America’s Education Spring: A Growing Revolt Against ‘Reform’ Mandates

[marmar]

Published on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 by Campaign for America's Future Blog
America’s Education Spring: A Growing Revolt Against ‘Reform’ Mandates

by Jeff Bryant


“It’s always hard to tell for sure exactly when a revolution starts,” wrote John Tierny in The Atlantic recently. “I’m not an expert on revolutions,” he continued, “but even I can see that a new one is taking shape in American K-12 public education.”

Tierney pointed to a number of signs of the coming “revolution:”

* Teachers refusing to give standardized tests, parents opting their kids out of tests, and students boycotting tests.
* Legislators reconsidering testing and expressing concerns about corruption in the testing industry.
* Voucher and other “choice” proposals being strongly contested and voted down in states that had been friendly to them.

Tierney linked to a blog post by yours truly, “The Inconvenient Truth of Education Reform,” explaining how the movement known as “education reform” has committed severe harm to the populations it professes to serve while spreading corruption and enriching businesses and political figures.

Echoing Tierney, on the pages of Slate, The Nation, and elsewhere, David Kirp, education professor and author of a popular new book casting doubt on competitive driven, market-based school reform, declared that cheating scandals and parent rebellions over high stakes standardized testing were proof that much ballyhooed reform policies championed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are not “a proven – or even a promising – way to make schools better.” ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-5