Schools Matter: Ohanian Speaks to Our Canadian Friends and Lovers of Freedom Around the World

Schools Matter: Ohanian Speaks to Our Canadian Friends and Lovers of Freedom Around the World

Ohanian Speaks to Our Canadian Friends and Lovers of Freedom Around the World

by Jim Horn

Ooh, good one. Posted at Susan's place:

from Our Schools/Our Selves, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Vol. 19, Number 2 (#98), Winter 2010

What's going on here?

Make no mistake: the assault on teachers in New York and Chicago also threatens teachers in Seoul (1) and London and Vancouver.

Worldwide, corporate interest strive to keep teachers intellectually barefoot. They want people who follow the script to train future workers for the global economy.

My bumper sticker reads Republicans/Democrats: Same shit, different piles. These two halves of the Corporate Party showed corporate loyalty by passing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001 by huge margins.

When this happened, Kathy Emery, my co-author for Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools? noted, "When Ted Kennedy and George Bush agree on something, you need to worry about who the man behind the curtain is." While writing our book, it became clear to us that the men behind the curtain are the members of the Business Roundtable.

People are so used to thinking of issues as right wing and left wing that they miss the corporate wing. In the name of preparing students for "the 21st century workplace," the Business roundtable (BRT) wrote the NCLB Business Leaders Toolkit, urging CEOs to take advantage of this "exceptional window of opportunity...[to] act strategically and with a common voice."

In addition to declaring all public schools failures, opening the door to vouchers and privatization, the Business Roundtable plan also paved the way for school-to-work plans sitting on the back burner ever since President Clinton failed to get the national test he wanted.

By 2000, the Business Roundtable had managed to create an interlocking network of business associations, corporate foundations, governors' associations, non-profits, and educational institutions. This network includes the Education Trust, Annenberg Center, Harvard Graduate School, Public Agenda, Achieve, Inc., Education Commission of the States, the Broad Foundation, Institute for Educational Leadership, federally funded regional laboratories, and most newspaper 

Imagine Schools is on a Roll!

by Kenneth Libby

The for-profit Imagine Schools are on a roll these days. Just weeks ago, the Kennesaw Charter School celebrated their official separation from the charter manager, and it wasn't long before that that two Florida charters run by Imagine were found to be $900,000 in debt (to Imagine, of course). And this article from Karen Francisco at the Journal Gazette makes it three scandals in less than a month. Here's a little snippet, but the whole thing is worth a read:

A founding board member of the [Imagine Indiana Life Sciences Academy East] charter school, he said members of the mostly African American community surrounding the school now believe they have been shut out of a role in its operation.
Williams, who is no longer a board member, said questions have been raised about how discipline is handled at the school, with an enrollment that's 84 percent African American, 9 percent Hispanic and 5 percent multiracial. Williams said he was told that a teacher at Imagine East made the comment that "my little black students are retarded," and another disciplined students by making them get on their hands and knees on the floor.
He was also critical of the hiring process at the school, which he said mostly excluded people from the immediate community.