Miguel Cardona: More of the Same Neoliberal Education?

Picture © Devin Leith-Yessian

By Brandon Edwards-Schuth and Brad J. Porfilio

A collective sigh of relief and hope has been commonplace on Facebook from fellow educators and P-20 school leaders recently who have, rightly so, been disgusted with the Trump administration and then education secretary, Betsy DeVos. It has been a tumultuous four years filled with white supremacy, a neglected pandemic which the wealthy got richer from, multiple supreme court nominations of conservative judges who will impact generations to come, and so much else. On top of that, DeVos dedicated her tenure to “advance God’s Kingdom” through school reforms in favor of school choice vouchers for “greater Kingdom gain,” largely doing more to destroy public education with an intensifying of neoliberalism, i.e. privatize everything because ‘the free market’ is better than the state at providing social entitlements, such as education, to its citizens.

While a new administration and education secretary (especially someone that’s actually a teacher) is far better than Trump and DeVos, it’s actually a really low bar that’s been set. In doing so, we fear that many are too easy to welcome in Cardona without really considering his educational policies and who is involved, which we feel is largely a continuation of the neoliberal capitalist status quo in the U.S educational system that predates (though continued through) DeVos. To really understand the very likely trajectory of a future Cardona tenure as Secretary of Education under President Biden, we have to briefly go back and see the historical context building up to today.

The Obama Administration under the leadership of the 9th and 10th Secretary of  Education, Arnie Duncan (2009-2016) and John B. King (2016-2017), changed the direction of educational policy formation in the United States, as the Obama Administration “for the first time pressured states in a sustained way to undertake systemic change in their education systems and held them accountable for the academic performance of their students” (1). To the dismay of some teachers, parents, school administrators, and scholars, the Obama Administration’s agenda for education was designed to promote the corporate ascendancy over the United States educational system, instead of providing the vision and resources necessary to eliminate social inequalities and institutional forms of oppression, such as racism, ableism, classism, and cis-heteronormativity, which are truly responsible for educational disparities in the United States. For instance, in securing Arnie Duncan for the position of Secretary of Education, Obama secured a corporate cheerleader who supported market-based educational policies during his over seven-year tenure as CEO of Chicago Public Schools, such as increasing standardized testing, opening for-profit charter schools, and eliminating an elected school board in favor of Chicago Board of Education, which consisted of Chicago’s wealthy and powerful. One of the Obama Administration’s quintessential mandates that ceded corporate control over the US education system was Race to the Top (RTTP) a $4.35 billion dollar “competitive incentive program” launched in June of  2009. With many U.S. states grappling from a lack of resources for schools from the so-called “Great Recession,” 46 state governments applied for needed resources in exchange for supporting corporate-driven educational mandates, “including charter schools, college and career-ready standards and evaluations of teachers using student test scores.” Numerous CEOs and philanthropists used RTTP to increase revenue, to gain notoriety for allegedly providing additional opportunities for the most vulnerable students, and to control teaching and learning within K-12 educational institutions. For instance, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation became involved in educating leaders to support the charter school industry across the county, the Walton Foundation spent millions of dollars to expand charter schools; and Pearson incorporated created textbooks, test-prep materials and high-stakes tests to reap an economic windfall for arbitrating whether teachers and school officials are effectively educating children.

The Obama Administration also increased the likelihood that specific states would receive support under RTTP if they adopted a “common set of K-12 standards,” which were internationally benchmarked and that prepared students for colleges and careers. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) became situated within the high-stakes testing climate, as specific assessments that were linked to CCSS became the chief barometer of whether teachers, schools, and districts were effectively educating children. CCSS in a test-polluted educational context had a debilitating impact on schools. They were responsible for teachers and leaders losing jobs, narrowing the curriculum to merely content on examinations, and educators losing the autonomy to create learning experiences designed to spark students’ creativity and intellectual curiosity. During Obama’s last year in office, John B. King Jr., did little to squelch market-driven educational approach to improving teaching and learning in the U.S. educational system. Instead, he just followed the same neoliberal path when he was New York State’s education commissioner from 2011-2014, King continued to support testing and accountability policies as a panacea for improving education as well as dismissing parents, students, schools and community organizers who believed opting-out of taking high-stakes test was vital to supporting their children’s intellectual and social development and to support teachers’ professional judgement to evaluate student learning and development. Near the end of Obama’s end in the Whitehouse, King attempted to appease those who criticized Obama’s top-down, corporate agenda for education by offering states grants to offer students “a well-rounded education and to provide additional social support to support mental care for students.” In the end, however, market-driven educational policy formations based on the ideals of accountability, competition, profit-motive and rugged individualism came to dominate how schools function in the United States.

Under the Trump Administration, Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, had rolled back the federal government from playing a dominant role in the US educational system. However, she utilized an already strong corporate-base within educational agencies at the state and local levels to strongly pushed her libertarian “school choice” agenda through hundreds of millions of financial aid to various charter schools (including organizations aimed at opening new ones) and unaccredited for-profit schools, while at the same time attempting to cut $17.6 million in federal funding for the Special Olympics. DeVos has also capitalized on the COVID-19 pandemic to hasten the privatization of public education; even ending her tenure with giving more than a million dollars to a soccer club with no prior educational experience to startup a charter school. DeVos’s tenure was largely dominated by diverting enormous quantities of financial aid away from public schools and into private hands, which although not new, was done with such explicit intensity and excess that it was seen as repulsive.

This brings us to today, where Joe Biden’s candidate for Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, is set to be heard by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on February 3rd, 2021. Son of parents who moved from Puerto Rico and whose father, Cardona Sr., was a police officer, Cardona is a former teacher, the youngest principal in the state’s history, and assistant superintendent for teaching and learning (2015-2019), and commissioner of education since 2019 in Meriden, Connecticut. While his teaching experience gives important merit, Cardona’s positions on educational policies have been largely a mystery to those in Washington D.C., though that is part of why he was chosen.

Historian of education and educational policy analyst, Diane Ravitch, in a Democracy Now! interview suggested that he was chosen by the Biden Administration for particularly “being non-controversial,” a particularly strategic move. Unlike Biden’s runner up choice, Leslie Fenwick, who has been a vocal opponent of charter schools and more, Cardona is seen as a non-controversial, safe pick who also hasn’t been clear on being for or against charter schools. This puts Cardona in a space where he can more fluidly appeal to most people across the political spectrum, so long as he does not support initiatives that challenge the hegemony of corporate practices, policies, and  social imaginary over the United States’ educational system. We see this when, during his educational administrative positions in Connecticut, Cardona “renewed every charter that was due and has not approved any additional schools for the legislature to consider opening.”  Furthermore, as an educator and Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, Cardona supported educational initiatives afforded minoritized learners additional access to educational opportunities, such as the ability to attend advanced-level courses, to attend “full-day kindergarten and offer more vulnerable children access to high-quality preschool,” without challenging the common-state standards and standardized tests, let alone unjust social formations, including racism and poverty, which are inhibiting the educational performance of BIPOC and other minoritized learners. It’s not hard to imagine the Biden Administration guide by Cordona’s leadership might not further the DeVos agenda, but at the same time probably won’t reverse course on the privatization of public education.

Cardona also gave a recent interview on Connecticut Public Radio’s Where We Live Podcast where he was open about some of his stances on education policies. Cardona’s comments make it clear he believes providing access to education is the chief lever for improving the quality of life of minoritized groups in U.S. society. For instance, he feels providing students additional opportunities to attend college and provide them “other career pathways'' will allow students to attain the “American Dream.” Clearly, Cordona is correct providing additional access to educational opportunities for BIPOC and other minoritized students may allow some to transcend their class status; yet, his belief in education access as a societal equalizer is misguided as it does not acknowledge how structures impediments, including unemployment, the dominance of low-paid service jobs, poverty, and lack of affordable housing, leave most citizens, even those who hold advanced degrees, from achieving the “American Dream.” Cardona also holds a similar perspective related to reopening schools in the midst of the global pandemic. He believes reopening schools is vital for the academic success of Black, Latino, and low-income children; but he overlooks larger structural conditions that inhibit students from low-income and racialized communities to succeed in schools, irrespective if they are physically open, including having to bear the brunt of more of their family members die and suffer from COVID. Another important consideration for reopening schools in the midst of the pandemic is if the schools that are reopened will continue to put the health and safety of children and communities at risk only to ensure the United States’ educational system will continue to support the interest of the political and economic elite over the well-being of working-class people. Perhaps, schools should only reopen if they are firmly committed to support the goals of border dissent movements, such as Black Lives Matter and Indigenous and environmental rights movements, which are committed to overturning systems of knowledge, structures, and institutions responsible for human suffering and environmental degradation. We also echo what Associate Professor of Urban and Multicultural Education in the Educational Studies Department at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, Brian Lozenski had said: “Otherwise, the reward of ‘safety’ is not worth the risk of perpetuating injustice.”

As educators ourselves, we hope that Cardona surprises us all by foregoing the neoliberal status quo and instead genuinely enact critical and progressive educational policies and emancipator pedagogies. Cardona ought to lift the mandate on standardized testing at least during this pandemic, but ideally indefinitely to combat the dominance of corporatism over the US educational system. Things like canceling student debt/free education at the very least, is long overdue in the fight for equity. Even further, implementing critical education rooted in decolonizing, abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and defunding the police (just to name a few) are some of the necessary components of an education aimed at genuine social justice that we ought to be demanding. For all the educators, scholars and leaders out there who are quick to accept Cardona as a beacon of hope and change, we urge skepticism and honesty. Cardona is certainly far more preferable to DeVos, but he was strategically chosen by the Biden Administration to not shake up the corporate ascendency over education and society too much. 

Notes

1. McGuinn, P. (2016). From no child left behind to the every student succeeds act: Federalism and the education legacy of the Obama administration. Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 46(3), 392-415.

Brandon Edwards-Schuth (He/They) is an educator, activist, and doctoral candidate in the Cultural Studies and Social Thought in Education program at Washington State University. b.edwards-schuth@wsu.edu

Brad J. Porfilio (He/Him) is the Director of the Ed.D. Leadership Program and Professor at San Jose State University. Porfilio16@aol.com

Donald Trump and Erik Prince's Privatization of War

(Pictured: Corporate mercenaries in Afghanistan)

By James Richard Marra

During my career as a business analyst, I learned much about why and how some businesses succeed while others fail. Failure may result from higher wage levels, employee health insurance costs, or market conditions. Nevertheless, it generally occurs due to poor management: owner incompetence, arrogance, and greed, insensitivity to fundamental business factors and best practices, or a flawed understanding of their markets and competitors.

I bring this up because the neofascist governance in Washington and its corporate partners are wooing Americans toward another imperial catastrophe in the Middle East, this time involving Iran. For these capitalists, much is never enough. So as expected, the military-technology-surveillance complex (MTSC) wishes to expand its profitable productive capacity into new or under-exploited war-commodity markets. The success of this expansion depends upon careful attention to geographic, material, and operational considerations. Best business practices demand that the MTSC develops a sound plan by first consulting experts in these areas. These factors might include those identified by the famous military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. For von Clausewitz, the three pillars of warfare are strategy, operations, and tactics. Within the MTSC’s production and marketing plans, these required military functions are transformed into profitable exchange values - money. If this program is managed well, the sky is the limit. If not, failure will likely come.

With these thoughts in mind, we might consider the case of Erik Prince, the ex-Navy Seal and founder/CEO of the failed and criminally mercenary service provider Blackwater. In 2018, Prince, the brother of Education Secretary, and public-education privatizer, Betsy DeVos, approached the Trump Administration with a proposal to privatize the Afghan War. Prince’s dog-and-pony show claimed that the war could be waged more economically and efficiently, while deploying fewer troops in smaller specialized units. 

Neofascists, like Steve Bannon, invited further discussion and exploration. This is not surprising because fascism of any sort, including today's neofascism, is an artful alliance of an anti-conventional and zealous "Leader," a hyper-nationalistic culture, and an exceptionally exploitative form of capitalism. Trump's fascism gets its "neo" in part from the fact that today's capitalism is largely unfettered, "neoliberal," finance-and-service-dominated, and monopolized. This current form differs from the manufacturing capitalism that dominated the world economy from the 1920s to the 1980s. Furthermore, history reminds us that, while Hitler disliked “industrialists,” he admired Henry Ford to the extent that, in 1938, he bestowed upon him the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.

Now, capitalism opposes worker control over their labor power. The military command structure epitomizes this, as unions are banned and the demands made upon military labor (soldiers) go unquestioned. Likewise, fascist governance requires that workers absolutely obey the will of the political Leader, as it is transformed into the productive operations in which workers participate.

Both Prince and Bannon recognized a profitable business opportunity enabled by the structural efficiencies fascism offers within a privatized war market. In this model, military needs are continually identified and marketed by the Leader and the MTSC through their political minions and the capitalist media. Once workers are indoctrinated to the benefits of war, the MTSC transforms those needs into corresponding commodities. Vast amounts of capital are provided by taxes largely levied upon the working class. Politically trumped up fears of the working class not only provide a market incentive, but also mobilize workers’ labor power, both on and off the battlefield.

Trump’s military and other members of the MTSC balked at Prince’s scheme. Generals Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster ensured that Prince’s folly was a non-starter. Given this, a question arises: How could a neofascist mercenary's neofascist proposal to a neofascist Leader fail? Prince is neither an idiot nor a novice. His operational capabilities have been successfully field-tested, are marshaled by a highly skilled cadre of special-forces experts, and bolstered by significant international technical and political support.

It occurs to me that Prince’s business failure significantly resides in his misunderstanding of the contemporary war market and its players. He doesn’t understand his competitors’ collective business model, its functional role within the neofascist governance, or its monopolistic structure. Prince’s arrogance leads him to believe he can slither his way directly to the top of the neofascist food chain, biting off a prime piece of the war market without complaint from the big players. That might work if the market were immature, and competition largely relevant to profitability. But today’s market is both mature and well organized. Leading participants synergistically avoid price wars, fight unions and organizing efforts, fund think tanks and lobbyists, contribute to the campaign coffers of servile politicians, and meet together at national and global conferences to determine market rules.

Dominant corporations viscously defend themselves from the competitive risks presented by new and less mature companies. Thus, corporations join in a “co-respective” market behavior that largely guarantees their continuing control and profitability.

Alex Hollings asks:

So why didn’t Trump...a business man that values bottom-line savings, sign off on it?...Steve Bannon, Trump’s recently fired chief strategist, was said to support Prince’s plan, but the Generals Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster have all dismissed it.  For those in Bannon’s corner, they argue it’s because he’s the outsider, free from the political pressures of the military industrial complex.

A congressional aide attending the meeting reported, “The adults hate it.”

There is another potential problem, although one that might offer a silver lining for Prince: the laws that govern American wars. These pesky laws make it more difficult for any privatized war business to control production, supply, and operational management. For a privatized war commodity to be successful, businesses require that civilian leadership regularly deliver new war-needs, which would motivate market demand. While both Democrats and Republicans are quick to fund occasional “short” wars, that isn’t enough. What is needed is a government that will go to war as unhesitatingly and continually, as Hitler did devouring the nations of Europe. A fascist leadership is ideal because it considers war to be among the noblest of human endeavors, and resists conventional or legal restraints imposed by “decadent” liberal democracies.

However, today’s renewed calls for limits upon the now imperial presidency from the American left illustrate the business risk represented by not appreciating the vicissitudes involved in political strategy. Prince’s short-term thinking led him to largely ignore the fact that presidents come and go. Public opinion changes with the lifting of a TV remote, and politicians the chase political winds like a bloodhound after a jackrabbit through a lush Kentucky meadow. Prince failed to appreciate that his business success hinged on controlling the dance card at a capitalist senior prom to which he is not invited.

My references to “neofascism” may annoy some folks: "You’re calling Trump a neofascist just because you don’t like his politics!” Although I find Trump's politics uniquely vile, that fact doesn’t inform my understanding of a “Futurist”-inspired fascism. To understand Futurism, let's allow it to speak for itself.

Futurists wish to

...sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and boldness.

...extol aggressive movement, feverish insomnia, the double-quick step, the somersault, the box on the ear, the fisticuff.

...to destroy the museum, the libraries, to fight against moralism, feminism and all opportunistic and utilitarian malignancy.

...glorify war - the only health-give [sic] of the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm of the Anarchist, the beautiful ideas that kill, and contempt for woman.

These pleasantries might well have come from Donald Trump or one of his torch-bearing neo-Nazi devotees. But, they are offered by the founder of the Futurist movement, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, in Futurist Aristocracy (1923), edited by the Italian Futurist Nanni Leone Castelli. As such, they illuminate a frightening Futurist thread between contemporary Trumpian neofascism and its historical roots. Benito Mussolini was a Futurist of sorts, and was seen by many contemporaries, Italian or otherwise, as the epitome of the aggressive and spontaneous Futurist hero. Here are a few priceless insights from Benito Mussolini’s (with Giovanni Gentile) 1932 article “Doctrine of Fascism.”

[Fascism]...repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism....[W]ar alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it.

For Fascism the tendency to Empire, that is to say, to the expansion of nations, is a manifestation of vitality...

Fascism attacks the whole complex of democratic ideologies and rejects them both in their theoretical premises and in their applications or practical manifestations. [F]ascism denies that the majority, through the mere fact of being a majority, van [sic] rule human societies; it denies that this majority can govern by means of a periodical consultation; it affirms the irremediable, fruitful and beneficent inequality of men, who cannot be leveled by such a mechanical and extrinsic fact as universal suffrage.

Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State, which is the conscience and universal will of man in his historical existence.

Fascism, in short, is not only the giver of laws and the founder of institutions, but the educator and promoter of spiritual life. It wants to remake, not the forms of human life, but its content, man, character, faith. And to this end it requires discipline and authority that can enter into the spirits of men and there govern unopposed.

These happy thoughts tighten the historical thread that connects Mussolini’s historical fascism to Trump’s regime, as transmitted through pseudo-intellectuals like Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka. This fascist mentality now commands the most powerful military force in human history. Trump’s behavior in both deed and word is a litany of fascist, and therewith Futurist, virtues.

Possessing the legal and political prerequisites for endless warfare, war enterprises need capital to fuel ongoing accumulation. War profiteers understand that citizens purchase war commodities in the sense that they accede to the Constitutional requirement that they pay war costs through taxation. In the current war market, temporary wars no longer provide the required market potential or capital. Fighting temporary wars no longer makes market sense. Instead, the working class must purchase a product that is always urgently needed, requiring continuing maintenance, like the family car. To ensure the needed profitability, war is sold as an indispensable civic need, based upon a continually present danger. That danger comes conveniently from “terrorists,” a term whose meaning is so muddled that it can apply to anyone, anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

With the proper social and political indoctrination, and product marketing, citizens happily surrender their Constitutional right to decide against whom, where, when, and how they sacrifice themselves to the god of imperial war. They are invited by a monopoly of war service providers to choose between column A or column A. Americans now enjoy a neofascist Leader in the White House, and a semi-fascist congress willing to pass mushrooming military budgets. If there were a Constitutional challenge to this state of affairs, the matter would be decided by a Supreme Court infested with neoliberal sycophants. Thus, endless war, as always under capitalism, becomes a good business investment, and therefore good governance.

Under Trump's neofascism, the Leader commands the “supply side” of the war market. Taxes on war businesses are deeply cut, while those enterprises become decreasingly deregulated and increasingly empowered. Under contemporary capitalism, the distinction between the sales effort, which invents new needs, and commodity production is largely dissolved. With the rise of a privatized war market, the traditional relationship between democratic governance and the “invisible” divine hand that supposedly guides markets is, to echo Mussolini, "repudiated." The MTSC is now fully absorbed within the structural operations of the governance, and vice versa. The business role of the Leader is to manage a permanent war-marketing project that inspires the continuing development of new war commodities. Thus, the US Defense Department is “deconstructed” (to use one of Bannon’s favorite words), only to emerge refreshed as the Fannie Mae of American global capitalist dominance.

In sum, Prince’s business proposal was ill conceived, misinformed, and poorly timed. It suffered from management problems that most failed businesses experience. While Prince, like Trump, may have obtained some measure of business success by bullying the defenseless and lying about much, both have left an ultimate legacy of business failure and bankruptcy. Unfortunately, Trump was provided a place at the head of the capitalist table by a rapacious Republican Party and its white nationalist supporters. It will remain to be seen if Prince learns some lessons and abandons his unprofitable arrogance in favor of sound business judgment. For the sake of the American working class, I hope that won’t happen.