Here is someone you should follow.
In a recent post, this teacher writes:
In order to forestall state-takeover, our district is scrambling to find ways to make “substantial improvement.” By improvement, of course we mean in our MCAS scores. One way we are responding is to get a private company called “Achievement Net” or “A-Net” to help us administer standardized tests throughout the year, which are “tailored” for our curriculum. We put an entire grade into lockdown mode, administer the test, and send the bubble sheets off to be corrected. They come back with lots of statistics and forms to fill out. Every student will do this a total of 12 times this year. We spend hours poring over the results, breaking kids into daily half-hour pull-out groups, filling out A-Net forms handed to us that have questions like, “Today I will _ to make sure my students understand the material,” or “Today I will reteach _ to make sure my students understand the concept of_.”
Bottom line: more money intended for instruction diverted to the booming Edubusiness.

Not to mention a dreadful collision with the purpose of school and learning. This a step past even a scripted curriculum.
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This is child abuse.
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Diane, I read her “Today I am despondent” post. I read in your posts; so much about the loss of local control and it is such a source of conflict. Parents, tax payers and the in-general community have failed in so many ways. She describes parents who don’t read to their kids and I have seen kids who don’t really HAVE a parent or parents. Many kids have kids and have no idea how to parent and no inclination to learn. In many communities tax payers won’t vote for anything that would produce revenue and might help. And so many communities are simply too fractured to agree on anything. Many local school boards have done all the wrong things, made all the wrong decisions and squandered millions of dollars doing so. In my state, Michigan, government has lent money to school boards intended to pay previous debt. Taking that money, perhaps one of the worse decisions of all. Unfortunately, privatization might be as much a desperate attempt to “work around” local control as it is some sinister plot to destroy public education. There are well intended people behind it. Even more unfortunate and tragic is the fact that changing the name or governance of a school doesn’t deal with the people issues. I used to argue that great schools should be used as templates or “best practices” and rewarded for their excellence. Easy idea to have when your school system IS one of the great ones. The problem with that idea is simply that people don’t or can’t care and many don’t want to be “like them” because they don’t “like” them.
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Twelve times a year? When are they supposed to teach this curriculum they are supposed to teach? When are they supposed to build those relationships with their students that are so crucial to student buy-in? When? When?? When???
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It’s a great time to be a corporate consultant!
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Does anyone else feel like they are selling their soul to continue teaching? It has incrementally gotten crazier and crazier. If I were to look at the philosophy of education statement I wrote to get this job 28 years ago, I would be mortified to see how far I have drifted from it.
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This happened at my school, but it was not a low-performing school. A new superintendent took over our district. He is convinced that only consultants know how to teach, and that teachers are problem employees who know nothing. After all, if we had any snap, we would find a way to earn a living out of the classroom.
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