The RSD has failed, but from the ashes an Education Mecca has been born
Posted on August 16, 2014
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The RSD, the New Orleans Recovery School District that was formed just prior to Katrina and used as an excuse an opportunity to wrest control of local schools and school districts from Orleans Parish and school systems across the state, has failed but without much fanfare in the local or national media. Katrina and RSD were lauded by many folks, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, as the greatest thing to ever happen to New Orleans. Arne probably read about this or wrote this for the Common Core history books that have been produced to go alongside the Math, ELA, and Science texts. (If you thought Common Core ELA and Math were bad, wait until you get ahold of the History and Science Common Core curricula. Local historians need not apply but that’s an article for another time.)
What happened in New Orleans is not that dissimilar to what we have done in other political enterprises. It’s a very common tactic called bait and switch in sales lingo. A salesman or store advertises a ridiculously low priced good or service, but once you show up at the store you find they are all out of that special deal, but you are in luck, they have something even better in store for you, and you will get first dibs on it! You are made to feel special and lucky and hopefully forget all about the original reason for your visit. If this is done well, you don’t realize you’ve been had and that the original advertisement was just meant to lure people in for the real sale where they offload a substandard product or something much more expensive and that you perhaps don’t really need.. If this goes poorly you write about it on blogs and Facebook, tell your friends not to shop there, and perhaps make a stink about it and maybe the vendor will give you a rain check or dust off a few of the special deal they had tucked away for persistent (bitchy) customers.
If you want to think of a political situation (without getting too political about it) consider the recent Iraq war that was sold to the nation on the pretext of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction.) The US public was told there were weapons that could kill them and their families. They were told that these weapons were about to be handed over to terrorists with a penchant and expressed desire to use them. This invasion was not long after we had been already attacked on 911 so we The RSD has failed, but from the ashes an Education Mecca has been born | Crazy Crawfish's Blog: