The activity of the Achievement School District (ASD) in birdful Tennessee is similar to that of the Recovery School District (RSD) in New Orleans.
ASD first evaluates schools using a method Gates Family Investments bought for $1 billion in the gift shop of Seattle's Urbanic University. The essence of the inventive hypothesis the method is based on is that students' test scores determine the quality of teachers, schools, and drinking water. The method was christened Very Valuable Valuing (VVV). Anybody who wants to measure stuff can order a VVV-kit online, which consists of a magical measuring tape and instructions.
If a school's VVV-measure is not what ASD dreamed about, ASD drives up to the school in a yellow Rolls-Royce and puts a ginormous scientifically designed red sign on the main entrance that says "Bottom 5%". The experts ASD trusts say, just this sign alone starts to turn a school around to better performance.
After fixing the sign on the door, ASD enters and takes the school over, if not exactly peacefully, but--at least this is what survivors claim--without using firearms. A crucial and bloodiest part of the takeover is the firing of all teachers, most of whom happen to be African Americans. Once that's accomplished, ASD's final action is to give the school to a charter school operator whose job is to improve its health.
Of course, such sweeping medical procedures demand serious merit pay, but nobody is to worry since all of the money is coming from the green Ocean of accumulated federal tax dollars, which is generously spendable on worthy projects such as ASD's.
ASD's chief surgeon, Barbic Barber MD., was given, in advance, 20 million USD from the Federal Tax Ocean.
The charter school medical manager team gets eight thousand USD per child per year. This doesn't seem like a lot for the tedious business of open child-brain manipulation, but luckily for them, they can experiment on 1000 kids per school. This means these managers will also get millions, which must be relatively satisfactory for people without a degree in meducation.
Some people make a big deal out of ASD's hostile takeovers, but I like it. It's romantic. It brings back the times when the Mafia ruled the land. They were the heroic protectors of small and not so small businesses. They were rich, charismatic and very macho. They did cool, manly stuff like gambling, smuggling, and shooting each other over broken poker chips or elegant but infectious courtesans.
Admit, dear reader, you crave for those times too. You went to see all those movies with Brando, Pacino, de Niro and Pfeiffer playing the all-American heroes. You were excited, and wished, you could see real blood puddling on the streets in your own neighborhood or that you could fire those sexy, plump Thompson machine guns yourself.
Many people say "Those were the challenging, exciting times, full of action. But what do we have now, especially here in Memphis? In recent times, the best organized crime action we had going for us was Tom Cruise's riding the Mud Island trainlet as he was chased by the Mob when filming The Firm here. Pitiful."
Those people, who think without the Mafia our country is dull, are mistaken. They just don't look at the right place. We have the largest, most powerful organized crime in history. They call themselves the Public School Reform movement, but I prefer the more expressive and less formal Charter Mafia name, and I affectionately refer to them simply as the CharMa.
CharMa sounds exotic and charming, doesn't it?
CharMa is conducted from the highest possible level in politics, but, as always, the real instigators are the wealthiest, most popular businessmen such as Hill Billy himself. Just the billions CharMa has invested in the largest child-brain experiment in World history has already far exceeded what the Mafia ever got out of their small time experiments with business protection services, gambling, smuggling and pimping.
Do we know why these most powerful CharMa members are willing to invest this much into child experiments? Yes, of course. The prize money for their meducational operations will be in the hundreds of billions each year, and they dream of reaching one trillion per year by 2020.
Do these billionaires have a chance to collect this much in the near future? After all, they are far from charismatic or macho, they are rather nerdy looking, hopelessly unfunny and dress without style or even good taste in necktie. They wouldn't survive on the streets, not to mention a gun battle.
The answer to the question is undoubtedly yes, and you, dear reader, will agree once you understand the devilish idea behind the CharMa plan.
The idea came about when they watched, in amazement, Gandhi and MLK achieving their goals without guns. "Wow, what an inventive, game changing method! Can we exploit it?" they exclaimed. Then they got together, and worked out a strategic plan on how to twist the Gandhi-MLK duo's ideas to reach their own delightfully devious goals.
Their object of desire was, of course, predictable: collect more money than God. But they had to find it. Finding money for mere mortals like us, dear reader, is impossible since our sense of smell for it is completely disabled by morals. But our star philanthropists were born with the keen sense of smell and empathy of the common fly, so they had no problems whatsoever finding gold, and they found it in public education.
In going after the treasure in public education, all they had to remind themselves during their morning coffee was "If we don't use guns, people won't realize what we really are doing, so we won't ever get punished."
And they were correct. There's noise here and there against CharMa, but so far nobody has thought, they deserve a few hundred years behind bars. Their strategic plan has been working brilliantly!
We watched so many movies about the Mafia that we understand their language with no problem. On the other hand, not many people have a full command of the CharMa language, so here I provide translations of the most common Mafia expressions to CharMa.
| Mafia | CharMa |
|---|---|
| We know what's best for you, and you don't. | We know what's best for you, and you don't. |
| Criminals | Public school teachers |
| Your shop needs protection from criminals. | Your public school and children need to be saved from their teachers. |
| Better shop management | Charter schools |
| We are your trained, professional protectors. | ASD, RSD, Duncan, Gates form your unprofessional meducation team. |
| Stuff that will improve your shop: liquor, roulette | Stuff that will make your school turn around: TFA, TNTP, Relay |
| Guns | Tests, Very Valued Valuing |
| Protection fee you pay us | $8K per child per year you pay us from Tax Ocean |
| If you don't cooperate, we'll cut your kids' fingers off. | Even if you cooperate, we'll test and discipline your kids to death. |