Democratic Vision of Public Education

A promise of a better tomorrow to the students of today

INTRODUCTION

In Their Own Words - The PastWhat greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?

Cicero

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree….An amendment of our constitution must her come in aid of public education.

Thomas Jefferson

It has ever been my hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would still say, let us try the experiment, and preserve our equality as long as we can. A better system of education for the common people might preserve them long from such artificial inequalities as are prejudicial to society, by confounding the natural distinctions of right and wrong, virtue and vice.

John Adams

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy

Abraham Lincoln

Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money in that order; it is a process, a never ending one

Bel Kaufmann

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism...But if we do…nothing will change. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Barack Obama

What makes democracy work is civic engagement. This is a habit, a practice, a set of skills, and a way of life that we must nurture from an early age and foster in everything we do as citizens ourselves, both in politics and outside it. In the schools, from an early age, let students learn the art of politics and the responsibilities of self-government and collective organization. Student government can be a valuable training ground for democracy, but it must evolve with a set of values and ideals that nurture commitment to the public good, foster open and respectful debate, and cultivate responsibility.

Larry Diamond

NCLB was a back-door maneuver “that will let the private sector take over education, something the Republicans have wanted for years –

James Jeffords (Chair of Senate Committee on Education 1997-2001)

Left Republican Party when the party refused to fully fund NCLB

Many in Bush’s Department of Education saw NCLB as a Trojan horse for the choice agenda – a way to expose the failure of public education and ‘blow it up a bit’ There were a number of people pushing hard for market forces and privatization.

Susan Neuman – One of Several Architects of NCLB

(Asst. Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education 2001-2003)

Retrieved from: http://www.time.com

In Their Own Words - Present

DEMOCRACY - a government in which the supreme power is vested in the common people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving free elections; the absence of heredity or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

• A nation created by and governed by its people• The notion that all citizens should be educated

in order to contribute to the greater good of the country and to hold politicians accountable to the people they represented.

• All citizens should be education in order to provide them a true sense of their rights, duties, and obligations, [and] a just knowledge of rational liberty intended to prepare students for active roles in public life

A Revolutionary Idea -

The Free, but not so DEMOCRATIC VISION

CAPITALISM - an economic system characterized by PRIVATE or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition.

FREE-MARKET - an economic market or system in which prices are based on competition among private businesses and not controlled by a government

Capitalism is at once far too rational, trusting in nothing that it cannot weigh and measure, and far too little as

well, accumulating wealth as an end in itself. Terry Eagleton, Harper's, March 2005

A Timeline of Public Education S-Curves – Tony Townsend (2009)• Based on the concept that all ideas are accepted at various levels over a

long period of time

TIME – DAYS, MONTHS, YEARS

Movement Gains or Loses Momentum

Breakthrough – Grow and Prosper Together or Break and Fail

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S-Curve 1

S-Curve 2

S-Curve 3

S-Curve 4S-Curve 5 ?

S-Curve 1: • Lasted approximately 4000 years. • Based on individual survival• Formal Education Provided to Aristocracy

− Maintain Status and Control− Leaders of Society Over Peasants

• Common Folk− Only Education Provided by Parents − Educated Only With The Information Needed to

Survive

• Lasted into 1800’s (overlap with S-Curve 2)

S-Curve 2: 1800’s – 1950’s• Lasted approximately 150 years• Pressure From Growing ‘Middle Class’ to Educate

It’s People. Focus shifts from individual to community

• Europe and Child Labor Laws− Child Labor Laws in Europe Banned Use of Young

Children For Labor− Increase in ‘Unruly Children’ in Neighborhoods− Need to Educate Children

• Industrialization…School as a Factory− Children Needed to be Education for Employment− Children Moved From Grade to Grade to Acquire

Skills Necessary to Work in the Factories and/or Mines

S-Curve 2: 1800’s – 1950’s• REVOLUTION in AMERICA

− Colonies Gained Independence− Formed a Democratic Society− System of universal public schooling, at the state

expense, to perpetuate a better informed public and to promote the broader goals of free nation governed by the people

• Democratic Societies− Formed during American Revolution− View of Education: the vehicle for informing

citizens of “a true sense of their rights, duties, and obligations, [and] a just knowledge of rational liberty intended to prepare students for active roles in public life” (Dotts, 2010)

S-Curve 2: 1800’s – 1950’s• Common School Movement

− Horace Mann− View of Education: develop a school system that

“would diminish strife among a pluralistic people, supplant it with a common and universal patriotism, and instill respect for law and order” (Dotts, 2010, p. 190).

− What was valued at this time was a way to standardize knowledge to assimilate all citizens to be good Americans and adopt the dominant culture.

− First Attendance Laws Passed− Factory model of Europe Implemented in the

United States. Train citizens to enter the workforce

S-Curve 2: 1800’s – 1950’s• Problems Arise

− Purpose to assimilate the masses into one dominate culture was bound to fail in a society based on an individual’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

− Public becomes suspicious of education, fearing it was a way to train and assimilate their children into the dominant culture and lower social class

− Growing disparity between the rich and poor.• Force many parents to keep children home from

school• Enter work force to provide for the family

− Increase of segregation between race and social class

• Great Depression and World War II− Pivotal moment in the history of the United States− The United States emerges as a leading world power.

S-Curve 2: 1800’s – 1950’s• A Nation Pulls Together for the Common Good

− Cold War Begins. Nation rallies to educate its people to stay ahead of the Soviet Union and prevent the spread of communism

− Sputnik (1957): Government responds by encouraging schools to improve the instruction of math and science. First sign of S-Curve 3: Govt. Involvement

• Other Notable Events/People− John Hughes – Establishment of Parochial Education− 1839/1847 - Passage of Bilingual Education Laws (OH, LA)− 1918 – National Education Association publishes report

calling for separate curricula for different students− 1920’s – More schools begin tracking students− 1930’s – Use of intelligence tests to place students− 1947 – Educational Testing Service is born

S-Curve 3: 1950’s – 2000• Government Begins to Take an Active Roll in Public Education• A Nation Pulls Together for the Common Good

− Civil Rights Movement and Brown v. Board of Education• Separate but Equal Schools for Blacks and Whites was

Unconstitutional• Schools ordered to begin desegregating schools

− Protests and riots for and against desegregation− Increase in number of private schools in response to ‘white

flight’

− Passage of Laws Protecting the Disenfranchised• Elementary and Secondary Education Act• Americans with Disabilities Act • Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act• No Child Left Behind• Individuals with Disabilities Education Act• Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Age Discrimination Act• FERPA 1974

S-Curve 3: 1950’s – 2000• A Nation at Risk

− Published in 1983− Conservatives, among others, label public education as a failure

and primary source of the decline of the United States in international comparisons of educational achievement Scores

− Educators attempt to explain the report merely highlighted areas where improvements could be made and should not be viewed as evidence of failing schools and that political involvement was the cause for the existence of the gap between high and low income families

− legislators jumped at the chance to use the reports as leverage toward removing democratic control of schooling, to support the use of vouchers, and to support the creation of privately run charter schools (Copeland, 2009).

• State Governors adopt National Education Goals to guide local, state, and national school improvement efforts. States that adopt the goals were promised additional funding from the federal government (money connected to obedience).

S-Curve 3: 1950’s – 2000• School Choice Movement

− 1990: Politics, Markets, and American Schools published. Provides support for school choice programs as authors John Chubb and Terry Moe claim “choice, all by itself, has the capacity to bring about a transformation in public education

− 1990-91: Milwaukee School District begins Parental Choice Program providing vouchers to parents who wish to send their children to private schools

− 1991: Minnesota passes statewide choice program. BY 2000, 16 other states have similar programs.

− 1996: Ohio allows vouchers for religious schools

• Other Notable Events/People− 1994: Proposition 187 passed in California – denies children of

undocumented immigrants an education. Later found unconstitutional

− 1998: California passes Proposition 227 – eliminates state’s bilingual program and requires all instruction to be done in English

− 2000: Arizona passes version of English-only laws− 2004: Washington DC Voucher Program begins

S-Curve 4: 2000 - Present• Free-Market/Business Model of Education dominated

by thoughts of accountability, a market-system of education: privatization and the dismantling of public education

• Proponents of school choice:− Suggest that low-income students perform better in private

schools and the competition forces schools to use resources more wisely.

− Competition and the business model of educating children will only improve the quality of all schools as administrators compete for students.

− Call for the removal of control from local school boards− Blame teacher unions for poorly run schools− Call for the establishment of privately run charter schools− Seek to remove professionalism from educators− Support the ability to choose a school where people enrolled

have the same religious background, political beliefs, and/or social background. It would seem this practice is a giant step backward and only perpetuates the stratification among the citizens living in the United States of America (Laguardia and Pearl, 2009).

S-Curve 4: 2000 - Present• Opponents of school choice:

− Data from private and charter schools are deceiving. Students enrolled in those schools are not as random as the schools would have the public believe.

− Students are selected for enrollment, and even if coming from a low-income home, typically have parents who are significantly more invested in the education of their children.

− Public schools are left with the rest, unable to limit the number of special education students and unable to create policies that can remove students who do not fulfill their obligations toward the expectations of the school (Ravitch, 2010).

− Charter schools reported as dumping poor performing students prior to state assessments (Kolodner, M., and Monahan, R. 2009, July 18). Retrieved from http://www.nydailynews.com

− Education based on competition encourages cheating

S-Curve 5: To Be Determined• We are at a crossroads in the United States when

it comes to the education of our children.• The citizens of the United States are certainly

confronted with a choice; however this choice is much greater than that of charter, private, or public. − Will our country abandon public schooling

altogether? − Will we base education and the future of our

country on the principles of competition: a system with clear winners and losers?

• The next S-curve must focus on the true principles of democracy once envisioned by our founders; however, it must also include the elements of social equity, rigor and relevance, and the concept where people improve themselves for the betterment of the others

S-Curve 5: To Be Determined• Want success? Stop making children the objects

we measure our effort against and instead, make children the subject of our efforts. In order to experience success for all we cannot:− have a quality education only for the few who

are rich and privileged − see schools as factories or businesses − expect the market to solve our problems.

• Education is a community experience. To be successful, people need to work together for the betterment of themselves, each other, and their community. Education of all must become a universal focus.

• All people must be provided a quality education – not only those who know how to work the system.

School Privatization?• Please take the time to review our research.• We are not against the idea of public, private, or

charter schools.• We are against placing the future of our nation

in the hands of big business and competition• We are against promoting competition in the

area of education – the only losers are the students.

• We support government support of innovative programs developed through the spirit of collaboration between school settings (Public, Private, and Charter)