Millions of parents and teachers watch and hope that Congress will scrap the failed policies of the Bush administration called NCLB.
It is this worrisome that the chief counsel for the Democrats on the Senate HELP committee was a senior policy person at the Gates Foundation.
Gates is infamous for its religious devotion to measurement. “What cannot be measured cannot be controlled” is the line we hear again and again, as children are reduced to data points and their lives are measured out in teaspoons and centimeters on a scale.
Maybe she is different. Let us hope.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Horrors!
LikeLike
Yep, does not sound promising!
LikeLike
If anyone still denies that we live in the CORPORATE STATES OF AMERICA, such evidence should give them pause! The tentacles of such ravenous corporations as Gates, are continuing to riddle our country’s middle class, destroying nation’s crops with GMO, health damaging crops and the prime movers of the Ayn Rand inspired GOP. They TRULY own the White House and Congress, lock, stock and barrel. Talk about “terrorists inside America”…the enemy TRULY resides in international corporate headquarters!
LikeLike
Yes, maybe even the Corporate Gates of America.
LikeLike
“What cannot be measured cannot be controlled”
And control is what it’s about for ol Billy the Goates.
Hum, many a dog trainer can control their dog without any “measurement”.
No need for measurement to control the masses, just some good trainers, preferably “computer trainers” that Billy the Goates can make a profit off of.
LikeLike
True, they not only KNOW each other, they are united in their goals for mankind (like reducing the planet’s population to 5 billion, shedding, what Kissinger calls “Useless eaters” and Romney calls the 47% of the growing poor “moochers.”) These jackals ultimate goals would shock the complicit public into protests against their evil elitist
goals for our world. If you don’t believe it, just google statements by Jay Rockefeller and a one world global government and look at the path of nations in the last 50 years!
LikeLike
It’s troubling to read “let’s hope.” Don’t we have any more power than that?
LikeLike
Here’s hoping.
And remember the way to make God laugh is to make a plan.
LikeLike
Which god you trying to make laugh?
LikeLike
Whichever one listens.
LikeLike
They all know each other. It is sickening.
LikeLike
Both the DSCC and DCCC gave to Michelle Rhee’s STUDENTS FIRST fraudulent nonprofit per recently revealed filings…
LikeLike
Could someone in politics actually appoint a real person with bonafide experience rather than a billionaire’s flunky
LikeLike
I started to call Harkin’s office to complain – and then looked closely at the press release which is dated March, 2012. A little too late to complain.
LikeLike
The revolving door. I’m surprised at Harkin and his choice. Oh well…just another day in Wonderland.
LikeLike
The media makes a big fuss when they feel LABOR influences politicians. But not a peep over this. We are headed for The Hunger Games.
LikeLike
schoolgal: take away the glamorized Hollywood-style gloss given to the books and the movie, and think of school children trying to navigate their way to and from their new neighborhood schools in Chicago this fall, attempting to make it alive through gang territories day in and day out. They are the unwilling new participants in the charterite/privatizer version of the hunger games for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
The survivors, though, won’t win anything except the distinction of attending the factories of despair set up by the educrats who are entrusted with promoting the public good but instead are promoting $tudent $ucce$$.
A bit different for THEIR OWN CHILDREN. Think of genuine centers of educational excellence like Cranbrook and Harpeth Hall, Lakeside School and Deerfield Academy, Harvard-Westlake and U of Chicago Lab Schools, Sidwell Friends and Waldorf School of the Peninsula. What am I getting at?
Just to give an all too brief mention of the Cranbrook schools: strangely, the students aren’t thinking too much about dodging bullets, what with celebrating state championships in lacrosse and tennis and putting on a performance of the classic musical West Side Story and quartet and recital performances. Not to mention everything else.
Can anyone spell “Two-tiered school system”?
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” [Mark Twain]
LikeLike
Anyone who thinks this person will change has a serious mental problem with fantasy. You cannot get that far in their organization without being a “True Believer” with the seriousness of a WWII Japanese Kamakazi. They know who they work for and where there bread is buttered. They are all out to get as much as they can right now and who cares about the people or the future of the world.
LikeLike