Todays Google search for enlightenment was caused by Rahm citing this:
"education reform open markets despite union skepticism"as one of Presdient's Obama's achievements in this thread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8715284&mesg_id=8715284And I wondered, what the heck does that even mean?
Now I get it. And the ramifications
http://dailycensored.com/2010/03/25/education-reform-is-the-best-stock-on-the-market/Daily Censored
EDUCATION REFORM IS THE BEST STOCK ON THE MARKET
Written by Adam Armstrong Education Mar 25, 2010
By Guest Blogger George Thompson
Numerous corporations such as Microsoft and ETS (Education Testing Service) use philanthropy to influence education policies in such a way as to create demands for their products. To take but one example of how this works, consider how Pearson PLC, is expanding its current markets through the push for national standards. (
http://www.corestandards.org/) After increasing profits by 46% at the height of the recession, based largely on its stake in the burgeoning school improvement industry, Pearson is now in a position to profit even more from “Obama’s push for common state standards in math and reading”, according to CEO, Marjorie Scardino.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704754604575094751085387736skip
As mentioned in earlier, Pearson is only one of many high-stakes players in this game of “raising the bar” and “closing the gap” for an ever greater accountability which is to be extracted from public funding in the name of “school improvement”. What is more disconcerting is the extent to which we have allowed public education to be effectively controlled by the education improvement industry and the accountability measurement organizations. Readers of previous articles in Daily Censored have been made well aware of the complex web of partnerships between for-profit organizations and non-profits, non-governmental organizations, research agencies, think-tanks, front groups, foundations, mass media controllers and politicians. This network holds a mafia-like grip over the government production of education policy which can only be broken by popular demand for an education system that is entirely government owned and operated and one that is driven by the principle of equality rather than “targeted” funding.
Until the general population is made aware of how school improvement and accountability that serves it are being used to subvert their power over education, it seems likely that policy will continue to be dominated by reform’s fundamentally anti-democratic agenda. http://www.truth-out.org/121708RObama's Betrayal of Public Education?
Arne Duncan and the Corporate Model Of Schooling
Wednesday 17 December 2008
by: Henry A. Giroux and Kenneth Saltman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
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Duncan, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, presided over the implementation and expansion of an agenda that militarized and corporatized the third largest school system in the nation, one that is about 90 percent poor and nonwhite. Under Duncan, Chicago took the lead in creating public schools run as military academies, vastly expanded draconian student expulsions, instituted sweeping surveillance practices, advocated a growing police presence in the schools, arbitrarily shut down entire schools and fired entire school staffs. A recent report, "Education on Lockdown," claimed that partly under Duncan's leadership "Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has become infamous for its harsh zero tolerance policies. Although there is no verified positive impact on safety, these policies have resulted in tens of thousands of student suspensions and an exorbitant number of expulsions."<4> Duncan's neoliberal ideology is on full display in the various connections he has established with the ruling political and business elite in Chicago.<5> He led the Renaissance 2010 plan, which was created for Mayor Daley by the Commercial Club of Chicago - an organization representing the largest businesses in the city. The purpose of Renaissance 2010 was to increase the number of high quality schools that would be subject to new standards of accountability - a code word for legitimating more charter schools and high stakes testing in the guise of hard-nosed empiricism. Chicago's 2010 plan targets 15 percent of the city district's alleged underachieving schools in order to dismantle them and open 100 new experimental schools in areas slated for gentrification. Most of the new experimental schools have eliminated the teacher union. The Commercial Club hired corporate consulting firm A.T. Kearney to write Ren2010, which called for the closing of 100 public schools and the reopening of privatized charter schools, contract schools (more charters to circumvent state limits) and "performance" schools. Kearney's web site is unapologetic about its business-oriented notion of leadership, one that John Dewey thought should be avoided at all costs. It states, "Drawing on our program-management skills and our knowledge of best practices used across industries, we provided a private-sector perspective on how to address many of the complex issues that challenge other large urban education transformations."<6>
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/26/a_look_at_arne_duncans_vipA Look at Arne Duncan’s VIP List of Requests at Chicago Schools and the Effects of his Expansion of Charter Schools in Chicago
When President Obama’s Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, was the head of Chicago’s Public Schools, his office kept a list of powerful, well-connected people who asked for help getting certain children into the city’s best public schools. The list—long kept confidential—was disclosed this week by the Chicago Tribune. We speak with the Chicago Tribune reporter who broke the story and with two Chicago organizers about Duncan and his aggressive plan to expand charter schools.
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PAULINE LIPMAN: Yes, good morning. I’m really glad that Azam has done this story, because it provides some evidence for what we’ve pretty much known on the ground all along. And as you said, I think that what it reveals is a bigger scandal.
The larger scandal is that Chicago has basically a two-tiered education system, with a handful of these selective enrollment magnet schools, or boutique schools, that have been set up under Renaissance 2010 in gentrifying and affluent neighborhoods, and then many disinvested neighborhood schools. So parents across the city are scrambling to try to get their kids into a few of these schools. So instead of creating quality schools in every neighborhood, what CPS has done is created this two-tier system and actually is closing down, as you said, neighborhood schools under Renaissance 2010 and replacing them with charter schools and a privatized education system, firing or laying off, I should say, certified teachers, dismantling locally elected school councils, and creating a market of public education in Chicago, turning schools over to private turnaround operators. And this is, in the bigger, bigger scandal, this is now the national agenda under the Obama administration for education.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And amazingly, Arne Duncan doesn’t have that much of a—he’s not an educator by trade, to speak of. Could you talk a little bit about his background?
PAULINE LIPMAN: Yeah, not only is he not an educator by trade, I mean, he was a functionary in the Daley administration. But because Chicago is under mayoral control of schools, which is another part of Obama’s and Duncan’s national agenda under the federal stimulus Race to the Top funds, because of that, what we have is exactly a school system that is led at the top by virtually no educators. There is only one educator in a high position. The board are all appointed by Daley. They are all bankers or corporate heads. The CEO of schools before Duncan, Paul Vallas, was in Daley’s budget office. The new CEO, Ron Huberman, ran the Chicago Transit Authority. So we have a school system that, as a whole, is led by corporate managers, not by educators.
It should have been a clue when Neil Bush became interested in educational software.