No 1 in the World, Mr. Duncan? Really ?

Number 1 in the World, Mr. Duncan? Really? You Have Got to Kidding Me 
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/02/number-1-in-world-mr-duncan-really-you.html
By Jim Horn
Arne Duncan proclaimed a couple of days ago that he wants the U. S. to be #1 in educational achievement but that we have "a long way to go."  But that's okay, boys, we're in a hole, so keep digging.

Since Duncan came to Washington to sit as ED's titular CEO while the Gates and Broad Foundations runs the show, the hole has gotten deeper as new shovels are brought in to replace the old ones.  The urban schools that were blown apart by NCLB's ticking time bomb have been turned into corporate segregated charters run like prisons, and more public schools are exploded each spring as the scores come in, telling us where the poorest children in America will be added to the penal charter list, as two-year temps from TFA and alt-cert neophytes take over the duties of teachers. 

Meanwhile, the Gates-Broad team hire the high priest of the stats world to devise ways to use unreliable and invalid tests to keep or fire teachers, despite the mountain of scientific evidence and common sense that tells the rest of us that this is unfair, unethical, and just a bad idea.  Other Gates goons are working to shut down or re-make teacher education programs to focus on those same test scores.  Still others are being farmed out to conservative and neolib state legislators and governors looking for ways to take away teachers' collective bargaining rights, due process, and any remaining shreds of academic freedom.

Meanwhile back at the school children are choking on the growing mountain and tests that fatten the corporate leeches who publish them.  Children learn to read by racing through nonsense syllables and despise reading by the time they get to junior high. Librarians are fired and book collections dumped or allowed to collect dust.  Students are paid to graduate a year early to save money, while class sizes swell to overflowing.


read the entire piece here.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/02/number-1-in-world-mr-duncan-really-you.html