Cloaking Inequity

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. Last year I began the Educational Policy Turkey of the Year Award. The 2012 inaugural winner (as voted on by the readers of Cloaking Inequity) was TFA (See: Teach For America: 2012 Educational Policy Turkey of the Year)

The 2013 Educational Policy Turkey of the Year Award will again be voted on by the readers of Cloaking Inequity and announced Thanksgiving Day (Gobble Gobble). This award will be given to the educational policy (or program or person or groups of persons) 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!

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1. Great Hearts, Basis and other profit making and/or diversity-averse corporate charters (Click here). Because The wealthy need segregated charters too!? (1 and 2), “Diversity is too hard” and What BASIS?: Nepotism and aggrandizement in charters Notably, the Texas State Board of Education and Nashville Metro School Board saw through Great Hearts’ BS (technical term).

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2. Eli Broad and his minions (Click here). For forcing “disruptive” and “unreasonable” trickle-down reform into the public space.

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3. Rahm Emmanuel and the “reformers.” For attempting wrestle public schools away from democratic control (Click here).

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4. President Barack Obama. For a complete and total fail on education policy (Common Core, Race to the Top, I3, no re-authorization of ESEA/NCLB, waivers, VAM, etc. etc.). And, especially for hiring a non-expert, non-educator basketball buddy as US Secretary of Education. I write this as a bitter pill since I was a two-time Texas state delegate for Barack Obama (Click here).

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5. Teach For America. Last, but not least… last year’s Educational Policy Turkey of the Year winner— Teach For America. For this: A Horror Comedy: Teach For America Rises to Power and this: The Republicans didn’t get what they wanted from Shutdown, but TFA did and this: Teach For America: Feel Good Spin vs. Dose of Reality From A Corps Member and this: New Mathematica TFA Study is Irrational Exuberance See all posts on TFA here.

Update: With 47.58%, President Barack Obama has won another poll. He is voted 2013 Educational Policy Turkey of the Year. Congratulations and condolences.

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