Cloaking Inequity seeks to illuminate popular and dominant ideologies that purport to foment equality and close the achievement gap. Often well-intentioned citizens support educational policy that claim to create a more inclusive and better quality education system— unbeknownst to them— instead these policies magnify and hide inequality by utilizing an elegant, yet false, bureaucracy of data, research and media promotion. As a result, I am inaugurating a new award called the Educational Policy Turkey of the Year Award to be voted on by the viewers of Cloaking Inequity and announced Thanksgiving Day (Gobble Gobble). This award will be given to the educational policy (or program) of the year that is deemed to most egregiously cloak inequity. I will provide an introductory hyperlinks about each nominee for research purposes. Let the voting begin!

El Paso Independent School District, for cheating scandal that sent superintendent to prison. Discussed on CI here. (News articles: 1,2,3.)

Florida State Board of Education, for lowering the bar by race/ethnicity. (An emerging trend that is also appearing in D.C. and elsewhere). (News articles 1,2)

Recently granted a new charter in Texas. Discussed on CI here and here and here. (An interesting book about Great Hearts entitled It’s All About the Information: What Great Hearts Academies Doesn’t Want You to Know)

The Texas Legislature, for gifting us the framework for NCLB, TEKS social studies standards (Okay, it was the SBOE, but they gave them the power), cutting $5.3 billion from education and thrusting vouchers back into the limelight.

For not being exactly straightforward about allot of things.

Why let evidence get in the way of feel-good stories about fresh-faced college students teaching in impoverished communities? Sometimes reform needs reform.