This is a great article on why the current so called "school reform" movement is phony, wrong, and just an attempt to make profits off of our school children. It summarizes why I am against privatization and charter schools and so much else that is being done in the name of "reform" nowadays. This is not to say that all charter schools are awful. I know there are some that are doing a good job. But the movement as a whole is wrong. "Of equal importance are the topics that corporate reformers don’t talk about. Seldom do they protest budget cuts, no matter how massive they may be. They do not complain when governors and legislatures cut billions from the public schools while claiming to be reformers. They do not protest rising rates of child poverty. They do not complain about racial segregation. They see no harm in devoting more time and resources to standardized testing. They are not heard from when districts cut the arts, libraries, and physical education while spending more on testing. They do not complain when federal or state or city officials announce plans to test children in kindergarten or even pre-kindergarten. "They do not complain about increased class size. They do not object to scripted curricula or teachers’ loss of professional autonomy. "They do not object when experienced teachers are replaced by recruits who have only a few weeks of training. They close their eyes to evidence that charters enroll disproportionately small numbers of children with disabilities, or those from troubled homes, or English-language learners (in fact, they typically deny any such disparities, even when documented by state and federal data). They do not complain when for-profit corporations run charter schools or when educational services are outsourced to for-profit businesses. Indeed, they welcome entrepreneurs into the reform community as investors and partners. "If the American public understood that reformers want to privatize their public schools and divert their taxes to pay profits to investors, it would be hard to sell the corporate idea of reform." salon/2013/09/15/diane_ravitch_school_privatization_is_a_hoax_reformers_aim_to_destroy_public_schools/?h=1
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 17:54:15 +0000
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