"Data"

When any school superintendent starts yammering about "data," you'd better the hell watch out.

Kids are now reduced to being called "data." It's disgusting, but recall what the ultimate goal of the privatizers is: The goal is to deprofessionalize teaching so that any idiot off the street can read a script, or that students will take "classes" by internet and be "taught" by a pennies-a-day "teacher" in India or China, and then be tracked out of school by middle school at the latest. The ultimate goal is to limit upward mobility--even high school would be off-limits for most--and the filthy rich will continue to be an exclusive club.

You have to understand the mentality of these assholes. They really DO believe they are better than you or me. If WE were really that talented or smart, why aren't WE rich?

An astute comment at the Ohanian link:

One of the corporate wrecking balls brought down recently on America’s public schools is “data driven” education. The charade is a creation of the Business Roundtable and other forces that dream of a privatized school system that serves only their global profit making schemes.

Because their sinister intentions must be kept on the down low, data driven education is packaged and sold as economical but revolutionary pedagogy come to the classroom. Absurdity is the inevitable result. And so it is that our system of universal public education is now trapped in a scene from Woody Allen’s farce Bananas. The new leader has decreed that, “From this day on the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16-years-old are now…16-years-old!”

Promoting insanity in the classroom has proven to be quite an effective weapon of public school destruction. Teachers are being broken down and driven away at an unprecedented rate. One in five new teachers will not make it through their first year. Half of them will be gone inside of five years.

Revolving door teachers.  Once fired or "dismissed" or non-renewed, it is difficult if not impossible to find another teaching job anywhere  in the United States.  State licensing boards are slow to recognize the current abuses going on in public school systems where teachers are thrown out for the stupidest of reasons or no reason at all.  These licensing boards, as well as other school districts, will assume every time the teacher who is let go or denied "tenure"  has done something wrong.  After all, it's "impossible" for a teacher to get fired unless he or she  committed "misconduct" or he or she is "lousy."