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Wednesday, May 23, 2012

The Romney Education Agenda « Diane Ravitch's blog

The Romney Education Agenda « Diane Ravitch's blog:

The Romney Education Agenda



What would education policy look like in a Mitt Romney administration?

As the saying goes, people are policy. Romney’s list of campaign advisers was released this week and it is a re-run of the George W. Bush administration.

There is Rod Paige, Nina Rees, Bill Hansen, Russ Whitehurst, Bill Evers, Carol D’Amico, and possibly others who were high-level Bush II appointees. Margaret Spellings has also advised Romney but is not on this task force. There are representatives of big corporations, and there is a state superintendent (Tom Luna of Idaho) known for his love of online learning (and getting campaign contributions from providers of same). There are also conservative policy academics, such as Paul Peterson, Herbert Walberg, Robert Costrell, and John Chubb.
There was a time when I would have been on the same side with these like-minded folks. But I am no longer like-minded. What I can bring to the table, however, is that I know their policies and ideas well because I once shared them.

Their core beliefs are school choice, testing and accountability. These were the hallmarks of No Child Left Behind, as they are now the foundation for Race to the Top. So a new Romney administration would seek to advance vouchers, charters, online learning, and test-based accountability. But because Republicans don’t like