We have reached the ultimate, and unavoidable zenith of the education accountability movement. Students segregated by test score. Marked with color coded ID badges and segregated.
This is not a curriculum decision. This has nothing to do with the students’ education. They are not segregated into special intervention classes. They are not segregated in order to give them more support. Nope. Not at all.
The students are segregated into separate lines for lunch. They are segregated for purposes of special rewards. The line for the wrong color cards was also much longer. Students with the wrong color card who tried to push themselves in advanced classes were shunned and told they did not belong by the kids with the right color cards. If you had the right color tag, you also got discounts at the school store and at some local businesses.
You might think that this is an Onion story. You might say these are just some crazy extremists. You would be wrong. This is the obvious and inevitable destination of our market based obsession with school reform. Helping kids and interventions are hard work, and costly. Sending the untouchables to their own line is cheap and easy. Punishment and rewards. Negative reinforcement. You folks want market based education reform, this is it. This is the zenith.
I’m disgusted and repulsed. However, I am mostly disgusted because this is just a visible example of what the reform movement has made mainstream. This is NO Child Left Behind in technicolor and 3D. This is happening to our schools every, single, day.
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