Military-industrial complex schools

An article at Socialist Viewpoint, titled No School Left Unsold, tells the story of how Obama's new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, used No Child Left Behind (NCLB) as Chicago's superintendent to attack unionized public schools, and in one instance, promote the opening of a naval school.

Arne Duncan's embrace of NCLB and the reconstituting of Chicago schools is well-known. But this military school story is uncanny, since the school I worked at in St. Paul - Cleveland Jr. High - suffered a similar fate due to NCLB. To make a long story short, Cleveland Jr. was taken over by the Farnsworth Aerospace School to become a NASA school. (At the time I called Farnsworth the military-industrial complex school, and that perception was amplified by its insanely tyrannical principal.)

We knew before that NCLB promoted military interests by mandating that students' information be given to military recruiters unless students opted out. And many suspected that NCLB promoted corporate interests by privatization and the interjection of corporate curricula. But I wonder if there is a trend of NCLB promoting military schools nationwide. Is the miltiary-industrial wing of corporate America the biggest beneficiary of NCLB?

Background on NCLB:
Susan Ohanian Speaks Out
My article - Education and the 2008 Election

Support the wildwood workers

Today I attended the Latinos United for Change (Latinos Unidos para Cambio - L.U.C.) meeting in which Wildwood workers told their incredible story. The owner of Wildwood Industries here in Bloomington, a guy named Gary Wilder, used the money owed to workers to pay back bank creditors as he ran his company into the ground. How messed up this company was is clear from this article on a sourcing industry website, ttnet. Some workers are owed a week's pay, others are owed money for 3 or 4 weeks. Now he is being investigated by the feds. This Pantagraph article discusses the situation, saying nonchalantly that workers can apply to the state for their back pay (without mentioning that this avenue, still to be tried by the workers, was due to L.U.C. pressure).