Imagine a Secretary of Education for America's Children

When President Jimmy Carter worked with Congress to create the Department of Education as a cabinet-level division of the federal government, he – along with parents and educators – envisioned the Secretary of Education as the advocate for the nation’s children and their education.  I’ve written about the dangers of concentrating too much power in one office, of so centralizing authority that it could easily be abused.  In the appointment of Betsy DeVos, a self-proclaimed opponent of public education, my cautions seem warranted as Ms. DeVos showed in her confirmation hearing little interest in and even less knowledge about the duties of her office to support the nation’s schools.   Her chilly and, frankly, smug interactions with the senators questioning her, and her fierce devotion to dismantling our public schools to replace them with a “market” of commercial and religious schools, means the struggle to protect, enhance and support our children’s schools will take our keenest vigilance, our collective advocacy, and our best ideas.

And that got me to thinking:  what if…  What if the Secretary of Education understood the gravity of the position:  “I am the face of the nation’s children in every meeting of the president’s Cabinet.  I am the voice of America’s children and the first and strongest advocate for their well-being and their education.”  I started wondering what such a person, stepping into the role in a spirit of humility and deep obligation to our children, would do.

Feel free to cue up John Lennon’s “Imagine” as you imagine along with me:

Imagine a Secretary of Education who rushes to meet with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, saying “You and I have a job to do.   Children learn best when they are healthy.  I need you to work with me to make sure every child in America has good, affordable health insurance and a doctor and well-staffed clinic nearby.”

Imagine a Secretary of Education who insists on a meeting with the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, reminding him that children learn best when they and their family have a safe place to live.  “Together,” she would say, “we need to bring in mayors, school leaders, builders, bankers, and members of Congress to come up with -- and fund and stay on top of --  creative solutions to the need for affordable housing all across the country.”

Imagine a Secretary of Education who understands what it means to work hard and still struggle to support a family, who knows that holding two jobs and still making minimum wage leaves little time to read to your kids.  Imagine that Secretary of Education summoning the Secretary of Labor to get together over coffee to hammer out a plan for federal legislation to guarantee a fair and living wage – with benefits – for America’s workers.   If such a plan needs input about tax laws, she would invite the Secretary of the Treasury to join them.  If the president is serious about a huge federal infrastructure investment, bring in the financial advisers to make sure all the jobs created pay fair wages, with benefits.

Imagine a Secretary of Education who pleads with the Attorney General:  “Look, I know your record on civil rights is not stellar, but this is your chance to correct that legacy. American kids are counting on me to make sure they are all treated fairly, whether at home or at school or in their communities.  I need you to help make sure no one discriminates against a child because of his race, her religion, their gender or culture or country of origin.  Jeff, you can do this – and without you, I can’t be sure we can get all these kids through school.”

Imagine a Secretary of Education who knows that little minds have trouble learning when the children are afraid.  She would march over to the Homeland Security building and barge in on the Secretary’s border enforcement budget meeting:  “If kids think they might be picked up by ICE, or that their parents may disappear while they are at school, they can’t concentrate on their lessons.  You know that rounding up immigrants violates our cherished due process protections and just makes people in our country and abroad cynical about America’s commitment to the rule of law. Work with me here. We can come up with creative ways to protect families – and it will take both of us to convince Jeff Sessions and the loudest anti-immigrant supporters of the President.  But an education is a human right. We’re Cabinet members! We can do this!”

Imagine a Secretary of Education who can’t bear the thought of hungry children, children whose neighborhoods may be “food deserts” without healthy grocery stores or farmers’ markets, children eating un-nutritious fast foods that are cheaper than vegetables. That Secretary of Education would call on the Secretary of Agriculture to collaborate in ways that benefit farmers, children and healthy grocery stores.   

She’s the same Secretary who would venture to the Pentagon to enlist the Secretary of Defense in removing the military’s access to students’ personal social media information and school records and instead using the power of his office to advocate for publicly-funded higher education so that poor youth don’t have to see fighting in wars as their only path to a skill and an education.

A sign in my office urges “Imagine the Possibilities.”  Yes, let’s do! Let’s imagine what would be possible for America’s children and their education if a Secretary of Education assumed that office in the spirit of humility and obligation that being the voice of America’s children requires.  We believe all children can learn.  Imagine for a minute that all adults – including those in high office – can too. 

I'm happy to share my recent OpEd in the Dallas Morning News.  Your feedback and comments are invited!

Betsy DeVos’ educational marketplace concept is absurd

Also, please have a look at this urgent call to action from NPE, the Network for Public Education.  Voice your opposition to HR 610 which would undermine funding for the public's schools.

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SILENCING CIVIL RIGHTS

Image source:  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Coretta_Scott_King_1964.jpg

When I described what it felt like to be silenced by school district officials because of my research findings showing accurate dropout numbers in our schools, I could not have imaged that the next silencing to capture our national attention would be the exclusion of our civil rights history on, of all places, the floor of the US Senate.   Seeing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell essentially tell Senator Elizabeth Warren to sit down and shut up was stunning.  Even more stunning was the reason:  Jeff Sessions, conservative senator from Alabama, would be confirmed as Attorney General unless enough senators took seriously his documented history of active opposition to civil rights, voting rights, women's rights -- basically the body of law it would be his duty to enforce.  

Elizabeth Warren chose to make that history known by reading a letter written by Coretta Scott King opposing Sessions for a federal judgeship because of his racist treatment of African Americans trying to vote in Alabama in the 1980's when Sessions was not a US senator but the state's attorney general.   The letter is eloquent, detailed, and credible.   By reading it, Elizabeth Warren would unmask the silence of Sessions' racist past, exposing any senator who voted to confirm him as complicit with an agenda not compatible with the duties of the attorney general or the rights enshrined in the US Constitution and in hard-fought laws and landmark court rulings.

Instead, Senator Warren was silenced.  "Rule 19," which sounds like something out of a children's game, was the weapon.  Mitch McConnell was the silencer.  His demeaning treatment of Senator Warren is now legendary:  "She was warned!" 

Telling Senator Warren she could not speak about Sessions was demeaning, embarrassing to our country and our Senate, and frankly childish.  But thanks to Mitch McConnell, a whole new generation now knows Coretta Scott King as not just the beautiful supportive presence beside Martin Luther King, Jr., but as a force for justice in her own right.  By silencing one powerful woman, Mitch McConnell gave voice to another.  And he quite inadvertently but very effectively showed the nation that his effusive praise of Jeff Sessions cannot hide Sessions' personal racism and his undeniable history of a willingness to use the full force of his public office in its service.

We need an attorney general who will enforce our most just laws and work to improve our justice system for everyone.  Jeff Sessions is not that person. And now, thanks to Elizabeth Warren and Coretta Scott King, we all know to watch every move he makes, speak up when he fails to uphold the law, and stay vigilant on behalf of those least likely to be well served while he holds this office.

Thank you, Senator Warren, for shedding light on Mr. Sessions' role in one of the darkest moments in our history and for bringing into the light another powerful moment of resistance!

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TAKE ACTION FOR ETHNIC STUDIES!

Texas SB No. 695

Relating to elective courses in ethnic studies for middle school and high school students

Good news out of Austin:  A bill requiring the state of Texas to offer ethnic studies courses as middle and high school electives has been introduced in the legislature.  SB695 would authorize ethnic studies electives in Mexican American, Asian American, Native American and African American studies.   Tireless efforts by informed community groups built the coalition behind this bill.  Forward-thinking legislators signed on to sponsor it.

Now we all need to make sure SB695 gets a hearing, gets a vote, and becomes Texas law!  If you were horrified by the bogus “Mexican American studies” book that colonized Mexicans and degraded our collective history, if you admired the scholars and community leaders who successfully fought its adoption, then seize this chance to make our kids’ education match our rich history and cultural assets.  

See Angela Valenzuela’s advice for legislators to contact, copied from her blog (below).   The bill itself is here; share it with your friends, your children’s teachers, your children themselves.  Letters and calls from school kids carry weight:  these are the future voters.

Whom to thank:

• The K-12 Committee of the NACCS Tejas Foco organization.  
• Senators Garcia, Hinojosa, Lucio, Menéndez, Miles, Rodriguez, Uresti, Watson, West, Whitmire, ad Zaffirini for co-authoring this historic legislation.

Whom to contact:

• Senate Education Committee Chair Larry Taylor and Vice-Chair Eddie Lucio, Jr. and members to get a hearing for SB695 as follows:
• CHAIR, Larry Taylor, VICE-CHAIR Eddie Lucio, Jr.
• MEMBERS Paul Bettencourt, Donna Campbell, Bob Hall, Don Huffines, Bryan Hughes, Kel Seliger, Van Taylor, Carlos Uresti, Royce West

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Let's work together to Educate All Our Children.  Below is a listing of a CVPE (Community Voices for Public Education) event to be held in Houston on February 9.  Support of these voices is more important than ever.

RSVP Here


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Please forward Diane Ravitch's eloquent summation of the DeVos confirmation to all of your friends, your neighbors, your elected officials.  Let your children and their teachers know that you stand with them and will be a tireless advocate for them and for their schools.  Then call or write every elected official who will need extraordinary courage to stand up against the harmful policies that will start to impact our schools; let them know you'll be right there with them as they stand up to DeVos's determination to dismantle our schools.

And to those public officials -- right now 50 senators -- who were too scared to stand up for the public's schools, let them know that you know when the next election comes around , you'll be watching to see if they cave to the DeVos legislative agenda or have the courage to listen to the parents and teachers and business leaders and civil rights organizations in their states and vote for strong, equitable public schooling.

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When You’re Told to Shut Up, You Must be Doing Something Right, Part II:  A Lesson I Learned in Houston 

And that’s where the letter you see here comes in:  As Anna Werner, the award-winning investigative journalist who uncovered the Firestone tire hazard, took our findings seriously, her national reputation could give these academic studies a wide audience and considerable credibility.  Thus, I personally had to be discredited.  The district’s press secretary (HISD’s Sean Spicer!) took the time to write a 4-page letter advising Channel 11 reporters not to listen to me because I had “an ax to grind,”  was “a paid critic of the Texas accountability system” who “frequently attacks the Texas accountability system and HISD.” 

Yes, I gave testimony as an expert witness in a discrimination lawsuit on behalf of Hispanic and African American students who had fulfilled all graduation requirements but been denied a diploma because they did not pass the state test.  My research was independent, conducted prior to the lawsuit. I was paid for my time in depositions and at trial, a standard practice (I had planned to donate my time but was advised by other women scholars that if a woman expert witness is not paid, the court or opposing counsel often discounts her expertise).

The Ch. 11 reporters did not silence me or my data, nor that of other researchers, nor did they discredit the experiences of the students and their parents who came to them for help.  They did the ethical thing of providing me with the school district's letter, thus notifying me of the attempt to prevent my findings from being made public.

Principals also received a “don’t talk with Linda McNeil and don’t answer questions from reporters about the testing system” email, which several showed to me, grateful for my concern for the ethical dilemmas they faced every day in the conflict between producing test scores (thus keeping their jobs) or taking the risks needed to educate kids well.   My colleagues and I in the Rice University Center for Education had since 1988 been working closely with Houston public schools in our innovative teacher development programs to enhance the teaching of science, writing, early childhood, and such specialized areas as Asian studies. Our grant-funded programs created opportunities for teachers to update their knowledge of their subjects, of children’s learning and of the cultures of the children and their families. Our credibility was hard-earned over decades.  When principals told us they knew the kids they were holding back would likely dropout, they trusted us to make public through our research the perverse incentives the accountability system placed on them.

Central office had no such desire for the public to know what tricks lay behind the production of rising test scores.  The HISD press secretary’s letter challenges a story Anna Werner and her Ch. 11 investigators were about to run:  “We urge KHOU to produce a fair and balanced story on this issue rather than simply allowing disgruntled employees such as Bob Kimball (featured on Bill Moyers NOW as a whistle-blower) and apologists for the failed education policies of the past such as Linda McNeil to say whatever they want without challenge.”  [Note, scholarly findings are challenged through rigorous peer review.]

The press secretary’s admonition went on:  "We also urge that if KHOU airs an interview with Linda McNeil that you also report that Texas officials say that McNeil and others oppose the Texas accountability system because 'they have an ax to grind, because they were paid witnesses against the state in a Hispanic civil rights group’s failed lawsuit alleging school bias.' (The district judge who found the testing system to be discriminatory but not to a ‘constitutional level,’ would soon be appointed by Bush to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.) 

Especially grating to HISD was my comment to the Washington Post that “It [the testing system] is all phony; it’s just like Enron. Enron was concerned about appearances, not real economic results.  That pretty much describes what we have been doing to our children in Houston.”  The HISD letter to the reporters noted graduation rates for several of the district’s high schools as rising (citing percentages that did not match actual grade-level enrollments) and argued that not holding kids back would deprive them of an extra chance to learn, though many who were held back had already passed all but one class in that grade and had earned sufficient credits to be promoted to their correct grade.  Details few policymakers would pay attention to so long as test scores appeared to be rising.

So HISD and the State of Texas continued to produce and publicize “alternative facts,” hyping test scores and hiding dropout rates.  Bush got Democrats in Congress to go along with NCLB on the Texas claims of closing racial achievement gaps, Paige got to be Secretary of Education, the testing companies and their lobbyists kept raking in the big bucks, and Obama and Duncan compounded the assault on our teachers and kids with Race to the Top, shifts of tax dollars to charter chains, and other misguided deeds.

I take no pleasure in knowing our research findings were right: the standardized accountability system was harmful to the children and their teachers then, it has been used since as an excuse to further under-fund and even close schools with low test scores, and it has enriched privatizers at the expense of the public’s schools. Its greater legacy may be in the legitimation of false numbers and phony indicators as a proxy for the public’s right to know what is happening to our children.

Thomas Jefferson was speaking not as an idealist but as a harsh realist when he said that an educated citizenry is essential to the health of a democracy. An informed populace is the only effective protection against a demagogue.  Misinformation can be dangerous.

If you’re a researcher or teacher, take heart from my “silencing” experience to stay in touch with reporters and reliable social media:  make sure they have all the information they need to keep the public informed. Stay in touch with your school board and legislators and members of Congress, making sure they hear more than the official claims.  Use clear language – call charters for what they are: outsourcing companies, corporate chains, not “public” schools.  Don't let test scores displace meaningful, authentic, robust assessments of children's learning.  Don't let corporate charter chains call themselves "public" just because they capture our tax dollars.  Don't let a nice-sounding word like "choice" give a pass to people who want to dismantle the public's schools, making democracy all that much more fragile.

Today’s silencing seems more draconian, the fake claims more obvious and outrageous in their audacity – but even the smallest silencing shifts our common culture away from the truths we need to counter tyrannies and protect the public good.  Speak up, speak out.

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