US-Style School Reform Goes South

This piece by David Bacon is such an important read. Here goes the testing industry with its insatiable thirst for new markets to exploit and undercut workers,  namely, the teachers union. This should remind us just how important our struggle against these numbers-based accountability systems are in the US. Our  struggle against them has implications far beyond  our borders.  This is nothing short of predatory capitalism's capitalizing on the economic disaster that NAFTA has caused.   Please read this article if you have any doubts about this: http://www.fpif.org/articles/nafta_at_20_the_new_spin

This piece  by David Bacon further underscores quite well the ridiculousness of the use of numbers-based accountability and high-stakes testing in a context like Mexico where the assumptions of equal access to education are glaringly false. In fact, applying U.S.-style reform is downright hostile. 

It's interesting to see how international banking institutions aside from the expected corporate interests  are working closely to institute reforms that will only benefit the deeply-lined pockets of the neoliberal right. We do not need an Elba Esther Gordillo to get punished for bilking the country when, on the other hand, the neoliberal, global agenda will accomplish just as much or worse.

-Angela

US-Style School Reform Goes South

David Bacon

March 12, 2013   |    This article appeared in the April 1, 2013 edition of The Nation.

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Members of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) raise their fists during a protest march to commemorate National Teachers Day in Mexico City May 15, 2012. Thousands of teachers from the state of Oaxaca and Mexico City took part to protest against the mandatory evaluation tests for teachers and to demand the removal of their union leader Elba Esther Gordillo, according to local media. Reuters/Edgard Garrido
 
Just weeks after taking office, Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, ordered the arrest of the country’s most powerful union leader, Elba Esther Gordillo. The move garnered international headlines and was widely cast as a sign that the government was serious about cracking down on corruption. But virtually no one in Mexico believes that was the real reason for her arrest.

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