Challenges to academic freedom: California teacher educators mobilize to resist state-mandated control of the curriculum

Teacher Education Quarterly, Winter 2003 by Ahlquist, Roberta

What kind of vision do we hold for public education? What are the ideal purposes of schooling in a democracy? What kind of citizens do we hope to 'grow' within the context of the American public school system? Do we want a school system that teaches people how to critically think and act, from multiple perspectives, on the world in which we live? Shouldn't we prepare students for future generations? Do we want independent learners, who ask challenging questions and are unsatisfied with simplistic answers? Do we want civically and ethically responsible citizens who care for each other and the fragile world in which we live? These are some of the questions that parents, teachers, and the communities, in which we live and work, need to consider, as policy makers and business interests reshape public school curricula. With the current barrage of standards, we need to think seriously about whether these standards significantly help us accomplish the primary goals and functions of public schooling. The future of public schooling in the U.S.A. is at stake.

The public sector, particularly education, is the last frontier for commodification in the U.S.A. Public schools are being reshaped and corporatized, and education at all levels is becoming increasingly more commodified, driven by market forces, and therefore unequal. Much of this is being done under the guise of one-way accountability. To understand the implications of this major restructuring of public education one needs to look at how big business leadership is consolidating its power, authority and legitimacy over democracy in schools (Ross, 2000). What little local control that exists is being dismantled, as we watch teachers become de-skilled technicians, driven to teach students content that will appear on the next onslaught of standardized high stakes tests during the school year. These tests will be used to also determine whether teachers are doing a good job - of teaching students to take the tests.

The movement to monitor and control what K- 12 teachers teach is not new. It has been ongoing for over the past thirty years (Ahlquist & Hudson, 2002), and by some accounts as long as a century (Brown, 1990). This movement is escalating around increased curriculum control and mandated standards that teachers need to teach to, and recently it has advanced to higher education, specifically teacher education, in great part because teacher educators are being blamed (along with K-12 teachers) for not doing their jobs (Hardy, 2001). Furthermore, as test scores are compared across the nation and within the state, "teachers are being blamed, and students are being punished" for any drop in standardized scores, without even looking at changing demographics, poverty, and other social conditions (Marker, 2002). It is well known that SAT scores reflect social class background, and can rise up to 100 points based on test preparation courses (http://www.faintest.org/univ/2000SAT20scores.html).

Over the past five years, the state, under the auspices of the Commission for Teacher Credentialing (CTC), the State Board of Education, the Business Roundtable, and the legislature (SB 2042), has built a case to reinstate the monocultural curriculum of the 1950s, by re-imposing a standardized, homogeneous curriculum upon public education (Berlak, 2002). The CTC mandates for teacher education are a corporate-generated model, which fit within the directives of the Master Plan for California education. California's mandates are being driven by federal corporatedriven standards, in a major overhaul of teacher education from the federal level (See Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge, 2002). This is a one-sizefits-all, reductionist, teach-to-narrow-required standards, and dismiss as irrelevant the complex sociocultural, linguistic, and individual needs of students. Not that standards are not important; baseline standards are necessary. But whose standards, created by what process, and why so minimalist, degrading, and mainstream? Take a look at what is being cut out of programs, literally reducing some credential programs to a bare-bones core curriculum, teaching primarily to test-proof standards that the state, not the majority of teacher educators claim are most important. Situated pedagogy, that is, teaching a curriculum that is grounded in students' lived experiences, and that responds to the explicit and multifaceted needs of the particular group of students one teaches, is all but lost in this scenario.

We need to address the contradictions in the form of pleas from state officials for teachers and schools to address the most needy students, in the lowest performing schools; a major priority of California's vision for schools. This call becomes a hollow gesture at best, if one analyzes the content and standards for K-12 students. The same is true for beginning teachers in higher education. Increasing state and corporate control over kindergarten through higher education curriculum has implications for academic freedom, social justice, and for advocates of a critical multicultural and equitable approach to the curriculum. Imagine if the state came to science academics, or humanities and arts faculty, and mandated a curriculum which was top-down and driven by narrow business interests. Be careful, it is just around the comer.