A Military Coup in Education?

Several years ago, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce recruited a derelict retired black general and friend of Colin Powell named John Stanford to help privatize the Seattle School District. Stanford brought along another retired general to serve as his "Chief of Staff." Still another black general was appointed superintendent of public schools in Washington, D.C.; he was honest enough to admit that he couldn't handle the job.

Former military officers have headed other school districts. Not content with recruiting Colin Powell's pals to serve in management, Big Business is now militarizing students...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21929-2003Nov29.html

A Md. School Tries an About-Face
Students and Teachers Brave a Military Campaign in Pr. George's

By Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 30, 2003; Page A01

Last year, Christopher was a lanky, stoop-shouldered ninth-grader whose voice rarely rose above a whisper. Against his wishes, his mother enrolled him in Forestville Military Academy as it began a dramatic experiment -- to see whether a low-performing, chaotic high school in Prince George's County could become one of the nation's few coeducational public military schools.

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If they want to instill discipline, why not model schools after Outward Bound and teach something useful, like environmental science, at the same time? Why not create paramilitary academies that teach students how to ambush Republicans and stage revolutions designed to win back democracy?

do the students actually learn more? How do they do on standardized tests, the ones that have been around forever and have decent validity, not the new high-stakes crap that's being shoved on all the schools.

What are their true graduation rates like? How many who enter grade 9 actually graduate from grade 12? Sometimes graduation rates only give those who enter grade 12 and graduate. How demanding is the curriculum? Are the students able to get admitted to decent colleges? Or do most of them get shuffled off to the local junior college where they take the classes they should have gotten in high school?

There must be other questions to ask that I'm not thinking of.