The corporate push to take over state education masks the failures of corporate America

[Hannah Bell]

The top positions in state education across the US – for example, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, recent chancellors Joel Klein (New York) and Michelle Rhee (Washington, DC), and incoming Chancellor Cathleen P Black (New York) – reflect a trust in CEO-style leadership for education management and reform. Along with these new leaders in education, billionaire entrepreneurs have also assumed roles as education saviours: Bill and Melinda Gates, and Geoffrey Canada...

Like Obama, Secretary Duncan has led refrains against bad teachers, while ignoring the growing impact of poverty on the lives of children and on schools. One very visible effect of this trend for recruiting CEO-style leaders and billionaire entrepreneurs is the new commitment to corporate-sponsored charter schools – such as the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) among the most high profile.

The messages coming from state education in the US, then, are that government has failed and that only the private sector can save us. But is that message accurate?

The corporate push to take over state education is, in fact, masking the failures of corporate America. And, in turn, this masks the fact that America has failed state education, rather than state education failing America...The real failure, which is the message being ignored here, is that one of the wealthiest countries in the world refuses to face the inequities of its economic system, a system that permits more than 20% of its children to live in poverty and to languish in schools that America has clearly decided to abandon, along with its democratic principles.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/15/education-schools

[DonCoquixote]

1. Indeed

Although to be honest, I wish some of the Teacher's Unions actually adressed some of the issues that led to this, instead of burying their head in the sand.