By Thomas Ultican 8/1/2023
The 74 recently ran an opinion piece, “America’s Education System Is a Mess, and It’s Students Who Are Paying the Price”. Author David Steiner, Executive Director of Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Education Policy, claimed, “The fundamental cause of poor outcomes is that policy leaders have eroded the instructional core & designed our education system for failure.” He was referencing the recent decline in math and reading scores on NAEP testing while ignoring “The Stolen Year” lost to a pandemic. Ironically, Steiner has been one of America’s most powerful education policy leaders for almost two decades.
The above graphs used NAEP Data Explorer, based on a 500-point scale, all scores fit within a 30-point range. Since 1992, reading and math scores have wiggled up and down on a small range. In 2022, almost all students missed one year of in-person instruction and in some states, like California, more than half the three years tested. If there had not been a dip in scoring, it would have been powerful proof about the uselessness of standardized testing.
Steiner claimed:
“When the recent NAEP long-term trend results for 13-year-olds were published, the reactions were predictable: short pieces in the national press and apologetics in education blogs. COVID-19, we were told, was continuing to cast its long shadow. Despite nearly $200 billion in emergency federal spending on K-12 schooling, students are doing worse than a decade ago, and lower-performing students are today less capable of doing math than they were 35 years ago.”
He linked an almost hysterical report in The 74 about the NAEP testing “CRISIS” and a Washington Post article, citing COVID-19 as a cause. “Apologetics” points to a post by former Assistant Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch, who asserted:
“The release of the NAEP Long-Term Trend data yesterday set off the usual hysterical reaction. The scores fell as a consequence of the pandemic, when most kids did not get in-school instruction.
“These are not secrets but they bear repeating:
“*Students don’t learn what is tested when they are not in school for long periods of time.
“*Learning online is inferior to learning in-person from a qualified teacher.
“*It’s better to lose points on a test than to risk serious illness or death or infecting a family member or teacher or other member of the school staff.”
Steiner tried to both-side the issue, using Ravitch’s concluding question, “Will politicians whip up a panicked response and demand more of what is already failing, like charter schools, vouchers, high-stakes testing, and Cybercharters or will they invest in reduced class sizes and higher teacher pay?” His counterpoint was, “On the other [hand], their conservative critics point to lack of school choice, poor teacher preparation programs and (more recently) the woke invasion of classrooms.”
He seems to be speaking for himself.
Employing “woke” undermines credibility. “Woke” is a talking point, used by many GOP politicians but has no erudite meaning; it is baseless. He probably did not use CRT here because it is the worn-out 2021 unfounded attack on public education.
The opinion piece shows Steiner believes in a need to test students, younger than eight, and that standardized test scores should carry consequences for test takers. He is a big fan of high school exit exams, corporate style education standards and standardized testing. It can be inferred that he admired the “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to The Top” programs, foisted on America by Presidents Bush and Obama.
David Steiner
Escaping Nazism in 1940, David Steiner’s father, George Steiner, and his family emigrated from France to New York City. George met and married New Yorker, Zara Shakow, in 1955. They both became successful academics. He earned many honors and degrees, including a PhD from Harvard. She became an authority on international relations and served as vice-president for New Hall in Essex (UK). While living in Princeton, New Jersey, their son, David, was born in 1958.
Although birthed in the US, David grew up in Cambridge, England where he eventually attended the Perse School and earned a B.A. and M.A. from Balliol College Oxford University. Returning to America, he earned a political science PhD from Harvard University.
From 1999-2004, David served as a professor of education at Boston University and for two years, he worked at the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2005, he was appointed Dean of Hunter College City University of New York.
Billionaire, Merryl Tisch, became Chancellor of New York State Board of Regents in 2009 and believed in standardized testing so strongly that Diane Ravitch dubbed her, the “doyenne of high-stakes testing.” Like the Heritage Foundation, she decried the government monopoly over public education and saw a like-minded educator in the Hunter College dean.
In 2008, Steiner created Teacher U at Hunter College, a new teacher preparation program, requested by charter school founders, Norman Atkins of Uncommon Schools, David Levine of KIPP charter school and Dacia Toll of Achievement First (Relay 59). This move coincided with Tisch’s thinking and the following year, she picked Steiner to be the New York State Commissioner of Education.
After he became Commissioner, the Board of Regents authorized independent teacher preparation graduate schools (Relay 60). It was a move to undercut the university-centered monopoly on education training that Tisch and he opposed.
In 2011, Teacher U became Relay Graduate School of Education. Steiner was a founding board member and is still on the board. Relay is a fraudulent school, privatizing teacher training.
Steiner bolstered his resume by supporting the neoliberal agenda, waiving the superintendent of schools job requirements, for Cathie Black, head of the Hearst magazine chain, to take over New York City public schools. Despite not having required teaching experience and professional degrees in administration, he claimed her “success” in business made her, in the words of Mayor Bloomberg, a “superstar manager.” She lasted on the job less than 100-days.
In an interview with Frederick Hess, Steiner proudly pointed to three policies he drove as Commissioner of Education: “commitment to standards-based curriculum”, “commitment to improved testing” plus “rethink and redesign teacher and principal certification.”
July 12, he was a guest speaker for a Pioneer Institute event. Pioneer Institute is affiliated with the very anti-public education State Policy Network. Recently appointed to Hoover Institute’s Practitioners Council, he serves with pro-privatization enemies of public education like Michael Horn, Patricia Levesque and Don Shalvey.
Johns Hopkins
In 1867, merchant, banker and railroad director, Johns Hopkins, bequeathed $7 million to establish America’s first research university in Baltimore. Since then, the private university has been a major success and boasts 29 Nobel Prize recipients. It is truly a world leader in medicine and the sciences.
It is sad to see billionaire dollars corrupting this respected institution and undermining public education. The following graphic shows some of the most virulent, anti-public education entities in America are supporters, listed on the Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Education Policy about page. From 2015-2018, the donor-directed Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a dark-money fund, sent $27,381,018 to Johns Hopkins.
Alum Michael Bloomberg is the largest donor to Johns Hopkins University. In 2018, he gave a whopping $1.8 billion to the school.
When neoliberal Democrats in Rhode Island decided to take over the Providence public school system, they contracted with Johns Hopkins to do a study. The school districts demographics were 65% Latinx, 16% Black, 9% White, 5% Asian, 4% Multi-racial and 1% Native American. In addition, 31% of students were multilingual learners, 16% received special education services and 55% came from homes where English is not the primary language. An unbiased study would have quickly revealed that the schools were not failing and the poor testing results reflect deep poverty, language learners and a large special education population.
The Johns Hopkins study was commissioned in May and presented in June. By July 19th, Mayor Elorza officially petitioned the state to take over schools.
Last year, The Institute for Education Policy at Johns Hopkins wrote a joint paper with Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, calling for more testing.
When it comes to education, Johns Hopkins University has abandoned unbiased objectivity and joined a corrupted agenda.
The 74
The 74 was founded in 2015 by former CNN news anchor, Campbell Brown, along with Michael Bloomberg’s education advisor, Romy Drucker. Its original funding came from billionaires, Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Since then, it has been the vehicle for spreading the billionaire message, undermining public schools.
Campbell Brown, the original face of The 74, supported charter schools, opposed teacher tenure and was convinced schools were full of sexual predators. In response to a reporter, she stated,
“I agree we have a point of view; it’s a nonpartisan point of view. It’s a clear point of view, and that is that the public education system, in its current form, is broken, and there’s an urgency to fix it.”
Public education is being molested by billionaires, for different reasons. It is not broken.
Some billionaires see the non-sectarian nature of public education as a threat to their dreams of a Christian theocracy. Others are libertarians that oppose free universal public education. They believe everyone should pay their own way and not steal other people’s property through taxation. Many are firmly convinced that education should be run like a business and respond to market forces.
None are experts in pedagogy nor have experience in running schools.
tultican 
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