Alfie Kohn's very angry rant about ed reform. Says Obama has intensified what Bush began.
I think I will sit back, have some coffee, and watch this very real truth disappear down the rabbit hole or wherever.
Hat tip to educator Steven Singer on Twitter
A: What is the purpose of education?
B: To raise test scores.
A: Why?
B: To raise corporate profits.
Listen closely to his words about STEM and why it is crowding out subjects like literature and history.
Who in the world is Alfie Kohn?
Kohn has been described in Time magazine as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores." His criticisms of competition and rewards have helped to shape the thinking of educators -- as well as parents and managers -- across the country and abroad. Kohn has been featured on hundreds of TV and radio programs, including the "Today" show and two appearances on "Oprah"; he has been profiled in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, while his work has been described and debated in many other leading publications.
Kohn lectures widely at universities and to school faculties, parent groups, and corporations. In addition to speaking at staff development seminars and keynoting national education conferences on a regular basis, he conducts workshops for teachers and administrators on various topics. Among them: "Motivation from the Inside Out: Rethinking Rewards, Assessment, and Learning" and "Beyond Bribes and Threats: Realistic Alternatives to Controlling Students' Behavior." The latter corresponds to his book BEYOND DISCIPLINE: From Compliance to Community (ASCD, 1996), which he describes as "a modest attempt to overthrow the entire field of classroom management."
Kohn's various books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, and Malaysian. He has also contributed to publications ranging from the Journal of Education to Ladies Home Journal, and from the Nation to the Harvard Business Review ("Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work". His efforts to make research in human behavior accessible to a general audience have also been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Parents, and Psychology Today.
His many articles on education include a dozen widely reprinted essays in Phi Delta Kappan from 1991 to 2008. Among them: "Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide," "How Not to Teach Values: A Critical Look at Character Education," "Test Today, Privatize Tomorrow," and "Why Self-Discipline is Overrated."
Crossposted at my Twitter link
= new reply since forum marked as read
Test taking can be traumatic. 
Not really funny, but I used to have dreams about the FCAT writing test.
a generation" sparked by the '57 panic and Loren Eiseley called it the "Invisible Pyramid", saying space/STEM was absolutely important but not the *only* thing and not go all deMille building it: now this was when the US was still in a boom and Fordist (if you were white enough, though LBJ was expanding that)
but even after Rachel Carson and the failure of industry and science to win Vietnam and even the financialization of every damn thing under the sun and the reinforcement of school districts (Compton pays for its own schools, Bel Air for its), art and music were still permitted in schools and programs--but they're always the first to go, and each "STEM panic" twists the tourniquet a little. bit. tighter. each. time. (some have even said "we have science: who needs history or philosophy?"
but you probably figured that out.
Much appreciated. 
And a big to you.
And a 
as well.
Back in the saddle.
About damn time. 
