administration privatizing public schools....?

[Hannah Bell]

by George Schmidt

Using language that most of the United States has not yet heard, but which will become familiar...President Barack Obama's Secretary of Education, former Chicago schools Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan, launched a national campaign in May 2009 to privatize between five and ten percent of the remaining public schools in the USA.

Under the headline "Obama Wants to See 5,000 Failing Schools Close," Associated Press reporter Libby Quaid released a three-paragraph story on May 11 that rocked the nation. "Barack Obama wants to see 5,000 failing schools close and reopen with new principals and teachers over the next five years," the AP reported...

STOP: As Chicagoans know, and the rest of the USA is about to learn, when a Chicago politicians talks about "underperforming" schools, he is slipping into that weasel wording that Chicago came to know from Arne Duncan. Just as he did in Chicago, Duncan talked about "underperforming" schools — not "failing" ones. Why? Because Duncan wanted to obfuscate, not illuminate...

Among other things, Arne Duncan refuses to say how any district will know how to proclaim "underperformance." Just as it proved impossible in Chicago, so it will be across the USA.

But behind the rhetorical smokescreen... Duncan is wielding the biggest stick in the history of American public education: the second wave of federal "stimulus" money. The Obama administration intends to force the entire country to begin the massive privatization of public education or face the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money...

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-ordering-states-close-5000-failing-schools-chicago-lies-go-national

[Hannah Bell]

1. kick

[ColbertWatcher]

2. I see disaster capitalism has moved into education. k+r, n/t

[JDPriestly]

3. Here is the problem: private schools do not pay their teachers as

as well as public schools in general. The privatization of schools will result in fewer strong people entering the teaching profession. The decline in teachers' salaries will mean that a student of modest means cannot afford to take out the loans to get a teaching certificate.

Many private schools do not require the same credentials and the same continuing education for teachers. They are also not always bound by the training that public school teachers get in things like equal opportunity. This is a stupid move.

Did we elect a Democrat or a Republican? I know I am a Democrat. But what is Obama?

[HamdenRice]

4. In other news, President Obama stabbed a 4th grader on live tv and bit off the head of a pigeon.

Details at 6!

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