ESSA Whack-A-Mole
Recently, I read a comment on Diane Ravitch’s blog that said that with the passage of ESSA, we will now be playing “whack-a-mole” with the American Legislative Exchange Council and host of billionaire-backed foundation-funded groups who – if they have not yet descended upon your neck of the woods – are no doubt ready to pounce on your state capitol and local districts.
ESSA, of course, offers states big grants for digital, blended learning, and competency-based learning projects –none of which have solid research support their use, but all of which have been developed behind the scenes with plenty of financial support from Wall Street and venture capitalists.
When Lamar Alexander said the following regarding ESSA:
“It will unleash a flood of excitement and innovation and student achievement that we haven’t seen in a long time…”
what he meant was exactly what Arne Duncan meant when he said this:
“Whereas No Child Left Behind prescribed a top-down, one-size fits all approach to struggling schools, this law offers the flexibility to find the best local solutions—while also ensuring that students are making progress.”
And both, of course, meant the following:
We now get to shop around, district by district, for the best “learning solutions” that are being offered by Pearson, McGraw Hill, Quester, Measured Progress, and all the rest.
As for the whack-a-mole analogy, I thought it was a great comment, and it made me think of a time when I was little and watched my mom absolutelycrush a game of whack-a-mole at Hershey Park, in a feat of super-human ESSA Whack-A-Mole | Save Maine Schools:
