A Rhee Is Spit Up By The Global Economy
The global economy is at the very foundation of business model for schools, charters, vouchers, data driven instruction, merit pay, standardized testing, and most perversely of all, paying students to consume the corporate version of education.
It all began when the globalizers, fueled with the fire of the Reagan Revolution, put together their devious campaign at the Business Roundtable education summit in 1989. Standardized testing would be their primary weapon. The tests would isolate urban schools first and bury them under public posturing for accountability. The corporate vultures from Edison Schools and the others would move in to pick up the pieces and impose their gospel, the business model. Vouchers and charter schools would even redirect public monies to the destruction of public schools.
Toxic wastes, like incessant testing and mindless data collection and merit pay plans, would be pumped into the public school environment to sicken both teachers and students. And bye-and-bye the corporations would have a brave new education system to serve their global economy.
And they were so close when the roof fell in recently. They had their blueprint for legally closing public schools, the No Child Left Behind Act, in place. Billionaire Bloomberg and his CEO sidekick Joel Klein were in control in New York City. Mayor Daley and Arne Duncan were strangling the Chicago Public Schools. Mayor Villariagosa and Admiral Brewer were trying to get their hands around the throats of the Los Angeles Unified Public Schools. Jeb Bush, in and out of office, was calling the shots in Florida. Bill Gates had succeeded in winning Washington D.C. for Mayor Fenty and he in turn introduced the nation to a new level of ruthlessness and brutality in the person and policies of Michelle Rhee. Eli Broad's superintendents dotted the landscape from Vallas in New Orleans to Crew in Miami, chirping over the achievement gap and with grave voices declaring "the children of Singapore are eating our kids lunch." Many of those pesky democratically elected school boards had been eliminated.
Then just as the campaign appeared ready to bear fruit, their rationale for being, their precious global economy, crashed! Their pride and joy is on fire. It was supposed to be immutable. It was eternal! Now the attitude is all gone.
A forlorn John Castellani's mug has been all over TV recently. He's the president of the Business Roundtable. Who could have imagined that less than twenty years after their education summit these same men would appear on their knees, hat in hand, to desperately plead with every public school teacher, parent and student to give them $3,000 as their share of a $700 billion public bailout. Goodness, what happened to their vaunted business model? Somehow these proponents of data driven education have no idea what their collateralized debt obligations (CDO's) and structured investment vehicles (SIV's) are worth. Most shockingly, the poster boys for accountability who pranced around with their noses in the air chanting "no excuses" over the battered minds and bodies of poor children, now beg for sympathy and want to be rescued by their victims!
Our corporate tormentors will soon slink away to lick their wounds and we will have to rebuild the public schools, make them truly places of learning. Imagine there's no pacing guides, it's easy if you try. Our time under these sanctimonious, hypocritical blowhards is over! They have forfeited their right to any influence in our schools and in our lives.