I don't know if I agree, but I've never heard this said before...

This is your must-read blog post, over at An Old Soul:

Read this entire speech, given back in 1997 by David Stratman, and then you can decide whether to be blown away or hide your head in the sand.

Stratman dared to pull all the pieces together about what's going on in public education policy almost 8 years ago. I think the whole picture he paints makes complete sense as we see that some of the strongest cheerleading and unconditional love for NCLB comes from the corporate Dems, the DLC.

The reason that public education is under attack is this: our young people have more talent and intelligence and ability than the corporate system can ever use, and higher dreams and aspirations than it can ever fulfill. To force young people to accept less fulfilling lives in a more unequal, less democratic society, the expectations and self-confidence of millions of them must be crushed. Their expectations must be downsized and their sense of themselves restructured to fit into the new corporate order, in which a relative few reap the rewards of corporate success-defined in terms of huge salaries and incredible stock options-and the many lead diminished lives of poverty and insecurity.

If my analysis is correct, it means that you - public educators, every person in this room, and all the staff and colleagues you have worked with these many years - you are under attack not because you have failed - which is what the media and the politicians like to tell you. You are under attack because you have succeeded-in raising expectations which the corporate system cannot fulfill.
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There is a world of difference between raising our "expectations" for students and raising "standards." Raising our expectations means raising our belief in students' ability to succeed and insuring that all the resources are there to see that they do. Raising standards means erecting new hoops for them to jump through.
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I think this goes back to what BushCo said in a debate once, another era ago: NCLB is a jobs program to better prepare workers for the 21st century jobs. Yes, I see, I see.

It's to better prepare us to work at all those slave drudgery jobs, so that we the sheeple will unquestioningly live our lives of insecurity and poverty for generations to come.

It has the ring of truth, doesn't it? [The Sideshow]