“COMMON” Goal: Corporate Ownership of Public Education and Our Children’s Futures
Common Goal. Part I.
Lamar Alexander and Patti Murray didn’t (really) write the new Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA). The Business Roundtable (BRT) did. Let me break this down for you:
By now, those of us who are fighting for public schools are pretty aware of how the Common Core state standards (CCSS) were crafted behind the scenes by corporate interests (via ALEC and The Business Roundtable. If you need a primer on that first, see HERE and HERE.
For a full list of education reform organizations associated with ALEC click here.
The final culmination of all their efforts is the control of both the content (what is taught) and method (how it’s delivered). CONTENT is covered in PART I of this blog. METHOD is covered in Part II.
It started (circa 1984 when UNESCO first coined the term Common Core) in a document called “A Methodological Guide to the Application of the Notion of Common Core in the Training of Various Categories of Educational Personnel.” It will end (post 2016) with the “disruptive, innovative, personalized, career and college ready” ELIMINATION of public education. The passing of ESSA has delivered everything the Business Roundtable wanted on a silver platter: Control of educational content, methods of privatization (charters and outsourcing services) and alternative assessments for teacher and teacher education “accountability.” They say this in their own words. One Business Roundtable (BRT) spokesperson says: “We are particularly pleased that the final legislation includes challenging academic standards; annual testing; increased transparency of school performance through state, district and school report cards; required state action to improve low performing schools; and enhanced support for public school choice and charter schools.”http://businessroundtable.org/resources/brt-letter-urging-passage-every-student-succeeds-act
Content
Content is the “WHAT” we teach in a curriculum. Call it Common Core, call it state-created “career and college ready standards.” Call it “lilly lala poohpa” for all I care. We can pretend that the adoption of the ESSA bills means that states DON’T HAVE to adopt CCSS and that we now have more “freedom” to choose standards. I can also pretend that unicorns exist… but that does not make it so. Member of the Business Roundtable have been supportive of the idea of national or Common Core standards for decades.
They’ve even devised COMMON EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS. This document was crafted by something called the“COMMON” Goal: Corporate Ownership of Public Education and Our Children’s Futures | educationalchemy:
