Monday, August 15, 2011

Schools Matter: Tennessee, the Oligarchs' Poster State for Corporate Education Reform

Schools Matter: Tennessee, the Oligarchs' Poster State for Corporate Education Reform

Tennessee, the Oligarchs' Poster State for Corporate Education Reform


Mr. Superlative, Arne Duncan, announced last week that Tennessee will likely be the first state granted a royal waiver from the child and school crushing NCLB testing targets that guarantee an 80-90 percent failure rate in most school communities across America by 2014. I was in Tennessee at the time recovering from foot surgery when a friend there called with the news. Having just that day been working on a book project that extends a case study of Tennessee’s valueless value-added testing scheme devised by the Dr. Strangelove/Wizard of Oz of testing, Bill Sanders, the irony was just too sweet.

Tennessee could not be better positioned to become the poster state for embracing Duncan’s federalized