This is the beginning of the factual stories behind K-12 educational reform over recent decades that I was saving until after the Presidential election, waiting to see who won. It was my feeling based on the false narratives being spread and the facts in my possession that both candidates would end up pushing the same K-12 education agenda for the most part. Hillary Clinton because she and Bill Clinton have been involved going back to Arkansas being one of the states that volunteered in the 80s for the little discussed, federally-sponsored (while Bill Bennett was Education Secretary and with Lamar Alexander when he was the Tennessee Governor and head of the National Governors Association) “Project Education Reform: Time for Results”. Donald Trump would be pushing the same agenda because his advisors on education hyping School Choice as the panacea do not seem to be telling him its history.
So I will don my metaphorical helmet and flak jacket and begin doing it. For those not raised on Uncle Remus Tales in the South the briar patch in the title is from the “Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby” story where the captured, but cunning rabbit, convinced his mortal enemy Brer Fox that no punishment could be as dreadful as being thrown into the briar patch.
“Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please,” said Brer Rabbit. “Only please, Brer Fox, please don’t throw me into the briar patch.” Not having string to hang him nor being close to a stream to drown him, Brer Fox flings Brer Rabbit “head over heels into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit let out such a scream as he fell that all of Brer Fox’s fur stood straight up. Then there was silence…Then Brer Fox heard someone calling his name. He turned around and looked up the hill. Brer Rabbit was sitting on a log combing the tar out of his fur with a wood chip and looking smug. ‘I was bred and born in the briar patch, Brer Fox,’ he called. ‘Bred and born in the briar patch.'”
Being thrown in the briar patch was actually Brer Rabbit’s escape route. School Choice as it has been developed over the decades by think tanks and professors is actually a trap pretending to be a remedy so it can be put into place as a matter of law. Let’s move away from American folklore now that we have a metaphor for whether something will trap us or free us and move to a book published in 1990 called Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools by John E Chubb and Terry M. Moe. Both will later serve on an ed reform project sponsored by the Hoover Institution, the Koret Task Force, with one of President-Elect Trump’s ed advisors, Bill Evers, so he should be more than familiar with this history of School Choice, but the 1990 book was actually published by the Brookings Institution. Several fed ED grants funded the book along with the Olin and Bradley Foundations that have gone on to finance both School Choice initiatives and the experimental economics/Neuroeconomics work we covered in the last post.
If this convergence of what is clearly a project of the admitted Left and purported Right seems confusing, let me quote from one of the book’s footnotes since I just love to tiptoe through the cited support.
“The classic argument for vouchers is developed in Milton and Rose Friedman Free to Choose (1981)…The Friedmans’ argument is of course associated by educators with political conservatism. But vouchers have also been proposed by social democrats on the left, who seek to enlist markets in the cause of justice and equal opportunity for the poor. Perhaps the most influential of these proposals has come from Christopher Jencks, who, along with like-minded colleagues, urged administrators within the Office of Economic Opportunity (within the late Johnson and early Nixon presidencies) to take vouchers seriously and encourage experimentation by states and districts.”
I bolded ‘states and districts’ there because as we will see when I get back to Time for Results, this trumpeted shift away from the feds to making the local, with the states in charge, the focus has ALWAYS been the vision for how to achieve a fundamentally different vision of American education. To quote another admitted leftist, President Obama’s education advisor who was deemed too radical to be confirmed as an Ed Secretary, Linda Darling-Hammond, from 1990 as well, when she was still a prof at Columbia, on the need for a ‘bottom-up’ approach to reform instead of top-down:
“rather than viewing the disciplines as embodying information to be transmitted by teachers and acquired by students, the frameworks seek to present subject areas as providing ways of thinking that will foster knowledge and understandings to be constructed by students themselves. More than any other state curriculum effort to date, California’s experiment aims explicitly at the goals urged by many recent reform reports: instruction that helps students think critically, express themselves proficiently, construct and solve problems, synthesize information, invent, and create.”
Sound familiar? Even for those who have not yet read my book Credentialed to Destroy, there is nothing new about what is now being called the Common Core or the active coordination of fed ED, the think tanks of every purported allegiance, and the NGA. To anyone who has not guessed it yet, ed reforms for results will become better known and then notorious as Outcomes-Based Education. Education reforms for results embodying actual changes in the students at an internalized level in how they think, feel, and ultimately act needed a new conception of schools and how they operate. That’s what School Choice has always been about. This is from the Foreword to the 1990 book, written by the Brookings’ President (my bolding):
“the nation’s education problem, then, is an institutional problem. To overcome it, the authors recommend a new system of public education based on fundamentally new institutions. They propose a shift away from a system of schools controlled directly by the government–through politics and bureaucracy–to a system of indirect control that relies on markets and parental choice.”
That again was Brookings and it fits with the Rockefeller Foundation’s recognition in the 80s that only “systemic school reform” would allow the kind of change in American schools toward holistic human development for ALL students that it sought. So School Choice became seen as the means for ensuring that ALL schools will offer “a high-quality learning experience” and a “rigorous curriculum in which students actively participate.” Envisioned as a theory in 1990 then, but that same pursuit of active and experiential is what accreditors now require and what the December 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) wrote into federal law for the states and districts to all implement. There is another useful confession in this book that no one seems willing to concede anymore now that School Choice is not just a theory.
“Any private schools that do participate will thereby become public schools, as such schools are defined under the new system.”
That same logic also is how homeschoolers are now poised to become ensnared via School Choice’s newest Vehicle for its Theory–Education Savings Accounts. Anyone using an ESA may be forced to submit to “high quality assessments” measuring and monitoring precisely what they have internalized and what guides their “sense of self”( as Reschool Colorado recently termed it in its Framework for the Future of Learning).
Again, let’s go back to the beginning of the confessions about what Choice might do and who was involved.
“Choice is being embraced by liberals and conservatives alike as a powerful means of transforming the structure and performance of public education…At the federal level, Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush have been enthusiastic supporters of educational choice, although there is not a great deal the federal government can do on it own. More consequentially, given the primary role of the states in public education, the National Governors’ Association has come out strongly for choice in its recent report [1986] on education, Time for Results–and reformist governors, Democrats and Republicans alike, have typically been in the forefront in pressing for real change.”
Karl Marx and John Dewey turn out to not be the only ones committed to social transformation via putting theories into practice. Public policy think tanks and their political allies love to as well. Authors Chubb and Moe again: “more important [a full-blown choice system] allows us to suggest in specific terms what our institutional theory of the schools actually entails for educational reform–and to emphasize, once again, how essential it is that reforms be founded in theory.” Now, if you are beginning to feel like a theory guinea pig, or at least a funder of such experiments, hold on for this stunning admission:
“Our guiding principle in the design of a choice system is this: public authority must be put to use in creating a system that is almost entirely beyond the reach of public authority.” If that sounds like nowhere to effectively appeal for any parent or student who grasps that School Choice and the law are to be used to impose the consciousness needed for the Human Development Society, the related footnote confirmed it:
“A good way of mitigating it [state legislatures or governors trying to control schools or their new mission in the future], however, would be to design institutions around fully decentralized authority and then install them through constitutional amendment. The legal foundation of the new system would then be very difficult to change or violate once put in place.”
Now I am just getting started on what has poured out in the last month as I sought to discern why no one was being honest about the history of either School Choice or the Common Core’s ancestry and who has been involved.
I guess we can just call this the Briar Patch Trilogy enlightening us all on why there has been such an insistence on false narratives.
I have been warning that the law and education are viewed as the ways to alter culture and the prevailing individual consciousness to something deemed appropriate for the ‘cooperative commonwealth’–another term frequently used.
If President-elect Trump is going to get us out of the Paris-climate accords (thank goodness!), can we please also cancel the attendant cultivation of a Comrade Consciousness via education reforms?
GOD BLESS YOU LADY!!! I have proof that they are not only properly informing Trump they are actively keeping the truth from him. This is Ronald Reagan and Charlotte Iserbyt all over again. Now we have groups out there pushing Bill Evers for Secretary of Education and rumors of Michelle Rhee. Tweeting and posting all over the place for Evers. We should be pushing a complete dismantling of the department not supporting yet another progressive for Secretary of Education. Well those of us that have a clue will be pushing YOUR article.
Hooray and hallelujah! You’ve done a great job of explaining the horrors of choice. We have been blessed with our new President-elect as a chance to carve a new future out of the mess we’ve found ourselves in; now to understand the policies that might cause him to stumble. The bottom line in everyday language for vouchers is that public money requires public accountability, thus there is no room for differintiation if you use a voucher. All schools would be “public” and would be subject to the same curriculum, goals and policies.
Some may think that using “charters” would be a safety valve. However, charters use the same techniques that are used by NAFTA–and they are devised and promoted by the same organization that pushed NAFTA, the Heritage Foundation. Charters are invitations to “free market” solutions that benefit investors, but do not meet the needs of students and, ultimately, our culture. Charters play havoc with our state constitutions, our representation by elected officials, and become drains on tax bases for local schools. To avoid the same pitfalls that President-elect Trump perceives in NAFTA before they ruin what is left of our education in this country, it will be necessary for him to hear and understand these issues from people other than Heritage Foundation and other think tanks that share their political perspective.
Charters are a legal contract that few parents ever read, but most I have read are using the law in precisely the way called for in this Brookings’ book. Charters get renewed and under ESSA, CMOS can qualify for federal money to expand to other states by being effective in changing the child at an internalized, neurobiological level. Many now are run similarly to these Finnish reforms, except parents do not grasp that. http://bigthink.com/design-for-good/the-latest-school-reform-in-finland-introduces-a-new-way-to-look-at-subjects
I hold people accountable for the books and reports they write and the task forces they participate in. Did you know another Trump ed advisor was involved in the push to get Model Charter legislation? http://www.baeo.org/projectstatus/bio/robinson_v01.pdf I heard Gerard Robinson speak back in 2010 at a forum for legislators put on by Atlas member the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. They were also speakers at the forum I was at this past saturday where I got such dirty looks for asking about the Vicki Alger paper on ESAs TPPF/Independent Institute just released that is where I got the info on requiring assessments for high quality learning to qualify for ESAs. Parents will believe these are tests which is precisely what the Heartland employee changed my question to in his answer.
Gerald Robinson AND Robert T. Goad. Not a good one on the team!!!
Bravo!! and Thank you.
Excellent! Having written about and spoken to the point that the issue must be addressed in concept rather than indulging in critiquing specific charter schools. Once one begins to compare specific charter schools the battle has already been lost, for as your article so colorfully
explains, the purpose of charter schools is to restructure the constitutional institutions of electing the most local of local elected representation. i.e. school boards. It has been my contention while that process is at work, next will be the other local jurisdictions whittled away by regional unelected decision makers. Charters are part of a Political Process underway in the guise of sheeps clothing of the wolve’s agenda.
Thanks. As you probably know I have tracked the very concept of charters back to the early 70s and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto and also to Bela Banathy’s work involving the Asilomar Conferences and ISSS-the International Society for the Systems Science.
At the Legislative Preview session I attended this past Saturday where Lennie Jarratt, the Project Manager of the Heartland Institute for Education Transformation, spoke, he mentioned a crucial point that is likely driving the switch to ESAs beyond the cooping up of hmeschoolers in the new vision for ed and being able to sell parents that leftover funds can be used for college. He said that charters are driving the Catholic schools out of business and that this is especially a problem in the Chicago area. ESAs then enable the private and parochial schools that would otherwise close to remain open. Parents simply assume that the education offered is the one they remember. The fact that those private and parochial schools must change the nature of their product in unperceived ways as a condition of being eligible for the ESA money is not on parents’ radars unless they read this blog. Much like our briar patch, it’s the illusion of choice.
Switching to your regionalism point, that is clearly sought if we look simply on this blog on the posts that have covered the ties between the Metropolitanism program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and education reform. If you remember, my book laid out its presence in the original transformation visions from the 60s of what the trasnformed future would look like. It also figures prominently in both unesco’s and especially the OECD’s work now.
Great article. Thank you Robin for your continued insight into charter schools and total restructuring of our constitutional government through education.
Great article as usual. Restructuring education especially charter schools is a political issue and always has been. When the laws, rules and regulations are waived to implement them, then the issue is Constitutional and should be addressed in that manner. The same is true for vouchers for private education.
Chick this out. I’ll leave it here with a wink and a high five for getting another one right.
https://www.change.org/p/president-elect-donald-j-trump-appoint-an-education-secretary-with-integrity
So Joy Pullmann started the petition and her book is about to be published by Encounter Books owned by the same Bradley Foundation that financed the 1990 book published by Brookings from this post. They show up in Parts 2 & 3 as well, not because I am looking for them, but because they just keep showing up on Acknowledgments pages in old books in my possession that go to how standards work and what everyone has been lying to us about.
Part 3 will go to the Kennedy School of Government and what their Program on Education Policy and Governance has been mopping up. Heartland’s School Reform News that Joy is an editor of is one of the listed sponsors as are the Olin and Bradley Foundations as well as Gates and others.
What juggernaut this is though with the same desire. If President-Elect Trump does select Evers, I think he needs to be asked about those California Subject Matter Frameworks that they pioneered. They just keep showing up. I know how they work, but it really is time all of America did.
If everyone is an insider who then could be supported for Ed Secretary?
This is a difficult point in time because so much effort has gone into misrepresenting the true nature of standards-based reforms, School Choice, student centered learning, and SEL standards just for starters. It appears to me there is a desperate attempt to make sure that whoever the next Ed Sec is, they will not be a whistle blower as to what has really been going on.
P-E Trump and I have one thing in common beyond a clearly substantial work ethic, he was not supposed to be President and I am not supposed to understand all this. I do know the rest of the story now and I am telling just enough to be a warning so no one later can say “If you had only said something.”
Hillary did not want to do right and Trump does. That alone is a substantial difference whomever he names. Because all this has gone on so long, most prominent names in ed are either involved in the duplicity or well-intentioned but clueless. Neither is what is needed.
Talk about an agenda moving forward. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/transforming-communities-broadband-goals-for-2017-and-beyond-registration-28053926048 at the search engine giant’s DC offices and with the Ford F involved.
Remember how the search engine giant insisted I had to take down all those posts on Classical Ed and how it was clearly using the same cybernetic template created for the Marxist Humanist global vision by the systems theorists and what is called The Humane Use of Human Beings? Not exactly disinterested as we already knew.
SHLB was formed in 2009 soon after the inauguration. This is its Mission Statement and it has Gates funding. http://www.shlb.org/uploads/Governance%20Docs/SHLB%20Mission%20Statement.pdf
There is so much that will still go on to pursue the MH vision grounded in data unless the presence of this agenda is specifically understood by the Trump Transition Team. Lots more than just Ed Sec using this.
For those reasons, the appointment of a Secretary of Health and Human Services will be important to watch as well as Education. Too close a connection to ignore.
I agree 100 percent!
This just came out. https://www.edchoice.org/blog/next-accountability-part-4/ Notice how closely this dovetails with the rhetoric coming out of the Classical Ed template, particularly the Barney Charter Initiative Hillsdale is pushing but also the Christian World view Declaration we covered in those posts the Search Engine Overlord insisted six months later had “mischievous code”. Look what else this same author wrote https://www.amazon.com/John-Rawls-Christian-Social-Engagement/dp/1498504949/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479414513&sr=1-7&keywords=greg+forster and https://www.amazon.com/Joy-World-Christianity-Influence-Rebuilding/dp/1433538008/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479414513&sr=1-1&keywords=greg+forster
The Joy to the World book as an endorsement by the co-author of the Christian Worldview Declaration–Marvin Olasky. I still have the 1987 Turning Point book he wrote with Herbert Schlossberg. The quote about how “The educational progressives were right, then, to put the freedom of the individual first, and embrace the consequent fact of social diversity. Where they went wrong…teachers and schools are not seen as sources of wisdom about transcendent things.” Between James Moffat’s writings on the real purpose of standards in The Universal Schoolhouse to Purpel’s Moral and Spiritual Framework I also have, that is simply untrue. No wonder I see the Right and Left Pincer headed in the same direction. We will come back to Forster at the end of Part 2 as the Friedman Foundation, now EdChoice, commences in Indianapolis in 1996, the same year that the Education Excellence Network ceases to be run out of the Hudson Institute there and turns over its initiatives to the Fordham Institute, which decides to have a single focus. It is also Forster who ties Evers’ Closing the Door on Innovation intended to create a false CC narrative to mislead parents and politicians to the Witherspoon Institute, tied to Robert George and the American Principles Project. In the comments to the last post we tied Witherspoon to the Science of Virtues work at U-Chicago as well as the Templeton Foundation’s redefinition of Liberty as now a communitarian ethos.
The latter reboot fits closely with all of Forster’s references to what sounds like Communitarianism. Remember how often we have found embedded into the real CC implementation in everything from Positive School Climate practices to the Discourse Dialogue classroom to what constitutes Career Ready practices in students?
The Joy book also has the author Tim Keller listed who wrote Generous Justice and is a progressive Christian. He is very much tied to the Kairos vision we have discussed as well as moving churches though transformation to ‘seeker friendly’ (emergent) status.
Have you noticed that Bradley foundation is represented on the BOD of the Kern Foundation who funds a transformational church think tank?
I noticed there are elements of Forster’s cv listed on Amazon in connection with his books that are never listed on his EdChoice bio. I went back and reread the Part IV this morning and the alliance between what Forster writes and the Rockefeller-financed vision of humanism going back decades is too close in terms of language used and goals laid out to be coincidental. If you click on the highlighted phrases, Forster links to John Dewey, Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic, Robert Putnam, etc. He is also using the concepts of Urie Bronfenbrenner and Ecobiological Systems Theory. I had never heard of that Oikonomia Network and looked it up. Theology that Works sounds like What Works Cities, doesn’t it? We have economic wisdom training for future pastors at seminaries to go with the psychological Neuroeconomics training for federal judges that simply calls itself economics.
Everyone’s internalized belief systems and means of valuing and making decisions are targeted now. If they didn’t get you signed on to the “common core of learning” (which Forster describes repeatedly without using that precise term) in P-12, now they will grab you in college or seminary, law school, or while you are getting your MBA (remember PRME?).
I guess I never appreciated how much easier the March through the Institutions is if the Social Engineers get to hold banners designating them as Conservative, Christian, or free-market, and everyone simply says “Go ahead then. No need to worry about Uncle Karl’s teachings infesting your ideas and practices.” Actually as we are seeing the exact opposite is true.
The Kern Family Foundation’s interest in moral and ethical values fits right in with the Science of Virtue and Charles Fadel’s Curriculum Redesign with Character as one of its four bases. We really are seeing the same template from every direction precisely because the psychological emphasis is needed to “mold this sense of responsibility [to] determine what kinds of social order individuals are ready to live under.” That’s quoting Forster in his Accountability vision because it really is about using ed to transition us to the Human Development Society without anyone admitting it. I can see it because I have read so much of the plans of the admitted Marxist Humanists.
What is education to train “the student’s sense of responsibilty to think and act well” but education intended to carve and then steer the internalized keel at the level of the student’s mind and emotions? The student may not quite grasp what Habits of Mind have been cultivated carefully to control his or her consciousness and thus eventually the prevailing culture, but the theoreticians like Forster will. The foundations funding all these ed reforms and especially School Choice as the supposed panacea do.
It’s no accident that the supposed ‘conservative’ think tanks are now moving to force the same remedies that the Rockefeller Foundation laid out back in the 80s as their druthers. I feel sorry that so many are coordinating to lead the President-elect down a pathway that actually doesn’t lead to the goals of helping inner city kids succeed, unless having a diploma to validate the existence of the redesigned keel counts.
Kooky students clearly find a kooky adult federal judge in your neck of the woods. http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/11/teens-sue-federal-government-demand-climate-action/#more-191920
Hugely important and connected.
Yes. ‘Xiuhtezcatl Martinez’ sounds just like a local Oregonian name. Eugene always has been breeding ground for just this type of new human mind. I wonder if that large IB High School created him. As for the judge, she has her progressive Oregonian styling down.
If I attend a Portland Ed meeting I have found the appropriate attire. A lovely long crepe skirt and a bohemian blouse, courtesy of salvation army discount Wednesday, to join my birkenstocks . Found a tea tree & lavendar lotion too. Thick glasses frames help. No makeup or you stand out. Bring a ‘green’ snack bag and an eco water bottle as accessories. Honestly, I’m not sure how you can stand attending so many of them Robin.
I go to fewer than I used to and am more likely to go to a related program on Housing or Healthcare now to make sure I am tracking the full Subjective Wellbeing template.
This further reiterates how much the Return to the Local is both a False Narrative and the needed venue to thoroughly ensnare the student and the public. http://www.learningfirst.org/sites/learningfirst/files/ANewPhilosophyonEducationDecisionMakingOct2016.pdf
Greenfield was good yesterday .
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2016/11/you-are-being-lied-to.html
Followship Training
Today’s Dilbert cartoon is perfect background for the discussions here — steering people toward serfdom and compliance with centralized, increasingly globalized, governance.
I’m sure someone can develop a schedule of learning objectives for a Fellowship Training 101 course!
http://dilbert.com/search_results?terms=+followship
OOPS — Correction — Followship, NOT Fellowship. Dilbert cartoon deals with leadership training and followship training. How timely the topic is!
http://dilbert.com/search_results?terms=+followship
I will always remember that piece of paper that had been presented to state school board members who were looking into “Positive School Climate.” There were words that had been struck through with the “Positive School Climate” phrase replacing them. Those words were “Psychologically Managed Climate.” Sort of explains things, doesn’t it?
Did you see David Horowitz, whose work I admire, taking credit for being the one to push the School Choice meme to first Bannon and then Trump? http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264871/steve-bannon-civil-rights-hero-david-horowitz
May have something to do with the Olin and Bradley Foundations providing the money to found the Freedom Center. That founding in 1988 fits with the timeline for Politics, Markets, & America’s Schools
Yes, PSC takes the more euphemistic sounding terms from Positive Psychology. I actually have an insider book explaining how the PP theories can be used to quietly implement the Marxist Humanist vision.
Validators — A New Job Category For Schools?
My capacity to read is probably 1/100th or closer to 1/1000th that of Robin’s. But, I must say, what she provides on the blog has for me, two valued features: a) facts, leads, references, quotes, who’s who, etc., etc. on the sorry field of education distortion as happening now; and b) an increased sensitivity I’ve gained for detecting these shifts and dangers in my own environment.
I think CPW has a developed sensitivity to catching and calling out “shifty” practices and I’m thankful to know about the incident where “Psychologically Managed Climate” was deliberately changed to more palatable terminology — “Positive School Climate”. It would be useful to list such interchangeable terms.
My sensitized vigilance signaled an alert to me yesterday. One of my long-ago jobs was working as a counselor in a government employment agency. We used the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT, now obsolete) for categorizing jobs. I became fascinated with job titles. I keep wondering what other terms like change-agent are coming forward to expedite these education “transformations” we keep talking about on ISC. The job “validator” jumped out from the paper I was reading yesterday!
Validator is someone who checks your competencies that you say you have acquired in work or experiences beyond the curriculum in university. University of Toronto has a framework of competencies that qualify for the CCR, Co-Curricular Record, which is attached to your transcript and is to be an aid to employability. It is not mandatory but highly recommended. What is a co-curricular record? https://ccr.utoronto.ca/about-ccr/q-a.htm The desirable competencies https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/student-life/sites/files/student-life/public/shared/pdfs/Competency%20Charts.pdf
In view of discussions on ISC and how competencies are being installed in K-12 programs we have been wondering how they are to measured or recorded, beyond the subjective checklists of teachers. Now I’m wondering if “validators” are going to be yet another supplementary school job added to the growing list of other staff in our schools as competencies keep being added to change minds of children?
We are heading for radical transformation in every area of our lives if we continue on these multiple tracks that have been laid. When I think about Forster’s history with Milton Freidman’s organization and his positive attitude of using vouchers/choice and charters as social and economic change tools, I am distressed to find him heading up an organization, the O Network, that is being used to bring about the same type of change in the spiritual realm.
One entity of the O Network is the Land Center at Southwestern Theological Seminary in Texas. This Center was named for Richard Land who headed the political watchdog group for the Southern Baptist Convention. The odd thing there is that he was asked to participate as a member of the National Commission on Civic Renewal back in the 1990s. The Commission was headed by William Bennett, former Secretary of Education, and former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, whose daughter was heading up a statewide effort to involve citizens of Georgia in volunteering. The executive director was Robert Gholson, former assistant to George HW Bush and William Clinton in the proposing the of the New American Education Goals and many other projects over the years. The Commission was diverse–from Richard Land, Bennett, Nunn, Robert Woodson (being put forward for a place in Trump’s Cabinet), and Amitai Etzioni, just to name a few. What a group! Coming to consensus about what to do to bring communities together. Sound familiar? Oddly enough, there was one issue they could not come to consensus concerning–choice in education! But they all agreed that it was an important issue.
If you go to the end of this essay, you will find that Milton Friedman wrote a book on Positive Economics in 1953. That fits rather well with the Positive Psychology being used in these Positive School Climate edicts. https://hec.unil.ch/docs/files/56/618/simon_1986%5B1%5D.pdf Herbert Simon is important to cybernetic theory, but this also helps me appreciate why I looked at Daniel Kahnemann’s work on framing and heuristics and immediately recognized what ESSA mandates for all students as at least annual HOTS testing.
I am reading a book that came out of the Ford Foundation-funded National Commission on Testing and Public Policy from 1987. Being tied to Project Education Reform: Time for Results fits with this confirmation that Bill Clinton was a member of that Commission. http://www.siop.org/tip/backissues/TIPJuly98/roberts.aspx
I have looked at that Civic Renewal Commission before and it was clearly created to push the concept of citizenship laid out in Etzioni’s The Active Society book. It always saw the local as the unit of government that could force the desired internalized change within the citizen. Given what has been forwarded to me offline from school districts since the election, the school districts are using Trump’s election as an excuse to further use the classroom to force PBIS and Courtney’s Cazden’s Discourse Classroom. They always leave out that Cazden developed that vision on the same 1979 trip to the USSR that caused Ann Brown to develop the similar Fostering Communities of Learners for the School level. Also on the trip was Michael Cole whose Cultural Historical Activity Theory clearly aspires to control prevailing values and belief systems well beyond individual consciousness or the level of the school.
School Choice utilizes all these theories, but it sounds good so their use to mandate what is deemed effective gets hidden. Assessments of motivation, framing, and what guides action get inaccurately termed as ‘tests’ and parents have no clue just how psychologically manipulative the classroom is. Looking at the list of seminaries on that O Network list makes one want to take a family walk in the park on Sunday rather than go to church. What in the background of the average pastor-in-training would allow them to recognize the ancestry of these ideas?
Yes. And so, in a different style, is Fr. Rutler, always worth reading. (I am certain that his education was not stultified by Catholic Curriculum Standards):
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/populist-election-aftermath
Have you seen this? https://www.agencybasededucation.org/conferences/2016-conference/ Human capital or human greatness? If competency-based education was based on an accurate understanding as laid out in my book instead of misrepresenting it while stealing any footnotes that might have a helpful point as both the Pioneer paper “Cogs in the Machine” and the new APP/Pioneer paper on Catholic Ed both did, the fact that agency-based ed and competency-based ed function the same would be obvious.
I guess that is why the False Narrative purveyors seek to both steal my work while trying to make sure few become aware of its accurate insights. That’s why I have worked so hard all these years? So others could pretend to be authoritative to gain parent and taxpayer trust? How naughty of me to grasp the actual story and document it.
I think I had better look at the previous year’s conferences. Others may want to as well, especially with Agency as one of the three components of the Reschool Colorado Framework for the Future of Learning.
“But there are still only a few rather early examples of customized learning sustained over a multiyear trajectory. The handful of examples we have–research on individualized tutoring and next generation models–suggests real potential for accelerated progress and deeper learning. The potential is strong enough that Jim Shelton has made it the central focus of the new Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. They call it “advancing human potential ”
http://www.gettingsmart.com/2016/11/advancing-human-potential-the-power-of-personalized-learning/
Don’t forget Jim Shelton chaired the Competency-based learning summit in 2011 moving into place the related outer paradigm while our Left and Right Pincers came up with the Shanker Manifesto earlier in year and then Hoover/ Harvard Kennedy School of Government, led by one of P-E Trump’s Ed Transition directors–the heavily trumpeted Bill Evers–and Fordham followed in early May with Closing the Door on Innovation. Fordham taking over the mantle from the Hudson Institute of the Olin and Bradley-funded Educational Excellence Network is where we are going next. Here is Joy Pullmann trumpeting Evers while knocking down Rhee. http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/17/michelle-rhee-terrible-choice-education-secretary/ Do pay attention to the linked list from Rick Hess as many on that list I have dealt with are desperate to perpetuate the false narratives surrounding the Common Core and School Choice.
Both Michael Horn, who now edits PEPG’s Education Next that Bradley underwrites for the trio above and Sajan George were at that summit and featured presenters. Interesting as the local Georgia Atlas member featured each of them at respective ed programs without ever mentioning what they were really pursuing while the Common Core was simply the latest ruse to compel fealty to the vision. Rick Hess has been a part of the PEPG coordinations since before he went to AEI while he was still a poli sci prof at UVa. Jay Greene as well when he taught government at UT-Austin. Education reform is clearly the favored way to get political theories imposed as a fait accompli.
Human Potential, apart from the links to Uncle Karl, fits with Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, starting Human Capability Development as a global emphasis in about 2004.
Hope your turkey day preparations are moving along. My daughters have decided they want a new tradition–cranberry mimosas after everyone gets here Wednesday night. Sounds like fun.
Just imagine how much power Zuckerburg has if he is allowed to control the information coming in for most people via Facebook and then the nature of what is perceived and how it is processed by anyone’s mind via how these personalized/competency-based education reforms really work. I guess we should all be thankful this is the year I fully understand all the elements and how they tied together and where it all originated in far more detail than even what is in my book. I was thinking about that this morning. Just how much the Deceivers with their machinations and theft have revealed. This past year was not fun, but it has certainly made for a more fully-encompassing story of what has been intended for us and who all is involved behind the scenes.
Cranberry mimosas sound lovely. My kids have asked for cinnamon rolls for breakfast again so Wednesday evening will be dough making.
Will you shop with the crowds Friday?
Here we have another parrot playing a game.
https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2016/11/21/whos-trump-pick-for-education/
No, but the college kid coming home loves to go after midnight on Thanksgiving. Usually hubby and 3 kids go and I sleep. I am better, but I still get tired and naps remain my friend. Cornbread for dressing is in the oven now so I can crumble it and dry it. Saw Mario Batali’s suggestion of brining overnight on Tuesday night so turkey can dry in frig on Wednesday and that makes sense.
I thought the fact that Education Week‘s story yesterday on Trump’s Ed Transition team was so much longer for Evers with details they hoped would get people excited to support him is consistent with who supports Ed Week financially and how they also, like Gates, support, the PEPG vision fpr education reform. Did you see that Bill Bennett is one of three Ed Sec’s speaking at the Foundation for Excellence in Education’s meeting in DC? I guess he is taking a victory lap with Rod Paige and Arne Duncan on the final realization of the Project Education Reform : Time for Results vision in ESSA. That is what they are speaking on.
Evers is also tied to that Independent Institute that just published the Vicki Algers paper with the Texas Public Policy Institute. That’s the one that calls for “quality assessments” for all who use an ESA. That would pull in the homeschoolers at last.
This is the week that something always drops that is trying to get published without attention. In 2012 this was the week the CCSSO released the hugely troubling C3 Social Studies Framework. Sure enough, the National Academies Press had embargoed until last Thursday its report from the Committee on the Evaluation of NAEP Achievement Levels for Mathematics and Reading. Given everything else I have, it definitively ties standards going back to the 80s, through OBE and its successor now-competency-based education, the New Standards Project, the National Commission on Testing and Public Policy to the Common Core as the latest iteration. It also ties it all to what I shorthand as the cybernetics model that wants to control thought by focusing on the processes of the mind. The reality is that is why ESAs need to require “high quality assessments” as well, but we are not supposed to know that, much less have it fully documented.
The paper released this morning is 266 pages long and was my morning chore before running out to find a Seghesio Zinfandel for Thursday my husband had like. We drove by that winery on our way to Mendocino and the Pacific Coast Highway back in summer 2015. It reminds me of that trip.
This is the definition of Proficient Achievement under NAEP when the levels were created in 1990. It sounds just like what we now call College, Career, and Citizenship Ready. It also uses the “challenging subject matter” language that will become a mandate on all states under ESSA, making the Common Core rhetoric superfluous. Hope P-E Trump has someone who will accurately explain how ESSA really works to him. I would not rely on Lamar Alexander to interpret it or someone like Marty West tied to PEPG.
“This central level represents solid academic performance for each grade tested–4, 8. and 12. It will reflect a consensus that students reaching this level have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter and are well prepared for the next level of schooling. At grade 12 the proficient level will encompass a body of subject-matter knowledge and analytical skills, of cultural literacy and insight [Remember LDH quote in this post], that all high school graduates should have for democratic citizenship, responsible adulthood, and productive work.”
This year we can surely be thankful over just how unwavering this real vision turns out to have been over decades now that we are at the real ‘common core of learning’ each student is to internalize. Watching the behavior of so many Millenials after this election, it is already widely in place.
Ugh. Schooling. Hate it when they use the word like that. Aye Aye Comrade.
Mixed reality. Brought to us by Pearson and MS. http://www.ecampusnews.com/disruptions-and-innovations/institutions-mixed-reality/
The Comrade will believe what the comrade has been trained to believe via the VR experiences programmed to do just that.
Does this strike you as Jumping the Shark? https://jaypgreene.com/2016/11/23/understanding-bigotry/
On another note, notice the reference to training students for “evidence-based inquiry and explanation in social studies” http://oceansofdata.org/projects/zoom-teaching-science-data
Just saw news on Betsy DeVos. I have not met her, but I have talked with Kevin Chavous and he seemed greatly alarmed I knew what I knew and could go beyond talking points. Very troubling she is on the Board of Jeb’s Foundation for Excellence in Education as it is behind so much of the synthesis and duplicity in ed reforms. I have no idea if she knows that or just loves the ideas and has never needed to get to the bottom of what she advocates for. We will see. I do know though, how Jeb’s entity and what it pushes fits in.
This is the Jeb Bush statement on the DeVos nomination.
Tallahassee, Fla – Today, Governor Jeb Bush, Chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education released the following statement.
“Betsy DeVos is an outstanding pick for Secretary of Education.
“She has a long and distinguished history championing the right of all parents to choose schools that best ensure their children’s success. Her allegiance is to families, particularly those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder, not to an outdated public education model that has failed them from one generation to the next.
“I cannot think of a more effective and passionate change agent to press for a new education vision, one in which students, rather than adults and bureaucracies, become the priority in our nation’s classrooms.
“I congratulate Betsy and look forward to her bold leadership at the U.S. Department of Education.”
They may erase Common Core by name but the function has settled in nicely and likely will not be going anywhere. All that’s left is the backpack funding for everyone. Cheers to knowing the road already.
https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2016/11/22/whats-competency-based-education/
Thanks. I found the statement at the alternative of “Agency=Based Education” of a desire to have the heart be the decisionmaker and not the mind to be terrifying.
Tranzi OBE properly understood and competency-based ed, which is just a euphemism as well as ACES really is a technique so many of out institutions, political, religious, social–planned to use. We do have a lot to give thanks for in what we have locked in this past year. Turkey done. Parents here. Champagne poured.
I just found a reference to what was at the time (1987) a very controversial report Called “Caught in the Middle: Educational Reform for Young Adolescents in California Public School”. It is clearly part of Project Education Reform’s change in emphasis and fits perfectly with the no-known Common Core/competency-based education template. When I went to see what Bill Honig ws doing now as he directed Task Force (beyond the conflict of interest convictions) I found this fascinating post. https://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/07/bill-honig-why-california-likes-the-common-core-standards/
Notice that neither Diana Ravitch nor Bill Honig draws the accurate connections to what either California or the Educational Excellence Network (that she started with Chester Finn at Columbia in 1982) were doing and the purpose of the Common Core now. If I wasn’t a maniac researcher it might still be unclear. As it is, similarly to Bill Bennett not ever making link on his radio show when he addresses the Common Core, it all appears to be a coverup of the true links.
Pertinent to the Classical Ed template, the Barney Charter Initiative and others like Great Heart Academies are pushing, the Middle School template wants to “elevate issues related to the moral and ethical struggles of young adolescents to a much higher level of concern…Questions related to reality, truth, goodness, and beauty should be brought to the foreground of studies in the core, elective, and exploratory curricula…”
I found the 1991 book that laid out the relevance of that paper because I was looking for a paper on “Alternative Policy Instruments” used to force the desired implementation without protest. It appeared to me to be relevant to School Choice as it is used today, especially in the advocacy now of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence.
This is interesting. Out last week. https://sheg.stanford.edu/upload/V3LessonPlans/Executive%20Summary%2011.21.16.pdf
“Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online REasoning”. I guess the provided internalized lenses are not functioning as desired yet. Not enough “high-quality assessments” I suppose. Those ESSA accountability reg’s will take care of that.
Is Dr Cristina Karns on your radar? https://www.learningandthebrain.com/Event-342/Promoting-Positive-Mindsets%3A/
Look at the list of co-sponsors too. Got to go to a windowless room in my basement earlier during the tornado warning with sirens going off. A little excitement to go with the new post.
“Internal moral compass“–https://www.agencybasededucation.org/principles/
I have corresponded offline with Oak Norton and thought highly of his Weapons of Math Destruction work, but that’s a cybernetic vision I found in the next story up from the one you linked to.
That link ties it to LDS and this year’s conference to Classical ED. Fits with Greg Forster’s language too and what I recognized in the Catholic Curriculum Framework that was straight out of the behavioral science dictionary. I wonder if anyone pushing Agency-based education is even familiar with Albert Bandura’s work and his stated goals for it? We do have a convergence even though many of the advocates do not seem to recognize that.