It Was a Bad Week for Education Reform at the End of an Awful Era of Corporate School Reform
The title of Jeff Bryant's Education Opportunity Network piece says it best: Education Reform's Very Bad, God-Awful Week. Bryant reviews the resignation of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, President Obama's apology for contributing to over-testing, and the stagnation and even the decline of the reliable NAEP scores after decades of growth.
Bryant also surveys the national news on charters. A series of new stories in several states document how the lack of oversight opened the doors for financial irregularities by charter school operators, and the number of other reports documenting underperformance by charters continues to grow. Of course, the documentation of how Success Academy pushes out more-difficult-to-educate kids and Eva Moskowitz's arrogant response was a huge blow to reformers.
Bryant concludes his impressive catalogue of recent reform failures with the words of teacher/activist Jesse Hagopian:
It should be clear that this national uprising, this Education Spring, has forced the testocracy to retreat and is the reason that the Obama administration has come to its current understanding on testing in schools. However, the testocracy, having amassed so much power and wealth, won't just slink quietly into the night.
The first decade of school reform was an outgrowth of Reaganism. As Karl Rove explained, conservatives sought to destroy public sector unions in order to cut off funding for the Democratic Party. He endorsed NCLB in order to split Democratic constituencies in an effort not to defeat, but to outright destroy, the party.
Test-driven, market-driven reform became exceptionally destructive when conservatives were joined by liberals and neo-liberals. As contemporary reform movement morphed in corporate school reform, the big donors' public relations gurus spun it into a supposed "civil rights" issue. That unholy alliance is now unraveling, It Was a Bad Week for Education Reform at the End of an Awful Era of Corporate School Reform | John Thompson:
