ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by analyzing Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's (2010) speech, "Education and International Competition: The Win-Win Game", to illustrate the illogic that has been driving American education reform for the past three decades. The idea that American education reform has been an inherently flawed enterprise since at least the 1980s is not new. Neither is the idea that reform tends to fail because both the American Dream and education itself are vague abstractions. The chapter turns now to the so-called Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) policies in the United States, specifically No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and Race to the Top grant program (RTTT). To understand how GERM reform in the United States was supposed to work, one would do well to consult O'Day and Smith's (1993) "Systemic School Reform". If even one of them is essential for society to function peaceably, then eliminating it without a viable alternative will necessarily lead to societal dysfunction.
