On March 22, Governor Paul LePage will host an event for Jeb Bush and his merry team of market-model crusaders in Augusta, Maine.
Bush will present the full range of ALEC-inspired “reforms” guaranteed to bring privatization and for-profit entrepreneurs to Maine, while demoralizing Maine’s teachers and principals.
How clever to present the rightwing agenda as “reform,” and at the same time advertising Jeb’s Presidential run in 2016.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You can read my reply to a Portland Press Herald Op-Ed supporting “choice” by the Friedman Foundation and Maine Heritage Foundation (a kick-off?) here:
http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/school-choice-advocates-dont-let-reality-ruin-the-pitch_2013-03-16.html
I was happy to see 35 “likes”, but the comments were interesting, expressing the idea that “choice” was intrinsically good no matter what the evidence showed. We have a lot of work to do.
LikeLike
“Choice” is a word that sounds great. In reality you get watered down choices that were weaker than what you had. Resources only go so far. Kids just make the “choice” to go to the nearest school. What “choice” is there when the nearest school is a charter, you have to walk, and their curriculum is even narrower than the public school you had before.
LikeLike
I think “choice” is the object of the bait-and-switch that the reformers are planning to replace the public schools with for-profit virtual schools. Since their real objective is to destroy public education and teachers’ unions, they don’t have to care about offering a legitimate distinguishable choice; they just have to get the public to buy into the idea that “choice” is better than what they have now.
And “choice” is a very seductive word when you think about it: Since the word is an abstract noun, it is visualized uniquely by each person who can impart their desires and fantasies on their interpretation without contradicting reality. Even when presented with facts that demonstrate the switch to charter schools produces worse results, the public will just rationalizing away the facts as unique to their time and location, since their own, personal, unique vision of “choice” hasn’t been challenged.
Of course, once “choice” has won and the game, which I expect is to move everyone into K12-type virtual schools that are unaccountable to anyone for anything, is eventually exposed for the sham it is, it will take a long period of cognitive dissonance followed by a grueling battle to force the legislatures to either make the deal work or return to public schools; by then the rich will have moved on.
LikeLike
Hasn’t the country suffered enough from the Bush dynasty? If we remember that it was when Jeb was governor in Florida, when that state helped the GOP in their dubious “victory” in the 2000 election! If anyone checks into the histories of that family, from Prescott to Jeb, you’ll find enough to make you wish we will never endure another one from that family…whole books have been penned about them! They are the friends of the elite, and have done damage to the rest of the country! Now Jeb wants to be the ring leader in destroying another pillar of our democracy…public education!
LikeLike