Again I come at something from a libertarian perspective, with an attempt to explain to my many friends that this perspective is critical to take to Dover. Todays topic: Common Core and corporate education reform Please read Kevin Carsons piece (linked below); it is as short and incisive an examination of the Common Core process as you are going to find, and also an explanation of why the charter school movement is nothing to attach yourself to. Heres a relevant snippet about the architect of Common Core: [David} Coleman worked the Common Core movement in typical McKinsey fashion. McKinsey’s style is to provide expensive services that can be duplicated much more effectively in-house, to drive a wedge between senior management and everyone below them, and to convince the boys in the C-Suite that actual production workers are lazy incompetents who need to be micromanaged and downsized. And that’s exactly the approach Coleman took to Common Core. Instead of building grassroots support, he approached the richest former CEO in America, Bill Gates, enlisting his help in selling it to the U.S. Department of Education and imposing it on school districts top-down. The Common Core approach starts with the assumption that rank-and-file teachers are an enemy to be threatened and micromanaged into shaping up, and flatters public school administrators into siding with Common Core wonks against teachers. Unfortunately this has worked so well in corporately owned Delaware that we may be past the tipping point unless various constituencies change course NOW. Libertarian and conservative groups that are prone to dislike unions on general principle have to overcome that aversion in order to ally with teachers, who have been set up as the victims. Teachers by and large agree with opting out of tests; by and large share our skepticism about Common Core; and by and large want to limit government intrusion into their classrooms. And the only vehicle they currently have available to organize around those principles is their union. The teachers (hope youre listening, Mike Matthews) need to get their heads around the idea that investing every year in the same candidates who ultimately vote against your interests is not only self-defeating, but is in fact arming your enemy. Mike once recently wrote about the need, on occasion, for unions to create tension between themselves and their employers. Unfortunately, to date (with the exception of recent resolutions for Opt Outs and Common Core) the DSEA has been so interested in being at the table, that its leaders have missed the fact that they are on the table as the main course. Some legislators have begun resolutely speaking out (and voting!) against the advance of corporate reform. You dont have to agree with every position each of them takes to know we need to preserve those voices. And, likewise, there are candidates out there (hello, he said shyly) who will join that chorus. These folks need to be supported. But mostly you need to take five minutes to read Kevin Carsons article and realize that, yes, libertarians belong in the alliance to turn back corporate education reform.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 19:07:57 +0000
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