-based assessment, the state had been working to develop its own assessment. It was only in March of 2012 that the NYS Board of Regents adopted the recommendation of the state DOE to adopt SCALE’s edTPA instead, with a swift implementation timetable (King, 2012). Schools of education were to receive copies of the handbooks in 2012–13 for formative use, and all May 2014 graduates had to pass the edTPA (passing score to be determined in late 2013).

Faculty Union over Faculty Governance  259 For nearly all of us this would be the first time we encountered anything but the edTPA handbooks, and I was told that this training was scheduled only under fierce pressure from the CUNY deans, who demanded that SCALE share actual, scored submissions with New York teacher educators. We had been instructed to bring laptops in order to work with portfolio materials in our specific subject areas. The students who I would meet in just a few days for my Spring 2013 social studies methods class would student teach in 2013–14 and would all be required to pass the edTPA for certification. This left me eager to see what actual portfolio samples looked like, and how they had been scored. My colleague at Queens College was going to work with five students who had volunteered to write and submit edTPAs in return for $1000 each (funded by Race to the Top monies), but we would not see their work until May, and their submissions would not be scored for months. This was my only opportunity to see actual portfolios in time to incorporate any edTPA-related assistance in my spring 2013 methods syllabus. After a brief overview of the day, SCALE staff came around with thumb drives loaded with portfolio samples and helped us copy materials onto our laptops and make certain that it opened. They also passed around a form for us to sign, and when I glanced at it I saw that it was a Non-­Disclosure Agreement (NDA). It defined as confidential “any and all” evaluation materials, including but not limited to sample candidate performances and video of those performances. It forbade the disclosure of any confidential material “in whole or part” without the express written consent of SCALE except for local evaluation training on campus (edTPA local Evaluation NonDisclosure Agreement). This oath of silence caught me off guard. I’d participated in scoring student test materials before, as someone hired by the College Board to score the AP US history examination, and as an unpaid group of stake-holders setting a cut-score for the New York State Content Specialty Test (CST). I had never been handed an NDA in either of those situations, let alone in a setting when I was seeing sample materials, not test papers from current students. I have signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement in order to receive de-identified student data from New York City as part of a research study, but in that case I was allowed to share the data once I had de-identified it. Instead of an agreement to facilitate scholarly debate and exchange, this document would silence me. I immediately raised my hand and told a SCALE staff member that I didn’t intend to sign the paper. She took me to the person running the event for SCALE, who clarified that, indeed, while I could say whatever I liked about the rubrics, I could not speak about the details of any video clip or work sample and how it had been scored with anyone other than faculty at Queens or students in my classroom. She confirmed that the NDA barred me from picking up the phone or using email to contact other colleagues in my professional organization, the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies to tell them what

260  David Gerwin I thought of the quality of the student portfolio samples, or the way they had been scored. It prevented me from meeting with a colleague at Teachers College, even if she too had students who had to pass the edTPA, to discuss the edTPA work samples. The SCALE staff member quite cordially explained that the samples we would see contained the images of P-12 students and their work that SCALE lacked explicit permission to share nationally. Pressed by the deans of Education at CUNY to provide sample portfolios, they made these available although the students’ parents had only signed a form allowing the student teacher to submit their work and images as part of an edTPA, while it was only the student teachers who had given SCALE permission to share their work. To protect the identities of those minors, SCALE’s IRB required that everyone at the CUNY training sign an NDA. She claimed no intention to prevent the free flow of discussion about the edTPA, but an attempt to protect the privacy rights of children. I sympathized but didn’t sign the NDA. Obviously, SCALE agreed with the premise of the CUNY deans that it was impossible to discuss the edTPA with the rubrics alone, or to prepare us for helping student teachers without looking at the application of those rubrics to specific work samples in our own disciplines. In that case, given that New York State was now leading the nation in using the edTPA “consequentially”—to award or deny initial certification—SCALE had a responsibility to obtain and share “clean” edTPA portfolio samples with all of the permissions for sharing them in place, or SCALE had to inform New York State that they simply were not ready yet for consequential use in 2014. Race to the Top funds, which were paying for this effort, could be used this semester during the pilot to develop such samples in New York State and summative use could occur a year later. I was not going to sign an NDA about samples of a state-mandated certification requirement that would prevent me from discussing the quality of the requirement or the quality of the scoring with research colleagues or the broader community. In response, the SCALE staff member informed me that I would have to leave the training if I didn’t sign the NDA, and called my dean and department chair over and explained the situation to them. My chair pointed out that if I left the training I would still be unable to discuss the edTPA scoring with colleagues in CUFA as I wouldn’t know anything about the scoring, while if I stayed at least I would know what I wasn’t talking about. My dean simply said that whatever I decided to do, we should agree that SCALE had an impressive commitment to protecting student privacy when we discussed the edTPA with our candidates. After I again declined to sign the edTPA another SCALE staff member confiscated the thumb drive, wiped the material off of my laptop, and then told me that I was free to leave. Neither my dean nor department chair uttered a word of protest. None of the faculty present ever initiated any follow-up with SCALE to raise concerns about the NDA. On this January morning there did not seem to be an effective

Faculty Union over Faculty Governance  261 faculty response to this moment. The inability of faculty to respond was also the case a month earlier when we considered the edTPA at a department meeting.

A Resolution The Queens College Secondary Education department formally discussed passing a resolution to disapprove of the edTPA at our December 2012 department meeting. We voted to write such a resolution and consider it. We were also having an end of semester potluck celebration immediately after our meeting. While we were eating, two colleagues wrote a statement that condemned the edTPA for interfering with our academic freedom and for creating inequality. They stressed that some schools would have plenty of in-house equipment for video-taping classes, while poorer schools would ask our students to record classes with whatever equipment our students could find. The statement circulated during the potluck. I don’t recall anyone objecting, but we didn’t meet after lunch and formally vote on the resolution, and it certainly did not circulate in advance for discussion. Instead, colleagues placed copies of the resolution in faculty mailboxes in all three education departments, Secondary Education, Elementary Education, and Education & Community Programs. In 15 years at Queens College I’d never seen much in the way of a reaction to any faculty resolution, and our department rarely passed policy resolutions anyhow. Nor had anyone ever bothered to communicate a resolution to the other departments. This resolution was different, as the swift distribution that afternoon demonstrated. The act of placing the resolution in faculty mailboxes provoked an equally prompt response. Notices appeared in every faculty mailbox in all three departments within the Division of Education at Queens College explaining that the resolution had never officially passed at our department meeting, and it was not the Secondary Education department’s policy to oppose the edTPA.

Faculty Governance and edTPA: An Overview As a faculty, we dropped the issue, rather than coming back in the spring with the exact same statement and passing it again. Why? It never came up for discussion, but my personal assessment is that the impact wasn’t worth the anguish. Our department chair spends hours of each week on email with individual faculty members, attends numerous meetings on our behalf, and does her best to get our department a reasonable share of the scarce resources at our university. We all respect and appreciate the work she does on our behalf. Passing the resolution would accomplish no visible objective, but it did seem to frustrate her. Without question she would not object to a resolution that we introduced, debated, and passed with attention to process, but the minimal result of simply making it clear that a majority of us opposed the edTPA did not seem worth the upset that it caused our chair.

262  David Gerwin These are personal reflections based on my sense of our department rather than the result of actually asking people for their recollections. The college-wide Academic Senate was another potential forum within our governance structure where we could raise concerns. This would involve explaining the edTPA to colleagues and students in other academic departments in Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, Math and Sciences, a significant burden since most of these divisions have no idea about the regulations of teacher education. And, again, what tangible difference would that organizing effort make in the imposition of edTPA on our programs? Since it is not a college policy, it doesn’t make a huge difference if the Academic Senate passes a resolution about the policy. Our student teachers must past the edTPA for certification whatever our colleagues might think. Faculty governance mechanisms primarily provide a forum for acting within the university. Academic Senate resolutions regarding academic policies adopted at Queens College, or by the CUNY-wide Faculty Senate, may come to the attention of the Chancellor and the CUNY Board of Trustees. Academic Senate resolutions are not, however, even reported to the New York State Regents or the New York State Department of Education. The minutes of the Academic Senate are not sent to the state unless they authorize a new academic program. Only at that point are they included on the monthly Chancellor’s University Report (CUR) to the New York State Department of Education. In retrospect, Queens College also has at least one individual in the college president’s office working on legislative relations, and it might have been possible to engage him in outreach about state policy. In practice, no one from the Division of Education has had contact with this individual, or considered this a possibility. Another way of phrasing this point is that faculty in the Division of Education learn about state policy through communications from the Dean of Education. We do not, ourselves, regularly check the NYS Regents website, or communicate directly with the state. We receive notification of policy, after it has been made, from the Dean as we learn what we must do to comply with new initiatives. Rarely, someone might notify us of a policy under consideration, and when that happens we usually send feedback to the Dean, or make comments at a divisional retreat. As a Division of Education we have not built an independent mechanism for commenting on state policy, nor have we been in the habit of asking our Academic Senate to pass resolutions directed at the NYS Department of Education, the NYS Legislature, or the NYS Board of Regents. The case study of the edTPA illustrates this point. Had we built a policy arm we would have had many policies to comment upon. To place the edTPA in the context in which we considered—or ignored—this new performance assessment requires an appreciation for the many changes announced as New York State applied for and won $750 million in federal Race to the Top funding. NYS adopted the Common Core for K-12 education and changed P-12 student tests to align with the Common

Faculty Union over Faculty Governance  263 Core. It introduced a new rating system for teachers (in New York City these included Charlotte Danielson’s rubrics for classroom observations), basing forty percent of a teacher’s effectiveness rating (and ineffective teachers can be dismissed) on a value-added measure of their students’ performance on the new standardized tests. These were all part of the regulatory changes to the P-12 schooling system made in order to qualify for federal Department of Education “Race to the Top” funding. Each policy affected the schools where education faculty placed our student teachers. For faculty, it was an overwhelming number of changes to follow. In the meantime, education faculty also managed the increasing assessment demands of national accreditation. In the years between 2010 and 2012 each program in my Division of Education needed to provide data and analysis to a Specialized Professional Association (SPA). These long and complex reports analyze every aspect of a certification program, including standardized testing results, at various “checkpoints” from admission, to acquisition of content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and during clinical practice such as student teaching, through to graduation. At each step programs provide data on the certification candidates, and consider larger issues related to program improvement.2 Faculty were also preparing for the division-wide accreditation visit that took place in December 2012. Even though I was on sabbatical in 2011–2012, I prepared a SPA submission for my social studies program in March 2012. I presume that most other faculty members took only minimal notice of this letter from Commissioner King, particularly as it contained no specifics alerting us to the extensive and unusual nature of this performance assessment. At least in my Division of Education, we heard no more about the TPA that spring.

Victories for Deans of Education and Faculty Governance In the fall 2012 semester the TPA began to come into focus. We were sent a copy of the field test booklet from 2011. Although the handbook had technically expired when we obtained it in September, it had all the components of the assessment and provided fair warning that anyone submitting a TPA faced a task of significant magnitude, one that might take a semester to complete. In early January 2013 the Dean of Education contacted me about recruiting social studies student teachers to participate in a trial of the new assessment that spring. By the end of the month I had been thrown out of the SCALE training at City College, and fifty colleague in education from across CUNY had signed an NDA in order to see classroom video, P-12 student work, and TPA submissions from certification candidates in California. These training sessions, and the spring field tests that paid student teachers for completing and submitting a TPA portfolio, were all funded from the $750 million that New York State won in Race to the Top funding. Originally teacher education programs were left out of the plan for the funds, but after protests by the deans at many schools

264  David Gerwin of education, in 2012 the NYSED agreed to make $10 million available to CUNY, SUNY and the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities (the private institutions) for professional development related to new exam development. My social studies program received $5,000 of this money in the summer of 2013 and 2014 respectively, and $1,000 trickled down to me. In both summers we funded a team comprised of a classroom teacher, an Assistant Principal (the NYC equivalent of a social studies department chair), a teacher candidate who had gone through the edTPA process, a history department member, and a social studies education faculty member. The first summer provided the opportunity to completely redesign the fall Curriculum and Assessment course that accompanies the Initial Clinical Experience, the first half of student teaching in our program. The revision matched the assignments to the edTPA, ensuring that student would basically write a complete drat of at least one portfolio. The intention was that students would finish up that portfolio and submit it over the winter break, allowing them to experience student teaching free and clear of the edTPA. The second summer provided an opportunity for revisiting that course, placing a greater emphasis on the video-taping, and creating an assessment for accreditation based upon several different course assignments. We were lucky in that second summer to hire a teacher who had served as an edTPA scorer, so we were able to rewrite our course assignments to emphasize the precise language that scorers looked for in the three different tasks—planning, instruction, and assessment. Deans of Education at SUNY and CUNY fought for and won the SCALE trainings with actual scored portfolio materials and the $10 million of funding that paid for summer work and other innovations at my institution. Other campuses opened computer labs just for edTPA support, or staffed “edTPA boot camps” during a public school vacation week in February so student teachers could work on portfolios. None of this was originally part of the NYSED and SCALE plan for rolling out the Teacher Performance Exam. According to NYSED these programs, collectively, reached over 20,000 individuals, from K-12 members to higher education faculty, staff and administrators (D’Agati and Wagner, 2015, p.3).

Table 15.1  Total Meetings and Participants for edTPA in New York

SUNY CUNY cIcu TOTAL

Total Meetings

Total Participants

2,149 1,884 2,862 6,895

8,765 6,115 5,759 20,693

Faculty Union over Faculty Governance  265 These data appear to summarize earlier self-reports of the number of faculty, staff, and school partners attending meetings held after the release of the $10 million in professional development funds to teacher education programs (NYS Board of Regents, 2015). I do not know how this data was reported to NYSED or how NYSED staff compiled these data. As far as I know only two CUNY-wide trainings led by SCALE took place in early January 2013 and collectively they reached perhaps 100 people. Departmental meetings to discuss edTPA were perhaps “supported” by Race to the Top funds if someone in the department had a course release to discuss them. Still, it is fun to calculate that if each meeting was an hour, and each “work day” is 8 hours long, then 6115 people giving a single hour to edTPA, whatever overlap and duplication that represents, is over 775 faculty days spent on the edTPA. It seems likely that this calculation is self-serving and off by an order of magnitude if one wants to know about attendance at meetings with SCALE or extremely well-informed edTPA facilitators, and perhaps more realistic if you count every single faculty moment when edTPA and the other new tests were mentioned for 18 months in NYS. Even as a rough measure, it suggests that what the deans achieved by demanding some funding and some more handson views of the edTPA materials was not trivial in scope. All institutions were also provided with vouchers allowing candidate to submit edTPA portfolios to Pearson or take tests offered by Pearson with Race to the Top funds. According to Deputy Commissioner of Higher Education for NYS, the total number of vouchers statewide was 600 for edTPA (a cost of $180,000 if each voucher was worth $300, the cost of the exam) and 1200 for the other new examinations ($210,000 since they cost $175 each). He indicated in his testimony that more vouchers would be forthcoming, but did not provide figures for them (NYS Assembly Hearing, 2014, p. 21). Schools of Education fought for and obtained $10 million to support efforts to help faculty and students with the new exams, and $390,000 in vouchers. This amounts to 1.3 percent of the federal dollars awarded NYS in Race to the Top funding, although the bulk of those monies went to P-12 teachers and students, a much larger constituency. What is the worth of the $10 million the deans won? Twenty-five full-time faculty currently teach and research in the Queens College Department of Secondary Education, roughly costing $100,000 each in salary, or $2.5 million overall, excluding staff. Queens College has 3 departments in our division of education, and elementary education is larger. Ten million dollars is very roughly the cost of operating the QC Division of Education for a year. According to the website of the New York State Education Department Office of Teaching Initiatives, as of March 15, 2015 there were over 100 teacher preparation institutions in NYS. Ten million dollars would provide each school of education with $100,000 if evenly divided. Those monies might fund a testing coordinator, open computer labs, and buy equipment for filming classroom lessons. It is not insignificant. It is also equivalent

266  David Gerwin to the tuition and fees of just two students enrolled at Teachers College, Columbia University. For a private institution with comparable fees and adequate enrollment, $100,000 looks smaller. Faculty governance can also involve choices about how to manage state mandates. edTPA was mandated, but during this same time period that deans of education obtained funding from NYSED, the Queens College Secondary Education curriculum committee took up a proposal related to the Content Specialty Examinations (CSTs). Introduced during an early set of reforms to teacher education in NYS (announced in 1999, effective in 2003) these examinations measure the knowledge of English, or social studies, or mathematics, and so on for each certification area, that each student should have mastered in their Arts and Sciences coursework. Programs with more than 10 students and pass-rates below 80 percent face a process of remediation monitored through a “corrective action plan” and can risk program closure. Programs often need to provide details of each student’s score on different subsections of the exam as part of obtaining national recognition from their SPA. Yet NYS does not report specific student scores to colleges of education. Our curriculum committee met to discuss what we might require from students to ensure an over 80 percent pass rate and to obtain the scoring data needed for accreditation. The simple means to obtain a 100 percent pass rate for program completers would be to require each candidate to pass the CST before student teaching. Requiring a copy of the score report would provide our department the subscores necessary for accreditation reports. Faculty members who favored this approach pointed out that without a passing score on the CST students cannot obtain certification, so allowing students without passing CST scores to invest an entire semester in student teaching didn’t make any sense, and risked closing our programs. A passing score required prior to student teaching meant only candidates who passed the CST would complete our program, guaranteeing us a 100 percent passing rate, and ensuring that all of our student could be certified and our programs would not be threatened with closure. Other faculty argued for requiring students to take the CST and share the scores before student teaching, but allowing them to student teach even if they failed. Faculty supporting that option, myself included, pointed out that students who failed the CST often passed on the second attempt, and they could continue taking the examination all spring and summer long, and obtain certification in time for the next school year. It seemed cruel to force them to wait another year to student teach in order to pass a test. Undergraduates could not be expected to take the CST too far in advance of student teaching, as presumably their coursework provided the basis for passing the exam, and they needed to be at least substantially through their junior year. We also admitted students to the post-baccalaureate program who needed additional content area coursework, allowing them to complete their studies in the content area while taking their education courses. Following deliberation and discussion over several months the committee chose the proposal requiring students to take the CST as co-requisite with

Faculty Union over Faculty Governance  267 the clinical experience, but allowing them to student teach even with a failing grade. Students with failing scores were required to create a remediation plan with a program advisor to support their efforts to pass the CST at a subsequent examination date. These were the victories obtained through the faculty governance and “working through channels” system by spring 2013. SCALE was forced to share some actual scored TPA submissions, albeit protected by the NonDisclosure Agreements; the NYSED redirected 1.3 percent of Race to the Top funding towards education programs; and in my own department faculty made the decisions about whether or not to allow candidates to student teach even if they had not yet passed the Content Specialty Test. These measures all involved compliance with the edTPA and other testing, managing implementation as well as possible.

A Broader Context: Common Core The travails of teacher education programs appear relatively minor when compared to parental opposition to the NYS testing program associated with the Common Core. As the Pearson-produced tests termed many students below proficient without releasing the questions, across the state parents began opting their students out of taking the examinations, the “optout” movement. On a listening tour across the state NYS Commissioner of Education found himself repeatedly booed by parents. These stirrings led to a change in leadership at the state union level. The NYSUT leadership had acceded to the Common Core and testing program and endorsed the Race to the Top application. This helped the state obtain the federal $750 million at a time of significant budget cuts, and gave them a role in implementation that allowed districts statewide to include “local measures” rather than standardized test scores in their value-added formulas. The New York City schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who supported Common Core and the associated testing never reached an agreement with the city union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), on a substitute local measure. At their statewide convention the New York City teachers’ union joined with the two higher-education faculty unions to vote out the more moderate NYSUT leadership. The same New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) statewide assembly voted to withdraw its agreement to the Common Core and passed a highly unusual “no confidence” motion in New York State Commissioner of Education John King (Crowe, 2014).

Opposing edTPA Outside Of Governance: The Power of Unions Complaints against the new certification exams had also accelerated. In response, the New York State Assembly scheduled a highly unusual joint hearing of the Education and Higher Education committees to take place on

268  David Gerwin April 30, 2014. The process for signing up to testify in legislative hearings is public and on-line, and accessible. Nothing in faculty governance tracks or facilitates that process. Individual, politically engaged faculty members may, on their own time, track that process and show up to testify. In contrast, NYSUT has a dedicated staffer who tracks pending teacher certification proposals from the NYCDOE, the Regents, and the state legislature. My local union, the PSC, has a single legislative coordinator for 25,000 faculty and staff, but she coordinated with NYSUT and sent out an email to those of us in education across CUNY who had been meeting through the union. I signed up to testify, and the union arranged transportation to Albany. A bill in the legislature proposed a flat one-year moratorium on the edTPA. The Regents had a scheduled meeting for that Monday and Tuesday while the Assembly hearing was scheduled for Wednesday. In the face of opposition to the edTPA and the pending Assembly hearing, the NYS Education Department began negotiating the terms of a “safety net” for the Regents to pass as an emergency measure. It is entirely possible that, during this 48 hour period when the negotiations occurred, the Deputy Commissioner for Higher Education, John D’Agati, communicated with a CUNY or SUNY dean of Education or some other faculty structure. I have no evidence that any such communication occurred. What I do know is that NYSED was actively negotiating with NYSUT, and NYSUT reached out to teacher education faculty through the PSC and UUP. During those two days, April 28–29, I received a few phone calls and a number of emails and provided some input as the terms of the safety net were hammered out. My input into state policy came through the union. The safety net agreement required students to pay the $300 fee to Pearson and submit an edTPA portfolio containing all required components, with audible video and P-12 student work (no “this is my edTPA—cash my check” submissions). In “edTPA-speak” the submission would not qualify for the safety net if a submission came back to the candidate with “condition codes” noting some technical flaw that prevented scoring. An edTPA portfolio that had been submitted, scored, and marked a failure qualified for the safety net. Students could take the ATS-W3 (the Secondary Assessment of Teaching Skills-Written), an exam that candidates pass at a rate over 99 percent (Decker, 2015). The Regents passed this emergency safety net on April 29, 2014 the day before the Assembly hearing. In addition to providing a pathway to certification for those with a failing edTPA score, the unions pushed hard for, and won, the NYS Commissioner’s agreement to establish an edTPA taskforce. Although in his initial testimony to the NYS Assembly Deputy Commissioner D’Agati described the safety net, he barely mentioned the task force until he was prodded to elaborate by questions from the Assembly member who chairs Higher Education, Deborah Glick (NYS Assembly, 2014, pp. 35–37). When I sat in the hearing room at the New York State Assembly on April 30, 2014, and John D’Agati finished testifying, I could not help

Faculty Union over Faculty Governance  269 noticing that not a single CUNY or SUNY dean of education appeared. It simply seemed a moment of great cowardice when, having to present a complex portrait of the difficulties involved in the edTPA, the deans collectively failed to turn up and testify when it would risk angering the NYSED, the agency that approves all of their programs and with which they are constantly in contact. Lori Quigley, the Dean of Education for the private Sage Colleges, was the only dean to testify and she spoke in favor of the edTPA. Rather, the second panel featured the executive director of NYSUT, the President and the Vice President for Academics of the SUNY faculty union, and the First Vice President of the CUNY union. That glance around the room convinced me that the faculty union, working with the NYS teachers unions, had my back, while my dean and faculty governance in general only worried about compliance. That is an emotional reaction, not analysis. A more charitable formulation is that a dean of Education has much to lose, and cannot permit himself or herself the luxury of testifying against state policy at a public hearing, since it is not a personal risk but an institutional risk. Perhaps it is bravery or immense self-control to keep quiet when you wish to speak up. If that is the case, then it presents a significant limitation on working “through channels.” At some point, policies require public opposition. In my personal view, the edTPA and other state tests and the instant implementation of those tests already threated education students and education programs with great harm. Over the summer the PSC introduced a resolution at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) national convention that specifically condemned the edTPA as introduced in NYS. The resolution also reaffirmed that teacher educators should be included in decision making about performance assessments, asserting that for-profit corporations such as Pearson are inappropriate partners, and noting the lack of any predictive validity for the edTPA. The new language pointedly stated, “Neither edTPA nor any other performance assessment should be tied to a high-stakes testing regime and the outsourcing of evaluation, especially to for-profit corporations such as Pearson, as it is not an appropriate assessment of teacher education programs and teacher performance.” (AFT Resolution, 2014). This represented a significant qualification to the AFT’s (2012) “raising the bar” position that had called for significant involvement of teacher educators in designing any assessment, but had also supported a “universal and rigorous” entry assessment to initial teacher certification (AFT, 2013). The NYS edTPA taskforce started meeting in August 2014 and concluded its work that December. Although the Commissioner of Education John King did not send any action items on to the NYS Regents, the taskforce provided a forum for teacher educators, superintendents, principals, and cooperating teachers from around the state to discuss issues related to implementation of the edTPA with representatives from SCALE and AACTE, and to certification more generally. To give one example of the broader nature of the conversation, most NYS stand-alone masters degree programs (ones that do

270  David Gerwin not also provide initial teacher certification) require initial certification as a condition of admissions. Under the new system of multiple examinations and an edTPA, that no longer seemed tenable, as students were beginning to enroll directly in the MS Ed after student teaching, but while still finishing all of the examination and edTPA submissions, so they were not yet initially certified. While each teacher education program could resubmit their MS Ed for re-registration, which would involve a great deal of red tape, while the panel recommended that the Regents provide a pathway for programs to simply drop that requirement. Since the Commissioner chose not to create any action items from the panel, that proposal never went forward, but it received a significant hearing and discussion from the assembled group. Many other useful proposals were discussed. During my entire service on the edTPA panel, there was never a CUNY or Queens College sponsored event on edTPA at which I was asked to present on the panel’s work or we discussed a future in which edTPA would not be required. In 2015 New York State Regent Cashin convened Town Hall meetings across New York State on teacher certification examinations. She turned to the UUP and PSC for assistance in organizing the panels, since faculty governance mechanisms had not played any prior role in discussing the edTPA. The union provided staff who coordinated call-in times, organized a conference call number, sent notes around, and tracked developing panels. This mild level of support nonetheless facilitated the organization of the evening. NYS extended the safety net twice, most recently in April 2016. The last round of extensions specifically cited these town hall meetings. I’ve never been extended such support by CUNY for working across campuses to research or organize conversations around the edTPA. This is an unfinished story. Through the PSC and UUP faculty unions, in collaboration with the state teachers union NYSUT, we have fought and won some small victories. The safety nets have ensured many more students who have completed our rigorous, two semesters of student teaching, have a pathway forward into teaching. We are concerned that despite this work, many other students who did not have the $300 for the edTPA or had mishaps in recording their videos or other difficulties, did not submit an edTPA and so did not qualify for the safety net (Gurl et al., 2016). New York State now has a new Commission of Education, Mary Ellen Alia, and a new Chancellor (head of the Board of Regents), Betty Rosa. The NYS Regents have recalled the edTPA taskforce, and these meetings may result in a policy change that will allow all programs that wish to use the edTPA to do so, perhaps without mandating edTPA for all, or without the same high-stakes attached. These conversations are continuing, and that in itself is a victory. Events of the past two years, since that moment when I looked around the hearing room in the state legislature in Albany, have reinforced my impression that faculty governance generally leaves us in the dark and powerless about impending changes in our teaching and learning lives. Governance mechanisms orchestrate compliance once changes have occurred. At worst, they make us bureaucrats with administrative responsibilities that

Faculty Union over Faculty Governance  271 take up significant amounts of our working lives (Graeber, 2015). Faculty governance does not provide input over state policy or budget debates. The faculty union provides advanced notice of policy changes and, with the teachers’ union, a measure of protection. Most importantly, in my experience it has been my union, not my faculty committees, that has provided a site for resistance to certification policies imposed from above without stakeholder input and, crucially, asks me to speak with my colleagues and collectively to imagine what teaching and learning could be like, and to work for that ideal.

Notes   1  Puritan theology held that the Catholic Church erred in arguing that God’s grace could ever been earned by acts, and that original sin condemned all humans to death except for those whom God directly saved through an act of grace. The community of the saved, referred to as “saints”, made up the “invisible church,” and the Puritans aimed to have the “visible church” reflect the invisible church as closely as possible. In order to join a church in New England one had to provide an account of the signs and understanding that demonstrated you had been saved, in addition to behaving as if one had been saved. A committee of the church would examine the applicant. Puritans believed in grace, salvation and conversion from saint to sinner, but they examined each individual closely to determine as best they could if the conversion experienced was genuine, or a trick of the devil. Those Puritans who left England and sailed to the New World were willing to advance conversion narrative, but in later generations their descendants were far less certain of their receipt of grace. As early as 1662 the “halfway covenant” allowed the children and grandchildren of church members partial church membership and the right to take “the Lord’s supper” even if they were uncertain of their own salvation. Jonathan Edward’s “Personal Narratives” reported his eighteenth-century conversion experience, and although later, is an American classic. A review of this chapter suggested that it can be read as an example of this classic American drama, the conversion narrative.  2 A library of exemplary “SPA reports” can be found here: www.ncate.org/­ Accreditation/ProgramReview/ProgramReviewResources/SPAAssessment Library/tabid/460/Default.aspx)  3 www.nystce.nesinc.com/NY_testinfo.asp?t=091

Bibliography American Federation of Teachers. (2012). Raising the bar: Aligning and evaluating teacher preparation and the teaching profession. Washington, DC: Author. American Federation of Teachers. (2013). Raising the bar: Aligning and elevating teacher preparation and the teaching profession. Retrieved June 7, 2016, from www.aft.org/sites/default/files/news/raisingthebar2013.pdf. American Federation of Teachers. (2014). “edTPA and Respect for the Professionalism of Teacher Educators” Resolution adopted 2014. Retrieved June 7, 2016, from www.aft.org/resolution/edtpa-and-respect-professionalism-teacher-educators. Clauss, H., and Francis, M. (2016). “Chicago state university president on school’s financial crisis.” Transcript of broadcast on Chicago Tonight, WTTW, February 16, 2016. Television. Retrieved May 26, 2016 from http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2016/ 02/16/chicago-state-university-president-school-s-financial-crisis.

272  David Gerwin Crowe, K. C. (2014, April 5). NYSUT delegates call for the ouster of State Ed’s John King. Albany Times Union. Retrieved on June 7, 2016 from www.timesunion. com/local/article/NYSUT-delegates-call-for-ouster-of-State-Ed-s-5379662.php. D’Agati, J., and Wagner, K. (2015, April 6). “Proposed options for the creation of safety nets for candidates who take the new teacher certification examinations (ALST, EAS, and the redeveloped CSTs) and an extension of the safety net provisions for the edTPA.” Policy Memo, Higher Education and P-12 Education Committees, NYS Board of Regents, p.23. Decker, G. (2015, March 19). “Aspiring teachers struggled on new tests, data showed, prompting diversity debate.” Chalkbeat (on-line publication of a nonprofit news organization covering education). Retrieved June 6, 2016, from www. chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2015/03/19/aspiring-black-and-hispanic-teaches-struggleon-new-tests-data-show-prompting-new-debate/#.VyH5Oz85hSw. Duncan, A. (2013). The condition of education: 2013. Washington, DC: US Department of Education. Duncan, A. (2016). The coming crossroads in higher education. Remarks of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association Annual Meeting, July 9, 2013. Retrieved May 26, 2016 from www.ed.gov/news/speeches/coming-crossroads-higher-education downloaded. edTPA Local Evaluation NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT Campus Version. (n.d.) Retrieved on May 31, 2016, www.uww.edu/Documents/colleges/coeps/ academics/SignedSCALE%20NDAfor%20edTPA%20Local%20Eval%20copy.pdf. Graeber, D. (2015). The utopia of rules. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House. Gurl, T. J., Caraballo, L., Grey, L., Gunn, J., Gerwin, D., and Bembenutty, H. (2016). Policy, professionalization, privatization, and performance assessment. New York: Springer. Ihejirika, M. (2016, April 29). 300 Lay-offs at Chicago State University. Chicago Sun Times. Retrieved May 26, 2016, from http://chicago.suntimes.com/ news/300-layoffs-at-chicago-state-university/. King, J. (2012, March 23). “Dear Colleagues” letter. Albany, NY: New York State Department of Education. Neira, M., Bowen, B., and Smith, P. (2009, December 18). “Dear Commissioner Steiner” letter. Albany, NY: New York State United Teachers. Retrieved on May 31, 2016 from http://archive.psc-cuny.org/PDF/CommissionerSteinerLetter.pdf. Newfield, C. (2008). Unmaking the public university: The forty-year assault on the middle class. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. New York State Board of Regents. (2015, February). “Update on Higher Education Faculty Development Agreements.” Albany, NY: Author. New York State Assembly Standing Committee on Public Education Standing Committee on Higher Education. (2014). Public hearing new statewide teacher and building leader certification requirements. Held Wednesday April 13, 2014. Albany, NY. Schutz, P. (2016). “Chicago State University Faces Closure over Budget Impasse” transcript of broadcast on Chicago Tonight, WTTW, March 30, 2016. Television. Retrieved on May 26, 2016, http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2016/03/30/ chicago-state-university-faces-closure-over-budget-impasse.

16 The Anatomy of Dissent as Teachers Plan and Lead a Demonstration in Seattle Intersections of Hope, Agency and Collective Action Richard D. Sawyer On the stage in front of a large audience of people, Julianna, an elementary school teacher is delivering a speech at a rally to approximately 2,000 teachers, parents, students, and legislators in Olympia, the capitol of Washington State: We object to No Child Left Behind failed policy. We object to inhumane test requirements. We object to the undemocratic process of adopting these tests. [. . .] We object to how private student data is commercially available to private companies. We object to the lack of trust in classroom experts. We object to the time stolen as SBA [smarter balanced assessment] becomes the main goal of our classroom instruction. We object to the fact that SBA will force more kids to dropout, which will increase poverty, which will increase suicide rates. We object to the use of SBA or any standardized test that directly correlates to family income. We object to the lack of transparency on the SBA test items and scoring mechanisms. We object to forcing young children to sit though hours of bubble tests when they don’t understand what they are even doing. We object to forcing students of special needs to take standardized tests when they’ve already proven to be one and a half to two years behind grade level through standardized tests. We object to how financial backers through the corporate takeover of education are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fund campaigns to elect corporate education reformers—we call them deformers—who will force the SBA upon us because of profit. Now, we are engaging in a struggle. Her speech is notable for a number of reasons. First is what she says: In it she outlines a forceful response to the accountability and testing agenda currently dominating public education in the United States. In her message she stresses how neoliberal projects are increasing poverty and causing student trauma. In the United States, for example, the neoliberal agenda is constricting classroom experiences as well as the promise of education as a force for social and environmental justice (McLaren, 1998). It is forcing students from kindergarten to college to take high stakes tests that sort them into

274  Richard D. Sawyer society’s winners and losers, putting them on a future path of self-worth or disposability (Farenga, Ness, and Sawyer, 2015). Second, is what she does not say: Her message is notable for its selfless character (in contrast to media portrayals of teacher resistance motivated by fears of teacher accountability and pay-for-performance). And finally, she—along with Becca and Susan— the three elementary teachers and leaders of the WABATS (Washington Badassed Teachers), exercises her leadership both inside and clearly outside the classroom, offering new and counter-narrative examples of teacher opposition to the school reform that harms children more generally and to the Common Core State Standards more specifically. Throughout the United States, teachers are organizing and engaging in collective action for democratic change. Recently, Julianna, Becca and Susan organized a major march against the Gates Foundation, the philanthropic arm of one of the most powerful, rich, and neoliberal corporations on the planet. (The website/blog Educating the Gates Foundation is dedicated to this effort.) In an abstract sense, Julianna, Becca, and Susan inspire hope in dark times. Every story that reaches the public about teacher efforts to organize and resist the new testing agenda provides a counter narrative of teacher courage and agency. But in a concrete and lived way, their work humanizes the daily school experiences of their and other public school students in the United States. In this chapter, I examine the resistance of Julianna and Becca. As a context of analysis, I deconstruct from their vantage point—their motivation, action, reflection, challenges, and lived response—one event that they organized, the protest march on the Gates Foundation in July, 2014. I also highlight their vision for a new approach to education in the U.S. In this protest, nearly 2,000 educators marched two miles to the front gates of the charity foundation of the corporation, located at the base of the Space Needle in Seattle. My discussion examines the genesis of change and the beginning of a movement. As part of the larger national movement in opposition to neoliberal forces attacking public education in the U.S. (e.g., the Opt Out of the CCSS Movement), the Washington state contingent of the Badass Teachers Association has currently started organizing and planning both responses to the current situation as well as beginning to suggest new ways to approach education.

Teacher Opposition to the Common Core State Standards Little formal literature exists on teachers who, for the sake of their students and democratic public education, oppose school reforms. Teacher opposition in the literature is often focused on views of teachers as resistant to change or reform (McKenzie and Scheurich, 2008). Much of this literature comes out of educational leadership or organizational change and considers teachers as part of broader issues related to school reform (e.g., Noddings, 2007).

Anatomy of Dissent  275 Studies of teachers as change agents are often framed by teachers’ adoption of or resistance to the adoption of such curriculum reform (Snyder, Bolin, and Zumwalt, 1992). This literature is limited as a conceptual frame for broader, more “mass-movement” teacher opposition to school reform. It often takes a deficit approach to teacher practice, practice which is evaluated by its fidelity to established curriculum frameworks (such as the CCSS) (McKenzie and Scheurich, 2008) or views resistance as a form of “good teacher sense” (Gitlin and Margonis, 1995). Rarely are there broader discussions of how teachers create spaces to combat social injustice (Mills, 1997). More recently there has been renewed interest in the topic of teacher leadership. Silva, Gimbert, and Nolan (2000) mention three waves of teacher leadership as managerial (i.e., further existing school structures and content organizations), expertise-based (i.e., teacher applying their expertise to curriculum tasks), and school re-cultural (i.e., teachers applying their expertise to change school culture). Holland, Eckert, and Allen, 2014) added a fourth wave to the definition to involve teachers leading policy at all levels, thus closing the practice-policy gap. Drawing from the work of Eckert, Ulmer, Khachatryan, and Ledesma (2014), Holland et. al offer that “teacher leadership encompasses the practices through which teachers—individually or collectively—influence colleagues, principals, policy makers, and other potential stakeholders to improve teaching and learning” (p. 436). While the fourth definition of teacher leadership expands the boundaries of teacher leadership to include teachers’ work with stakeholders outside the classroom, the focus of that influence is more narrowly limited to the classroom. Studies that examine the specific professional practices of teachers involved in the leading of large scale movements intended to restore democratic principles to schooling and public education are nearly non-existent. Lacking in the literature are critical examinations of teacher resistance against a backdrop of neoliberalism and globalization. This framing is crucial given the impact of neoliberalism and globalization on public education in the U.S. and the work of its public school teachers. Matus and McCarthy (2003) clarify these changes in relation to students: The contemporary hierarchical arrangement of schooling in countries such as Japan and the United States works to produce differentiating processes, such as testing and streaming, that undermine and fragment student identities. These differentiating processes, in turn, help to generate a powerful ground of culturally significant distinctions between student and student, student and teacher, and so forth. (p. 74) Such new arrangements profoundly alter the curriculum and thus the work of teachers who become complicit (unknowingly or knowingly) in implementing curriculum that is increasingly found to cause student trauma

276  Richard D. Sawyer (Farenga, Ness, and Sawyer, 2013; Goldberg, 2005; Harris, 2012; Holmes, 2006; Johnson, Johnson, Farenga, and Ness, 2008). While the majority of teachers who resist such measures do so in their classroom, there is a growing group of teachers who are now leading new responses that also involve large-scale organizing of other teachers and community members to “opt out” of the testing linked to the new Common Core State Standards. This particular study provides fairly detailed portraits of two teachers involved in leading large teacher-opposition movements to the CCSS. My intention in the study is to use their work involved in planning and organizing the march on the Gates Foundation as an analytical context for the examination of their resistance more generally. I argue that a new conceptual lens is needed to more fully understand the meaning and implications of such work.

Deconstructing Views of a Moment: Drawing from a Phenomenological Methodology I used a phenomenological methodology to examine how and why from their perspectives Becca and Julianna chose at a particular moment in time to organize the march in Seattle against the Gates Foundation. Without prompting, I sought to explore first the experiences they mention and then how they situated these experiences within their life histories. An underlying theme I sought to explore was how they were able to step outside the everyday, taken-for-granted aspects of their lives: How did they free their thinking from the limiting structures of daily routines (Pinar and Reynolds, 1992)? Where were the celebrations and were their moments of light and identity, when their “lived burdens can be shown to have their source in too limited a view of things” (Smith, 1991, p. 189)? Drawing from this methodology, I sought to ask Becca and Julianna to recall the “lived” origins and foundations of their actions. I interviewed Becca and Julianna each once and sent them a copy of my interpretation of their perceptions and actions. They both then gave feedback and revised my interpretation of events. For the data analysis, I sought to examine what Maxine Greene (1987) referred to the phenomenological context of their lifeworld, their “experienced context.” Informing the analysis, I followed these steps:

• I considered experience and perception as interrelated but not totally • • •

intertwined. I situated the analysis within the lifeworlds of Becca and Julianna. I examined how the social practices within their lives formed their actions and choices. And, I examined how their conceptual tensions, challenges, and dilemmas were generative (Pinar and Reynolds, 1992).

Anatomy of Dissent  277 Further, as phenomenological research, this inquiry involved myself and my writing (Pinar and Reynolds, 1992). The following are themes from Julianna’s and then Becca’s perceptions of organizing the march.

Julianna Considers the Genesis of a Demonstration Julianna was an elementary school teacher in a city just southeast of Seattle. She grew up not far from where she taught, in the south part of Seattle. In high school she was active in political issues and decided to become a teacher. She received her BA in 2001 and her master’s degree in education the following year. Her teacher preparation program emphasized a constructivist model of learning. As she stated, “My undergrad classes focused on the constructivist model . . . and this made (and still does) sense to me.” She taught for two full years before taking three years of maternity leave to have children. She returned as a part-time teacher to the fifth grade classroom in 2006–07. When she returned to the classroom she was disappointed to note the large elementary class sizes of 29–30 students and “increasingly realized that my way of teaching wasn’t what the federal government wanted . . . [and] that there was a new world order in education.” After returning to the classroom she became legislative chair for her own kids’ PTA before her children became enrolled in her current school. She thought that her part-time position gave her the time to begin to work with the Washington Education Association (WEA). [I had] a lot of opportunities to train/work with the union on policy. I was groomed for leadership because I had days off (my kids’ father worked from home and we had enough money for me to stay part-time for five years). I traveled to many conferences and trainings and also worked with the Center for Teaching Quality for a few years. She became Political Action Committee Board Director for the WEA council and lobbied and trained other teachers on how to become politically active under the union’s tutelage. She then began to work more nationally and became part of the Save Our Schools national coordinating committee. She helped plan and then attended a large rally they held in Washington, DC in 2011. She mentioned that the networking from that event led to additional lobbying of state legislators and congress people for reclaiming curriculum and its accompanying assessment. While continuing in her union role, she joined the new WABATS, creating a new platform for teacher activism: My activism with BATs is far more satisfying as it is much more radical and aligned with the outrage I feel about how schools have been

278  Richard D. Sawyer transformed and how silent the vast majority of teachers are about all the changes. There is so much complaining internally but not enough teachers feel empowered or informed enough to do the kinds of things that would bring about real change to education. She continued to work with the union in addition to organizing in WABATS, lobbied for educational issues, and trained teachers from around the state on political issues. Exceptionally active in change initiatives, she is a member of Social Equality Educators, Center for Teaching Quality, Save Our Schools, 15 NOW, Socialist Alternative, and the New Organizing Institute.

Organizing the March to the Gates Foundation With Becca, Susan, and other more background organizers, Julianna played a key role in organizing the march. She is articulate and offers a wealth of knowledge about school reform. Her ideas are focused and come rapidly with precision and passion. Here she describes the overall organizing process: The organizing process was the definition of grass roots. The teachers and allies who came up with this idea in the fall of 2013 self-organized calling ourselves Badass Teachers thanks to the idea from the national Facebook page started by Mark Naison. The WABATs have been meeting monthly since Sept 2013 and as the group chose the date and venue I secured city and park permits and designed the activities. I worked with activists and organizers from 15 NOW, WEA, and other progressive groups throughout the planning process. WABATs broke down the duties needed for the day; we had marshals for crowd control, sign makers, audio master/dj, flash mob choreographer, and other duties as assigned-all teachers. The invitations and promotion of the event was the most difficult since we had a budget of zero dollars and this event was after school let out for summer. Twitter and Facebook were the key methods of invitation although I did also build an event-through-action network and sent a LOT of emails to progressive groups inviting each individually. [. . .] I credit Renton kindergarten teacher Susan *** for much of the promotional work. Initially, Julianna and the other organizers sought the backing and involvement of the union in the march, but the union declined: Given that our group was fledgling and our tactics are outside of typical union strategy that vote failed (rarely does union leadership like members yelling in the streets at big donors even if they agree with our ideals on the subject).

Anatomy of Dissent  279 However, Julianna realized that even though the union’s lack of involvement prevented them from using union communication channels (e.g., their listserve) to publicize the march, their lack of involvement did have a silver lining: They were then less constrained by union guidelines and more formal ways of operating. Being in a relatively open position to plan and organize their march was beneficial, given the depth of her motivation and commitment to the march.

A Motivation Formed in the Classroom and Grounded in Principles of Justice As a key organizer of the march, Julianna was motived by both underlying and immediate concerns. Initially, and in an immediate sense, her activism stemmed from classroom-based perceptions that the new reforms did not benefit students—in fact that they were harmful to all students, but in differentiated and unequal ways. She first described their impact on special education students: “It is more difficult than ever to qualify a child for special education-the hours upon hours of documentation of interventions tried and failed and resulting data evidence precludes some teachers from referring at all.” And she was especially concerned that classroom relevance—the lived curriculum animated by students that Ted Aoki (1987, 1993) might describe—was being crushed by a commercially planned curriculum: I see teachers forced to teach standards not students; that is, life lessons kids may need get trumped by force-feeding ELA and math content that will be tested. I see students (not in my classroom as I cultivate a culture of learning emphatically focused on students’ LOVE of learning, not test mania) stress out on test days and act out because instruction is either not differentiated to their level, is boring, or is scripted for test purposes. One of her biggest concerns was how backwards-designed content was coming to dominate more constructivist learning as well as simply the joy of learning. When I interviewed her in her classroom, the phone rang every couple of minutes as another teacher called her for concrete advice about how to deal with pressure to teach to the tests. She mentioned that many teachers now download lesson plans directly from the Smarter Balanced Assessment website—to achieve “perfect” alignment between their curriculum and the test items. The focus on formal assessment was derailing teachers’ professional judgment and classroom based formative assessment: “I see the emphasis on data points that policy makers can expediently understand to make changes constantly trump any data that the classroom teacher uses to teach kids.” She continued, “Data for outsiders ruled over the anecdotal data teachers collect. Tests were the determinant of teacher efficacy. Art,

280  Richard D. Sawyer civics, project-based learning, health and joy were diminished or altogether lost from the public school classroom.” The amount of lost instructional time for practice time cannot be overstated. Instead of teaching we are testing. Or practice testing. Or practicing test behaviors and routines and logins and rules that make the classroom not a joyful place of learning but an environment set to catch cheaters and prove which students have worked hard enough or have enough affluence to be called ‘proficient’. We are so hyper-focused on test data that students are not having their social/emotional needs met by us and counselor and nurses have been cut to part-time so we may have additional administration for TPEP. [teacher assessment] And, shifting her focus from the classroom to the public, she became motivated to organize a march to highlight specific issues and to give teachers a voice. She describe the specific goal of the march: The goal was first and foremost to raise public awareness about the new ‘reforms’ negatively impacting teaching and learning conditions in schools. The secondary goal was to build a coalition of other organizations who seek to remove the power enjoyed by oligarchical entities such as the Gates Foundation. This protest was the first event in an ongoing movement to reclaim a democratic society. Given that the super-rich are controlling (both legislative processes and through ‘grants’ and ‘charitable’ programs) many aspects of social conditions, I learned that many progressives see Gates’ influence as circumventing democratic processes with experimental changes as something to actively protest against. It was these framing principles of democratic processes that were foremost in her thoughts and description of the event.

Choosing One’s Battles: Being Smart and Strategic Part of the success of the opt-out movement has been the smart approach of its organizers. In direct contrast to other grassroots efforts (e.g., Occupy Wall Street) Julianna has been methodical and exceptionally strategic in her organizing. I’ve pushed back at every district meeting or training that touts CCSS as the goal of the classroom experience. I constantly push other educators to question the reform mindset; and I’ve had a big part in pushing for parental awareness (through the union and parent groups like PTA and my own kids’ activities) around test refusal. SOS is another grass roots group that plans direct actions at places like Dept. of Ed. and around the country. This group is very anti-CCSS

Anatomy of Dissent  281 and has coincided with BATs recently. Many of the SOS people are now part of the NPE as well. I’ve written and had passed new business items at NEA rep assembly that sought to quantify the amount of time teachers spend on testing. This didn’t get much funding from the union but it DID result in a cohesive report and subsequent campaign against ‘toxic testing’. I’ve written and have organized for passage other NBIs at my state for opt out support and to direct the union to publicly have legislators TAKE these state tests. I also wrote and had passed a new business item to have legislators spend an entire school day in a classroom in their legislative district as a student-to see the reality instead of visiting schools and being the honored VIP. Both of these NBIs have had sporadic success informing legislators of the reality we face. Often the friendly lawmakers utilize these opportunities when what we really need are the ‘reform before revenue’ set to experience how many reforms they’ve already forced upon us without success. Strategic in her approach, Julianna has been focused on legislation as well as on the opinion of parents. It is important to note that she is aware of the narrative of the testing movement as being in the best interest of low-income children and has especially considered it her mission to accurately inform the parents of these and other students as they daily encounter test-driven curriculum. Here she describes working with parents: Opt out is, at this moment, the most powerful lever of change I think we have. ‘Starving the data beast’ is a form of civil disobedience that has many benefits, besides the obvious of not subjecting children to an unfair test that is tying their teachers’ hands to meet their needs. Parents aren’t used to fighting on these issues but when they hear how standardized testing has reduced their child’s classroom experience to one of ranking and sorting children instead of instilling curiosity and creativity, they are willing. The challenge is making them aware and convincing them that opting out will not harm their child’s future success.

Finding Joy in Opposition: Building Structures of Support A central question in this study is what sustains and nurtures teachers who take on the pressures of vast new work on top of an already normally demanding work schedule. Julianna is guided by her intellect, imbued with a sense of joy and passion, and kept focused by articulated principles. For example, at the end of the march, in the shadow of the Gates Foundation building next to the Seattle Center and with the iconic Space Needle one block away, Julianna and her daughter began a five-minute celebration dance that Julianna and her daughter began a five-minute celebration dance in the center of the large crowd, a dance many happy protesters joined. This dance was an outpouring of joy, humanity, and embodied imagination. It was a

282  Richard D. Sawyer confirmation of their hope for reestablishing democratic public education. It was also performative in that it provided a new, joyful and imaginative response to the march against the CCSS. Perhaps central to who she is as a person, Julianna found the type of work itself sustaining. She directly discusses this aspect of her work: Like many others I find satisfaction from social media self-expression. My Facebook and twitter world is FULL of fighting reform. Many people share my posts and links and while I know the feeling of power I get from this casual blogging is exaggerated in my mind, there is no denying that the majority of actions and events I attend (for issues outside of education, even) start and perpetuate on these platforms. Meeting community leaders at campaign events for friendly legislators has provided some great opportunities to educate people who tend to agree to fighting education reform. Democratic precinct officers, election/campaign managers, legislative aides etc. become friends and become allies. The camaraderie of like-minded educators keeps me going. Just knowing that other innovative, dedicated, social justice-minded teachers are in agreement about specific policies and the harm they are causing students is energizing. Burn-out is very real in both teaching and organizing. Having my local and state union leaders support my work (as much as they can, when they can) is also empowering and supportive. Of course the rank and file membership must rise up and reclaim our union’s power but I see this struggle in relation to the underlying problems with American democracy; these systems only work if people are actively engaged in them. And teachers are so tired. Citizens are pretty hopeless that change will occur and many people don’t see how their actions may actually make any difference; teachers especially fear retaliation for speaking/acting out. So many people thank me for doing this work and not having fear-I don’t feel that I have a choice but to do this work. Around the country there are BATs and allies who support this work simply by sharing information. Just last week my friend (and hero) Michelle Strater Gunderson from Chicago sent me a contract provision she uses to problem solve at her building level because I asked for advice on a listening session I was facilitating between my school’s staff and our new principal. The amount to support and help and wisdom I get from the other bad asses is unquantifiable and truly vital. Really the training I’ve had within the union has supported me in this work. I was so fortunate to be part-time in the classroom for so long; many opportunities were afforded me and the relationships I built in those years (especially with CTQ & WEA people) have paid dividends recently. All of this work is related to social justice and I have no problem

Anatomy of Dissent  283 tying in over-testing to other societal issues in any conversation I have with anyone-because I am confident I am not along in my worldview. Julianna was also sustained by her work to improve society around issues of social justice and “collective consciousness.” Perhaps running parallel with both short-term (changing perceptions about the CCSS) and long-term goals (restoring democratic structures to public education), Julianna was aware of immediate and more structural challenges to her activism. She first discussed more immediate challenges: “Getting people to think critically is the biggest hurdle. But I think a few things prevent many people from being open-minded about complex issues of education policy.” In addition to these immediate concerns, Julianna also articulated goals to bring about deep-seated change. She stated an underlying concern about the uncritical nature of how Americans think in “good or bad [terms] without gathering all facts. Believing (falsely) that competition is the predominant catalyst of innovation and compels so many people to subconsciously agree with high-stakes testing to expediently ‘prove’ their worth. The human element is lost in the process.” She also critiqued the emphasis in America on individualistic notions of merit, “grit,” and competition: The ‘work hard and you can do anything’ mindset (which conveniently circumvents issues of race and poverty) also hinders the public from supporting kids the way they need. I still know teachers who say ‘I don’t see color’ or ‘we can overcome poverty if we only have a longer school day/year’ etc. [. . .] Further, capitalist thinking has pervaded every aspect of our culture and people believe that a competitive workforce is the MOST important outcome from public schools. The economy being more important that ecosystems or human health—the scale of political importance says it all. She linked this dynamic to capitalism and the growth in corporate wealth, giving the Pearson corporation as an example. Her perception about the loss of democratic educational processes and collective conscience was underscored by media complicity: Teachers are just now realizing that our profession is the LAST sector under attack by profiteers who see the edu-‘industry’ as the last great cash cow of tax revenue. Media perpetuates the glory of monetary wealth being proclaimed in overt and covert ways at EVERY turn. Commercialism is killing us. Like other WABAT educators, Julianna articulated a vision for education: [I would like] schools as community hubs; wraparound services provided for every child to be nourished and nurtured; high quality free

284  Richard D. Sawyer early learning; technology integrated to SUPPORT learning, not direct it; teachers in hybrid roles working part time teaching students and part time in the area of their passion and expertise; community embedded project based learning as “curriculum”; performance assessments that loosely correlate to age-appropriate academic standards; all administrators and union leaders teaching at least one real lesson per week in a real school; pre-service teachers having 10–20 practicum experiences simultaneous with coursework; community and business leaders having a “home school” at which they spend time each year meaningfully mentoring students and helping with decision-making; oh, and puppies for everyone. (I jest, but really? For developmentally delayed kiddos, we need to get creative). Julianna’s vision of education is centered on the welfare of children and reconceptualizes the purpose of education (for students “to be nourished and nurtured”), the work of teachers (supporting the professional “expertise” of teachers in hybrid roles), and the physical organization of schools (“as community hubs”). It is important to note that she does not exclude business people, but sees them as mentors of students.

Becca as a Guiding Force in the Movement Becca was the computer teacher for her middle school in a medium sized city southeast of Seattle. As a teenager in secondary school, Becca was politically active. She started the Junior Statesman Club at her high school and was a junior senator, actually meeting with elected state senators. After she became a teacher over 25 years ago, she married and focused on home-and-school life. After getting divorced, she returned to her political roots. In 2009 Becca became a representative for her building and attended Renton Education Association representative council meetings. A year later, with a group from REA, she was sent to Washington D.C. where she formally trained as a grassroots organizer and learned about how to turn a vision into a mission and then into collective action. In 2010 she also became a member of the group, Save Our Schools (SOS) and in 2011 joined the second SOS event—the march and rally Washington D.C. in favor of education. As she described it, I was the information coordinator for Washington State and one of the first fund raisers they did was a webinar. . . . I’d been teaching for a long time and I didn’t know about all this stuff. . . . It was a time for the first 20 years of my career, I would sit in my [class] room and everything was going fine. . . . Everything was just moving along fine. And then when I joined Save Our Schools and they were going to march on the White House and it

Anatomy of Dissent  285 had to do with testing, I started to go, OK, and when I went to that webinar organized by Diane Ravitch I would say that was my matrix moment. She joined the steering committee of Save Our Schools and in 2012 helped organize the second occupation of the Department of Education. It was at this time that she met the people in Washington D.C. who were in the movement to “opt out” of the new national teaching standards, the Common Core State Standards, and the accompanying testing. The group was called the bad assed teachers (the BATS). As she was organizing the second occupation of the DOE in Washington D.C., she decided to set up the chapter in Washington State: So, I’m the connection to getting Washington BATs started. And that’s not an ego thing. It’s like, one of my things that I like to do is connecting people. Once I did the march in 2011 I then the next year was on this steering committee for SOS and then that next year in 2012 we had a conference and I met the opt-out folks. . . . And so then when they had their second occupy the DOE that’s where [. . .] the BATS started the whole concept. . . . And it was [at first] a joke. The first day we were like—ha ha this if funny. [Then,] overnight, we had a thousand people. In 2013, along with Julianne and Susan, they decided to organize the march on the Gates Foundation: One of our strategies was to call out Gates and everything that he’s been doing. And that, I have to give credit to Susan *** from the time that I met her when she started doing this, she was like, I want to take this to the Gates Foundation. . . . So she wanted to do it so we got together, looked at it: Did it fit with our mission vision, it did—because we wanted to educate the public on what the Gates Foundation and what Bill Gates’ money is doing to education and that was the goal and it met with our mission to educate the public on what where it’s all coming from [. . .] and organize it from there. In 2016 Becca was elected to the WEA Board.

The Interaction between Beliefs, Practice, and Place In our discussion Becca grounded her actions and thoughts into beliefs about the value of both students and public education: I mean I know students in 6th grade who feel like failures already. Those are 6thgraders—12 year-olds—and that’s not OK. So we need a system

286  Richard D. Sawyer where we can support and help those children grow where they are. . . . My ultimate vision is that public education stays public. And, as this quote suggests, she sees a direct connection between between public education and the support of children to find their potential. Central to her work is her strong belief in the value of every child as unique and gifted in their own way. She considered it her challenge as a teacher to find and build on children’s special gifts. As she stated, “That is our role— to help these kids find their element. What is their element? What is their track? And that will help them flourish.” Becca, however, clearly contrasted the impact of accountability testing with the welfare of children. She described a conversation with her principal about testing: I had a debate with my principal. He said, but we have to do what’s right for kids. Testing is what’s right for kids. And I said, “testing’s not what’s best for kids, I’m sorry.” So we talked in a circle. He’s like agreeing with me, agreeing with me and then would circle back, “We have to do what’s right for kids” But it’s not right for kids. Becca saw herself as being forced to contribute to the testing process and realized that it was imperative for her to take a stand. She stated that, “You can force me to give this test and then I have to make a choice on whether or not I’m going to give it. And they gave me a different assignment.” Resonant with the thoughts of Maxine Greene (1987, 1991), that personal choice reflects one’s existential stance in the world Becca made a difficult and brave choice for herself. She took a public stance toward the testing movement: I delivered my letter of professional conscience. We—the four of us in Renton—Julianna, Susan, and Judy and I took the Martin Luther King ‘Beyond Viet Nam’ speech and recrafted it so it was about high stakes testing and delivered it the day after MLK day and then I asked for a different assignment. . . . You can give me a different assignment and value my professional judgment or you can force me to give this test and then I have to make a choice on whether or not I’m going to give it or not. And they gave me a different assignment. Moving further into the public realm, she then became motivated to go to the Gates Foundations: I wanted to take this to the Gates Foundation. [. . .] We got together, looked at it, ‘Did it fit with our mission vision?’ It did—because we wanted to educate the public on what the Gates Foundation and what Bill Gates’ money is doing to education and that was the goal and it met with our mission to educate the public on what where it’s all coming from.

Anatomy of Dissent  287 Underscoring beliefs about students and public education was a view of herself as a person who needed to act according to her conscience.

Mission Statement as a Guiding Light Through the long process leading to the march, Becca went back to her mission statement as a frame for her actions. She discussed the importance of having a mission statement to this event: So the first thing we did when we started working on this [event] was we reflected back on what we learned and we set a mission, a vision. And so we have all of that for WABATS and so in order to reach our goals we have our strategies. [For] all the people who come into the group, we go over the mission and the vision quite often. Are we getting there? Is this where we are getting by our actions? We always to try to link everything back. [. . .] And I always look strategically at things—like in WABATS we have the far left and the far right. How do we get them on the same page and then we have these people in the middle and I always ask the question, how do we shift the middle? We don’t need to shift the people on the left—they are there. The mission statement reflects her groups’ principles. As such, her ongoing reflection helped to “elevate” her organizing activity and keep it close to principles related to democracy, the value of public education, the intrinsic worth and beauty of every student, and ultimately the moral calling of teaching.

Work and Networks as Relational Generativity Becca worked within a number of teacher networks that included her state and national union organizations, Save our Schools (SOS) and then the WABATS, of which she was one of the founders. As a computer teacher, it is perhaps not too surprising that she emphasized the value of technology to the long and careful buildup to the demonstration on the Gates Foundation. She described the role of listserves, a webinar, and Facebook to their building the movement and generating community and understanding about the event. Here she discussed a tutorial video that was instrumental to herself: There is a video in you-tube—It’s how to build a movement in three minutes or less. It’s the shirtless dancing nut. It’s filmed over in the [Columbia River] Gorge and this guy gets up and he starts dancing and he’s the leader and as you watch the video another person gets up and dances and finding the first follower is the most important thing in any movement.

288  Richard D. Sawyer It’s important to note that Becca did not romanticize her role or in any way cast herself as a hero. In fact, it was the opposite: I’ve put in time and I’ve put in work, and it’s the grunt work that has to get done because it’s like I have the time to do it. But that doesn’t make me the leader it just means that I do the grunt work. They created all of the state pages and I was already there . . . and I said, ‘OK, put me to work.’ So I went into Washington and I just started adding people [to listserves]. Anybody that I know as a teacher, I just started adding them. When I started doing that work, we were going to unions, we were going to the labor council, we were getting endorsement from all of these different groups and I was learning how to connect. But a central part of her work with others was building a web of meaningful and generative relationships: I try to value everyone that comes in on the same level. Because if you don’t do that your movement will die. Because if it’s all about one, it won’t make it. And it’s like people come up to me and say you’re a leader of WABATS, it’s like, no, we are all in this together. I ask, ‘What do you like to do? Are you into writing letters? What are you into’? So, right now we are getting ready to write the letters and we organize the action network to just have people come in and sign their name and sign it—the really quick and dirty stuff. I put a post, who likes to write? Who likes to edit? I say, ‘OK—now you guys are in charge of this. Now you go.’ And I’m really about finding the strengths of people and then I go, ‘I’ll support you and I’ll check in with you.’ It’s like, Julianna calls me her ‘accountable-buddy’ so if she needs something she knows she can call on me. As she supports her students, she supports the others that she works with, actively mentoring them. While she did not use the word “cycle”, it is probably not a stretch that she views mentoring as part of a cycle, from which she also benefited. As she stated, “I met a gal named *** who is pretty involved in her union and she is very supportive of public schools and she was my mentor to understand how the union and the labor council knowledge of all of that works.” She spoke well of Diane Ravitch as a teacher and role model (as noted in an earlier quote): “I went to that webinar organized by Diane Ravitch I would say that was my matrix moment.” It is important to note here Becca’s flexibility and openness to personal change as well as her acknowledgement of others who have been significant in her leadership journey. A second aspect of her growth as a leader is her acknowledgment of opposition. She held a stance toward opposition that was generative—that

Anatomy of Dissent  289 opened rather than closed possibilities of action. As she stated, “The person or the entity that is doing all of this stuff to us, not with us but to us and then is disguising it as teacher support is Bill Gates and his money. And it’s that that needs to be called out and it’s very hard in some places.” And of course her general stance toward the accountability and testing movement was one of engagement and not withdrawal.

An Artful Platform An aspect of her (and as we mentioned, Julianna’s as well) work in organizing the march on the Gates Foundation, one that I personally found surprising, was its joyful and arts-based platform. This platform both preceded and led to her organization of the event. Here she described the WABATS chorus: Then we started the active chorus. [. . .] So now the chorus is now the WABAT chorus and you know that now that we’re doing all these walk outs—they are calling us to come and sing and organize their strikes. But if they would have jumped on board four years ago when we passed the new business items we would have been really ready for all of this— we could have activated music teachers and it would have been very powerful but they didn’t see the long run. Even the WEA Chorus, when we started that we started out with a mission and a vision: here are our goals and here’s our strategy to get there. And when you do that you have that framework that can always refocus the conversation. It helps. It’s important to note that Becca did not consider the arts in isolation from the classroom and the lives of students, but rather drew a parallel: When I first started teaching I was a choir teacher. So I have a very soft spot in my heart for music. And I’m talking to colleagues about where they are cutting their music programs and the kids are having two hours of math and two hours of reading and no art—that really kicked something in me, too—the narrowing of the curriculum. Especially in middle school. In middle school students are supposed to be exploring and figuring out the world around them and figuring out where they want to go and if they don’t have the exploring part, they won’t find that and the other piece. In addition to being a foundational piece, the arts played a role in the actual event. Soulful and embodied artistic expression was part of the march. As Julianna and her daughter began to do a performative dance at the march, Becca joined in.

290  Richard D. Sawyer

Discussion/Conclusion: Learning Is about Love The research and literature on school change and teacher leadership are insufficient to frame the complexity of Becca and Julianna’s work. I suggest we need larger and more complex conceptual frames to understand and analyze the public scholarship of reflexivity they demonstrate. Their work with the WABATS and their organization of the demonstration create not only classroom change: More broadly, it creates a pedagogy of resistance and of hope. This hope may be found not only on the ground in the actual protest march and the hard work leading up to it. It may also be found conceptually in the movement they are developing, a movement which inspires hope in dark times. As a pedagogy of hope, their work springs from collective lived narratives and offers further pathways of resistance, hope, and collective action. As they organized the protest march, their path to the Gates Foundation building next to the Seattle Center was not linear and straight-forward. It was recursive and relational, circling back and then winding forward, intertwining multiple lives. Working towards the protest march, they engaged in (and allowed others to engage in) participatory democracy within dialogic spaces. The dialogue in these spaces rose from themselves and others as they worked to counter repeated threats to student learning in the classroom in a concrete sense and to the public good and democratic educational processes in a more abstract sense. And the dialogue also existed in the tension between their perceptions of classroom/curriculum-based student trauma on the one hand and the decontextualized and disembodied language of school reform on the other. In the finest sense of the word, they are teachers. In their work, they create a transformative space, a new dialogic and democratic space. I suggest that in this space they create a pedagogy of resistance. This is a pedagogy— grounded in action and framed by principles—that collectively generates embodied change and hope. And as they planned and then engaged in the demonstration, they imbued their actions with art and joy—with performative structures that quite possibly disrupted (contrived) normative ways of viewing education (i.e., through a neoliberal lens). The WABATS chorus, the dance at the demonstration, the costumes and papier-mâché images at the demonstration, and the descriptions of art in the classroom—these examples can nourish imagination to respect and conceptualize a new vision of humanity and education. I was initially motivated to study the process of organizing a protest march to present narratives of resistance. I was hoping that these narratives could inspire and maybe even provide other educators with something of a “blueprint” for engaging in such work. What I realized after talking to both Julianna and Becca is that lives do not really create “templates” for others. Julianna and Becca’s work is deeply situated within their lived histories and biographies. Their motivation and relational skills were deeply

Anatomy of Dissent  291 grounded in their lived experience and especially their experience in relation to their students’ lives in their classrooms. They have engaged in this work uniquely and with immense courage, exceptional intelligence (on multiple levels), integrity, passion, and joy. And, as the words of Julianna remind us, learning is about love: “I am refusing to administer the SBAC test this year; someone must take a stand to the competitive nature of school and the need by corporate reformers to rank and sort students on tests that do not lead to increased love of learning.”

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292  Richard D. Sawyer Matus, C., and McCarthy, C. (2003). The triumph of multiplicity and the carnival of difference: Curriculum dilemmas in the age of postcolonialism and globalization. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), International handbook of curriculum research. (pp. 73–82). New York: Routledge. McKenzie, K. B., and Scheurich, J. J. (2008). Teacher resistance to improvement of schools with diverse students. International Journal of Leadership, 11(2): 117–133. McLaren, P. (1998). Revolutionary pedagogy in post-revolutionary times: Rethinking the political economy of critical education. Educational Theory, 48(4): 461–462. Mills, M. (1997). Towards a disruptive pedagogy: Creating spaces for student and teacher resistance to social injustice. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 7(1): 35–55. Noddings, N. (2007). When school reform goes wrong. New York: Teachers College Press. Pinar, W. F., and Reynolds, M. W. (1992). Understanding curriculum as phenomenological and deconstructed text. New York: Teachers College Press. Silva, D. Y., Gimbert, B., and Nolan, J. F. (2000). Sliding the doors: Locking and unlocking possibilities for teacher leadership. Teachers College Record, 102(4): 779–804. Smith, D. G. (1991). Hermeneutic inquiry: The hermeneutic imagination and the pedagogic text. In Forms of curriculum inquiry (pp. 187–210). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Snyder, J., Bolin, F., and Zumwalt, K. K. (1992). Curriculum implementation. In P. W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research in curriculum (pp. 402–435). New York: Macmillan. Van Manen, M. (1984). “Doing” phenomenological research and writing: An introduction. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.

Contributor List

Roberta Ahlquist is Professor of Education in the College of Education at San Jose State University. Richard L. Allington is Professor of Education at the University of Tennessee and an internationally recognized specialist in literacy. Elizabeth Chase is Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at St. John’s University and Director of the Residency Internship for St. John’s University Educators (RISE). Autumn M. Dodge is Assistant Professor of Education Specialties at St. John’s University who specializes in issues of social justice, language, and literacy. Stephen J. Farenga is Professor and Director of the Science Education Program in the Department of Secondary Education and Youth Services at the City University of New York, Queens College. Kay Fujiyoshi is Foundations Year Instructor in the Urban Teacher Education Program at the University of Chicago. David Gerwin is Associate Professor and Director of the Social Studies Education Program in the Department of Secondary Education and Youth Services at the City University of New York, Queens College. Carl A. Grant is Hoefs-Bascom Professor at the University of WisconsinMadison in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Barbara S.S. Hong is Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of Special Education at Brigham Young University Hawaii. Roselmina Indrisano is Professor Emerita and an Editor of the Journal of Education at Boston University School of Education. Bonnie Johnson is Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at St. John’s University. Daniel Ness is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at St. John’s University.

294  Contributor List Isabel Nuñez is Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. Evan Ortlieb is Professor and Coordinator of the Literacy Program in the Department of Education Specialties at St. John’s University. Jeanne R. Paratore is Professor of Education and Coordinator of the Reading Education and Literacy Education programs at Boston University. William F. Pinar is Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia. Todd Alan Price is Director of Policy Studies and Program Coordinator for Educational Foundations and Inquiry at National Louis University. Richard D. Sawyer is Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Washington State University in Vancouver. Peter M. Taubman is Professor of Education in the School of Education at the City University of New York, Brooklyn College.

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics denote references to Figures and Tables. 12 Million Black Voices (Wright) 242 Aaron, P. G. 107 Abbott, J. 152 academic curriculum. See curriculum Academic Literacy and Skills Test (ALST) 91 accommodation for edTPA 34, 38 – 9 accountability testing 6 – 8, 11, 81, 286 accreditation: benefits of NCATE 184; CAEP and 90, 184 – 5; corporatizing of 79; education faculty responsible for 256; passing rate for 266; value of 95 – 6 accreditors 184 – 5 achievement gap 139 – 40 achievement need 173 Acta Diurna (Action Journal) 177 advertising wearout 176 – 7 affiliation need 173 African-Americans: Chicago Public Schools 224; cultural recognition of 247 – 8; private school attendance 5; racial oppression 237, 242 – 4 After Queer Theory (Penney) 27 Agamben, Giorgio 18 Alberty, E. J. 213, 215 – 16 Alberty, Harold 213, 215 – 16 ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) 67 Alger, Horatio 141 Alia, Mary Ellen 270 Allington, R. L. 104 Altstiel, T. 177 Amanti, C. 147 American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education 171

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) 269 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) 67 American Statistical Association (ASA) 83 Angelou, Maya 78 Apollo Group 80 Apple, Michael 51 Armstrong, G. 174 artmaking 5 arts-based platform 289 Assessment of Teaching Skills-Written (ATS-W) 91 – 2 ATS-W (Secondary Assessment of Teaching Skills-Written) 268 attraction theory 149 – 53 audit culture 91 authentic assessment 39 autonomous, voluntary immigrant minorities 146 Baker, Frank 247 Baker, W. E. 176 Baldwin, James 21, 27 – 8 Bank of North Dakota 72 Baptists, Edward 245 – 7, 248 bare life 18 Beals, R. K. 241 Becca (computer teacher) 284 – 9 Beck, I. L. 153 Bennett, James Gordon 177 Bentum, K. E. 107 Bersani, Leo 25, 26 – 7 “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Freud) 17, 19 Biemiller, A. 121 – 2

296 Index Biko, Steve 228 Bilingual Education Act 141 – 2 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 82, 226, 274, 278 – 9, 285 binaries 149 Black Belt 239 Black experience, the 61 Black Lives Matter 26, 71, 73 Bollas, Christopher 24 bootstraps narrative 141 Borman, G. D. 107 Bossing, Nelson 214 – 15 bottom-up union movements 71 Bourdieu, Pierre 35 brand image 176 brand-name imprinting 176 Braudel, Ferdinand 34 Brenner, D. 113 Broikou, K. A. 105 Bronzeville 239 Brown, Wendy 20 Burdell, P. 205 Bus, A. G. 112 Butler, Benjamin 247 – 8 Butler, Judith 28n1 CAEP (Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation) 79 – 80, 184 – 5 California Board of Education 142 California State Frameworks 211 – 12 Campbell Institute 245 campus recruiters 87 caning, pedagogical 193 capitalism 64 CCSS Validation Committee 90 certification: examination costs 93; fingerprinting costs 95; as form of market manipulation 90 – 1; policies 256; workshop costs 94 – 5 charter schools: corporate media promoting 69; practice of expelling students 14n15; proliferation of 64; public funding in 69, 73; short-term test score gains vs long-term policies 72; support for 82 – 3 Chicago Public Schools: branding of 244 – 5; charter school replacement 241, 248; vs. charter schools 223; education injustice 240 – 4; institutional reforms 240; racial oppression 242 – 4; Renaissance 2010 223 – 4, 241; school closures 224, 241; social injustice 238 – 40; transition areas 242 – 3 Chicago State University (CSU) 254

Chicago Teachers Union 226 children with special needs. See pupils with disabilities (PWD); special education City University of New York (CUNY): budget reduction 255 – 6; edTPA resistance 257 – 8 Civil Rights Movement 141 class stratification 181 – 2 Cleverism (website) 244 – 5 Clifton, John 194 climate change 70 – 1 Clinton, Hillary 14n15 Closing of the American Mind, The (Bloom) 216 Coates, TaNehisi 21, 60 Coleman, David 22, 84 collaboration, enforced 9 collective consciousness 283 college and university enrollments 86 – 7,  141 College Scorecard 54, 55 colorblindness/color muteness 60, 68 Common Core State Standards (CCSS): class stratification reinforced by 181 – 2; criticisms of 218; flexibility in implementation 183 – 4; gaining prominence in schools 119; inspiration for 217; introduction of 79; New York adoption of 262 – 3; parental opposition to 267; to promote privatization 181 – 2; promoting equity among various student demographics 217 – 18; states’ rights and 85; teacher opposition to 274 – 6; validation claims for 84 Commons, the 61 – 5 common schools 173 communicative capitalism 28n1 consequentiality, issue of 41 constructivist learning 152 consumer choice 223 Content Specialty Examinations (CSTs) 266 core curriculum: defined 214; design 211 – 13; as experience vs. content 214 – 15; type-five 214; type-four 213 – 14; type-one 213; type-three 213; type-two 213. See also curriculum core knowledge and cultural preservation 216 – 17 core reading program design 112 – 13 corporate media 68, 69

Index  297 Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) 79 – 80, 184 – 5 Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) 13n6 credentialing process 90 critical analysis of edTPA 34, 39 – 40 critical thinking 230, 283 Crossman, Ashley 240 Crowe, E. 226 cultural conservatism 61 cultural ecology theory 145 – 6, 148 cultural literacy 216 – 17 Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Hirsch) 216 culturally relevant pedagogy 148 cultural preservation 216 – 17 cultural relativism 216 culture wars 216 – 17 Cuomo, Andrew M. 3, 255 curriculum: commercially planned 279; curricular fragmentation 106 – 7, 110; democratic conceptions of 213 – 16; grade book spreadsheet 9; LEAP test and 7; non-profit control over 88 – 90; problem-posing, liberatory 64; racist 239; reading instruction 106 – 7, 110; shrinking 7; value of 218 cut score 36 – 7 D’Agati, John 268 D’Agostino, J. V. 107 Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Mayer) 66 data-based decision making 33 Dean, Jodi 28n1 death drive: concept of 17; defeating 26 – 7; defined 19 – 20; feelings 22 – 5; history 21 – 2; masochists and 28n4; memory 21 – 2; as return to inanimate state 20; super ego and 23 decoding emphasis program 111 Deerborne Academy 5 deficit ideology 62, 68, 148 dehumanization 218 – 19, 226 – 7,  237 Delpit, L. 148 DePaul College of Education Winter Forum 51 – 3 destabilizing communities 222 destabilizing intensities 25 Developing the Core Curriculum (Bossing) 214 – 15

deviant behaviors 192 Dewey, John 214, 215 – 16 diagnostic teaching model 120 differentiated literacy instruction 153 – 60 Dillon, Stephen 21 disciplinary literacy 142, 161 discourses 148 diverse learners 145 – 9 diversity, advantage to literacy learning 149 – 50 Douglas, Fredrick 242 Dreamers 71 Du Bois, W. E. B. 140, 238, 244 Duncan, Arne 3, 21 – 2, 81 – 3, 85 – 6 dyad reading 121 dynamic assessment 120 East Asian School myth 189 – 90, 192 – 6 Ebonics 142 economic inequality 13n11 economics: mathematical and scientific aspects of 229; racial oppression and 246 – 7 economic theory in isolation 229 economy 62 edTPA: academic language 43; accommodation for 34; background 37 – 8; as consequential tool 35; critical analysis of 34; cut score 36 – 7; description of 256 – 7; faculty governance and 261 – 3; faculty resistance to 257 – 8; in Illinois 33 – 5, 40 – 6; Illinois annual state conference 40 – 6; implementation feedback 44; implementation of 42 – 3; Initial Clinical Experience 264; minority teacher candidates 37; multilingual learners and 46; non-disclosure agreement for 258 – 61; official scorers 42 – 3; opposing 267 – 70; portfolio assessment 91 – 2; psychological archetypical responses to 33 – 4; purpose of 41; resistance to 34; retake plans 44; in rural areas 45; social justice organizations opposed to 50 – 1; special education teachers and 45; for teacher effectiveness 37; technology component of 48 – 9; tool box 43 – 4; total meetings and participants in New York 264; value of 50; violating data privacy 52 – 3 educational communications technology (ECT) 32

298 Index educational performance, socioeconomic background and 179 See also poverty educational system, Singapore 189 education policy, national: adverse influences on 79; concerns in meeting regulations 79 – 80; pointless tests 3; trauma of race in shaping 21 education reform: as civil rights issue 21 – 2; constricting the symbolic 22; market-based 79, 86 – 7; ramifications of edTPA 47 – 8 education standards: legislation related to 138; from non-governmental agencies 90; to support domination over programs 92; as tools for exploitation 90 – 5 education teacher performance assessment. See edTPA educator preparation provider (EEP) 185 educators. See teachers Eigen, Michael 20 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 14n17 Eitzen, D. S. 179 Eldredge, J. L. 121 Emery, K. 175 empathy, decline in 24 enforced collaboration 9 enrollments, declining 86 – 7 enslavement 246 – 7 entrepreneurial city 240 – 1 entrepreneurial initiative 223 Erenreich, Barbara 28n1 Eros 18 – 19, 25 – 8 ethical lapses of public speaking 180 Every Student Succeeds Act 12n1 exclusionary nativism 61 faculty behavior 255 – 6 faculty governance 255 – 6, 261 – 3 failing schools: defined 175; newspaper headlines as proof of 177 – 9; Redbud Elementary as example of 185 – 6; standardized tests to support 180 – 4 Farenga, S. J. 184 – 5 Faunce, Roland 214, 215 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) 87 Feel Tank Project of Chicago 28n1 feminism 140 – 1 Finland 65 Finnish Lessons (Sahlberg) 65 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 18 Flavell, J. H. 153 Florus, Publius Annius 169

fluency 128 Francis, B. 147 Freire, Paulo 64, 90, 141, 225, 230 Freud, Sigmund 17, 19 Friedman, Milton 178 Fundamentals of Curriculum Development (Smith) 214 funds of knowledge 147 – 8 Gallup Poll 194 Gee, J. P. 148 gender identity 147 generative learning environments 151 Geraghty, C. 121 Gigats.com 87 Gill, Rosalind 18 Gimbert, B. 275 Giroux, Henry 242 Glick, Deborah 268 global economy/globalization 61 – 2, 66 – 7, 228, 241, 275 Gonzalez, N. 147 Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education 84 Gramsci, Antonio 64 Great Migration, the 242 Greene, Maxine 276 Grow, J. 177 guided reading 120 Gunderson, Michelle Strater 282 Gutenberg press 140 Hackworth, Jason 228 – 9 Half Has Never Been Told, The: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Baptist) 246 – 7 happiness index 194 – 5 Harrington, M. 180 Hartwick, Elaine 229 Harvey, David 222 Hawkins, D. I. 175, 176 Heath, S. B. 146 – 7 Hedges, Chris 59 hegemony 64, 67 – 8, 229 Hiebert, E. H. 113 higher education institutions 33, 37, 254 – 6 Higher Learning Commission (HLC) 54 highly effective teacher (HET) 38 – 9, 52 high performing schools 104 High Stakes: Poverty, Testing, and Failure in American Schools (Johnson) 101 – 2, 236 – 7, 248 – 9

Index  299 high stakes testing: Business Roundtable and 65; as commonplace 172; diverting student development 52; eliminating 71; opt out of 74; protests on 96; social justice and 237; subject emphasis of 11. See also edTPA; standardized tests Hindin, A. 122 Hirsch, E. D. 216 – 17 history, death of 21 – 2 homelessness 60 Honda 174 Hong Kong 191, 196 Hudson, R. F. 112 Hurricane Katrina 24 – 5 hybridity theory 148 – 9 Idle No More movement 70, 71, 73 Illich, I. 90 Illinois Coalition for edTPA Rule Change 46 Illinois House Elementary & Secondary Education School Curriculum and Policies Committee 46 – 8 Illinois State Board of Education 33 Illinois State Education Professional Licensure Board (SEPLB) 35 Illinois Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium (IL-TPAC) 41 – 2 Imig, D. G. 184 immigrant minorities 146 imperialism 65 independent reading 111, 120 individual responsibility concept 60, 68 informational text 127 Institute of Metropolitan Opportunity 242 institutions of higher education (IHE) 33, 37, 254 – 6 instructional plans 9 See also curriculum instructional support programs, evaluating 108 InTASC (Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium) Standards 181 integration 141 intellect, defined 143 intellectual traditionalism 217 intelligence vs. reading ability 142 – 3 interaction-based theory of learning 213 – 15 International Literacy Association 180 – 1

Intervention Assessment (IA): assessment with intervention 129 – 31; assessment without intervention 126 – 9; collaborative nature of 124; defined 119; diagnostic teaching model and 120; examples of 132 – 4; focus of 122 – 3; informing learners and teachers 132; oral rereading 128 – 9, 131; principles of 120; process 123 – 6; reading preparation 126 – 7, 129; reading stamina 127; recalling information 127 – 9; recording outcomes of 131; responding to questions 129 – 31; summary writing 131; text authenticity 126; text selection 126, 129 Intimacies (Phillips) 26 inverted totalitarianism 59 Iowa testing 7 – 8 Islamophobia 60, 61 Jameson, Fredric 24 Johns Hopkins Conceptual Framework for Non-Profits 88 Johnson, B. 182, 184 – 5 Johnson, Dale D. 78, 95 – 6, 101, 170, 180 – 5,  235 jolts 151 – 2 Joravsky, Ben 243 – 4 Jowett, G. S. 177 – 8 Julianna (elementary school teacher): activism with BATs 277 – 8; genesis of a demonstration 277 – 8; motivation for march 279 – 80; organizing march 278 – 9; as political action committee board director 277; rally speech 273; strategic approach 281; vision for education 283 – 4 Just Acceptable Qualified Candidate (JAQC), defined 36 – 7 King, John 269 King, John B., Jr. 13n7 King, Martin Luther 239 Klein, Joel 267 Klein, Naomi 59 knowledge: cultural preservation and 216 – 17; funds of 147 – 8; importance of prior 147 – 8, 182 – 3 Knupfer, A. N. 239 – 40 Koch, Charles and David 66 Kotler, P. 174 Kuhn, M. R. 128 Kundera, Milan 24

300 Index Ladson-Billings, G. 148 language, impoverishment of 23 – 4 lead generators 87 LEAP test: field testing 8; private schools 5; shrinking curriculum and 7 Left Melancholia 18 leisure time reading 112 – 13 Levy, L. 128 Lindsay, J. J. 113 linguistic maturation 4 Lipman, P. 64, 222 – 3, 225 literacy/literacy instruction: in classroom 150 – 3; in Colonial America 140 – 1; cultural 216 – 17; disciplinary 143, 161; gender-based power in 140 – 1; history of 140 – 2; jolts 151 – 2; multiple entry points 144; video technology 151 – 2. See also reading instruction; struggling readers Louisiana 3, 5 – 6, 12n5 love: defeating death drive 26 – 7; transferential nature of 26 – 7 Lucas, S. E. 180 Lyon, G. Reid 108 Macdonald, James B. 14n17 Mallory, Charles 247 – 8 marginalization, students experiencing 203 market-based education reform 79 market-based reform 86 – 7 market capitalism 20 Massumi, Brian 22 Matus, C. 275 Mayer, Jane 66 McCarthy, C. 275 Mcelwee, S. 245 McGill-Franzen, A. 104 McKeown, M. G. 153 Means, A. 242 media. See corporate media memory, death of 21 – 2 mentoring 288 metacognitive conversation 123 – 6, 125, 153 Milgram, James 84 Milner, Rich 139 – 40 minority groups 145 – 6 Mistretta, J. 103 Moje, E. B. 149, 161 Mol, S. E. 112 Moll, L. C. 147, 161

Morgan, A. 121 Mothersbaugh, D. L. 175, 176 multilingual learners 45 – 6 multimodal teacher pedagogies 150 multisensory stimuli 151 Naison, Mark 278 narrative text 127 National Assessment of Educational Progress 81, 142 National Association for Alternative Certification (NAAC) conference 185 National Association for Multicultural Education 51 National Center for Educational Statistics 241 National Center on Family Homelessness 60 National Commission on Excellence in Education 175 National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. See Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) 141 National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) 32, 54 – 5 Natoli, Joseph 28n1 NCATE. See Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) Neff, D. 147 neoliberalism: affecting the psyche 28n1; defined 61 – 2, 222 – 3, 240 – 1; as dehumanizing 20; education reforms 20 – 5; as hegemonic 229; impact on teaching 225; naturalization of 228 – 9; as obsessional neurotic 28n1 neoliberal urbanism 240 Ness, D. 184 – 5 newspapers, use of, as proof of failing schools 177 – 9 New York 83 New York Herald 177 New York State Education Department (NYSED) 257 New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) 257 Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) 82 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) 12n1, 32, 79, 139

Index  301 Noddings, Ned 194 Nolan, J. F. 275 Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) 259 nonimmigrant, involuntary minorities 146 non-profits, controlling curriculum development 88 – 9 North Dakota 72 nuclear proliferation 70 – 1 Oakland Ebonics movement 142, 145 Obama, Barack 3 Occupy Education movement 70, 73 O’Connor, R. E. 121 O’Donnell, V. 177 – 8 Ogbu, J. U. 145 – 6 O’Hanian, Susan 65, 175 one-to-one tutoring 109, 115 opportunity gap 62 oppositional identities 145, 146, 147 opt-out movement 26, 52, 267, 274, 280, 285 oral reading 128 – 9 Oregon 74 Other People’s Words (Purcell-Gates) 147 Packard, V. 173 para-educational enterprises 80, 86, 87 – 8 Paratore, J. R. 122 Parks, Rosa 235, 249 Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) 84 Pathogeographies 28n1 Patillo, M. 241 Pearson Inc. 18, 35, 48 – 51, 54, 65 – 6, 82, 265 pedagogical caning 193 pedagogy 149 – 50, 227, 290 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire) 141 Peet, R. 229 Peoples’ March for Public Education 74 personal responsibility 223 persuasion tactics 173 – 5 perturbation 152 Pew Research 245 phenomenological methodology 276 philanthropy in education 64 – 5 Phillips, Adam 21, 26 phonics 141

Pianta, R. C. 103 Picard, Cecil J. 6 – 7 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) scores 191 planned fragmentation 110 pleasure principle 17, 19 plurilingualism 150 politics of disposability 242 poverty 4 – 6, 60, 105 Power, Michael 18 power need 173 praxis 230 President’s Plan for a Strong Middle Class and a Strong America, The (Obama administration) 53 – 4 Pressley, M. 103 prime training 189 – 90 private schools: branding of 175 – 7; poverty and 5 privatization: accreditors to support private school model 179 – 85; counter to 68 – 70; defined 62; as form of white hegemony 69; function of 61; marketing strategies 174 – 5; mass movements to counter 70 – 2; newspaper headlines as proof of failing schools 177 – 9; personalities at podia 179 – 85; persuasion and consumer behavior 173 – 7; Redbud Elementary as example of failing school 185 – 6; short-term test score gains vs long-term policies 72; steps to 172; support for 223; venture philanthropy and 66 – 7 product repositioning 175 – 6 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores 191 progression of program models 213 projective screen, Louisiana’s role as 12n5 propagandistic techniques. See pseudo-events pseudo-events 78 – 9, 177 – 8 psychic dead zones 20 – 6 public-private partnerships (PPP) 65, 241 public speaking, ethical lapses of 180 punishments of Asian school children 193 – 4 pupils with disabilities (PWD) 103 – 4, 106 See also special education Purcell-Gates, V. 147 Puritan theology 271n1

302 Index Queens College Secondary Education department 261 queer theorists 28n1 Quigley, Lori 269 Race to the Top initiative 54, 79 – 80, 82 – 3, 262 – 3 racial oppression 237, 242 – 5 racism 60, 222, 239 Ravitch, Diane 96, 288 reading: comprehension 153, 182 – 3; high volume of, greater reading competence 121 – 2; intelligence vs. ability 142 – 3; proficiency of 113; stamina 127. See also literacy/literacy instruction Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys (Smith and Wilhelm) 147 reading instruction: additional time for 108; curriculum conflict 110; decoding emphasis program 111; dyad reading 121; effects of rereading difficult text 122; engaged readers 144; evaluating 108; fragmentation 106 – 7, 110; one-size-fits-all 109; one-toone tutoring 109; phonics 141; proficiency linked to time reading 113; recall 127 – 8; skills worksheet model 106, 109; summer reading loss 113 – 14; Title I funding 106; traditional assessment 120; whole group instruction 109; whole word reading 141. See also Intervention Assessment (IA); literacy/literacy instruction; struggling readers reading skills, defined 123 reading strategies, defined 123 recruitment strategies 87 Redbud Elementary 3, 102, 170 – 2, 185 – 6,  199 regressive reform 67 relational generativity 287 – 9 Renaissance 2010 223 – 4, 241 Renton Education Association 284 repetition compulsion 24 reproduction theory 68 resistance to edTPA 34, 39 retention rates 104 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 62 Rosa, Betty 270 running records 102 Ryan, T. 152

Sahlberg, Pasi 65 Sanders, Bernie 60, 73 – 4 Santner, Eric 27 Save Our Schools (SOS) group 280 – 1, 284 – 5 Save Our Schools Activists Conference 74 SBA (smarter balanced assessment) 273 scapegoating of teachers 9, 11, 81, 92 Schiffman, L. G. 173 Schneiderman, Eric 86 school achievement for teenage mothers. See teenage mothers school choice: advocates of 5; in Chicago Public Schools 223; as form of racism 241 – 2; history of 178; social justice and 238 schooling: contemporary hierarchical arrangement of 275 – 6; privatization of 61 school reform: as good for business 6; neoliberal agenda of privatization 225 – 7; opposing 274 – 5; student trauma due to 275 – 6 schools: branding private 175 – 7; building conditions 4; deviant behaviors 192; educating citizens for global economy 228; failing 175, 177 – 9; mission of 228; as political spaces 144; suicide rate 191 – 2; violence 192. See also charter schools; privatization Schools for Freedmen during Reconstruction 242 school-to-prison pipeline 73 school vouchers 178 Schubert, William 217 segregation 5, 239 self-love 26 – 7 sexuality, domesticating 25 Shady Lake Christian School 5 Shanahan, Timothy 139 Shany, M. 121 – 2 shock doctrine capitalism 59 Shores, J. H. 214 Silva, D. Y. 275 Simons, H. D. 146 Singapore Institute of Mental Health (IMH) 191 skills worksheet model 106, 109, 113 slavery 246 small-group reading 120

Index  303 Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) 84, 273, 279 Smith, B. O. 214 Smith, D. M. 238 Smith, K. E. 179 Smith, M. W. 147 social justice 74, 237 – 40, 283 socioeconomic background, educational performance and 179 Solomon, M. R. 177 Solomon, Norman 71 Souto-Manning, M. 172 special education: academic gains 107; additional reading lessons for 108; qualifying children for 279; referrals to 103 – 5; retention rates 104 – 5; in Singapore schools 189 – 90; state accountability testing 104 special education teachers 45 See also teachers specialized professional association (SPA) enterprises 88, 91, 92 Spellings, Margaret 81 Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education 81 standardized tests: creating deficits 5; emphasis on 81 – 2; to end poverty cycle 11; as hegemonic control 68; to promote privatization 180 – 4. See also high stakes testing Standards for Reading Professionals, Standards 2010 180 – 1 Stanford Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) 37 – 8, 171, 259 – 61 Stanley, W. O. 214 state education policy, federal government’s intervention into 83 Stotsky, Sandra 84 “Stronger Accountability Model for Teacher Education, A” 226 struggling readers: access to books 114; additional reading lessons for 108; book self-selection and 113; case study 121 – 2; early intervention 115; independent reading activity 111; intelligence vs. reading ability 142 – 3; leisure time reading, importance of 112 – 13; managing difficult text 122; motivation for 112; reading growth 121 – 2; summer reading loss 113 – 14. See also literacy/literacy instruction; reading instruction Stuhlman, M. W. 103

subjective experiences 151 subjective presence 6 suicide rate 190 – 2, 273 summer books program 114 summer reading loss 113 – 14 Sustar, L. 239 Swanson, H. L. 121 synonymy 182 Taylor, K. Y. 239 teacher candidate competency 91 teacher education: in Illinois 33; market-based model 89; outsourcing 48 – 9; privatization of 49; problems in 226; program effectiveness 91; programs 84 – 5, 89; shifts in 143 teacher effectiveness 37, 54 – 5, 227 teacher leadership 275 teacher pedagogies 150 Teacher Performance Assessment. See edTPA teachers: building better 23; classroom readiness of 171; cultural ecology theory 145 – 6; driving force behind student failure 85; evaluating 172; instruction for 103; Intervention Assessment and 123; minority candidates for 37; neoliberal special treatment for 53 – 4; preparing for future 227 – 8; professional judgement of 10; as scapegoats 9, 11, 81, 92; stifling creativity for 8 – 10; as technicians 172. See also accreditation; certification; educators; highly effective teacher (HET); special education teachers teachers unions 89 Teach for America (TFA) 84 – 5 teach to the tests 279 – 80 technology: educational use of 151 – 3; promotion of 23 – 4; to support learning 284; and transformation of feeling 23 – 4; video component of edTPA 48 – 9 teenage mothers: academic supports 206; attending college 209; Bianca 199 – 203; financial issues 201 – 2, 203; financial support for 204 – 5; graduation goals 201; independent housing 204, 207; life after school 206 – 8; making up for lost time 202 – 3; need for progress

304 Index and achievement 207 – 8; school aspirations 200, 202; socialization 202; structural disadvantages for 205 Tennessee Education Association 55 Tennessee Value-added Assessment System (TVAAS) 55 test-grading industry 6 test pep rallies 172 third space theory 148 – 9 TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) scores 191 TINA (there is no alternative) syndrome 228 – 9 Title I: funding 106; remedial programs 107; students utilizing 106 – 7 Torgeson, J. K. 112 totalitarian world 24 Townsend, James 247 – 8 traditional assessment 120 trauma: children’s experience of 5; curriculum reform creating 275 – 6; as form of control 60; of LEAP testing 7 – 8; of race/white supremacy 21 – 2 Trivializing Teacher Education: The Accreditation Squeeze 95 – 6 Trump, Donald 61 Trump Entrepreneur Institute 86 Trump University 86 Turkle, Sherry 23 – 4 Twain, Mark 78, 169 United Nations happiness index 194 – 5 United Opt Out 26 universal singularity 26 – 7 university attendance 141 University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research 224 University of Phoenix 80 – 1, 86 urban school systems 224 U.S. Department of Education: CAEP and 79 – 80, 90; driving post-No Child Left Behind agenda 54 – 5;

proposing teacher preparation programs 32; Race to the Top funding 263 value-added models (VAM) 38 – 9, 54 – 5, 83, 263, 267 Venn diagrams 43 venture capitalists 72 venture philanthropy 66 – 7 Vergara case 55 video technology 48 – 9, 151 – 2 violence 192 virtual being 26 – 7 voluntary reading 112 von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 78 Vygotsky, Lev 149 – 50 WABATS (Washington Badassed Teachers) 274, 289 Wadsworth 239 – 40 Wansink, B. 174 – 5 War Made Easy (Solomon) 71 Washington Education Association (WEA) 277 Wharton-McDonald, R. 103 whole group instruction 109, 115 whole word reading 141 Why Johnny Can’t Read and What You Can Do About It (Flesch) 141 Wilcox, B. R. 121 Wilhelm, J. D. 147 Wilhoit, Gene 83 – 4 Wilson, Japhy 28n1 Wisenblit, J. 173 Wizard of Oz 78 – 9 word triggers 174 – 5 workbook pages. See skills worksheet model World Happiness Report 194 – 5 World Health Organization (WHO) 190 Wright, Richard 242 Zinn, M. B. 179 zone of proximal development theory 152 – 3