Corporate reformers wreck public schools: Billionaire foundations and Wall Street financiers are not out to help your kids learn
Both parties embrace all the wrong education reform ideas. Why is it so hard to invest in kids and teachers?
George W. Bush, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan (Credit: AP/Charles Dharapak/Ted S. Warren/Andrew Harnik)
From the book "SCHOOLS ON TRIAL" by Nikhil Goyal
When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in November 2008, I was grinding my way through the eighth grade, my final year at John F. Kennedy Middle School before I was to move up to high school. While I followed the election closely, the candidates’ positions on education policy weren’t of much interest to me. And at the time, I didn’t give any thought to how my school experience could be different.
Among many progressives and liberals, there were flickers of hope that Obama’s election signaled the prospect that his presidency would lead to the reversal of the No Child Left Behind Act and Bush-era policies. It sure seemed that way once he named Stanford professor and NCLB critic Linda Darling-Hammond to head his transition’s education policy team.
But then in December 2008, any remaining optimism suddenly vanished. The president-elect appointed the CEO of Chicago Public Schools and his friend (and basketball pal) Arne Duncan to the post of secretary of education. A report by the Broad Foundation, a group that has financed anti– public education reforms, noted that Obama’s election and the appointment of Duncan “marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned.”
As head of Chicago schools, Duncan shook up the system—in a disturbing manner. He bounced kids around from school to school to make it appear as though schools were “turning around.” He did not confront the effect of poverty on learning in a city system where 80 percent of schoolchildren live below the poverty line. He dumbed down standards, misleading the public when he pronounced that test scores had improved. He shuttered “failing” schools, replacing neighborhood schools with charters, often financed and run by fat cats and corporations. This is the man Obama put his faith in to run the Department of Education of the most powerful nation in the world.
The Obama-Duncan duo began their campaign on public education by surreptitiously slipping the Race to the Top program into the stimulus package. Few were aware of the magnitude of this initiative. Race to the Top is a $4.35 billion sweepstakes contest that dangled dollar bills before states that adopted Duncan-backed policies. As with all races, there were many more losers than winners. Obama and Duncan were well aware that states were bleeding red ink, teachers were being laid off left and right, and school budgets were being slashed. States would have little choice but to comply.
In distilled terms, Race to the Top is No Child Left Behind on steroids. Obama’s education policies have had a broader and more harmful effect on schools than Bush’s policies.
In order to qualify for money, states had to agree to tie teacher evaluations to standardized test scores, implement the Common Core standards, institute charter-Corporate reformers wreck public schools: Billionaire foundations and Wall Street financiers are not out to help your kids learn - Salon.com: