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Adams would be appalled

The Pioneer Institute is a conservative, market-oriented outfit that wants more charter schools. And people opposed to the Common Core will find plenty to agree with here. The drive for national standards produces strange bedfellows.

They should point out how much money the Gates Foundation put out promoting the Common Core.

By Jamie Gass

The recent Fourth of July holiday provided an opportunity to reflect on the principles of American democracy. Few had a bigger role in developing those principles than the commonwealth's own John Adams, who wrote the Massachusetts Constitution, proposed that Thomas Jefferson pen the Declaration of Independence, nominated George Washington to lead the Continental Army and appointed John Marshall chief justice.

But the plain-spoken Adams would be appalled if he saw the way public officials and unelected trade organizations, funded by private foundations, are flouting democratic institutions in their push to alter federal, state and local education policies.

Public education has long been administered and paid for by state and municipal governments. That local focus has kept it largely free of the "Gucci Gulch" phenomenon of policy made by influential D.C. lobbyists.

But that's all changing. Unelected trade organizations, fueled by tens of millions of dollars from private organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are working to persuade states to adopt proposed national education standards and assessments. Many of these organizations, like the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, have poor records when it comes to improving student achievement and are made up of public officials whose membership dues are taxpayer funded.

Testing companies and other private vendors are using vehicles such as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills to promote policy changes that would potentially position them to reap substantial financial gains.

Massachusetts produced Horace Mann, the father of public education. But events here are a far cry from Mann's vision of an educated, engaged citizenry.

The board never voted on, or even saw, either of the commonwealth's two applications for federal "Race to the Top" education grant funding before they were submitted. Grant competition rules require superintendent or school committee chair support, but don't require a full committee vote.

Later this month, the BESE is scheduled to replace the commonwealth's best-in-the-nation academic standards with weaker national standards and assessments. The public comment period for the proposed national standards was just three weeks during the summer, when many educators are on vacation. Comment periods are usually a couple of months, always during the academic year.

When it comes to the national standards, the line dividing public officials and trade organizations has become so murky that Pioneer Institute recently submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for correspondence between state education officials and organizations like NGA, CCSSO, the Gates Foundation and the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

It's particularly unfortunate that public education is the setting for this circumvention of democracy and the public trust. Even as we teach our children about the sanctity of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers, they watch adults develop ever-more-clever ways to brush aside the principles those documents exemplify.

An ongoing fiscal crisis that has Massachusetts facing an estimated $2 billion deficit for the next fiscal year provides the backdrop for these end runs around democracy. Regional DESE offices will cost money to operate; replacing the commonwealth's model academic standards would require expensive new assessments.

Massachusetts municipalities have been laid low by fiscal woes. Adopting national standards would inflict even more pain by forcing them to pay for new teacher professional development programs, textbooks that are aligned with the new standards and assessments and other unbudgeted costs.

John Adams believed future generations would mark Independence Day "with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations." But he would find nothing to celebrate in selected federal and state officials sidestepping democratic institutions that are the Founding Fathers' most enduring legacy.


Jamie Gass is director of the Center for School Reform at Pioneer Institute in Boston.





— Jamie Gass
South Coast Today
2010-07-16
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20107160308

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