Corporate Interests Change Lexicon for School Privatization into “Education Reform”
Diane Ravitch
Salon recently ran an insightful excerpt from the book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, written by former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch. The piece, “School Privatization is a hoax, “reformers” aim to destroy public schools,” sheds light on the growing fight by corporate interests to redo education laws and standards, in part to limit the power of teachers unions. As an introduction, Ravitch points out that while public schools are often labeled a “failure” they have increasingly become the safest place for children in troubled neighborhoods.
As long as anyone can remember, critics have been saying that the schools are in decline. They used to be the best in the world, they say, but no longer. They used to have real standards, but no longer. They used to have discipline, but no longer. What the critics seldom acknowledge is that our schools have changed as our society has changed. Some who look longingly to a golden age in the past remember a time when the schools educated only a small fraction of the population.
But the students in the college-bound track of fifty years ago did not get the high quality of education that
