Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Tweedle Dum vs Tweedle Dee. A plague on both their data pools!

by Sean Ahern

Critics of the Bloomklein 'reform' use the NAEP results to refute the 'success' of Mayoral control but I think this sort of 'critique' leaves us chasing our tails and leads to no positive alternative model of accountability.

Those of us in the schools would do well to change the channel and create new bottom up systems and ethics of accountability. I think that would be "important".

This conversation is going on in many parts of the country but I fear the incessant chatter and noise from the pundits, union leadership and professional advocates that proliferate here in NYC and Washington DC in particular may be a distraction.

Diane Ravitch and the AFT/UFT are part of the testocracy regime. They harp on the discrepancy between federal and state scores but to what end? To advocate for additional Federal controls over curriculum, certification and accountability through testing? To secure their own special place as gatekeepers in a second Clinton administration? Would the tests be more valid if they designed and administered them?

There is a shibboleth much esteemed by the Shankerites, that public schools create the national identity and should be uniform, ignoring the fact that our "nation" is an internal empire under a white male supremacist oligarchy. Education here is hierarchical, segregated by race and class, unavoidably a battleground and rightfully so. Uniformity and standards is the language of social control, vastly overrated as beneficial to all by the managerial classes.

Top down accountability systems, be they Fed or SED, Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum, need to be replaced by a bottom up version of accountability where managers serve the people not vice versa.

Sean Ahern

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