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Wednesday, August 10, 2016

CURMUDGUCATION: The Global Agenda for Monetizing Education

CURMUDGUCATION: The Global Agenda for Monetizing Education:

The Global Agenda for Monetizing Education


In today's USNews, education historian and activist Diane Ravitch talks about the worldwide movement to buy and sell education, to privatize it, to attack "the very concept of public education."



You don't have to look hard to find some of the folks who are heavily invested in driving what some call the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). Take for instance this white paper presented to the World Economic Forum-- "Unleashing Greatness: Nine Plays To Spark Innovation in Education"  (and briefly coveredin Ravitch's blog)

The paper is almost as interesting or who's behind it as for what's in it-- but I'm going to look at what's in it first. Then we'll take a look at the GERMy minds that created this monstrosity.

The Nine Big Plays

It makes sense that the Global Agenda for Monetizing Education (GAME) would talk about the kind of "plays" needed to win. These guys narrowed the list down to nine. 

The nine big plays come courtesy of Michael Barber, the chief of Pearson, and Joel Klein, previously the reformster-in-chief of education in New York City and, well, he's logged many fine achievements, such as awarding a multi-million dollar contract to News Corp for a big edu-data-crunching program called ARIS just before he left New York schools to go work for News Corp, shortly before NYC schools scrapped ARIS because it was junk. Klein also ran Amplify, Rupert Murdoch's big shot at making some big edu-bucks. Amplify lost about half a billion-with-a-B dollars before Murdoch just sold it off. Now on this paper, Klein lists his employment as Chief Policy and Strategy Officer, Oscar Insurance.

You will not find two more ardent supporters of privatization, not just of education itself, but of 
CURMUDGUCATION: The Global Agenda for Monetizing Education: