The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth, and Lies

Tienken & Orlich take an in-depth and controversial look at school reform since the launch of Sputnik I. They scrutinize school reform events, proposals, and policies from the last 60 years through the lens of critical social theory and examine the ongoing tensions between the need to keep a vibrant unitary system of public education and the ongoing assault by corporate and elite interests to create a dual system. The following events, proposals, and policies are critiqued:

• Sputnik
• A Nation At Risk
• Big Business Values in Education
• No Child Left Behind
• State Standards Movement
• Common Core State Standards Initiative
• High Stakes Testing
• Charter Schools

The authors provide an evidence-based contrarian view of the free-market education ideas and pierce the veil of the new reform policies to find that they are built not upon empirical evidence, but instead rest solidly on foundations of fraud, myth, and lies. The fight for a unitary system of public schools and the rise of the dual system is chronicled. Ideas for a new set of reform policies, based on empirical evidence and supportive of a unitary, democratic system of education are presented.

Acknowledgments
Forward
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Liberty and Justice For All
Chapter 2: The Education Reform King With a Styrofoam Crown
Chapter 3: A Catalogue of Reform Fallacies
Chapter 4: The No Child Left Behind Act
Chapter 5: The Path of High-Risk Implications for Public Education
Chapter 6: High Stakes, Low Quality
Chapter 7: World-Class Standards That Are Too Big To Fail
Chapter 8: Charter Schools: Separate But Legal
Chapter 9: What Now? A Way Forward