The Goal of Education Reform

Buried in this Atlantic piece about Michelle Rhee's departure from the D.C. school system is this Randi Weingarten nugget:

Weingarten says that Rhee's reforms won't be scalable, and that attrition rates among teachers will exceed 80 percent over five years.

I disagree that the "reforms" brought by Rhee won't be scalable elsewhere.

When you have a union head like Weingarten so willing to cave on core work issues like seniority, tenure and work conditions, everything is scalable.

But the important part of the piece is the attrition rate Weingarten expects for the D.C. system - 80%.

Those teachers Rhee (and now her successor) don't fire will bolt out of the system anyway under the new contract.

And the system will have a revolving door of TFA's and other cheap twenty-something McTeachers, lowlabor costs, and non-existent pension costs.

That, my friends, is ALL the reform movement is about.

That and opening up the billions of education dollars to private enterprise (or choice, as the reformers like to call it.)

Lower salary and pension costs, a privatized system - the neo-liberal goal for everything in American life.

And they are succeeding.