The “Choice” Charade – Part 4

The Threat to Homeschooling

A 3D Research Report

[This 5-part report was authored by Sarah H. Leslie of the Iowa Research Group, Inc. circa 2000-2003 as part of an effort to warn the nation’s homeschoolers of a newly forming false “choice” initiative in education reform. The state of Ohio was ground zero for this new effort to redefine homeschooling. The original concerns are still in effect to this day.]

Part 4: Chester Finn and the Devaluing of American Education

Greater transparency will also increase the likelihood that national policy decisions comply with agreed international standards.

Standards may be set by instruments (such as resolutions of some international organization) that are technically non-binding but in fact have considerable influence on behavior. If applied in practice, these standards may begin to assume some legal status. This is the hardening of so-called soft law. (Our Global Neighborhood, The Report of the UN Commission on Global Governance, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 328-9.)

Chief Architect of America 2000

Chester Finn is the ubiquitous partner to William Bennett. Wherever one finds Bennett in education matters, one can readily locate Finn. The two men have complementary views, agendas and methods of operating. They sit together on many boards, jointly write articles and books, and aggressively propel “choice” to the forefront of the reform movement’s agenda. The two have been together since the early 1980s, when Finn was appointed to assistant secretary, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) in the U.S. Department of Education, by Secretary Bennett. 

Chester E. Finn, Jr. can be said to the nation’s foremost cheerleader for “choice.” To Finn, “choice” is the essential missing ingredient for effective reform to take place. Because of this hard-nosed insistence on “choice,” Finn has often alienated the education establishment. Certainly he has been at odds with them most of his professional life. Yet, it is readily apparent from a brief survey of Finn’s exhaustive written and public record, that not only is he “on board” the reform agenda, but he is probably the conductor! 

Most people are totally unaware that Chester E. Finn, Jr., renowned conservative, was the architect of America 2000, President George Bush’s aggressive education reform plan that was launched in 1991, and published in a booklet by the U.S. Department of Education under Director Lamar Alexander entitled America 2000: An Education Strategy. In a groundbreaking article by grassroots reform opponent, Wayne Wolf in November of 1992, Finn was exposed as the brains behind reform. Wolf wrote,

…[W]e were told America 2000 was the consensus of the National Governor’s Association. The governors being elected officials from all 50 states, we can then assume that America 2000 represents educational goals mandated by a broad cross-section of Americans, right? Unfortunately, as we study the roots of America 2000, a different picture emerges. 

…One [abstract]… stated, “The Bush administration’s true education philosopher is Chester Finn Jr., a professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University. Finn is the chief architect of Bush’s plan to fix the nation’s schools.” 

“…Finn, 46, was Alexander’s principle advisor on the key elements of the new America 2000 plan: a national examination system, a network of experimental schools and public funding for private education. He wrote the early drafts of the blueprint, and he accompanied Alexander to the White House in March it to the president.” (“The Wizard of Education,” Thomas Toch, U.S. News & World Report, July 15, 1991, p. 46.)

Wolf cited an article Finn authored entitled “Reinventing Local Control,” (Education Week, Jan. 23, 1991) in which 

Finn then salts the wound by saying, “Local school boards are not just superfluous. They are also dysfunctional. They insulate education decisions from the voters, taxpayers, and parents.” The whole thrust of the article is his advocacy of abandoning the concept of schools being controlled by locally elected boards.

…Finn’s closing statements yield a wealth of information, not only about his own views, but also about the way power is going to be distributed in our educational system:

“We need change agents in charge of those schools, not preservers of entrenched interests and encrusted practices. If the states discharge their part of the job satisfactorily specifying the ‘ends’ of education, furnishing resources, and managing the information feedback and accountability systems; if responsibility and authority over the ‘means’ are devolved to the school-building level; and if parents are encouraged to pick any school in the state that, in their judgment, will work well for Matt or Jessica, we could readily dispense with the extra layer [of bureaucracy].

“Local control is dead. Long live local control.”

Wolf then analyzed the “ten precepts” of education from Finn’s 1991 book, We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future, (MacMillan: New York). Wolf concludes that these “indispensable ten” can be boiled down to the “Fatal Five”:

• National Curriculum 
• National Testing
• National Database
• Outcome-Based Education
• Site-Based Decision Making¹

Driving the Reform Engine

In Part 1 of “The Choice Charade” Finn’s record of national testing and databanking of student results was analyzed in some detail. To review, test results are fed into a federal databank. Test results determine student rewards or penalties (passing or failing a grade, for example). Test results determine teacher rewards or penalties (salary increases or demotions, for example). Test results determine district rewards or penalties (spelled out in elaborate detail in the No Child Left Behind legislation). To Finn, all that matters for effective reform to take place is the test and the databanking of test results. Standards must be based on a core of common learning (national curriculum). Accountability must be based on measurable results, meaning information culled from assessment scores. Accountability means rewards and penalties, meted out in Skinnerian fashion to individuals and entities, to ensure that everybody stays the course. And the newest term, “transparency,” means that it is necessary to create the appearance of being accountable for high academic standards to the public, even though it is really “smoke and mirrors.”

Because Finn’s reform engine can run on testing and databanking alone, he can then champion the deconstruction of public education. “Choice” is one method of deconstruction, designed to take education out of the realm of bureaucracies and building. “Choice” has the appearance of “local control” because parents have a say-so in where their children receive an education. But “choice” to Finn is never, ever to be separated from the test and the databank. “Choice” must only consist of options within the “Big Brother Is Watching” System. 

Finn’s version of education reform always includes accountability. According to Dr. Dennis Cuddy, in July of 1987, the U.S. Department of Education issued a

White Paper on Accountability: Tying Assessments to Action (probably prepared by Chester Finn’s office) with a cover letter saying, “Assessment can be used as both a carrot and stick – to recognize and reward school systems that are doing exemplary jobs in raising student performances, and in extreme cases, to intervene in districts and institutions that are not making the grade.” (Chronology of Education: With Quotable Quotes, 1998, p. 79)

Dr. Dennis Cuddy, who was a Senior Associate in the Department of Education during the era of Chester Finn at OERI, commenting on Chester Finn’s We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future (1991), noted the excessive weight of Finn’s penalties upon children,

Every student must meet a core learning standard or be penalized, according to Finn, who says, “Perhaps the best way to enforce this standard is to confer valuable benefits and privileges on people who meet it, and to withhold them from those who do not. Work permits, good jobs, and college admission are the most obvious, but there is ample scope here for imagination in devising carrots and sticks. Drivers’ licenses could be deferred. So could eligibility for professional athletic teams. The minimum wage paid to those who earn their certificates might be a dollar an hour higher.” (pp. 89-90)

Furthermore, teachers are not necessary to Finn’s reform plan. Teachers are as are “superfluous” as the school boards. Teachers are inextricably linked to the test and the databank, through the individual assessment scores of children under their tutelage. Therefore, teachers do not need elaborate credentials, extensive education, or more bureaucratic hoops for licensure or credentialing. They need only demonstrate “accountability.” Teachers can be anyone pulled off the street who demonstrates “measurable results” as evidence by children’s assessment scores. The only “effective” method to teach to such a narrow parameter of state-mandated standards, is Skinnerian – rote, drill, reward, punish, teach-to-the-test. Finn and Bennett have written,

What’s a “teacher”? Today, one can teach (in the public schools) only if one has graduated from an “approved program of teacher preparation” and proved that one took the requisite education courses. It’s a paper-credentials concept that preserves the hegemony of the ed schools, keeps a lot of able would-be teachers out of the classroom – and sends in many who know little about the subjects they are supposed to impart. Tomorrow’s teacher should be a person of sound character who knows a subject well and is eager to share it with children. Period. (“Reforming Education in Four Easy Steps,” The Washington Times, Dec. 16, 1997)

Into this system of education, William Bennett and his cybercharters neatly fit. Plugging a child into a computer program, with built-in drills that reward like pigeon-peckings, for hours upon end each day, ensures that no school buildings and no teachers are necessary. The “system” will function just fine. The only thing that matters is the “results.” 

Funding will emerge as a key issue in education in the next few years. The end goal is to assign each child a voucher, or hybridized tuition tax credit, which will follow that child to whatever “choice” is deemed best. The deconstruction of America’s education system is already beginning as “choice” is now eating up increasing tax dollars and funneling those moneys into the personal and corporate coffers of William Bennett and other “choice” gurus. (Of course, we now know that some of this money ended up in Las Vegas!)

This style of education in no way is to be confused with traditional homeschooling, which by and large has existed outside of the System. Yet the “choice” advocates freely wield the term “homeschooling,” hoping to mix apples and oranges in the public mind just long enough to rope all independent and private education into the System. 

Private education, be it homeschooling or schools who do not take state or federal dollars, is seriously endangered by this “choice” plan. While in the U.S. Department of Education, Finn wrote about accountability in private education.

Short of scattering money in the streets or handing it out to everyone who wants some, the funding agency must define eligible recipients…. This means, in a word, “regulation,” the inevitable concomitant of public financial support.

Finn went on to assert that it is an obligation of private schools

to recognize certain limits to their differentness and certain ways they must conform to the norms and expectations of a society that values and supports them….

Some to be sure, like to think they can have it both ways; i.e., can obtain aid without saddling themselves with unacceptable forms of regulation. But most acknowledge the general applicability of the old adage that he who pays the piper calls the tune, and are more or less resigned to amalgamating or choosing between assistance and autonomy.²

Well over a decade later, Finn still trumpets this cause.

Some experts say private schools should provide more information, whether they accept public funds or not. “I think their results should be as transparent as those of the public and charter schools, and they should be ashamed of themselves for trying to trade on status and reputation and rumor and exclusiveness, rather than hard evidence of educational effectiveness,” said Chester E. Finn, Jr…. (“Private Schools Pressured for Data,” Jay Mathews, Washington Post, Sept. 24, 2002)

Finn and his cohorts are hoping that rewards (incentives, dollars) will motivate private education to shift over to the System. Once money enters the picture, be it private or homeschooling, the child is no longer independently educated. The child then enters the System with its testing and databanking — the all-seeing, all-powerful System.

Implementing “Full Choice”

Chester E. Finn, Jr. recently wrote a widely disseminated op-ed piece evaluating the progress of education reform since the initial A Nation at Risk report, issued back in 1983 by the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Finn concludes that the schools are still “at risk.” Why? Because schools haven’t yet implemented full “choice.” 

To achieve transparency, schools need clear standards and accurate measurement tools….

…Transparently, however, must be connected to accountability.

For accountability to work, parents must be able to choose their schools….

…Choice will be even more effective… when schools become transparent and accountable institutions.

In combination, the three stratagems – accountability, choice and transparency – will transform our education system into one that will, at long last, live up to the principles put forth 20 years ago…. (“20 years later, U.S. Education still at risk,” 3/7/03)

Chester Finn’s remarks pertained to the recent issuance of a Hoover Institution Koret Task Force on K-12 Education report entitled Our Schools and Our Future… Are We Still at Risk? This is the latest in a series of reports, issued by the political Right since the early 1980s, linking the ultimate success of education reform efforts to implementation of “choice.”

Within the newly emerging system of education reform there will be horizontal mobility, called “choice,” but no way out. “Choice” is ultimately about the dismantling (deconstruction) of the entire government school system so that a new structure can be erected (reconstruction) in its place. John Chubb and Terry Moe, leading “choice” reformers, have written:

Our guiding principle in the design of a choice system is this: public authority must be put to use in creating a system that is almost entirely beyond the reach of public authority. (Politics, Markets and American Schools, p. 218.)

This comment is relevant because Chubb and Moe collaborated with Chester Finn on the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. These men are also close colleagues and associates of William Bennett. Together they have all been issuing the same drumbeat for more accountability, standards and assessments – and “choice.”

Prior to his tenure at the office of OERI, Chester Finn was a professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University. Bennett issued a grant from the Secretary’s Discretionary Fund to Vanderbilt to implement a proposal entitled “National Network for Educational Excellence” which examined school “effectiveness.” “Effectiveness” is one of those words loaded with meaning to education reformers, and it pertains directly to the “Effective Schools Research” of Ron Edmonds. Throughout Finn’s writings, one frequently sees the use of the term “effective.” In 1985, Bennett provided over $4 million to implement Effective School Research nationwide.³ On page 72 of The De-Valuing of America, Bennett refers to Edmunds’ “Effective Schools Program” in glowing terms. Because of the efforts of these two men, one can now find the term “effective” in federal and state education reform legislation. 

“Effective” refers to the method of delivery, the type of instruction that children receive. Edmunds’ work was a derivative of Skinnerian mastery learning, which is psychological operant conditioning applied to education (sometimes referred to as “training”). Cyber education was Skinner’s lifelong dream, as he pioneered “programmed instruction” methods which hooked children to computer programs that immediately delivered feedback on progress. This method is also known as direct instruction. The advent of virtual curricula is cluttered with advanced computer-assisted instruction, which is now jointly based upon brain research and operant conditioning. Obviously there are profound ethical issues surrounding this type of education/training of children. Yet Bennett’s K12 cybercharters have jumped into this venue enthusiastically. It may be that Bennett can brag that his students will out-perform others on the tests because he has the inside track on this most “effective” method of programming children’s minds. 

Underscoring the importance of the method is a startling excerpt from a 1995 report issued by the Hudson Institute, Looking Back, Thinking Ahead: American School Reform 1993-1995, co-authored by Finn, Bennett, Lamar Alexander, and Diane Ravitch:

The report decries the backlash against outcomes-based education…. Many state outcomes are inappropriate… but… unfortunately, an awfully important baby [mastery learning, ed.] could go down the drain with the OBE bath water, and the country could find itself returning to an era when inputs, services, and intentions are the main gauge of educational quality and performance.⁴

Chester Finn and William Bennett have co-authored a number of articles over the years pertaining to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), “choice,” local control, and education reform. The articles are noteworthy for their semantic deception and promotion of “choice” as a key ingredient for reform. Many of these articles are posited at http://www.edexcellence.net/library, which is the internet address for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, the organization that Finn operates from to advance “choice.” According to one news account, the growth in the charter school movement is directly attributable to the Fordham Foundation, which has put Dayton, Ohio, “on the map nationally in the decade-old charter school movement.” A Dayton Chamber of Commerce official claims, “Dayton is ground zero for charter schools the way Milwaukee is ground zero for vouchers.” Chester Finn is a Dayton native and president of Fordham. 

Finn’s group, named for Dayton industrialist Thomas B. Fordham, was redirected toward education reform in 1995 and relocated from Washington, D.C., two years later. It advocates for school choice nationally and has made Dayton its “real world” laboratory. In five years, Fordham has given $650,260 in grants to Dayton charter schools and facilitated their growth through an “incubator,” now handled by the Chamber’s Education Resource Center. (“Charter schools’ first checkup pivotal point,” Scott Elliott, 7/29/02)

A recent bio on Chester Finn, published by the Koret Foundation lists his accomplishments:

…[D]istinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. He is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and president and trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. He is on leave from Vanderbilt University, where he has been Professor of Education and Public Policy since 1981.

Finn serves on the board of the Center for Education Reform, the Foundation for Teaching Economics and the Colorado League of Charter Schools, and on boards of the National Association of Scholars and the Center of the American Experiment.

Finn is part of a huge, interlocking group of conservative political activists, who extensively cooperate on his “choice” agenda. The fearless reader can check out the anti-right website http://www.mediatransparency.org for a sample of the vast interconnections, funding mechanisms and activities of a group of power-brokers known as “neo-conservatives.” It is significant to point out that true grassroots opponents of education reform long ago parted ideological, political and economic company with these public policy institutes, think tanks, and “choice” cheerleaders. 

Shifting the Paradigm by Force

In 1993 the Iowa State Board of Education handed out an article by Chester Finn (“The Biggest Reform of All,” Phi Delta Kappan, April 1990) to discuss at its June retreat. A positive reference to this same Finn article was made by the “father of OBE,” William Spady, in the Spring 1991 issue of Outomes, a chief organ for the Mastery Learning/Outcome-Based Education (OBE) crowd. Spady, in his article “Shifting the Grading Paradigm that Pervades Education,” wrote,

And if you and your colleagues haven’t read Chester Finn’s article…then do so forthwith as well. Not only does it summarize the theoretical groundwork about paradigms first developed by Thomas Kuhn, it also provides a compelling analysis for OBE as being THE paradigm of reform that is now shaping the educational policy dialogue throughout the U.S. (and Canada I might add!). Talk about an unsolicited endorsement!

Why was Finn being lauded by these pro-reform advocates? The answer lies in his comments:

I came late to Thomas Kuhn’s famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962]…. Reading it turned out to be one of those rare, clarifying experiences that have lent order and definition to a jumble of ideas and development in which education – and I – have been tangled for a quarter of a century or so.

Who was Thomas Kuhn and why is he so important to these two men? Thomas Kuhn coined the term “paradigm shift.” Kuhn is referenced in Marilyn Ferguson’s Aquarian Conspiracy (the first “bible” of the occult New Age movement) as the originator of this term, which was confiscated by the New Age Movement in the 1970s to describe the revolutionary cultural transformation from western rationalism to eastern mysticism. Ferguson explains the term,

A paradigm is a framework of thought (from the Greek paradigma, “pattern”). A paradigm is a scheme for understanding and explaining certain aspects of reality. Although Kuhn was writing about science, the term has been widely adopted…. A paradigm shift is a distinctly new way of thinking about old problems. (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, Inc., 1980, p. 26)

The effect of Kuhn’s book was earth-shattering. Kuhn is renowned as the first scientist to break ground by applying Hegelian dialectics and existential though to the field of science. He proposed that science is evolving and has no absolutes. He moved from the rational and tangible nature of science to the nebulous, irrational, intangible and mystical.

Kuhn described science as a series of rocky shifts throughout history created by a crisis when the old scientific model encounters new information that didn’t fit. When enough new information is accumulated, a “revolution” would occur and a new scientific paradigm would emerge; e.g., Newtonian science gave way to Einstein’s theories. Kuhn parallels scientific revolution to political revolution, and notes that the use of force may be necessary to shift to the new paradigm.

…[T]he parties to a revolutionary conflict must finally resort to the techniques of mass persuasion often including force. (p. 92)

In like manner, both Finn and Spady explain that the “paradigm shift” in education means that the old paradigm of education (teaching academics) has to go and be replaced by the new definition (outcomes-based, results-based). Finn says,

Intense resistance to fundamental shifts in worldview is part and parcel of the tale Kuhn tells. Old paradigms do not retire gracefully, and the avatars [“spiritual master,” Ed. Note] of new ones are often scored and savaged…. Even today, one can find pockets of resistance to Darwin’s theories and – as Galileo discovered – opposition emanates as much from religious as from scientific thinking. …[Kuhn says] “the transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced.” … But shift we will.

Even if by “force”? Apparently so.

Endnotes Part 4:

1. Wayne Wolf, “Who Really Wrote America 2000?” Iowa Report, November 1992, pp. 2-5).
2. the deliberate dumbing down of America: A Chronological Paper Trail, Charlotte Iserbyt, p. 184.
3. Ibid., pp. 201-202.
4. Ibid., p. 352.