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I don’t know if it was Sabrina’s shaming or my call to Homeland Security, but Arne Duncan just wrote about (gasp!) social studies.
Our bud, the Secretary of Education, wrote an article in the recent May/June 2011 issue of Social Education extolling the essential role of social studies in the classroom. Other present and past presidents of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), of which I am a member, also commented on Arne’s writing.
We all tend to be in agreement: Even though he seems well meaning, Arne has a bad tendency to cry alligator tears and blame everyone but himself.
He begins by acknowledging what we have been screaming about for years: that No Child Left Behind has created an environment where English, mathematics and science were given massive emphasis at the expense of history, geography, government and other social sciences. Yet even this admission is half-hearted. A particularly galling statement begins thus:
“Principals, particularly those at elementary schools, tell me that though they would like to allow ample time for social studies education, they feel constrained by pressures to meet adequate yearly progress (AYP). By sacrificing civics, economics, and history, these leaders have felt forced to neglect the long-term benefits of a well-rounded education, instead allowing less important, short-term goals to take over.”
Instead of a mea culpa for the narrow AYP standards, he blames administrators and districts for not allowing enough time—all the while pushing these same districts to standards that require all of their time (and then some). Apparently the AYP is such a sacred cow that any attempt to corral it is seen as a trip to the NEA/AFT slaughterhouse.
Furthermore, his praise of social studies is clearly tongue-in-cheek. While pushing for social studies to be elevated to its rightful place as an essential subject, he still harps on the importance of reading and math. Arne does this for almost a paragraph before he finally declares that marginalizing social studies “is not only misguided, it is educational neglect.”
To me, this is tantamount to thinking about that hot new office assistant at work while having sex with your wife. Sure, it gets the job done—it may even feel pretty good—but deep down, you know what you did was dishonest.
Not only does Arne pass the buck on the problem, but it seems that solutions are also hard to come by. He mentions the need to “fix NCLB so that school leaders do not feel forced to ignore the vital components of a good education.” No specifics.
He stresses President Obama’s plan to focus more on at-risk schools than in micromanaging good schools in the new version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). No specifics.
New assessments that track for college and career readiness—no specifics.
More allowance for well-balanced curricula for districts—no specifics.
Where Arne does get specific are the very things that get his melon-head so excited: testing and giving teachers more work. He goes ga-ga, as he always does, for data-driven planning that targets strengths and weaknesses, especially with alignment to the Common Core standards in English and Math (kill me now). Yet he still has the nerve to call multiple-choice tests “mediocre” without questioning the data derived from said tests.
So who should fix this mess? According to Arne, we should.
Apparently, the Department of Education has a full plate pulling education dollars from children, creating ridiculous targets, adoring China like Mao in heat, all the while satisfying the needs of Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Koch brothers, McGraw-Hill and Pearson like a veteran Thai call girl. There’s just no time to force states and school districts to create rigorous curricula and assessments that measure success in social studies.
Arne is urging us, the social studies teachers, to push local and state governments to create high social studies standards. He wants us to push for data-driven accountability in social studies. He wants us to reform assessments to make them authentic enough to base instruction. He wants us to test kids on a full range of social studies skills and strategies.
We do a lot of this already. We bust our ass creating meaningful and rich curricula and assessments for our children. The problem is the states don’t listen to us—and neither does Arne.
When social studies testing at the elementary level fell to only 10 states, he said nothing.
When social studies standards became a political hot potato in Texas, he said nothing.
When high school tests in New York are threatened with extinction, he said nothing.
A recent House bill threatening to cut 43 educational programs was introduced—including Teaching American History, a grant program that serves as the very incubator of innovation in social studies education that Arne seeks. The Education and the Workforce Committee found “no demonstrated results from the program…” Really. Tell that to the hundreds of students in New York City that benefit from trained TAH teacher-historians. Yet I have not heard a peep from our secretary.
That’s the problem.
Arne Duncan plays lip service to the social studies crowd using tried and true platitudes and pithy remarks. All the while, we see right through his game—to placate us while his dismantling of American education is complete.
If Arne is truly serious about establishing social studies’ rightful place in American education, he should be the one—NOT us—who is pushing the states and districts to make AYP contingent on social studies success, to make meaningful and rich social studies curricula and assessments, to hold schools accountable for success in history, geography, economics, government and social sciences.
We have been advocating this—for years. It is time the Secretary of Education to stop fence-sitting and finally get in the game of saving social studies in America.
Otherwise, his words are as authentic as the assessments he loves.
Mr. D's Neighborhood 
The Education War – Who is winning?
Civil unrest. “Nation building.” Revolutions. Economic crisis. Natural disasters. The Q-word has been used repeatedly for so many of the dangerous, sticky situations we find ourselves as a society.
Yet does the education war—the clash of “reformers” that has stretched over a decade—deserve the dreaded label?
It depends on what you hear.
Many news outlets, in print and online, picture the education reform movement as clearly on the defensive. Attacks on charter schools have increased as never before, viewed as undemocratic, tyrannical and ultimately ineffective. The latest report on how Eva Moskowitz’ Success Academy charter schools were caught on record attempting to push out a special-needs student is particularly galling.
New tests based on the Common Core Learning Standards showed massive drops in scores, giving a giant raspberry to all earlier reform attempts. Companies cashing in on the testing craze—Pearson, McGraw-Hill, etc.—are under the microscope for botched questions and poor scoring in state after state. The Common Core itself is under attack, as state after state elects to opt out of the supposedly nationwide initiative—regardless of the DOE carrot-and-stick policy about Common Core adoption.
Even reform stalwarts like Teach for America, Michelle Rhee and the Gates Foundation find themselves under siege as critics wail on their status and perceived impact on public education.
Yet if you look at actual policy, it paints a very different picture.
Education reformers, backed bipartisanly, have pushed standardized testing into almost every classroom in America. Teacher evaluation systems across the country are aligning teacher effectiveness with student scores on state tests, with unions knuckling under in the process. The Common Core, though embattled, is now the rule in reform strongholds like New York, California and Massachusetts. Governors from both parties are backing more draconian measures to shut down failing schools.
Even worse, the media machine of education reform has recently launched a counter-offensive. Long criticized for not developing effective veteran teachers, TFA and other reform movements are now saying it is BETTER to have short-term teachers who won’t become veterans because their enthusiasm, their innate intelligence and God’s good graces are enough to provide a quality education for children.
This conflict looks like it qualifies as a quagmire… and part of fault lies with the opposition.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of standardized tests, TFA, charters, etc. Most readers here already know that. However, I am a very big fan of improving teacher selection and preparation, which is high on the education reform agenda. I don’t like that it’s relatively easy access into our profession, and it hurts our reputation in the process.
I have feet in two very different parts of the swamp. They shouldn’t be. Both sides should be having real, meaningful policymaking sessions by now. Why aren’t they?
The education reform movement does not take the opposition seriously.
This is a similar problem with the Occupy Wall Street movement. It was a grassroots movement, to be sure, but there was no definition of victory: no goals, no leadership, no direction. It “started a dialogue”, and you know how much J.P. Morgan and the like shake in their wingtips over that.
Occupy Wall Street failed because Wall Street itself never saw them as a threat. They didn’t become an electoral force, backing candidates allied to them for Congress and Senate. They didn’t become a fundraising power, soliciting funds so that candidates from both parties kowtow to them in alternating order. They didn’t become a lobby, oiling and adjusting the rusty gears of the filthy gearbox called legislative politics.
The Tea Party, on the other hand, though still disorganized nationally, managed to become a force because it knew how to monopolize the conversation and the ballot box. It wasn’t just Koch Brothers money that put the Tea Party boot on the throat of the Republican Party. The Tea Party quickly moved from “starting a dialogue” to “kicking the shit out of anyone in their way.” Moderate republicans fell like dominoes. Their candidates, whether they won or lost, made sure the Tea Party was firmly at the big boys table in the RNC.
The Tea Party became a threat. They became feared. Occupy Wall Street didn’t…and the education reform opposition isn’t much of a fear either.
As much as the opposition boasts numerous media outlets, a lightning-rod leader in Diane Ravitch, and numerous movements like Save Our Schools, etc., there is little to show for their efforts other than scathing editorials, page after page of incendiary blogs, reams of online petitions and packed comments on Facebook pages.
Victory is not “opening a dialogue.” It is when the policies of the state and nation are changed. That does not happen with a spirited debate.
If the opposition wants a seat at the education table, rightly placed across from the reformers, it has to fight for it.
Like Wall Street, the only thing many of these reformers will listen to is their wallet and the ballot box. The opposition needs to attack both, ferociously and brutally.
It must out-Koch the Koch brothers and out-Gates the Gates Foundation. It must attain its own billionaire allies to fund PACs, lobbies, and candidates to state and national office. It must push their agenda by any means necessary.
It has to turn the media conversation forcefully, repeatedly and effectively to counter the sound-bites of the reformers. The phrase “for the children”, co-opted by both sides, is both tired and unrealistic. It ceased to be about children a long time ago, unfortunately. This fight is about the adults, and hopefully the policies will serve children best. But to say that each side is exclusively serving the children is to be in an extreme state of delusion.
More than anything, however, the opposition needs to get its hands dirty with the business of politics. I know many in the opposition, and they are smart, savvy, earnest people who genuinely want to make a difference. They want to “maintain the moral high ground” and not stoop to the level of the Broads, Kochs, Gates and the rest. Their methods, frankly, will do nothing but create coffee-house chatter.
To change policy is a filthy, brutal, demoralizing and demeaning business. Only by beating the reformers at their own game can the opposition sit with them and negotiate as rivals to pound out the policies that best serve everyone.
As for maintaining the moral high ground…that only works when your opponent has morals to maintain.
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Tagged as Civil Rights, Commentary, Education, education reform, Educational leadership, Koch, Koch family, McGraw-Hill, Occupy Wall Street, Opinion, Tea Party, Teach For America, Teachers, Teaching, United States, Wall Street