Ed-Biz Wolf In Educational Sheep's Clothing

April 12, 2002

Ongoing White House "education reform" proposals continue to benefit ed-biz corporations, including the Washington Post Company. Last week, the White House announced another education initiative, this time for young children:

"The president's initiative will:

• Strengthen Head Start to improve the quality of experiences for young children, including training the nearly 50,000 Head Start teachers in the latest and best techniques;
• Ensure that pre-school programs are more closely coordinated with state K-12 education goals; and improve the information available to parents and caregivers about the best practices in early childhood development, including an unprecedented $45 million research effort to identify effective early literacy programs and practices."

What is not said - or reported - is that this new "Early Childhood
Education Initiative" stands to benefit private businesses more than public schools. Another corporate-favors wolf in educational sheep's clothing, it emphasizes not only students but also pre-students:
"The administration's plan calls on all States to take steps that will help
children before they enter school to be ready to learn. For example, States should help coordinate the public schools with the early childhood programs that serve the children they later educate.

This can be accomplished in part by making available to early childhood programs information on what will be expected of children once they reach school and what skills children will need to learn before school in order to meet State standards in school."

Let's hope that some of these public/private assessors find out, through government-funded research, that poor children need breakfast and lunch; that schools in poor districts need non-leaking roofs, plumbing that works, and reasonable security; and that teachers need enough textbooks (and classrooms) to go around and small enough classes to work with.

But somehow, these initiatives aren't as yet spelling out that states will be pushed to help pay grocery and electric bills for poor families, much less police for their streets (or even streetlights). The strongly worded implication seems to be they will be forced to procure "assessment," "evaluation," and "training" involving small children, their teachers and
caregivers -- exactly the offerings of Kaplan (Post Company) subsidiaries Quest Education Corporation and Score! Learning, among others.

Sample item from Quest's web site: "In 1998, Quest acquired six schools . . . this move both expanded Quest's existing programs in business, healthcare, and information technology and added new programs in the fields of electrical engineering, criminal justice and early childhood education."

Similarly, Score! Learning mentions its "Score! Educational Centers, the nation's fastest-growing afterschool learning company, is marking the start of the new millennium with the opening of its 100th center in Ellicott City . . ."

Sometimes, you almost get the feeling that some of these companies envision a cradle-to-grave approach to assessment, tutoring, distance learning, etc. Kaplan's online offerings geared to working adults already out of school target the older end of the age spectrum; at the younger end, you have "eScore.com, . . . the first educational services website for parents of kids newborn to age fourteen." Social Security should only be this comprehensive.

Using the emotional sales pitch of needy small children, the White House criticizes current pre-K programs:

"1) many states do not fully align what children are doing before they enter school with what is expected of them once they are in school; 2) early childhood programs are seldom evaluated based on how well they prepare students to succeed in school; and 3) there is not enough information for early childhood teachers, parents, and other child care providers on the activities that prepare children to be successful in school."

With any luck, this careful wording does not signify forcing small children into "early literacy," a chilling phrase. No responsible teacher supports hothouse-forcing younger students to read before their time. We cannot predict exactly when an individual child will learn to read: one day, it's cannot; the next day, it's can. The natural learning stages form a spectrum, not a timetable.

Generally, the more time spent "assessing" children, the less time spent teaching them and playing with them. And the child's natural learning is insidiously stunted by continuous competition and continuous pressures too big for him to ignore but too vague to understand -- including continuous "analysis" by half-trained online entrepreneurs.

But in spite of all the potential problems, these education reform proposals are largely being taken at face value in the press - quite possibly influenced by a major newspaper, and by major publishing companies, that benefit from the legislation. (That burgeoning online or "distance learning," vocational training, and "certification" offerings by businesses
can receive Title IV public funding is not being scrutinized at all.) One Post editorial praised the education bill thus, [Bush] "is headed in the right direction with his call for annual testing of students in the third through eighth grades . . . Keeping closer tabs on
student progress from year to year and providing that information to parents as well as policymakers could help identify successful programs and direct assistance to the schools and districts that need it most."

Common sense would tell you that the schools and districts that need assistance most are the poorest schools and districts. The need for hired statisticians and cyber-testers is, beyond a certain point, dubious. But according to its press releases, Kaplan, Inc, has been moving aggressively into younger-student education, just in time to benefit from the newest proposals.

My own experience coaching tiny GRE-prep groups in summer (four times, for three days each), while enjoyable, has reinforced my reservations about both testing and test-prepping.

No matter how you cut it, if a standardized test is genuinely going to measure schools' performance, then it has to be genuinely standardized. Teaching to the test in some schools and not others skews measurement of performance. So does tutoring some students and not others.

Margie Burns
margie.burns@verizon.net

* * *