I Got Yer Reform Right Here

A great little reminder regarding "Gubmint should be run more like a business":  For every spectacularly successful company like Google, there are thousands of equally spectacular failures - Value America, eToys.com, and on and on and on.  Thousands.  Is that really the model we want schools (eg) to follow?

(via Democratic Underground)

Somebody new to me - using the name jacobbacharach:

The cheating scandals prove that education reform is a wholly fraudulent endeavor. It isn’t the equivalent of a doping scandal in sports; it’s the equivalent of Enron, Madoff, the financial crisis. You think testing has something to do with compensation, hiring, and firing? It doesn’t. Testing is the accounting of the reform movement, and the executives are cooking the books. They’re manipulating the statements so it looks like the venture is turning a profit. Well, actually, it’s got negative cash flow. The gains are phantoms. The enterprise is insolvent. Even by its own standards, reform fails.

The central proposition of so-called education reform is that it endeavors to make schooling more entrepreneurial. Now this is bogus on its face. The most salient fact about entrepreneurialism is that most ventures fail. Is that the proper model for the delivery of a universal service? Consider the question irrespective of your thoughts about the larger questions surrounding the provision of universal education. Ostensible reformers say they want to mimic the dynamism and innovation of the private sector. The first question is: to what end, exactly? The second is: do you know how dynamism and innovation work?

"High-Stakes Testing" is just another good example of an entrepreneurial idea that sounds pretty good, but then fails miserably when we try to shoe-horn certain enterprises into it.