Chile is the poster nation for free market education reform.
Dictator Pinochet installed Milton Friedman’s free market ideas into education. Chile has vouchers, and it also has vast income inequality. Vouchers have destroyed free public education.
Now Chile has an angry student movement demanding free public education and an end to privatization.
To learn about the damage wrought by the free market in Chile, watch this documentary. you will learn about the Chilean student movement.
Watch and learn where the free market policies of the Koch brothers, Arne Duncan, ALEC, the DC think tanks, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Broad Foundation, Tom Corbett, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Scott Walker, and other free-market extremists are taking our nation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
See more on Vouchers and Chile here: http://cloakinginequity.com/?s=portales&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=Go
This sounds very familiar – “Today Chile is profoundly unequal. And the education system is designed to reinforce this system and produce inequality. That is its principal goal.”
One look at the results of Common Core exams imposed on children in NYC demonstrates this very same goal.
Diane,
I don’t know how to post in a more appropriate spot, but I want to thank you for testifying at the hearings on Common Core in Michigan. I hope your stature carries the weight it deserves with the committee. I have been in education 20+ years in this once great state and lately all I can do is shake my head in disbelief at the cabal in charge of Lansing. Thank you for all you do.
It ends with a statement by a student saying: “it’s a system that responds to the needs of the investors NOT the students” (which is where the US is headed).
Also here is some info on Vallas (from substance news) returning to Chile to continue the privatization push of public education decades after the ‘Chicago Boys’ brought privatization to Chile:
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=2439
We need to remember that students are children and not commodities. Sometimes success can only be measured over time, years or decades, not by tests. Let our investment be in loving, caring, and nurturing our most precious resource and exposing them to all facets of life. They are our future.
When I click on the link, it says the video is not available in this country. Any advice? thanks
Page and Diane,
That’s very odd. I watched it this morning around 8:00 am on my iPad and not it says not playable.
What happened?
Diane, I found it on Al Jazeera:
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/faultlines/2011/11/2011111103913257125.html
Maybe you can replace the link.
Thank you, Linda. Interesting that we have to go through Aljazeera to watch it.
I am so glad attention is being paid here to this subject. My cynicism about the Times, WaPo & WSJ grows as I look in vain for thoughtful pieces projecting the future of privatizing education, using the 40-yr vantage point provided by the Friedman experiment in Chile. This is what school choice looks like, full-blown. Anyone who follows the trail of the Chicago Boys from one embattled world economy to another over recent decades knows it’s time to batten down the hatches of our public institutions: they’re already banging on the doors.