Paul Thomas of Furman University says that educators have no political party, because no political party today supports educators.
The Republican party is downright hostile to public education and to teachers.
Romney’s education agenda calls for privatization.
It is the most radical rightwing document of any major political party in my memory (and I have a long memory).
Romney would be a disaster for American public education, for the schools that enroll almost 90% of the nation’s children.
His agenda is not conservative, because he wants to destroy a cherished part of our American tradition: free public education.
His agenda is radical.
But what of the Democrats?
Thomas nails down the Obama-Duncan routine of good cop-bad cop as well as the double-speak surrounding Race to the Top.
When the public sector unions and public education were getting a thrashing in Wisconsin in the spring of 2011, neither Obama nor Duncan showed up. Instead, they went to Miami to join with uber-privatizer Jeb Bush to celebrate a school that allegedly had been turned around by firing the staff (no reporter bothered to follow up and notice that the school in question was still on a list to be closed because it remained one of the state’s lowest performing schools even after the staff was fired).
Obama and Duncan repeatedly echo Republican themes about education, pushing charter schools, merit pay, firing teachers and principals as a “reform” strategy, etc.
It’s telling that when Romney announced his agenda, the Obama camp responded by saying, “we are doing that already, just look how much Governor Chris Christie likes our education program.” Pathetic.
I know that Obama gave a speech the other day saying all the things he should have been saying and doing for the past four years (but hasn’t). Is the change real or just more “reformer” rhetoric?
We will see. Actions speak louder than words.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“His agenda is radical” No, not radical but regressive-regressing back to a mythical “golden” era of America. So, not only is it not basic/radical but delusional as well.
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His agenda does not harken back to a mythical golden age of America. The mythical golden age was one in which public schools were the heart of every community.
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I agree. I wanted to say that the “mythical” was just that, a myth that never existed in fact.
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Yes, and in an age(s) in which parents were more involved, such as, perhaps, the ’50s. If you were a child then, there were stay-at-home moms, families sat down at the dinner table and, by golly, you’d sit at the kitchen table and finish your homework under the watchful eyes of your parents. And–last but not least–if you got into trouble in school, your parents wanted to know what YOU did wrong, then made you apologize to the teacher (and you were punished at home, to boot!).
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“Is the change real or just more reformer rhetoric?”
I believe not either of those. I think it’s called pandering.
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As long as the teachers’ unions continue to endorse Democrats because they are not quite as bad as the Republicans, we will have no power to stop the destruction of public schools. There is an alternative: don’t endorse anyone. Tell the Dems that they have not earned it. Maybe they will stop taking us for granted.
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The alternative was to make demands before offering an endorsement. That didn’t happen.
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I kept telling people that, and I asked people who went to the NEA and AFT conventions to propose that that very thing be done!
I have also e-mailed friends, relatives and colleagues to reply to donations requests that they would donate only after Obama:
1. Replaced Duncan w/ a real educator (you, Diane!): 2. Rescinded RttT and STOP all standardized testing; 3. Streamline or abolish the D.O.E.
Many people I know did this, but it takes 100s of 1,000s to make an impact. (Is anyone even paying attention to the “Dump Duncan” petition?!) Everyone can STILL do this, and I strongly recommend that EVERYONE out there DO!!!!
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Thank you, Diane. You hit the nail on the head. My husband and I (both teachers) will, for the first time, be voting green this year…and we are not alone.
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I, too, will vote for Jill Stein. My true blue state will back Obama. I need to vote my conscience and send a message.
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If Obama wants to prove to educators that he is changing policy, he can fire Duncan, nothing short of that will do.
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We need a third, fourth and fifth parties to be formed. Otherwise, we vote for the lesser of two evils or with Arne and Barack; good cop, bad cop. Pathetic.
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There are a number of other candidates besides the two that the fawning corporate media focus on. Vote third party!
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I am in agreement with the thought that educators and public schools have no true advocate in the Republican or Democratic party. I am disappointed in my union leaders’ willingness to roll over and paint as successful the agreements we have reached. The harm far outweighs the good, and these “agreements” were reached through coercion (you will not get funding, your school will be taken over, a plan will be imposed upon you…). The lead story on every communication should be “We are doing this because we were forced to, and we will do our best to make it work. There are many, ways in which these policies are harmful, and reasons why people who know little about education are being allowed to force harmful policies onto your students, your schools, and your communities.”
Like the “Tea Party”, but as a more sincere difference from the choices available, citizens that support an actual execution of “middle out” policies that President Obama talks of in rhetorical comments will need to unite. If politicians have become comfortable attacking public schools and educators (either openly or through their silent support of the attackers), then public schools need to be their own best advocates, and willing to detail the effects of candidates’ proposed policies. I, for one, have not been won yet by President Obama, and am more moved to vote my stubborn pride and my own values than a mathematical assessment of “the wasted vote”. Enough people gathered to act and vote this way in numbers can create a new voting force, possibly new candidates. Instead of the “Tea Party”, it could be the “Truth Party”
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I am an unaffiliated voter and tend to vote Democratic. I have been dismayed that the Democrats are marching to the same reform tune as the Republicans. Obama threw teachers under the bus with RTTT. Governor Malloy of Connecticut, a Democrat, is also attacking the teachers: apparently we only sit around doing nothing for 3 years to get tenure. I will never vote for him again and plan to vote for a third- party candidate if Malloy has the chutzpah to run again. The stakes are much higher at the national level, so I will be voting for Obama, but I did consider Roseanne Barr for a brief moment!
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I am thinking much like you are.
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No, we don’t have a party, and neither do the American people. Until this week, the Democrats didn’t even bother to pander. Their argument to me, five times a day by phone or email, is, “Give us money again, or the Tea Party will get you.”
And then we discover it was them who financed Akin’s campaign in the first place! The “weaker opponents” they say they want are serving as bogeymen to keep their supposed “base” down. I just read they’re about to screen the parent trigger movie at the Democratic convention? Who does that pander to?
Clearly, they don’t think they need or want my support. The hedge-funders would prefer Romney anyway, so the Obama administration is getting bad advice all around. So, ironically, if anybody really wants Obama to win, we have to stand up to him and turn his policies back to his only actual base (which isn’t wall street after all, duh).
Because the question is, do the Democrats have the teachers? Or the working class? Yes, we’ll vote for them, but just because some union hacks are bought doesn’t mean we’ll walk for them, or get out the vote.
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I agree that teachers do not have a political party. I have been very disappointed over Obama’s educational policies over the past 4 years. However, I feel that a vote for a 3rd party is a vote for Mitt Romney. Third party voting will hurt Obama more than Romney. The combination of Romney’s record in education when he was governor of Massachusetts and the addition of Ryan to the ticket makes a very scary proposition.
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I’m an independent. I won’t vote for Romney. I will decide how to vote as the campaign unfolds. My vote will be determined by actions not promises.
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Unions must use their phone banks and pull out the vote troops as leverage before Nov 6th and negotiate with BOTH sides to change their views. This is the time for Union leadership to stand up and stop with the “What else can we do?”and “Where else can we go?”. The Chicago Teachers Union is the one bright spot in a sea of Union malais. At least they’re trying and I wish them the best.
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I read Thomas’ book, Ignoring Poverty in the U.S., this summer.
http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Ignoring-Poverty-in-the-US
It is one of the best education books I have read. He has reframed my thinking. I had fallen into the trap of believing education as the cure for the poor. Thomas’ research highlights what all of us should be repeating in our communities. This is my Thomas-induced mantra:
Reforming public education does little to reduce poverty. Reducing poverty does lots to reform public education.
Consequently, I “officially” (in a grassroots way) am a Social Context Reformer. Thomas explains where to start.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/26/1048930/-Social-Context-Reform-Where-to-Start
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Thank you for the comment and links to my work!
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You should know that recently Arne Duncan was quoted as saying something close to “Some people believe you must fix poverty to fix education; I believe you must fix education to fix poverty”. Just lovely. The whole weight of the world is now on the back of teachers. Where’s the politicians? Obama needs to fire him, NOW.
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Is it too late to begin a write-in campaign for Diane? 🙂
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After the constant teacher bashing of the past five years….I kinda held out hope that there was a party for me.Then I found out that Won’t Back Down will be premiering at the DNC in Charlotte. Well any hope I had….just evaporated. And the unions,,,not far behind with their lack of push back or mounting a campaign to combat this.
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All I ever wanted from teaching was to do good work, excite children and really teach them. And I have done that. Always trying to do it better, always assessing and reworking what I do. I’ve been proud of my contribution to the children in my community, but I realize now that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that I work until late every night or that I’ve had a high standard (Common Core is no big stretch for me). Or that I’m passionate about what I do. None of that will matter because if parent triggers gain traction, my school could get taken over by 51% of the public. And if that happens, it won’t matter how good a job I’ve done. All that will matter is that I’m expensive. With 21 years of public ed experience, a charter could hire two teachers for the price of hiring me. That lowers class size or increases profits. Either way, I will be terminated and will have to look for work in my 50s. It doesn’t matter who I vote for because the fix is in. Either party can cost me my livelihood even though I’ve done all the right things.
The only strategy I have left is to continue to do my job and try to educate people in my community. Oh… and stop spending money on anything at all. I need to save every penny I have because this may not work out well for me. I can’t contribute to the economy or believe in the future. All I can do is hang on, do good work and hope that I can make it till retirement. Not because I’m burnt out or no longer love teaching, but because someone can come in and steal my life’s work out from under me, and I’ve got my government’s approval no matter who wins the election.
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Just when I thought conservatives couldn’t be crazier, I saw this: “Texas Judge Warns of Possible ‘Civil War’ if President Obama is Re-Elected” http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/texas-judge-warns-possible-civil-war-president-obama-230545603.html
The judge says that Obama is going to “hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the U.N.”
Right, like the guy who won’t even hand over schools to teachers is going to give the entire nation away to other countries.
Democratics are acting like Republicans and Republicans are acting like there is something very seriously wrong with their brains. Suddenly the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party are starting to look sane.
Ugh
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In New York, where I teach, the Governor is Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and son of one the most iconic Democrats in the last 50 years: Mario Cuomo. And I think he (Andrew) is the most anti-education government in the state’s history.
When he became governor two years ago, Cuomo engineered a local property tax cap on local school districts that was a disguised copy of Proposition 13, the 1978 tax cap that destroyed California’s school system. In 1978, California’s public school’s had the second highest reading scores in the country; the state’s public colleges were the crown jewels of the nation. Now, California’s schools hover near the bottom of every metric, and the palpable hope that used to course through its education culture is almost everywhere dead. The Prop 13 2.5 percent tax cap killed it through the slow poison of underfunding.
No one is any good at predicting the future and my investment portfolio proves that I’m worse at it than almost anyone else. But, at the moment, I can’t see how, given a similar cap, New York’s schools won’t go through the same death spiral as California’s.
One difference between California’s old cap and New York’s new one is their toxicity. Ours is worse: it’s a 2 percent cap. Another difference is who are the poisoners. In 1978, mainstream politicians, Democrats particularly, blanched at the irresponsibility of imprisoning future voters into a Draconian system that could not adapt to changing conditions. The permanent ceiling campaign in California came from Howard Jarvis, an activist whose tactics and extremism are the DNA for today’s Tea Party. New York in 2010 faced no such populist uprising; Cuomo and his allies blue-printed, assembled and pushed through this educational attack with suigeneris enthusiasm. The crowning touch — only seasoned professional politicians could have come up with it — was building in building “flexibility” into the cap by allowing voters in local districts to override it by voting for their school budget by 60 percent or more. That sounds wonderful and democratic (small “d”), but Cuomo and the cap’s engineers are well aware that local school boards are, along with groundhogs and voles, among the most timid creatures on earth. (consult Mark Twain on school boards for forensic diagnosis) It will take a miracle for any local board, save for those in the wealthiest districts, to offer up to voters a school budget that raises local taxes, ever again.
It’s difficult to wrap my brain around what has just been done to New York’s public schools — an institution that drives me hair-pulling nuts on a regular basis, but also one that I felt was fundamentally benevolent and capable of succeeding. I think I’m still in partial denial that a Democrat did this. A Cuomo! But the part of my cortex that also handles the memorization of 120 years of baseball statistics is already at work calculating how many years until retirement, and the odds of whether it can happen before the cuts and layoffs disfigure my good memories of teaching past recognition.
The only things that I am certain of are that, for the first time in my 25 years of teaching, I cannot, in good conscience, enthusiastically encourage my former students to enter the field — at least not in New York. And that, I’m damn sure that public education has political party.
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I’m sorry, history boy, I have gotten stuck on “suigeneris” (enthusiasm). It is either a really cool word or a typo. I feel your pain, but I am in word pain. Help! I can’t let it go!
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“sui generis” is a Latin phrase commonly used in English in legal contexts and others.
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When I consider what Democrats are doing to public education, I sometimes ask myself if I’m being a chump by always supporting them. I had such a moment yesterday in response to some of the changes my son’s school is instituting, all of them changes for the worse and all of them forced by the pressures created by high-stakes testing.
But then I remember that there is more than one issue out there. For one, I like the judges Democratic presidents have appointed to the Supreme Court an awful lot more than the judges the recent Republican presidents have put on the bench.
For another, I like that we have made some progress toward providing everyone with health care coverage and I don’t want to see even that small bit of progress erased. I don’t want to see Medicare and Medicaid dismantled, either.
The list goes on. I will hold my nose and sigh loudly on Election Day. I live in the swing state of Ohio, not a reliably blue one like New York. My vote will make a difference. To vote Green (how I wish!) will be the same as voting for the man who will certainly make things much, much, much worse. I’ll go with worse.
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I’m with you, Barbara, even though current education policy certainly played a role in abbreviated teaching career. As angry as I am at what has been done to public education, there are other issues that have to impact my decision. The Romney/Ryan ticket scares me.
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That it does. It should scare everybody else, too!
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“played a role in my abbreviated teaching career.”
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First week back to school…not as much time to read and post. I feel abandoned by Obama and the Democrats and screwed by the Republicans. Just got my NEA magazine..guess what the covers says:
Who protects NEA members? N O B O D Y!
I didn’t even open it yet…..I don’t know if I can take the propaganda. I am sickened by all of this. If Obama really cared, he would have spoken out a long time ago.
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Obama has served in traitorous capacity. I thought he was going to be for the “little guy”, you know, those whose voices are not heard. Teachers would be on that list. This is what I think of when it comes to being a democrat – serving the little guy. To think that a democrat would attack public education and move to dismantle it, and to do it in order to allow big corps, and the 1%, to cash in on our poor kids? It’s just to difficult to bear.
I can’t vote for a traitor, in fact, it makes me want to purposely vote for Romney (but I won’t) to force the democrats to get their act together. I’ll be voting an alternative party, as of now. Of course, who knows what mood I’ll be in tomorrow.
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What about Jill Stein of the green party? She opposes the privatization of our schools and lots of other things that would be great like full employment. Check out the green new deal on their website.
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Everything and everyone are only about MONEY. We need to stop these super pacs-money talks (Pearson-Rhee-Kochs-etc.). Our educational system is being changed due to outside interests wanting to line their pockets. I appreciate this thread of conversation. Always considered myself to be independent-I don’t know who to vote for and don’t have enough money to change someones mind.
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Political Parties are the problem. George Washington was against them. Other founders fell everywhere on the continuum concerning them. I think they should be abolished along with all of the other bribery schemes hiding behind the first amendment.
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