The republicans won't fight Obama on this. (Look away: Warning! OP is about education)

[Jakes Progress]

Last edited Fri Mar 14, 2014, 05:16 PM - Edit history (2)

"Say goodbye to public schools: Diane Ravitch warns Salon some cities will soon have none"
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/12/public_schools_under_siege_diane_ravitch_warns_salon_some_cities_soon_will_have_none/

In fact they support it with gusto.

Race to the Top was designed by people from the New Schools Venture Fund… a major nexus of charters and privatization and for-profit operations. And the Obama administration [has] now proposed and [is] getting confirmed the CEO of the New Schools Venture Fund to be the Number Two in the U.S. Department of Education…

The previous CEO of the New Schools Venture Fund… was Joanne Weiss, and she’s the one who helped design and oversee Race to the Top, and then became chief of staff to Arne Duncan… She wrote a blog for Harvard Business Review…where she said that creating national standards and tests creates a national market for vendors. Well, I never heard of the U.S. Department of Education having a policy based on creating a national marketplace for vendors.

I mean, what’s happened is that the Obama administration basically has the Republican agenda. The Democratic agenda was equity. Race to the Top is not about equity.

I taught for thirty years. arne duncan is an idiot tool for the corporate interests that will do to American education what corporate insurance has done for health care. They will get even richer by sucking our children's lives.

While I was in the field, I worked at local, state, and national levels on standards and assessment. No honest person who actually successfully taught would support race to the top (NCLB on steroids and a grover norquist dream).

I read the posts and stories about the idiots of the tea party and the morally dead republican leadership attacking Obama for everything. The stories make me mad, and I seethe with righteous anger about how wrong they are and want to defend him and his policies. But you see, I was a teacher. My life was given to education.

Suppose you were gay, and the president you helped elect and want to defend set up a department to destroy every right you might have, set out to make laws to discriminate against you. Suppose you worked for a women's shelter and health center all you life, and the president you helped elect and the party you want to support outlawed abortion rights and cut screenings for breast cancer from insured health care. How would you view this administration? How would you rate it? How much could you support a party that does that?

When I hear arne talk, or see Obama grinning with michelle rhee, it cuts to the core of my life. I see millions of children cheated for corporate profit. I see class warfare at its most disgusting.

I believe (I hope) it will mean something to many just what this administration and any Democrat who runs for office says and does about this destruction of American education. It may.

Arne Duncan just doesn’t get it: How the media and phony reformers hurt your kids
Defenders of charter schools and Common Core cast critics as ignorant skeptics. It could cost Democrats elections
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/13/arne_duncan_just_doesnt_get_it_how_the_media_and_phony_reformers_hurt_your_kids/

Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, for one, offers a model. As Education Week’s Ujifusa writes, in the article linked above, Davis has released a plan for improving education that gives full-throated support to “public schools,” rather than voucher programs and other competitive forms of school. Instead of more austerity, she advocates for expanding college enrollments and guaranteeing top-performing high school students acceptance to college and a Texas teaching job. Instead of cutting teacher pay and bringing in unqualified Teach for America temp-workers, she proposes a college loan-repayment program for teachers and pledges to bring Texas teacher pay in line with the rest of the country. (The NEA ranked Texas 30th in the nation in average public school teacher salaries.)

The republicans won't fight our schools. They won't fight to push back on what Obama's education department is doing. If they won't, who will fight for the children? Will the next generation be sacrificed in the battle of lesser evils?

For keeping arne duncan and letting him implement the neo-con plan for American schools, Obama runs the risk of loosing both houses next year, spoiling chances for Democrats everywhere, and leaving the death of American education as his legacy.

[cui bono]

1. morning kick!

[Xyzse]

2. This is one of the few core things I can't agree with, in regards to what Obama has done.

I must admit though he is pushing for higher education.

I still think this is even more important.

[Jakes Progress]

5. There are a couple

of things I don't like that come from this administration. But none that are as bad as this to me.

i like most of his rhetoric and despise the lies from the other side. But our nation's schools are going to be lost because of this president. If a republican president tried to push through this neocon wet dream, all Democrats would rise up in arms to stop them. But because it is a Democrat, and because it is Obama, good Democrats sit on their hands and say what a shame it is that we have no choice but to support "our" president.

Coddling Wall Street and the banksters was bad enough, but to anyone with the slightest knowledge of education issues, this is a simple, bald-faced sell-out to corporate interests.

It's like the environment too. Once you wreck it, it won't be back in our grandchildren's lifetimes.

[Blue Idaho]

3. It is up to every citizen to get involved with their local schools

Diane Ravich among others are sounding the warning and it's up to all of us to stop the dismantling of public education. Charter Schools, Common Core, and Standardized testing will destroy public education and help cement the wall that is being built between the haves and the have-nots. It is not too late. You can make a difference before K-12 and now the Community College systems are turned into cash cows for educational corporations.

[MisterP]

4. actually they probably WILL fight--and that means it'll pass because then Dems can't oppose it...