Most people have no idea about the privatization movement. They don’t know that the narrative of crisis (“our schools are failing, failing, failing”)–repeated again and again–is intended to clear the way for privatization.
Peter Greene explains the insidious plan here.
Step one, create a crisis.
Step two, take power away from the community, dissolve the local school board, give it to the mayor, the governor.
Step three: cash in.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Create a crisis sounds far fetched.
More like exaggerate and fictionalize a situation by playing on fears and worries.
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Everyone worries about how their kids will ultimately ‘measure up’ in some way . . .
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Whether one creates a crisis or exaggerates and fictionalizes a situation, it still falls under the heading of what Naomi Klein categorizes as Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
In the absence of a natural crisis or a war to “capitalize” on, education presents a soft, vulnerable, available, tempting opportunity if you can convince those in power and unaware of the greater social consequences.
From the review of Shock Doctrine by Joseph Stiglitz published in the New York Time published September 30, 2007:
“Some readers may see Klein’s findings as evidence of a giant conspiracy, a conclusion she explicitly disavows. It’s not the neoconspiracies that wreck the world but the series of wrong turns, failed policies, and little and big unfairnesses that add up. Still, those decisions are guided by larger mind-sets. Market fundamentalists never really appreciated the institutions required to make an economy function well, let alone the broader social fabric that civilizations require to prosper and flourish.”
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Doesn’t “exaggerate and fictionalize a situation by playing on fears and worries” sort of equal “create a crisis”?
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YES!
It’s just a bit more accurate and credible.
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So you’re quibbling over semantics because you want to tone it down. I get it.
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No. Creating a crisis out of nothing just sounds silly and incredible. I don’t think it is convincing or enlightening regarding how these people are actually thinking.
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Adakemos,
The “reformers” have created a crisis out of nothing. It is not silly and incredible. They claim that “bad” teachers cause low scores and refuse to consider the most important correlate of low test scores: poverty. They have gone on a rampage for the past 15 years, using test scores to close schools and fire teachers and principals. What is the evidence for anything they advocate? There is none.
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Akademos,
Another evidence of “the sky is falling” rhetoric. The 2012 report by a task force of the Council on Foreign Relations, chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice, which asserted that America’s national security was jeopardized by our mediocre public schools. This was utter nonsense, ably refuted by the dissenters on the task force. I added my two cents here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/07/do-our-public-schools-threaten-national-security/
This silly crisis talk inspired me to write “Reign of Error.” The reformers needed to create a crisis so they could sell Common Core, charters, vouchers, and new technology.
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Not sure what to write, Diane. I mean, I’m on your side. I’m concerned with how this plays to those slightly out of the loop, given it sounds just beyond the pale to me. I mean, poverty is a crisis; and it’s damnable that the deformers are using it to their end. To imply they are ingeniously creating crises out of thin air, makes them appear as evil geniuses, rather than more common sleaze.
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Remember the Maine?
Tonkin Gulf?
Umm, what about those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the trillions of dollars spent, and many thousands of lives lost to address that “crisis?”
When the Overclass wants something, and it’s Executive Committee (aka “The Government”) has decided on a course of action, no matter how dishonest, deluded or ultimately self-destructive, it will not hesitate to manufacture a phony crisis.
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Can you say “false flag”?
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American oligarchs are following the Russian playbook, snatching up key national assets.
Seizure of community schools, by U. S. oligarchs from Silicon Valley/Wall Street, guarantee a taxpayer-funded revenue stream. The tactic is Common Core and charters/vouchers.
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As Peter Greene points out, the phrase, “our schools are failing, failing, failing,” (or “OURFAILINGSCHOOLS, OURFAILINGSCHOOLS!!!!!!”) is repeated over and over, ad nauseam, from sea to shining sea. I remember the loathsome Lou Dobbs incessantly parroting the phrase “ourfailingfschools” every time he did a “report” on education. Chris Christie has referred to NJ real public schools as failure factories. The school reformers have aggressively pushed the notion of “our failing schools.” This is no accident, this is a ploy, a plan, a stratagem to undermine and destroy our trust in our public school system. “Ourfailingfschools” is a bumper sticker, a propaganda meme and a total lie. Unfortunately, most of the corporate media has been complicit in propagating this false narrative along with the unquestioned blarney that charter schools are miracle schools.
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The other “ad nauseum” phrase, “education is the civil rights issue of our time.” This is usually used by corporate shills to mask actual intent which is the corporate exploitation of poor, minorities.
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If you believe that rightwing think tanks, conservative billionaires, and libertarian zealots have the best interests of Black and Hispanic children at heart, then you might also believe their claim that privatization and school choice are “the civil rights issue of our time.”
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And if you believe what Diane wrote about then I’ve got some great ocean front property over at Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri for sale quite inexpensively. Call now operators are standing by!!
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http://www.redefinedonline.org/2015/07/florida-private-school-choice-tops-100000-students/
This story shows the clear pattern of privatization, both in back door ‘tax credit scholarships’ which are really vouchers, and Charter schools. Big money is winning over democratic institutions.
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“. . . base the measure of school and teacher success on bad standardized tests that don’t actually measure academic achievement as well as they measure poverty.”
There has never been, is nor will be any “measurement” of the teaching and learning process nor of “academic achievement”.
Man it sure is hard to kick the “measurement” addiction.
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We can only hope that:
“you can fool some of the people some of the time, fool all the people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people all the time:.
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”.
BUT
sometimes a great deal of suffering goes on before this happens. Germany, a great example. They followed the lies and propaganda but learned the hard way where the truth lay.
When in Berlin a few years ago under the Brandenburg gate was a series of pictures following WWII progression. Most of us have seen the UTTER devastation of their cities..
Almost directly under the gate is a sign “Stille Raum” where one can go to sit, pray, meditate or just remember. The Kaiser Wilhelm cathedral is left just as it was when bombed out and another building houses a statue within it and a plaque outside
“We remember”; the Jews, homosexuals etc.
THEY, the Germans wish to remember and not have to go through the trauma of following a false leader.
Hopefully we will not have to go that far to find out the truth before such cataclysmic events bring us forcefully to that truth.
We MUST work to forestall that happening.
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In another era there was crisis rhetoric. Here it is
FINDINGS AND DECLARATION OF POLICY
National Defense Education Act , 1958
SEC. 101. The Congress hereby finds and declares that the security
of the Nation requires the fullest development of the mental resources
and technical skills of its young men and women. The present emergency
demands that additional and more adequate educational opportunities
be made available. The defense of this Nation depends upon
the mastery of modern techniques developed from complex scientific
principles. It depends as well upon the discovery and development
of new principles, new techniques, and new knowledge.
We must increase our efforts to identify and educate more of the
talent of our Nation. This requires programs that will give assurance
that no student of ability will be denied an opportunity for higher
education because of financial need; will correct as rapidly as possible
the existing imbalances in our educational programs which have led
to an insufficient proportion of our population educated in science,
mathematics, and modern foreign languages and trained in technology.
The Congress reaffirms the principle and declares that the States
and local communities have and must retain control over and primary
responsibility for public education. The national interest requires,
however, that the Federal Government give assistance to education for
programs which are important to our defense.
Or find the opening lines in the infamous Nation at Risk document 1983.
It is an unfortunate fact that crisis rhetoric is probably needed to get headlines in our new “attention economy.” The saturation levels are so high that most campaigns are using sophisticated techniques to determine their “messaging strategies.” USDE awarded a big grant to market Race to the Top.
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The really scary thing is that competing in a global economy has really very little to do with maintaining a strong democratic society. Big multinational companies do not owe allegiance to a country whether the Supreme Court grants them personhood or not. The only allegiance they owe is to their stockholders.
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The primer is Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” (2007). Reformers have simply replaced natural disasters with manufactured crises and followed the exact same script. Somewhere Milton Friedman is laughing until he wets his pants.
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