Earlier this year, Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice chaired a task force at the Council on Foreign Relations, which issued a scathing indictment of public education, calling our public schools “a very grave threat to national security.”
Klein works for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, where he is in charge of selling technology. The latest report from his division repeats the gloomy (and inaccurate statistics) about US education and says there is a way to fix all these dire problems: Buy the technology he is selling!
Here, Jersey Jazzman deconstructs Klein’s snappy visual claims.
Just for the record. Klein’s (and the task force’s) assertion that test scores have been flat for 20 years is flat out wrong. Reading scores on NAEP have increased slowly and significantly for blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians since 1992. Math scores have increased dramatically for the same groups.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Moreover, if Joel is going to claim crisis, and raise concerns about flat scores, as the guy in charge of NYCDOE, the largest school district n the US, he should shoulder some of the blame! Its ludicrous whats happening – the reformy crowd – who have been in charge of education for a good decade morph the solution to suit where they are positioned – and where they profit…
Hmm, speaking of “indictments,” when are some of these people, Klein and Murdoch I particular, going to get perp walks?
I know it’s a long shot, since the Obama administration has gone out of its way to avoid prosecuting the banks that looted the country, but one can dream.
Yes, and please look at the full propaganda piece. Notice the pictures of the children sitting in rows either reading or looking at their teacher (page 11 I think) and then the picture of Joel Klein’s vision of “progress” (page 13) – what do you see? Children sitting in rows looking at tablets – and that folks is “progress”, but you must buy your educrap from Murdoch and Klein and then everything will be better and scores will improve.
Click to access Amplify_UBS_PresentationDec2012.pdf
Yeah, the kids in the pictures have that look of an R.P. McMurphy after his last trip upstairs for a lobotomy. Unbridled compliance, is that what we need for “national security?”
Regarding Klein’s chart (which the Jazzman quite adequately destroys in one way): I’m no economic guru, but I’m pretty sure that a spending “increase” from $3,000/student in 1970 to $11,000 per student in 2008 is actually a significant *decrease* in spending per student when inflation is factored in.