In Part 17, found here http://www.diatribune.com/... and here http://www.dailykos.com/... , we dissected and disproved Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’s denial of culpability in the corruption of Reading First, the presumed intellectual cornerstone of Sandy Kress’s No Child Left Behind. But our foray into Reading First and Spellings’s denial was a tangent, and we return now to the trail of former White House Senior Education Advisor Sandy Kress, who rewrote Lyndon Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act, re-naming it No Child Left Behind and turning it into an automatic teller machine for the corporate elite cozening to the administration and family of George W. Bush. The statute that once promised equal access to public education to millions of American children now promises billions of dollars in profits to Kress’s corporate clients through a pair of rackets: testing and assessment, and supplemental educational services. And Kress himself? He’s being well-paid to solve the problems that he was well-paid to create. What a guy.
(To review the series from the beginning, click here http://www.diatribune.com/... or here http://www.dailykos.com/... ).
In October, 2006, reporter David Hoff of Education Week magazine updated us on Kress’s whereabouts; apparently still lobbying for Akin Gump, the global lobbying powerhouse in Washington, D.C., Kress was "recently retained" by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce "to lobby on federal education issues, particularly on the NCLB reauthorization."
Surprise, surprise. Because Kress’s crowning achievement as a policymaker is up for review by Congress this year, the twin profiteering rackets he embedded in the law are subject to scrutiny, and the possibility exists that a rational Congressional majority might eliminate those rackets from the statute. Who benefits most from them? Not America’s schoolchildren, but rather America’s corporate elite, who have already siphoned untold billions of dollars from the federal treasury through NCLB. Who is best positioned to protect those tunnels into the gold mine? Of course, that would be the man who designed those tunnels in the first place: Sandy Kress. And as luck would have it, he’s available. Thus, the U.S Chamber of Commerce is placed foursquare in the education business in 2007, and no child is safe. Next thing you know, we’ll be designing job training programs for pre-schoolers.
Kress told reporter Hoff, "There’s a general sense that in the business community, No Child Left Behind was a very important step and to back away from it would be a troubling sign, ... particularly in the face of this ramp-up [of educational achievement] in other countries."
See, China and India are nipping at our heels, friends. The two nations with the largest populations in poverty and poor health are gaining fast on the strongest, wealthiest economic and political superpower in the recorded history of the universe, and we need to preserve our twin rackets of testing-and-assessment and supplemental educational services if we hope to keep them at bay. At least, that’s how I read Kress’s warning. Thank goodness we have the business community manning our forts for us.
The story is bigger than just the U.S. Chamber’s hiring of Kress; Hoff writes, "Large companies and major business groups are known for hiring well-heeled lobbyists to push for their interests, especially in such areas as tax and spending laws. But their federal lobbying presence on education issues has been relatively modest. Until now. As Congress gears up to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, business groups are laying the groundwork to have their voices heard in the process. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable—two prominent Washington-based groups representing business owners and chief executives of large corporations, respectively—announced last month that they have formed a coalition with other business groups to protect the nearly 5-year-old education law from major changes."
A subscription is required to read Hoff’s article at Education Week’s website, but the great folks at www.4lakidsnews.blogspot.com posted it for consumption by the lay reader here http://4lakidsnews.blogspot.com/... . (Thanks.)
"The U.S. Chamber, the Business Roundtable, and other business organizations are also pushing for changes in other areas of pre-K-12 education, such as improving mathematics and science education, expanding instruction in foreign languages and international issues, and offering preschool to all families that want it," Hoff writes. "Business leaders say their interest in the No Child Left Behind law and other education matters can be summed up in one word: competitiveness."
I guessed the one word might be "profits" but I guessed wrong.
"This is a very, very serious problem, and business takes it seriously," Arthur F. Ryan, the chairman and chief executive officer of Prudential Financial Inc., a Newark, N.J.-based insurance and financial-services company, said at a forum on the NCLB law sponsored by the Business Roundtable in Washington last month.
Executives such as Mr. Ryan, who is chairman of the BRT’s task force on education and workforce preparation, are actively involved in part out of self-interest. They believe that by improving schools and student achievement, they’ll have better employees in the future.
"Business is probably the largest consumer of American education," said Charles E.M. Kolb, the president for the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington-based group of business, academic, and philanthropic leaders. The priority is "having people in the workforce who are capable and have the skills you need in the workforce today," he said.
Ryan and Kolb didn’t mention that business profits from American education, thanks to Kress’s NCLB, but no matter. Their point is clear: The goal of the federal government should no longer be to invest in the preparation of broadly educated, creative, critical-thinking young minds, but rather to invest in the preparation of workers who will take direction well, who will quickly and accurately press the right keypads on the cash register, who will quickly and accurately combine the appropriate nuts and bolts on the factory floor, who convey a sense of smiley contentedness when asking, "do you want fries with that?," and who will not ever call OSHA, or buck management, or suggest that their fellow workers organize for better pay.
Speaking of getting organized, Hoff writes that these corporate elites are doing just that.
While corporate America has long supported national education initiatives, many observers say that business leaders are now more prominent and more focused on specific details than ever before. Although business leaders supported efforts to set national education goals in the late 1980s, for example, they weren’t as involved as they are now in advocating specific policy measures.
Before Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, business leaders had not been big players in reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Great Society-era legislation that was most recently revised by the NCLB law.
That year, the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce formed a coalition of 50 other business groups and individual companies to support key elements of the legislation, which President Bush ultimately signed into law in January 2002. The coalition worked hard to ensure that the law’s testing requirements focused on reading and mathematics and required annual snapshots of students’ performance. Congress adopted that approach, requiring testing in those subjects in grades 3-8 and once in high school.
That’s where the business community first crossed paths with Sandy Kress, "who as a White House policy aide helped President Bush negotiate with Congress over the details of the No Child Left Behind law. He is now a lawyer based in Austin, Texas," Hoff explains.
Despite the current focus on the No Child Left Behind law, the U.S. business community has a larger education agenda—one that extends from preschool to college.
There it is: Job training in pre-school.
Aren’t these the same folks who railed against "social engineering" back in the early twentieth century? Having figured out how to adapt "social engineering" principles to their profit-making machinery, they appear to have taken a liking to the idea now. If the walls of your local pre-schools begin sporting posters showing bespectacled folks in white lab coats, clear safety glasses, pocket protectors and Palm Pilots, here’s why:
The Business Roundtable has set a goal of doubling the number of U.S. college graduates with degrees in mathematics, science, engineering, or technology by 2015. It is advocating changes to teacher preparation and K-12 policies to achieve that goal.
But that’s not all.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently established an institute that will focus on educational issues related to preparing students for a future in the workforce. All of those efforts have one goal in common: to make American workers of the future economically competitive.
Because economically competitive workers are profitable workers.
We’ll include reporter Hoff’s sidebar also, because the more we know about the business community’s plans for our kids, the better prepared we can be to protect our kids’ individuality, creativity and critical thinking skills.
THE BUSINESS OF EDUCATION
Three major U.S. business groups, all based in Washington, with a wide range of interests in education policy, have recently stepped up their efforts to influence the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.
▲BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE
Members: 165 chief executives of major U.S. companies
Education agenda: Working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a coalition to improve the NCLB law. The groups support the law’s accountability and testing rules, especially annual testing to measure whether students are making progress toward reaching proficiency in reading and math. The roundtable has set a goal of doubling the number of college students graduating with majors in science, math, engineering, and technology by 2015. Improving the quality of K-12 math and science instruction is vital to meeting that goal, the group says.
▲U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Members: 3,000 state and local chambers of commerce, representing 3 million businesses
Education agenda: Is working with the Business Roundtable to support the NCLB law as Congress prepares to reauthorize it. Recently started the Institute for a Competitive Workforce, which convened a meeting this month of K-12 policymakers and business leaders to discuss important issues in education policy and how business leaders can be involved. The institute also plans to issue report cards on states’ education policies.
▲COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Members: More than 170 business executives, academics, and philanthropic leaders
Education agenda: Advocating voluntary preschool programs for all 4-year-olds. Promoting foreign-language instruction and international education as a way to help students become better prepared to enter the workforce.
SOURCE: Education Week
But Kress spends some of his time with non-business-elite types too. Late last summer, he was found back in Washington at the Capitol Hilton, holding forth on the virtues of his NCLB to Phi Delta Kappa’s annual Summit on Public Education. Moderating the panel discussion titled, "How Well Has NCLB Worked? How Do We Get the Revisions We Want?" was John Merrow, education correspondent for "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS, and the panelists were these:
Panel members included Michael Casserly, executive director, Council of the Great City Schools; Susan Gendron, commissioner of education, Maine; Sandy Kress, partner, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld, LLP; Bill Sanders, senior research fellow, University of North Carolina; Wendy Puriefoy, president, Public Education Network; and Virginia McLaughlin, dean, School of Education, College of William & Mary.
Did you note Kress’s descriptor?
One can imagine that Kress sat uncomfortably in his chair, listening to luminaries take aim at the statute he crafted for George W. Bush. PDK reporter Anne C. Lewis described it, and the scene in the Capitol Hilton, this way: "The law was conceived by the White House and passed by Congress on a nonpartisan basis. Since it first took effect in 2002, it has been the focus of intense lobbying by many groups wanting to change it. Now, after more than four years, it stands accused of not doing very much, very fast, for the children attending schools just a few blocks from the hotel, the kind of struggling and often neglected students the law is intended to help the most."
But, Lewis writes, "The panelists were a lot nicer than many in the audience wanted them to be. In breakout sessions focused on what the panelists had said, PDK members and others voiced frustration at how the law is playing out in their classrooms, school districts, and higher education institutions."
Given this backdrop, it’s understandable that Kress was warm under the collar when he was given the floor. Lewis reports:
Panel member Sandy Kress, an architect of the legislation for President Bush and former school board president in Dallas, said passionately that the law allows no excuses for the achievement gap. "I think part of what gets No Child Left Behind into trouble is, it means [what it says]. There are teeth to it, more teeth to it than anywhere in any previous act of legislation." Those in the small-group discussions agreed but argued that the accountability provisions are in need of a good cleaning.
The panelists welcomed the fact that ensuring good teachers for classrooms in high-poverty schools was on the table. But even the panelists did not equate the law's definition of "highly qualified" with real competence, and Summit participants, many of them teachers, decried the law's effect on excellent teachers who had been made to feel that they are failures because of NCLB's statistical definition of adequate yearly progress (AYP).
The panelists and Summit participants certainly agreed that NCLB has provoked a national discussion about public education and has made public the significant achievement gap among the nation's students. Yet many worried that the conversation was too narrowly focused on test scores. Missing from all the attention to student outcomes are a number of equally important roles for schools, such as developing critical thinkers and future citizens.
The Summit's emphasis on NCLB had a clear purpose -- to stimulate PDK members to become involved in the reauthorization process. Although final passage of a revised NCLB may be delayed because of politics, Congress will surely begin its discussions in 2007. The new committee leadership in the House and Senate anticipates little change in the core provisions of NCLB, but it should be pointed out that the law, itself a reauthorization of the 40-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act, practically "sneaked" onto the books late in 2001. The public had scarcely any opportunity to help shape it.
Lewis writes that panelist tried, as educators do, to find something nice to say about NCLB before turning "to a number of troubling unintended consequences that have arisen from NCLB. And therein lies the tale of why the law is controversial and unsettling to educators whose careers have been built on a different set of values from those that have taken precedence under the implementation of NCLB."
President Michael Casserly of the Council of Great City Schools reminded Kress that "a basic psychology course teaches that punishment does not motivate people to do better." Casserly went on to say:
The main problem, to my mind, is that the law and its accountability system have been overly focused on . . . sanctions, on compliance with the sanctions, without the added focus in the law about good instruction, good instructional systems, and technical assistance in research that will help schools actually attain the goals. . . . It has created all kinds of unintended, weird, and perverse side effects, including some narrowing of curriculum, teaching to the test, and all of that. That's something that can be fixed. What the law conceptually needs to do, however, is to put more emphasis on good instruction with interventions.
None of this stuff has anything to do with actually raising student achievement. I just defy anybody to actually find any research that would suggest that those are successful strategies.
When conversation turned to the subject of "how to make changes," Lewis writes that Kress, "whose views of NCLB were the most positive among the panelists, mostly wanted to see its accountability provisions applied more forcefully to secondary schools."
Why not? Imposing his twin rackets of testing-and-assessment and supplemental educational services on elementary schools has proven quite lucrative for Kress; one imagines that expanding his portfolio into the secondary schools market could set himself and his family up comfortably for generations.
Of course, others on the panel, like Maine’s Education Commissioner Susan Gendron, understandably disagreed with Kress’s recommendation.
Moderator John Merrow was given the last word at a debriefing session on the last day of the Summit, Lewis writes: "Based on what he has seen in schools serving poor children, he finds that NCLB ‘is training kids for jobs that won't exist and is drilling the joy out of learning. [Secretary of Education] Spellings likens it to Ivory Soap, but to me it's more like a candy bar -- M&M's -- as in more and more children left behind’."
Kress didn’t meet a much warmer crowd at the University of California at Berkeley two months ago, when he spoke to professors, community members, teachers and graduate students on March 7. The cool reception to his presentation must have stung Kress, who is a graduate of UC-Berkeley. He gave a rosy view of the statute nonetheless, including his recommendations to drag its flaws into secondary schools. Reporter Ryan Cole covered the event here http://www.dailycal.org/... :
Kress’s presentation cited the rise in test scores from 1990 to 2005 as proof that the standards-based reform movement, which inspired the act, is effective in raising test scores. Kress said rising minority scores reveal the positive impact of the reform movement.
"I think there’s a lot of strong support for continuing and strengthening (the act)," Kress said. "In some respect that will involve fixes, in other respects it will involve going further in policies to improve teacher effectiveness, to strengthen secondary schools and to encourage greater college and work-place readiness."
Panelist Goodwin Liu, a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law, said Kress’s statistics did not prove the act was a major factor in academic improvement.
"Why is the black and Hispanic improvement curve more steep prior to the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act?" Liu asked.
Kress defended it as a work in progress, saying there were many improvements to be made.
"The system was totally broken when we found it in 2001," Kress said.
A question and answer session revealed frustration and dissent from teachers and community members. Audience and panel members expressed concern that test accountability causes teachers to teach to the test, stressing math and reading and ignoring other curriculum subjects.
Kress responded that districts have the freedom to make any necessary curriculum changes to be able to meet the test standards.
"Who’s keeping people from doing it? If it’s more successful, do it," he said.
His interaction with interviewers at the Hoover Institution the same month was decidedly warmer, and I’ll highlight a few pearls of wisdom shared by the architect of No Child Left Behind in Part 19. Stay tuned.
And to review our progress, click these links, cross posted at Daily Kos and Diatribune:
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 1
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 2
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 3
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 4
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 5
http://www.diatribune.com/...
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Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 6
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 7
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 8
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 9
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 10
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 11
http://www.diatribune.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 12
http://www.diatribune.com/...
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Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 13
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Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 14
http://www.diatribune.com/...
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Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 15
http://www.diatribune.com/...
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Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 16
http://www.diatribune.com/...
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Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB, Part 17
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