"Multiplication Is for White People": Raising Expectations for Other People s Children - Hardcover

INTRODUCTION:
YES, DIANE, I'M STILL ANGRY

Recently I was invited by education activist Dr. Raynard
Sanders to New Orleans for an educational summit. The
speaker, the renowned and controversial Diane Ravitch, had told
Dr. Sanders that she wanted to meet me. Dr. Ravitch, currently a
professor at New York University, has made headlines with her
about-face on many issues related to public education. Ravitch
was the assistant secretary of education in the George H.W. Bush
administration, where she made her conservative intellectual and
political reputation with her staunch support of standardized testing,
charter schools, the No Child Left Behind Act, and free market
competition for schools. She has now repudiated many of her
earlier positions, stated both in public presentations and in her
book The Death and Life of the Great American School System:
How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. This courageous
scholar has resigned from influential conservative policy
groups and has incited many powerful enemies. As a result, in contrast
to her former life as a popular conservative commentator, she
has now found herself barred from expressing her new views in
many popular venues.

Before the speech began, I joined Diane, Raynard, and a few
invited guests in an adjoining room. Diane and I talked about the
devastation of public schools in post-Katrina New Orleans and
how politicians and educational entrepreneurs hawking privatization
are claiming the travesty of New Orleans education to be a
national model.

Diane asked me why I hadn't spoken out nationally against what
was happening. I told her about my work in New Orleans and my
modestly successful attempts to engage other African American
scholars in the struggle against what was happening there. I added
that the sense of futility in the battle for rational education policy
for African American children had gone on for so long and that
I had come to feel so tired, that I now needed to focus on those
areas where I felt I could actually make a difference: working with
teachers and children in an African American school. I was so angry
from the sensation of butting my head against a brick wall, I
told her, that I needed to give my “anger muscles” a rest. Diane
looked at me squarely and said, “You don't look angry.”

I realized two things at that moment. One was that Diane's anger
was relatively raw and still fresh and hadn't yet needed to be
modulated. It must have been quite a shock to go from being an
influential authority whose views were sought and valued in most
political circles to being a virtual outcast. While it was undeniably
courageous to reanalyze one's positions and come to a significantly
different stance, it has to be anger-provoking to realize that the
power elite seem less interested in logical analyses for the public
good than in maintaining power and profit. Her anger had a different
quality than the anger of those of us who have struggled
with the same issues for many years.

The second thing I realized was that, yes, I am still angry―despite
my attempts over the years to calm my spirit and to focus
on the wonder of teaching and learning. I am angry at the machinations
of those who, with so little knowledge of learning, of
teachers, or of children, are twisting the life out of schools.

I am angry that public schools, once a beacon of democracy,
have been overrun by the antidemocratic forces of extreme wealth.
Educational policy for the past decade has largely been determined
by the financial contributions of several very large corporate
foundations. Among a few others, the Broad, Gates, and
Walton (Walmart) foundations have dictated various “reforms”
by flooding the educational enterprise with capital. The ideas of
privatization, charter schools, Teach for America, the extremes of
the accountability movement, merit pay, increased standardized
testing, free market competition―all are promulgated and financially
supported by corporate foundations, which indeed have
those funds because they can avoid paying the taxes that the rest of
us must foot. Thus, educational policy has been virtually hijacked
by the wealthiest citizens, whom no one elected and who are unlikely
ever to have had a child in the public schools.

I am angry that with all of the corporate and taxpayers' money
that is flowing into education, little-to-none is going to those valiant
souls who have toiled in urban educational settings for many
years with proven track records. Instead, money typically goes to
those with little exposure to and even less experience in urban
schools. I am left in my more cynical moments with the thought
that poor black children have become the vehicle by which rich
white people give money to their friends.

I am angry because of the way that the original idea of charter
schools has been corrupted. In their first iteration, charter schools
were to be beacons for what could happen in public schools. They
were intended to develop models for working with the most challenging
populations. What they discovered was to be shared and
reproduced in other public school classrooms. Now, because of the
insertion of the “market model,” charter schools often shun the
very students they were intended to help. Special education students,
students with behavioral issues, and students who need any
kind of special assistance are excluded in a multiplicity of ways because
they reduce the bottom line―they lower test scores and take
more time to educate properly. Charter schools have any number
of ways of “counseling” such students out of their programs. I
have been told by parents that many charter schools accuse students
of a series of often trivial rule infractions, then tell parents
that the students will not be suspended if the parents voluntarily
transfer them to another school. Parents of a student with special
needs are told that the charter is not prepared to meet their child's
needs adequately and that he or she would be much better served
at the regular public school around the corner. (Schools in New
Orleans, the “model city” for charters, have devised an even more
sinister scheme for keeping unwanted children out of the schools.
The K-12 publicly funded charter schools, which are supposed to
be open to all through a lottery system of enrollment, are giving
preferential admission to children who have attended an affiliated
private preschool, one of which charges over $4,000 in tuition and
the other over $9,000.)1

In addition, the market-driven model insists that should charter
schools actually discover workable, innovative ideas, they are
not to be shared with other public schools but held close to the
vest to prevent “competitors” from “winning” the standardized
test race. So now, charter schools are not meant to contribute to
“regular” public education but to put it out of business.

I am angry about the hypocrisy rampant in education policy.
While schools and teachers are admonished to adhere to research-based
instruction and data-driven planning, there is no research to
support the proliferation of charter schools, pay-for-performance
plans, or market-based school competition. Indeed, where there is
research, it largely suggests that we should do an about-face and
run in the opposite direction.

I am angry that the conversation about educating our children
has become so restricted. What has happened to the societal desire
to instill character? To develop creativity? To cultivate courage
and kindness? How can we look at a small bundle of...