The Commercial Assault on Children and on School Academic Standards — Kathleen Burke Interviews Alex Molnar

Hi, I'm Kathleen Burke, Director of ASCD's Annual Conference. Welcome to ASCD's Annual Conference Online 2003.

We are pleased to present a series of online programs that will preview topics and highlights of the 2003 Annual Conference. Joining us now is Alex Molnar, Professor of Education Policy and the Director of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University. He has authored numerous books and has served on the Board of Directors and the Urban Education Advisory Board for ASCD.

Alex, what do you believe are the major issues influencing educators today?

Well, I think the major background issue is the ongoing chronic fiscal crisis that faces many school districts. They simply don’t have enough money to do the things they are being asked to do.

That background then is what creates all kinds of problems with the new elementary and secondary education act, the so-called “No Child Left Behind Act,” which carries with it a number of mandates for testing children, identifying failing schools, providing highly qualified teachers and so on.

It’s a very rigid regime. And while it does provide some funding for some of its requirements, it doesn’t provide nearly enough, particularly given the stress that this is going to place on schools and communities. The question of mandates without the proper funding is something that school people are very familiar with. They face it in bi-lingual education, they face it in special education, they face it in a variety of different areas. So we have long history in this country of placing burdens on schools without providing the resources necessary for the schools to carry those burdens.

So, the biggest problems we have right now are the same old problems we’ve always had, and that is that we have high demands, high rhetorical claims, and modest resources. And school people are chronically in the middle trying to satisfy a public that is boundless in its expectations and very, very stingy in what it’s willing to provide to satisfy those expectations

As you talk and work with educators, what trends or concerns are you learning?

Well, there is tremendous concern about high-stakes testing and the impact that high-stakes testing is going to have not only on school budgets and on effective education policy making but on the day-to-day lives of children and teachers in the classrooms — because the high-stakes tests push in the direction away from teacher autonomy and local decision-making and move the authority and control of the education of children in the United States away from local communities and toward the state and the federal government. And this is a very big change historically in American public education. So, as represented by high-stakes tests, that would be, I think, one of the major concerns that educators are talking about.

You might add to that bi-lingual education and the whole question of multi-lingualism in the United States and how it should be addressed. You know, we have several states now that have prohibited bi-lingual education one way or another. That’s going to be an increasingly difficult issue for educators. Special education is, was and will remain a very difficult educator as states continue to mandate but not fund what they’re demanding of schools.

The whole question of privatization and so-called competition among schools is unsettling and not in a particularly good way — the education decision-making and communities all across the country and having an impact on the education that children receive.

Your presentation is titled “The Commercial Assault on Children and on School Academic Standards.” Why did you select this topic and what will participants learn from this presentation?

I think the topic captures very well almost all of the trends that I’ve been talking about. Corporations have always been influential in shaping American public education, but to a large degree, corporations now have begun to exploit education as if the children were a market to be harvested. And this creates all kinds of distortions. From something as simple as the amount of time that various corporate activities now take up in schools that detract from the academic programming that children receive to arrangements that schools make with corporations that actually undermine the health and well-being of their students and that directly contradict their curriculum.

The most dramatic example of that is in the area of exclusive agreements with soft drink bottlers. Here we have a crisis of childhood obesity in this country which is precipitating increasing numbers of children who are turning up in doctor’s offices with what used to be called adult diabetes, type 2 diabetes. It’s becoming very difficult to maintain that distinction. One of the strongest indicators of childhood obesity is soft drink consumption. And soft drink consumption among adolescents in particular has skyrocketed over the last decade. So now you have schools all across the country signing contracts with bottling companies to promote the consumption of these products in a way that directly undermines their own health curriculum. And the majority of these contracts, according to the Centers for Disease Control, have financial incentives for the school district to encourage children to consume more soft drinks.

So, I chose this topic because it captures the ethical rot of the political bankruptcy and the almost boundless cynicism of many corporate initiatives in schools. I’m very critical of corporate executives, but I have to say that they couldn’t get away with what they are doing without the substantial number of superintendents, principals and other people who work in schools aiding and abetting them. And it’s a shameful derogation of their responsibility, and their moral standing is correspondingly undermined.

Thank you, Alex, and thanks to our Internet audience for tuning in to one of a series of online programs previewing ASCD's 2003 Annual Conference in San Francisco.

Check back this time next week when we will post another interview with an nnual Conference invited speaker.

Before you leave this site, take a few minutes to visit the ASCD Annual Conference web page for the latest conference updates. I'm Kathleen Burke.