The
CCSS “highlights” subsection stands out with a toolkit
with links to CCSS materials; a StudentAchievement Partners
website full of free materials to better understand and implement
CCSS; a list of propaganda explaining the worthiness of CCSS, an how
already parents and teachers are cooperating in this times of CCSS;
and a new section about materials available in i-tunes and through
the ASDCwebsite,
among other things. In addition, there is a selection articles and
multimedia giving a positive spin to CCSS. Everything on this page
seems all right or innocuous; after all, it is information for NEA
members. So, what could be wrong about NEA’s CCSS page?
Indeed,
I would argue precisely that the existence of this CCSS page itself
is inappropriate: there is an evident influential campaign section
for CCSS in NEA’s website for no valid reason! Mainly, there are at
least two major questions that deserve answers. Conspicuously, no one
has deemed appropriate to inquire about the existence of such section
--that ought to be the first question. But a more considerable
question would be: Why does NEA show such an inordinately vested
interest in promoting CCSS in the first place?
First
of all, CCSSis copyrighted
by the
NGA
Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Councilof Chief State School Officers
(CCSSO); CCSS
was not an NEA initiative or the product of a partnership with these
entities. Secondly, there never was a serious debate on the issue of
NEA supporting CCSS in the committed way it has done it. As a matter
of fact, the disconcerting official NEA position, based on
information from three entities: ASCD, TheEconomy Policy Institute
(EPI), and TheHunt Institute,
appears in a policy brief
signed by NEA president Van Roekeli.
Thirdly, CCSS has not even been properly tried or piloted! This
oversight alone raises reasonable doubts about the unwavering and
expensive support from the largest teachers associationii.
What makes it even more difficult to comprehend is that despite two
years of serious criticism and protests against CCSS, the NEA
leadership had remained firm in supporting the implementation of
CCSSiii.
To sum up, if after two years, with no academic or anecdotal
evidence, or any valid reason to commit millions of dollars and the
trust of its millions of members to CCSS, why is NEA still doing it?iv
A plausive explanation for NEA’s unyielding support of CCSS may
involve various perspectives.
Corporate
Reformers Are Opportunistic Edupreneurs
For
a veteran educator, the long and short term consequences
of the CCSS problematic
implementation –confusion, sinking scores, lack of support and
materials, students and teachers frustration, unreliable systems of
evaluation, and so forth-- would be good enough reasons to request a
cautious and vigilant approach from its association. However, there
is yet another less examined concern that in my opinion should be
comprehensively considered: the undue influence of BillGates in the creation and promotion of CCSS.
v
Record
shows that from its inception the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
(B&MGF) has sponsored and promoted CCSS in a perplexing fashion.
Undeniably, its influence has been, and still is a most serious
factor in how every stakeholder and the public in general perceive
CCSSvi.
For that reason, all NEA members should share the primal concern
about the potentially risk of NEA compromising its autonomy and
integrity.
Conceivably,
given the fact that the Billand Melinda Gates Foundation has bankrolled
or heavily supported all companies connected with the creation and
advancement of CCSS, NEA could have been swayed as well. For
instance, NEA has associated itself with strategic companies funded
by the B&MG. From the NEA webpages, one reads that:
1) the company ASCD, whose materials NEA promotes in its website, was awarded $3Million to aid nationwide in implementing common core standards. 2) StudentAchievement Partners, a non-profit organization founded by David Coleman, Susan Pimentel and Jason Zimba, lead writers of the Common Core State Standards, received a grantof $4,042,920 in order to support teachers nationwide in understanding and implementing the Common Core State Standards. Prior to that, Achieve had received $23.5 million in Gates’s funding. Another $13.2 million followed after CCSS creation, with $9.3 million devoted to "building strategic alliances" for CCSS promotion.
3) NGA received $23.6 million from the Gates Foundation from 2002 through 2008. After June 2009, NGAreceived an additional $2.1 million from Gates expressly to work with state policymakers on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, and later $1,598,477 for “rethinking state policies on teachers’ effectiveness.”
4) ForCCSSO, Prior to June 2009, the Gates Foundation gave $47.1 million (from 2002 to 2007), with the largest amount focused on data "access" and "data driven decisions." Later, the B&MGF gave CCSSO $31.9 million, with the largest grants earmarked for CCSS implementation and assessment, and data acquisition and control.vii
1) the company ASCD, whose materials NEA promotes in its website, was awarded $3Million to aid nationwide in implementing common core standards. 2) StudentAchievement Partners, a non-profit organization founded by David Coleman, Susan Pimentel and Jason Zimba, lead writers of the Common Core State Standards, received a grantof $4,042,920 in order to support teachers nationwide in understanding and implementing the Common Core State Standards. Prior to that, Achieve had received $23.5 million in Gates’s funding. Another $13.2 million followed after CCSS creation, with $9.3 million devoted to "building strategic alliances" for CCSS promotion.
3) NGA received $23.6 million from the Gates Foundation from 2002 through 2008. After June 2009, NGAreceived an additional $2.1 million from Gates expressly to work with state policymakers on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, and later $1,598,477 for “rethinking state policies on teachers’ effectiveness.”
4) ForCCSSO, Prior to June 2009, the Gates Foundation gave $47.1 million (from 2002 to 2007), with the largest amount focused on data "access" and "data driven decisions." Later, the B&MGF gave CCSSO $31.9 million, with the largest grants earmarked for CCSS implementation and assessment, and data acquisition and control.vii
5)
HuntInstituteviii
played in instrumental role with the 5 million dollars from the
B&MGF. According to the Washington Post, the Hunt Institute
“coordinated more than a dozen organizations — many of them also
Gates grantees — including the Thomas B. Fordham Institute,
National Council of La Raza, the Council of Chief State School
Officers, National Governors Association, Achieve and the two
national teachers unions.”
Evidently,
the convergence of these companies was in no way altruistic or
motivated by a desire to help public education. These are not
independent entities spontaneously cooperating for a common cause. As
a matter of fact, the B&MGF strategically positioned each one of
them to do a specific job for the concluding purposes of creating and
promoting CCSS! As noted, all edupreneurs in these misunderstood
non-profit corporations actually have managed millions of dollars
courtesy of the B&MGF. But, what about NEA? Inconsistently, in
what logistically could be considered a central role validating CCSS
to millions of teachers, NEA did not receive a cent, did it?
Perhaps
NEA members may think that Mr. Gates funding CCSS from its inception
to date is not relevant or important enough to request NEA leaders
for information about their support for CCSS. After all, NEA
holds values like democracy, equal opportunity, professionalism, a
just society. Moreover, everyone knows that NEA has internal
mechanisms to deal effectively with relevant decisions, like
supporting or not CCSS in this case. In short, NEA is not a company
like Achieve, ASDC, or the others; it is inherently different. NEA
leaders take their own decisions based on what is best for NEA
members regardless of CCSS, not on what the B&MGF promotes with
its grants, right?
However,
it could be argued that the magnitude of the issue of the B&MGF
driving CCSS would justify NEA members’ request for transparency
and explanations. If the B&MGF funded each of the mentioned
companies in order to support the cause of CCSS, would it ask the
same from NEA?ix
According to the B&MGF records, NEAhad been the recipient of more than seven million dollars since 2009
for
the purpose of advocating for CCSS.
Has
this unsolicited money influenced leaders’ decisions in this, and
perhaps, other matters? Or perhaps it didn’t, and even without that
money NEA leaders would have approved to have that well designed
webpage section promoting CCSS anyway. Would have NEA leaders
organized those several workshops and events to help teachers with
CCSS? Possibly, and they would have cover the expenses by asking
their members an increase in their dues. CCSS is a major change in
public education. For that reason alone, teachers should feel they
have the right to scrutinize CCSS itself and its creation to
satisfaction.
When
years ago, the respective leaders of NEA and CTA unexpectedly became
devoted agents for CCSS, these organizations gave a new and
unwarranted project an undeservedvalidity.
That legitimacy by association indeed exempted and protected CCSS
from the authentic, valid, and probably devastatingscrutiny
from rank and file members. Furthermore, a collateral damage was done
to the prospective dissenters and potential protesters. By NEA
becoming a pro-CCSS agent, all dissidents were automatically
disqualified and swiftly destined into isolation in their own
associations. Unsurprisingly, that move did not dissipate the
opposition. In fact, while many accepted CCSS at face value, some
courageous teachers looked for alternatives to express their
discontent. That reaction explains that hundreds of non-conforming
teachers formed fringe group such as the BATs (BadassTeachers Organization),
which devotes itself to question and challenge the new orthodoxy.
It
could be consider unconscionable that teachers associations
practically took away their members’ prospect for dialogue, debate,
or complain about CCSS. Without the protection of an association,
every teacher was basically trapped in a frame where CCSS had to be
thought of as right, good, and necessary. With the associations
themselves reciting the reformers CCSS doctrine, unsuspecting
teachers had no option but to obey, comply, and conform. Strangely,
when teachers were hoping for an endto feeling demoralized
after a decade of NCLB, having NEA reinforcing CCSS mandates was
bizarre.
Arguably,
for public school teachers and public education in general, when NEA
leaders prematurely embraced CCSS, they made more than a misleading
mistake, but a colossalblunder, Even NEA President Van Roekel
acknowledged that teachers asked NEA to oppose it due to the many
problems with CCSS . If NEA’s idea was to help teachers and public
education through supporting CCSS, the attempt was a complete
failure, even counterproductive. As it happened, the confusing and
frustrating process of implementing CCSS in NewYork,
Chicago,
and now in progress in California,
do not seem to validate NEA’s faith in CCSS.
Considering
implausible a significant improvement of the CCSS implementation, NEA
members would be correct in asking for a revision and a moratorium.
NEA members may question their leaders’ decisions and request time
to actually learn about CCSS through other means. The serious issues
about CCSS manufacture and its implementation make a strong case for
NEA members to redirect their efforts from CCSS toward rescuing and
rebuilding our public education system.
No
Contest Between Corporate Reformers vs Public School Teachers
After
learning how CCSS came about, one has to admire Bill Gates’s
brilliance in selling theCCSS's promotion to
teachers. From the beginning, teachers were taught through induction
that CCSS were necessary standards, and that in order to apply them
properly they needed to accept a serious change, a new paradigm.
Unlike NCLB with its prescriptive, dry, lessons and bubble tests, the sales pitch presented CCSS as a teacher friendly, collaborative, and fresh approach to teaching! The
pedagogical part of CCSS took center stage. Appropriate teaching
methods were introduced by districts and teachers associations.
Teachers will be in charge of planning, designing lesson, evaluation
–everything. CCSS was wonderful!x
Additionally, everyone would vouchfor CCSS
-- billionaires, politicians, administrators, board members, PTA’s,
and the most important ones, the teachers’ associations’ leaders.
As teachers were concerned CCSS was a gift from heaven. NCLB was
dead, long live CCSS!
Bill
Gates and all the corporate reformers involved in CCSS could not be
more pleased --- the way the implementation was progressing meant
good news for businessxi.
Privatizing
policies were firmer in place than ever. Consequently, there would be
more opportunities for profit and controlxii.
As a matter of fact, some corporate reformers were already lobbying
for the potential billions of dollars in revenue in computer datacollection
and testing alone. Manifestly, corporate reformers know what they
want and work diligently to succeedxiii.
In
a glaring contrast, despite public education being privatized,
teachers showed neither goals nor interest to do anything about it.
They understandably seemed to care mostly about CCSS being better
than NCLB! In fact, NEA’spoll in 2013 showed that teachers strongly supported CCSS.
After all, teachers had only read the selling points in bold letters,
and not the hidden obligations in fine print.
What
corporate reformers conveniently kept for themselves was that CCSS is
an all included and expensive package -- It has standards,
curriculum,
a convoluted testing
plan,
and then some, all in a package that included even more arbitrary
accountability. In short, NCLB had been a road, and now CCSS is the
highway to the privatization
of public education.
Indeed, later teachers found out that reality differed sharply from
rhetoric, as the 2014
Gallup survey
showed when more than 60% of teachers responded that they felt
frustrated or worried about CCSS. But since teachers had no other
direction or drive, they could not articulate their oppositionxiv.
If
NCLB taught teachers a lesson, it was to distrust the corporate
reformers when they tell them how to do their jobs. Indeed, they
should not take any claim at face valuexv.
No one would criticize teachers if they
did not believe corporate reformers this time.
Arguably, CCSS is not about solving the problem of identifying
effective or ineffective teachers,
or the need of standards
to improve imaginary problems, or about giving those good and wise
teachers something new and better to take from CCSS trainings.
Certainly, it is not about the ludicrous international competition.
What is certain is that there is so much more corporate reformers do
not share with teachers about CCSS, as the Chicago
Teachers Union
realized a year ago when it passed a resolution opposing it.
According
to its short and hectic record,
CCSS seems to be more the corporate reformers' next and final step to
take over public education, than a tool to fix and improve education.
Public school teachers, who have been overworked already, will be
even busier. They will spend extra hours learning anything that they
are told need to be in place for CCSS to be properly implemented. By
design, teachers would be too busy and scrutinized to pay attention
to the structural changes brought upon them. In the meantime, the
responsibility of this bold project would be as always solely on
teachers' shoulders. As in the past, when the poor scores come,
corporate reformers will criticize even more harshly public schools
and teachers, and will come up with more privatizing
solutions that would find no opposition. Following
recurrent patterns, corporate reformers will keep this CCSS trend of
controlling the direction of public education
while being unaccountable and making profits in every possible way
--consultants, materials, books, charter schools, and so on, while
teachers do all the work for even less money in an arbitrarily
imposed accountability system.
Perhaps
by learning more about CCSS than what they are taught, NEA and CTA
members would find reasons to care enough about their public schools
and their profession and less about CCSS. Maybe, with the revelations
about CCSS, and after more than twenty years of looking at the
reformers demonizing, underfunding, and privatizing public education,
NEA and CTA rank-and-file members would find appropriate to stop
validating and promoting CCSS. I for one find NEA supporting CCSS
unethical, outrageous, and self-destructive. It is contemptible to
support CCSS so resolutely while deserting public education when is
being privatizedxvi.
This shift from CCSS to defending public education would be a step in
the right direction.
CCSS
or Public Education
One
clear conclusion can be drawn from watching at corporate
reformers
interaction with teachers in recent past and in particular in looking
at their alliance to support CCSS: Corporate reformers do want to
privatize public education, and teachers do not want to stop them.
Unlike corporate reformers who have the ultimate goal of dismantling
and privatizing public education motivated by potential huge profits,
teachers in general and their teachers’ association’s leaders
have no inherent motivations or particular goals. Interestingly,
many teachers do not feel obligated to defend public education
against privatization, or to defend their livelihoods or profession
even when corporate reformers employ unfair or invalid arguments.
Incredibly,
NEA members show no pride for their noble struggles or their
remarkable accomplishmentsxvii.
Those are stories used to spice speeches. Never mind the sacrifices
of tens of thousands
of teachers,
mostly women, who through history
organized and fought for their rights and their students’.
Regardless of their rich union history, teachers’ associations’
leaders in this century have not found intrinsic motives to rally
teachers in defense of public education from privatization, but they
did find worth it to use NEA’s power to implement CCSS.
This
explanation for the apparent paradox must acknowledge the corporate
reformers’ neoliberal ideology. The anti-public education
ideological
campaign has been carried on for decades. Neoliberalism asks for
schools to be managed as business competing to succeed or fail in
free-markets. It has rendered teachers unable to appreciate the value
of public education or their role as stakeholders.xviii
Civic
values
–democracy, solidarity, justice, fairness, and the common
good--which shaped the attitudes and norms that sustained America’s
public schools have been eroded. Slowly, these values have
been crowded out by the market values
like profit, efficiency, competition, and choice. Corporate
reformers use them effectively to criticize, cut, fire, dismantle,
and privatize. As a result, public education has been devaluated even
in the eyes of teachers, while CCSS has been placed as a chief piece
of the reforms. Privatization is accepted because teachers have been
conditioned to think and act less as citizens and more as consumers.
According
to the corporate reformers’ narrative, schools have been failing to
their students, and it is the teachers’ fault. Oddly, they have
been declaring that for decades already without serious questioning
from teachers. Hence, corporate reformers have shown absolute
confidence instructing teachers in how to fix the problem time after
time, despite their record of consistent failure. After their poor
record, it is incredible that corporate reformers still control
teachers so powerfully that they do not question or challenge their
unwarranted alternatives, or let alone defend their own public
schools from being privatized. Now, they proposed the notion that
high standards is the missing factor to finally get the reforms
right. They are wrong! As the late Gerald Bracey explained in 2009,
Higher
standards as a curative for school ills have been actively promoted
for over 100 years. It seems to have had no effect, at least from the
perspective of the public school critics. Secretary Duncan spoke of
the “education crisis” in virtually all of his early speeches,
coupling it to the economic crisis. Thus, after 100 years of cries
for higher standards, we are still in an education crisis. The push
for higher standards has not worked. Perhaps it is time to try
something else. The Sidwell approach looks good to me. Can it work
in schools such as the one Linda Perlstein describes in Tested? She
thinks so, but not while high-stakes testing displaces true
education. This is the critical issue. As Yong Zhao pointed
out in the Detroit Free Press, “President Barack Obama and
national education officials appear to be moving the United States
toward national K-12 standards—a mandate that would cause
irreversible damage to an education system already suffering from No
Child Left Behind.
xix
In
closing, I cannot remember the last time any stakeholder seriously
defended or advocated for public education in public! Disturbingly,
with a well-funded and motivated group of profiteers attacking it now
with CCSS, and nobody devoted to defending it, public education in
America seems to have its days numbered.
Who
wins, who loses, who cares?
In
solidarity,
Sergio
Flores
Originally posted on Sergio Flores' website at http://www.serflo1.com/
i
The policy brief repeats the talking points made by CCSS promoters:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Campaign for
the Whole Child resources at www.wholechildeducation.org Economic
Policy Institute. Broader Bolder Initiative resources at
www.boldapproach.org The Hunt Institute. Blueprint for Education
Leadership, Numbers 3 and 4, June 2009 and June 2010, www.
hunt-institute.org Common Core Standards Initiative. The standards
and resource materials. www.corestandards.org
http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/PB30CommonCoreStateStandards2010.pdf
ii
The NGA/CCSSO common core standards should be subjected to extensive
validation, trials and subsequent revisions before implementation.
During this time, states should be encouraged to carefully examine
and experiment with broad-based school-evaluation systems.
http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/PB-NatStans-Mathis.pdf
iii
Not surprisingly the protests were centered in the abysmal results
in the testing associated with CCSS, and not by the implementation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/27/as-testing-opt-out-movement-grows-so-does-pushback-from-schools/
v
Lindsey Layton wrote in the Washington Post: The Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the development of what
became known as the Common Core State Standards. With more than $200
million, the foundation also built political support across the
country, persuading state governments to make systemic and costly
changes. Bill Gates was de facto organizer, providing the money and
structure for states to work together on common standards in a way
that avoided the usual collision between states’ rights and
national interests that had undercut every previous effort, dating
from the Eisenhower administration.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-swift-common-core-revolution/2014/06/07/a830e32e-ec34-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html
vi
Merceders Shneider writes: The four principal organizations
associated with CCSS– NGA, CCSSO, Achieve, and Student Achievement
Partners– have accepted millions from Bill Gates. In fact, prior
to CCSS “completion” in June 2009, Gates had paid millions to
NGA, CCSSO, and Achieve. And the millions continued to flow
following CCSS completion.
https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/a-brief-audit-of-bill-gates-common-core-spending/
vii Researcher
Mercedes Schneider explains better than anybody the intricate web
that Mr. Gates’ philanthropy has made around CCSS
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mercedes-schneider/a-brief-audit-of-bill-gat_b_3837421.html
viii
The foundation, for instance, gave more than $5 million to the
University of North Carolina-affiliated Hunt Institute, led by the
state’s former four-term Democratic governor, Jim Hunt, to
advocate for the Common Core in statehouses around the country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-swift-common-core-revolution/2014/06/07/a830e32e-ec34-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html
ix
NEA has a section titled “NEA’s involvement in the Common Core
State Standards? It reads: NEA decided to join the partnership for
two major reasons. First, it is clear that that there is broad
support from many groups of stakeholders for common standards.
Second, NEA wanted to be sure that the concerns and voices of
teachers were considered as these standards were developed. That
has happened as the project staff met with groups of mathematics and
English language arts teachers who were NEA members and National
Board Certified. There is evidence that they listened carefully to
our members and incorporated many of their suggestions into the
subsequent drafts of the standards. Three of our teachers from the
review group were on official review committees for the standards.
http://www.nea.org/home/46665.htm
x
In the CTA webpage, one reads: “We will be spending much of this
year dealing with the implementation of Common
Core Standards. They put teachers back in control of crafting
and tailoring the education of their students. Critical thinking
skills can now be part of our students’ educational foundation,
and we can decide how to best teach that.
http://www.cta.org/en/Issues-and-Action/Testing-and-Standards/Common-Core-State-Standards.aspx
xi
In 2012, Jeff Paux explains : You start to see entire ecosystems of
investment opportunity lining up,” Rob Lytle, an business
consultant earlier this year told a meeting of private equity
investors interested in for-profit education companies. According to
Stephanie Simon of Reuters, who reported on the event, investment in
for profit education has already jumped from $13 million in 2005 to
$389 million in 2011. Among others, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan
Chase have created multimillion-dollar funds for education
investments.
http://www.epi.org/publication/education-profiteering-wall-street/
xii
As Diane Ravitch explains: Reform” is really a misnomer, because
the advocates for this cause seek not to reform public education but
to transform it into an entrepreneurial sector of the economy. The
groups and individuals that constitute today’s reform movement
have appropriated the word “reform” because it has such positive
connotations in American political discourse and American history.
But the roots of this so- called reform movement may be traced to a
radical ideology with a fundamental distrust of public education and
hostility to the public sector in general.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/28/public-education-who-are-the-corporate-reformers/
xiii
Education privatization would not, per se, create a net new stimulus
for the economy. But by diverting large existing flows of money from
the public to the private sector it would create new profit-making
ventures that could be capitalized and transformed into stocks,
derivatives and leveraged securities. The pot has been sweetened by
a 39 percent federal tax credit for financing charter school
construction that can double an investor’s return in seven years.
The prospect of new speculative opportunities could well recharge
the animal spirits upon which Wall Street depends.
http://www.epi.org/publication/education-profiteering-wall-street/
xiv
NEA has only a small section regarding privatization. It relates
mainly about ESP (non-teachers) whose positions are vulnerable to
outsourcing. http://www.nea.org/home/16355.htm
xv
In “Campaign for America’s Future: Get Ready for the Next Wave
of Education “Reform,” Jeff Bryant warns teachers: As
anti-democratic pressures appear to be easing on the federal front,
they are ratcheting up in states across the country. In fact, the
next form of education “reform” may be as bad as or worse than
what NCLB imposed. http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/get-ready
.
xvi
Noam Chomsky explaining privatization in a nutshell: Manufacture
Crisis —> Privatize Public Resources1) Manufacture Crisis:
budget, edu-performance and/or consequences of NCLB/grant compliance
failure (often measured against known unattainable standards)
2)
Fail close/take over public schools
3)
Replace with charter schools linked to private CMOs (Charter
Management Organizations), corporate eduservice providers (Pearson)
and for-profit online learning. Staff with Teach for America temps
who are indebted recent college graduates. Done.
xvii
Teachers unions have been part of important and noble events in its
long history: “In 1857, one hundred educators answered a national
call to unite as one voice in the cause of public education. At the
time, learning to read and write was a luxury for most children—and
a crime for many Black children. One hundred and fifty years later,
public education and the profession of teaching are transformed. In
1966 we joined forces with the American Teachers Association. Since
then, our voice has swelled to 3.2 million members, and what was
once a privilege for a fortunate few is now an essential right for
every American child, regardless of family income or place of
residence.” http://www.nea.org/home/1704.htm
xviii
It is time to open debate on the premises and goals for public
education. “Markets are useful instruments for organizing
productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite
the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate
about the moral limits of markets.” ― Michael J. Sandel,
Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
xix
Gerald Bracey (RIP) was a harsh critic of the so called reforms and
became a true champion for public education. This piece is an
excellent read for those who want to understand the fallacies behind
the reformers’ alternatives.
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/bracey-report
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