Big Money, Our Favorite Things (Updated with Accompaniment!)

The Summer Solstice has just passed, and it feels like a time to play with rhyming words. After playing with nursery rhymes and lullabies that need more work, I crafted a loving tribute to the apparent agenda big business bigwigs have in mind for our public school system. Think Rodgers and Hammerstein, with Maestra Maria Sallee instead of Maria von Trapp, and sing it out loud:

(To read while listening to the tune, courtesy of YouTube, simply click above link to ‘Maria von Trapp’ then click back to our tab.  Simple!)

Trained career teachers’ inflated remittance
Replaced by new people who’ll cost just a pittance
Take unions’ bargaining powers away
Tenure and contracts are all so passé

Teaching by formula, oh how we love it
True pedagogy, you know they can shove it
Teachers with expertise threaten the plan,
Find ways to shame them whenever we can.

We’ll say things like “accountability”
Even if we’re not so clear what that means
We’ve got investments to bring in the bucks
Pearson, McGraw Hill ensure our schools suck

There is money
To be made in
Tests and charter schools
We’ll simply install our Broad leaders and then
They’ll serve as our plan’s real tools

We like to sneer “status quo” when we’re questioned
It’s been a handy phrase we can mention
We like it when we  so easily distract
In all those moments we’d like to pretend
That it’s not the Status Quo that we defend

We smell a market ripe for capitalizing
We’re working quietly on school privatizing
We’ve got the interest and we’ve got the means
School crisis stories fit into our schemes

We like to say it’s about civil rights
But we aren’t concerned with impoverished non-whites
Follow the money and you soon will see
Our intervention’s not philanthropy

When they score low,
We will close schools,
Call it “redesign”
We’ll simply replace them with our charter schools
and everything will be fine