The criminalization of public education
Two stories grabbed headlines this week.
Those Atlanta school teachers who cheated on tests were sentenced to some pretty heavy prison terms.
By now we've forgotten that one altogether because our very own Barbara Byrd Bennett has gone on on paid leave while under federal investigation for a shocking new conflict of interest story a fishy deal we bloggers have all been writing about for two years but seems to be heretofore unknown by the mainstream Chicago newspapers and radio.
Separated as they are by several states and many years, it’s hard to see how they have anything to do with each other. But they do. And it’s important. To explain it I have to back up a few decades, so bear with me.
Corporate education reform came barreling on to the scene after the Reagan-era Chicken Little report, A Nation At Risk. We were told our students scored terribly on tests, our schools were failing, our teachers were lazy, our unions locked terrible teachers in place forever, and our nation would soon collapse if that perilous status quo wasn't destroyed. So lots and lots of things were done, and have been done for 30 years now.
The fixes that have been applied ever since that report have been drawn from the world of business, along with the language about schools and curriculum. We have CEOs running our school systems and investors who are waiting for returns on their investments. Literally. Those folks who loaned money for Rahm's outrageously titled "universal preschool" are now going to be watching the approximately 2,500 kids it will serve to see if their Kindergarten test scores demonstrate a good return. The highest dollar value per kid will be for not needing special ed.
One of the business theories corporate reformers love is "disruption." They seek to destroy in order to remake. One main target for this process is teacher's unions, the flamekeepers, in this narrative, of the status quo of failure. We all know about the lazy lazy union hogs that are our nation's teachers. We may not know a single such teacher, but we all know the story.
Disruption, breaking unions, establishing appointed boards of ed just like corporate boards in order to keep disagreements and disorder and different ideas from mucking up the works--these are all priorities of the corporate reformers. Privatizing is the next important step because after breaking down the status quo, it's important to put something in its place. I have written about who benefits from the privatizing of schools. You know the answer: the corporations who run the schools. The investment opportunities that benefit the privatizers are considered trusty, can't-fail, and highly profitable. The kids in these schools? They get an education extruded out of a machine, one that is never chosen by any of the corporate managers for their own children.
Common standards and common tests are another piece of the fix. To the corporate reformers the exciting thing about this is the mass-scale market that results from the national standards and tests. Rupert Murdoch, purveyor of edtech gadgets and products through Amplify, famously drooled over the $500B education market potential. Education giant and congressional lobbyist par excellence Pearson now controls almost all Common Core testing, plus test prep, plus curriculum to go with the tests. Apple has been making inroads in selling entire districts iPads, and how exciting that those districts will have to buy new ones in a year or so The criminalization of public education:
