My last article covered a few of the “acts” that ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council; a special interest conservative right leaning organization) has helped our legislators to write and implement across the country. What I outlined previously were merely a few examples of their good works put out by their Criminal Justice/Homeland Security task forces. While I focus on ALEC in much of my writing, please keep in mind that ALEC is but one of a hundred or so groups who work behind the scenes in D.C. to buy off our politicians and force policies that meet their own political and profit driven agendas. I tend to single out ALEC only because they are one of the most prominent groups and there are numerous connections between ALEC, private prison corporations, declining education and our ever tightening and restrictive ‘tough on crime’ laws…but I cannot emphasize enough that they are just one of the players and takers of the big profit pie that our lawmakers gorge themselves on.
For this article, I am going to highlight some of the ways ALEC (and other outside influences) has helped our educational system along. Since there seems to be a direct connection between education and incarceration, this is an important piece of how politicians and CEOs are legislating profits for prison industry. Let’s face it, very few ‘hardened criminals’ have college degrees and if our government wanted high achievements from our schools, we’d damn well have high achieving schools, don’t you think?
From ALEC’s webpage on their education task force:
Each year, the Task Force releases an annual Report Card on American Education. One of ALEC's flagship publications, the Report Card takes a comprehensive look at the state of public education all across our country. Based on a variety of indicators, the Report Card consistently shows no direct correlation between conventional measures of education inputs, such as expenditures per pupil and teacher salaries, and educational outputs, such as average scores on standardized tests.
As always, the Task Force will continue to focus on those policies that hold teachers accountable for the education they are providing as well as developing new ideas on how businesses can become partners in educating the next generations of our children.
We’ve already seen the wonders of bringing businesses into our prisons, now they want to do the same to our schools? Pardon me if I don’t jump up and down in excitement over this idea.
Here is more from ALEC’s page:
“Our Model Legislation
Resolution Supporting the Principles of No Child Left Behind”
Apparently NCLB has been a smashing success for those who profit from filling up cellblocks. Pink said it best with, “No child gets left behind, we’re not dumb and we’re not blind; they’re all sitting in your cells, while you pave the road to hell…”
When you read more closely into parts of NCLB here is what is written into the fine print, and again, this is straight off of ALEC’s page:
“Focus on Achievement: NCLB not only promotes—and fully funds—innovative reforms in public education, but the law also holds schools accountable for their own success. For the first time in history, states must prove that they are yielding academic results before the federal government hands over the money. When achievement is not up to standard, the federal and state governments expect them to focus on how they can improve public education standards.”
Back the hell up. Schools that are doing poorly get cut off from federal aid.
