Designed to fail

These days Corporate America has a large problem on their hands. In 2000, according to census data, more than 4 in 5 Americans had at least a high school diploma. Over half had gone to college for at least some time. And yet we have a trend called "the democratization of unemployment," in which white collar workers are headed toward the same unemployment levels as blue collar workers. For instance, in 2003:

With an overall unemployment rate of 6.2 percent, the rate for workers categorized as white collar stands at a little over 3 percent. This may not seem like much, but when it is taken into account that in 2000 the unemployment rate for white-collar workers was only 1.5 percent, it can be seen that in the space of three years the number of professionals and technical workers out of work has doubled. Also, an analysis of Labor Department data by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that of those termed as long-term unemployed (more than six months), over 18 percent came from white-collar jobs. This is a much higher ratio of joblessness than their actual composition of the total work force.

The emphasis is mine; I wanted to highlight the fact that those with white collar jobs are more likely than others to be unemployed for over 6 months. More likely.

Back when I was an undergrad I took a course on social movements and revolutions, and we saw again and again that what prompts a revolution (social or governmental) is an educated middle class that has been thrust into poverty. Professionals who go without a job for a year are a danger to whoever is in power. They might get organized and demand to know why the total income of the highest earning 1% of Americans is the same as the total income of the 100 million lowest earning Americans (link). This is especially true in a nation where people have long believed in their right to equal opportunity, where people expect to be rewarded for hard work, especially hard work in school.

I came across an excellent article, You'll Never Be Good Enough: Schooling and Social Control, which describes the corporate solution to the over-education problem:

In the past two decades, corporations have adopted new management techniques designed to undermine worker solidarity and integrate workers more thoroughly into the company machine. Known variously as "continuous improvement" or "management by stress," or "kaizen," the Japanese term for it, the technique consists essentially of dividing the workforce into competing "teams" and "stressing" the production system by imposing higher and higher production quotas. As workers work faster and faster to meet the quotas, the company achieves several key goals: production is increased; jobs are eliminated; "weak links" in the system break down and are replaced.

Most important, "continuous improvement" creates great anxiety in workers about their ability to meet the ever-increasing goals, and encourages workers to replace solidarity among themselves with loyalty to the Company Team. It forces workers into constant speed-up. Workers are kept running so fast to meet company goals that they don’t have time to think or talk about their own goals or work together to pursue them.

Corporate-led education reforms use similar strategies. They use "School-Based Management" to isolate teachers in each school from their colleagues around the system. Teachers are then encouraged to join with management as a "team" to compete for students and survival with other schools.

The reforms use testing to keep raising the standards which students and teachers must meet, far beyond what their parents were expected to achieve and beyond anything that would be of value. The purpose is the same as "continuous improvement" in a factory: raise the anxiety level and keep students and teachers running so fast to meet the goals set by the system that they have no time to think about their own goals for education or for their lives.

These reforms will have terrible effects. Many students who would otherwise graduate from high school will drop out. (In Texas and Florida, where "high-stakes" testing is in place, high school drop-out rates which had been dropping have already begun to rise.) Young people who fail to meet the new standards will be condemned to marginal jobs and told to blame themselves.

Continuous improvement is unattainable on its face, just as No Child Left Behind's "Adequate Yearly Progress" is unattainable. Apparently schools are supposed to improve until every student scores 100% on all standardized tests-- and after that, how will we define "progress"? By making the tests harder?

But in fact, many of these tests are already too hard. According to a New Democracy flyer:

MCAS is designed to fail. MCAS uses intentionally confusing and difficult questions, many of them on material not covered in class, to produce a massive failure rate. More than 40% of 10th graders failed the MCAS in 1999; 53% failed in Boston. (In Virginia, 98% of school districts failed similar tests.) Drop-out rates in Florida and Texas, which began these tests several years ago, have increased dramatically.

MCAS imposes a climate of fear on students, parents, and teachers. Students must take these unfair tests in the 4th, 8th, and 10th grade. Many children are becoming discouraged early on, convinced that they will never be able to pass them. For many others, the joy of learning is being replaced by a fearful obedience to authority. Teachers are forced to teach to a terrible test, and to watch in horror at the results.

In California, 2/3 of the class of 2006 appear likely to fail the test required for them to receive a diploma.

Another test used in Boston schools, called the Stanford 9, is also absurdly difficult for tenth-graders:

The 10th grade math test evaluates students on their ability to answer problems like these:

1. "Identify the equation for the line of regression for a scattergram."

2. "Determine a correlation, given a set of data."

3. "Given one side of a right triangle, an angle measure, and the graph of a trigonometric function, find the length of another side." (Trigonometry isn't even offered until the 11th grade!)

4. "Estimate the area under a curve; Solve problems using infinite sequences."

Of the 140,000 randomly selected American students who were given the "Stanford 9" to evaluate the test itself, 61 percent of the 10th graders failed it.

The public accepts such high failure rates as evidence of uneducated students because for two decades they have heard the constant drumbeat of propaganda about failing schools and declining student aptitude. A former director of the national PTA, David Stratman, gave a very informative speech which argued that student abilities had not declined prior to this sudden wave of mandatory testing, that this supposed decline was a destructive myth used to insist on corporate-backed, corporation-friendly school reforms. If over half the students fail a test, it's because the test is bullshit. Only a massive PR campaign could make parents accept such failure rates as realistic or indicative, and allow so many of their children to be labeled as somehow deficient.

I'll end with a few sample test questions from the 10th grade MCAS, and you can judge for yourself whether this is reasonable 10th grade material. Personally, I am strongly reminded of college "weeder" classes, only this time it's a "weeder" test, designed to thin the ranks of what used to be known as the middle class.

Honor can have different meanings for different people. Literature is full of characters that can be considered honorable. From a work of literature you have read in or out of school, select a character that is honorable. In a well-developed composition, identify the character, describe what makes the character honorable, and explain why the character’s honor is important to the work of literature.

[after an excerpt from the first ball in Pride and Prejudice]:

The narrator notes that Mr. Darcy seems better looking to other guests once they learn he has “ten thousand a year.” What is the narrator poking fun at?

A. Darcy’s appearance
B. Darcy’s friends
C. the guests’ shallowness
D. the guests’ manners

[Incidentally, I disagree somewhat with answer C. Austen was not unsympathetic toward economic considerations in marriage. The guests' manners are what Austen is really criticizing, but here answer D would be marked wrong.]


Which of the following shows an application of the distributive property?

A. (6xy + 4xy) + 2xz = 6xy + (4xz + 2xz)
B. 2xy + 3xz + 5xy = 2xy + 5xy + 3xz
C. 4xy – 12xz = 4x(y – 3z)
D. -5xy + 5xy + 3xz = 3xz

A movie projector positioned 28 feet from a wall creates an image that is 7 feet wide on the wall. If a screen is placed 5 feet in front of the projector, what will be the width of the image on the screen?

A. less than 1 foot
B. between 1 and 2 feet
C. between 3 and 4 feet
D. greater than 4 feet