No Millionaire Left Behind

Check out Michael Grunwald's expose on No Child Left Behind's Reading First Initiaive. A disturbing illustration of the federal government's absolutely artful use of government policy to make their friends filthier and richer. In this case, science has been hijacked to use schools, teachers, and students as guinea pigs in market-driven education reform. And guess who foots the bill? Bush was called the education president. He's overhauled the public education system and education research to include more federal control than any time in our country's history, in the name of higher standards and accountability. You want your kids to learn, right? It's like milk for babies. Who's going to argue against standards and accountability. So teachers & schools should be held accountable for what and how they teach and students for what they learn. And curriculum that teachers use to teach literacy should be validated scientifically. Sounds like common sense? There are sound arguments against narrow conception of teaching and learning as well as the the criteria that NCLB sets forth for scientifically-based research but let's assume that we accept the federal government's guidelines for rigor and justification. The problem is how readily they abandon the standards they created when doing so suits their interests. A standard for practice is created to guide science in education. That standard is conveniently ignored when it would get in the way of supporting one's own agenda. Rough translation: it's all about the Benjamins.

Do not assume that everyone in education reform is out for the same end goal to improve opportunities for all (or even most) young people through greater access to quality edcuation. There is a sizable and growing force in the field whose business is business. Public education is a huge potential market and still relatively unclaimed terrain for private interests. Loosen restrictions on for-profit entities in public schools and you open over a $7oo billion possibility for corporate development. That's a lot of digits to make Bush wet and whet the appetite of his financial backers.