Why ALEC Lied About Failures at Public Schools
- Sunday, 04 August 2013
ALEC vs. Kids: ALEC’s Assault on Public Education. That’s the alarmingly accurate title of a new report that focuses on how the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) education task force has used a state-by-state report card to fabricate failure in state public schools in order to create sales opportunities for their corporate membership. [editor's note: the ALEC v Kids report is at the end of this post. We previously posted on the fallout from this report in the Florida media, which you can see here]
That concept is, of course, not new: the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was famously known as No Corporation Left Behind, when instead of delivering equal access to public education to millions of American children, it provided billions of dollars in profits to corporate clients through dubious processes of testing and assessment and supplemental educational services.
The wedding of big business and education benefited many, including Sandy Kress, chief architect of NCLB; Harold McGraw III, textbook publisher; Bill Bennett, former Reagan education secretary; and Neil Bush, the then-president’s youngest brother.
Apparently, ALEC likes that business model.
ALEC – All About Favoring Corporations
ALEC was formed in 1973 by a group of conservative activists who came together to advance a national right wing agenda in state legislatures across the country. They do this by coordinating and connecting corporate special interests, insurance companies, lobbyists, right wing think tanks, the super rich and conservative state legislators.
So it is no surprise that the hallmark of ALEC model legislation is to make conditions as favorable to corporations as possible. The group is behind just about every bad Republican initiative, including union-busting, Voter ID and Stand Your Ground gun laws that helped George Zimmerman go free after murdering an unarmed Trayvon Martin.
Recently the conservative lobbying group has found its way into the previously untapped market of public education by producing an education “report card.” And the 2013 result is not a pretty sight.
Report Full Of “Shoddy” Research
Professor Christopher Lubienski and doctoral candidate T. Jameson Brewer, both of the University of Illinois, reviewed the [ALEC v Kids.pdf] document: