The Accountability Scam

Sean Crowley, my brother blogger from Buffalo, has a great column about how educational leaders are popped into place with no public input. A secondary point he makes is about accountability. This is the word we invariably hear when insane systems are initiated. Why should teachers be judged by test scores? Accountability. Why must every kid, no matter where he or she comes from, get the same test? Accountability. Why is our tenure and union under frontal assault? Accountability.

Reformy politicians love accountability. If you didn't know better, you'd think it warmed the remote nether regions of their ice-cold hearts. You'd think they care about the progress of our poor underprivileged impoverished children. You'd think that because that, in fact, is what they say when they pimp common core, value-added ratings, and firing as many teachers as possible.

But here's the thing--accountability does not, in fact, mean taking responsibility for real problems. It simply means passing the buck. If the problem in the United States is that children are not getting high enough scores on standardized tests (and it isn't, by the way), you can say, "See? Those lazy teachers aren't doing their jobs! They're sitting around and reading the newspaper while our children are suffering and failing!" That's what a whole lot of editorial and op-ed writers would have you believe.

The problem, though, is not in our stars, nor in ourselves. The problem is in our communities. Despite Governor Cuomo's valuable lip service that some workers in NY State will receive $15 an hour in a few years, a whole lot of people are just not making in in this country. When two parents work 200 hours a week each and still can't make ends meet, they don't have a whole lot of time for parenting. Unfortunately, the people who fund reformies like Andrew Cuomo are profiting enormously from low wage workers. Uber-reformy Whitney Tilson of DFER has no problems hyping and profiting from the likes of Walmart and McDonalds.

But the race to the bottom in American employment is in fact a huge factor in why kids don't do well on tests. Parents who haven't got a minute to read with their kids, who haven't got a minute to read themselves, who haven't got a minute to visit schools or teachers have serious problems. And the very reformies who vilify teachers not only contribute to this problem, but also directly profit from it. And as if that weren't enough, they've now got their fat grubby paws in charters, cyber charters, and various other schemes to divert even more money from those of us unimaginative enough to have to work for a living.

In America, we don't need circuses, because they're everywhere. Over a dozen GOP candidates debate and not one addresses minimum wage. They stand there arguing over how to defund Planned Parenthood and feign outrage when Donald Trump makes some juvenile crack about one of Fox's bleached blond talking heads. They present us corporate funded union-busters and rail about President Obama's program to bring health care to more people. You might leave one of those debates outraged over Obamacare rather than the fact that every other industrialized country offers its citizens health care as a matter of course.

Reformies love accountability only because they can dump it on us. By blaming unionized teachers for all the world's woes, they are held totally blameless for their miserable and perpetual failure to help working Americans. And for all the crocodile tears they shed for our children, they will soon grow up to be working Americans, and thus shunned and ignored by those who claim now to be their advocates.

And who is it who actually spends time and energy on these children?

That would be us, the educators. The tinhorn politicians and tone-deaf op-ed writers who vilify and libel us for a living profit off of the misery of those we serve every day. We can't afford to let them make us miserable too. It's our job to tell the truth, no matter how much it hurts Frank Bruni, Andy Cuomo, Arne Duncan, or any of the other demagogues who infect our media.

When any one of them or their ilk wishes to actually be accountable rather than toss the word around, it will be a miracle akin to the one pictured above. 

Another Gates Project--Because Destroying K-12 Is Not Enough

Bill Gates, the world's richest man, has appointed himself our national education expert. It's pretty clear he's got the ear of Arne Duncan, who gleefully repeats whatever Gates says. If Gates says we need higher class sizes, so does Arne. If Gates says release junk science scores of individual teachers, Arne wholeheartedly concurs. If Gates says don't release them, Arne's on board with that too.

This begs the question, has anyone ever seen Arne Duncan speak while Bill Gates drinks a glass of water?

This notwithstanding, Bill Gates has determined, after having been responsible for closing scores of schools, after having decimated neighborhoods, after having privatized public schools, after having seriously cut into the power of teachers, the last bastion of vibrant unionism in these United States, that he needs to branch out. It's not enough to degrade and codify K-12 in ways his limited intellect can process. Apparently, we need to do the same in college.

Gates looks at the figures, which are all that matters. There aren't enough college graduates, determines Gates, and we must correct that. Let's get rid of all these teachers and buildings and simply have people sit on computers. Socializing is not an important part of college. Who cares about all those wasteful discussions about literature, morality, society and other such nonsense? Let's stick to the meat and potatoes. That way, we can make sure Americans get not only a one-dimensional K-12 education, based solely on test scores, but also an equally shallow college education.

Who cares whether or not the graduates end up getting jobs? That's not Bill's job. Who cares whether or not kids are raised in poverty? That's not Bill's job either. He doesn't think he can fix that problem. What he can do is bring "accountability." That means unionized teachers get fired if they don't get enough kids to pass the tests Bill's BFFs collect millions to design.

Why can't we export this model to college? Since K-12 teachers cannot be trusted to design tests, let alone grade them, why can't we use this model in college? Let's have all American students rated on standardized tests only, and graded by computers. Let's dispense with that human factor Bill can't comprehend.

Because anything Bill can't comprehend, apparently, is not worth considering.

Actually, all that talk about American education being in crisis, or left behind, or whatever they call it is abject nonsense. In fact, if you discount poverty (as Bill Gates does), American students are doing fine. If you were to address poverty (as Bill Gates does not), a whole lot more American students would perform a whole lot better.

It's a sin that we allow a clueless billionaire to toy with our national education system just as a two-year-old will toy with anything she can find. Just as we preserve things from our two-year-old, so they don't get irrevocably broken, we need to fight to preserve our schools, our legacy, our country, from this idiot savant.

This is particularly egregious as whatever is, was, or was perceived to be savant about this idiot continues to become more elusive.

Act of God No Excuse, Declares Mayor Michael Bloomberg

If your house had ten feet of water rip through it, or if your living room is full of mud, or sand, or locusts, that's no reason for missing work. Michael Bloomberg is the mayor of New York, he has billions of dollars, and if he says so it must be true.

After all, his brownstone is still there, and it was not damaged. Why the hell was your residence damaged? If you had half a brain, you would've bought an east side brownstone rather than a ranch house in a flood area. Then you would've been able to go to work while the storm raged. So what if you were taken up by the wind, and flew around with Dorothy and Toto and a cow? Judy Garland wasn't even five foot tall and she did it. So what's your excuse, pal?

And please, don't give me that line about helping your grandfather dig out of his ruined home. Have you seen Bloomberg helping anyone clean up, or bringing food to people without power? Have you seen him donating food to shelters? Of course not. In fact, he banned donations to food shelters, because who knows whether or not the evil donors will give soft drinks that are too large? After all, who wants those careless refugees drinking too much Pepsi Cola?

Now of course Mayor Bloomberg has made allowances in case the building in which you work happened to have been closed. Were that the case, you simply had to have taken a photograph of yourself in front of the closed building on the day in question. What could be simpler? And just to make things perfectly clear, Mayor Bloomberg made that ruling a week after the fact. So all you need do is travel back through time, take the photo, perhaps with that day's newspaper, and provide absolute proof you didn't do so after the fact. A cinch.

Mayor Bloomberg is not restricted by nature. When we were hit with a crippling snowstorm last year, he just got in his private jet and headed to Bermuda. If you'd had the foresight to do that, you wouldn't have been here bellyaching about how to get your car out of the driveway. And please don't go on about convention and laws. When Mayor Bloomberg saw term limits, twice affirmed by voters, he simply got his pals to pass a new law, spent a hundred million bucks, and bought himself Gracie Mansion, fair and square, for the third time.

So please, New York, enough with the complaints. Man up, and face the situation. Just do what Mayor Bloomberg would do.

In Which We Revolutionize Basketball for Arne Duncan

Last night, on Twitter, Arne Duncan congratulated the USA Women's Basketball Team for a wonderful performance. But a lot of teachers on Twitter questioned it. For one thing, how do we know they're doing well if there isn't a charter team to ensure healthy competition? And why aren't we doing this right now? Isn't this a crisis that can't wait for solutions?

Also, it's important we fire the bottom 10%, so as to ensure we are truly fielding the best team. And it's not enough that they do an excellent job. Sure, it looks like they're doing well. But how do we know they're doing well unless we give their opponents tests in reading and math twice a year and check the improvements from September to June? We really can't go by measures like whether or not they win games. What does that mean, ultimately?

Let's also make sure that the charter teams get space in the stadiums. I don't think it's fair we allow our teams to practice in courts by themselves. Lets collect a few trash cans, hollow them out, and dump them in the basement for our public teams to use. The charter teams could use the ones upstairs. And I don't want to hear that the players are only three feet tall, or 9 years old, or that they've never played before. We will accept no excuses.

Basketball training will be done by hedge-funders and billionaires who have no training or experience whatsoever about basketball. However, since they've established their success by accumulating all that money, we'll rely on their excellent judgment. We will not bother to study or test their ideas before enacting them systemwide, and we will establish blue-ribbon panels with celebrities and rich people, and not basketball players, to praise the ideas on the media. When they fail, we will close stadiums and replace entire teams.

We will, of course, start an organization called Democrats for Basketball Reform. We will travel around with suitcases full of cash to help persuade legislators. We will start a satellite group, Students for Basketball Reform, to give us the appearance of credibility. Then we will go after those darn unions, and claim they only pursue adult interests. We will show basketball players how cool it is to work without contracts, to get rid of that health insurance, to pay for their own uniforms and balls, and to work in substandard conditions. Finally, we will halve teams so as to save money, and demand equal performance. No excuses.

Because that's the way we do things in America. We have a model, and even if it proves to be utterly without merit, we must replicate it everywhere, immediately, to avert the crisis we contend to be in.

No Impossible Demand Left Behind

That's what you're expected to do, and you've got just about a year and a half to do it. NCLB says all children will be proficient by 2014, and every year you fail to get 100% of your kids to pass is another year you risk your school being closed. Why don't we judge other professions by that standard? Let's begin at the top.

Are 100% of Americans employed? I don't think so. If that isn't corrected by 2014, we'd better close the White House, toss out the Congress, and have the whole government taken over by privatizers. Sure, you say, it's those same folks who put the economy in the crapper, left it there, and had us bail them out. Yet that's how we run education, what with Joel Klein's hotline to hedge-funders, so obviously we need to replicate this system elsewhere.

Are 100% of crimes solved? Are 100% of criminals in prison? If not, we'll need to close all the police stations, fire 50% of working cops, and replace them with temporary TFA workers. Maybe what we need is smaller police stations, each with 6 captains rather than one. Probably cops would do a better job if criminals were tested on a regular basis, and if said criminals failed tests two years in a row we could dismiss them. Surely Pearson could devise questions on safecracking, murder, extortion, or any topic under the sun.

How about banks? Is there enough cash in your account? If not, it's surely the fault of incompetent bankers who've failed to ensure you have enough to pay your bills. It certainly couldn't be your fault you blew a wad of cash on a Hawaiian vacation, neglecting that mortgage and car payment. If they can't figure out how to balance their books before 2014, they're outta there!

Finally, let's get on those darn doctors. It's already 2012, and lots of people are still sick! In fact, some people are still dying. Many, truth be told. If those health providers can't stop providing excuses rather than the health we pay for, they ought to be severely penalized. Heads must roll at hospitals, and not only those of patients.

Let's get the word to Mayor4Life Bloomberg, Governor 1% Cuomo, and faux-Democrat President Barack Obama that standards must be universal, and if our demands are not met, we will close down the city, state and country.

After all, that's what they want from us, isn't it?