Refrains of the school critics: behind the rhetoric lies a contempt in some quarters for the work of public educators

School Administrator, August, 2005 by Susan Ohanian

George Packer, a New Yorker staff writer, points to the danger of clarity, observing that seemingly simple and tough-minded words blow out as much smoke as the jargon of the Pentagon of decades past.

Nowhere is this smoke thicker and trickier than in the lingo the corporate-politico-media squad uses when talking about public schools. At first glance, their talk seems plain and to the point: failing schools, caring about education and education as war. In contrast, education progressives befuddle the public with authentic means of assessment, decision-making processes and triangulated learning.

But the simplicity is deceptive. The expression failing public schools has a lot in common with war on terror. After the media parrot these phrases often enough, we find ourselves at war and in the morass of radical public school deformation. Familiarity breeds acceptance. We need to unpack the knee-jerk, smoky phrases to examine the purposes behind the rhetoric we are in danger of taking for granted.

What follows are refrains about schools plucked from the news--not always unique statements but phrases repeated so often they have become jingles framed around a common theme: Make sure the public can't think about public schools without thinking about failure.

The structure below is designed to encourage people to look closely at the rhetoric used to describe schools. Readers are invited to unpack popular phrases, to think about what is revealed and what is hidden. In so doing, we can keep our own discourse free of the corporate catchphrases.

Refrain: Schools are failing.

Example: We need to acknowledge that our K-12 education system is failing--Our future U.S. competitiveness hinges on fixing it.

Speaker: American Electronics Association Board of Directors, in a report, "Offshore Outsourcing in an Increasingly Competitive and Rapidly Changing World: A High-Tech Perspective"

What It Means: When your job is outsourced, blame the schools. When the dollar tanks, blame the schools.

What It Hides: The only concern here is the bottom line. Corporations ship jobs overseas because that's where the cheap labor is.

Something to Consider: More than five times as many people die from drugs prescribed by physicians than from the combined effect of street use of cocaine, heroin and Ecstasy, but there is no hysteria about the failing medical system.

Refrain: Caring about education.

Example: "In these times, caring about education means caring about the implementation of No Child Left Behind."

Speaker: Joseph M. Tucci, chair, Business Roundtable's Education and the Workforce Task Force

What It Means: The Business Roundtable has been on-message about public schools since the 1980s. The organization has flooded the media with its message and formed a network of public and private organizations characterized by incestuous partnerships, overlapping alliances and common funding sources.

What It Hides: With 8-year-olds vomiting on high-stakes tests, special education students forced to take tests on their age level instead of their developmental level (and their school labeled failures when this doesn't work), and high schoolers who want to be welders shut out of a high school diploma, caring seems a distinctly inappropriate word here. With care-givers like the Business Roundtable, public schools need no enemies.

Refrain: Education as war I

Example: "America is engaged in an unconventional conflict that stretches to every corner of the globe.... Our nation, which has prevailed in conflict after conflict over several centuries, now faces a stark and sudden choice: adapt or perish.

"I'm not referring to the war against terrorism but to a war of skills--one that America is at a risk of losing to India, China and other emerging economies. And we're not at risk of losing it on factory floors or lab benches. It's happening every day, all across the country, in our public schools. Unless we transform those schools--by upgrading our corps of classroom teachers for the next generation--and do it now, it will soon be too late."

Speaker: Louis V. Gerstner, chairman, Carlyle Group, and former CEO, IBM, and founder, The Teaching Commission ("Bad Schools + Shackled Principals = Outsourcing," The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 7, 2004)

What It Means: Noted researcher Gerald Bracey calls Gerstner the "captain of the scare industry." Here, Gersmer provides a variation on the failing schools theme. Blaine the teachers for outsourced jobs. Schools are a battlefield and the teachers are warriors. Referring to education professionals as a corps fits right in with the battlefield metaphor with the first meaning of corps being "a separate branch or department of the armed forces having a specialized function." The second meaning is "a tactical unit of ground combat force."

What It Hides: As co-author of Reinventing Education: Entrepreneurship in American Public Schools, Gerstner defined students as "human capital" and urged schools to compare themselves to each other as "Xerox compares itself to L.L. Bean for inventory control." But it's the global economy, not public schools, that's destroying the working class. Corporate greed, not teacher skill, is the problem.