3rd Grade Reading Guarantees: Impact Investors Build System To Terrorize Eight Year Olds
I know a number of activists out there are working to raise awareness around the brutality of third grade reading guarantees. These laws demand students achieve a specific score on standardized reading test. If they do not, they can’t advance to the next grade. I wrote this short introduction with the idea that it could be shared with people who are not yet aware of the speculative financial underpinnings linked to these laws.
“Pay for success” was embedded into federal education law with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act. Public-private partnerships, in coordination with investors, are embracing this form of “innovative finance,” catalyzing new markets in human capital. Digital platforms, including ed-tech and online behavioral services, are designed to generate data for the evaluation of outcomes-based contracts. That is what is behind the push for expanded screen-time and benchmark testing in schools.
It’s known as “collective impact,” and the Strive Network based in Cincinnati is working with United Way chapters across the country to advance data-driven education and social services to meet the demands of this burgeoning investment market. Children are being turned into data so the debt associated with funds allocated to provide education and social services to them can be traded on global markets (like bundled mortgages prior to the 2008 crash).
A “cradle to career roadmap” with set achievement metrics has been created with benchmarks where impact evaluation will be imposed as a CONTINUE READING: 3rd Grade Reading Guarantees: Impact Investors Build System To Terrorize Eight Year Olds – Wrench in the Gears
