Thoughts

"You cannot complain if you do not vote." This is timely piece of rubbish to cite in the wake of the midterm election, for it is so often hurled around by those "politically engaged" individuals who seem to view the state and its mechanisms as some institution completely beholden to the will of "the people" (i.e. the majority vote), strong enough to withstand the influence of forces outside of this will that would otherwise steer its mechanisms to the pandering of interest groups and corporations. How blissful and naive this picture looks! But, of course, I do not expect you, dear reader, to rely on my agitation as the means for belief in this sentiment. So, instead, I'll show you how the implementation of Common Core has belied any sort of democratic practice while running full-steam ahead on the profits of capital, which is, as you know, "the governing power over labor and its products." In other words, I hope to briefly show that we educators are governed not by our elected officials, our "democracy," but by the rule of wealth, by plutocracy. 

In order to understand the depth of this sham, it will be prudent to review what the countenance of capital (i.e. Common Core) looks like to the public. Here is what is stated on Common Core's website apropos its development:

"The nation's governors and education commissioners, through their representative organizations, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), led the development of the Common Core State Standards and continue to lead the initiative. Teachers, parents, school administrators, and experts from across the country, together with state leaders, provided input into the development of the standards. The actual implementation of the Common Core, including how the standards are taught, the curriculum developed, and the materials used to support teachers as they help students reach the standards, is led entirely at the state and local levels. "

Let’s focus on the first part, the part where the NGA and CCSSO are discussed as “leading the development of CCSS.” Taking my cue both from Mercedes Schneider’s blog, deutsch29, (and don’t admonish me for a blog citation when I’m writing on a blog and without consulting my reference, which after reviewing I’m sure anybody will count as credible) and Alan Singer’s writing in the Huffington Post’s Education Op-Ed section, Schneider, as she focuses more on the implementation of the CCSS than on its merits (although those are laden in her writing, too), had this to say about the NGA’s hand in the development of CCSS: “…if one reviews this 2009 NGA news release on those principally involved in CCSS development, one views a listing of 29 individuals associated with Student Achievement Partners, ACT, College Board, and Achieve. In truth, only 2 out of 29 members are not affiliated with an education company (emphasis added)” This sentence is just one among many that help demystify the original and misleading CCSS language that compel one to believe that “the nation’s governors and education commissioners” acting through “their respective organizations” means that they acted solely through the NGA and CCSSO, when in reality these organizations are merely fronts for corporate think-tanks like the Student Achievement Partners, ACT, College Board, and Achieve. I mean, all one has to do is look at this NGA news release to realize that these “elected officials” have little else to do with the implementation of CCSS other than merely making announcements: “The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) today announced the names of the experts serving on the Common Core State Standards Development Work Group and Feedback Group and provided more detailed information on the college and career ready standards development process.”

            But citing this is as the only source of evidence against the praising of voting as the means to ensure democratic decisions is jumping the gun, for it is stating a point in time (July, 2009) that proceeded an initial juncture that, once it is shown, should really levels the charges of pro-voting idealists down to that of delusions and science-fiction. Singer’s piece also cites his college’s, Joy Resmotives, “How Common Core Became Education’s Biggest Bogeyman.” In it, Resmotives gets to the root of the corporate influence in the development of CCSS when she first chronicles the fastidiousness of the Kentucky chief of schools, Terry Holliday. During April of 2009, realizing that his state’s resources were not adequate to meet the demand of the legislature, who mandated that “he needed to write new learning standards that ensured students were more prepared for higher education or careers,” Holliday, with the NGA and CCSSO, thought up an idea: “Instead of states developing standards on their own, why not pool resources and work on the project together?” These resources, rather than being “pooled together” by states, were given by none other than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

            Resmotives describes the situation that led Gates into the mix as deriving from a startup that had been created during the good ol’ No Child Left Behind era. David Coleman and Jason Zimba’s Grow Network, which was responsible for assessing the results of NCLB tests to better guide teacher instruction, were instrumental in the develop of CCSS, for they had written a paper—that called for “math and science standards that were fewer, clearer, and higher”—for the Carnegie Foundation. The contents of which subsequently caught the eye of representatives of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who then “dropped as much as $75 million on what would become the Common Core.”

            I could continue, but I would merely be paraphrasing Resmotives’s piece. Now, I know, even university departments rely on the grants and fellowships of capital in order to continue their pursuits. The issue is not whether or not reliance on private capital ought to be discouraged in education; the problem is that the embryo of these initiatives starts well outside of the people who have to live with the standards: teachers, parents, and students. You could counter and argue that this initiative is rooted in the people, for the NGA is an association of governors, who are elected by the people. But it was shown that the NGA had merely been a front, a sort of façade that enlisted experts to do the bidding of the demos. And did I vote for these experts to bid on my behalf? And, more significantly, the fact that CCSS used “Teachers, parents, school administrators, and experts from across the country, together with state leaders, provided input into the development of the standards,” and that, as Resmotives remarks, “They [the CCSSO and NGA] analyzed 10,000 public comments pulled from a website they had set up and revised the standards yet again with that feedback in mind,” does not answer to the critic who sees this whole process not as a form of democracy, but one of asking for consensus. As soon as the question of standardization entered into the relationship between venture capitalist charity and the mechanisms of the state, Common Core was going to happen; it was just a matter time, money, and manipulation of the “opinion polls” to show us non-experts, us “common folk” (i.e. teachers) what we all thought of “our” law that “we” created; “public comments on a website” are nothing more than barometers measuring a degree of consent.