Righting Wrongs

[LWolf]

The background:

The following article exposes a facet of a well-known disinformation campaign. Well-known, at least, to those who were educators at the time.

I'm referring to the organized attack on public education, with the intent of discrediting, and then privatizing, the system. First we had "A Nation At Risk," a 1983 report from Ronald Reagan's National Commission on Excellence in Education. That was designed to convince us that our public schools were in crisis, and that our teachers were incompetent.

Then, in 1989, Bush I and our governors produced National Education Goals. The Secretary of Energy, Admiral James Watkins, challenged national laboratories become more involved in education. In response, Sandia National Laboratories conducted an analysis and produced a report that debunked the assertions made in "A Nation At Risk."

The Sandia was suppressed for 3 years, and finally published in 1993. This article by Gerald Bracey exposes what happened next:

<snips>

The draft of The Sandia report closed with "There are many problems in American public schools, but there is no system-wide crisis." This was too positive for Ravitch, then assistant secretary education in the now defunct Office for Educational Research and Improvement, and Secretaries of Education and Energy, Lamar Alexander and James Watkins.

.........................................................................

Bob Huelskamp, one of the three engineers who authored the report returned some three months later to present it to me and some administrators in the Cherry Creek School District. I said we should take all of the data I had collected (substantially more by then than when I wrote the SAT piece) and the Sandia data and publish them all in one place. Huelskamp said, "We can't. We've got internal political problems."

I think it is inherent among engineers to practice understatement. What had actually happened was that the Sandia group had gone to Washington and presented the report to department of energy and department of education staff and some Congressmen. At the end, David Kearns, former CEO of Xerox and then Deputy Secretary of Education said, "You bury this or I'll bury you." Ravitch has denied Kearns said this. Huelskamp has affirmed it. An article in Education Week said only that "administration officials, particularly Mr. Kearns, reacted angrily at the meeting." The article also contained allegations of suppression and denials of such ("Report Questioning 'Crisis' in Education Triggers an Uproar," October 9, 1991).

The engineers did get buried, being forbidden at one point to leave New Mexico to talk about their findings. "Dead wrong" was how Secretary of Energy James Watkins (Energy funds Sandia) described the report in the September 30, 1991 issue of the Albuquerque Journal. "It is a call for complacency when just the opposite is required," he said. (It amazes me that each time someone points out that the educational sky is not actually falling, those who say it is lose all capacity for logic and accuse that the non-Chicken Littles of being messengers of complacency. In a badly argued, extremely simplistic Washington Post op-ed, Ravitch pinned that label on me and the Sandia engineers, along with Iris Rotberg, then of the National Science Foundation ("U. S. Schools: The Bad News Is Right," November 17, 1991); typical distorting sentence: " say it is not fair to compare ourselves to countries like Japan and Korea because they value education and we do not").

More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/righting-wrongs_b_75189.html

The campaign to discredit and degrade our public education system has been wildly successful. While it was begun by Republicans, how many Democrats now sing the same tune? Instead of supporting what we were doing WELL, and addressing weaknesses, we've been systematically destroying the baby along with the bath for decades now. When do we stop letting those bent on abolishing public education win this battle?

[Maestro]

1. Gerald Bracey and his website

should required reading for anyone going into education. He and Susan Ohanion do a great job of debunking the reichwing attacks on education! And it is disgusting to see that some Democrats sing the same tune. Thanks for posting.

[LWolf]

2. You're welcome.

For any who are interested, here are the links to both Bracey and O'Hanion's work:

http://susanohanian.org/index.html

http://www.america-tomorrow.com/bracey/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/

[flashl]

3. Why is it, no one notice or question

that since heads of education have taken on CEO-like roles they are applying industrial age assembly line style product results to academics?

[LWolf]

4. I can give you a cynical, somewhat bitter answer:

People have been well-conditioned. Americans LIKE the blame game, they WANT to have someone, something, ANYTHING, to blame so that they are never held accountable for their own failings.

Americans WANT to blame public education for every social ill; they LIKE being anti-intellectual, and they LIKE the idea of sending their kids to private schools that are generally organized to segregate students by religion, social class, etc..

Americans don't want to confront the reality of what it would really take to to provide a world class education to every citizen.

Even here on DU, where supposedly Democrats and liberals are supposed to be on the side of just that equal opportunity and equal access to a good education, look how many responses a post supporting or defending education gets.

If I'd posted a thread complaining about "the schools," or a particular teacher, many more people would pop in to add their own attacks.

If we post a thread pointing out that the current state of education is based on disinformation and deliberate, systematic destruction, it sinks like a rock.

Who here will hold their reps accountable for deep-sixing NCLB, for example?

[flashl]

5. My observations are the same

This post "Sing Up" helps children learn through song received little attention while this post is like the energizer bunny with interesting undertones.

You are right about NCLB, in another one of my posts about dropout factories, the AP and John Hopkins attacks were ... unexpected?

While I am on my soapbox, since many here appears to support capitalism, one would conclude the direct connection of education and capitalism is understood.

If this country is not creating jobs at the rate of graduation, where are all of these educated people going to work? Why are we blind to the fact that few American ever work in the field of their degree? Of what purpose is a soldier with master degree in an infantry unit in Iraq? Or, a cab driver with a master degree?

/end rant

[LWolf]

6. You make good points.

You would think that partisan democrats would realize that, by abandoning education, they've allowed the opposition to control the way future voters are taught to think. With the control over msm, and over what children are taught and they way they are taught it, we are creating larger and larger groups of future voters who will vote as they are told by the media.

How does this benefit the nation, or the Democratic party, for those partisans?