Further, I cannot muster the faith to believe that this is accidental. Keeping the teachers too busy to advocate (and teachers will tell you privately that these measures are worthless, draining, and interloping practices in their classrooms), and too worried for their positions to speak out is a clear and effective strategy to pull the rug out from system. The people who have devoted their lives to the political act of teaching children must be made too busy to advocate against the obvious plot to destroy the system–all while their students are dehumanized so that their suppression can be justified with bottom lines and pie graphs. There are people that buy it, I’ll grant that. People that justifiably believe that this kind of practice is the best way—everyone is entitled to their opinion—however that way I see it is that these practices have not only failed to slow the degenerating state of the American education system but they have in many way accelerated it. The only conclusion I can come to is that somewhere in the decision making check book (not elected officials, but rather the hands that pantomime their mouth movements via a rear entry) there was a clear plan to move things in this direction. As the middle class shrinks more and more, and racism becomes more effectively replaced with classism as the oppression du jour, knocking out the legs of the only true leveling tool the society offers seems like a great way to separate the haves from the can’t-haves (no longer have-nots, as that denotes the possibility of having).
Some may say that I’m overreacting, or that I’m a conspiracy theorist but to those people I suggest you take a step back from the painting and take in the scene. The economy isn’t healing, jobs are going elsewhere, the government is profiting from student loans that they are enslaving debtors to their jobs (if they can get one), banks aren’t loaning money, the major political parties are aligned to keep the people distracted over obvious minutia while they rape and remove freedoms left and right, and the erstwhile replacement for public schools—charters—statistically don’t produce better results—only a cost less to the general public.
The expertise of the teacher is devalued, their morality irrelevant, and their ability to advocate for their charges unwillingly sapped away by fear of hunger. The tests are to be administered in such a way that teachers have become enforcers whose methods are scripted, no longer needing the “thoughtful practice” that the data is purportedly informing. People aren’t quick to notice this, or to speak against it, because teachers aren’t the only people worried about their job security due to these kinds of measures and overregulation—everyone is. When you are worried about your next meal or if a military backed private bank is going to come and foreclose on your house its hard to take that step back and aggressively call out “This is wrong! This is broken! What are we doing?”
There are many pieces on the political chessboard, education is just one of 16 pawns—but nobody can even see the Kings and Queens; the best thing the devil ever did was convince the world he didn’t exist, and the best thing the aggressors ever did was disguise our oppression as progress.
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A very educated view point, bravo!