Corporations and education

Two events this week that will likely resonate in the education community for a long time to come: one, Democratic voters fired Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, and effectively along with him one of the movement's biggest superstars, District schools chief Michelle Rhee. Nathalie Hopkinson describes it best in her piece for The Atlantic: "This Spring, Rhee negotiated among the most revolutionary teacher's contracts in the country, which essentially broke the union, loosening tenure protections in exchange for the potential for teachers to make more money and earn performance bonuses. D.C. is being hailed as a model in urban education reform, and there are plans to replicate this model..."

Where the road meets the rubber is in the insistence of the charitable arm of Wal-Mart to retain Rhee to make sure she'd continue on the union-breaking war path or it would yank millions of dollars in funding, according to Hopkinson...

which leads me to the second event this week, also in Washington D.C.

President Obama announced Thursday the launch of a new organization called "Change the Equation," which will help the administration's goal to improve math and science education. In the prez words, Change the Equation "brings together a coalition of more than a hundred CEOs from the nation’s largest companies who are committed to bring innovative math and science programs to at least a hundred high-need communities over the next year."
Among the top execs invited to witness Obama's announcements were Ursula Burns from Xerox, Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobil, Craig Barrett, former Intel CEO; Antonio Perez of Kodak; Glenn Britt from Time Warner.

So I'm curious. Will the funding of these corporations be contingent on whether school reform includes union-breaking measures? Can we really expect schools to work as businesses? If so, how do we measure "productivity" and for whom? And what happens to the kids who don't "produce"?