High Stakes Testing As Class War Strategy

Bill Resnick talks with local education activist Hyung Nam about high stakes testing in US schools. Hyung talks about how he was threatened with firing from Wilson High School for asking critical questions about high stakes testing, but also for raising other critical questions about teacher's academic freedom. Hyung explains how business interests are driving "education reform" to turn education into a business. This is happening, he says, in the broader context of capitalism's perpetual crisis (stagnating wages, recessions, collapsing tax bases, etc.), which is transfered to the sphere of education in terms of greedy or lazy teachers. He also argues high stakes and standardized testing are used to reproduce class society and a kind of competition that is tearing American society apart. He mentions Rethinking Schools, Portland Social Equality Educators and wraps up talking about what the alternative to corporate education reform, what real teaching looks like.