{"id":6690,"date":"2011-07-08T11:39:52","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T18:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=6690"},"modified":"2011-07-08T11:39:52","modified_gmt":"2011-07-08T18:39:52","slug":"quota-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=6690","title":{"rendered":"Quota Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend wrote the other day and asked me if I’d ever read anything by Stuart Archer Cohen.\u00a0 I fear for my friend’s mind, because just two years ago … on her recommendation … I read Cohen’s The Army of the Republic<\/em><\/a> and sent her a copy of my brief review, which I’ll repost here:<\/p>\n

\"\"For the past two years I’ve been seriously thinking about what American working people might do if the government allows employers to destroy labor unions and cancel pension obligations.\u00a0 I’ve been entertaining fantasies of assassination teams composed of unemployed and retired auto workers picking off high-profile CEOs and top government officials.<\/p>\n

The world of The Army of the Republic<\/em> features unrestrained capitalism and a Bush-like corporate government busily going after the few freedoms remaining to the American people, opposed by groups of loosely-organized militants and civil dissenters, playing out in front of a public that cares only about its own immediate comfort, perfectly willing to live under a dictatorship so long as the government leaves them to watch their reality shows in peace, with a Rush Limbaugh-like talk radio host and a Fox News-like Channel America screaming out government propaganda 24\/7.<\/p>\n

Narration shifts between three points of view: that of a militant, a civic organizer, and a corporate CEO.\u00a0 As the story progresses the three narrators become increasingly intertwined.\u00a0 They think about their actions, they waver in their commitments, they grow.\u00a0 Many books fascinate us, but how many both fascinate us and make us want to take to the streets?\u00a0 Not damn many.\u00a0 This is a brilliant and inspiring book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My friend went on to talk about the Atlanta school testing scandal<\/a>, which has been in the news recently, recounting a couple of her own experiences with people and institutions cheating to satisfy quotas and requirements.<\/p>\n

Not much of a connection between a book about a fictional American uprising and a school cheating scandal, you say? Not to my fevered mind! Here’s my reply to my friend:<\/p>\n

How do I know S.A. Cohen? You introduced me to him!<\/p>\n

Re Atlanta: Arizona too has standardized testing for high school seniors. Of course this was done by right-wing legislators on the basis of AM hate radio anecdotes, and was really initially directed at Mexican-American students. But once mandatory testing started, every high school in the state became a test-teaching institution, since jobs and funding clearly depended on good average scores.<\/p>\n

A few years later the legislature passed a bill to eliminate teacher tenure or seniority as a consideration in promotion, hiring, and retention (the bill was written by lobbyists working for the American Legislative Exchange Council<\/a>, a Koch Brothers-sponsored group that writes pro-business model legislation for members to introduce in their state houses).<\/p>\n

Today school districts with lower than average test scores have adopted what they call “transformational models<\/a>,” a lovely Orwellian phrase which translates into firing teachers who are getting close to retirement and the pensions they\u2019ve paid into their entire careers. These teachers go to the back of the line for rehiring since their seniority no longer counts for anything. All the teachers\u2019 unions can do is squawk \u2026 they don\u2019t have a leg to stand on.<\/p>\n

I remember reading about Stalin’s quotas in The Gulag Archipelago<\/em><\/a>. When you have to find 2,000 enemies of the state every week, by golly, you find them.\u00a0 When your job depends on students passing a standardized test, you’re going to make sure they pass.\u00a0 Metrics come in, honesty goes out. Anyone unwilling or not competent enough to cheat winds up in some literal or figurative Siberia.<\/p>\n

The brilliant part of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s model legislation?\u00a0 It goes hand in glove with ALEC’s anti-immigrant legislation<\/a>, which Arizona also adopted and turned into law.\u00a0 Now we can transfer the teachers’ pension money to the governor\u2019s private prison industry pals (a division of Koch Brothers Industries).<\/p>\n

Fuck yeah I read Stuart Archer Cohen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend wrote the other day and asked me if I’d ever read anything by Stuart Archer Cohen.\u00a0 I fear for my friend’s mind, because just two years ago … on her recommendation … I read Cohen’s The Army of the Republic and sent her a copy of my brief review, which I’ll repost here: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10,2,8],"tags":[169,166,171,170,168,167,164,131,165],"class_list":["post-6690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother","category-current-events","category-personal","category-politics","tag-american-legislative-exchange-council","tag-atlanta","tag-gulag-archipelago","tag-koch-brothers","tag-pensions","tag-schools","tag-stuart-archer-cohen","tag-teachers","tag-the-army-of-the-republic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6690"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6702,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6690\/revisions\/6702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}