Failed Results of Standardization and Privatization of American Education

It has come to light Michelle Rhee and her StudentsFirst campaign, through independent journalist John Merrow piece, "Michelle Rhee's Reign of Error" and a leaked memo, that there was wide spread cheating under her tenure as Chancellor of Schools in Washington D.C public education in standardized testing. Rhee got nation wide attention for her tough tactics and quick results by linking students test scores to teachers pay, otherwise known as merit based pay. Under Rhee, she hired and fired many teachers and principals for their underperformance based on standardized test taking, one firing she enthusiastically did on national TV in a PBS documentary. The memo and investigation claims there were many anomalies in tests throughout the school district that only could have happened with teachers erasing wrong answers and putting the right ones in. Apparently this could have only been done with principals knowledge at said accused cheating schools. 

On top of this, Matt Taibbi in his Rolling Stones exposé, absoulety eviscerates Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst campaign, where they lobby politicians to gut benefits of teachers, link teachers pay to test scores and implement evaluation systems that can fire teachers based off of students results. In the piece we see that StudentsFirst not only is connected to the already well established, but we also meet hedge fund manager Dan Loeb, who sits on the board of New York City StudentsFirst branch. Coincidentally, he also manages public education pension funds and other public employees at his firm, which seems like a huge conflict of interest. Taibbi notes that Loeb manages public education pensions and at the same time sits on a board that has the complete opposite agenda of public education employees and instead campaigns for charter school like results and merit based pay.  Please read it to get a full understanding of why there is a movement to privatize education across the United States not only in K-12, but also in the university level too. The private sector is lining up to make billions and they will do anything they can to get their cut.

Don't get me wrong, I know there are bad teachers and it can be hard to get rid of them, but linking students test scores to teachers job performance is not the right way to go. Evidence of this is the the Merrow piece that says up to 191 teachers in 90 schools cheated in Washington DC and changed their students tests scores in order to look better. These teachers also got bonuses, while other teachers where fired. Here, you can read education historian Diane Ravitch question Michelle Rhee's motives and her style of education.

In short,  I will say this about standardization and privatization of students in our public education and hope to write in due time, a bigger post about the the direction of public education.  Standardization creates conformity, it creates more obedient workers, it creates students and humans to think in a certain capacity to learn, it promotes regurgitation rather than cognition, it promotes memorization rather than creativity. Standardization does not create critical thinking nor cognitive students and puts students on the first belt of a conveyer system for the rest of their lives. Privatization and standardization is a wider agenda to mold and form students across America to obey and conform to a model of education that is not only archaic, but what I believe, a model for a failed privatized system that is evident by our present socioeconomic values and results.

I look forward to writing my next piece why I think privatization and standardization of education is a formula for disaster for our future and I will use my own experience in education as evidence. You can be the judge and maybe I can help you think differently about or present model for education and reform.

Until then, listen to this dominate rebuttal against Teach for America.
part two