From “It Takes a Village” to It Takes a “Race”

Back in simpler times, when adversarial politics was considered the norm and not every representative in DC cowered behind the mantle of “bipartisanship,” the Republicans in the Reagan administration backed an agenda of vouchers, school prayer, and abolishing the department of education. President Reagan’s antipathy toward teachers unions and the bussing of school kids for racial integration was famous. And in 1983, his educator-bashing Secretary of Ed. Terrell Bell gave conservatives the perfect weapon to bash away at public schools for generations to come: a report called A Nation at Risk.

Back then, the Democrats actually mustered some opposition to the conservative onslaught. “Congress killed his major school choice initiatives, rejected several of his proposed cuts to school programs, and successfully fought off his plans to disband the Education Department.”

What rapidly ensued after the adversarial Reagan years was that the neoliberals descended on DC and the “Washington Consensus” became the governing paradigm.

As edu-nihilist Frederick Hess has pointed out, the Washington consensus on education took a unique form that would foretell not only the direction of the Democratic party but also reveal its idealistic undoing at the hands of the savvier Republican leadership.

According to Hess, the Washington Consensus on education was primarily guided by three principles: “First, that the nation’s foremost education objective should be closing racial and economic achievement gaps. Second, that excellent schools can overcome the challenges of poverty. And third, that external pressure and tough accountability are critical components of helping school systems improve.”

It was this Washington Consensus that resulted in the landmark No Child Left Behind legislation that still governs education policy today. The consensus, however, was flawed in a number of ways. To begin with, it was not the result of any bottom-up democratic process, but instead a matter of deal-making among elites in politics and business. And second, it wasn’t really a consensus.

For while the Republicans conceded almost nothing – the legislation was adored by big business and irritated only the local control advocates in the party – the Democrats conceded just about everyone in their base who was connected to public education. As most of the nations 3 million + public school teachers fumed at the mandates of NCLB, more and more parents began to experience how the mandates were disrupting their children’s education and degrading neighborhood schools.

So for Republicans, NCLB was a strategic tour de force. And while Democrats continued to sell this neoliberal snake oil under the mantle of “rescuing poor kids” (something that Republicans have never been much interested in), their political base degenerated further into conflict.

But much more than just a strategic blunder, the Democratic party’s leadership on education policy is symbolic of its complete and utter moral failure. Sticking educators and schools with the lone responsibility of overcoming poverty – again, something Republicans have never shown much interest in – is a cop-out of the first order. And erecting grand schemes of rewards and punishments for coercing educators without placing any responsibilities on more powerful sectors of our country, such as big corporations and wealthy individuals, is cowardly.

Can anyone witnessing the debacle of the Democratic party’s leadership on education be at all surprised at seeing it sell out in other policy areas, such as healthcare (individual mandates with no public option), the economic collapse (bail outs for big banks with anemic jobs programs), and the nation’s debt (tax breaks for millionaires while people making less than $20,000 get a tax increase).

Now what we see is the Democratic leadership still wedded to the evil spawn of NCLB which is Race to the Top. And we’re now being sold a bright and shiny “New Washington Consensus” that promises, in a nutshell, to allow local politicians to ease up on well-funded schools in the leafy suburbs while school children in dilapidated urban districts and abandoned rural tracts continue to feel the strong arm of our expanding plutocracy.

In the past month we’ve seen amazing turnouts of public outrage in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and elsewhere as the Democratic party’s leaders in DC continue to dither with the Republican on charades like Race to the Top. And now that the village is in flames, maybe the villagers are about to revolt.

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