My MLK Post: An Assignment for Test-Driven Reformers
On this day dedicated to the memory of a remarkable man who gave his life (literally) for the sake of civil rights and social equity, I expect that education privatizers will use the opportunity to promote themselves as “overcoming” opposition to their self-serving, destructive policies.
Such grandiose, corporate reformer self-titling is nothing new. Beginning with former President George W. Bush in 2002, reformers have been proclaiming themselves as civil rights saviors.
Bush used the “civil rights ” term during the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday weekend at the outset of his No Child Left Behind (NCLB) years:
WASHINGTON (CNN) – With the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend under way, President Bush on Saturday called education “the great civil rights issue of our time” and took the opportunity to highlight his agenda for change.
Regarding Bush’s “agenda for change”: This current year presents a particular irony since Bush proclaimed “100% literacy” by 2014.
It’s 2014. As education historian Diane Ravitch notes in