NBC first called today's panel "Does Education Need a Katrina?"

madfloridian

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Tue Sep-28-10 12:25 PM
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NBC first called today's panel "Does Education Need a Katrina?"

Edited on Tue Sep-28-10 12:28 PM by madfloridian

I don't know what they are calling it now.

Leonie Haimson writes about it at Huffington Post.

Education Indoctrination

The latest outrage is the panel discussion scheduled for Tuesday as part of Education Nation, originally entitled, "Does Education Need a Katrina?" Though the name of the panel was changed after protests, it still is being described as a discussion to examine "the advantages to the New Orleans school district of starting over post-Katrina."

When Arne Duncan made a similar statement about New Orleans schools benefiting from Hurricane Katrina, he was roundly and justifiably criticized. Hurricane Katrina killed over a thousand people, and destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives. Since then, the poorest and neediest students have been increasingly concentrated in the New Orleans' public schools, while charter schools are attracting the highest achieving and wealthiest students. This two-tier educational system is a pattern that has been replicated in New York City, Chicago and elsewhere.

NBC either told prominent critics there was "no space" for them to speak on panels (Yong Zhao) or refused to make accommodations to enable them to be included in the live panel (Diane Ravitch). They invited few if any public school parents, and have given up any pretense of providing a fair and balanced presentation of views. The panel on teacher quality will be moderated by Steve Brill, a journalist who has made a second career out of attacking teacher unions and promoting charter schools, in articles full of exaggerated claims and factual errors.

That theme of using a crisis like Katrina is seen through all the rhetoric about failing schools. They have turned it into a crisis in education where none actually exists.

Even Arne got on the bandwagon when he said Katrina was the best thing that happened to New Orleans schools

ABC News' Mary Bruce Reports: Education Secretary Arne Duncan said today that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans” because it gave the city a chance to rebuild and improve its failing public schools.

In an interview to air this weekend on “Washington Watch with Roland Martin” Duncan said “that education system was a disaster. And it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that we have to do better. And the progress that it made in four years since the hurricane, is unbelievable.”

The Education Department confirmed the quote to ABC and Duncan released the following statement in response: “As I heard repeatedly during my visits to New Orleans, for whatever reason, it took the devastating tragedy of the hurricane to wake up the community to demand more and expect better for their children.”

This reminds me of an introduction to what Kenneth Saltman wrote called Schooling in Disaster Capitalism.

Capitalizing on Disaster in Education

Despite the range of obvious failures of multiple public school privatization initiatives, the privatization advocates have hardly given up. In fact, the privatizers have become far more strategic. The new educational privatization might be termed “back door privatization” (4) or maybe “smash and grab” privatization. A number of privatization schemes are being initiated through a process involving the dismantling of public schools followed by the opening of for-profit, charter, and deregulated public schools. These enterprises typically despise teachers unions, are hostile to local democratic governance and oversight, and have an unquenchable thirst for “experiments”, especially with the private sector. (5) These initiatives are informed by right wing think tanks and business organizations. Four examples that typify back door privatization are 1) No Child Left Behind, 2) Chicago’s

Haimson had a very interesting paragraph about today's panel of Education Nation.

Indeed, the vast majority of panelists appear to have been pre-selected by the Gates and Broad Foundations, Education Nation's co-sponsors, who through spending billions have been subverting democracy and imposing their rigid prescriptions on the nation's urban public schools. NBC has also asked the president of the University of Phoenix to participate, the nation's largest for-profit online chain and yet another co-sponsor, although this institution has been widely criticized for fraudulent practices. As the independent Poynter Institute commented, "it looks like the University of Phoenix bought access" onto the show, which "undermines the credibility of the project." Indeed, it is apparent that for NBC, money rather than real expertise talks.

The same monolithic cast of characters dominate Waiting for Superman, which despite numerous cogent critiques, is likely to draw support from viewers who are otherwise ignorant of the real problems plaguing public education.