Draft standards released by Common Core State Standards Initiative

The draft standards by CCSSI have been released for public comment. Located here.


The press release states that "The NGA Center and CCSSO are encouraging those interested in the standards to provide feedback, which must be supported by research and evidence, by October 21 at www.corestandards.org."

So feedback must be supported by "research and evidence". Whatever that means.

means of transmission

EDUCATION trends have three means of transmission, all invisible to the public: the sale of textbooks and other instructional materials, teaching in schools of education, and teacher-training seminars conducted during the paid noninstructional days that are provided in teachers' contracts. As superintendent in California, [Bill] Honig realized that he couldn't directly affect what was taught in schools of education, because they are independent of the state board of education, and so if he wanted to have any real influence over what went on in public-school classrooms, the best means at hand were textbooks and seminars. He moved aggressively to put his people in charge both of setting up California's eight annual "staff development" days for teachers and of writing state subject-matter "frameworks," which form the basis for textbook orders.

The Reading Wars by Nicholas Lemann

Atlantic Monthly November 1997

Thus was born the California Subject Matter Project. Ed headed the History Social Science Project; Phil Daro, currently a member of the mathematics Work Group for the Common Core national standards effort, was in charge of the Mathematics Project.

The Subject Matter Projects gave teachers professional development in the form of seminars taught by disciplinary specialists. History teachers took seminars given by history professors, not consultants. Ed says today that, at the time, he had no idea how radical Honig's concept was.

Me, neither.

Core Knowledge: Voluntary National Standards Dead on Arrival

I've just gotten the Core Knowledge post re: the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers standards from Robert Pondiscio:

Written By: Robert Pondiscio Blogger
23-7-09
Categorized in: Education

A draft of the newly developed common core state standards purports to offer “sufficient guidance and clarity so that they are teachable, learnable and measurable,” however the ELA guidelines offer almost no specific content and little that would be of use to teachers in planning lessons–or parents in understanding what their child is expected to know.

Copies of the draft, an effort spearheaded by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA) have begun circulating among reviewers. A copy found its way to me without any restrictions on its use or circulation. I have posted the draft document here.

The draft insists that the voluntary standards be “coherent” but defines coherence to mean they “should convey a unified vision of the big ideas and supporting concepts within a discipline and reflect a progression of learning that is meaningful and appropriate.” Framed as a series of benchmarks students must reach “to be college and career ready,” the draft enumerates standards such as the ability to “determine what text says explicitly and use evidence within text to infer what is implied by or follows logically from the text.”

To put this as blandly as possible, this is neither a revelatory insight nor a meaningful standard. Educators hoping for guidance on what particular texts are expected to be taught, or how to get students to reach the bland and obvious standards will be disappointed. On specific “texts” the draft says merely:

The literary and informational texts chosen should be rich in content….This includes texts that have broad resonance and are referred to and quoted often, such as influential political documents, foundational literary works, and seminal historical and scientific texts.

“At first glance, these language standards are, despite the brave descriptors, very similar to the dysfunctional state standards already in place,” notes Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, Jr. “Like most state standards, they naively take a formalistic approach to language ability. They assume that the ability to understand literary and informational language is chiefly a how–to skill, whereas it is chiefly a topic-dependent skill that varies with specific topic familiarity.”

A sample scientific text on covalent bonds in the draft document, Hirsch notes, is a “a good illustration of this general point. Will it be more useful for understanding such texts to spend class time teaching some will-o-the-wisp language proficiency or to impart a good general education in science and the humanities?

“One begins to despair,” Hirsch concludes.

Speaking as a parent who has had to enroll her son in a Jesuit high school to provide him a liberal education, I do not want to hear that E.D. Hirsch is beginning to despair.

Disciplinary specialists, of whom E.D. Hirsch is one, need to be writing these standards.

too much knowledge

Comment on Curriculum Matters:

My problem with any of these standards is that they are too focused on knowledge learned rather than basic learning process skills. Learning these 100 things about algebra or these 100 things about American history is not the point and just forces kids to learn a bunch of stuff that they may not be interested in, or that prevents them from learning other stuff they might be interested in.

Meanwhile Core Knowledge has apparently called the draft "Dead on Arrival," though you can't read the post because the Core Knowledge blog is down.

I'm taking my cues from E.D. Hirsch.

stakeholders

To the Editor:

Your June 17, 2009, article on national standards discusses the virtual exclusion so far of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the International Reading Association from the Common Core State Standards Initiative. But the exclusion of other key stakeholders also must be addressed.

First is the exclusion of authentic subject-matter groups from the “Common Core” decisionmaking process that determines what is in the final document. Anyone proposing to create mathematics and English-language-arts standards must enlist and pay heed to the expertise of true subject-area experts. Members of the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, appropriate engineering societies, and the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics should be allowed to provide input.

In addition to being true experts in their fields, college and university professors are in the best position to inform standards-writing committees about what high school graduates need to know and be able to do for success in credit-bearing college-level courses. It is well documented that community colleges nationwide have freshman remediation rates of more than 70 percent in math and English. Clearly, the community college stakeholders must have a seat at the standards-writing table.

Tax-paying parents are another important stakeholder group absent from the Common Core project. Yet the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that children receive a proper education rests with them. It is they who must closely monitor the success of students and schools, and it is they who must pay the price—in dollars and in anguish—when inadequate standards leave children ill-prepared for college or the workplace. Dozens of grassroots parent groups have sprung up in the past decade to advocate for improvements in mathematics education in the public schools. Our group, the United States Coalition for World Class Math, is just one of these.

Before mathematics standards for K-12 are finalized, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers should make room at the table for one of the most important education constituencies in the country: the parents of children in our public schools.

Amy Flax

Westfield, N.J.

Jill Gladstone

Bridgewater, N.J.

Sarah-Kate Maskin

Ridgewood, N.J.

Renata Pestic

Oradell, N.J.

Timotha Trigg

Chadds Ford, Pa.

The writers are co-founders of the United States Coalition for World Class Math.

Vol. 28, Issue 36, Pages 26-27

CO Coalition for World Class Math
CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

Education Week coverage:
6.30.2009 Parents Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
7.1.2009 Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?
7.14.2009 ‘Common Core’ Initiative: Who’ll Make Decisions?
7.30.2009 Transparency of Common-Standards Process at Issue

1.12.2007 how politics work

Colorado Coalition for World Class math

CO Coalition for World Class Math

CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

who made the list

Curriculum Matters links to the list of people writing the Common Core Standards.

I don't see any parent reps.


CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

time to put the public back in public schools

National Coalition Presents "Design Principles for K-12 Mathematics Standards and Assessments" and Seeks Seat at National Standards Writing Table

The United States Coalition for World Class Math, a new non-partisan organization of concerned parents collaborating with professional mathematicians, educators, and others to promote improvements in K-12 mathematics education, has just issued its "Design Principles for K-12 Mathematics Standards and Assessments." It is also asking to be included in the decision-making process for the national mathematics standards currently being developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers in concert with several other educational organizations.

"Extraordinary numbers of grassroots groups have formed in recent years to learn more about current issues in mathematics education and to promote improvements in K-12 mathematics curricula," says Coalition co-founder Timotha Trigg. "Many parents believe there is already a crisis in mathematics education and fear that poor standards, if adopted by states on a national scale, would make the situation even worse."

For example, the most recent Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) found that only 6% of U.S. eighth grade students perform at the advanced level in mathematics, whereas 40 - 45% of eighth graders in top-performing countries reach this level. The poor performance of U.S. students on these and other state, national, and international assessments has not only spurred interest in creating national mathematics standards, it has also motivated many parent groups to unite under a single banner and to design a document setting forth their own principles for K-12 mathematics standards and assessments.

Jill Gladstone, who helped to spearhead the Coalition, states, "This document is intended to help inform the Common Core State Standards Initiative, the 46-state effort that will result in K-12 mathematics standards and assessments for public school students in participating states." Key points of the Coalition's Design Principles, found at United States Coalition for World Class Math, include:

Top-rated mathematics standards (MA, IN, and CA) should be used as a model; University mathematicians must play a key role in establishing priorities and ensuring mathematical content is appropriate and clear in both standards and assessments; and The findings and recommendations of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, which reviewed more than 16,000 research studies, must be followed.

Gladstone adds, "Our website is generating a tremendous amount of interest nationwide. Each week, at least one new state chapter is being formed by parents who are counting on us to make their voices heard. These parents have earned a seat at the decision-making table as a core of common mathematics standards and assessments is constructed. We look forward to participating as a full partner in the effort to create world class mathematics standards and assessments for our children."

Contact Information:
Jill Gladstone 908-672-2070
Timotha Trigg 610-388-6220
E-Mail: USWCmath @ yahoo.com
Website: www.usworldclassmath.org

CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

United States for World Class Math

Just in: a website for people like us who want a seat at the table when it comes to national math standards:

United States Coalition for World Class Math

Check out their Design Principles for K-12 Mathematics Standards:

1. All students should be expected to master foundational concepts and skills – especially in arithmetic – that are prerequisite to an authentic Algebra I course in a logical progression from grade to grade in the elementary and middle school years. The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) should be the guiding document describing appropriate mathematical content.

2. The K-7 standards should be designed to prepare as many students as possible for an authentic Algebra I course in Grade 8. K-7 standards should be based on the "Critical Foundations of Algebra" described on pages 17-19 of the NMAP’s Final Report. Standards for authentic Algebra I and Algebra II courses should be based on "The Major Topics of School Algebra" described on pages 15-16 of the NMAP’s Final Report.

3. Standards-based alternatives could be written for less prepared students and alternate paths after algebra and geometry for high school students, depending on student achievement, interests, and career goals. For example:

a. The standards document could outline the possibility of a two-year course spanning Grade 7 and Grade 8 based on Grade 7 standards for students who, at the end of Grade 6, are judged to need more time to master foundational concepts and skills for Algebra I.

b. The standards document could outline a two-year course spanning Grade 8 and Grade 9 based on authentic Algebra I standards for students completing Grade 7 who are judged to need two full years to master Algebra I standards.

4. As emphasized by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, "a focused, coherent progression of mathematics learning, with an emphasis on proficiency with key topics, should become the norm in elementary and middle school mathematics curricula. Any approach that continually revisits topics year after year without closure is to be avoided." Placement of the standards should reflect the grade level at which mastery is expected, and standards should not be repeated from year to year.

a. The sequence of the standards should be logical and hierarchical, following the structure of mathematics itself and should be modeled after the strong standards in California, Indiana, and Massachusetts.

b. "Benchmarks for the Critical Foundations" (pages 19-20 in the National Mathematics Advisory Panel’s Final Report) and recommendations from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ Curriculum Focal Points should be used for grade level placement.

c. Concepts and skills, once mastered, should be used in subsequent years with a minimum of review.

5. In order to focus on building solid foundations for the more advanced mathematics – including algebra – that occurs in Grades 8-12, extraneous topics including aspects of geometry such as tessellations, nets, statistical approaches to geometric properties, much of data analysis, probability and statistics, and non-algebraic concepts such as pattern recognition should not be present in the K-7 standards.

6. In Grades K-7, the distribution of content by strand should be stated explicitly as percentages at each grade level and should change as students move up through the grades.

a. Early grades should concentrate on the arithmetic of whole numbers and measurement, with a limited amount of geometry and graphing. Certain aspects of algebra, as well as preparation for algebra, should be present from the earliest grades, as is the case with the California and Massachusetts standards.

b. Students should be expected to acquire automatic recall of basic number facts at least to 10 x 10 and 10 + 10.

c. Students should be expected to understand and use the standard algorithms of whole-number arithmetic in the early elementary grades (i.e., addition, subtraction, multiplication, and long division).

d. Students should be expected to understand and use the standard definitions for operations with fractions in conjunction with the standard algorithms of whole number arithmetic to compute sums, differences, products and quotients of fractions, including fractions expressed as decimals and percents.

e. The algebra strand gains emphasis in the middle grades, focusing on the content specified by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel.

7. The organization of the standards should change at Grade 8.

a. In grades K-7, standards should include multiple strands of mathematics, with their relative weight appropriately adjusted through the grades.

b. For algebra and beyond, standards should be given for a single-subject course sequence (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-calculus, etc.) and their components re-ordered for alternative integrated mathematics courses. The standards for the Geometry course should require students to do proofs and to understand postulates, theorems and corollaries.

8. Mathematical problems should have mathematical answers.

a. In general, students should learn techniques for problem solving that can be applied to many contexts. Problems should be contextualized in the "real world" only when the context is sensible and relevant and contributes to an understanding of the mathematics in the problem.

b. Standards documents should include example problems. The level of difficulty of these problems should reflect mathematical complexity rather than non-mathematical issues.

9. K-12 math standards should meet the criteria specified by the American Federation of Teachers. They should be:

a. Clear and specific enough to provide the basis for a common core curriculum.
b. Rooted in the content of mathematics.
c. Clear and explicit about the content and the complexity students are to learn.
d. Measurable and objective.
e. Comparable in rigor to the standards of A+ countries, with grade-level specificity.

10. Standards documents should appropriately emphasize the attainment of procedural fluency. Students must be competent in performing all K-7 tasks without using a calculator.

11. Standards documents should only address mathematical content; language pertaining to pedagogy should be excluded.

12. As emphasized by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, mathematicians should be included in greater numbers, along with mathematics educators, mathematics education researchers, curriculum specialists, classroom teachers, and the general public, in the standard-setting process and in the review and design of mathematical test items for state, NAEP, and commercial tests.


CO Coalition for World Class Math
CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

Our Country Deserves Better Than This!

From Jay P. Greene's Blog - Sandra Stotsky tells us what’s what:

“If another country wanted other countries to respect its educational system and the reforms it was trying to make, who would it choose to lead such an important professional project as the development of its national standards in mathematics and in the language of its educational system itself? In any other country in the world, one would expect a distinguished mathematician at the college level to be asked to chair the mathematics standards-writing committee–someone who commands the respect of the mathematics profession (and obviously is an expert on mathematics). For the language standards-writing committee, one would likewise expect an eminent scholar in a college-level department–someone whose command of the language and understanding of the texts that inform the development of this language could not be questioned. If the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers had thought about national pride (and national need) as well as academic/educational expertise, then all of us would respect the Common Core Initiative and look forward with eagerness to the drafts the NGA and CCSSO have promised to make public in July.

These two organizations could have followed, for example, the exemplary procedures followed by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, on which I had the privilege to serve. The Panel was chaired by the former president of one of the major universities in the country, all Panel members were identified at the outset, their qualifications were made known to the pubic, their procedures were open to the public and taped as well, and the final product was hammered out in public, after dozens of reviewers provided critical comments.

But instead of choosing nationally known scholars to chair and staff these committees–to assure us of the integrity and quality of the product–the NGA and the CCSSO have, for reasons best known to themselves, treated the initiative as a private game of their own. The NGA and the CCSSO haven’t even bothered to inform the public who is chairing these committees, who is on them, why they were chosen, what their credentials are, and why we should have any confidence whatsoever in what they come up with.

One person has announced on his own to the press and to a state department of education that he is chairing the mathematics standards-writing committee. He has not been contradicted by anyone at NGA or CCSSO, so we must assume he’s for real. It turns out he is an English major with no academic degrees in mathematics whatsoever. No one has yet announced on his/her own that he/she is chairing the English standards-writing committee. One wag has already wondered whether this person might be a mathematics major with no academic degrees in English. But it’s possible the sad joke in mathematics is not being repeated in English.

This country deserved better for a project of such national importance.”

Robert Pondiscio on 21st century skills

Send this to your local school board.

national standards: 1992 edition

History on Trial tells the story.

Ed was tangentially involved in the creation of the 1992 national history standards, which are now used by New York state and receive a grade of "A" from the Fordham Foundation. The entire undertaking was a political fiasco, and having taken a look at Chester Finn's recent description of the standards I have no reason to think things would be different today.

Here is Finn, writing in Troublemaker:

...the quest for standards was instead weakened by the credulous expectation that self-interested experts, mostly free from the discipline of consumers, parents, practicing teachers, and policymakers--and sometimes free from leading university scholars in their own fields--could successfully distill from their own cherished subjects the essential skills and knowledge that kids should learn in school, and could do so while (a) avoiding political correctness, (b) sparing schools from the savage internecine disputes within the field, and (c) producing a manageable document of essential curricular guidance rather than a kitchen-sink tome with the heft of the Los Angeles phone directory.

The dismaying results ranged from incoherent blather (English) to left-leaning political correctness (history) to immense, encyclopedic treatments (geography) that placed the authors' discipline at the center of the intellectual universe and made everything else revolve around it. The U.S. Senate voted 99-1 to condemn the history standards, and an early draft of the English standards was so vapid that Clinton's Education Department cut off further funding.

Troublemaker by Chester E. Finn
p 173

It's always worse than you think.^*

Chester Finn is one of the few policy types who has championed liberal education. Yet here we see him dismissing major historians as "self-interested experts" who require the "discipline" of consumers, parents, practicing teachers, and policymakers to produce an acceptable set of history standards.

David Klein got the same treatment.

Worse yet, Finn's glancing mention of the 99-1 vote is obnoxious. The Senate did not vote 99-1 to "condemn" the standards. The Senate voted 99-1 on a bill concerning unfunded mandates to which an amendment condemning the standards had been attached.

Here's Gary Nash:

To well-informed observers in the Senate gallery, it was obvious the action had been hasty and purely procedural. The Senate had held no hearings on the history standards; the Subcommittee on Education, Arts, and Humanities had taken no action; and not one of the teachers and scholars who had produced the guidelines had been consulted. It was also apparent that most of the senators voted on the resolution without having opened a copy of the documents at issue. Patty Murray, Gorton's Senate colleague from Washington, admitted that she voted for the resolution without ever having seen the standarsd "in order to move the debate back to the unfunded mandates bill that was on the floor at the time."

[snip]

Less than two weeks after the Senate passed the resolution, it voted to strip its Unfunded Mandates Bill of all extraneous provisions, including the resolution disapproving the history standards. Later the House took up the bill but neer introduced the history standards issue at all. Nevertheless, a chill wind blew through the NCHS office in Los Angeles. The world's most powerful deliberative body had intervened in support of the most fervent critics of the standards to tell the nation's teachers and academic historians that its guidelines for schools had been written irresponsibly and malevolently.

p. 235-236

There you have it: how politics work. The Senate voted 99-1, then took it back, but the damage was done and that's the point.

99-1!

Those were some bad standards!

Nearly 20 years later Chester Finn, champion of quality, can roll out this astonishing number as proof that you don't want historians in charge of history, geographers in charge of geography, or mathematicians in charge of math.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Foundation he leads bestows a grade of 'A' upon these self-same standards and no one's the wiser.

The fact is: parents and college professors cut no ice with anyone, including most of the folks advocating on our behalf.

So I'm not going to be signing on for national standards.

I'm giving Gary the last word:

The standards have been used extensively across the country, and for eight years I have not received a single criticism of the revised volume.
Lynne Cheney's Attack on the History Standards, 10 Years Later

Case in point.

David Klein on IB and AP
Chester Finn on curricular gold
Gary Nash: Reflections on the National History Standards
Lynne Cheney's Attack on the History Standards, 10 years Later
History on Trial Chapter One
History on Trial (Harvard Education Letter)
Whose History? by Linda Symcox

the standards:
National Standards for History Basic Edition
National Center for History in the Schools UCLA
ISBN 09633218-4-6
National Standards for United States History Grades 5-12 Expanded Edition
National Center for History in the Schools UCLA
ISBN: 09633218-1-1
National Standards for World History Grades 5-12 Expanded Edition
National Center for History in the Schools UCLA
ISBN: 0-9633218-2-X

^* family motto

Robert P & Paul B on national standards

Robert:

At the risk of oversimplifying, I think it's possible to eat our cake and have it too. Here's how: national standards (content standards, please) ought to represent a statement of what we expect our kids to learn and know in school. What if we married those standards to national assessments, with reading comprehension tests tied to those content standards. In other words, the selections on the tests would be culled from the content standards, thus making it a test worth teaching to. Finally, tie federal funding to states adopting the standards and tests with NO SANCTIONS WHATSOEVER based on performance. Thus the federal role is limited to spreading sunshine--a pure apples-to-apples comparison among states, districts and schools. If everyone is taking the same test, it'll be pretty clear who is performing well and not, and up to states and districts to improve their performance. If you're serious about "decentralizing down to a few million Darwinian enclaves" as you put it, then the only way to credibly gauge performance and unlock what works is if everyone is shooting for the same target.

Paul H:

Standards don't stand in isolation to the rest of the Gordian knot. The way they're written can drive whether or not your curriculum spirals. They can drive pedagogy, phonics vs. sight words, for example. They can drive calculator usage, or not. Whosoever shall write the standards, shall tie the rest of the knot.

These things drive text book selection, which is driven by the ed schools and professional organizations with skin in the game. Don't forget the publishers and consultant community. Lots and lots of players converge on standards.

I would pose another question, perhaps more thought provoking... Why should the feds give a rats patootie (is patootie a word?)how a school performs? OK, it's rhetorical! They care because they've got their $$$ nose in the tent.

Why is their nose in the tent? It's not a constitutional mandate is it? I think the only people that should care at all are the parents. The objective measure (over time) is; are the graduates successful in their post graduate pursuits? This is far more important than a contrived test.

Until parents own the measurement, and take responsibility for the cost by paying for and having the freedom to not pay if the measurement flops, the camel wins every time.

By advocating for, and accepting federal or state money, schools and parents are making a pact with the devil. They are allowing a convergence of interests (not necessarily aligned with their own) to drive their children's future.

I guess I'm just not convinced that we're collectively smart enough to write a 'standard' that fits millions of kids to a tee.

Robert:

Point taken. Bad standards are worse than none. But parental interest is a strong reason to support nationalized standards and assessments. As a parent, it's impossible to know whether your child's school is terrific, atrocious or somewhere in the middle unless it's measured by the same yardstick as all the others.

My favorite statement re: parents comes from Joe Williams, who points out that parents have the best odds of making the right educational decisions for their own children.

I agree with Joe, and I believe that you could demonstrate historically that parents as a group have systematically been right where everyone else was wrong.

national standards redux

I've left a comment on the Flypaper post re: Randi Weingarten's op ed promoting national standards.

Weingarten thinks we ought to convene a "broad-based group" to "take the best academic standards and make them available as a national model."

All well and good; we've heard it before. Personally, I have no interest in the views of broad-based groups that aren't broad-based enough to include parents and taxpayers.

If you've time to weigh in at the Flypaper, that would probably be a good idea.


parents need a union
how to change the system (Moses on Caro)
Mary D: No Child Left Behind observations and reflections

parents need a union

We do.

Well, maybe we don't, but we need a lobbying group, that's for sure. Like AARP.

A while back Liz Ditz posted the classic observation about the difference between a group of parents with a concern (an organization) and just one parent with the same concern (a lunatic),^* and I think that's the essence of politics.

Competing interest groups are what politics is about.

Remember Robert Caro on Robert Moses?

[I]n local politics the various "actors" - banks, governments, unions, political machines, and so on - typically have a converging interest in extracting more money from taxpayers to use as they see fit and to manage their relationships with one another.

In the case of Robert Moses, there were 5 Actors: Moses, the banks, the labor unions, construction companies, and the Democratic machine.

Moses wanted to build parks, highways, and bridges; banks wanted deposits of funds to pay for parks, highways, and bridges; construction companies and unions wanted contracts to build parks, highways, and bridges; the Democratic machine wanted jobs on Moses' parks, highways, and bridge projects to dispense to members of the Party. (Moses was himself a Republican.)

Taxpayers weren't asked whether they wanted or needed all of these things; in some cases the projects Moses undertook were not only unwanted by voters but were actively opposed.

These entities—Moses, the banks, the unions, the construction companies, and the Democratic machine—weren’t the same entity; they had the potential for conflict. What prevented conflict – what kept operations smooth and conflict-free – was money.

Taxpayer money.

The people who were footing the bill were the one entity that did not have a voice.

Same thing in schools. Parents don't have a voice; ditto taxpayers. A couple of minutes ago I tried to log onto edline to get the agenda for the school board meeting tonight, and it turns out I can't log on because all of my kids have changed schools, so I have to get a new activation code. That's the rule.

Which, of course, raises the issue of how taxpayers who don't have kids in the schools get hold of public documents....and the answer is that while I'm sure they can, because I remember one of the principals telling me they could, it's not easy.

I've been thinking about this in light of the ferment in the Democratic Party, where the teacher's union looks to be no longer allied -- or not so closely allied -- with civil rights groups.

That's a good thing as far as I'm concerned, but you could disband the unions tomorrow and parents & taxpayers would have no more influence over public education than we do now. Given the fact that there are numerous cases in which union interests coincide with student and parent interests, we'd probably have less.

Here's Nicholas Lemann on Arthur Bentley's book, The Process of Government:

[Bentley argued that] all politics and all government are the result of the activities of groups. Any other attempt to explain politics and government is doomed to failure. It was, in his day as in ours, a wildly contrarian position. Bentley was writing “The Process of Government” at the height of the Progressive Era, when educated, prosperous, high-minded people believed overwhelmingly in “reform” and “good government,” and took interest groups to be the enemy of these goals. The more populist Progressives liked having the people as a whole decide things by direct vote; the more élitist Progressives wanted to give authority to experts. But Bentley, who seems to have shared the Progressives’ goal of using government to curb the power of big business, rejected such procedural tenets. In Chicago terms, Bentley was the rare Progressive intellectual who believed, in effect, that the machine had a more accurate understanding of how politics worked—how it always and necessarily worked—than the than the lakefront liberals did.

Bentley’s reputation soared in the years after the Second World War, and there’s a reason. His presentation of politics as a never-ending, small-bore struggle for advantage among constantly shifting coalitions of interest groups, which appalled the Progressives, was appealing in the wake of Hitler and Stalin. Big ideas about the collective good had come to seem scary—the prelude to mass murder. Bentley spent the last years of his life being honored. Students of American politics read “The Process of Government” alongside Tocqueville and the Federalist Papers.

But pluralism—the name for Bentley’s theory of politics—has always been good for starting an argument. The standard objections are that pluralism gives too little weight to the power of ideas and of social and economic forces, and that it leaves no room for morality. (Pluralism’s equivalent in foreign relations is realism, which strikes people who don’t like it as having the same flaws.) What if there actually is such a thing as a policy that’s right on the merits? Shouldn’t we find a way to make sure that it’s enacted, instead of having to trust in the messy workings of the political marketplace? If politics worked the way Bentley thought it did, wouldn’t the richer interest groups buy themselves disproportionate political power? To a lot of people, pluralism sounded like pessimism. It was during the nineteen-sixties, when reform was again in the air and impatience with traditional forms of politics was on the rise, that “The Process of Government” began to fall out of favor.

Bentley’s insights are almost entirely missing from political discussion these days. Only in the realm of foreign policy is it permissible even to use the word “interests” in a positive way, and then they must be vital national interests. In domestic policy, interest groups (and particularly those in that ill-defined but malign category known as special-interest groups) are always the bad guys. So are their representatives in Washington, the lobbyists. We’re inclined to think that the wheedling of interest groups—tree-hugging anti-free-traders, the Sugar Association, AIPAC—distorts politics. (For Bentley, the workings of interest lakefront liberals did. groups—in interaction with one another—constitute politics.) When a politician speaks at an interest group’s convention, we want to hear that he has somehow challenged or confronted the group, rather than “pandered” to it. Partisanship is bad, and “partisan bickering,” which by Bentley’s lights would count as a basic description of politics, is even worse. To an unusual extent, our Presidential candidates this year got where they are by presenting themselves as reformers, as champions of the transcendent public interest—as the enemies of Washington dealmaking-as-usual. For Bentley, there was no such thing as a transcendent public interest, and no politics that didn’t involve dealmaking, disguised or not.

[snip]

Bentley generally divides interest groups into two categories: organization groups (contemporary instances would include the American Association of Retired Persons, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the National Council of La Raza) and discussion, or “talk,” groups. Discussion groups encompass all those who claim to represent the public interest or a good cause— journalists, reformers, activists, humanitarians, policy analysts—and, in Bentley’s view, they matter far less than we think. He saw “an enormous overvaluation of the forms of activity which appear in words.” Besides, anyone who comes into public life claiming not to have an interest is either deluded or deceitful.

Conflict of Interests
by Nicholas Lemann
New Yorker

Parents don't have an organization group. Actually, it's worse than that; the group we do have -- the PTSA -- is an arm of the teachers' union. (Here is Chester Finn on the same subject.) And taxpayers are completely out of the loop.

As a direct result, you can read an article by Bill Ayers on education back to back with an article posted by the National Review on education and find that, when it comes to parents, the only difference between the two is that Bill Ayers has a better attitude.

e.g.:

National Review: The true teacher cannot simply be an instrument of the wishes of the student’s family. “Educating Helen Keller” 09/08 6:00 AM

Bill Ayers: Sherry Anderson grew up on a ranch in Wyoming and moved to the city with dreams of becoming a teacher. She was young—23 or so—white, and while she got along well with the other students in her cohort and was eager to learn, she also seemed extremely naïve about issues of race, culture, and urban schooling. Sherry put her foot in her mouth during seminars more times than we can recall—saying she was “surprised how clean” one of her student’s homes was...

At the National Review parents are deluded incompetents who treat teachers like the hired help (thanks guys!); in the land of Bill Ayers parents are neither here nor there, but at least their homes are clean.

Competing interests are a good thing.

Parents and taxpayers need to become an interest.

As opposed to the PITA people who pay the bills.

(Next question: would parents need more than one interest group?)

update 5.21.2009: The PTSA is not an "arm" of the teachers' union. It is historically allied with the teachers' union and is, today, constrained from commenting on union bargaining positions during collective bargaining:

We need to go back to 1920, when the PTA headquarters was actually in the NEA building in Washington, DC. At that time, there were very few teachers in the NEA because it was a professional organization run by school administrators. It was completely different from the union model they now have. But within the NEA in 1920 there was a department just for the PTA.

In the local school systems at that time--which numbered more than 100,000--the PTA acted like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval. Every superintendent wanted that seal of approval on his school and this encouraged the establishment of the PTAs. By the 1960s, the vast majority of schools in the country had PTA organizations.

The 1960s was also when the NEA decided to transform itself into a teacher union like its rival, the American Federation of Teachers. It was a time of great turmoil in the school systems, with many, many strikes for various and sundry reasons, with parents unsure of whether to side with the school administrators or the teachers.

Although the PTA had moved out of the NEA headquarters in 1953, there was still a very close relationship between them. Many teachers were leaders in the PTA, just as they are today. The NEA let it be known that if PTAs continued to support the school board during teacher strikes, the NEA would pull its teachers out and start a competing organization. The PTA was afraid of losing members, and so, in 1968, the PTA Board of Directors--not the membership--set a policy declaring that, in teacher strikes, the PTA would not oppose the teachers and the teachers’ union. This eliminated parental support for the administration.

Up to that point in time, administrators had made the majority of the decisions in dealing with school functions. But when the teacher union came in, union contracts affected not only the terms and conditions of the teachers but also other school operations parents were interested in, such as teacher assignments. Parents still are interested in these other issues, but local PTAs can no longer provide any support to parents who wish to challenge union positions. In fact, a few years ago at the NEA convention, NEA President Keith Geiger reminded the PTA that its locals were bound by PTA policy not to challenge the teacher union positions in collective bargaining.

Taking the Parent Out of the National PTA

^* I can no longer find this post, so if you can, let me know. 10.3.2008: got it