Schools Matter: How Duncan's RTTT Became Your New NCLB

Schools Matter: How Duncan's RTTT Became Your New NCLB

During the reign of Bush II, NCLB was typically underfunded by $6-8 billion per year while unfunded mandates piled up for states and municipalities, so much so that by the time of the Wall Street heist in 2008, public education coffers were hollow. Now they are bare. Taking advantage of the public funding crisis, then, will be the centerpiece of the new oligarch-inspired RTTT (Race to the Trough), which will pit states against one another in a contest to see how fast they will approve policies that are intended to hand over public education to corporate management by selling out public institutions.

For instance, states like Massachusetts have taken the Gates Foundation grantwriters' advice for getting some of the bribe money by passing a law to double the number of segregated charter school test camps, where collective bargaining will be replaced by CEO control and teacher standards will be further weakened and the curriculums will become a corporate script, all in the name of "innovation." In the meantime, the public schools will lose about