Racism, Class and the Attack on Public Education: A Talk by Brian Jones

In this episode we spend the hour listening to a talk by Brian Jones titled “Still Separate, Still Unequal: Racism, Class and the Attack on Public Education.” He was speaking to a group of teachers and parents in New York City this past February as part of Black History Month.

Brian Jones

Brian has worked as an elementary school teacher in Harlem and is currently a fourth grade public school teacher in Brooklyn, NYC. Brian participated with the Grassroots Education Movement, GEMNYC, to produce the documentary An Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman in 2011. This documentary was a response to the widely publicized film Waiting for Superman, produced by Participant Media, which also produced An Inconvenient Truth. Education Radio episode 5 “Exposing the Myth of Education Reform” from September of last year highlighted Jones’ work on this documentary and can still be heard on our blog.

In his talk, Brian draws connections between attacks on labor and attacks on public schools. He suggests education reformers’ emphasis on test scores, teachers and outcomes is about “excellence” (using their words), but not equity. Brian addresses the increasingly undemocratic process by which these neoliberal reforms are being implemented, and the potential power of true solidarity between parents and teachers.

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High-stakes testing, segregation, and the undermining of democracy: OCCUPY the DOE

Across the country, educators and activists are organizing to stand up and fight back against the corporate controlled education reformers. In this week's show we speak with teachers, teacher educators, students, parents and community members who are part of a growing movement to opt out of and demand an end to high stakes testing.

We begin at San Jose State University, where professor Roberta Ahlquist talks about the ways high stakes testing damages our students, our schools, and our understanding of the kinds of people and communities we want to make. Professor Ahlquist, co-editor of the book “ Assault on Kids: How hyper-accountability, corporatization, deficit ideologies and Ruby Payne are destroying our schools” helps us understand how high stakes testing is part of larger ideology that is leaving us with schools that are more segregated and that deny the human potential of all students.

Next we hear from Aisha Daniels, a high school junior from Florida, who opted out of the state tests about why she opted out, and the response from teacher, schools, administrators and classmates. Aisha's mother Ceresta Smith is an organizer of United Opt Out, an organization whose purpose is to draw attention to the devastating impact of high stakes tests and to offer guidance, support and solidarity for students and parents who choose to Opt Out.

The Opt Out movement will be in Washington DC March 30- April 1 to OCCUPY the DOE and demand an end to high stake testing. In the last part of this week's show, Education Radio producer Barbara Madeloni joins the organizers of Occupy the DOE at one of their weekly skype meetings to talk with them about how they came to the movement, how they understand what is happening in education, and what we can do to resist. She speaks with Morna McDermott, associate professor Towson University, Ceresta Smith, 23 year veteran National Board certified teacher, Laura Murphy, community member and charter member of the Save Our Schools march, Tim Skelar, associate professor Penn State Altoona, Peggy Robertson, former public school teacher, parent and blogger at pegwithapen, and Shaun Johnson, assistant professor at Towson University and host with Tim Skelar of at the chalk face.

Listen and join us to OCCUPY the DOE in DC, March 30- April 2, 2012.

Get more information about Occupy the DOE.

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Educating for Obedience: The disastrous impact of education reform on young children

Nancy Carlsson-Paige

In this weeks program we talk to Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Professor Emerita of early childhood education at Lesley University where she taught teachers for more than 30 years. She is also a respected author and the founder of the University's Center for Peaceable Schools.

Nancy discusses how schooling can meet the developmental needs of school-age children; and how current corporate education reform policies are harming young children's social, emotional, cognitive and physical development.

She talks pointedly about how current standardized curriculum and testing regimes and the privatization of public education causes great harm to young children's development; exacerbates inequality and undermines the human potential to engage in social change.

Nancy also talks at length about the horrendous impact virtual schools have on the lives of young children.

Click here to learn more about Nancy Carlsson-Paige

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Program 20: Pacifica Audioport (podcast)
Program 20: Internet Archive

Audit Culture: Snuffing the Life out of Teacher Education

In this week's program Education Radio looks at how audit culture is being used to undermine and privatize teacher education, decoupling it from higher education and turning teacher development into technical training.

Speaking first with Christine Sleeter, Professor Emerita, California State University, we look at how the assault on teacher education connects to the larger neo-liberal effort to privatize public spaces. We then examine the specific measures being used to devalue, de-humanize and undo the democratic the work of teaching and teaching teachers.

Ann Berlak, of the California State system, helps us understand the technical rationality behind the current push for a national teacher performance assessment. Celia Oyler, Associate Professor of Education at Teachers College Columbia University, brings us into the absurdities of the National Council on Teacher Quality's grading' of school of education, and the dangers of privatization found in the new Relay Graduate School of Education, founded by educational management companies Achievement First, Uncommon Schools and KIPP. Finally, we speak with Julie Gorlewski, from State University of New York New Paltz, as we examine how teacher educators can respond to this assault by naming it for what it is and making spaces to fight back and claim the liberatory potential of our work.

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Program 19: Pacifica Audioport (podcast)
Program 19: Internet Archive

Audit Culture, Teacher Evaluation and the Pillaging of Public Education

In this weeks' program we look at the attempt by education reformers to impose value added measures on teacher evaluation as an example of how neoliberal forces have used the economic crisis to blackmail schools into practices that do not serve teaching and learning, but do serve the corporate profiteers as they work to privatize public education and limit the goals of education to vocational training for corporate hegemony. These processes constrict possibilities for educational experiences that are critical, relational and transformative. We see that in naming these processes and taking risks both individually and collectively we can begin to speak back to and overcome these forces.

In this program we speak with Sean Feeney, principal from Long Island New York, about the stance he and other principals have taken against the imposition of value added measures in the new Annual Professional Performance Review in New York State. We also speak with Celia Oyler, professor of education at Teachers College Columbia University, and Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, about the impact of value added measures on teacher education and the corporate powers behind these measures.

You can sign on to support Sean Feeney and the New York principals at
http://www.newyorkprincipals.org/

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Program 18: Pacifica Audioport (podcast)
Program 18: Internet Archive

Fighting tuition hikes and mobilizing for free public higher education

In this edition of Education Radio, we report on world-wide student  resistance to the attacks on public higher education, along with the story of neoliberalism as it threatens the future of public higher education in  the U.S.  Emerging from the Occupy movement, advocates calling for a  student debt strike that includes the vision of free college tuition  will present their case.

The first part of the show, features reports from Puerto Rico, the UK,  and Chile, where sustained, mass mobilizations of youth have sought to  halt enormous tuition hikes.

We next hear from labor activist and UMass academic Max Page, co-author  The Future of Higher Education, who deconstructs the mechanics of a  corporate-governance, privatization mentality that is squeezing the  quality of and access to public higher education.

For the last part of the hour, speakers from Zuccotti Park, including  Anya Kamentz, Pamela Brown, and Andrew Ross, link the Occupy movement to  the crisis of growing student debt in the U.S.  Each outlines the  reasons for a national debt strike for college loan forgiveness and free public education.

A good part of the material for this show is collected from YouTube. Using simple free capture software, in this case MacTubes, short videos  were downloaded.  These video mp4 files were then converted to an audio  file (WAVE) using free audio conversion software called Switch. It's an  amazing resource that allows access to direct information about  resistance movements that we would never see through mainstream  corporate media.

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Program 17: Audioport (podcast) 
Program 17: Internet Archive

Teachers Fight Back with Courage, Solidarity and Organizing

In this weeks show, we bring you interviews with four activists educators who are working within their communities and unions, local and national, to actively speak back to and resist the neoliberal structures and paradigms being imposed on us. Their stories remind us of the necessity and power of organizing and of finding courage in solidarity.

The assault on public education is multi-faceted and strategic. Here on Education Radio we have explored the ways that politicians, corporations and individual financiers manipulate the discourse, bully educators, intensify the disempowerment of low-income communities, and purchase access with the goals of privatizing education and feeding their profits from the public trough. The forces of neoliberalism, which aim to privatize and commodify every aspect of our lives, are powerful and organized.  For those of us who see education as a place for the building of a democratic and just society, for transformation and human freedom, understanding the magnitude of the struggle can be overwhelming. But there are numerous spaces of resistance and groups coming together to speak back to the dominant discourse and claim a new way of knowing ourselves as teachers, educators, union members, students, parents and community members.

We begin by speaking with Shaun Johnson, assistant professor of education at Towson University, blogger at The Chalk Face, and organizer of Opt Out of the State Test, a grassroots organization that encourages and supports parents and teachers to refuse to participate in standardized testing.

Karen Lewis

We then speak with Karen Lewis, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union and former classroom teacher, about how she and other Chicago Public School teachers formed the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) to take over union leadership to ensure that the Chicago Teachers Union represented the best interest of teachers, students and low income communities in the fight against corporate education reform.

Yvette Felarca

We also talk with Yvette Felarca, an English and history teacher at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkley, CA. She also a founding member and organizer with BAMN - Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary. We talk with Yvette about her activism within teaching as well as with BAMN.

Simone Harris

We finish by going to Santa Rosa California to speak with Simone Harris, high school English teacher, union organizer and blogger at theedutalk.blogspot.com about her union’s decision to not only endorse but to plan an action with Occupy Santa Rosa. Simone’s activism reminds us that our struggles as educators are shared struggles, against the same forces and for the same hopes, as those of our students, the poor, working people, and the planet.

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Program 16: Audioport (podcast)
Program 16: Internet Archive