This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, K-12 education, postsecondary educational attainment, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, environmental issues, Ethnic Studies at state and national levels. It also represents my digital footprint, of life and career, as a community-engaged scholar in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin.
"Imagine what a good doctor would think if he or she were told that the
problems in our healthcare system would be solved if only doctors were
publicly branded with an A, B or C grade by some external authority
using only numbers generated by computers based only on two absurdly
limited dimensions of healthcare outcomes. Suppose all the talk of
improving healthcare came down to getting rid of bad doctors, but the
government was doing almost nothing to improve the quality of new
doctors. What do you think young people at the top of their high school
graduating classes would think of the medical profession as an option
if they saw all these punitive actions being taken against doctors, if
they saw that, increasingly, doctors had less and less control over
their work and young doctors were not making enough money to support a
family? What do you suppose doctors would think if hospital
administrators got together and decided that the answer to the country's
healthcare problems was to use a 49-page evaluation rubric to evaluate
all the doctors admitted to practice at that hospital?
Test-based
accountability and teacher evaluation systems are not neutral in their
effect. It is not simply that they fail to improve student
performance. Their pernicious effect is to create an environment that
could not be better calculated to drive the best practitioners out of
teaching and to prevent the most promising young people from entering
it. If we want broad improvement in student performance and we want to
close the gap between disadvantaged students and the majority of our
students, then we will abandon test-based accountability and teacher
evaluation as key drivers of our education reform program."
By Valerie Strauss,
Updated: February 21 at 6:00 am
With resistance to standardized test-obsessed school reform growing
around the country, three dozen local, state and national organizations
and individuals have now banded together in an alliance to expand
efforts to bring sanity to education policy.
The alliance, which is called
Testing Resistance and Reform Spring, will support a range of public
education and mobilizing tactics — including boycotts, opt-out
campaigns, rallies and legislation — in its effort to stop the high-stakes use of standardized tests,
to reduce the number of standardized exams, and to replace
multiple-choice tests with performance-based assessments and school
work. The alliance will help activists in different parts of the country
connect through a new Web site that offers resources for activists, including fact sheets and guides on how to hold events to get out their message.
The emergence of the alliance represents a maturing of the grassroots testing resistance that has been building for several years
locally in states , including Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois.
Though many supporters of Barack Obama expected him to end the
standardized testing obsession of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind
when Obama was first elected president, many now say that the Obama
administration has gone beyond the excesses of NCLB to inappropriately
make high-stakes standardized tests the key measure of achievement by
students, teachers, principals and schools.
Assessment experts say that standardized test scores are not a
reliable or valid way to make high stakes decisions about the
effectiveness of teachers or the achievement of students, but education
policymakers have ignored these warnings for years. This has led to
situations that are nothing short of preposterous, such as teachers
being evaluated on the test scores of students they never had.
Meanwhile, the emphasis on testing has led to an explosion of tests
being given to kids; for example, fourth-graders in the Pittsburgh
Public Schools have to take 33 standardized tests mandated by the district or state this school year. It is this reality that has fueled the resistance.
The founding members of the alliance are the Center for Fair & Open Testing, or FairTest, as well as Parents Across America, United Opt Out, Network for Public Education, and Save Our Schools.
Prominent educators, activists and bloggers who are partners in the alliance are: Wayne Au, associate professor, University of Washington
Anthony Cody, teacher, blogger
Nikhil Goyal, student, activist
Jesse Hagopian, teacher, Garfield High School, Seattle, Washington
Deborah Meier
Diane Ravitch
Angela Valenzuela, professor, U-Texas, Austin
George Wood, superintendent, Federal Hocking Local Schools, Stewart, Ohio Organizations that are alliance partners are:
National
Coalition for Essential Schools
HispanEduca
K-12 News Network
National Latino/a Education Research and Policy (NLERAP)
Rethinking Schools
State and Local
Change the Stakes (New York)
Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education (CReATE)
Citizens for Public Schools (Massachussetts)
Jefferson County Teachers Association (JCTA) (Kentucky)
MecklenburgACTS.org (North Carolina)
More Than a Score (Chicago)
New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE)
Opt Out Orlando (Florida)
Parents United for Responsible Education (Chicago)
ReThinking Testing Midhudson Region (New York)
Social Equality Educators (Seattle)
Students 4 Our School (Denver)
SWside Parents Alliance (Chicago)
Teacher Activist Group – TAG Boston
Texas Center for Education Policy
Time Out from Testing (New York)
Youth Organizers for the Now Generation (YOUNG) (Boston)
" Black men are largely underrepresented in our nation's classrooms; it has been widely reported that they make up less than 2 percent of our country's teachers."
I credit the
late Octavio Paz for initiating a high-profile conversation about Chicano/a
identity, but there's a lot to this article and his analysis that really needs
to get unpacked in terms of why Chicano/as hate Paz so much. For
starters, blanket characterizations of any kind about a people are harmful and
disparaging and ultimately, untenable as a claim.
He "others" Mexican Americans and in so doing, not only creates
a distance between Mexicans and Mexican Americans/Chianos, but his
positionality as a member of Mexico's elite situates him and members of his
class as “above” Mexican Americans upon whom they look down.
I also learned today from
Dr. Gilbert Gonzalez that the word, “Chicano”
is used in print as far back as 1926 appearing, for example, in Las Aventuras De Don Chipote and Cuando Los Pericos Mamen.
Another problem is his characterizing us as "hijos de la chingada," as progeny of the great rape—of Doña Marina/La Malinche by Hernán Cortés. He can be an hijo de la chingada if he likes. Us Chicanas love, adore, and respect our mother without whom we would not exist.
A final point. What I do not like about either Stavans or Amy
Chua and Jeb Rubenfeld’s hypotheses about immigrant achievement is not only
again, the very broad strokes they take for, in effect, negatively categorizing
large categories of humanity in disparaging ways which is neither scientific nor uplifting, but they also place so much
of the onus for underachievement on our communities rather than on the culturally chauvinistic and oppressive system of schooling that is more the norm than the exception.
Never mind Mexican Americans’ deep and very conflicted history with their
struggles related to bilingual education, immigration, high-stakes testing, tracking, (hyper)segregation,
school finance, and poverty, against a broader panorama of historical
marginalization in politics, society, and the economy.
To psychologize Chicanos/as and Latinos/as,
generally in a reductive manner commits the same symbolic violence that all of
these systems and institutions mete out in a casual, normative manner that is
unfortunately, the air that we so regularly breathe that it, too, becomes
invisible—not only to those in power, but also to ourselves.
The etymology of Chicano is surrounded in mystery. I’ve seen its roots traced to Nahuatl, specifically to the term Mexica,
as the people encountered by Hernán Cortéz and his soldiers conquering
Tenochtitlán in the early quarter of the 16th century where known. In
Spanish, the word is pronounced Meshika: the x functions as sh.
Mexico, as a nation, opts to look at the Mexicas as their defining
ancestors. Curiously, when first registering the name, the missionaries
spelled it Méjico, with a j. It transitioned to an x when the country ceded from Spain, becoming independent in 1810.
In any case, Chicano might be an abbreviation of Mexicano,
although Chicanos prefer to see themselves not as Mexico’s children but
as its ancestors. According to legend, Aztlán, their Xanadu, located in
either present-day northern Mexico or somewhere in the American
Southwest, or maybe as far as Oregon, was the place where the Mexicans
originated in their journey for a promised land, which they ultimately
found in a region of five lakes where Mexico City was built. In their
mythology, an eagle sitting on a rock in a lake, devouring a serpent—the
symbol at the center of the Mexican flag—was a divine sign for them to
settle there.
My research suggests that the original appearance of Chicano in print is traced to 1947, in a story by Mario Suárez published in Arizona Quarterly. I have also seen other etymologies for Chicano. The word acquired fresh currency in the sixties, during the civil-rights era. Some people spell it Xicano.
(Curiously, I’ve never come across a Chicano calling himself Aztleño,
meaning “dweller of Aztlán.”) On several occasions, I’ve seen the word
connected with chicanery: according to Merriam-Webster, “deception by
artful subterfuge or sophistry.” In this regard, the word suggests a
double conscience, an idea—linked to W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk
(1903)—that characterizes, broadly understood, the identity of minority
people. Daniel Chacón has a collection of stories titled Chicano Chicanery (2000).
This year marks the hundredth anniversary of Octavio Paz’s birth.
Mexico’s only Nobel laureate for literature, Paz was an extraordinary hombre de letras:
a poet, an essayist, a publisher, a diplomat, as well as “a
philanthropic ogre,” a phrase he used in one of his numerous books to
talk about the role of the state in modern society but which some of us,
his admirers, prefer as a description of him. Paz’s ego was
inflammatory: a true cosmopolitan, he was ready to devour you if you
displayed any criticism of his oeuvre. In any case, arguably Paz’s most
famous book is The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950), a monograph
about the Mexican psyche. Influence by Alfred Adler and other late
psychoanalysts, Paz used his considerable intellectual talents to offer
incisive opinions on his own country’s ethos.
The initial chapter of The Labyrinth of Solitude is called
“The Pachuco and Other Extremes.” Awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, Paz
lived in Los Angeles in the forties, where he was exposed to
Mexican-American culture. Put succinctly, he found it appalling. Pachuco
was a social type of youth: defiant, dressed up in a zoot suit with a
hat, and embracing a distinct jargon. The ubiquitous comedian Tin Tan
still personifies the pachuco. The best portrait I know of the era is Luis Valdez’s play Zoot Suit (1979), about the zoot-suit riots of 1943.
Anyway, Chicanos hate Paz. Thus it seems unlikely, to me at least,
that they will celebrate his centennial. For they believe Paz
misrepresented them. In Paz’s view, pachucos—e.g., a particular type of
Chicano—suffered from an overabundance of culture. And, even more
scandalously, they were overwhelmed by an inferiority complex.
Is Paz right? In other chapters, he describes Mexicans as also
suffering from that complex. Bizarrely, among Mexicans he is an icon,
whereas among Chicanos he is Satan.
A student of mine from Los Angeles asked me that question. She wondered if the etymology of Chicano, a word the younger generation hesitates to adopt (they call themselves Mexican-American), might come from chico, not taken as child but as small. My student called my attention to Presumed Incompetent
(2012), a collection of academic essays edited by Gabriella Gutiérrez y
Muhs et al., about the plight of working-class women of color in
academe. My student identified with the sections on Chicanas.
The question she raised, I said, comes at a time when the baggage
behind “the inferiority complex” is being reconceptualized. It used to
be that an inferiority complex was a defect. Nowadays, things are
different—especially in the context of the debate surrounding “the
triple package.” The thesis, made by the wife and husband writers Amy
Chua and Jeb Rubenfeld, is that certain immigrant minorities (Asians,
Jews, Hindus, etc.), on the road to success, exhibit three
characteristics: a superiority as well as an inferiority complex, plus
traction to make it to the top. The issue, of course, is why some
minority groups display this traction and not others.
I will leave the answer to psychologists. In any case, since
ancestral times Mexicans—and I am one—have nurtured an inferiority
complex. Chicanos do too. Is the name Chicano pushing them down, making them small? Can it be turned into an engine of success?
It all boils down, my student said, to “the colonial mentality”:
Chicanos feel inferior because they have been taught to feel that way.
But Hindus were also subalterns of empire and, depending on the region,
so were Asians. Not to mention Jews, whose plight as slaves in Egypt is
recalled every year during the Passover Seder.
My response: Etymology isn’t fate. Actually, unless one consents,
fate isn’t fate either. After all, having a double consciousness is
better than having only one.
It IS amazing that there is not more reaction against the workings behind these shifts. The writer makes the point that while the large oil companies are easy to blame, a lack of reaction is reducible to ignorance and complacency.
The
truth is, it is too late for all of that. Greening the ski industry is
commendable, but it isn’t nearly enough. Nothing besides a national
policy shift on how we create and consume energy will keep our mountains
white in the winter — and slow global warming to a safe level.
This
is no longer a scientific debate. It is scientific fact. The greatest
fear of most climate scientists is continued complacency that leads to a
series of natural climatic feedbacks — like the melting of the
methane-rich permafrost of Arctic Canada.
This is certainly a challenge that the next generation will have to tackle much better than we have managed to do in ours.
Wouldn't it be amazing if our educational systems embraced a kind of critical and social justice STEM approach that would graduate cadres upon cadres of youth that can take on this multi-faceted problem?
Of course, we need our teachers to be well prepared to teach this, as well, so this is also a responsibility that should be equally shouldered by our teacher preparation programs of all types.
Surely, there are places within our K-12 system where this is occurring, but this really needs to be a new default in science-based instruction that is itself interdisciplinary and policy oriented. Short of this, our descendants are destined to a world without snow—and all that attaches to that, as well. -Angela
Slopes were closed last month at Fichtelberg mountain in Oberwiesenthal, Germany.Jan Woitas/European Pressphoto Agency
OVER
the next two weeks, hundreds of millions of people will watch Americans
like Ted Ligety and Mikaela Shiffrin ski for gold on the downhill
alpine course. Television crews will pan across epic vistas of the
rugged Caucasus Mountains, draped with brilliant white ski slopes. What
viewers might not see is the 16 million cubic feet of snow that was
stored under insulated blankets last year to make sure those slopes
remained white, or the hundreds of snow-making guns that have been
running around the clock to keep them that way.
Officials
canceled two Olympic test events last February in Sochi after several
days of temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit and a lack of snowfall
had left ski trails bare and brown in spots. That situation led the
climatologist Daniel Scott,
a professor of global change and tourism at the University of Waterloo
in Ontario, to analyze potential venues for future Winter Games. His
thought was that with a rise in the average global temperature of more
than 7 degrees Fahrenheit possible by 2100, there might not be that many
snowy regions left in which to hold the Games. He concluded that of the
19 cities that have hosted the Winter Olympics, as few as 10 might be
cold enough by midcentury to host them again. By 2100, that number
shrinks to 6.
The
planet has warmed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1800s, and as a
result, snow is melting. In the last 47 years, a million square miles of
spring snow cover has disappeared from the Northern Hemisphere. Europe
has lost half of its Alpine glacial ice since the 1850s, and if climate
change is not reined in, two-thirds of European ski resorts will be
likely to close by 2100.
Porter Fox is the features editor at Powder magazine and the author of “Deep: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow.”
This interview with former Stanford President Gerhard Casper brings back memories of the contentious 80s at Stanford over the Western Civilization curriculum. Note: I was there from 1983-1990 as a doctoral student in Sociology.
Although Donald Kennedy was the president during this time period, the consequences were particularly felt during the Casper administration. When I think of how horribly this administration was to our legendary and heroic leaders at Stanford—the late Tony and Cecilia Burciaga—were treated, this memory is a very painful one for so many of us.
Among other things, this interview with former President Casper shows exactly how liberal individualism can align to reactionary politics and agendas. This whole debate of course set off a firestorm of reaction from which we have largely not recovered, in my view. Whole language instruction virtually died and phonics-based instruction came in with a ferocity. Although high-stakes testing was slowly evolving in Texas and nationally during this same time period, it is safe to say that this was welcomed by the right because of the ways that the system structured out the deeper kinds of conversations, themes and issues that the multiculturalism movement was, and has been, about. Fortunately, here in Texas, our historians like Dr. Emilio Zamora, Keith Erekson and others are weighing in on the high school social studies standards at the State Board of Education level and making the basic argument that without this knowledge of subaltern histories—a systemic absence of which the Western Civ debate at Stanford was impactful—students are neither well-prepared for college, nor for life in an increasingly globalized world. The different contributors to the Erekson anthology
collectively not only present the intricacies of the debate, they also provide an anatomy of the ideological strands that unmask many of the hidden beliefs, ideologies, and interests that advocate for a highly conservative status quo.
All told, things are a changing nevertheless here in Texas. -Angela
Former Stanford president
Gerhard Casper is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and a
professor of law and, by courtesy, political science. His book The Winds of Freedom: Addressing Challenges to the University,
to be published by Yale University Press in February, comprises
selected speeches he made about contentious issues during his presidency
(1992 to 2000) accompanied by his current thoughts on their context.
Stanford recently interviewed Casper (an abridged transcript is in the
print magazine); an excerpt from the book follows.
Sunday, February 02, 2014
The outcome of this case will surely have ripple effects for teacher tenure. Quotes from within:
“It’s
yet another example of not rolling up your sleeves and dealing with a
problem, but instead finding a scapegoat,” Ms. Weingarten said. “They
are not suing about segregation or funding or property tax systems — all
the things you really need to get kids a level playing field. They want
to strip teachers of any rights to a voice.”
State
education laws across the country are changing. School districts in 29
states use poor effectiveness as grounds for dismissal, according to a
report released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a
Washington-based think tank that tracks teacher policies. Just five
years ago, no states allowed student performance to be considered in
teachers’ evaluations, said Kate Walsh, the executive director of the
center. Now, 20 states require such data.
Some
of the students who are suing the State of California over tenure for
teachers walked to a news conference this week outside Superior Court in
Los Angeles.Monica Almeida/The New York Times
LOS
ANGELES — They have tried and failed to loosen tenure rules for
teachers in contract talks and state legislatures. So now, a group of
rising stars in the movement to overhaul education employment has gone
to court.
In
a small, wood-paneled courtroom here this week, nine public school
students are challenging California’s ironclad tenure system, arguing
that their right to a good education is violated by job protections that
make it too difficult to fire bad instructors. But behind the students
stand a Silicon Valley technology magnate who is financing the case and
an all-star cast of lawyers that includes Theodore B. Olson, the former
solicitor general of the United States, who recently won the Supreme
Court case that effectively overturned the state’s ban on same-sex
marriage.
“Children
have the right to access good education and an effective teacher
regardless of their circumstances,” said David F. Welch, the
telecommunications entrepreneur who spent millions of his own dollars to
create Students Matter, the organization behind the lawsuit. The group
describes itself as a national nonprofit dedicated to sponsoring
litigation of this type, and the outcome in California will provide the
first indication of whether it can succeed.
Launch media viewer
John E. Deasy, the schools superintendent of Los Angeles.Monica Almeida/The New York Times
At
issue is a set of rules that grant permanent employment status to
California teachers after 18 months on the job, require a lengthy
procedure to dismiss a teacher, and set up a seniority system in which
the teachers most recently hired must be the first to lose their jobs
when layoffs occur, as they have regularly in recent years.
Teachers’
unions, which hold powerful sway among lawmakers here, contend that the
protections are necessary to ensure that teachers are not fired
unfairly. Without these safeguards, the unions say, the profession will
not attract new teachers.
“Tenure
is an amenity, just like salary and vacation, that allows districts to
recruit and retain teachers despite harder working conditions, pay that
hasn’t kept pace and larger class sizes,” James M. Finberg, a lawyer for
the California teachers’ unions, said this week in his opening
statement in court.
The
monthlong trial promises to be a closely watched national test case on
employment laws for teachers, one of the most contentious debates in
education. Many school superintendents and advocates across the country
call such laws detrimental and anachronistic, and have pressed for the
past decade for changes, with mixed success. Tenure for teachers has
been eliminated in three states and in Washington, D.C., and a handful
of states prohibit seniority as a factor in teacher layoffs. But in many
large states with urban school districts, including California and New
York, efforts to push through such changes in the legislature have
repeatedly failed.
While
several lawsuits demanding more money for schools have succeeded across
the country, the California case is the most sweeping legal challenge
claiming that students are hurt by employment laws for teachers. The
case also relies on a civil rights argument that so far is untested:
that poor and minority students are denied equal access to education
because they are more likely to have “grossly ineffective” teachers.
Judge
Rolf Michael Treu, of Los Angeles County Superior Court, will decide
the nonjury trial. His ruling will almost certainly be appealed to the
State Supreme Court.
Witnesses are expected to explain many of their basic assumptions about how to create quality schools.
The
first witness for the plaintiffs was John E. Deasy, the superintendent
of Los Angeles Unified School District and a staunch opponent of tenure
rules and “last in, first out” seniority for teachers. Mr. Deasy
testified that attempts to dismiss ineffective teachers can cost
$250,000 to $450,000 and include years of appeals and legal proceedings.
Often, he said, the district is forced to decide that the time and
money would be too much to spend on a case with an unclear outcome, in
part because a separate governing board can reinstate the teachers. Such
rules make it impossible not to place ineffective teachers at schools
with high poverty rates, he told the court.
Launch media viewer
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.Philip Scott Andrews for The New York Times
“I
absolutely do not believe it’s in the best interest of students
whatsoever,” Mr. Deasy said of the layoff policy. “The decision about
who should be in front of students should be the most effective teacher.
These statutes prohibit that from being a consideration at all. By
virtue of that, it cannot be good for students.”
Teachers’
unions contend that such job protections help schools keep the best
teachers and recruit new ones to a job that is often exhausting,
challenging and low paid. Mr. Finberg, the lawyer for the unions, said
in court that the fact that Mr. Deasy has increased the number of
ineffective teachers dismissed from the classroom — to about 100 of the
district’s 30,000 teachers — suggests that the laws are working.
The
plaintiffs’ legal team, from the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher,
includes not only Mr. Olson, who served as solicitor general under
President George W. Bush, but also Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a lawyer
for Apple in its antitrust case on e-book pricing. The lawyers and
public relations firm behind Students Matter previously teamed to
overturn the California ballot measure against same-sex marriage and say
this case could have a similar ripple effect across the country. Among
the boldface names siding publicly with the plaintiffs is Antonio R.
Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, who joined them in a news
conference outside the courthouse this week.
“The
case has the potential to have really broad and important implications
not just for California,” said Michelle A. Rhee, the former Washington
schools chancellor who now runs Students First, an advocacy group that
works to elect leaders who support changing the employment laws for
teachers. “In an ideal world you would want policies to be passed in the
legislature, but in California there was no movement on that. I think
in this case they were tired of waiting.”
Teachers’
unions nationwide have fought changes in employment laws, contending
that their members must be protected from capricious or vengeful
administrators. In Colorado, where a sweeping law in 2010 created a new
system to evaluate teachers, the unions are suing over a provision that
lets principals decide whether to hire veteran teachers who lost jobs
because of budget cuts or drops in enrollment.
Randi
Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said
in a telephone interview that the California case echoes the fights she
had when she led the teachers’ union in New York, and called the lawsuit
“worse than troubling.”
“It’s
yet another example of not rolling up your sleeves and dealing with a
problem, but instead finding a scapegoat,” Ms. Weingarten said. “They
are not suing about segregation or funding or property tax systems — all
the things you really need to get kids a level playing field. They want
to strip teachers of any rights to a voice.”
State
education laws across the country are changing. School districts in 29
states use poor effectiveness as grounds for dismissal, according to a
report released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a
Washington-based think tank that tracks teacher policies. Just five
years ago, no states allowed student performance to be considered in
teachers’ evaluations, said Kate Walsh, the executive director of the
center. Now, 20 states require such data.
“We
have really seen mountains move in some places — the trend in the
country has been toward meaningful ways to evaluate teachers and to use
that evaluation to make tenure decisions,” Ms. Walsh said in an
interview. “But I don’t think anyone has figured out how to implement
them particularly well yet.”
Rep. George Miller from California is claiming innocence. How can he when we had just come out of a federal court case on high-stakes testing here in Texas and we learned unequivocally that the system produced a disparate impact on Latino/as, African Americans, special education children, and English language learners?
The trial produced ample evidence, as well, about where this system was headed.
Plus, Dr. Linda McNeil and I visited with his office staff before the passage of NCLB—and many other offices from the Texas Congressional delegation.
The late Senator Paul Wellstone was a fierce, very vocal opponent during this time period, as well. His office, especially Jill Morningstar, was instrumental in educating many offices about the expected harmful effects of this law. Boy, was his death ever untimely.
With all of these offices, we shared evidence from Texas that this law would marginalize both students and curriculum—and most especially, children of color and the poor.
This law was nevertheless about ideology based on harmful assumptions about teachers and kids, while also appealing to the "managerial mindset," those thinking that a stick was needed to force teachers to teach and the kids to learn. To quote Jonathan Kozol, never mind the "savage inequalities" of our schools. And never mind the opinion of professionals—not all of them racist or classist—as he actually suggests in this interview, albeit obliquely.
But that is exactly how they got the liberal vote—this law would make white teachers teach Black and Brown kids, regardless. No excuses! And guess what? We not only do not have to invest in education, but we can even threaten taking away their resources with this law.
How offensive, cruel, and fantastically convenient. -Angela
Rep.
George Miller, D-Martinez, visited with EdSource Today staff shortly
after announcing his retirement after 40 years in Congress. Credit:
Lillian Mongeau, EdSource
Rep. George Miller, a leading architect of the No Child Left
Behind legislation, says he never anticipated that the landmark
education law would ignite the testing obsession that engulfed the
nation’s schools, leading to what some have charged is a simplistic
“drill and kill” approach that subverts real instruction.
EdSource sat down with Miller, D-Martinez, last week for a lengthy
and wide-ranging conversation on his accomplishments, philosophy and
hopes for the future of public education. The Contra Costa County
congressman, who served as chair or ranking minority member of the House
Education Committee and the Workforce Committee since 1997, announced
earlier this month that after 40 years in the House of Representatives,
he would not seek re-election when his current term expires.
