“Failing Schools” Narrative a Tactic to Privatize Public Education and Destroy Unions | FDL News Desk

“Failing Schools” Narrative a Tactic to Privatize Public Education and Destroy Unions | FDL News Desk:

“Failing Schools” Narrative a Tactic to Privatize Public Education and Destroy Unions

by David Dayen

(photo: ChrisM70 / flickr)

The Obama campaign has recently tried to squeeze their opponent on the issue of education, leading to anomalous situations like Obama criticizing Romney for supporting class size increases that his own Education Secretary agrees with. There is probably a debate to be had between the two campaigns over education, one that comes down mostly to resources. But the philosophy underpinning both sides on education comes from a similar place – the idea that America is slipping behind the rest of the world on education, and that drastic measures must be taken to reverse that trend. Usually these drastic measures fall directly on the heads of teachers and more specifically their unions.
There’s one problem with this scenario – the premise is wrong. An excellent article at Mother Jones takes issue with the idea that American education is all about “failing schools” and lower standards and backsliding on teaching our young people. In fact, Kristina Rizga takes a look at one so-called failing school and finds that, actually, it’s doing pretty well:

At Mission High, the struggling school she’d chosen against the advice of her friends and relatives, Maria earned high grades in math and some days caught herself speaking English even with her Spanish-speaking teachers. By 11th grade, she wrote long papers on complex topics like desegregation and the war in Iraq. She became addicted to winning debates in class, despite her