Given the origins of the historic Vermont Design for Education, a 1968 Vermont State Department of Education document guiding education that resulted from  policy makers in Montpelier asking local communities what they want for and from their schools, it is more than ironic   that these days politicos traveling under the banner of 'progressive' are determined to wrest the last crumb of public school policy and practice away from us locals.

The Vermont Design for Education focuses on the needs of individual learners and states explicitly in Tenet 5 that "Education should strive to maintain the individuality and orginality of the learners" declaring that "The school's function is to expand the differences between individuals and create a respect for those differences."

 It's no surprise that the Vermont Design for Education was erased from the Department of Education website years ago. Worse,  Governor Peter Shumlin seems intent on instituting a Jack Daniels education policy, that is, education policy based on his own exceptionalism.  In January at a Montpelier event titled Rolling Out the Vermont Blueprint to Close the Achievement Gap, he spoke of his own dyslexia, pronouncing that if he could succeed in school, anybody can.

There, Shumlin was front man for the evangelical science hawked by the keynote speaker, discredited Reading First architect Reid Lyon.

Elsewhere, educators thought Reid Lyon had been buried by the disaster of the U. S. Inspector General's report on the Reading First program mandated by No Child Left Behind and by the negative report issued by the U. S. Department of Education's own research arm. This research found that "The $1 billion-a-year Reading First program as had no measurable effect on students' reading comprehension. . . ."

But never mind, a press release tagged the Roll Out event as "a seminal initiative developed to help Vermont's struggling readers," and  after proclaiming that Vermont teachers don't know how to teach reading, Reid Lyon announced that "all poor kids" should get the reading method specified in his 32-page Power Point presentation.

Two months later, in March, Governor Shumpliin again offered a mandate for education. Following up a news conference where he advocated making Algebra, Geometry, and Algebra II requirements for a high school diploma, he made the same pitch  at a meeting of the State Board of Education. Shumlin spoke movingly of his own struggles with higher math, insisting, "If I could do it, anybody can."

As Prof. Steven Gross observed, this math requirement was the education solution proffered by the famous Committee of Ten report--in 1892.

Never mind that the prestigious Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce reports that less than 5% of Vermont jobs in 2018 will require this level of math training.  The Kellogg project tells us that the skills we need for the twenty-first century include  those found in the arts and social sciences, those that foster creativity, community, responsibility, team-work, and flexibility.

 Like many politicians, Shumlin refers to anecdotes from business executives who say they have jobs that go unfilled because of the lack of qualified people. Such anecdotes have reached  mythic levels. But, as the eminent MIT labor economist Frank Levy notes, the real shortage is in non-technical skills. There are three math and science qualified candidates for every job provided by U. S. businesses. While whining about training, our corporations are off-shoring jobs where engineers are bought for pennies on the dollar.

Thus, the Governor and Commissioner Vilaseca are pushing for an antiquated math plan that does not solve our jobs problem, alienates a substantial portion of our youth, generates a surplus of unhappy, unemployed youth with college debt,  and dictates what our local schools should teach all children in every grade.

Governor Shumlin’s account of his own education journey is truly inspiring, but universalizing a personal experience into  education policy by exceptionalism is not only foolish, it is dangerous, throwing a sizeable number of our students off a cliff.  

Our governor talks to other governors and to IBM executives. I recommend that he have a conversation with award-winning researcher David Berliner, co-author of the famous Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools.

 Addressing participants at the New DEEL Conference at Temple University in 2010, Berliner noted that  “Somewhere within a mile of this auditorium is a 90-year-old man who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and probably, as well, another 90-year-old who drinks half a bottle of Jack Daniels every day. These exceptions exist. But you do not want to use them to make health policy. You want to make policy based on the most likely outcomes you can expect."

Berliner pointed out that likewise, in education, it’s quite wonderful  when someone  manages to pull himself up by his bootstraps, but “that’s not an excuse for abandoning policies that might help poor kids do better in this world.”

For the sake of our children and our own future, we must not implement a Jack Daniels education policy. Let’s put  politics and exceptionalism on a back burner. The governor has very strong, idiosyncratic education views based on his own exceptional history.  These views, however well-intentioned as they may be, need the leavening effect of a diverse state board of education whose members bring experiences and knowledge from every corner of the state. Not only should we refuse Gov Shumlin’s call; we must reclaim our schools—take them back so they address the needs of children.  The place to start is with local boards of education.

Today’s educational crisis is not the failure of our local schools; it is twenty years of scrambling to cope with inept federal and state meddling.

How many adults first learned about moral complexity from the final chapter of Beverly Cleary’s Henry Huggins,when the dog Ribsy must choose between two equally kind masters?

Who, at any age, can read unmoved the last pages of Tarzan of the Apes when the rightful Lord Greystoke, deliberating sacrificing his own hope for happiness, quietly says, “My mother was an ape. . . I never knew who my father was.”

In her New York Times Magazine blog,[v] Ilene Silverman writes of her three favorite books as a teenager: The Chocolate War, Separate Peace, and My Darling My Hamburger. For the teen Silverman, these novels were filled with informational text, providing important information about the world.

Interviewed for the film Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and to Kill a Mockingbird, in which a range of people—from Roseanne Cash to Tom Brokow– talk about the important world knowledge gained from reading Harper Lee’s novel. Ph.D. Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo says, “Masterpieces tap into something essential to us—at the heart of who we are and how we love.” James Patterson says, “You’re suspecting something about Boo—which should tell you something about yourself.”

Of course David Coleman insists we’re supposed to convince students that nobody gives a shit about how they feel or their need to find out something about themselves.

Writing in The New Yorker, Louis Menand says[vi], “When I read a poem I relate it to all the other poems I have read. . . past poems condition my response to any new poem. And the really new poem conditions my response to all the poems that precede it. After “Prufrock,” the Inferno is, ever so slightly, a different poem. Thus text informs text backwards and forwards. Sarah Bakewell says the same thing in How To Live: A Life of Montaigne,[vii] insisting that readers approach Montaigne “from their private perspectives, contributing their own experience of life. . .  a two-person encounter between writer and reader.”

In his introduction to Poet’s Choice[viii], MacArthur Fellowship winner and award-winning poet Edward Hirsch  advises that biographical, literary, and historical info provides readers a context for their reading. The teacher decides which kind of information is most relevant for each work. The reader decides too. But in presenting his notion of a  model lesson for teaching Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter to a Birmingham Jail,”  David Coleman snidely rejects out of hand such  approaches as  providing any biographical, cultural, or historical context for the letter—just as he rejects reader response theory which focuses on the reader as an active agent in the work’s meaning. Instead, Coleman champions what amounts to New Criticism on steroids, insisting that the reader’s  sole focus must be  only on the words in  the text

Although  a multitude of expert readers  show that the emperor of the Common Core Standards is naked,  as long as such professional organizations as the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the International Reading Association (IRA) remain silent, David Coleman seems safe in  shouting his absurd declarations from the rooftops. Instead of offering any informed  resistance, NCTE and IRA are occupied with  figuring out how they can make money from embracing the Common Core—and staving off dissidents in their own ranks. Last year, NCTE resorted to technical  excuses for squashing a proposed resolution against the Common Core. But the resolution proposers are back:  See Resolution Sent to NCTE (http://susanohanian.org/show_yahoo.php?id=699).

Money Talks, Money Legislates, Money Delivers Classroom Lessons

The Common Core State Standards exist because the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wanted them. To help their aide-de-camps, the  president and the U. S. Secretary of Education, pretend that these are state and not national standards, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation  sent buckets of money to  the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers to act as sponsors.  More tons of money to the National PTA to spread the good word and so on. As I revealed in an article in Extra![ix] very few media have pointed to the money source. Of course very few media even bother to mention anything about the Common Core.

I’d like to introduce David Coleman, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan—and all the rest of the Standardistos– to Chris, who found handwriting very difficult but insisted on laboriously copying out  Beatrix Potter’s  Tale of Squirrel Nutkin in his notebook.  Every word. Dougie asked him, “Why are you doing this? Miz O gave us all our own copy of the book.” And Chris answered, “I know.  I just like the way the words feel.” This from a boy who entered third grade loudly complaining about how much he hated both reading and writing. This is the boy who ended the year exchanging letters with his favorite poet, Jack Prelutsky.  I’d like to introduce this motley school deform crew to Chris’  classmate Leslie, who contacted me 25 years later, to talk about the importance of Amelia Bedelia in her life.

This Common Core den of thieves who are stealing the literary rights of our students should read Arnold Lobel’s lovely little fable, “The Crocodile in the Bedroom.”[x] A crocodile who loved the neat and tidy rows of the flowers on the wallpaper in his bedroom was coaxed outside into the garden by his wife, who invited him to smell the roses and the lilies of the valley.  The crocodile couldn’t  stand the “terrible tangle” of freely growing flowers, and went to bed, preferring to stare at neat and tidy wallpaper. There, “he turned a very pale and sickly shade of green.”

With David Coleman as their spokesman out on the stump, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the U. S. Department of Education, acting in concert with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, prescribe a very pale, sickly shade of green future for our vibrant and deliciously messy classrooms.  Certainly, Lobel’s moral, Without a doubt, there is such a thing as too much order, applies even more to the classroom than it does to wallpaper. And letting our corporate school reformers steamroll our schools into a neat and tidy standardized product puts our children in great peril.

The US Department of Education's own data (Data Express) reveals that in 2008-09, 44.2% of students in US public schools were identified as low income. The Obama/Duncan education solution is to send in the scripts. The US Department of Education has just handed Success for All bucketfuls of money, as in $50 million--for an Investing in Education (i3) grant to expend in Title 1 Schools. This means schools on script  will more than double in the next five years.

This targets poor children, children, who have fewer books in their homes, less access to neighborhood libraries, children who need to be read to, need to be able to choose what they want to read. Children of affluence get book clubs; children of poverty get scripts. And more testing.  Success for All points out that its scripts are accompanied by "frequent assessment."

Meanwhile, in Ohio, Kim Dietrich and his colleagues have collected stacks of data showing that lead exposure causes permanent brain damage. The Cincinnati Lead Cohort Study is the longest-running study on lead exposure and development in the United States. Its findings reveal the devastation lead poisoning brings--from developmental impairment in preschoolers to links to anti-social behavior in teens and young adults. Arizona School Board Association Researcher Michael Martin has also done extensive research on this topic. See A Strange Ignorance: The Role of Lead Poisoning in Failing Schools.

But the US Department of Education's answer to poverty is to attack teachers. Joining with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is engaged in a systematic campaign to deprofessionalize teaching, announcing:

1)  teachers need scripts
2)  teacher Masters Degrees are useless--and maybe even harmful to children
3)  teacher experience after two years is of no value.

As Pulitzer Prize reporter Daniel Goldman has noted, "Today, the Gates Foundation and Education Secretary Duncan move in apparent lockstep" on an agenda  that is "an intellectual cousin of the Bush administration's 2002 No Child Left Behind law."

 In a Truthout commentary, Happy as a Hangman, Dec. 6,  2010, Chris Hedges directly addressed the point of the Obama/Duncan public schools policy:

The creation of a permanent, insecure and frightened underclass is the most effective weapon to thwart rebellion and resistance as our economy worsens. Huge pools of unemployed and underemployed blunt labor organizing, since any job, no matter how menial, is zealously coveted. As state and federal social welfare programs, especially in education, are gutted, we create a wider and wider gulf between the resources available to the tiny elite and the deprivation and suffering visited on our permanent underclass. Access to education, for example, is now largely defined by class. The middle class, taking on huge debt, desperately flees to private institutions to make sure their children have a chance to enter the managerial ranks of the corporate elite. And this is the idea. Public education, which, when it functions, gives opportunities to all citizens, hinders a system of corporate neofeudalism. Corporations are advancing, with Barack Obama's assistance, charter schools and educational services that are stripped down and designed to train classes for their appropriate vocations, which, if you’re poor means a future in the service sector. The eradication of teachers' unions, under way in states such as New Jersey, is a vital component in the dismantling of public education. Corporations know that good systems of public education are a hindrance to a rigid caste system. In corporate America everyone will be kept in his or her place. 

In  Death of the Liberal Class. Hedges observes, "Fear keeps us penned in like livestock." Today corporate politicos are going after public school teachers. Who will be next?

NOTE: I attended the meeting on the Vermont State Board of Education on August 17, 2010, where they unanimously voted to adopt the Common Core standards, promoted by U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and financed by the William and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

I was upset to find myself the only member of "the public" commenting on these standards at the morning session of the Board meeting, but this was because so few people in Vermont know about this radical change in our education policy. Certainly our media has published no information. It's odd that a couple divorcing has to publish public declarations about their debts but our State Board of Education has no obligation to inform the public about an impeding radical deformation of our education policy.

After submitting articles about the surrealistic quality of this Board of Education meeting and  receiving acknowledgment only from the bi-weekly Charlotte News, I posted the following at the Huffington Post, as well as on my education news and commentary website. It seems deplorable that:

•  our politically appointed State Board of Education shows more fealty to the federal government than to the needs of the children in our Vermont public schools.

• Our media feels no responsibility to inform the public about local education issues other than reporting sports scores.

Vermont State Board of Education Forsakes Independent Heritage and Says, "Let Bill Do It"

Huffington Post, September 1, 2010

Forget that cliché that Vermonters are independent, resourceful, and people who value the consensus of town meetings. Like the lemmings in other states, Vermonters just let Bill Gates take charge of education policy and practice in our state. With barely a whimper.

This radical deformation of Vermont education policy, which will change the education of every child in the state, has rated barely a notice in the press, with nobody pointing out that, as of August 17, 2010, the Common Core standards paid for and promoted by Bill Gates are a done deal -- with no public discussion.

This is in sharp contrast to what happened in 1968, when the State Department of Education issued a remarkable document, The Vermont Design for Education, which called on Vermont values and strengths in setting the course of education of Vermont children. The opening sentence set the tone:

Education in Vermont, if it is to move forward, must have a goal toward which to move, a basic philosophy which combines the best of what is known about learning, children, development, and human relations, with the unique and general needs and desires of Vermont communities.

Then, every town in Vermont was asked to hold meetings and talk about how they wanted their children educated. They wrote local plans. Now the Board of Education is saying, "Just do what Bill Gates wants."

Money carries a big stick.

During the "Public to be Heard" part of the August 17, 2010 Vermont State Department of Education meeting agenda, I was the only one in the audience and spoke very briefly of my disappointment that there had been no public discussion of these Common Core standards. There were two responses:

One board member disagreed, saying she'd been to a meeting in Philadelphia where the Common Core standards were discussed.

If that wasn't bizarre enough, another board member said, "We will be discussing the Common Core after we adopt it today."

The Board of Education meeting was late getting started. When I arrived the board was still at their "Networking Breakfast and Joint Discussion with Vermont Business Roundtable Education Working Group." Finally, we had the pledge, roll call, introductions, and such. Then, just 35 minutes after calling the meeting to order the board went into executive session. This meant the public had to leave the room. Department of Education employees were told, "We'll call you when we resume -- in about 45 minutes."

There was no mention of how "the public" would be informed, and so I hung around. Their executive session extended to an hour and 20 minutes. They opened the doors at 12:13PM and then adjourned for a catered lunch at 12:15PM. So I hung around some more. I didn't want to miss the vote on the Common Core standards. When it came, it was unanimous.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also financed The Common Core Curriculum Mapping Project, designed to plug in specific curriculum to align with the standards. They point out that the virtue of this plan (for which Gates paid $550,844) is that it's free. Experienced teachers will be hard pressed to find any other virtues. Here are some of their recommendations:

12th grade: Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith & Sufferings of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

11th grade: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

10th grade: short stories by Luis Bernardo Honwana (only available used for $29.68 and up) and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

9th grade: Preface to Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth

8th grade: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is recommended for "advanced readers." Others can read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.

I wonder whether members of the Vermont Board of Education will go to Philadelphia to discuss these reading lists for the Common Core standards to which they have pledged allegiance or whether they might consider launching discussion here in Vermont.

In mid-May, I attended two public meetings: Bernie Sanders called a Town Meeting in Burlington to hear public concerns about federal education policy and Department of Homeland Security/Customs & Border Protection Agency held a meeting in Franklin on why the Army Corps of Engineers needed to seize a farmer’s land.

Both meetings centered on federal usurpation of local control. The Department of Homeland Security insisted that they need to build a new border station at the tiny Vermont crossing with Quebec known as Morses Line. The first plan was to replace the building, a small, plain brick structure built as a public works project during the Depression and standing on ½ acre, with a $15 million facility spreading out over ten acres. Federal officials tried to wear out the packed town hall with minutiae. About an hour into the convoluted explanation of why they needed to expand the border facility, the word “terrorism” was invoked.

The equivalent terminology from the U. S. Department of Education, under the leadership of Arne Duncan is "turnaround." In the name of this reform, the federal government insists that the principal of the Integrated Arts Academy at H. O. Wheeler Elementary School in Burlington's Old North End must be ousted because student test scores aren't high enough to satisfy the U. S. Department of Education formula. Never mind that this is a school of 97% poverty, a school welcoming immigrant children from 20 different countries, many of whom have been in the U. S. a short time. The U. S. Department of Education decrees that one standardized test fits all.

The first time he met with federal officials about the expansion of the Morses Line border crossing farmer Clement Rainville asked about the amount of traffic through that crossing. The federal official said, "I don't know but I'll get back to you."

The Rainvilles asked four more times. Finally, they were told the Feds couldn't release the info because it "involves national security data." Brian Rainville filed a Freedom of Information request: 2.5 vehicles pass through the Morses Line border crossing each hour. One doesn’t need to file a Freedom of Information request to know that with a student body speaking 20 languages the H. O. Wheeler School does not fit a Federal cookie cutter model.

"National Security" is invoked to stop all argument. The education parallel is "Preparing Students to be workers in the Global Economy." The Feds ordered that the "ten lowest-performing" schools in Vermont be “"estructured" --meaning dump the teachers or dump the principal. "Performance" is judged solely by scores on standardized tests--whether students speak English or not. In return for compliance, Vermont will get $8.5 million in federal funds, which are, of course, laundered Vermont tax dollars. Widely published, longtime Vermont school superintendent William Mathis has documented how much money Vermonters lose in this laundering process.

This is blood money.

By the time the public meeting rolled around, the proposed Morses Line facility had been scaled back. "The amazing shrinking port is now 2.2 acres. The amazing shrinking port should be zero acres," said Brian Rainville, a high school history teacher. His theory is that "Homeland Security has a pile of money they need to spend--$420 million to modernize ports like Morses Line."

The Feds announced that if the Rainville family wouldn't take the money offered, then the land will be taken by eminent domain. Brian Rainville provided the rationale that seems to be missing in discussions with school folk: "They tried to throw some money at me. This is not about money. This is about you folks making a terrible mistake."

If Vermont refused to participate in the Feds distribution of taxpayer money, then control of the schools could be local. But state politicos and bureaucrats grovel for every penny the Feds offer.

The Rainvilles are fortunate that Vermont politicos are standing with them. After Brian Rainville's moving testimony before the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee meeting, Rep. Peter Welch said, "Today a Vermonter was heard, and today a Vermonter made a difference. The process that led to this proposal has failed the family, failed the contractors, failed the community and failed the test of how Vermonters do business. I'm thankful to Brian for his moving testimony and to Chairman Oberstar for listening."

Patrick Leahy sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano informing her he was prepared to close Morses Line during the appropriations process, if necessary. He said he agrees with those at the public meeting that this little-used port is not a critical link in the nation’s security or commerce. On June 3rd, Leahy announced that Napolitano has agreed to close the facility.

After hearing H. O. Wheeler parents speak at the Town Meeting, Bernie Sanders told a Burlington Free Press reporter that the pushed-out principal "is almost a poster child for some of the absurdities of No Child Left Behind and I want to see that addressed."

But don't blame George Bush for this one: It is Obama/Duncan policy that is forcing the principal out. Sanders sits on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions. Maybe the ten principals will be invited to testify. Right now, despite the Federal invasion of their territory, they are staying mum. They could learn something from Brian Rainville, a teacher.

More than a few Vermonters refer to the fact that the U.S. Constitution grants no authority over education to the federal government. The Founders worried about the concentration of power and deemed that the best way to protect individuals and a civil society was to limit centralized power. The Tenth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, restates the Constitution's principle of federalism by providing that powers not granted to the national government nor prohibited to the states by the Constitution of the United States are reserved to the states or the people.

The History of the Formation of the Union under the Constitution, published by the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission in 1943, under the direction of the president, the vice president, and the Speaker of the House, contained this exchange in a section titled "Questions and Answers Pertaining to the Constitution":

Q. Where, in the Constitution, is there mention of education?
A. There is none; education is a matter reserved for the states.

We must call on our Congressional delegation to exercise the same worry over the Fed's declaration of eminent domain in our schools that they showed over the farmer’s 2.2 acres. They must cancel the control the Feds now exercise over our local schools, and as people working for civic democracy, we must work at supporting those schools.

NOTE: Susan is a member of the  14th Council of Censors.