The Mercury of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, has an editorial describing the devastating effects of budget cuts and tax caps on Pennsylvania’s public schools.
The cuts threaten the future, says the editorial. Class sizes are growing. Thousands of teachers have been laid off. On the chopping block and already cut are music and art, sports, kindergarten, early childhood education, after-school activities.
State budget cuts, combined with the transfer of public funds to charter schools and voucher schools, are eroding public education for the vast majority of the state’s children. The great many are suffering because of privatization.
What is at risk?
“Public education is the foundation of our democracy,” said William LaCoff, Owen J. Roberts School Board member. “You need an educated populace to make good decisions about the nation’s future and education is expensive. If we have no public schools, or if they are the school of last resort, not everyone is going to get an education and then we have a permanent under-class? That’s the last thing we want.”
My comment on the editorial: as privatization expands, public education will implode. And maybe that is the goal of the privatizers. As they grow, they are plundering a basic democratic institution.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That’s from the Pottstown Mercury. My sister’s hometown. I sent her the editorial and noted how her paper’s editorial board make the Times editorial board look like the corporate privatization shills they are.
Adam Smith knew capitalism couldn’t exist without a educated society. These corp deformers are eroding the base from which they derive their profits. Idiots.
Aren’t oligarchs doing OK in Russia and China? Decades of neglecting civics is doing far more harm to teachers, IMHO.
So, Eric, just wondering…shall we blame that on teachers, too.
When in doubt (teen pregnancy, obesity, drug use, domestic abuse, insert your societal ill here), blame teachers?
… blame that on teachers …
Suppose we gave teachers the choice of which union to join. Union “A” strives to be a union of professionals and promotes research-based practices and the civic purposes of eduction through its publications. Union “N” uses dues money to build political power, maintain an enemies list of “right wing bastards,” and build ineffectual coalitions to provide the appearance of progress. If teachers had a choice of union, I’d blame the ones in union “N.”
Since teachers don’t have that choice, I’ll blame the teacher prep programs that fail to provide their students the knowledge necessary to promote the civic purposes of public education through whichever union they find themselves compelled to support.
Thank you for your question.
I already belong to union A and I do have a choice. You are misinformed, but thank you for your support and for your response.
Along with destroying our democratic republic, the ultimate goal is funded by supporters of lobbyist Grover Norquist, who pledged to shrink government until it fits in a bathtub and then drown it. Check out this article:
http://www.reviewatlas.com/opinions/x1009568834/Lawmakers-beg-Grover-Norquist-to-free-them-from-no-tax-pledge
Will someone please tell me why a “pledge” to a lobbyist supersedes the oath of office for these republicans, which actually states:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
Making a pledge to another person or organization that in fact forbids them from legislating per the constitution should be considered a breech of office, shouldn’t it?
The labor relations consultants, lobbyists, and lawyers paid with billions of dollars in union dues from teachers must not consider that a priority. They’ve had seven years to act:
“Improving Public Education through Strengthened Local Control”
“Fixing What’s Broken: An Agenda for Education Reform for Pennsylvania”
So the real threat is from within and not from the outside as the CFR, Condi Rice and Joel Klein articulate.
“Public schools represent the future of our nation; we must find a means of adequately funding public schools or that future is threatened.”
Maybe we need to ramp up the rhetoric and make the argument that school reform is not only anti-democratic but not very patriotic. Hummmm. Just a thought.
It has often occurred to me that the shrill attacks on American education by people like Rhee, Klein and Rice are not only false but being false, are unpatriotic as well. They are striking at the heart of our democracy when they attack our public schools.
Well we all know that M. Rhee is an agent of the North Korean Intelligence Service sent here to destroy American Public Education and along with it the American Way!
You need an educated populace to make good decisions about the nation’s future …
How well would educated, good decision makers score on NAEP Civics? Where is a plan (or even model legislation) to help schools meet that goal?
When the Shanker Institute publishes “Education for Democracy” and states have little to show a quarter century later, it’s increasingly difficult to laud public education as a “Guardian of Democracy”
What was the billions of dollars in dues money from unionized teachers buying for that quarter century? Even a single policy initiative superior to the ALEC policies for stemming civic illiteracy?
Playing politics instead of addressing the compelling interests of the nation certainly moves the public education doomsday clock closer to midnight!
A healthy mind in a healthy body and a lot of other problems take care of themselves. Not sure why that can’t stand as a mantra for the role of government.
The “reformers” are focused on PROFIT not education. Their goal is to privatize whatever they can. In some of the GOP run states, i.e. Maine, the GOP are working to repeal the child labor laws. So it is important that we stand back and look at the big picture to see how our democracy is being attacked.
We can expand the electoral franchise because America’s schools educate competent citizens. From the 1821 NY state constitutional convention:
“The provision already made for the establishment of common schools, will, in a very few years, extend the benefit of education to all our citizens. The universal diffusion of information will forever distinguish our population from that of Europe. Virtue and intelligence are the true basis on which every republican government must rest. … I feel no apprehension, for myself, or my posterity, in confiding the right of suffrage to the great mass of such a population as I believe ours will always be.”
If the schools fall short (of educating for civic “virtue and intelligence”), then we should:
o Ensure teachers have the training and resources necessary to address the deficiencies
o Adopt model legislation from ALEC
o Ignore the problem
o Repeal the 26th Amendment
If after 25 years of failing to ensure teachers have the training and resources necessary to address the deficiencies, we should:
o Set the public education doomsday clock to one minute before midnight and ask educators, “Is that your final answer?”
o Adopt model legislation from ALEC
o Ignore the problem
o Repeal the 26th Amendment
In which years were ALEC’s suggestions for stemming civic illiteracy inferior to that offered by supporters of public education?
_1988? _1989? _1990? _1991? … _2009? _2010? _2011? _2012?
Question for reflection: What would George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses Grant do? Use primary sources.
Maybe this is David Coleman.
Maybe this is David Coleman.
Nope. David Coleman (apparently) believes that high school freshmen can read the Gettysburg address as if they’ve never, ever seen it before and have no clue about what happened in the 1860s. (American History to 1877 is often an 8th grade course.)