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CERCER Analysis
CER's Play-by-Play" Analysis of
SCHOOL: The Story of American Public Education
A PBS Special produced by Sarah Mondale,
September 4, 2001
The fourth show in this series deals with modern reforms, and starts out with ominous music and the narrator, actress Meryl Streep, intoning -
"By the 1980s, there was much to celebrate about American schools - most Americans were enrolled in school and 85 percent were graduating, and the majority continued on to college."
"But President Reagan thought differently ...," going on to characterize him (in Simon Legree fashion) as "an opponent of what conservatives called the public school monopoly."
Thus, the first clip the audience sees is not a teacher using a new reading program, not a new charter school opening its doors, nor parents waiting on line for much-demanded options, nor Governors deliberating important new choice laws, but rather former President Ronald Reagan talking about competition. And then the narrator warns - to daunting music - of
"A Declaration of a learning crisis by politicians ... that would forever change the perception of American Education, opening the door to free market policies." (See - its those politicians!)
But Wait! Suddenly, there's nice cheery music. This new tone introduces what American education was succeeding at - and the words are invoked:
"Traditionally, American education taught its citizens to live in a democracy - a melting pot where immigrants embraced the American Dream. And they were at the forefront of the struggle for equality."
Then the ominous music is back, and the narrator drones that during the 80s and 90s schools were being asked to compete in a business-driven world, where only one thing mattered: The Bottom Line. (Of course, they don't define the bottom line, leading you to conclude that the bottom line was about something other than achievement).
And that's how it starts.
Now, the producers are back to Reagan again, reporting on "A report to the president - 'A Nation at Risk.'" There's a clever use of sepia-toned news footage here, implying that this is old outdated stuff not worth paying attention to.
Suddenly, we're thrown a parade of "historians" and "authors," characterizing the past two decades as somewhat hysterical: They mockingly tell us the early 90s proclaimed that "we're going to Hell in a hand basket." But author Nicholas Lemann tells us that the "dire picture of steady decline" is simply not true. To prove it, he cites the math NAEP scores as rising (which in reality were flat.)
These interviews are set against backdrops of appealing, soft lights. Even more interviewees inform us that there's really nothing wrong. We're educating a wider population - so therefore, we're not doing so badly after all. "Great strides are being made, really!"
The producers even manage to use breathless voice inflection - the report had "shocking findings," using the word "shocking" in the same way Claude Rains did in "Casablanca" - when you knew he really didn't believe it.
And now we're back to Reagan, arguing that education had gone off-track, but what do they choose as a clip? One suggesting that he blamed it on civil rights enforcement.
The result? We then are treated to reports of a federal government "scaling back its role" (at a time of rising Education Department budgets), and charges that arts and sports were pushed back because of standards!
And as more ominous music (the kind you hear just before someone gets murdered in a movie) is cued up, we see: Pictures of a standardized bubble and pencil test being taken!
Finally - 12 minutes into the film - we get a confession: Some schools weren't working, and we see failed inner city schools. But it's nothing more money couldn't solve.
"Historian" Larry Cuban explains a market model drove a lot of the solutions throughout the 80s and 90s, and that people began to look for results, which was the like "a profit margin in a company."
Reformers than began the study of choice in East Harlem, where "reconstitution" of failing schools took place. By 1987, people wanted results (remember - you've just been told results are like a profit margin).
But nationwide, a small but growing number of parents went to great lengths to seek alternatives and choices - and this raised concerns about the whole movement.
"Historian" Carl Kaestle (everyone on one side is identified "historian" or "author"; all reformers are former officials or elected officials), tells you that the motives for school attending school suddenly changed - now it was all about "getting your kid ahead" and "making your kid score higher," as if wanting your child to do better was wrong.
Enter Jonathan Kozol on vouchers: Conservatives have a tendency to create a lifeboat mentality, he says, but the trouble is that these types of schools say nothing about what's happening to a majority of children in these cities (No word about Kozol's "Titanic mentality" - women and children first should go down with the ship).
Enter Milwaukee, where choice expanded in a radical direction. There's no Howard Fuller to discuss this (he is left out of this entire film), but suddenly the viewer finds herself watching: President and Mrs. George Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle, and Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander.
We switch - not to the classrooms of Milwaukee - but to the White House Lawn, where Bush talks about vouchers.
But finally, a minority supporter of choice appears on screen - author of the Milwaukee bill, State Rep. Polly Williams. But lest you think anyone but white Republicans like choice, here we go again into: (cue daunting music) the Republican National Convention , where Governor Tommy Thompson is blasting the Democrats.
Ah, wait: Here is Checker Finn ("former Reagan official") talking now. At last, perhaps, some sense. But wait: Checker's face is small, he's been given a Nixonian five o'clock shadow, and he's pushed into a corner of the screen with a strange side view as he talks.
Then comes Kozol again, whose face is full to the camera, open, well lit, and prominently seated. He's talking about how he'll be for vouchers when those voucher supporters will put $35,000 down for poor kids to go to Exeter (Okay, Jonathan! You're on!).
One little success story mentioned - Urban Day School in Milwaukee, but Streep hastens to point out not ALL the voucher schools were success stories (when will they say not all traditional public schools are success stories?) . A new "expert" is introduced, who begins to surface regularly through the rest of the film. It's Greg Doyle, an untitled state employee who works for the department that fought to stop the voucher program there - and still does.
Dan Quayle comes on, whose relevance to all this is still not clear, but he's caught in a goofy grin with some kids. Next up - the NEA lawyer arguing in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but instead of saying who he really is, the narrator simply intones "opponents took it to the Supreme Court."
Doyle returns: He invokes the scare talk so often used by choice opponents: Schools will be run by witches! By skinheads! (no lions, or tigers, or bears?) He never says where they turned up, nor do the producers ask for the evidence.
Next Kozol talks about "Choice Lie: Balkanization." This way, instead of seeing children in the Cleveland choice program reading or learning (which is what happens), we now see them doing religious prayers and hear the warning voice of Kozol saying that this program will "splinter the fabric of our nation, and use public money to do it."
Doyle again!!! (For a guy with no title, they sure use him a lot). He argues that Wisconsin is not making an effort to support the public schools, but rather "supplanting" them, and that more than $660 million dollars extra would be needed to support private schools (but no statistics to back up the charge). He charges that private schools could siphon off the best students, leaving special education and bad students behind based on class, etc. Never mind that this doesn't happen, and one of the most successful choice programs is aimed exclusively at special education students in Florida).
We now move to exploiting fears of "The Christian Right." A little house is now shown with an evangelist's radio program being broadcast in the background. Parents with decidedly southern accents are shown teaching their children reading and comprehension lessons from ... The Bible. The commentator notes that "The Christian Right was successful in making home schooling legal in all 50 states," and that "Exit strategies like homeschooling and vouchers would spark political battles in the years ahead."
We next move to Baltimore, where there was "an experiment with big implications for public schools." Here, Education Alternatives Inc. president John Golle talks about the government monopoly, and where his company was put in charge of running several failing schools.
The Baltimore union president is shown speaking about schools being underfunded and overcrowded, and the former Superintendent speaks about what's not working and how they were looking for answers where they hadn't been found before.
EAI was thus hired to manage nine schools, boost achievement and still make a profit - portions of an EAI promotional video are shown.
Golle talks again about how they did more with less funds, but the narrative immediately shifts to how EAI "replaced unionized teachers", cut arts and social services and "took the profits back to Minnesota at the expense of Baltimore schoolchildren."
Jeanne Allen comes on, identified as a former Department of Education employee under Reagan (a 2-year stint) rather than as president of CER (an 8-year leadership role). She talks about how private company involvement in education is not such a strange idea and has been done in numerous areas (from software to furniture).
The film tells us private companies began coming in as part of a "$400 billion a year industry," mixing together private tutoring companies used to raise student scores, corporate logos on soda machines, and Whittle Communications' Channel One program.
Then First Lady Hillary Clinton is shown in the mid '90s visiting Baltimore and endorsing trying different things that work.
Suddenly, we're on the stock market floor, the ominous music rises, EAI gets trashed as a results of "independent" reports saying gains were no better than anywhere else (they don't mention the report was from the American Federation of Teachers).
The Baltimore Teachers Union leader is back, saying "Education was supposed to be their (EAI's) job, and they didn't deliver.
Forty minutes into the film, the viewer is left with the impression that all privatization efforts start and end with EAI.
John Golle returns, saying his effort will be used to say competition won't work, but that there are a dozen companies proving that the private sector can work. But the film never tells us who they are, or what they do.
We then segue into charter schools with a reference to EAI's contract to run a dozen charters in Arizona.
Jeanne Allen returns to give a solid definition of charter schools.
Former NYC regional superintendent Seymour Fliegel comes back (now identified as an "advocate for charters") talking about the character of charters, and the viewer gets to see some school focused on various learning styles.
Backed by a picture of the Capitol, we're told that in 1997 Congress allocates $80 million to finance charter schools. President Clinton is seen talking about it, and Checker Finn is back to talk about the ripple effect.
There's then a rebuttal from historian Carl Kaestle talking about how he hasn't seen any evidence to suggest its going to work (we have 61 out of 65 objective studies to prove otherwise).
Historian James Anderson is then shown talking about skepticism to competition and how he doesn't see alternatives "of the same quality" as traditional public schools.
The film then moves to its final segment: on the impact high academic standards is having nationwide.
"The legacy of the Reagan era now has bi-partisan support," we're told, and Clinton is seen at the State of the Union talking about every state meeting high standards.
A Core Knowledge School is introduced in Macon, Georgia, along with clips of several other Core Knowledge schools. E.D. Hirsch is interviewed about shared knowledge and the culture schools are obligated to provide.
We get to see third graders immersed in Roman culture, 8th graders doing Shakespeare's plays, and deep analysis of artistic styles.
All of this is the first positive view of non-status quo reforms the entire evening!
We're told then that the Core Knowledge model appeals to certain parents, but according to Larry Cuban its all relative: "All that tells me is that there are many ways to make a good school, and Core Knowledge is part of this choice movement to do that. There are other schools in District four, for example, and parents love those also."
Absent from Cuban's remarks the whole night is any focus on results -- or any substantiation of him and others in the education establishment.
Progressive education is introduced by Deborah Meier, and the "Teacher as Coach"/"Learning by Doing" philosophies are brought up. The claim is made that both Core Knowledge and progressive education have shown positive results, but there's no support for the suggestion that they are equally effective.
Now, we move to testing, and we cancue syncopation music, sounding a bit like the countdown music from "Jeopardy," giving you the idea that these tests must create pressure. In fact we're told: "A growing part of the school year is taken up by tests," school budgets are tied to them, newspapers publish the scores.
President George W. Bush is shown visiting a school and talking about testing children every year in reading and, and the narrator ominously tells us: "The bar was being raised at a time when the educational system was facing huge difficulties."
The difficulties are the ones we've heard about for the past hour and the past 20 years: Overcrowding, underfunding, untrained teachers, violence and shootings. (How dare we change when there's so many excuses!)
But we're heroically told: Despite the problems, education in most communities continued and the overwhelming majority of people "entrusted their children to public schools." (Do they have a choice?)
Diane Ravitch tells us that "excellence doesn't have to be elitist", but she's overwhelmed by the rest of the wrap-up, which consists of great graduations clips, complete with pomp and circumstance (anyone who's had a kid who graduated will tear up at that one), and historians and authors telling us that public education has been a big success in America, and that its in urgent to support public education.
Historian David Tyack closes with this: "I do not see any way to achieve a good future for our children more effectively than by debating together and working together on how we educate the next generation."
We would agree. But a debate has two sides, and it certainly won't begin with the Mondale-produced version of "School."
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The Center for Education Reform [CER] is a national, independent, non-profit advocacy organization providing support and guidance to individuals, community and civic groups, policymakers and others who are working to bring fundamental reforms to their schools. For additional information on education reform please call CER at (202) 822-9000.