\doc\web\2000\05\baldbad.txt -----Original Message----- From: Gerald W. Bracey [mailto:gbracey@EROLS.COM] Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 12:21 PM To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU Subject: I just came from a seminar on the Baldridge In Education Initiative, which shortens to BiE IN, pronounced, Buy In. I don't yet know enough about the system to draw firm conclusions, but the saying that formed in my head was: Buy Into Baldridge, Sell Out Democracy and Freedom. The people, two principals from Florida, one official from Raytheon, one from GTE Directories and one from the National Alliance of Business, kept talking about "empowering kids", but all of their descriptions of what really happens seemed to do just the opposite. The principals said things like: "Businesses OWN what we are making kids for." Really. That's a direct quote. "Kids are the workers in the system." The Raytheon and GTE people sounded like it never occurred to them that schools might have purposes other than to prepare children to be high performing drones and docile, even enthusiastic, robots in the work place. Everything is part of one system. The job of any part of the system is to satisfy the customers. For elementary schools, this means preparing kids that middle schools find skillful; middle schools need to get kids ready for high school. So far, not bad and I don't know of any schools that don't do this. But, here's the kicker: Each level of the system assumes that the next level of the system has rational and desirable goals. Thus the high school principal said that his "customers" that he tried to satisfy were the district, the state, universities and employers. But he accepts that it is his job to do whatever these customers tell him to do. Thus, even though many in Florida are mad as hell about FCAT and Bush's grading system and want the whole thing done away with, this guy just assumes that whatever the state tells him to do, he has to do and do with enthusiasm. The customer is always right. Orwell would be thrilled, no doubt. This operation, always having given rise to a well-viewed teleconference put on by the National Education Goals Panel, makes OBE look tame. I can't imagine that conservatives, much less us old liberal arts heads, are going to buy into it. Anyone out there able to tell me more about this system? It comes out of the TQM legacy (so the story goes anyway), but somehow I imagine Deming in spinning in his grave. On the positive side, the approach to pedagogy seems as anti-Hirsch as one can imagine. The kids are allowed to "take charge of their learning." It's just that what they are permitted to take charge of is totally prescribed by the next level of "customer". My head was spinning so much that as I read their literature, I missed my subway transfer point by four stations. Jerry From: Flanigan, Allen [mailto:Allen.Flanigan@USPTO.GOV] Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2000 9:44 AM To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU Subject: Educational Baldridgedash Gerry, It does indeed sound like more of the same "treat education like any other business" nonsense that has been spouted recently. Baldridge was a former Secretary of Dept. of Commerce who has an award for Excellence named after him. Here is a quote from the Dept. of Commerce website touting the Baldridge Educational Excellence Pilot Program, and a link with more info than you could possibly want from the Dept. of Commerce's Website: "Central and crucial to the success of the excellence concept in the Education Pilot Criteria is a well-conceived and well-executed assessment strategy. The characteristics of such a strategy should include the following: * clear ties between what is assessed and the school's mission objectives. This means not only what students know, but also what they are able to do. * a main focus on improvement -- of student performance, faculty capabilities, and school program performance; * assessment as embedded and ongoing. This means that assessment needs to be curriculum-based, and criterion-referenced, aimed at fostering improved understanding of learning goals and overall performance requirements. * clear guidelines regarding how assessment results will be used and how they will not be used; and * an ongoing approach for evaluating the assessment system to improve the connection between assessment and student success. Success factors should be developed based on external requirements derived from the marketplace, other schools, etc. " I found the above under the heading "integration of key Education Themes". http://www.quality.nist.gov/docs/edpilot/edpilot.htm It truly is galling and astonishing that they feature this on the Dept. of Commerce website. I doubt whether they even have a mirror link on the Dept. of Education website. I guess the presumption is that the only department with anything relevant to say about educational excellence is the Department of Commerce. I typed in Baldridge at the Dept. of Ed website and all I found was a notice about Tommy Thompson's National Education Goals Panel teleconference on April 13th entitled "Creating a framework for High Achieving Schools", which mentions applying TQM and the "Baldridge criteria in education". http://www.ed.gov/MailingLists/STM-LIST/msg00109.html Let's surf to find stuff on NEGP: Their Website: http://www.negp.gov/ And more to the point, the press release touting TQM and Baldridge Criteria generated from the Teleconference: http://www.negp.gov/issues/publication/othpress/nr04142000.pdf Had enough yet? Allen F.