I recently learned that the Obama administration “monitored” me.
Two years ago, blogger Mike Klonsky tweeted that the U.S. Department of Education had a secret task force to watch me. He was ridiculed by Secretary Duncan’s press secretary in response. But now the Assistant Secretary for Communications acknowledges that he monitored me and others.
It’s no secret that I never thought much of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top. RTTT was released not long after I realized that George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind was a failure. I thought President Obama would ditch high-stakes testing and federal sanctions and chart a new course.
He didn’t. He built on the foundation of NCLB and made the stakes even higher by tying teacher evaluations to test scores. So I referred to Race to the Top as “NCLB on steroids” or “NCLB 2.0.”
I met Secretary Duncan in the fall of 2009, and we spent an hour alone talking. I talked about the failure of NCLB, the flaws of high-stakes testing, the risk of sacrificing the arts, history, and everything else because of making test scores so important. He smiled, he was charming, he took notes, we had our photo taken together. He is very, very tall. But nothing I said made a difference.
Now I learn that the Department of Education “monitored” me. Did they have the right to do that? I am not a terrorist. I don’t lead a secret organization. It’s just me, a critic of their policies.
Who else was monitored? What does it mean to be monitored? I don’t know.
It just doesn’t feel right when the government, with its vast powers, uses people to watch and monitor critics. It reminds me of Nixon’s “Enemies’ List.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Absolutely creepy. I was so full of hope, you know, for the change. I no longer trust anything this administration says solely because they lost me on education. If we can’t trust them to do the right thing for kids, we can’t trust them. Period. Monitoring you is creepy.
I hope you are planning to file a FOIA request for your file, and I hope you share the best parts with your blog readers.
Yes, creepy. But if they have to monitor someone, then let it be pseudo-reformers like Michelle Rhee.
I agree it doesn’t seem right to “monitor”–and does that mean your regular readers are also being “monitored?”
I suppose the big question is. . .monitored to what end? What is being done with the information gathered while monitoring you and why?
If it provides enlightenment to know what people are thinking and what those experienced in a field have to say, then perhaps there is a better word than “monitor” (which I know was used earlier in the week by the guy who worked with Duncan or whoever it was). Or since competition is the name of the game in everything these days, I guess it is like one TV network watching the commercials of another TV network to see what they’ve got going on. ??
To all those monitoring. . .hi! 🙂 I am a moderate, upper middle class Christian southern white woman with three children who likes to know what is going on in public education around the country because I care. So I read blogs like this one.
Someone (my mentor) suggested the following to me about Obama regarding education:
actually the mentor thought doesn’t fit here. I will save it.
Careful, they might come looking.
I believe Obama was a board member of the Joyce Foundation which supports and funds the “reform” movements going on in public education. It makes sense to me that Obama would ignore your advice however wrong and harmful his policies may be. Even more disturbing is duplicitous nature (my opinion) as exemplified by courting teachers/unions by having Linda D. Hammond as his educational advisor while campaigning then replacing her once he won office with Duncan.
but it does fit here:
“Is Obama pro charter schools; he has been praising the results with minorities, consistent with his push to improve and increase the middle class in the US. Yet, he has also been well aware of the general data showing basic equivalence between the two (many more than two) “methods,” and has warned his DOE that he will not tolerate skewed statistics. In effect, while in favor of the better outcomes and progress of minorities in charter schools, he has adopted a wait and see approach, overall.”
So I guess “monitor” goes with “wait and see.”
“Is Obama pro charter schools”
Depends on for whom. For his kids and the kids of his elite buddies? Hell no. For your kids, my kids and everyone else’s kids? Oh yeah.
Joanna–Is this really a question? No–of course, Obama & his admin. are pro $$$–it’s all about the ka-ching & bling, nothing more, nothing less. It’s over, y’all. Pear$on & charter$ trump the common good, doncha’ know. Let’s stop agonizing & continue our organizing. We ALL are being monitored, even if not to the extent of Diane. So what? Just keep on keeping on, because–as Diane has shown–yes, WE can…and we WILL!! And the first thing to do
is to spread the word–OPT OUT OF TESTING THIS YEAR!
We’re all being monitored – that’s what Snowden told us.
As for being specifically monitored as in your case, yes, that’s for terrorists. Anyone who dissents from the government is now a terrorist, apparently. Just ask Glenn Greenwald’s partner.
If Obama is a true Constitutional scholar, then I am the late Princess Diana.
Well, watch your choice of drivers, Di. Oops, too late.
Ha, ha, owj!
It’s outrageous that Duncan and his associates spend their time monitoring critics of their own tax funded destructive policies and bogus reforms than federal education contract waste, DC cheating, and grant fraud. I’m for monitoring all funds funneled to for-profit charter schools, for-profit virtual charter schools, TFA, Pearson, Wireless Generation, inBloom, Amplify, etc. and making the contracts and grants accessible for parents to review for “value added” to their children’s education.
I’m for monitoring all anti education policies created by Duncan and his associates including A-F school grading schemes, high-stakes testing, FERPA law changes, and value added teacher rating nonsense. Follow the money –
Why is a government employee being paid for a second to “monitor” what you say? I’m sure they’d give some sanctimonious answer about seeking public feedback to adjust policy – but barring some other far-fetched answer I can’t conceive of, this doesn’t sound like they wanted your policy advice (since they’ve never taken a bit of it except for the rhetoric of lower testing) and if they didn’t want that, then why is someone being paid to read your blog and report controversy to Duncan?
If you’re being monitored, it also speaks to an us vs. them mentality which the DoE has tried to distance itself from in being “for children” and not the “adults” and that all adults are equal in this regard – public or charter.
Why was strengthening the public school system not considered one of the acceptable interventions under NCLB or RttT?
Duncan sounds more slimy each time I hear things like this and he’s more of a politician who’s satisfying the right donors than someone who is making any moves remotely connected to the reality of improving a child’s education.
He can listen to his detractors, say he listened, and then go on doing what he planned to do before he even asked for an ear in the first place. This is what happens routinely with the NYC PEP board appointed by Bloomberg. There is no mechanism in place that forces him to take any amount of public input and to use it.
The Department of Education has about run its course, it’s time for it to be disbanded in favor of state level control again…I am only vaguely familiar why it was created in the first place (under Carter if I recall) – that’s before my time.
Right now it’s only serving as a lever for those in power to pull local strings for monied interests.
Obama is a Trojan Horse for the Overclass.
Of course his National Security Stateniks are monitoring you, Diane: you’re a borderline terrorist, just like the rest of us.
I wonder who else besides NSA has access to Diane’s personal data. Wall St? The Chamber of Commerce? DFER? Jeb!?
The best answer to who has access to Diane’s personal data is the following post on Naked Capitalism.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/gaius-publius-irs-is-using-nsa-data-too-who-in-town-isnt.html
Well if they’re monitoring they are learning something with the discomfort they are experiencing which is that they are very wrong. They will also see that in response people are getting the information they need to become informed about what is really going on.
Duncan’s appointment was one of Obama’s worst, one that should have told educators that we were far from being out of the woods with this administration. At this point, as I’ve posted repeatedly the past week or so, I can’t see it making a difference to education and educators who is in the White House (barring a true miracle, which Obama clearly was not): the billionaires and corporations own the US government and they aren’t going to get any static on taking over public education from that quarter. It’s up to us. Diane said that at the premiere of THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT WAITING FOR SUPERMAN in NYC. I was lucky enough to be there. She was right. And of course she had to be monitored by this government as a result. Her powerful voice was speaking for those who most needed to be heard and it must have scared the bejeezus out of the powerful. As well it should.
Very shameful but not surprising. The govt. wants to know what you are doing, to keep a step ahead, to avoid falling behind the political contention which your defection set in motion(6 mil blog hits! a national speaking tour with packed audiences!). The govt. surveils all kinds of groups and people, but when someone of high renown and credibility leaves the consensus of the insiders, switches to opposition, produces readable contradictions of the official story, the status quo becomes more vulnerable, less controllable. You are certainly no terrorist and are doing nothing illegal but your dissent has the potential to be a major game-changer. Duncan/Broad/Gates/Rhee/Kopp/Murdoch/Bloomberg/ALEC/etc. do not want their game changed by outsider critics. The full promise here has yet to be played out. If this growing opposition leads to an anti-corporate movement of educators and others against poverty and for the public good, the Billionaire Boys’ Club will see the floor fall out from under them.
Davis Sirota has an interesting column today on Obama and his struggle
with truth. Of course we should have all known what his plans were when,
as a Senator, he voted in favor of the FISA bill after promising his
growing and enthusiastic base that he would not. Thereafter, as Prez,
he beefed up the Patriot’s Act far beyond what Bush had constructed, and
also re-implemented the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and then reiter
Also, ellen, that he never did put on those walking shoes in Wisconsin.
My advice would be: If you really are concerned that the US DOE was monitoring you in some impermissible way — wiretaps, other electronic surveillance, black helicopters, etc. — then make a public, high-profile demand for a confirmation or denial of that.
If it’s just the use of the word “monitoring,” I would counsel restraint and common sense. Cunningham’s job was “Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach in the U.S. Department of Education.” He was a public relations flak. One of the things flaks do is monitor what others are saying about their employer in mass media or public forums. And apart from the big ick factor that’s inherent in all public relations work, there’s nothing improper about that.
Flerp..you miss the point. Obama and his group have made this all legal…the NSA spying, everything. Agree about the flacks doing monitoring, but that is not the same as private hidden monitoring…public monitoring is common game, hidden monitoring bodes ill.
My thinking was that everyone else is missing the point. What the NSA has been doing with electronic communications is very different from the DOE’s communications flak setting up web searches with auto-notifications for “Diane Ravitch” and “RTTP stinks.” While the NSA’s engines scour the Internet, flaks like Cunningham are still doing their job the old fashioned way so they can have something besides “Uh, well, I’m still waiting for that NSA information sharing agreement to come through” to tell their boss when he asks “So, what’s the word on the street?” I see nothing in this guy’s HuffPo article that suggests that his “monitoring” involves anything other than garden-variety PR work.
The stuff the NSA does is extremely disturbing and should be taken seriously. And one of the things that’s disturbing about it is that we don’t get notified that we’re a target in HuffPo columns by mid-level bureaucrats from third-tier federal agencies.
I was not missing the point.
Careful with “everyone else,” there Counselor.
FLERP! This was personal. I was “monitored” in NYC by PR flacks. They compiled a dossier on me and tried to get reporters to write hostile stories to shut me up. I know what monitoring means. It is not innocent. Do you want to be monitored by the U.S. Government?
Were they the ones who were taping you? Pretty sad. It’s hard to believe in anyone these days.
I don’t know what form the “monitoring” took from the Feds. In NYC, the Department if Education sent staff to tape my lectures and to monitor my writing and speaking. I felt they were trying to intimidate me.
I certainly don’t want to be monitored by the US government, and I don’t blame you one bit for not liking it, either, although surely you’d acknowledge that there’s a huge difference between gathering clippings and bugging your house or tapping your phone. It was my impression that you were suggesting that the DOE was conducting surveillance that went far beyond Internet searches. (You write “I know what monitoring means,” but in your post you literally wrote the opposite: “What does it mean to be monitored? I don’t know.”) That suggestion seemed unwarranted to me. If I misread the post, I apologize, and I certainly understand your personal reaction to your experience with Klein’s office and the Post.
Was it not Chris Cerf, star BROADIE and Jebbite, who monitored you in NYC?
Yes, Chris Cerf acknowledged that he authorized the close scrutiny of whatever I said or wrote, sent staff to record what I said at lectures, compiled a dossier called. “Diane Ravitch–Then and Now.” It was an obvious effort to intimidate me. Cerf was unapologetic. It didn’t work.
background on Chris Cerf …..
http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2012/07/jersey-jazzman-chris-cerf-story-pre.html
I’m a social justice/change advocate (tucking public education under that broader umbrella label), who is convinced – based on hard evidence – that we live in a fascist plutocracy.
And I won’t shut up about that – its not the kind of world I want for the children I birthed to inhabit and then to have to slave in…
So I research and I speak out and I share information and I “out” people (like Michelle Rhee) and I do a bunch of other stuff and I advocate for major, revolutionary change to our social, economic, political systems….
And because I will not accept the status quo and I refuse to go clandestine, covert in my social justice activism, I take it for granted that everything I put out there is “monitored”. I accepted a long time ago, that we are living Orwell’s 1984…
(Diane…the comment site is still not working properly for me…does not let me in to edit.)
continuing….
Obama reiterated and strengthened the Executive power of signing statements. And of course there have been no trials of war conspirators in Iraq, not of the banksters who committed world wide crimes.
We are all on the list…but you will continue to be our beloved leader should they one day come to round us all up. I am only saying this half in jest. It is beyond Nixon, for Nixon was a Republican and we knew where he stood…but Obama fooled us into thinking he was for Hope and Change as a Democrat.
It is a very frightening category that Obama/Duncan has forced on you. To be on his, or anyone’s Watch List, bodes retribution. It truly stinks.
They could monitor me (if I even mattered) because there is nothing I have said here that I wouldn’t say to anyone’s face. You haven’t either. So there is nothing to worry about or “hide”. They are simply wrong about education. NCLB paved th way.
I would consider being monitored because you are attempting to save our public education system from corrupt politicians and corporations among the highest of honors. Congratulations~
A time honored component of political activity is “opposition research”. To do proper opposition research, you must monitor the opposition. As long as that doesn’t violates one’s Constitutional rights or intrude inappropriately into one’s life, there’s nothing wrong or unprofessional about this.
In deed, in a “Capt. Hookish” sort of way, it’s a compliment. They consider you influential and articulate enough to keep an eye upon you.
/thread
Ken, you are 100% correct! & Sahila–nice to hear your voice again–I don’t recall reading you here for quite a while.
Finally, George Buzzetti–are you there? We haven’t heard from you recently. Hope you are okay!
thanks for the “hullo”! Challenging personal situations have kept me off line for a long time…. AND…
I was spending too much (unpaid) time doing activism stuff and getting ratty from being up to my elbows in the crappiness that surrounds us in this sorry excuse for ‘civilisation’ we inhabit!
And getting really angry at the ignorance and passivity of many people…. Had to take a break….
Ken…many of us feel that our Constitutional Rights have been trashed and no longer exist.
It’s time to organize, and convince people in this country to vote in 2016 for the Green party, or other third-party candidates who understand the importance of a solid education for all students, and would help to restore the respect that has been lost for our profession.
I’d suggest sharing things like this with all the people politicians have talked into voting against their own best interests, “The One Comic That Explains Just How Screwed America Is” http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/26/1103368/-The-One-Comic-That-Explains-Just-How-Screwed-America-Is
Big Brother is watching because they are afraid very afraid. Lets continue to give them something to monitor.. Did you hear that Arnie?
You should read the latest issue of Harper’s magazine where there is an article entitled, “Life as a Terrorist” wherein William Vollmann, an innocent journalist, was tracked from 1990 to the present for everything from a Unibomber suspect to a member of the 9/11 plot as well as an anthrax suspect.
I also read that everyone who visits the Salon website is flagged.
At least you’re in the august company of Martin Luther King and Noam Chomsky.
” The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in time of moral crisis” ~ Dante Alighieri
I would also like to find out who was monitored.
Welcome to the Panopticon.
Dear Secretary Duncan: I’m sure that you are a perfectly well-intentioned fellow, but your policies are inflicting irreparable and egregious damage on our nation’s children and teachers. In such situations, emotions sometimes run high. It’s time for you and your administration to look beyond your natural reactions to the ad hominem attacks sometimes found at rallies and on blogs like this one (though not from the mouth or pen of Dr. Ravitch, who is always professional) and to ask yourself, “Why would thousands of highly trained, highly qualified professional educators be aghast at the current Department of Education policies regarding standards, testing, and teacher and school evaluation? Is it not time to listen, really to listen, to what these people are saying? Is it really possible that ALL of these professionals are part of some sort of “lunatic fringe”?
I don’t believe Duncan is well intentioned…
Arne Duncan is “well-intentioned”? It’s a matter of, “for whom”? If being well-intentioned means looking out for his president, the neo-liberal conservative factions in his party and their billionaire corporate sponsors, and assuring himself a future high-paying job and an elite lifestyle for his wife and children, then yes.
If you mean well-intentioned for the rest of America’s children, at best, I think they’re a lower priority than all of the above. To my mind, this means that serving his country and his self-proclaimed “civil rights issue of our time” is all just a ruse.
Another way in which Mr. “Hope and Change,” Mr. Duncan’s boss, reveals himself to be a cynical, grinning empty suit and a fraud. It also shows the increasingly authoritarian nature of our government, which is not interested in the will of the people, but in imposing itself on the people.
It is standard political process to monitor/track one’s opposition. You might remember that the young man at whom George Allen’s “Macaca” remark was directed was a tracker for Jim Webb. Siddarth went to all of Allen’s public events with a video camera.
The Obama administration is simply following what they did during the campaign in 2008. I was told in June of that year by someone high-ranking in the campaign that they watched what I wrote on Daily Kos, especially on education, as they knew that people read what I wrote.
Given your following, Diane, it makes perfect political sense that your public expressions would be tracked, or monitored, if you prefer, so they know what you are saying to the thousands of people who read you.
And after all, among the myriads of us who oppose this administration’s education policy, we collectively track all their public pronouncements, do we not?
I do not view it as sinister.
I do view it as a bit silly, because if they want to know what you are saying/writing all they have to do is subscribe to this public, and if really determined, follow you on twitter. Both sources of your ideas are readily available to anyone who wants to read them.
One more thing – that they feel they have to devote resources to ensuring they know what you are putting out means you are being effective in your opposition, and they know it.
What was stupid was the way this pushback was done.
But that’s not the only stupid thing this administration has done, especially in education.
Shall we start with Katrina being the best thing to ever happen to education in New Orleans?
The problem with your assessment is that while individuals may monitor what the government does, we do not have the power that the government exerts over the population. It would be different if the government were in a dialog with real educators who oppose privatization, but that isn’t what is going on here. This is quite the illusion breaker if anyone of us was still living under any.
I think you miss the point of what I am saying. For the people at the Dept of Education, this is a political process in the attempt to achieve a policy. They want to identify opposition and be able to be proactive in responding. Whether or not you think the government should be doing this, it is a part of many government agencies in both Democratic and Republican administrations. And since there is nothing being tracked that is not PUBLIC, there is nothing illegal about it.
I don’t think the fact they are keeping track of what their most prominent critic says should in any way be surprising. This is not monitoring phone calls or capturing emails or breaking into a house and planting Carnivore (to capture all the keystrokes) on your computer.
The reality of engaging in political action – and trying to block an administration on what it considers a key policy initiative is a political action – means your opposition is going to keep track of what you are doing.
Exactly. Well put.
I didn’t realize that Huff post shafted all their writers. wow.
Reading Diane’s comment makes my heart bleed. Shame on the Department of Education. SHAME!
Speaking of monitoring, the Obama administration, and school reform, did anyone else see the video of David Coleman announcing that Obama’s election data team is now working for the College Board? Like so many reformy terms, we didn’t know that “hope and change” meant something different to those imposing the policy than to those on whom it was imposed. Why is such a high-powered data team now monitoring students and teachers? Curious.
So Diane, I suppose you know first hand how our children will feel when they figure out that they’re being followed by “big brother” who’s watching. What is happening to the America I used to know??
I am not surprised. In 1990, a friend of mine requested his FBI file through the Freedom of Information Act as an assignment for a graduate class. When he received it, there was a photo of him at an art show opening. It was a show of artists against U.S. involvement in Central America. If stuff like that happened 23 years ago, I am sure my FBI file must be massive by now.
I would choose to think of it as an honor, really. Sometimes I am most reassured when I look at who opposes me most vociferously! Keep up the good fight. Peter Cunningham is as useless as his old boss.
I hope everybody in the Department of Education is “monitoring” your blog, speeches and books! Maybe they’ll learn something.
Anyone critical of the Corporate State’s agenda is going to be under surveillance. The privatization of public schools is part of that agenda. As Chris Hedges writes, it is now impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs because both parties are financed by the same corporations.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13739-new-documents-on-activist-surveillance-may-be-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg
No, Diane, I do not think that you should be monitored by our government. I think that while the rationalizations given here regarding political interests and PR are undoubtedly true, the point is that this IS all about politics and tax dollars are not supposed to be spent by government employees on political matters.
Even worse, when government officials classify advocating for equity for America’s children, their education and their teachers as subversive, the government itself is the problem.
There is a huge amount of government money spent for what some might deem as political purposes. I am a Quaker. Yet the government is allowed to spend large amounts of $$ promoting enlistments in the military. Remember, even if the time may be free from stations, the adds still have to be produced, and they use real service personnel in the videos.
There are people in the Executive Office who do legislative liaison. That is a political-related task.
There are people tasked with outreach to certain groups – that is political.
None of this is illegal.
What is illegal is using tax-payer funds to directly promote or oppose the election of people to political office, or to directly promote or oppose a particular political party.
But when the purpose is advancing or opposing a policy, that does not disqualify it from being paid from funds collected from taxpayers.
Otherwise, the President making remarks on a policy at an event in any way paid for by the taxpayers would be illegal.
Now, if the tapes Chris Cerf took of Diane’s public speaking turned up in a political ad for Chris Christie, then you might have an issue.
Whether or not Cerf might have hoped to intimidate Diane is by itself insufficient grounds, and besides, if he thought it would it simply shows how out of touch with reality he is.
Sounds like the apologist who would contend that Obama’s about-face after making public campaign promises to support union workers was “just politics” and legal, when bait and switch under Obama’s own preferred business model is false advertising and illegal.
Many of us think we should have been told upfront beforehand that a vote for Obama was a vote for a guy who is proud to be half Republican. Now we are stuck with a party that targets its own members for surveillance because they don’t tow the party line. It’ like we have only one political party now –a very scary harbinger of totalitarianism.
Someone was monitoring in 2001 and I ended up on the watch list when I fly.
I suppose we should assume that Diane is “monitored”. What she has to say is very powerful and she is exposing wrongdoing of others. She is supporting those who are otherwise defenseless. She has the experience and intelligence to make a meaningful contribution to the major issue of our time. This reminds me that Eleanor Roosevelt was monitored by the FBI and J Edgar Hoover was checking her out round the clock. Smart, insightful and informative women must be very scary to those who aren’t the brightest bulbs, have foggy vision and don’t have the slightest idea of how to run a government agency. The Department of Education is doomed by its own suicidal mission to crash and burn public education. Obama just picked a pilot he knew would get the job done. His lack of support for public education is disappointing but he is a politician by trade. Its looking very much like he chose Duncan specifically to dismantle the role of federal government in education. Probably Hillary will not even have a DOE. Being jerked around by Duncan sets her up to just kick the whole agency to the curb with minimal protest from educators.
Wow! Some convoluted way to support Obama! Obama knows exactly what he is doing. He wants to join the “Billionaire Boys Club” after his tenure. Obama supporters need to get over the fact that he mislead his supporters in order to get their vote.
For a scholar of Constitution Law, POTUS has enacted, or allowed to be enacted, some of the scariest laws and policies ever – in the name of national security. I thought George was an idiot and just did what his “advisors” advised. It made me crazy, but I always passed it off as his ignorance. With Obama, it is insidious, because he knows better and does it anyway.
Or, for those who had history or civics in their curriculum when they went to school, many of us or our parents learned and lived through something similar to this, – The Red Scare, where dissenters were blacklisted. This kind of intimidation and violation of our right to privacy, is too high a price. Thank you for your voice of reason and courage for the kids.
The folks who are saying, on this blog, that this “monitoring” is simply a standard political process seem to think it naive that Dr. Ravitch and others are shocked and disturbed by it.
I think that it is both true that a) such monitoring is quite common and quite legal and b) that it is quite sinister and can easily spill over into activity that is illegal or, at least, questionable ethically. In our time, when the tools for “monitoring” and for responding to what one learns via concerted PR campaigns have become so easily available; when networks of public/private “partnerships” between politicians, bureaucrats, and the wealthy are so common; and when there is no limit on the private money that can be spent on electioneering, what once was simply “opposition research” can easily spill over into truly egregious abuse of power. It takes only a few clicks to compile an enemies list. It takes only a phone call or a comment over dinner from a highly placed politician or bureaucratic functionary to get a contract or job offer cancelled. It takes only an email to pass the opposition list on to a highly placed politician or bureaucrat who can make that phone call or comment over dinner. I know that I have, myself, struggled between the desire to protect my livelihood, on the one hand, and the desire to speak the truth, in this venue and others, about how the so-called “reform” movement is hurting kids and teachers. What can happen as a result of such monitoring can be extremely damaging to the person being monitored.
Years ago, I dated a young woman who grew up in the old East Germany. At the age of 16, she decided that she wanted to see something of the world, and she applied for a Visa to travel. One had to do that at the Stasi office. From that point on, her house was watched, her parents’ phone was tapped. Shortly after she filed the application, her father was removed from his good job. I’m sick of listening to apologists for our contemporary equivalents of the Stasi.
Very well-written! You can see where the true allegiances and priorities are with this administration when the government classifies as subversive people who advocate for children, education and teachers, while ALEC remains miscategorized as a “charity” and not a PAC.
Nothing and no one matter more than self-serving political and corporate interests, and speaking up about that puts one at peril. And, yes, this is getting horrifyingly similar to life under the Stasi.
“Now I learn that the Department of Education “monitored” me. Did they have the right to do that? I am not a terrorist. I don’t lead a secret organization. It’s just me, a critic of their policies.”
In my experience, being a critic of policy or opinion of those high in hierarchies is a good way to be considered a problem. To some, this makes you worse than a terrorist—you are a heretic. With the pen proverbally mighter than the sword, a critic can also be a bigger problem from their point of view.
“I thought President Obama would ditch high-stakes testing and federal sanctions and chart a new course. He didn’t”
Funny, how he continued in the foot-steps of Bush in so many areas…
I don’t know; I think he’s simply a PR flack. They have to monitor so they can push whatever it is they’re selling.
Monitoring HIM is sort of interesting, however.
Peter Cunningham @PCunningham57 19 Aug
Who is fighting for working people? Setback for unions is a setback for the middle class http://nyti.ms/14rZJpb
Who is he kidding with this?
Duncan was in Detroit 3 months ago singing the praises of Rick Snyder. The Obama Administration has all but endorsed Snyder, because they will shill for ANYONE who supports the Common Core. It’s a straight political quid pro quo.
Snyder is the most anti-labor governor in my memory. Snyder endorsed Duncan’s CC project, therefore… Arne Duncan thinks he’s great.
Cunningham is worried about “fighting for working people” in Michigan?
Please. Since when? Yesterday?
It’s pure politics, Diane. Duncan is a purely political actor, and the Common Core is his project. Anyone who opposes who questions the Common Core will be vilified and anyone who supports the Common Core will be championed and defended.
Just look at the alliances they’re making; Jeb Bush, Kasich in Ohio, Snyder in Michigan. If you came out for the Common Core tomorrow, all of a sudden you’d be an “innovation leader” too.
Can anyone find a single criticism by Arne Duncan of any state or federal leader who supports CC? That’s the single factor for “excellence in education”, support of Arne Duncan’s personal project.
I don’t have any objections to the CC in broad terms. I was turned off it as a parent because public school funding has been gutted in OH under “reform” and I don’t want to pay for a whole new set of million dollar tests. Had the Obama Administration supported public education instead of remaining (ridiculously) “agnostic” I might have given it a second look. As it is, we’re just trying to hang on here until we get a state or federal leader who supports public schools.
We’re all reformed-out in Ohio. Between unregulated charters, “reform” lobbyists owning my legislature, and Duncan trashing public schools in every forum he can find, I don’t have time to worry about the Common Core. We’re just trying to survive. Honestly, the best thing Duncan could do for public schools right now is leave us alone. At this point I’m just asking that the Obama Administration not actively hurt my public school system.
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