I really want to thank the author of this excellent piece for clarifying what went on in Oregon in re the abolishment of standards.
At first I thought it was another case of antiracist racism or White Saviorism gone mad ("we're lowering all requirements to help POCs!") but now I know it was just more political corruption to cover up the dismal state of public education in America, and how the open alliance bw the Dem Party and the teachers' unions has been aiding and abetting all this negligence.
It helped remind me that first impressions can often be wrong, misguided or just incomplete (esp when the story seems to reinforce your own personal biases) and also that the DIE agenda has multiple purposes, up to and including being used as a fig leaf to cover the misdeeds of our institutional leaders.
Want to get away with something you know is wrong or just cover your tracks and hide your agenda? Emit a word cloud of Diversity-speak and dare anyone to disagree and maybe get smeared with a bigotry accusation. This seems to be a new, effective and popular strategy (unless this is just my own biases showing again).
Aug 23, 2022·edited Aug 23, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
This is excellent reporting. Thank you. The circumstances are utterly reprehensible.
Teacher's unions, public unions more generally, should be made illegal. Why? Because the purpose of a union is to represent its members via an essentially adversarial relationship. When a private company wishes to pay as little as they can get away with and provide insufficient protections for their employees, then the employees can unionize and pressure the company to change.
What happens in public unions, such as teacher's unions? The unions pour 10's of millions of dollars into the political campaigns of those who they then are supposed to pressure to do what, change on behalf of their employees? That is insane, how does the union have an adversarial relationship with a politician whom they helped elect? And how does a politician - who is responsible to pay the salaries, to set the standards, and insure the taxpayers are provided a quality service, have any leverage over the public union? --- Oh, I get it. They don't, they won't, and the system doesn't really incentivize them to do so either. The politician is beholden to the union and will have a very, very, hard time criticizing or otherwise requiring better outcomes from them else they lose their very significant funding source.
The teachers have a hard time too. To whom do they turn if the educational establishment is requiring them to lower standards, to coerce speech, to teach things they think are wrong? They have no one. And so what do they do? The retire early, they quit, they opt out. Leaving what, only the activists that the unions are seeking to create to achieve their ideological ends.
Also, the government exists to serve the people. We elect them to do so. If it does not pay a fare wage and provide fair protections then you vote them out! How does a public union add any value or possibly help to solve such problems?
I have one quibble with this story: "Teachers didn’t like it for various reasons, and students and their parents (overwhelmingly white) didn’t like it because only half passed. So everybody in the system wanted to find a way to get rid of the test while also saving face." -- how does the author know that the parents liked the lowering of standards? That seems unlikely - but may actually be the case. Most everyone wants their kids to do well, they'll wait years and make great sacrifices for access to a charter school. This was the only unsupported statement I found in the piece.
All of these "progressive" (and by "progressive," I mean college-degreed white ruling class elite) efforts to "level the playing field" by reducing both opportunity and accountability are based on the foundational assumption that black and brown kids are not actually the equal of white kids; that there is no use trying to hold them to the same standards, because they can't possibly meet them. But doing away with those standards intrinsically equates to doing away with opportunities.
And yet we know, from the military, from sports, from Scouting, that when given a truly equal opportunity and hold them to high expectations, ALL kids can meet those expectations. Black kids don't get an easier path to Eagle Scout - you either complete your required Merit Badges and an Eagle project, or you don't. Uncle Sam doesn't care what color (or gender) you are when you're working on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier: You can either help put those planes and aircrews into the air and bring them back safely, or you can't.
Blacks and Hispanics (and Asians and Native Americans) have ALWAYS shown they are every bit as capable, as disciplined, as white kids.
So why does the ruling class keep pretending they aren't?
Aug 24, 2022·edited Aug 24, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
Excellent reporting and analysis - thanks for a job well done. It should be further emphasized, primarily for the benefit of other commenters who may be a bit over-anxious to jump on this as an example of the decline of American public ed, that the dropping of the SBAC (and its purpose of serving accountability) was the main purpose served by the Oregon shenanigans, and that it is the way this was done that added insult to injury. (Just a bit of clarification there for anyone whose reading skills are a bit rusty.) The gov and pols certainly earned negative style points for this caper.
Speaking as a public high school teacher I can vouch for the necessity of unionization. Few outside the field appreciate the persistent tension between educational administrators - loyal denizens of the professional managerial class- and rank and file teachers. It’s a widespread problem; I’ve taught in 7 different schools in 2 states - mostly inner-city LA but also suburbia and the rural Midwest - and have seen it in all of them. Much hope for improvement has been wasted on the charter school movement, soon to begin its 4th decade. It has always aimed to diminish the professionalism and status of teaching but has yet to clearly establish itself as a superior alternative to traditional public schooling. In any case, the culture of public education varies significantly from state to state, and teachers unions are essentially toothless in about half of them, with no right to strike. Many teachers would be happy to have public support when their administrative superiors hatch half-baked reform plans, but the truth is most people only act as if they care about education when they have a particular bone to pick. The people who led the effort to ditch the SBAC in Oregon were pols and bureaucrats who recently acquired the jargon they used to camouflage their intentions. Do Oregon teachers actively support such efforts to lower standards? That question wasn’t addressed in the article, but it is a safe bet that they do not.
Loan forgiveness for the rich and already educated is a dramatic mistake. It is political insanity in fact. I have been a college philosophy and ethics professor for over 30 years, with tenure. To solve the college extortion problem is simpler than most recognize:
First, attach government sanctions to colleges and universities that add administrators but cannot demonstrate that students benefit in either higher graduation rates or lower loan default rates from those administrators. Stop administrative bloat. Did that additional DEI hire for $120,000 actually improve graduation rates? Likely not.
Second, work to solve the precipitous drop in state funding of state universities. The second reason tuition rates have risen into the stratosphere is States no longer fund their higher education like they did only 30 years ago. WHY???? Is there a link between administrative bloat and states withholding funding? I think there is.
Third, and most important, lower the bar for students who default on their loans, or do not earn more than they would have had they entered the workforce with just a high school diploma, to sue the colleges that took their money. Many of those students were intentionally defrauded by those colleges, and those defrauded students should be made whole. Currently Colleges have no good motive not to take the money and run, and leave their failed students with life-crippling debt. Is that MSW from Columbia worth it? No. And Columbia, and most schools, darn well know it, bloated administrations and all. https://www.wsj.com/articles/financially-hobbled-for-life-the-elite-masters-degrees-that-dont-pay-off-11625752773https://www.thirdway.org/report/higher-eds-broken-bridge-to-the-middle-class
When it seems all the world is talking about one thing, ask yourself what is it that no one is talking about. And that is likely the truth hidden. Public education is corrupt, and that corruption begins at the level of our colleges of education. We funnel the least competent to become school teachers, and the colleges keep raking in the dough.
Thank You select members of FBT. As other's have "said," *outstanding* job. I and others had no idea. But can't say it surprises me, knowing the information You've provided.
TYTY again, and looking forward to further articles in the series.
Awesome work.: informative, lucid, compelling. This is what real journalism looks like.
I really want to thank the author of this excellent piece for clarifying what went on in Oregon in re the abolishment of standards.
At first I thought it was another case of antiracist racism or White Saviorism gone mad ("we're lowering all requirements to help POCs!") but now I know it was just more political corruption to cover up the dismal state of public education in America, and how the open alliance bw the Dem Party and the teachers' unions has been aiding and abetting all this negligence.
It helped remind me that first impressions can often be wrong, misguided or just incomplete (esp when the story seems to reinforce your own personal biases) and also that the DIE agenda has multiple purposes, up to and including being used as a fig leaf to cover the misdeeds of our institutional leaders.
Want to get away with something you know is wrong or just cover your tracks and hide your agenda? Emit a word cloud of Diversity-speak and dare anyone to disagree and maybe get smeared with a bigotry accusation. This seems to be a new, effective and popular strategy (unless this is just my own biases showing again).
Cheers!
Excellent analysis—concise and acute. You really exposed a shameful scam.
This is excellent reporting. Thank you. The circumstances are utterly reprehensible.
Teacher's unions, public unions more generally, should be made illegal. Why? Because the purpose of a union is to represent its members via an essentially adversarial relationship. When a private company wishes to pay as little as they can get away with and provide insufficient protections for their employees, then the employees can unionize and pressure the company to change.
What happens in public unions, such as teacher's unions? The unions pour 10's of millions of dollars into the political campaigns of those who they then are supposed to pressure to do what, change on behalf of their employees? That is insane, how does the union have an adversarial relationship with a politician whom they helped elect? And how does a politician - who is responsible to pay the salaries, to set the standards, and insure the taxpayers are provided a quality service, have any leverage over the public union? --- Oh, I get it. They don't, they won't, and the system doesn't really incentivize them to do so either. The politician is beholden to the union and will have a very, very, hard time criticizing or otherwise requiring better outcomes from them else they lose their very significant funding source.
The teachers have a hard time too. To whom do they turn if the educational establishment is requiring them to lower standards, to coerce speech, to teach things they think are wrong? They have no one. And so what do they do? The retire early, they quit, they opt out. Leaving what, only the activists that the unions are seeking to create to achieve their ideological ends.
Also, the government exists to serve the people. We elect them to do so. If it does not pay a fare wage and provide fair protections then you vote them out! How does a public union add any value or possibly help to solve such problems?
I have one quibble with this story: "Teachers didn’t like it for various reasons, and students and their parents (overwhelmingly white) didn’t like it because only half passed. So everybody in the system wanted to find a way to get rid of the test while also saving face." -- how does the author know that the parents liked the lowering of standards? That seems unlikely - but may actually be the case. Most everyone wants their kids to do well, they'll wait years and make great sacrifices for access to a charter school. This was the only unsupported statement I found in the piece.
All of these "progressive" (and by "progressive," I mean college-degreed white ruling class elite) efforts to "level the playing field" by reducing both opportunity and accountability are based on the foundational assumption that black and brown kids are not actually the equal of white kids; that there is no use trying to hold them to the same standards, because they can't possibly meet them. But doing away with those standards intrinsically equates to doing away with opportunities.
And yet we know, from the military, from sports, from Scouting, that when given a truly equal opportunity and hold them to high expectations, ALL kids can meet those expectations. Black kids don't get an easier path to Eagle Scout - you either complete your required Merit Badges and an Eagle project, or you don't. Uncle Sam doesn't care what color (or gender) you are when you're working on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier: You can either help put those planes and aircrews into the air and bring them back safely, or you can't.
Blacks and Hispanics (and Asians and Native Americans) have ALWAYS shown they are every bit as capable, as disciplined, as white kids.
So why does the ruling class keep pretending they aren't?
Excellent reporting and analysis - thanks for a job well done. It should be further emphasized, primarily for the benefit of other commenters who may be a bit over-anxious to jump on this as an example of the decline of American public ed, that the dropping of the SBAC (and its purpose of serving accountability) was the main purpose served by the Oregon shenanigans, and that it is the way this was done that added insult to injury. (Just a bit of clarification there for anyone whose reading skills are a bit rusty.) The gov and pols certainly earned negative style points for this caper.
Speaking as a public high school teacher I can vouch for the necessity of unionization. Few outside the field appreciate the persistent tension between educational administrators - loyal denizens of the professional managerial class- and rank and file teachers. It’s a widespread problem; I’ve taught in 7 different schools in 2 states - mostly inner-city LA but also suburbia and the rural Midwest - and have seen it in all of them. Much hope for improvement has been wasted on the charter school movement, soon to begin its 4th decade. It has always aimed to diminish the professionalism and status of teaching but has yet to clearly establish itself as a superior alternative to traditional public schooling. In any case, the culture of public education varies significantly from state to state, and teachers unions are essentially toothless in about half of them, with no right to strike. Many teachers would be happy to have public support when their administrative superiors hatch half-baked reform plans, but the truth is most people only act as if they care about education when they have a particular bone to pick. The people who led the effort to ditch the SBAC in Oregon were pols and bureaucrats who recently acquired the jargon they used to camouflage their intentions. Do Oregon teachers actively support such efforts to lower standards? That question wasn’t addressed in the article, but it is a safe bet that they do not.
Loan forgiveness for the rich and already educated is a dramatic mistake. It is political insanity in fact. I have been a college philosophy and ethics professor for over 30 years, with tenure. To solve the college extortion problem is simpler than most recognize:
First, attach government sanctions to colleges and universities that add administrators but cannot demonstrate that students benefit in either higher graduation rates or lower loan default rates from those administrators. Stop administrative bloat. Did that additional DEI hire for $120,000 actually improve graduation rates? Likely not.
Second, work to solve the precipitous drop in state funding of state universities. The second reason tuition rates have risen into the stratosphere is States no longer fund their higher education like they did only 30 years ago. WHY???? Is there a link between administrative bloat and states withholding funding? I think there is.
Third, and most important, lower the bar for students who default on their loans, or do not earn more than they would have had they entered the workforce with just a high school diploma, to sue the colleges that took their money. Many of those students were intentionally defrauded by those colleges, and those defrauded students should be made whole. Currently Colleges have no good motive not to take the money and run, and leave their failed students with life-crippling debt. Is that MSW from Columbia worth it? No. And Columbia, and most schools, darn well know it, bloated administrations and all. https://www.wsj.com/articles/financially-hobbled-for-life-the-elite-masters-degrees-that-dont-pay-off-11625752773 https://www.thirdway.org/report/higher-eds-broken-bridge-to-the-middle-class
When it seems all the world is talking about one thing, ask yourself what is it that no one is talking about. And that is likely the truth hidden. Public education is corrupt, and that corruption begins at the level of our colleges of education. We funnel the least competent to become school teachers, and the colleges keep raking in the dough.
Brilliant.
If you tried to turn BIPOC children into helpless victims who are ill equipped to handle life, you couldn't do it any better than Democrats: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-groom-commissars
Thank You select members of FBT. As other's have "said," *outstanding* job. I and others had no idea. But can't say it surprises me, knowing the information You've provided.
TYTY again, and looking forward to further articles in the series.
Thank you for an excellent read.