Some Questions on Education, Business, and Power

I don't think anybody anywhere can talk about the future of their people or of an organization without talking about education. Whoever controls the education of our children controls our future. --Wilma Mankiller, first woman elected Chief of the Cherokee Nation

(Thanks, Education for Liberation and NYCore for including this quote in your Plan Book.)

A book to add to your list- The Blackboard and the Bottom Line: Why Schools Can't Be Businesses by Larry Cuban.

"Ford Motor Company would not have survived the competition had it not been for an emphasis on results. We must view education the same way," the U.S. Secretary of Education declared in 2003.

That's a pretty scary statement.

Who runs our schools? The biggest names:

• Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education: never a teacher.
  
• Rod Paige, Former Secretary of Education: never a teacher (As far as I can tell. Anyone know for sure?) Majored in Phys. Ed and went straight to college sports coaching. Involved in that famous Texas Miracle, err...Myth...
  
• Joel Klein, Chancellor, NYC Department of Education: never a teacher.

Is a business mentality the solution to our troubled education system? Should hedge fund managers be running charter schools? What happens when we place test results as the bottom line? 

Should private schools be for-profit?

Bush's DOE: A Pressure Cooker

Former Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, Susan Neuman, describes Bush's DOE as a "pressure cooker" in this NYT article.

Susan Neuman, a professor of education at the University Michigan who served as Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education during George W. Bush's first term, was and still is a fervent believer in the goals of NCLB. And she says the President and then Secretary of Education Rod Paige were too. But there were others in the department, according to Neuman, who saw NCLB as a Trojan horse for the choice agenda — a way to expose the failure of public education and "blow it up a bit," she says. "There were a number of people pushing hard for market forces and privatization."