Halliburtinizing?

I'd sort of been wondering why the National Education Association was sponsoring a lunch featuring Harold Meyerson and Andy Stern on the global economy. What's the teacher's union angle? Well, they seized the opporunity to give every attendee not only a pretty gross box lunch but also this one-pager (PDF) deriding NCLB as the "No Contractor Left Behind" law responsible for the "Halliburton-ization of America's public schools."

It's, um, not all that convincing. For example, "McGraw Hill - Textbook-maker with documented ties to George Bush. Has the 'lion's share' of contracts in Texas." For one thing, this has nothing to do with NCLB. And, more to the point, that the school system produces revenue for textbook makers is hardly a scandal. Should the kids not have books? And so it goes down the list.

Yes, if people take more standardized tests, then some companies will make money doing test prep, but that, on its own, is hardly a reason to avoid tests. A carbon tax could create big profits for windmill manufacturers, but proponents of curbing global warming aren't part of an insidious plot to "Halliburtonize" the energy system.

Comments

MY, angling for that link from Kaus.

Posted by Woody Bombay | August 3, 2007 1:07 PM

And here I always thought NCLB was constructed to fail to prove that government is the problem and allow all the charter school Bush supporter types to make their coin.

I'm not sure, as you note, Halliburton is the proper metaphor. The school book companies provide the product, a book, perhaps at an inflated price. The margin on such things is so small no self respecting corrupt Republican would waste time on it. Better they siphon from college loans. Now, maybe your backwater Republican wannabes are involved, but this is the minor leagues of corruption.

Posted by Mudge | August 3, 2007 1:20 PM

So you're at this luncheon and they hand out a flier you think is stupid. Normally the blog format is exactly what you've done here, simply react to the printed word. But given that you're in the room with them, couldn't you have pressed them on the issue and seen what they had to say? Blogs rightfully give reporters a lot of crap for not picking up the phone and calling sources to get their side of things. When the folks are actually in front of you, couldn't you say "Hey, McGraw-Hill has nothing to do with NCLB," and see if there's anything more to back it up?

Posted by Antid Oto | August 3, 2007 1:24 PM

I know this makes me sound like a concern troll, but unlike Kaus, I think that teacher's unions, by and large, are fine. This type of thing, however, is exactly the type of overreaching stupidity that undermines their credibility. Look, there are a whole host of things that the teachers unions should be focused on attacking. Many of those things are connected to various dumb federal and state mandates which make funding education more difficult, or even actually makes education itself more difficult. But this is not worth their time or energy, and just makes them look silly, especially since there is not widespread support for this type of attack.

Posted by IP Guy | August 3, 2007 1:25 PM

Naah .... he doesn't express any desire to bust the teachers' union, nor to unwind their existing benefits (e.g. tenure, seniority-only pay); just not to take on their new priorities.

I think the subtext of the NeA's argument is that the test prep software, crash course books, private tutoring programs, etc., aren't actually educating anyone; they're just helping people pass tests. So I just read it as another line of the "teach to test" critique, which I have vague sympathies for. Meanwhile, some hucksters have convinced school districts that this stuff will boost test scores, and of course money doesn't grow on trees for school districts, so teachers don't want this competition for the same pot of money.

Or, succinctly, "teachers don't want expensive, crappy tools; they want a raise and respect from their students and administrators".

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | August 3, 2007 1:26 PM

The point, of course, is that standardized testing is a disaster for education, and that the influence of standardized testing interest group money, as best expressed in NCLB, has pushed standardized testing to more and more of a preeminent role, and pushed aside concerns such as, you know, teaching students academics and skills suited to their own abilities that can help prepare them to engage in a productive life.

But then, you knew that.

Posted by Freddie | August 3, 2007 1:42 PM

Hey, McGraw-Hill has nothing to do with NCLB

The contention that the educational tools industry, with their financial interests in standardized testing, didn't lobby for NCLB is as absurd and wrong as Matt's notion that the school voucher crowd (like their grand poobah Jeb Bush) didn't.

Posted by Freddie | August 3, 2007 1:45 PM

Succinctly, what I want from the local schools is some evidence that can do something about the 30% drop-out rate that they manage to achieve despite spending nearly $20,000 per pupil per year. If they want to continue to fail in their duties, they can at least do so more cheaply so that I can have more money to send my son to private school.

Posted by MH | August 3, 2007 1:46 PM

Yes its just a coincidence that all the Bush education reforms in Texas, Florida, and teh US have helped out brother Neil's business.

Posted by Rob | August 3, 2007 1:49 PM

Freddie: I wasn't making any contention about McGraw-Hill and NCLB. I was just saying that if Matt was going to argue against the connection, the people were right there in the room for him to argue with. He could have reported the results.

Posted by Antid Oto | August 3, 2007 1:52 PM

There are numerous substantive education policy reasons for opposition to NCLB that have nothing whatsoever to do with teachers' unions. It would be nice if you could address those concerns once in a while instead of suggesting the criticisms offered up by teachers' unions are the only ones the left has to offer about this law.

Posted by jason | August 3, 2007 1:57 PM

I know... I was trying to respond to Matt's suggestion that a major textbook company has no connection to NCLB, and your quote was the most succinct way to bring it up. That was pretty stupid of me. I just find it an annoying stab at contrarianism to say that the education industry wasn't involved in passing NCLB. That's absurd. And it's not like that's a secret, either.

Posted by Freddie | August 3, 2007 1:59 PM

Of course, the flipside is technology (provided by contractors) will eventually replace most teachers. As I've commented here before, Benjamin Bloom pointed out years ago "the two sigma problem", the average student (being average) scored at the 50th percentile on achievement tests, while tutored children score at the 98th percentile. The goal of education reform should be replicating that result for every child.

The obvious solution is creating computer programs that teaches material at each students own pace. Much of what we call intelligence is how fast we can learn something new. The A student is the one who masters the grade level material in 9 months. It might take 10 or 12 months, but even a C student can master the material if they can learn at their own pace.

The military (especially the Navy) has been working on so-called, "Intelligent Tutoring Systems" for years. Currently, even the best software only gets you to the 75th percentile (albeit 30% faster than in a classroom setting).

Certainly that's an improvement but what's been missing is a human tutor's ability to sense whether the student answered incorrectly because they are genuinely confused or merely because their mind is wandering. The Navy is now testing systems to monitor the learner's brain activity (via EEG) to replicate that.

If or rather when, these computerized tutors make the jump to the K-12 system, a lot of teachers aren't going to have much to do all day. And a lot of students are going to save a fortune on college tuition by taking online university classes once they've finished the high school curriculum years early (student could still have social promotions from Freshman through Senior years, just each student would be learning high school or college classes at their pace).

Posted by beowulf | August 3, 2007 2:04 PM

If or rather when, these computerized tutors make the jump to the K-12 system, a lot of teachers aren't going to have much to do all day. And a lot of students are going to save a fortune on college tuition by taking online university classes once they've finished the high school curriculum years early (student could still have social promotions from Freshman through Senior years, just each student would be learning high school or college classes at their pace).

You obviously have no idea what goes on in a typical classroom (or university for that matter) if you think computers will ever replace teachers.

As any HS teacher will tell you, put 20 kids in front of computers and in less than a minute the majority of them will be checking email, IM-ing, downloading ring tones, gaming, or surfing.

Thousands of schools around the country were sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of "distance learning" equipment in the past few years which is basically video-conferencing equipment so that students in one school can take classes remotely via video conference from another school. The basic idea being that small schools could offer subjects like say Japanese, for which they don't have any qualified teachers. Of course most schools quickly learned that you can't dump a group of kids in front of a TV and expect them to actually learn anything. You have to actually have real teachers engaged in the classroom. As these schools have learned their lesson a whole lot of expensive videoconferencing gear is mostly gathering dust.

Technology actually has very little to do with teaching. And a good teacher can teach far more with a blank whiteboard and blank notebooks on every desk than a average or mediocre teacher can teach with all the latest technology in the world.

Posted by Kent | August 3, 2007 2:30 PM

Matt makes it sound like it's just a coincidence that Texas is the largest market for textbooks, and the biggest textbook publisher is located in Texas, and the former Governor of Texas, now President, wants a national test that would require all of the states to buy new textbooks from Texas.

Well, thatsa some coincidence.

But let's assume for a minute that it is all just a coincidence, and look at the best possible outcome of NCLB- that all children would receive an education as good as George Bush got.

Is we learning yet?

At the bottom line NCLB is about creating charter schools in which untrained "aides" can coach students in rote learning from standardized texts to pass a test on subjects the school boards of Texas think it's safe for us to learn.

This, in theory, will eventually put food on our families heads. I'm inclined to think that what will really happen is that 50% of us will end up dumber than George Bush. And that's an awful lot of dumb people to have in one place.

Posted by serial catowner | August 3, 2007 2:51 PM

"the average student (being average) scored at the 50th percentile on achievement tests, while tutored children score at the 98th percentile. The goal of education reform should be replicating that result for every child"
*snark*
Yea!!!!
That way we can all be above average!!
*/snark*

*insert eyeroll*

jack

Posted by whskyjack | August 3, 2007 3:11 PM

Kent, you realize that a computer still functions even if its not hooked to the internet? If computers are loaded with learning software but don't have an internet connection, students can't check email, IM, download ringtones, game or surf.

And I'm not talking about videoconferencing, which has all the downsides of classroom instruction plus the teacher can't see if the students are smoking pot in the back of the classroom. I mean, each student working at their own terminal at their own pace on a modularized lesson plan. By modules, look at how Kumon Reading Centers uses paper worksheets to teaching Math and Reading. The Math curriculum runs from counting to calculus by a 23 steps (roughly equivalent to a semester of school work) schedule. Each step is broken into 460 worksheets that the student works through at their own pace. I grant you Kumon (a Japanese company) uses too much rote learning for American tastes, but they have the right idea.

Students could learn on their own while a teacher or proctor monitors how attentive each student is and how much progress they're making (until that fine day the Navy perfects a workable headset EEG monitor).

Certainly, some (maybe a majority) of students won't be able to learn on their own. Great, they can still be taught in a classroom. But motivated students who can work on their own should be able to learn as fast as they are capable.

Posted by beowulf | August 3, 2007 3:13 PM

Sorry, I meant to say Kumon has 4600 worksheets total (from kindergarten to college level math), each step is comprised of 200 worksheets.

Posted by beowulf | August 3, 2007 3:17 PM

Beowulf,

The world isn't Lake Wobegon, every kid isn't above average.

Unionized public schools per se aren't the problem. In towns with high percentages of educated, middle class and upper-middle class parents white and Asian parents, there are some great public schools, and the teachers there have unions. Where public schools have failed miserably is at educating low-income blacks (e.g., D.C.), and Latinos.

There isn't any panacea that would make every low income black kid Dalton material (they don't live in Lake Wobegon either), but there are some schools that have dramatically outperformed unionized public schools in educating low income black and Latino kids, e.g., KIPP schools and Catholic schools.

Posted by Fred | August 3, 2007 3:20 PM

Fred,

Just maybe the teacher's unions are a problem in and of themselves, just one that upper-middle class parents can counteract. The only accomplishments of the teachers union in our area are: 1) preventing lays-offs despite plummeting population and enrollment, 2) making sure that no one is ever fired for being a bad teacher, 3) removing the requirement that teachers have to live in the district in which they teach, and 4) making sure that teachers don't have to contribute more toward their own retirement or health care. Grade schools with 200 kids have multiple assistant principals. And, students working at several years below grade level.

Posted by MH | August 3, 2007 3:35 PM

Yeah, you guys are right. The reason public schools are so bad (which, as is typical, you've provided no evidence to prove, beyond the "everybody knows!") is strictly the fault of unions. Because the South has the least unionized teachers, and the Souths schools are the be-- oh shit, wait....

Allow me to point out the fact that the oversight for private school testing data amounts to the honor system, and the private schools have enormous financial incentive to misrepresent their data. But god knows its a sin to question the virtue of our private schools....

Posted by Freddie | August 3, 2007 3:42 PM

Fred,

Question private schools all you want. Until private schools can take my house if I don't pay them hundreds of dollars every month, I firmly intent to ignore all of them except for those at which I have children enrolled (or am considering enrolling children in). As long as I am paying both property and incomes taxes to support the school, I want some evidence that it is succeeding, or I want them to try new things (and personnel) until they do have some success. The unions block this.

Posted by MH | August 3, 2007 4:08 PM

"For one thing, this has nothing to do with NCLB."

It certainly does; Texas was the lab for NCLB. Read Molly Ivins' and Lou Dubose's book about Dubya's Texas career and learn. The whole scam is at least half about enriching the testing companies, curriculum providers, etc. who supply the program.

Posted by Nell | August 3, 2007 4:16 PM

"I'd sort of been wondering why the National Education Association was sponsoring a lunch featuring Harold Meyerson and Andy Stern on the global economy. What's the teacher's union angle?"

They don't need an angle. Their political wing is in lockstep with the Democratic Party on non-teacher issues and they lobby that way even if the issue has nothing to do with teachers.

That is one of the reasons the Democratic Party is so against 'opt out' for union political contributions.

Posted by Sebastian Holsclaw | August 3, 2007 4:21 PM

MH, I have written about this at length before, but I'll just say it simply here: any statistical advantage private schools enjoy is overwhelmingly the product of who they exclude. Private schools, in the vast majority of cases, don't teach poor kids, special ed kids, kids with emotional disturbance, kids in the foster care system, kids with criminal records, and kids with extreme behavioral problems. In short, they don't teach kids who are most likely to fail academically. The idea that we can upwardly scale the private school system by many thousands of times and end up with a system that continues to outperform public schools is a fantasy. Private schools aren't going to swoop in on their magical green dragon and wave their Wand of Educational Reform and fix things.

The only way to "fix" the system is to recognize the folly of applying simplistic, arbitrary standards to an enormously diverse group of children, diverse socially, intellectually, economically and culturally. Abandon standardized anything and begin to treat education the way it should be treated, as a way to help individual kids meet their individual potential and improve to the degree that they are able, rather than trying to shoe-horn them into an imaginary standard such as grade level.

Posted by Freddie | August 3, 2007 4:31 PM

Here in Texas there are no teacher unions. The NEA an AFT exist, and have members, but they simply act as professional organizations. Teachers join mostly for the group insurance and magazines. Not for collective bargaining. In fact, there are few if any teacher unions in most of the deep south.

This, of course, explains why the south leads the nation in educational achievement and educational innovation. Oh, right.

Beowulf. your faith in software is really quite charming. In fact, your sales pitch sounds exactly like Neil Bush and the scam he has going on selling un-networked closed-platform educational computer packages to schools. Thank God most school districts have more common sense.

Posted by Kent | August 3, 2007 4:35 PM

Sebastian Holsclaw

Your post is misinformed at best. NEA's lobbying efforts are purely defined by educational issues approved at the annual representative assembly. The lobbyists are governed by the Legislative Program whose tenets and bylaws are adopted at the RA. The legislative lobbying wing is generally prohibited from taking stands on issues not sanctioned at the RA.

Furthermore, if I were to ask for a rebate on my dues for the money used for political action at the National level, I'd get about $12 back.

Posted by Mark | August 3, 2007 5:01 PM

The taxes that go to pay for teacher salaries (and benefits that are far better than my own) are my fastest rising expense. At nearly $20,000 per pupil, I want the magic green dragon and I want him crapping ice cream.

If these national standards work, great. If not, at least the evidence will be there for the voters to see when it comes time to elect a school board.

Your argument is basically "Give us the money, we know what to do." Yes, every kid is different, but that doesn't mean it is pointless to check to see if all of the sixth graders can read or not.

Posted by MH | August 3, 2007 5:03 PM

MH, the reason people are raising the issue of private schools fudging test result data and excluding "problem" students is that the entire right wing argument about public schools is that private schools can do the job better.

In fact, a key components in Florida's version of NCLB is that parents whose kids attend a "failing" school (defined by standardized test scores) can use tax dollars to send their kids to private school. Such private schools have no requirement to prove that they "succeed" using their test scores. But even if they did, due to the reasons already pointed out, any claim to such success would be highly dubious.

Thus, in Florida, at least, private schools by proxy can, as you put it, "take [your] house if [you] don't pay them hundreds of dollars every month" whether your kids attend or not.

In fact, the entire point of programs like NCLB (and most, if not all, privatization efforts, for that matter) is to funnel as much of our tax money as possible into private hands with as little accountability as possible. All of these fatuous arguments about markets and performance are so much dust thrown up to distract the rubes.

Posted by Rob Mac | August 3, 2007 5:18 PM

MH, do you know how much of your taxes go into teacher salaries? Since you're so convinced, I assume you have the numbers.

Posted by Jumbo | August 3, 2007 5:27 PM

"Abandon standardized anything and begin to treat education the way it should be treated, as a way to help individual kids meet their individual potential and improve to the degree that they are able, rather than trying to shoe-horn them into an imaginary standard such as grade levels"

OK -- but if that happened, wouldn't we want to know if the kids are meeting their individual potential? And how would we find that out? Testing!

If the tests are bad, the testing regime will be bad. But if the tests are asking for the right thing, then there's nothing wrong with "teaching to the test." Here in California, the state standards & testing have encouraged/forced schools to actually give a shit about whether the kids learn anything. THere's all kids of after-school help and summer school for kids who aren't doing well on those tests, help those kids weren't getting before the standards regime.

Posted by too many steves | August 3, 2007 5:46 PM

The taxes that go to pay for teacher salaries (and benefits that are far better than my own) are my fastest rising expense.

I can't tell if this is a joke or not. It had better be, because if not it's one of the the stupidest things I've ever read. The only way it could remotely be true would be if teacher salaries (not education spending as a whole but specifically teacher salaries) in your town were rising faster than a) all other categories of government spending at all levels and b) all of your own personal expenses. Even if it were true, and it can't be, it's not a meaningful statement. Who the hell cares what my "fastest-rising" expense is? I want to know what my biggest expenses are.

Posted by Antid Oto | August 3, 2007 6:13 PM

Mudge refers to "backwater Republicans." Aren't they really Blackwater Republicans?

Posted by Clyde | August 3, 2007 7:18 PM

Jumbo and Antid Oto,

I was being a bit over-broad. I do know exactly how much I pay in school taxes, but I don't know what portion of that is spent on teacher salaries. And I'm objecting to that overall amount, not just the portion spent on teachers. I'll try to be more clear in the future.

Also, I didn't say that teacher salaries were rising that quickly, I said that the taxes I pay toward teacher salaries are rising faster than all of my other expenses, by which I meant my school taxes are rising faster than my other expenses. How do my school taxes rise so quickly with the teachers seeing big raises? Easy: A) declining population, with the decline being especially pronounced among the working-aged, and B) property valuation isn't an exact science and it doesn't always work out fairly.

Posted by MH | August 3, 2007 8:20 PM

Antid,

Matt wouldn't have had a chance to ask an NEA official such as Joel Packer, because after a brief intro by an NEA staffer, the interview began. Packer was at a breakout in the afternoon, bur there were many of them.

When I get home, I'll blog about the handout, but I agree it's not a good use of resources (I'm an NEA member), if for no other reason than it says nothing about the structure of NCLB.

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