Duncan's 'teacher appreciation' BS backfires... RTTT is worse than NCLB, even CNN notices

[Hannah Bell]

The rest of the USA is still learning what Chicago teachers learned the hard way (and what the leaders of the National Education Association are still trying desperate to ignore) — Arne Duncan is the enemy of veteran teachers... From the day in December 2008 when Barack Obama announced that Duncan was Obama's choice to be U.S. Secretary of Education, the administration declared war on America's unionized teachers, and that war has been escalating ever since...

In Spring, Summer and Fall of 2008, the armies of people — a huge number of them public school teachers — worked overtime to get out the votes that Obama needed to win over John McCain and Sarah Palin. Within two months of his November 2008 election victory, Obama, following the corporate script he had previously outlined in "Audacity of Hope," betrayed those teachers by announcing that he would appoint Duncan — who had no teaching experience and had been corporate Chicago's privatizer in chief and hatchet man — to become U.S. Secretary of Education. The Duncan appointment was even announced at one of the many examples of Chicago's corporate fraud (and racism) — the "Dodge Renaissance Academy" on Chicago's West Side. Dodge had been destroyed as a neighborhood public school by Arne Duncan in 2003 and turned over to the corporate "Academy for Urban School Leadership" (AUSL). Most of the Dodge teachers (the majority of them African Americans) were forced out of their jobs by Duncan following the pre-"turnaround" turnaround of Dodge. Yet without a sense of irony or history, Barack Obama sat with Arne Duncan at Dodge in December 2008 to announce the Duncan appointment.

The rest was in the script, although it was still going to take some time for America's teachers to realize that the corporate script of "Race To The Top" would be even more vicious than what had been so nasty in "No Child Left Behind." By the time "Race To The Top" had forced a privatization, merit pay, and teacher bashing agenda on more than half the states by early 2010, even the most blinded Obama fans realized that something was wrong. But rather than taking a cold hard look at the Obama (Duncan) record in Chicago (the closing of more than 50 African American public schools between 2004 and 2009, and the firing of more than 1,000 teachers, most of them African American), some people still insisted on belief over evidence...

That wake up call came, not out of the tightly controlled Chicago media bubble (Substance has been the only consistently critical publication of these events since 2002 when Duncan did a "renaissance" on his first three schools — Dodge, Terrell and Williams; all of them all-black), but out of a mostly white school that shared the characteristics of the schools that had been on Duncan's corporate Hit List: Central Falls High School in Central Falls Rhode Island...

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=2263§ion=Article



What CNN discovered (belatedly) about how teachers feel about Duncan & Race to the Top:


TEACHERS GIVE COLD SHOULDER TO OBAMA EDUCATION CHIEF, CNN -- May 16, 2011, By Paul Frysh...

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/16/arne.duncan.letter/index.html

An open letter of appreciation to teachers from the Obama administration's chief education official has highlighted the administration's difficult relationship with the nation's teachers.

"I have a deep and genuine appreciation for the work you do. ... You deserve to be respected, valued, and supported. ... It is my goal to see that you are treated with the dignity we award to other professionals in society," reads the letter from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

But many teachers are unmoved.

"Respect? Value? Support? Not seeing much," said teacher and education commentator Sabrina Stevens Shupe, who writes about education on her blog, the Failing Schools Project. "The gap between his words and his actions is too large to ignore," Shupe said in a widely circulated open letter responding to Duncan that echoes the sentiments of many in the teaching community.

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=2263§ion=Article

[Fumesucker]

1. "by early 2010, even the most blinded Obama fans realized that something was wrong."

That's untrue, we have plenty of people right here on DU defending this to the last breath..

[Hannah Bell]

2. yeah, but i don't think being an obama supporter is the major reason for a lot of them.

[Fumesucker]

3. On the most pro-Obama forum I look at (not DU) the subject of ed reform is seldom raised..

It's a lot of very bright people, probably more educated than DU on average, and they just don't want to talk about Obama and education.

[Hannah Bell]

4. so you're saying they don't want to talk about it because it looks bad?

[Fumesucker]

6. That's my opinion..

I'm not a mind reader but that's what it looks like to me..

[Hannah Bell]

7. So wouldn't that imply that supporting BO isn't the main goal of folks talking

it up here?

[Fumesucker]

8. They have to because there's a lot of people talking it down..

They'd rather not talk about it at all really because the position is not terribly defensible, at least that's my take on the situation.

It's actually kind of funny when certain very strident posters fail to show up on particular threads though.

And I see that happen both ways too.

I'm sure there's some that are doing what you suggest but I think the majority just are not capable of seeing criticism of a certain person without engaging in a knee jerk defense.

[Hannah Bell]

9. my impression was that the most strident ed deform supporters weren't necessarily hard-core

obama supporters. i.e. they showed up mainly on the ed threads, not on other threads which were critical of Bo or his policies.

but just my impression.

[Fumesucker]

10. I haven't paid enough attention to really be sure..

You may be right..

I don't always pay a lot of attention to who is saying what, I tend to respond more the the substance.

[Skittles]

5. yup

truly sickening

[Orlandodem]

11. Obama will struggle with the teacher vote in 2012.

And that's bad news because it's a major constituency.

[Smarmie Doofus]

12. Not so much the vote. But $$ and time. I did plenty of both last time.

But I'm not traveling to toss-up states to get someone elected who wants to fire my ass 'cause I'm over 50.

I hope no one is surprised.

[madrchsod]

13. anyone who was following the problems in chicago knew ....

it`s a money laundering scheme for the rich and their lackeys.

[Starry Messenger]

14. k&r

[MichiganVote]

15. The education of our US children under Bush and Obama has resulted in chaos

They have only themselves to blame. There is not a union in the world that could hold teachers back provided they had sound leadership based in something other than this trite attempt to placate a seriously pissed off voting block.

Teachers will follow good leaders. They disdain bad leaders, as well they should.

A child may have a "bad apple" teacher for 1 year or 1 semester. That's not ideal surely. However by the time of the elections we will have had seriously bad leadership in education for twelve years. For the past four years, educators have been treated as badly as anyone who serves the public can be---by other public servants, our very own Flunkin' Duncan and the millionaire/billionaire crony club. Yet they don't equate themselves to the dirty old public. They all have a God complex.

The education of our kids is a present problem and a future disaster. It should not be an opportunity for political opportunists. Or so we said, when George Bush was President. What's changed?

When we had an adequate tax structure, when we cared about our country and our future as a nation, we didn't NEED a Race To The Top. We needed ongoing reinforcement in and for education in America. I fail to see where any of this political drivel does anything but piss on professionals.

So as far as I'm concerned, on the issue of education--Obama and his bullshit Ed. chief have failed to persuade me that they are any more effective at leading than George Bush.

I can't vote for that.