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A critique of charter systems and their interests

Great overview of the current education landscape

"Pearson would like to become education's first major conglomerate, serving as the largest private provider of standardized tests, software, materials, and now the schools themselves. To this end, the company is testing academic, financial, and technological models for fully privatized education on the world's poor. It's pursuing this strategy through a venture called the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund. Pearson allocated the fund an initial $15 million in 2012 and another $50 million in January 2015. Students in developing countries vastly outnumber those in wealthy nations, constituting a larger market for the company than students in the West. Here in the US, Pearson pursues its privatization agenda through charter schools that are run for profit but funded by taxpayers. It's hard to imagine the company won't apply what it learns from its global experiments as it continues to expand its offerings stateside.

"What can teachers learn from the workplace culture of companies like Google? A new paper suggests that one way to improve students' happiness and performance is to revamp the classroom to look more like one of the United States' top companies.  Heather Staker, an adjunct researcher for the Christensen Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on innovation, authored a white paper that gives teachers a guide to creating higher-performing, happier classrooms in seven steps. The 81-page "playbook for teachers" includes three case studies-a mixed-income public school, a low-income charter school, and an independent affluent school-that show how teachers from all backgrounds and of all grade levels can make their classrooms look more like the highest-ranked workplaces."

Change in Education