Montana Just Says No to More Testing Insanity
The corporate education reformers (both neocon and neolib) had one big goal in mind when they rolled out NCLB under the cynical and manipulative banner of a high quality public education for all children: to use impossible testing targets that most poor children will never meet in order to undercut support for public schools and to create the demand for privatized options such as the segregated chain gang charters. In short, the goal was to blow up public education.
And so we end up 9 years after NCLB passage with the neediest children in behavioral straight jackets, learning how to bubble in anti-cultural, anti-thinking tests inside inadequate buildings without libraries or certified teachers, and with CEO principals who have a free rein to abuse his power and to steal the public dollars that fund these corporate madrassahs. Tell me the Business Roundtable doesn't have power.
In Montana, anyway, they have had enough, telling Arne Duncan and his oligarch handlers to not pass go but go directly to Hell with their unethical testing scheme that has left millions of the poorest children of America labeled as failures for life. Enough!
From the Bozeman Chronicle:
And so we end up 9 years after NCLB passage with the neediest children in behavioral straight jackets, learning how to bubble in anti-cultural, anti-thinking tests inside inadequate buildings without libraries or certified teachers, and with CEO principals who have a free rein to abuse his power and to steal the public dollars that fund these corporate madrassahs. Tell me the Business Roundtable doesn't have power.
In Montana, anyway, they have had enough, telling Arne Duncan and his oligarch handlers to not pass go but go directly to Hell with their unethical testing scheme that has left millions of the poorest children of America labeled as failures for life. Enough!
From the Bozeman Chronicle:
Denise Juneau, Montana's top teacher, is