Ever wonder why the American public consistently votes against its own interests?
Does it drive you crazy when you hear that "only 17 percent of young adults in the United States could find Afghanistan on a map"? (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...)
Do you think it's insane that less than "half of American teenagers who were asked basic questions about history and literature during a recent telephone survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one-quarter thought that Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World sometime after 1750, not in 1492."? (http://www.nytimes.com/...)
There is a reason why Americans are so poorly informed, and the past 10 years of "education reform" has done a lot to make this problem WORSE.
I have been a public school teacher for 11 years, and I first recognized the severity of this problem when I was working a 2nd job as a tutor for Sylvan Learning Center. A middle school student with whom I was working was reading a passage about an event in American history. At the end of the passage, the student was struggling with some reading comprehension questions. I tried to help the student understand the questions, and I said, "Remember when you learned about this in history class?"
The student gave me a blank stare. "History class?" he asked. "We don't have no history class, miss. We just have things like reading and math."
But it's not just my experience, and it's not an isolated case. Back in 2006, the Center on Education Policy "found that since the passage of the federal law, 71 percent of the nation's 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects to open up more time for reading and math." (http://www.nytimes.com/...)
Many critics of No Child Left Behind generously call this an "unintended consequence."
But is it really "unintended"?
Who are the players behind the push for testing and accountability?
Why do so many of the school choice, charter school "reformers" vehemently oppose the idea of a common core of standards nationally?
No Child Left Behind has an interesting mandate that, in my opinion, exposes it as a fraud. The mandate states that 100% of all students must be proficient in reading and math by 2014. The law was passed in 2002.
That's right: ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!
Think about what would happen if we mandated that 100% of crime must be prevented, or 100% of patients must be cured, or 100% of Americans must be employed!
By mandating 100%, the law is clearly intended to ensure that the public schools fail.
And when they fail, the private sector is geared up to take them over.
It's already happening. In New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina, over 70% of the public schools were re-opened as charters. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, from 1999-2009, "the number of students enrolled in public charter schools more than tripled from 340,000 to 1.4 million students." (http://nces.ed.gov/...)
It seems clear to me that NCLB, via the hedge-fund supporters of the charter school movement, has every intention of dismantling the public school system.
Not all charter schools are bad -- a few are very successful. But ANYONE can open a charter school, and quite a few charter school organizations are run by billionaire hedge-fund managers.(http://www.nytimes.com/...)
Why would these billionaires be so interested in charter schools -- which are primarily designed to educate low-income and minority students?
When 2014 comes around, ALL of America's public schools will be labeled failing because of the 100% mandate.
If we led hedge-fund managers control what our students are learning, what will our students learn?
Will they learn about the history of the labor movement? Will they learn about the Vietnam War? Will they learn about evolution? Will they be able to identify Iraq or Afghanistan on a map?
Or will they be programmed to be ignorant consumers and unquestioning workers for the Wall Street bosses?
"The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations."
— Thomas Jefferson