I didn't say that. What I would say is that the primary aims of education reform are as follows:
1. To make education a scarce good. 2. To channel public money to private profit. 3. To divide the working class between those who can figure out what charters to get their kids into and the "refuse" who are left to public schools. This will make the public schools look even more inefficient and make the case for privatization even stronger. 4. To destroy teacher's unions. 5. To further degrade the conditions and remuneration of teachers
^^^^ CB: The way things have gone down in Michigan, number 4 rank as a number 1 reason , too.
My general suspicion is always that the ruling class doesn't want most of the working class' minds stimulated at the level that occurs in higher education as this has potential to raise class and radical consciousness. So, they don't want too many people succeeding in elementary and secondary ed. primed to go to college and actually going to college. What if 95% or high school students succeed in high school well enough to qualify for college ? Is even the institution of the normal curve without political basis ?
Not all college encourages critical social and political thinking , but there's more of it in college than outside. And it creates expectations of career and advance. The more people with such expectations, the more will be frustrated and alienated when some don't have their expectations met.
College profs are relatively politically left of the average in the overall population. Elementary and secondary teachers probably are too. The teachers' union is the most militant union in Detroit in recent years. Profs and students were a main segment of "The 60's" reform movements in the US. The ruling elite has institutional memory of that; and can just look at polling data today ( I guess the polling data shows that smile) or get their info from David Horowitz ( is that his name ?)