Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

Diane Ravitch posted a press release from K12 announcing the launch of a new online product targeting prekindergarten students. K12 is a largely discredited online learning company that has recently lost contracts to some school boards because alert parents and faculty members have pointed out to board members that the K12 program is demonstrably unsuccessful. Given the parental and teacher pushback against this program and the political pushback by local school boards, K12 is doing direct marketing to parents with this kind of push:

…Educators across the U.S. have identified kindergarten-readiness as an educational priority, and even the President of the United States has made kindergarten-readiness a national issue. According to the U.S. Department of Education, there is a robust body of evidence and research demonstrating that high-quality, early learning programs help children arrive at kindergarten ready to succeed in school and in life.”

Nothing like telling your prekindergarten child that they need to get screen time so they can arrive at school “ready to succeed in life”… but K12, their privatization cronies, and political leaders all know that fear sells  because… it’s worked in the past.

I remember as an elementary student being told that the Sputnik launch proved we were falling behind the Russians… and hearing as a Superintendent in Maine in the early 1980s being we were a “Nation at Risk” of falling behind the Japanese… and now hearing over and over again about how we are losing our economic competitiveness because of poor public schools and falling behind China. In college I read a lot of George Orwell’s essays so I know where this is coming from…. and having worked in public schools as an administrator for over 35 years I know the most engaged parents are fearful that their kids won’t get into the best colleges and THAT fear has launched many supplemental after school programs.

K12 and the privatizers know that fear sells, and the preschool parent market is a good place to go because there is no one to counter the worthlessness of their online packages… and so we have a generation of students moving from Baby Mozart to K12 to corporate charter schools…  and who knows what kind of products to help them achieve “success” in the future.