Tony Bennett's Day of Reckoning Has Come: Is Corporate Reform Far Behind?

[LWolf]

It can't come soon enough for me.


Bennett, Rhee, Rahm, TFA, the Waltons, Skandera, Gates...way too many to <snip,> but here's just a bit:

But wiggle as he would, Mr. Bennett could not escape his lies and manipulations on behalf of the schools he favored. And this has revealed, at least in his case, that the "accountability" project he has championed was driven to produce results that would stigmatize public schools and promote charter schools. And when the numbers did not come out the way they wanted, the books were cooked.

Michelle Rhee cooked the books as well - or at least overlooked the cooking that was happening under her regime in Washington, DC. But her true day of reckoning has yet to come. John Merrow this week revealed that a well-written and carefully sourced column on the Michelle Rhee cheating scandal was rejected by four national newspapers. This is a man who has had no trouble getting columns published in the past. But he was told by one of the newspapers that Michelle Rhee is "not a national story." She, the woman who was featured in Waiting For Superman and NBC's Education Nation, not to mention the cover of Newsweek, as one of the country's leaders in calling for accountability. Her national organization, StudentsFirst raised $28 million last year and spent much of it supporting pro-corporate reform candidates around the country. But somehow, when she is caught covering up wholesale cheating under her watch, this is not news.

There is no shortage of other days of reckoning that are way overdue. In Chicago, the school board of millionaires appointed by Rahm Emanuel has awarded a $20 million no-bid contract for the training of principals to a company which employed school CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett until she began working for Chicago schools. Add this to the closure of fifty schools, and diversion of $33 million in public dollars towards a new basketball stadium, and there are some huge questions about that city's democratic processes and priorities.

Earlier this year, investigator Michael Corwin in New Mexico found evidence of numerous actions by another of the "Chiefs for Change," Hanna Skandera. New Mexico law prohibits for-profit charters from receiving public funds. But Skandera engaged in extensive manipulation to ensure that K12 Inc, the nation's largest for-profit virtual charter chain, could be funded. This is in spite of the dismal outcomes these schools have produced. She remains in office, though she has yet to be officially confirmed.

And more:

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2013/08/tony_bennetts_day_of_reckoning.html

[LWolf]

1. .

One more try, in case anyone has anything to say about this issue.

I'm always surprised at how education ranks so low on the political discussion table.