Christopher Tienken and Donald Orlich, “The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth, and Lies” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013)

Christopher Tienken and Donald Orlich are authors of the provocative new book, The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth, and Lies (Rowman and Littlefield 2013). Dr. Tienken is an assistant professor in the College of Education and Human Services at Seton Hall University, and is also currently the editor of the American Association of School Administrators Journal of Scholarship and Practice and the Kappa Delta Pi Record. Dr. Orlich is professor emeritus of education and science instruction at Washington State University, Pullman. Their new book is an unabashed critique of nearly five decades of school reform and the questionable assertions and arguments made by many advocates for standardization, nationalization, and corporatization of public schools. They refer to the famed “Sputnik” moment of the 1950s as a manufactured crisis that Bon Jovi might call a “vagabond king wearing a Styrofoam crown”. They call A Nation at Risk, the landmark study of educational performance in US schools, “an intellectually vapid and data challenged piece of propaganda” and the current federal law, No Child Left Behind, “Stalinist-inspired”. Deep down, this book is a critique of the neoliberal theory of government applied to education. Tienken and Orlich argue that standardization, testing, and charter schools have been foisted upon local school in deference to neoliberalism, rather than in service of students. They suggest that better policies can better improve education. A few highlights from the podcast interview. On Sputnik and Bon Jovi: “Bon Jovi and Sambora have a song off the album, These Days, and the song is called These Days, and in that song they use phrase “vagabond king wearing a Styrofoam crown”. And I heard that phrase and it struck me: yes, that really sums up Sputnik in one phrase, Sputnik is the really the genesis of the school bashing and the current school reform movement. Everyone refers to it as if it was a meaningful event in terms of school reform.” On A Nation at Risk: “When you read A Nation at Risk, we challenge anyone to go ahead and find the actual data to support the claims and conclusions they draw.” On federal education policy: “Under Obama and the Republicans in terms of the Common Core State Standards and new national testing initiatives, so really for the first time in this country’s history, curriculum is being determined by a small group of elites far away from your kids’ and my kids’ schools. That is problematic culturally but also educationally.”