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Business-Managed Democracy‘Business-managed democracies are those in which the political and cultural 
National Education Summits
National Education Goals Summit, 1989
Reference: Jeffrey R. Henig, Rethinking School Choice: Limits of the Market Metaphor, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 3; Keith H. Hammonds, ‘The Mission: David Kearns's Crusade to Fix America's Schools’, Business Week, 22 March 1999; Joel Spring, Political Agendas for Education: From the Religious Right to the Green Party, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002, p. 67.
It was held and attended by President Bush, state governors and CEOs from around the nation. Bush accepted the business proposition that the school system required a total restructuring and incorporated it in his administration’s education policy, leading to America 2000: An Education Strategy, authored by David Kearns of Xerox, his education secretary Alexander, and Diane Ravich and launched in 1991. It promoted “national academic standards, national achievement tests and corporate involvement in schools”.
Reference: David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools, Cambridge, Mass., Perseus Books, 1995, p. 212; Edward H. Berman, ‘The Politics of American Education and the Struggle for Cultural Dominance, 1996-’, Melboune Studies in Education, vol 37, no 1, 1996, p. 28.
The Goals 2000: Educate America Act that was passed in 1994 did not vary much from America 2000. It established a National Education Standards and Improvement Council to promote national standards for core academic subjects. National Education Summit, 1996
Reference: ‘A Business Leader's Guide to Setting Academic Standards’, The Business Roundtable, Washington D.C. June 2006, p. 26; Edward B. Rust, 'Business Issues in Elementary and Secondary Education', Paper presented at the Committee on Education and the Workforce, US House of Representatives, 1 July 1999 ; Joel, Spring, Political Agendas for Education: From the Religious Right to the Green Party, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002, p. 64.
40 state governors and 49 corporate CEOs met at IBM headquarters to plan a second phase in the campaign for public school reform. This time they were welcomed by President Bill Clinton. The Summit reaffirmed the emphasis on standards, testing and accountability. They formed an organization called Achieve, Inc. to lead and sustain the campaign and to provide resources to states implementing standards and testing. For several years the Louis Gerstner, CEO of IBM, co-chaired Achieve. National Education Summit, 1999
Reference: Barbara Miner, ‘Testing: Full Speed Ahead’, Rethinking Schools Online, vol 14, no 2, 1999
24 governors and 33 business leaders met at IBM headquarters as well as state superintendents and other invited guests. President Clinton again addressed the conference as did Gerstner, co-chair of the summit. School principals, teachers and students were not invited. The conference again reiterated the need for every state to “adopt standards backed-up by standardized tests” and “a system of ‘rewards and consequences’ for teachers, students, and schools based on those tests”. It recommended that teachers, too, should have to pass standardised content tests before they are certified and that teacher pay increments be linked to student achievement on standardised tests. 
See also: Key Individuals | Business Coalitions| Education Crises | Profit Seekers
© 2009 Sharon Beder
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The Corporate Capture of Childhood
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