The Privatizing Agenda of Survey-producing Education Next
In August 2014, Education Next released the results of its annual education poll.
In a post on August 20, 2014, I wrote briefly on the EdNext survey findings specific to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). I plan to examine the entire survey more closely in a future post. However, in this post, I will examine the folks behind the survey:
I call them the EdNextians.
They are the privatization slant behind the EdNext post.
Education Next is a journal that promotes “choice,” and what that means is the privatization of public education, including the defunding of traditional public schools in the form of vouchers and charters. This defunding is accomplished via the grading of schools, and the grading of schools depends upon placing standardized testing as front and center in determining educational “value.” Many of the EdNextians also promotes CCSS, which have also been fused with high-stakes testing as far back as the planning stages. And let us not forget supplanting the teaching profession with teacher temps who are later fast-tracked into education leadership positions.
Published by the pro-privatizing Hoover Institute, EdNext presents its privatization priorities euphemistically in its mission statement:
In the stormy seas of school reform, this journal will steer a steady course, presenting the facts as best they can be determined, giving voice (without fear or favor) to worthy research, sound ideas, and responsible arguments. Bold change is needed in American K–12 education, but Education Next partakes of no program, campaign, or ideology. It goes where the evidence points. [Emphasis added.]
“EdNext goes where the evidence points”??
Baloney.
Consider some of the EdNext advisory board members and other leadership.
First is EdNextian Chester Finn. I wrote about Finn in chapter 12 of my education “reformer” whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of The Privatizing Agenda of Survey-producing Education Next | deutsch29:
