Bottom Up Education

Not really.  But, some individual professors did.  As noted in the Arne Duncan at Harvard post, two professors at HGSE asked challenging questions of Duncan.

Karen Mapp, who’s expertise lie in the area of family, school, and community partnerships, decried the recent de-funding of Parent Information Resource Centers, the only federally funded program in the country that concentrates on helping families get connected to their children’s education.  Of course, Duncan didn’t have a response other than that he doesn’t think the US DOE should be creating programs, just funding ones that are out there that work.  He implied that if states came to them with examples of programs that are working, then they’d fund them.  Only, in the meantime the programs that are working (like the Rhode Island Parent InformationNetwork – RIPIN) will lose funding and thus have their success derailed.

Susan Moore Johnson, an expert in the area of teachers unions, merit pay, and teacher retention, pointed out the inherent tensions found between Race to the Top reform priorities and most states’ collective bargaining laws.  RTTT is decidedly anti-union and seems to provide multiple pathways to bypass collective bargaining agreements between teachers unions and school districts.  According to Dr. Moore Johnson she hasn’t seen any state statutes in a place like RI that actually give districts the authority to ignore their collective bargaining agreements with local teachers union, and questions whether any federal policies even provide such cover.  The implication is that for a place like Central Falls, RI ,where the district has fired ALL the teachers in the high school and where there is no room for a reshuffling of these teachers into different schools (as might happen in a larger district with multiple high schools), the job actions taken against teachers are without cause and thus effectively illegal.  Without passing judgment on whether or not she thinks these decisions are good ones, Dr. Moore Johnson definitely seemed to question the thinking behind RTTT which has created the conditions for a “perfect storm” with regard to public schools, labor relations, and actual education-based decision making.

And of course credit goes to portions of the student body who do not buy into Duncan’s plans hook, line, and sinker.  There were challenging questions about RTTT’s focus on competition instead of collaboration, the potentially detrimental effects some of its priorities could have on students with disabilities, and the marginalization of art education.  (As an aside, Professor Thomas Hehir recently testified before the US House Committee on Education and Labor about charter schools discriminatory practices toward students with disabilities).  Then, that evening there was yet again a capacity crowd gathered to listen to Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade from San Francisco State University.  Dr. Duncan-Andrade’s message is quite different than the Education Secretary’s.  His message challenges the status quo in a way that Secretary Duncan cannot fathom, and I guarantee that the student body would follow Duncan-Andrade over Duncan into the educational battlefield if given the choice.

As for the institution of HGSE, it still isn’t clear where it stands.  Not that one would expect a place like Harvard, the bastion of some of the most elite interests in the world, to come out with anything radically mind-blowing.  So, while individual professors and students may find the courage to stand up and challenge the dangerous directions in which Arne Duncan is leading current educational reform policies, I think it is safe to say we’ll continue to hear not even a peep from the institution itself, which will instead hide behind its superficial claim to be “pushing the frontiers of education.”