No Child Left Behind From the Rapture

May 23, 2011 (GBN News): The world did not end last Saturday, but the US Department of Education was prepared just in case it did. GBN News has learned that a whopping $100 billion of the Department’s Race to the Top money was secretly put aside to restructure the nation’s schools in the event of the apocalypse.

The plan was said to have been modeled after the way the New Orleans schools were turned around after Hurricane Katrina. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was poised to take full advantage of the fact that most public school buildings would be destroyed by earthquakes, and that with the world ending, the issue of teacher tenure would be rendered all but moot.

Unlike New Orleans after Katrina, however, the best students would probably be admitted to heaven instead of to charter schools. Mr. Duncan would thus have to reassure hedge fund managers and other important stakeholders that they could nevertheless make huge profits on education in the period between the Rapture and the final destruction of the world in October. So to oversee the restructuring, the Secretary lined up someone they would trust, one whom he could be certain would never have ascended to heaven: former Washington DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

According to sources at the DOE, Secretary Duncan seemed disappointed this morning that the world had not ended as promised. But his dour mood did not last long. By afternoon, he had already put on the President’s desk a new plan to bring the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under the control of the Education Department. With the new plan, FEMA would respond to disasters such as floods, hurricanes, or terrorist attacks by immediately swooping in and privatizing the local school system.

While there was reportedly some objection from FEMA officials over the fact that the agency would no longer be able to provide disaster relief, emergency loans, or other assistance beyond school privatization, the Secretary stood by the plan. “It’s not about the adults,” he insisted. “It’s about the kids.”