Advancing Democratic Education: Would Horace Mann Tweet?

1
Gene V Glass2
A democratically run public education system in America is under siege. It is being attacked by
greedy, union-hating corporations and billionaire boys whose success in business has proven to
them that their circle of competence knows no bounds.
If we can find the answer to the question in our title, perhaps we will find the answer to the
question What can be done to restore democracy to public education in America? But to begin
to answer these questions, we have to start our inquiry some 30 years ago, when Americas public
schools were said to be in a state of crisis.
A Nation at Risk

This is the text of a speech delivered to the Ohio Deans Compact in Dublin, Ohio, on February 4, 2016. I think
Aimee Howley and Deb Telfer, organizers of the meeting for the invitation to address the group.
2
Emeritus Regents Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University; Research Professor,

School of Education, University of Colorado Boulder; Senior Researcher, National Education Policy
Center; Lecturer, Connie L. Lurie College of Education, San Jos State University.
Thanks to David C. Berliner and Sandra Rubin Glass for comments on an earlier draft.

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

A Nation at Risk, which appeared in 1983, maintained that a declining public school system
threatened not just the U.S. economy but the nations very existence. Having been commissioned
in 1981 by the newly elected President Ronald Reagan, the report was gratefully received in the
White House rose garden. Reagan never read the report. But he took the occasion to reaffirm his
K-12 education program: In a 1982 Gallup poll, the majority of those surveyed thought
Washington should exert less influence in determining the educational program of the public
schools. So, we'll continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers,
educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of
Education. None of these points was raised in the report itself.

The Crisis That Never Was

American 12th-graders scored at the very bottom of the rankings.

(William Raspberry, Washington Post, March 12, 1998, p. A-15)

Poor academic showing hurts U.S. high schoolers.

(T. Henry, USA Today, February 25, 1998, p. 1-A)

Hey! We're No. 19!

(John Leo, U.S. News & World Report, March 9, 1998, p. 14)

But what the report did mention was that the SAT average of some incoming college freshmen
was declining. This so-called crisis called for immediate action. Of course, we now know that the
SAT decline was a result of an increase in the number of poor and minority students applying to
college as a result of Lyndon Johnsons Great Society programs. It had nothing whatsoever to do
with the quality of teaching and learning in Americas schools. While the overall average SAT
was declining, the SAT average of every ethnic group was rising: Simpsons Paradox. Look it up.
The best available evidence on the quality question came from National Assessment testing which
has shown small and steady increases for decades, right up to the present.3 However, best
available evidence is of no interest to those who see the possibility of exploiting Americas
schools for personal or political gain.

I served on the Analysis Advisory Committee of NAEP in the late 1970s. Among the various
encouraging things we observed but were seldom noted outside the organization were such things
as the decline in physical sciences achievement and increase in biological sciences achievement as
a result of the nations schools redirect curriculum emphasis.

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

Consider the modern day version of a nation at risk. Various international assessments of
achievement rank the U.S. below average in the world achievement sweepstakes. Journalists
sarcastically announce that We are 19th worldwide in science and math, or that we trail
Lichtenstein in reading achievement. I cannot take the time here to dispel the multitude of
pernicious myths that stem from the absurdity of these international assessments. But lets
consider just two instances.
In the early TIMSS4 assessments in science and math, the U.S. scored below many nations. Lost in
the panic of what must be done to restore Americas 9-year-olds to world dominance were some
simple facts: The U.S. was one of four nations that did not allow its test takers to use calculators; it
was the only nation not tested in the metric system (and remains to this day one of three nations
4

TIMSS = Trends in International Math and Science Study.

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

not on the metric system; Liberia and Myanmar being the other two); and most nations scoring
higher were testing students at ages ranging from several months to more than a year older than
the U.S. examinees (the directions to examiners were to test students who are in the next to last
year of high school).

Those Japanese Kids Read Really Great

Tom appeared on the sidewalk
with a bucket of whitewash and
a long-handled brush. He
surveyed the fence, and all
gladness left him and a deep
melancholy settled down upon
his spirit. Thirty yards of board
fence nine feet high. Life to him
seemed hollow, and existence
but a burden.
~Mark Twain
Tom ist auf dem Brgersteig mit
einem Eimer von Tnche und
einer langbehandelten Brste
erschienen. Er hat den Zaun
vermessen, und alle Freude hat
ihn verlassen und eine tiefe
Melancholie auf seinem Geist
geberuhigt wird. Dreiig Hfe von
Ausschusszaun neun Fe hoch.
Leben, zu dem ihn Hohlraum
geschienen hat, und Existenz
aber eine Last.
~Herr Twain

The absurdity of the TIMSS assessment is nothing compared to the PISA5 assessment in Reading.
We hear that U.S. students cant read; they rank 17th out of 34 nations; even Lichtenstein students
outscore them. The sky is surely falling. But who has asked the simple obvious question, In what
language is the test written? Esperanto? No, the PISA reading test has to be written in the
language of each nation in which it is administered. What could be more obvious or so rarely
mentioned? And how can one equate the difficulty of the test in all these various languages? The
answer is simply that one cannot.
The PISA documentation from Boston College, the contractor for much of the assessment
activities, contain a 37-page Appendix alleged to prove that whether the test is written in English,
Finnish, Hungarian, or Swahili, it will be equally difficult. In fact, this appendix is a bunch of
mathematical and psychometric mumbo jumbo that I dont trust for a minute. So I emailed the
person at Boston College and asked for a sample of a dozen or so questions in English and their
counterparts in German since I majored in German 50 years ago and had some chance of judging
the equivalence myself. My correspondent at Boston College wrote back and told me that the tests
themselves were proprietary and could not be released in any form. I was out of luck.

PISA = Programme for International Student Assessment

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

My Boston College correspondent was my own doctoral advisee at the University of Colorado in
the early 1970s.
Democracy depends in fundamental ways on transparency.

Educational reform is a
euphemism for the
destruction of public
education.
Noam Chomsky ~ 2013

What Sustains the Myths of Failure?

If certain interests can sustain the myth that Americas public schools are failing to educate the
nations children, then they can command an audience for their solutions which take a form
called reforms. It is my contention that the reforms currently sweeping through our nations
school system serve a combination of interests: 1) the desire of a dwindling, aging white middle
class to contain or even reduce taxes that support public schools; 2) the desire of that same
segment of the population to segregate its children and grandchildren from the rapidly growing
Hispanic population; and 3) the desire of a small number of large corporations to get their hands
on as much as possible of the expenditures for public education.

3 Things Driving Education Reform

Economic Self-interest
Of White Middle Class

Racial/Ethnic Antipathy

Corporate Profits

School Reform

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

The Forces Driving School Reform

1) America is growing older, poorer, and browner.
Medical technology is extending life and allowing people to live longer. Unfortunately, the high
school graduate, white, Me-generation segment of the population (ages 30-50) is killing itself
with drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. But the bulk of the population is living longer. And they are
outliving their assets and resent seeing their property taxes going to the education of the rapidly
increasing Hispanic portion of the public school population.

America Is Growing Browner, Older & Deeper in Debt

Percent Hispanic of Regional Population, 1980, 1990 & 2000

America Is Growing Browner, Older & Deeper in Debt

25% of all children

under age 5 are
Hispanic.

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

Among those reforms that can cut or at least restrain the growth of taxes are charter schools,
alternative teacher training, class size increases, value-added measurement (VAM) and other
forms of union busting.

So You Think Resegregation Isnt Real?

2) Segregation.6 Those who pay the taxes that make public education possible view the minority
segment of the school population as a threat. Of course, this sense of threat is absurdly overstated.
The chances of being struck by lightning in ones lifetime 1 in 700,000 are about one-fourth
the chance of being killed by a terrorist. And the threat of ones children being injured by a
minority fellow student or hooked on heroin by such students is similarly hugely exaggerated in
the minds of parents: 35% of parents fear that their child will be shot; 45% fear that the child will
be beaten up; 60% fear that their child will be bullied.7 Consequently, reforms that segregate white,
middle class students from minorities are greatly favored by the public. Among those reforms are
charter schools, tuition tax credits, private schools, and even various forms of tracking (e.g., AP
courses) within traditional public schools.

3) The Corporate Sector

It was Rupert Murdoch the Australian billionaire owner of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal,
and nearly countless other assets who long ago sounded the charge against democratic public
education. It was Murdoch who pointed out to corporate America and Great Britain, I must add
6

The graph shows the White vs Hispanic enrollment of the Lexington, Nebraska, schools over a
decade after the Tyson meat packing corporation established a site in the town. It documents
extensive White flight from Lexington to small rural schools in the vicinity.
7
Pew Research Center survey of 1,800 parents with children under age 18, conducted in October
2013.

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

that public education in the U.S. was a half-trillion dollar annual plum just waiting to be picked
by the business community. And corporations have been gobbling up the low hanging fruit with a
vengeance ever since.
Once upon a time, private business profited from providing
services and materials to public schools by selling them
pencils, an occasional overhead projector, and mystery meat
for the cafeteria. But today, through the mechanism of charter
schools and assessment activities like VAM, PARCC8 and
Smart Balance, private businesses have set their sights on the
entire state allocation for students; and they are reaping
enormous profits at public expense.
Pearson PLC, the largest publishing and test development
corporation in the world based in Great Britain, recently spent
$8 million in one year lobbying Congress for favorable
legislation. Far more is spent by education corporations
lobbying state legislatures. Families for Excellent Schools,
which is actually a charter school lobbying group, spent $9.6
million in 2014 lobbying the New York state legislature in Albany. Their goal is obviously to
expand the revenue stream of the charter school industry. That year they outspent the teachers
union 3-to-1 on advertising and lobbying.

~
The charter school movement may have started as a dream of a few starry-eyed liberals who
thought they knew more about how to teach children than did professional educators. The
movement has now been co-opted by Educational Management Companies. These companies
bribe politicians and dodge state laws with phony non-profit foundations that have set their sights
on tax monies collected for public schools. My own half-time home state of Arizona has long been
a leader pointing the way toward everything that is wrong with the charter school movement.
Take the Arizona-based Basis Charter School company for example. Basis runs about a dozen
charter schools, mostly in Arizona but with a couple in Texas and Washington D.C. They were
started in 1997 by a retired economics professor from the University of Arizona named Michael
Block and his wife Olga. Basis Scottsdale and Basis Tucson were recently rated among the top ten
best high schools in America by US News and World Report. The combined graduating classes of
those two schools that year totaled fewer than 75 students an insignificant fraction of the honors
tracks of the high schools in those two cities. Basis achieves its high rates of college entrance and
high test scores on the SAT or the National Merit exam by ruthlessly washing out all but the most
capable students through a gamut of testing that starts in the early elementary grades. A typical
Basis school has 300 second graders and 35 seniors. Basis Charter Schools, a non-profit entity as
it must be in the state of Arizona, purchases its taechers and all services from the profit making
Michael Block company, whose income in recent years has exceeded $30 million annually.

PARCC = Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career.

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

If you think this picture cant get worse, think again. (Basis is no Gulen, but its almost as bad.)
Recently, Basis was caught outsourcing its bookkeeping to Olga Blocks family in the Czech
Republic. Currently, Basis has classified a significant portion of its students as autistic. Autistic
students are allocated about $20,000 per year instead of the $8,000 for regular charter school
students. One of my former students investigated Basis expenditures and found that $0 were spent
on programs for special needs students. He reported such to the state department of education. He
was informed that the state has no responsibility nor authority to monitor how these dollars are
spent. Low hanging fruit indeed!

If you are born poor

Its not your mistake
But if you die poor
Its your mistake
~Bill Gates

The Billionaire Boys & the Circle of Competence

A second force driving contemporary school reform are the billionaire boys.9 Some have called
them the Philanthrocapitalists.
The wealth gap, that started under Reagan in 1981 and was greatly accelerated under both Bill
Clinton and Bush #43, has created a class of billionaires, some of whom have decided that their
genius deserves to be more widely shared. Bill Gates is representative of a class that includes
Mark Zuckerberg, David Welch (who bankrolled Vergara), the many Waltons, Carl Ichan, Eli
Broad, John Arnold, Michael Dell, Michael Bloomberg, and a few dozen hedge fund owners.
These people talk in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars to promote the privatization of public
education. Eli Braod has promised $500,000 to promote the growth of charter schools in Los
Angeles. The Waltons, long-time contributors to charter schools, recently announced a $1 billion
9

Precisely how the billionaire boys are ruling our public schools has been brilliantly documented by Joann
Barkan in Dissent magazine: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/got-dough-how-billionaires-rule-ourschools

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

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campaign to reform education. On January 12, 2016, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings
announced on his Facebook page that he was creating a $100 million foundation to fund education,
primarily the charter school industry.10

The PHILANTHROCAPITALISTS
What do they contribute?
$$$ to those who are willing to play;
An inconsistent, unreliable stream of support;
A lack of accountability to the public.

were at 8% of students in charter

schools in California, whereas in New
Orleans theyre at 90%, so we have a
lot of catching up to do .

Due to a shared interest in playing bridge online, billionaire Gates befriended billionaire Warren
Buffett, the latter from my great native state of Nebraska. Now, my respect for Bill Gates is so tiny
that it cannot be detected by the Hubble telescope. Suffice it to say that he is in my estimation no
genius; he has stolen (by backward engineering) most of the ideas that have made him his
fortune, and he owes his wealth to winning patent infringement cases in court. Not incidentally,
his father is a trial lawyer.

10

The work ahead is really hard because were at 8 percent of students in California, whereas in New
Orleans theyre at 90 percent, so we have a lot of catching up to do. So what we have to do is continue
to grow and grow Its going to take 20 to 30 years to get to 90 percent of charter kids. So spoke Reed
Hastings. (Jacobs, Joanne. 2015. Disrupting the education monopoly. Education Next, 15(1). Available
online at http://educationnext.org/disrupting-the-education-monopoly-reed-hastings-interview/ )

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

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Warren Buffett, on the other hand, is a true genius. Buffetts partner in the creation and
management of Berkshire Hathaway is Charlie Munger. Charlie had an uncle who cornered the
market on womens shoe buttons in the early 1900s. Uncle thought that if he was smart enough to
corner the shoe button market that he was probably the smartest man in the world. And at every
family occasion, Charlies uncle would hold forth on any subject in perfect confidence that his
opinions were Gods own Truth. Buffett and Munger came to refer to arrogant know-it-alls as
suffering form the Shoe Button Complex.

WARREN BUFFETTS CIRCLE OF COMPETENCE

TECH COMPANIES

UNDERWEAR

Their antidote to the Shoe Button Complex is their concept of the Circle of Competence. There is
a narrow circle within which we are truly competent, and we step outside it at our peril. During the
Internet bubble of the late 1990s, Buffett was constantly asked which tech stocks he was going to
buy. None, he said. Buffett reminded his questioners that in the 20th century the U.S. was home to
more than 500 different automobile manufacturers. Why, he said, would I try to guess which
of the hundreds of tech companies would succeed in the 21st century? Instead he bought the entire
Fruit of the Loom company, confident in the knowledge that people in the future would continue
to wear underwear.
Tevye sings in If I were a rich man:
When youre rich, they think you know
The most important men in town
Would come to fawn on me
It wont make one bit of difference if
I answer right or wrong

Unfortunately, Bill Gates who in the last decade has had more influence on education policy
than any other person in the country knows no limits to his understanding of what Americas
public schools need. Make no mistake, Gates has purchased his influence; it has not come to him
by dint of his having demonstrated his competence to design the new U.S. education system.

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

12

One of Gatess most ambitious, early efforts to reform Americas public schools was the small
schools project. He announced to the National Governors Association in 2005 that Americas
high schools are obsolete. He planned to replace them with small schools high schools of
fewer than 400 students. Large city superintendents were only too eager to cooperate. After all,
Gates would invest more than $2 billion in the project, most of which would end up in the budgets
of the superintendents. More than 2,500 small high schools were created in 45 states with Gatess
money. Now much can be said for small schools, and those that evolve naturally out of a context
of history and geography have much to recommend them. But to decree by fiat that suddenly
massive schools of thousands of students will be broken into schools of 400 students is a plan for
disaster. After enough time had passed to shift through the ruins of Gatess project, journalist
Joann Barkan described the devastation: the project produced many gut-wrenching sagas of
school disruption, conflict, students and teachers jumping ship en masse, and plummeting
attendance, test scores, and graduation rates.
Chastened but apparently no wiser, Gates summoned one hundred leading educators to his home
in Medina, Washington in 2008. (My invitation must have got lost in the mail; or maybe my
Windows crashed, and the email was dumped.) Gates announced that the small school project had
failed, but that he was now prepared to back his next set of great ideas: VAM, Common Core, and
school turnarounds (fire the staff, close the school and replace it with a charter school). Surely
those educators including Arne Duncan were quaking in anticipation of Gates opening his
purse once again. Within six months, Duncan had created a new position in the Department of
Education: Director of Philanthropic Engagement.
One need only listen to Gates expound on the needs of public education to understand that this
man is a software engineer with little understanding of people, particularly children. Bill Gates
spoke thus to the U.S. Congress in 2009:
When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will
line up as welland that will unleash powerful market forces in the
service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of
customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every
teacher get better.
And Gates was quoted in a Wall Street Journal article in 2011, that the Common Core is like
having a common electrical system. It just makes sense to me.
Gates is not talking about fostering the development of young children. Hes talking about
fostering the development of computer software. Before software writers could write their
programs, they had to have a standard operating platform read DOS on which they could build
their software. And when everyone was writing software for the same operating system, the
entrepreneurs and the company that built the operating system would proper. The only problem for
Mr. Gatess advocacy of the Common Core and Value-Added-Measurement of teachers is that
children are not apps and the nations school system is not a computer operating system.
It is nothing short of incredible that anyone with any knowledge of children11 or teaching would
listen to poppycock like this. And if I may speculate, those who have listened and worse, acted on
it, have done so in hopes of being blessed with financial support from the worlds richest man.
11

Bill and Melinda Gates have three children: two daughters and a son.

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~
Bill Gates is not the only Billionaire Boy who thinks he knows better than educators and parents
about how to run schools. Enter the Koch brothers.
Charles & David, The Koch Brothers
Sons of Fred Koch, Oilman &
Founder of the John Birch Society

The Koch brothers are Wichita oilmen who made their first few millions the old fashion way: by
inheritance from their father, who just happened to be one of the key founders of the John Birch
Society. David and Charles Koch have pledged to spend half a billion dollars influencing the 2016
general election. According to Mitch McConnell, in an unguarded moment at a cocktail party, the
Koch brothers own the Republican party. And surely McConnells confession is more truth than
poetry. Witness the Keystone pipeline.
The purpose of the Keystone pipeline is to transport some low-grade petroleum from the Canada
oil sands region to the Gulf of Mexico to be refined and sold on the world market. The U.S. stands
to gain a few thousand jobs in the construction of the pipeline and fewer than 2,000 jobs long-term
in its maintenance. Why, then, did the Keystone pipeline become a fight-to-the-death issue for the
Republican party in the last session of Congress? Because the largest owner of Canadian oil sands
are the Koch brothers.
Now the Koch brothers have not been content to pursue their self-interest simply by purchasing
national politicians. They have funded development of curricula that teach high school students
about business bottom line: the government is too involved in regulating Americas businesses.
And for some years now they have been funding candidates in local school board elections. Their
greatest success and their greatest failures have been in two white suburban school districts
adjacent to Denver, Colorado.

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14

Jefferson (yellow) & Douglas (red) Counties

Targets of Koch Brothers School Board Takeover Attempts

Jefferson County school district is one of the geographically largest school districts in the nation. It
enrolls 85,000 students in a middle class suburb west of Denver. Douglas County, a middle class
suburb south of Denver that is also one of the fastest growing counties in the nation, has a school
district that enrolls 65,000 students. The Koch brothers successfully influenced school board
elections in both districts recently. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which is funded by
the Koch brothers, spent $50,000 on an ad campaign promoting Denise Denny, a key figure in
Douglas Countys TEA Party.
The Koch brothers also funded school board candidates in Jefferson County school district races,
and managed to win the majority of seats for conservative TEA Party candidates. The results
have been disastrous.
Douglas County schools hired a superintendent who instituted value-added measurement (VAM)
of teachers and other union-busting measures. In September 2013, the National Review asked
whether Douglas County was The most interesting school district in America? In July 2015, the
Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the districts voucher program was unconstitutional.12 Parents
12

From Colorado State Constitution:

Section 7:
Aid to Private Schools, Churches, Sectarian Purpose, Forbidden.
Neither the general assembly, nor any county, city, town, township, school district or other public
corporation, shall ever make any appropriation, or pay from any public fund or moneys whatever, anything
in aid of any church or sectarian society, or for any sectarian purpose, or to help support or sustain any

WOULD HORACE MANN TWEET?

15

and teachers alike suffered under the Koch regime for several years before the November 2015
election turned away all three Koch-backed board members.
In neighboring Douglas County, three incumbents Kevin Larsen, Richard Robbins and
Craig Richardson who claimed seats on the school board as part of a reform push
several years ago lost in their re-election bids. (Denver Post, Nov. 3, 2015

The Jefferson County school board, operating under the direction of three Koch-backed members,
initiated a review and attempt to replace the AP history curriculum, which they judged to be
insufficiently patriotic. Students, teachers, and parents did not take this intrusion lying down.
Students shut down schools and took to the streets. Teachers picketed and parents organized
demonstrations. A recall campaign was organized; and on November 3, 2015, the three Koch
board members were unseated in a recall election. Exactly how this happened in both Douglas and
Jefferson counties can provide us with case studies in winning back democratic control of our
schools, and may tell us if Horace Mann would choose to Tweet.

The Koch brothers and Bill Gates as political figures are a creation of the Supreme Courts
decision in Citizens United. In the view of Justice Scalia, corporations are people and ipso facto
have freedom of speech, and money is a form of speech. Hence, corporate contributions to
candidates cannot be restricted because that would be restricting free speech. As never before,
money rules.
The Billionaire Boys are the very anti-thesis of democratic education.

school, academy, seminary, college, university or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any
church or sectarian denomination whatsoever; nor shall any grant or donation of land, money or other
personal property, ever be made by the state, or any such public corporation to any church, or for any
sectarian purpose.

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ALEC: The Instrument of Education Reform & The Death of Democracy

The corporations, in their effort to suck the money out of Americas public schools, needed a
means of hiding their intentions and their blatantly self-serving operations. Enter ALEC, the
American Legislative Exchange Council.

ALEC, for those who havent heard, is the nexus between dozens of large corporations and state
legislators. If you remember nothing else from here, please remember this: ALEC is the most
powerful political force in the United States today. You are obliged to learn what it is and how
it operates.
The corporation lobbyists write the bills that they want passed, and a collection of ALEC task
forces hand them over to the ALEC membershipstate legislatorswho carry them home to be

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introduced and frequently passed in largely Republican dominated state legislatures. In 2013, one
thousand ALEC-written bills were introduced in legislatures throughout the nation; 100 of them
became law.
ALECs corporate members are a Whos Who of some of the largest corporations in America:
ATT, Coca-Cola , Crown Royal Liquor, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson, K12 Inc., Koch
Industries, Kraft Food, Phillip Morris, State Farm Insurance, Wal-Mart. Oh, yes, and let us not
forget: Pearson PLC. Each stands to profit greatly from laws that they cause to be written.
Why do the legislators carry water for the corporations? I never cease being amazed at how
cheaply legislators support can be bought. The price for getting your favorite bill introduced is as
cheap as junkets to fancy resorts, a few cigars, a round of golf, or a chance to rub elbows with
Fortune 500 CEOs who someday just might remember the name of a cooperative politician from
South Dakota or Alabama.
ALECs membership is composed of about 2,000 dues-paying state legislators all of whom are
Republican and a hundred or so large corporations. The legislators membership fee is $35;
corporations pay considerably higher fees, as you might suppose. ALECs role in voter
suppression efforts in the 2012 presidential election were so repugnant to some corporations that
they pulled out of the organization. They earlier saw nothing repugnant in any of ALECs main
thrusts: privatization of public institutions, tort reform to limit corporate liability, union busting,
and suppression of clean environment legislation.
ALEC is the instrument of the modern mode of transacting business in America. It is called crony
capitalism. Consider one of the most egregious examples: Corrections Corporation of America.
CCA is a major member of ALEC. It is based in Nashville, Tennessee. It advertises itself as a
provider of public-private partnerships in prison management. CCA contracts with states to run
prisons. CCA manages more than 65 prisons with a capacity of more than 90,000 beds in 19 states
and the District of Columbia. So they are approaching management of 10% of the U.S. prison
population. Revenue to CCA in 2014 approached $2 billion. Of course, CCA revenues depend in
essential ways on a steady stream of inmates, and here is where their state partners come in.
Coached by ALEC, state legislators pass laws that ensure that CCA will have ample clients: three
strikes and youre out, denial of parole, and punitive victimless drug crimes are just a few. A
newly minted contract between CCA and the state of Arizona stipulates that the state guarantees
90% occupancy of the new prison that it will turn over to CCA to run.
ALECs impact on state education policy has been considerable. They have focused on testing,
charter schools, tax credits, online courses, and online charter schools. Their member legislators
have dutifully carried back to their home states bills that remove limits to the number of charter
schools in a state, that permit charter schools to be entirely online (cyber-charters), and that require
a certain number of online courses for any high school student to graduate. These bills are written
by lobbyists for Connections (now owned by Pearson PLC) or K12 Inc.
State education policy is being written in the ALEC Education Task Force. Now the title task
force connotes a small working group that comes together, thinks a problem through, and floats
its ideas to a larger body for consideration. Of course, the ALEC task forces are working groups in
name only. In reality they are conduits through which corporations funnel their self-serving

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legislation to states. How many members of ALEC serve on the Education Task Force? 114
One-hundred-and-fourteen! Ohio has six members on the ALEC Education Task Force.13
Corporations who want special membership on the Education Task Force pay an additional fee of
$2,500. The co-chair of the Task Force is an employee of the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute,
and has veto power over any recommendation coming out of the committee.

A Case Study in the Democratization of Education Policy

This depressing history of crony capitalism and the dwindling influence of the public in public
education is enough to shake ones hope for the democratizing of our education system. But
perhaps there is a point of light that can be magnified.
Consider VAM.
VAM is the acronym for Value-Added-Measurement. VAM has been proposed as the scientific
means of evaluating teachers. Teachers must add value to their students lives, or what good are
they? But of course, in the view of Bill Gates and Lamar Alexander, Value means the pretestposttest gain on standardized tests.

VAM is a stupid idea. It has been a stupid idea for decades. I wrote a chapter in a book edited by
Linda Darling-Hammond back in 1989 in which I argued that VAM was a monumentally stupid
13

Nan A. Baker (District 16), John A. Carey, Jr. (87), Cliff Hite (1), Gerald L. Stebelton (5),
Kristina D. Roegner (42), Marlene Anielski (17).

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idea for several reasons. 1) There are no accepted standardized achievement tests in the majority of
school subjects (social studies, science, history, art, music, physical education, and the like); 2)
Consequently, VAM must be moved to the level of the school, not the individual teacher, which
must be rewarded or punished based on the pretest-posttest gains; 3) Bonuses based on VAM
results are called merit raises but they are really just cost-of-living raises; 4) The administration
of the tests can never be made secure.
I found six school districts across the nation that insisted they had instituted VAM and that it was
working. Upon examination, VAM proved to be as evanescent as the morning dew. In its most
celebrated application, the school principals, who had not been rewarded for their schools addition
of value, approached the district superintendent and demanded their own reward. After all, werent
they the schools instructional leader a dubious notion in my opinion? The superintendent
began to reward the principals with bonuses of $10,000 to $15,000. Within two years a couple of
principals were caught in their offices with the answer sheets, an eraser, and a No. 2 pencil. The
districts VAM program collapsed.
Where was that district? Who was that superintendent? Houston. Rod Paige, George W. Bushs
Secretary of Education who brought VAM to No Child Left Behind. Later, Gates blessed VAM for
Arne Duncan and the Obama administration.
It became apparent over the lifetime of No Child Left Behind that not only had VAM failed but
that students were spending far too much time taking standardized tests and that the curriculum
itself was being corrupted by the federal requirements for testing. Two sources of resistance began
to take form.
Resistance
Some university-based academics began to sound a warning that maybe VAM was not the answer
for teacher evaluation. (I am under no illusions that my 1989 chapter on VAM had even one iotas
impact on testing policy.) In the early 1990s, people like Aimee and Craig Howley and myself
were exploring this new world of the Internet. I started an online forum to discuss education policy.
Before we knew it, nearly 1,000 academics had signed up and were debating education policy.
Before long, we were deep into debates about VAM which at that time was being developed in
Tennessee under the aegis of Lamar Alexander who would eventually take it to Washington D.C. I
will hazard the opinion that that debate revealed VAM to be an incredibly stupid idea. (I am
likewise under no illusions that the online debate on VAM had even one iotas impact on testing
policy.) Perhaps my chapter and the Internet forum simply didnt carry the authority of an august
body like the American Educational Research Association.
So a couple years ago, AERA empaneled a subcommittee of its Board to examine the VAM
issue.14 After a couple years study, the committee presented their statement to the AERA Board.
The statement was approved by the Board and published first online on November 10, 2015. This
date is important. Here is the nub of the statement:
14

To the chagrin of some who served on the subcommittee, the executive officer of AERA chose a
person to oversee the subcommitees work who was known to be an apologist for the
shortcomings of VAM. That AERA sells a substantial portion of exhibit space at ots annual
meeting to assessment companies is almost too obvious to note.

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Sub-Committee Recommendations on VAM

1. Tests used must be reliable and valid
2. Multiple years of data required
3. Tests must be comparable over time
4. Systems must be monitored for quality

VAM scores must only be derived from students scores on assessments that meet
professional standards by which they mean AERAs standards of reliability and
validity.
VAM scores must be accompanied by separate lines of evidence of reliability and validity.
VAM scores must be based on multiple years of data from sufficient numbers of students.
VAM scores must only be calculated from scores on tests that are comparable over time.
Evaluation systems using VAM must include ongoing monitoring for technical quality and
validity.
(Educational Researcher, 2015, Vol. 44, No. 8, pp. 448-452.)
I submit to you that these statements are vacuous truisms. No state, district or federal agency
devoted to VAM would be the least threatened by these kinds of mealy mouthed recommendations.
Measurement must be reliable and valid yes, of course. But how reliable? How valid? Data
should be plentiful yes, of course, plentiful data are always a good thing. Systems should be
monitored yes, by all means. But by whom? And what will these monitors look for? Academics
opposed to VAM including myself and several of my colleagues have labored and brought
forth a mouse.
Now, the redrafting of NCLB, known ironically as the Every Student Succeeds Act, was made
public in early October this year. The date is important. ESSA slapped down VAM and the overtesting of students that was being pushed by Bill Gates and Arne Duncan. Why did this happen?
The answer to this question contains the answer to one other question: Would Horace Mann
Tweet?
Two years prior to the passage of ESSA, a movement was taking shape, at first slowly and outside
the view of the mainstream corporate media (which had also fallen for the Gates Foundations line
on school reform recall NBCs Education Nation15). It was a grass roots movement of parents,
students and teachers who had suffered through a half-dozen years of misery produced by No
Child Left Behind. It was becoming apparent to all concerned that students were spending
15

Other sponsors of NBCs Education Nation included Pearson PLC and the University of Phoenix.

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inordinate amounts of time preparing for, taking, and recovering from standardized tests. These
tests often had little correspondence with what teachers felt was important to teach. These tests
were driving out of the curriculum subjects like science and art and music and social studies.
Teachers known to colleagues, parents and students as competent, even outstanding, were being
labeled failing by VAM and recommended for remedial training.

The voices of parents and teachers and students were beginning to be heard in new venues. And
the voices were saying, Opt out! Students, play hooky on test day. Parents, keep your
children home on test day. Teachers, keep your heads down. And these venues were brand new
and they were online: Facebook (created in 2004), Twitter (created in 2006), Instagram (created in
2010), Snapchat (created in 2011).
The call was heard and the impact was immediate and powerful. In spring 2015, 20 percent of
eligible students refused to take the mandated New York state assessment. In the spring 2014,
between 60,000 students opted out of the grades 3-8 Common Core tests in New York state 20%
of the eligible examinees. In 2015, the number topped 200,000. In Washington State, more than
60,000 students opted out of the state Common Core test. In Illinois, 20,000 students refused
PARCC in spring 2015. And the opt out movement spread like a conflagration across the country:
New Jersey, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico.
ESSA was signed into law on December 10, 2015, by President Obama. It will allow states to
decide how to weigh their standardized test scores and decide whether and how to evaluate
teachers with or without said scores. I contend that what academics could not do, what the
American Educational Research Association could not do, was done by citizens on social
media. The voice of thousands, nay millions, of people spoke louder to politicians than the
voice of Pearson-backed ALEC or the billionaire boys.
Exactly how ESSA and the Department of education will deal with the Opt Out movement is a
mystery. Diane Ravitch requested clarification from Lamar Alexanders staff on how opting out
would be dealt with.16 The response was a model of mealy mouthed compromise of conflicting
forces. There are requirements, there are waivers, there are threats, there are punishments, and
there is passing the buck. In my opinion, the actions and the voice of the people are stronger than
the Department of Education.

16

See https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/15269a63d0737d04

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And here is why I believe it to be the case. Less than an hours searching on Twitter produced 30
accounts (Twitterers) with names a variation of STOP COMMON CORE and with combined
Followers of more than 28,000 individuals. And we must understand this about Twitter (and
Facebook and other social media). Their reach is incalculable. A Twitter follower of a tweeter will
retweet a posting, and that message will instantly go to all of that retweeters followers. One
message to 1,000 followers may be retweeted to 100,000 followers of the original tweeters
followers.
The opt out movement is organizing itself. Their website is at unitedoptout.com, and they are
holding a national meeting on February 26-28, 2016, in Philadelphia. It now calls itself, United
Opt Out: The Movement to End Corporate Education reform.
Mark this. My fine chapter on the evils of VAM appeared in 1989. Our Internet forum that
declared VAM a huge mistake was finished by 1995. The AERA statement on VAM was made
public on November 10, 2015, a month AFTER the publication of the Every Student Succeeds bill
by Congress. However, the social media Opt Out movement grew to juggernaut proportions in
Spring 2015. There is no doubt in my mind that it was the Opt Out movement created and carried
out in social media that changed ESSA 2015. And change things it did. A close reading of the
Act will reveal the fingerprints of several corporations: Teach For America; the charter school
industry; and most notably, Pearson PLC. Corporate friends of Congress managed to insert
sanctions against states that didnt deliver 95% of their student body on test day, a blatant move
against the Opt Out movement one reminiscent of the 90% prison capacity clause in Correction
Corporation of America contracts. But in spite of these attempts by Congresss capitalist cronies,
the pressure of the grass roots Opt Out movement prevailed.

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The release of the bill in the third week of October 2015 showed that Pearson PLC had taken a
huge hit. The unhinging of VAM from teacher evaluation that had been pushed so enthusiastically
by Arnie Duncan under NCLB caused Pearson stock to drop precipitously. Pearson stock dropped
simultaneously with the public release of the ESSA bill.

Pearson PLC STock Price, Oct. - Dec. 2015

Five years ago, 26 states were planning to administer Pearsons Common Core PARCC tests. By
August, 2015, only seven states remained with PARCC. On December 22, 2015, Pearson (PLC)
stock closed at $11.02 per share, the lowest since the 2008 crash. In January, 2016, Pearson
replaced the Governor of Massachusetts, the chairperson of the PARCC board, with the Governor
of New Mexico, without any fanfare or even a public announcement. Massachusetts had earlier
pulled back on its commitment to purchase most of their assessment items from Pearson. Was all
of this the effect of the Opt Out movement and the Opt Outs impact on ESSA? Yes.
Pearson is scared. In early 2016, they announced plans to downsize by 4,000 employees 10% of
its workforce and they fired their CEO and CFO.
Would Horace Mann Tweet?
One last personal aside before we address the question regarding Horace Mann.
I have harbored a growing sense during the last few years that my original academic specialty
education measurement was passing slowly to the dark side. From 1960 onward, I believed that
we psychometricians were doing the work of the angels on earth. We were speaking Truth to
Power, but I learned too late that Power was listening to Politics. Things came to a head this past
August when I posted to my blog an 800-word explanation of Why I Am No Longer a
Measurement Specialist. Diane Ravitch reposted a link to the blog entry, and a few people on
Twitter retweeted it.17 Within a week, the statement had been downloaded more than 12,000 times.
It had touched a nerve. Such is the reach of social media.
17

http://ed2worlds.blogspot.com/2015/08/why-i-am-no-longer-measurement.html

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Finally, would Horace Mann have a Twitter account if he were alive today? Or would he be
lobbying Congress or Albany or Sacramento to secure big contracts for some corporation?
Horace Mann, we must remind ourselves, was a 19th century educational reformer. He served as
Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education and was elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives in 1848. The historian Ellwood Cubberly wrote of Horace Mann that
No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception
that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social
efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of
sectarian ends. 18
If Horace Mann were alive today, I think he would be alarmed by what is happening in this
country to our public education system.

q Would Horace Mann Tweet?

q Would he have a Facebook page?
q Would he have a Blog?
q Would he use Instagram?
q Would he own a selfie stick?

Would Horace Mann Tweet? Yes, he would.

Would he have a Facebook page? Most decidedly.
Would he have a Blog? You bet.
Would he be using Instagram to promote democracy in education? Without doubt.
Would he own a selfie-stick? Probably not.

18

Cubberley, Ellwood P. (1919) Public Education in the United States. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 167