-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 13, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------IBM loves privatization
Giuliani pushes corporate agenda on New York schools
By Lyn Neeley
New York
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's campaign against this city's public schools has led to the termination of Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew. Giuliani, who is expected to be the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate this year, is building his conservative base in the rest of the state at the expense of this city's children, especially from the Black, Latino and other oppressed working-class communities.
His weapon of choice is to push standardized tests and school vouchers, seen by progressive educators as a big step toward turning the school system over to private interests. One of the people Giuliani considered to replace Crew with Louis V. Gerstner Jr., the chair of IBM.
Giuliani says he wants someone skilled in administration and management who "could run a very, very complex business or multinational corporation."
The School Board voted four to three to fire Crew, who is Black, by not renewing his contract in June. Three of the board members are Giuliani allies and a fourth has been intensely lobbied by the mayor in recent months. The chair of the State Assembly's Education Committee said, "At this point it is ridiculous to assert that the mayor does not control the Board of Education. He always did."
Giuliani's attacks are not popular. A poll by the New York Daily News found that only "one in five surveyed agreed that the Board of Ed should be abolished and replaced with an education commissioner who reports to the mayor ... 63 percent said the chancellor should continue working for the board."
The rift between Crew and Giuliani developed last year when Crew failed to support Giuliani's plan to implement vouchers in New York. Vouchers would allow parents to use public education money to send their children to private schools.
Then, when Crew proposed an $11-billion school construction plan, Giuliani blocked the proposal by putting pressure on the school board to reject it.
Attack on teachers
On Dec.7, Edward Stancick, special investigator for New York City schools and a close ally of Giuliani, released a report that accused dozens of teachers and two principals with helping students cheat on standardized tests in reading and math.
This reporter works at a school where two of the accused teach. Many of our students come into junior high with third- and fourth-grade reading levels. Two years ago we were put on a list of failing schools because the standardized test scores of our eighth-grade class were too low.
In response, teachers began tutoring students in a mandatory after-school program. Through hard work and dedication by students, parents and teachers, our test scores improved and the school was removed from the list.
Because of the improvement, our school was "suspect." Investigators in black suits began appearing at the homes of students and teachers, hounding them with intimidating questions about tests that had taken place two years earlier. Two teachers were suspended. One of them was fired.
Union charges fraud
United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said the findings were exaggerated and unfair--motivated by an attack on Rudy Crew while his future was being decided. Weingarten said some of the cases were "clear instances of conspiracy and fraud. ... The children's allegations make up the body of the report and the denials [by teachers] were buried in the footnotes."
Theodore Sizer, a former Dean of Education at Harvard Graduate School, said, "Teachers are angry about forcing kids to take tests that reasonable people find stupid, and that the teachers don't take very seriously."
Teachers are being pushed to "teach to the test," narrowing the curriculum and emphasizing memorization over critical thinking. The tests often determine whether a student graduates from high school. By the end of the next school year, 49 states will be forced to adopt these standards and 27 states will require students to pass high-stakes tests in order to be promoted or to graduate.
City schools shorted on funds
New York's schools do have real problems. Lack of funds at a time of unparalleled prosperity on Wall Street is one of them.
Crew backed a suit against Gov. George Pataki and the State Legislature accusing them of withholding state aid for New York City schools. The city now receives 35.5 percent of total state education aid but educates 38 percent of the state's public school children.
In what lawyers for the plaintiffs, a coalition of advocacy groups called the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, called an obvious attempt to justify the withholding of funds, Pataki released a report on Dec. 13 accusing city schools of attempting to get more state aid by inflating their attendance figures.
Crew called the report a "political hack job" and a "flimsy counterfeit report" by a governor who wanted to hide the fact that he had not furnished enough state aid. He said Pataki was trying to "run me out of here." Pataki has recently joined Giuliani's senate campaign.
Corporate heads dictate
education policyGiuliani's policies on public education coincide with the Third National Education Summit held in October at the national headquarters of IBM. President Bill Clinton, 24 governors, and 33 corporate heads attended the summit, in addition to state superintendents and education commissioners, to discuss school reform and set standards. Absent were any teachers or principals.
The media was barred from discussion groups and allowed to ask questions only under tightly controlled circumstances. They were told what corporate leaders wanted them to hear.
The summit was hosted by the same IBM executive, Louis V. Gerstner Jr., who is being courted by Giuliani to replace Crew as schools chancellor.
Progressive educators oppose private education and standardized tests because they drive the wedge deeper between students from wealthier, educated families and those from low-income families.
Standard tests vs. critical thinking
Raising scores is completely different from helping students to learn. In her coverage of the summit (Rethinking Schools, Winter 1999/2000), Barbara Minor wrote: "Governors and corporate leaders, aided by conservative think tanks, took over the standards movement and transformed it into a top-down process that establishes an official version of knowledge and sets back efforts to forge a multicultural vision, in the process valuing discrete facts, memorization, and 'basics' over critical thinking and in-depth understanding.
"Throughout the summit," Minor said, "there was the sense that if standards-based reform doesn't work, then vouchers will jump to the top of the agenda in education reform. There was no talk of funding equity or adequate resources. No mention of how the educators are to fulfill this responsibility without additional resources and reforms such as smaller classes."
The main topic at the summit was a system of "rewards and consequences" with an emphasis on consequences for teachers, students and schools based on standardized test scores. Funding for professional development will be linked to teaching the new standards. These policies will decrease funding for the students who need it the most and subvert everyone's right to a decent public education.
A few days after the summit, George W. Bush said that as president he would "require states to test students every year from the third through eighth grade as a condition for federal aid." States that showed progress on test scores would receive bonuses from a $100 million Achievement in Education fund and states that did not show progress would lose 5 percent of their federal grants. Bush advocates vouchers for schools that fail on standardized tests.
Giuliani has already instituted merit pay programs in two school districts in Brooklyn for teachers and principals in schools where test scores improve. In January he proposed an experimental $12-million school-voucher program.
These measures are meant to phase out public schools in poor neighborhoods, not help them. They go along with deep class bias and arguments that the poor needn't get a decent education because all they're good for is menial work--the racist and reactionary thinking behind such books as "The Bell Curve."
As biologist Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in his book "The Mismeasure of Man," a "resurgence of biological determinism correlates with episodes of political retrenchment, particularly with campaigns for reduced government spending on social programs. ...
"The publication of 'The Bell Curve' coincided exactly with the election of Newt Gingrich's congress. Slash every program of social services for people in genuine need. ... Balance the budget and provide tax relief for the wealthy." And when students start failing exams, blame it on "the laws of nature."
Giuliani may find out that there's another law of nature: Push people to the extreme and they will fight back. New York's students and workers can teach the mayor a thing or two.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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