Schools Matter: The Nation's Report Card on Corporate Ed Reform Comes Home

Schools Matter: The Nation's Report Card on Corporate Ed Reform Comes Home:

The Nation's Report Card on Corporate Ed Reform Comes Home

by Jim Horn

The Milton Friedman disciples who came to Washington with the Gipper in 1980 were intent upon smashing the public school system, beginning with the newly-formed U. S. Department of Education. Reagan's boys fell short on both counts, but they set in motion for the next 30 years a system of educational auditing that would assure public education coming up short in measurements designed by greed merchants and tax evaders from the Business Roundtable who wanted then and want now to turn education into a primary corporate revenue stream. A major piece of that strategy for assured public education failure was to renorm the National Assessment of Education Progress so that almost all public schools would fall short of "proficiency."

Analyses over the years have shown, in fact, that the NAEP proficiency scales

Vander Ark getting cranky regarding negative NEPC report

by Robert D. Skeels * rdsathene

The true path to higher test scores is reading. — Dr. Stephen Krashen

Look up the word charlatan in any lexicon and it would be of no surprise if it features a photograph of Tom Vander Ark as the accompanying illustration. The former Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation executive has been a major player in the corporate education reform onslaught against the public commons. He has been gorging himself at the tax trough for some time now. His antics and blather have garnered quite a bit of ink here at Schools Matter, partly since few people are as adept at technobabble and doublespeak as Vander Ark.

Earlier this evening Class Size Matters and Parents Across