The Failure of Corporate School Reform: Toward a New Common School Movement
Speech by Kenneth J. Saltman at Occupy Chicago, Friday, November 18, 2011, adapted from his forthcoming book "The Failure of Corporate School Reform" (Paradigm Publishers 2012).
In the United States, a corporate model of schooling has overtaken educational policy, practice, curriculum and nearly all aspects of educational reform.
While this movement began on the political right, the corporate school model has been heralded across the political spectrum and is aggressively embraced by both major parties. Corporate school reformers champion private-sector approaches to reform including, especially, privatization, deregulation and the importation of terms and assumptions from business, while they imagine public schools as private businesses, districts as markets, students as consumers and knowledge as product. Corporate