Adam Bessie is a professor at a California community college. He looks back wistfully to the era when free community college was guaranteed and a path to making one’s way in the world.
But he fears now that President Obama’s plan will turn into a Race to the Top for community colleges, with federal requirements for test scores, VAM, and graduation, along with punishments for not reaching mandated targets.
“I worry that “free” college may be a Trojan horse for implementing a Race to the Top (RTTT) for higher education, which has been a disastrous policy for K-12 education. RTTT, which is essentially No Child Left Behind rebranded, uses the force of the federal government to institute a regime of standardized testing and so-called “competition,” which has narrowed the curriculum (especially in poor schools, which many of my students come from), emphasizing only reading and math, and tossing aside the arts, sciences and other areas which can’t be tested. Beyond this, RTTT has wrested control of classrooms out of the hands of educators and communities, and placed them into the hands of distant technocrats in the federal government and corporate America.
“Free” college might mean that community colleges would cede local, community control to the federal government; thus, the policies of Washington and corporate America would drive the curriculum, rather than the needs of the community. And based on what we’ve seen with RTTT, it’s likely that community colleges again would become junior colleges – designed primarily as trade schools, or for transfer, with a focus on getting students in and out the door as fast as possible, using standardized, impersonal methods more focused on efficiency than education.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
TROJAN HORSE? I think so. Gates is pushing this.
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He indeed does https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf_rxN8Dqfg#t=2196
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Corporate Owned Government (COG) grinds on. It cannot be trusted with Education — or anything else for that matter.
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Isn’t Obama himself, along with everything he has done, a Trojan Horse for the Overclass?
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Why should States also be required to pay for this along with the programmed curriculum that may come with it. Already school districts are overburdened with testing and Common Core materials.
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I believe Adam Bessie might be on to something. Just look at what Scott Walker attempted to do with the University of Wisconsin and their mission statement.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/documents-show-walker-administration-seeking-removal-of-uws-wisconsin-idea-b99439710z1-290927651.html
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We can’t trust anything that comes from any known reformer. The end goal of the reformers is to profit off teaching children and that means an end to democratic public education and maybe an end to traditional k-12 mandatory schools for all children—be warned, the mandatory right to an education is at risk for all children expect those who come from the wealthiest families.
Once corporate Charters have replaced all democratic public schools expect the most difficult and at risk children to teach to end up on the streets excluded from an education.
In addition, if the reform movement achieves its end goal, keep an eye on prison construction that will signal an increase of private-sector for-profit prisons that will have plan to gather up and eventually lock up those children that corporate Charters refused to teach.
What we are seeing is the evolution of a republic/democracy into a police state ruled by a heartless and brutal cooperate oligarchy with no soul or empathy for anyone outside their families.
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Let’s not forget that the same fate would wait for 4 year colleges, since the community college program weakens 4 year colleges.
I just point at one example here: general education courses may not be taught at 4 year colleges anymore, since they can be taken for free at community colleges.
At least in TN, this means that more and more students will have their gened courses taken online or taught by exploited adjuncts.
Unlike Lloyd Lofthouse, I’m not just suspicious of the alternate motives behind the free 2 year college plan, but I am convinced, it’s part of the privatizers strategy to take over all public education.
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Actually, I said I was suspicious to be polite and take the middle road, but really I’m convinced like you are.
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As I am reading my posts here, they look like conspiracy theories even to myself. But privatizing has arrived to my university: we are outsourcing several university functions to private companies for no reason whatsoever, and we are about to have a charter department established on campus. To make the connection with the K-12 reforms continuous, the university wants to partner with charterizers, like the Achievement School District.
Tenured profs are called expensive, elitists, not willing to live in the 21st century.
Privatizers are not dummies by any means; they are very strategic. Very.
The new univ president, who is leading the charge, is a veteran of the “Gulf War era”.
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The City Colleges of Chicago have served the local communities and they have done it at much lower tuition costs than most universities. They provide a pathway to further education and often lead to students transferring into four year universities or better prepared for adult life. As an alum of a Chicago City College, now called Harold Washington, I am grateful it was in place when I needed it. In the 1960’s, during the height of the Vietnam War. The Chicago City Colleges of Chicago are well managed resources not to be underestimated. These are educational pathways. Not a Trojan Horse; more like shining stars of hope.
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