NOT SEEING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES OR THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD THEORY
Speech given at the CCTE conference March
30, 2007, San Jose, California
by Kathy Emery
The top CEOs in this country belong to a national organization called the Business Roundtable. I argue in my dissertation, in the book, which I have co-authored with Susan Ohanian, and in my article in this issue of TEQ, that not only is the Business Roundtable responsible for the idea of high stakes testing but it is also responsible for implementing standards based reform. After 1989, the Business Roundtable (BRT) created an interlocking network of organizations and has, for the last 18 years, steered the strategies of this network. The BRT
Why is it important to know this? One reason to know this is because it explains why Ted Kennedy and George Bush are both determined to ensure that NCLB will be reauthorized so it is aligned with the educational goals of the BRT. Both Democrats and Republicans depend on corporate money for their campaigns.
Knowing the relationship of the BRT to high-stakes testing can explain why the editorial pages of major newspapers speak with one voice when it comes to educational reform. A few large corporations own most of the newspapers.
The BRT's role can explain also why the leadership of the nation's teacher unions are playing hardball with those local chapters who are expressing opposition to the renewal of NCLB ? The union leadership doesn't want to threaten its access to the Democratic National Committee.
The big picture explains why the vast majority of teachers, students and parents are resigned to the new system as inevitable. They feel powerless when confronted by the scope and reach of high-stakes testing reform.
But the most important reason to know the big picture, to have good theory, is that it allows those who oppose high stakes testing to understand that it will take a social movement if we are ever to end the monopoly that the rich have over deciding the nation's educational policies and practices. By a social movement, I mean mobilizing people power over a long period of time. A march is not a movement (see February 13th blog entry.) A movement is a coalition of many grassroots or community based organizations acting together to effect fundamental change in the system. Necessarily, this must take place over many years. Only such a movement can counteract the control that the BRT has over the policy and practices of this nation and much of the world.
Having an accurate understanding of how the power structure in this country works allows one to predict that reasoned argument, presentation of the facts, and thoughtful framing of the issues cannot prevent corporate CEOs from pursuing their interests. Power only responds to power. This is why waiting for business leaders to eventually discover the errors of their ways will be a very long and fruitless wait. High stakes testing serves the interests of corporate America because it simultaneously creates a new tracking system for the new economy and legitimizes that tracking system in the eyes of the general public. The lock that corporate CEOs have on the political structure of this country will continue to make it increasingly impossible for teachers to teach, school board members to vote and parents to make decisions according to their consciences.
Only a social movement can break the political monopoly that CEOs have. Only in the context of a social movement will teachers, students and parents gain the kind of control over educational policy that will allow for other goals of education, besides sorting and socializing, to be pursued.
The bad news is that most people haven't a clue as to how social movements happen, especially academic types. The good news is that less than forty years ago, there was an amazingly successful social movement in this country. Today it is called the Civil Rights Movement, but at the time, it was called the Southern Freedom Movement. People from all over the nation went to the South and learned how to organize by participating in this movement. For example, Mario Savio went to Mississippi in 1964 and then returned to Berkeley with the kind of experiences that allowed him to help guide the Free Speech Movement. Chude Allen was a Mississippi Freedom School teacher and then went to NYC to help found the modern women's movement. The story is repeated for many of the leaders of the anti-war movement.
We need to go beyond calling for policy solutions in academic papers. We need to start calling for the kinds of organizing needed to overturn the new tracking system and replace it with an educational system that is democratically decided upon. Debbie Meier has offered us 6 alternative assumptions upon which to build such a system. Teacher educators can look to those among you who already have experience in organizing, like Duane Campbell, in order to understand what can be done to gain real control over your profession.
While there is no better education than that of learning by doing, we can still look to the Southern Freedom Movement for lessons to inform our theory building and organizing today. One of the most important organizing lessons that one can learn from studying fundamental social movements such as Abolitionism, Populism or the Southern Freedom movement is that everyday, regular people acting collectively make it happen. In other words, don't wait for a charismatic leader to emerge. Martin Luther King Jr. would not have had the opportunity to emerge as a leader if it weren't for the infrastructure and opportunities created by the Women's Political Council of Montgomery, Alabama.
Jo Ann Robinson was a founding member of the Women's Political Coucil and a teacher at Alabama State College. Those of you in the audience today who are interested in how to create a movement would do well to study what Jo Ann Robinson and the Women's Political Council did to create the infrastructure that made the Montgomery Bus Boycott successful, which in turn created the opportunity for King to emerge as a leader and founder of the SCLC. Leaders emerge out of movements, not the other way around. Don't take my word for it, read chapter ten in the Long Haul, Myles Horton's autobiography.
Another important lesson to take from the study of the Southern Freedom Movement is that without direct action, there is no social movement. Tonight, after dinner, I will be discussing that in detail, using a half hour documentary of the Nashville Sit Ins as a case study. Most people believe that policy necessarily becomes practice (although under George Bush, I think this assumption has taken a big hit). In any case, legal or policy action, however necessary, is not sufficient. Direct action is needed to ensure that socially just laws or policy are adopted but also needed to ensure that such policy is actually translated into practice. For example, in 1954, the Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional. But, it took ten years of direct action to translate such policy into practice. Similarly, the U.S. Inspector General has condemned the actions of the NCLB Reading First Panel as illegal. This, however, will not reverse the damage done by this Panel during the last five years unless there is political pressure put on the federal government by a large network of organizations.
Such a network does not yet exist, in part, because the leadership of NEA, AFT, ACORN, and PICO feel no pressure from the rank and file to create such a coalition. How such a coalition might be formed today can be seen by studying Freedom Summer. In 1964, the rank and file of the four major Civil Rights Organizations, SNCC, CORE, SCLC and NAACP worked together to break the back of segregation in the South in spite of the reluctance and even hostility by the leadership of each organization. It is worth studying the detailed history of Freedom Summer to understand how that happened.
To interpret what is happening today in education as privatization, commercialization or a destruction of the public school system is to miss what is really happening. It is important to know that the BRT has no interest in destroying public education and couldn't care less about vouchers and charters. Their interest is in producing more high tech workers than there are jobs available for them and legitimizing the tracking of low performing students into low paying, unskilled service jobs. If teachers understand this, then they know they must establish strong relationships with parents and support direct action by students, and that this has to be done in the context of building the next fundamental social movement.
When you talk to veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, they will tell you that they knew they were trying to do impossible. They will also tell you that they never felt more alive than when they were active in the movement. Cesar Chavez said: "When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So, it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of [people] we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life."