John C. Antush is a public high school teacher in New York City, a delegate in the United Federation of Teachers, and a member of MORE (Movement of Rank and File Educators). He was Monthly Review's assistant editor in the early 1990s.
The biggest threat to education today is the corporate education reform movement—what many of us call "Ed Deform." It is also the biggest threat to teachers' working conditions. Changes in education legislation are creating new government-funded markets for education entrepreneurs. Spending is being shifted away from teacher salaries, benefits, and pensions and into standardized tests, curriculum, and technology.1 To maximize this investment opportunity teachers must be reskilled away from deciding on content, assessing students, and tailoring education to meet diverse students' needs and interests. This reduces the room for teachers to implement, for example, the demands of anti-racist advocates and concerned parents for "culturally relevant curriculum" or, indeed, anything that deviates from relevant test-prep skills.2 Standardized test scores provide a simple metric for measuring "productivity" against teacher labor costs. One example of this Taylorist dynamic is New York City's new "Advance" Teacher Evaluation system.
In 2013, State Education Commissioner John King imposed the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) system, "a multiple-measures evaluation system" for evaluating teachers in the wake of the failure of the city's Department of Education and the UFT (United Federation of Teachers) to come to an agreement. I have been a public high school teacher and UFT member for nearly thirteen years. This is the largest change in our working conditions since our last contract was ratified in 2006. New York's Race to the Top application required the state to pass legislation mandating a new teacher evaluation system that "makes student achievement data [i.e., standardized tests] a substantial component of how educators are assessed and supported." "Advance" imposes greater standardization over teachers' labor and education in other important ways as well.
Of course, most New York City public school teachers are employed by the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE), not by private capitalists. However, a growing number of teachers work in charter schools managed by private corporations. More broadly, New York's Mayor Bloomberg, who ended his third and final term in December, was an exemplary Taylorist "gang boss" in his promotion of Ed Deform. As Diane Ravitch put it, Bloomberg "applied business principles to overhaul the nation's largest school system."4 Unfortunately, these trends are likely to continue under our new Mayor, De Blasio, because they are part of Race to the Top.
Harry Braverman explains in Labor and Monopoly Capitalism that for business, "every non-producing hour" someone is employed is a loss. Therefore, management pursues "complete, self conscious, painstaking, and calculating" control over the production process.5 Facing stiff competition in the market, capitalists are driven to streamline production, splitting up skilled work into discrete tasks that can be executed by less skilled workers. This dynamic is "the underlying force governing all forms of work in capitalist society."6 Of course, for the most part the public sector does not directly face market competition, but is subject to political processes. Ed Deform seeks to bring market-type pressures to bear on teachers' labor. This requires a metric for measuring teacher productivity and quality, which is what "Advance" is designed to provide.
Proponents of the CCSS argue that they were created with an eye towards developing critical thinking among students and to promote collaborative student-centered learning. The editors of the important education journal Rethinking Schools point out that some teachers "are trying to use the space opened up by the Common Core transition to do positive things in their classrooms." However, the CCSS were "written mostly by academics and assessment experts—many with ties to testing companies." Achieve Inc., a consulting firm that has worked with the National Governor's Association to develop the CCSS, brought together 135 people for review panels to direct the development of CCSS, but "few were classroom teachers or current administrators. Parents were entirely missing. K–12 educators were mostly brought in after the fact to tweak and endorse the standards—and lend legitimacy to the results."11 Most importantly student's performance according to the CCSS will be measured by standardized testing, as mandated by Race to the Top. Student test scores are a central component of the "Advance" teacher evaluation system.
Another integral part of the new evaluation system is the Danielson framework, an attempt to compartmentalize and break down "those aspects of a teacher's responsibilities that have been documented through empirical studies…these responsibilities seek to define what teachers should know and be able to do in the exercise of their profession." Danielson draws on evidence from a 2009 research study conducted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation "which entailed the video capture of over 23,000 lessons, analyzed according to five observation protocols, with the results of those analyses (together with other measures) correlated to value-added measures of student learning."12 Specific aspects of teaching are being brought forward by the Ed Deformers as an across-the-board formula for good teaching, eliminating the role that skilled educators have in assessing what is needed in different contexts to serve diverse communities of students.
Mayor Bloomberg further shored up his power as Taylorist gang boss, however, after Mayoral Control was established in 2002. For thirty years the system had been run by the Board of Education and local school boards. Now Bloomberg had the power to appoint the schools chancellor, set policy, and create budgets. The Panel for Educational Policy was established with eight out of thirteen members appointed by the mayor. It never voted against him. This allowed Bloomberg to introduce a blitzkrieg of Ed Deforms: grading of schools based largely on students' standardized test scores, co-locating privately managed charters in spaces used by already-existing public schools, a record number of school closings, systematic denial of tenure for most new teachers, and a stunning barrage of other attacks. This is the polar opposite of the community-controlled school boards some in the black community had fought for in the 1960s.
Bloomberg later replaced this with an incentive-based method of control. In 2007 Bloomberg's NYCDOE began grading schools with A–F report cards. Schools got an "A" if their students' scores went up a certain amount compared to the previous year. At the same time, schools that started off with high student test scores could easily get a lower grade the following year, because it was hard for them to register gains. Conformity to a test-prep curriculum was therefore guaranteed.
Other factors determining schools' grades, according to the NYCDOE, include students' progress in "earning course credits and passing Regents exams, and annual changes in student attendance." Absenteeism, of course, is usually related to issues outside school, such as job and family responsibilities. Schools that got three "C"s could be shut down. Closings have been disproportionately imposed on schools in poorer neighborhoods with the largest percentages of black and Latino students. In 2014, Mayor De Blasio took office and is promising that there will be a moratorium on school closings. Closings that were already set in motion under Bloomberg are still proceeding at this point.
Using the same state test scores as the other 20 percent.
Selecting from a number of other standardized tests created by vendors such as Scantron.
Selecting prefabricated "performance-based assessments." These were essentially standardized tests with no similarity to genuine performance based assessments that a teacher might develop to suit their specific educational context or school community.
Rather than choosing a different measure, it was easier for many school communities to use the state test scores as their local measure. That way, teachers could focus on preparing students to score well on one measure, rather than teaching them how to score points on, what were essentially, a whole other set of additional standardized tests.
According to state guidelines, teachers who are rated "ineffective" on this 40 percent (20 percent state tests plus 20 percent "local measures of student learning") "must be rated ineffective overall."28 Therefore, 40 percent equals 100 percent. A host of studies confirm that the equations used for "value added measures" of teacher performance produce wildly varying results from year to year. Anecdotal evidence and obvious logic suggest that student test scores are affected by a wide variety of changing factors that cannot be reduced to teacher effort or competency.
Up until now, students have not been required to take statewide high-stakes tests for every grade. Also, some of us teach subjects and grades where standardized tests are not yet in place. The state plans to introduce high-stakes testing for every grade, starting with new English Regents for ninth and tenth graders, tests for middle schoolers in Social Studies and Science, and "progress monitoring" for K–3 this year.29 Assessments for other areas are being developed.
The other 60 percent of teachers' evaluations are called "Measures of Teacher Performance." Thirty-one percent are based on classroom observations by administrators using the "Danielson" rubric. Twenty nine percent will be based on other measures, like "Artifacts" from the classroom (samples of teachers comments on students work, sample lesson plans, etc.), evidence of planning, and other factors.
Some of this violates our contract. In an effort to get out of paying municipal workers raises Bloomberg has left the new mayor, De Blasio, with all fifty-two municipal union contracts unresolved. The UFT has not had a new contract since 2009. However, in New York, because of state law, we are still covered by our old contract, which states that "The organization, format, notation and other physical aspects of the lesson plan are appropriately within the discretion of each teacher. A principal or supervisor may suggest, but not require, a particular format or organization, except as part of a program to improve deficiencies of teachers who receive U-ratings or formal warnings." However, Danielson calls upon evaluators to rate lesson plans, and to judge how well a lesson plan "indicates correspondence between assessments and instruction." This has led many principals to require particular lesson plan formats from teachers and to assess teachers on how well their written plans conform to suggested curriculum for state tests. The NCYDOE asserts that the imposition of the new evaluation by New York State Commissioner King renders the contract language on lesson plans obsolete, while the union disagrees. As of this writing, the UFT and Education Department are in arbitration over this.
The new evaluation system also feeds into the dynamic described by Braverman where "a structure is given to all labor processes that at its extremes polarizes those whose time is infinitely valuable and those whose time is worth almost nothing. This might even be called the general law of the capitalist division of labor."34 Under the new evaluation system, top scorers will be ranked from "Model teachers," up to "Teacher leaders," to the highest grade "Master Teacher." Model Teachers may be asked to "model lessons for other teachers." Master Teachers may have an "increased role in school improvement programs, curriculum development, inquiry teams, etc"; may be asked to "Mentor/coach developing or ineffective teachers"; and may be "Trained to assess teacher performance using new evaluation tools" or to "Provide formative or, if agreed, summative assessments of peers."35 This divides teachers by creating what are essentially new layers of management among them.
Also, under the old system, teachers who were rated with a "U" could decide whether or not have an outside evaluator examine their performance as part of appealing their "U" rating. These evaluators were known to generally uphold "U" ratings, but teachers could simply choose not to include this evaluation process as part of their appeal. This kept the burden of proving teacher incompetence on the DOE. Under the new system, outside evaluators are mandatory for teachers rated "ineffective" two years in a row. Therefore, the burden has been shifted more onto teacher, to prove they are not incompetent.
Furthermore, before 2005 excessed teachers had the right to be placed in a vacancy within the same district based on seniority within their license area. Our 2005 contract ended the right of teachers to transfer and gave principals the power to decide which teachers may transfer into their schools. Subsequently, when schools are closed, many staff members get thrown into the "Absent Teacher Reserve." Members of this literal reserve army of labor rotate from school to school weekly to cover classes of absent teachers. These teachers are treated as unskilled help. Changes in the structure of school funding under Bloomberg also incentivized principals to hire newer teachers who are lower on the pay scale, instead of veteran teachers with seniority.
New York State is a "Governing State" in the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers (PARCC), which is developing computer-based CCSS tests. As part of its participation in the state's Race to the Top agreement, New York City also agreed to add up to one hundred schools to the city's "Innovation Zone" (or "I-Zone"), through which schools are experimenting with online learning and instruction among other technology-based techniques. The Race to the Top application also allocated funding to support as many as a dozen new online schools.
Assure us that some aspects of the evaluation system will be addressed in contract negotiations.
Assert that the NYCDOE is only interpreting Danielson as calling for evaluation of teachers based on lesson plans. Mulgrew and the UNITY leadership claim that this is not so. They are also backing targeted grievances on this issue.
Signed on to New York State's Race to the Top application, with all of its Ed Deform requirements.
In addition to informing teachers in our UFT chapters about issues of importance; holding meetings, forums, get togethers, and protests around problems such as the evaluation system, the spread of standardized testing, abusive administrators, and the disappearance of black and Latino educators; and providing mutual aid and support for teachers where the current leadership has fallen short, MORE is working with parents and students. In our newsletter and petitions (stuffed in teachers' mailboxes across the city in September and again in January), at an October rally outside the union's Delegate's Assembly, and in resolutions we have introduced to the UFT, we have highlighted the common ground students and teachers share in opposing high-stakes testing and the evaluation system. On February 1, 2014 MORE teamed up with other grassroots organizations including Teachers Unite, Change the Stakes, and the NYC Student Union to hold a conference called "MORE than a score: Talking Back to Testing." We attracted more than 150 parents, teachers, administrators, and students. Workshops covered topics such as "High Stakes Testing 101," "Stopping the Test-Fueled School to Prison Pipeline," and "Portfolio Based Assessments in Our Schools." One MORE-led session addressed ongoing efforts to secure a new union contract through drawing rank-and-file UFT members into dialogue and action. In April 2014, a small number of MORE members and other teachers organized with coworkers in their schools to take a stand as "teachers of conscience" and have refused to administer some tests. They are making a very public statement against the standardization of education and the accompanying degradation of our labor.
The UFT leadership, meanwhile, has focused its criticism on the lack of Common Core curricular materials that teachers would need to fully prepare students to improve their test scores. Michael Mulgrew and other UFT heads have called for a moratorium on consequences of test scores for teachers until these curricular materials are provided, along with professional development on how to use these materials to help students raise scores on the new tests. They have also voiced opposition to the new K–2 standardized tests.
I am sure that the only hope for slowing down Ed Deform lays in critical rank-and-file participation inside UFT structures combined with organizing that brings together teachers, students, and parents within and across school communities. There is also the possibility of uniting with other working people—both public workers and those who depend on public services—regarding the introduction of market-style Taylorist deforms across public services. The recent formation of Public Workers United, a cross-union, rank-and-file grouping in New York City, suggests that finding common ground along these lines is possible. The permanent elimination of the Taylorist impulse in education, however, will only come with transition to a fundamentally different political economy.
↩ John Bellamy Foster describes this as: "Leadership in the twenty-first century corporate school reform movement—even preempting the role of government in this respect—has come from four big philanthropic foundations, headed by leading representatives of monopoly-finance, information and retail capital: (1) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, (2) the Walton Family Foundation, (3) the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and (4) the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation." See Foster, "The Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital: The U.S. Case," Monthly Review 63, no. 3 (July-August 2011): 6–37.
↩ Change The Stakes, "The Truth About High-Stakes Testing in New York City Public Schools," http://changethestakes.files.wordpress.com.
↩ Karl Marx, Capital , vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1977), 644.
↩ Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System (Philadelphia: Basic Books, 2010), 62.
↩ Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), 45.
↩ Cited in ibid, 77–78.
↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital , 81.
↩ New York State, "Race to the Top Application: Phase II," June 10, 2010, 93, http://www2.ed.gov.
↩ The Editors of Rethinking Schools , "The Trouble with the Common Core," Re thinking Schools 27, no.4 (Summer 2013), http://rethinkingschools.org.
↩ Charlotte Danielson, The Framework for Teaching (Princeton: New Jersey, 2013), 4.
↩ Cited in Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital , 77-78.
↩ EngageNY, "Changes to the State Standards, Curricula, and Assessments," April 22, 2013, 2, http://engageny.org.
↩ EngageNY, "CSS, APPR and DDI Workbook for Network Teams/Network Team Equivalents," 3, http://engageny.org.
↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital , 82.
↩ Cited in ibid, 82.
↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital , 83; Taylor is cited on the same page.
↩ Katherine Zoepf, "City Hall Rally Protests Policy Of Firing Uncertified Teachers," New York Times , August 28, 2003, http://nytimes.com.
↩ Nate Raymond, "NYC Discriminated Against Black, Latino Teachers: Court," Reuters , December 5, 2012.
↩ Center for Constitutional Rights, "Gulino v. The Board of Education of the City of New York and the New York State Education Department," http://ccrjustice.org.
↩ Finally, in December 2012, a U.S. judge ruled that the Board of Education had discriminated against black and Latino teachers by requiring them to pass a standardized test that wasn't properly validated to become licensed, in violation of violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Unfortunately, the decision did not directly affect the newer version of the LAST that has been in place since 2000 (Raymond, "NYC Discriminated Against Black, Latino Teachers"). All the teachers in the class covered by the case had masters degrees, had passed content specialty exams, had completed required course work, and had received only satisfactory evaluations while working as city teachers, some for up to fifteen years (Center for Constitutional Rights, "Gulino v. The Board of Education of the City of New York and the New York State Education Department").
↩ Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System , 73.
↩ See the analysis of the NYS Race to the Top Application, in Carol Corbett Burris, "Are Half of New York's Teachers Really 'Not Effective?" (guest column for Valerie Strauss's "The Answer Sheet"), Washington Post blog, December 7, 2011, http://washingtonpost.com/blogs.
↩ The University of the State of New York Education Department, "State of New York Commissioner of Education, In the Matter of the Arbitration Proceeding Pursuant to Education Law 3012-c(2) (m) – between- NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION–and–UNITED FEDERATION OF TEACHERS–DETERMINATION AND ORDER–In the Matter of the Arbitration Proceeding Pursuant to Education Law 3012-c (2)(m) = between – New York City Department of Education, and Council of School Supervisors & Administrators," http://usny.nysed.gov.
↩ Ibid; "New York Kids to To Be Put To the 'Tests'," New York Post , March 20, 2012, http://nypost.com.
↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital , 76–77.
↩ Danielson, The Framework for Teaching , 35.
↩ MORE (Movement of Rank and File Educators), "Does Michael Mulgrew Believe That Our Teachers' Working Conditions Are Our Students' Learning Conditions?," February 3, 2013, http://morecaucusnyc.org.
↩ Diane Ravitch, "No Student Left Untested," New York Review of Books , February 21, 2012, http://nybooks.com.
↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital , 57–58.
↩ EngageNY, "Designing Career Ladder Programs for Teachers and Principals," June 2013, http://engageny.org.
↩ Michael Mulgrew, "Mayor Doesn't Get His Way," New York Teacher , June 13, 2013, http://uft.org.
↩ Jeff Faux, "Education Profiteering: Wall Street's Next Big Thing?," Huffington Post , September 28, 2012, http://huffingtonpost.com.
↩ At the same time, on a parallel track, traditional for-profit investments have also advanced. As one consultant put it to private investors in 2012 who were interested in for-profit education, "You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up." Investment in for profit education shot up from $13 million in 2005 to $389 million in 2011. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and other heavy hitters are getting in on the action. Stephanie Simon, "Privatizing Public Schools: Big Firms Eyeing Profits From U.S. K-12 Market," Reuters , August 2, 2012, http://in.reuters.com.
↩ Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital , 118, 81.
↩ Ravitch, The Life and Death of the Great American School System , 283.
↩ There are also concerns about student privacy. Reuters has reported that nine states, including New York, planned to give confidential student data to in-Bloom, Inc., a Gates Foundation-funded corporation, so that this information could be shared with for-profit vendors. InBloom, Inc. reported that it "cannot guarantee the security of the information stored…or that the information will not be intercepted when it is being transmitted" (cited in "Protect Illinois Students' Privacy," http://commercialfreechildhood.org). MORE objected that, "The consolidation of test and other data, combined with the junk science of VAM-based evaluations, will make teachers even more vulnerable to digital surveillance, micromanagement, absurd and wasteful mandates, harassment and abuse" ("Our Children's Privacy For Sale," March 14, 2013, http://morecaucusnyc.org).
↩ Michael Mulgrew, "President Mulgrew's Member Letter On the New Evaluation Plan for Teachers," June 1, 2013, http://uft.org.