Saturday, March 23, 2013

Stop the Minnsanity! | EduShyster

Stop the Minnsanity! | EduShyster:


Stop the Minnsanity!

The next stop on TFA’s “listening tour” should be CEO Matt Kramer’s hometown: Minneapolis
A “family tree” of the Minneapolis education reform movement drawn on a bar napkin.
If there is a single city in the US that perfectly exemplifies the insanity of the corporate education “reform” movement it has to be Minneapolis. The particular brand of reform here—let’s call it Minnsanity— combines cronyism and contempt for democracy in a neat, corporate-funded package topped with a pretty bow of race-tinged hyperbole. But why take my word for it (or the word of the Minneapolis parents and teachers who seem to contact me daily asking what the @#$% is going on in their city)? Let’s climb aboard the education rephorm express and head to Minneapolis, the city whose name I have just learned was coined by city’s first schoolteacher, who combined mni, a Dakota Sioux word for water, and polis, the Greek word for city. The first