Paul Karrer teaches fifth-grade students in an impoverished community in California. Here, he apologizes to Hillary because he voted for Obama in 2008. He realizes now that he made a terrible mistake. His students gained nothing from NCLB or Race to the Top.
He wishes the president would understand the stress in his students’ lives. Testing is not helping them. It diminishes their lives.
He writes:
“I have four special education kids in my class. The pull of gangs is all-powerful here. A few years ago, a former student’s mother was gunned down in a gangland slaying in nearby Salinas. The same child’s grandmother was shot in the face in another gang incident.
“I boil over and fester when I hear any mention of “failing schools.” I teach in a desperate community of abject poverty. Poverty is the failure, not the bricks of my building nor the many noble and heroic teachers who have chosen to work in my school. Making teachers accountable for testing results with the abominable life conditions here is a disconnect so large the country is lucky teachers are not engaged in open rebellion. And the money lost to testing, test preparation, test result trainings, test motivation and test-improvement- consultant-magic-dances is repugnant.
“All is focused on language arts and math. Nothing else matters, as it is not tested. Result — a diminished curriculum, no music, art, band, restricted field trips, if any. But unctuous consultants show up with paycheck regularity, drive-by checklists in hand.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oh please. What does anyone think Hillary would be doing differently?
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Perhaps I remember incorrectly, and I cannot find a reference right now…
But I recall Hillary saying, during the 2008 campaign, that NCLB was a mistake and indicating she intended to dismantle it.
But, as I said, I could misremember, or perhaps I heard what I wanted to hear.
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I’m pretty sure Obama said something very similar.
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Hillary wanted to get rid of NCLB, http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/04/27/35hillary_web.h26.html. Senator Edward Kennedy, a NCLB hawk, endorsed Obama, some speculate, because Obama was seen to be friendlier to NCLB, http://www.edwize.org/kennedy-obama-and-nclb.
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2008 election was a difficult time for those of us in education who had a sense that the wrong candidate was nominated. I guess we’ll never know…
Education Week, 27 April 2007:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the current front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, today blasted the No Child Left Behind Act as narrowing schools’ curricula and relying too heavily on standardized tests at the expense of student creativity.
“We can all agree that we do need measures,” she told the New York State United Teachers’ annual convention in the nation’s capital. “We do need accountability. But not the kind of accountability that the NCLB law has imposed on people.”
“It’s time we had a president who cares more about learning than about memorizing,” Sen. Clinton added. “The tests have become the curriculum instead of the other way around.”
The crowd of about 3,000 at the Washington Hilton, which had been waving “New York [Heart]’s Hillary” signs when Sen. Clinton took the stage, erupted into thunderous applause. She was the only presidential candidate appearing before the union.
http://elladvocates.org/media/NCLB/EdWeek27apr07.html
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“2008 election was a difficult time for those of us in education who had a sense that the wrong candidate was nominated.”
I was definitely of the opinion that of the 2, (Clinton or Obama), she was the better choice for ed. As I mentioned earlier, I recalled (and bases my support on) comments she made to the effect of the speech you quote here.
Perhaps Obama did make similar comments (Don’t like NCLB, plan to dismantle it), but I don’t recall reading about them.
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Indeed, she would have been no different on education.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34577258@N02/3215180231/in/photostream/
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What does a photo mean? Politicians have their photos taken with everyone. I happened to own a copy of Rhee’s book out of morbid curiosity, but that does not mean that I support Rhee.
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out of morbid curiosity. LOL
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Vihn, Did you look at all of the photos, not just the first one?
In his book, “The Art of Being Unreasonable”, Eli Broad says he stayed at the White House when Clinton was President, and Bill Clinton roused him out of his sleep and they talked until dawn. A few years later Broad retired from his corporation and started The Broad Foundation.
The Clinton’s also have close ties with Penny Pritzker, infamous Chicago Board of Ed member during the Chicago teachers strike, and now U.S. Commerce Secretary.
http://heraldnews.suntimes.com/photos/galleries/18852747-418/penny-pritzker-resigns-from-chicago-board-of-education.html
Early in June, the Clinton’s had a conference of his Global Initiative in Chicago. “The “convening sponsor” of the CGI is the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation. J.B. is the brother of Commerce Secretary-designate Penny Pritzker. J.B. has long been a strong Hillary Clinton backer, even in 2008, when sister Penny was Obama’s national finance chair.”
http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/20683567-452/clinton-clan-and-gov-christie-hit-town-for-cgi-event-this-week.html
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AMEN.
This NCLB and RttT is a bipartisan effort, phase I and phase II. Duncan is a (Margaret) Spelling clone. Let’s not be naive. What is happening is MUCH bigger than either party, or either Dem or Rep corporate candidates. (Just like NAFTA.)
They ALL blasted NCLB, which paved the way for RttT which would have been phased in under whatever party or candidate for either party had won. WAKE UP.
Ravitch’s work clearly documents this!
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The last line is poetry: But unctuous consultants show up with paycheck regularity, drive-by checklists in hand.
I’m thinking of New Zealand’s school system, which does not have a top-heavy administration or a fleet of overpaid consultants.
The decisions made locally by the parents and teachers get funding through one, not many, administrative boards.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/bill-clintons-big-ideas-for-education/2012/09/05/e1e5f0ec-f7bb-11e1-8398-0327ab83ab91_blog.html
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101059801
Bill Gates and the Clintons are intertwined with the same goals. The Clintons are just more stealth in their school “reform” actions. Note that Clinton mentions Eli Broad is “in the audience”. He wouldn’t be there if he wasn’t in The Circle.
The Walton family were clients of the Rose Law Firm, of which Hillary Clinton was a partner. Of course, anyone who has read this blog know that the Waltons are very much into corporate control of public education.
Lastly, here’s a good take on the entire fiasco that is Gates, Broad:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/got-dough-how-billionaires-rule-our-schools
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Paul Karrer’s letter is very powerful and it should be mandatory reading for Obama and Duncan and they should reread it every day for the next decade. Not that it would do any good since they are so beholden to the billionaire boys’ club. Instead of apologizing to Hillary maybe he should have apologized to Jill Stein. I’m not buying into the theory that Nader was the one who hurt Gore’s chances of winning (he did win the popular vote), I blame the Supreme Court and that phony baloney right wing GOP mob that shouted and screamed down the vote count in FL. Nader had a right to run for office, just as much as Jill Stein and we do need a PROGRESSIVE alternative to the duopoly.
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I don’t think she would have been any better on education. Obama blasted NCLB too. In fact, one of Duncan’s sub-themes is that NCLB discredited his own genius plan.
The general theme of liberals and Democrats who are backing this is they are different than Bush because their intentions are better. That’s all I can conclude because the policy and actual facts on the ground seem to me to be identical. They squirm a little when they’re at one of the ed reform industry conventions and Jeb Bush is ranting about “government schools” and how great vouchers are, but they’ve done absolutely nothing to push back against the more extreme market-based folks on the Right.
Arne Duncan was in Detroit about 6 months ago basically stumping for Rick Snyder. Michigan ed reform is a deregulatory, for-profit dream. It’s radical. 80% of their charters are for-profits and it’s an absolute lobbyist-fed frenzy. Arne Duncan appeared to endorse the whole thing.
My own sense is it’s a bit of a quid pro quo. If the conservative school reformers will endorse the CC, Duncan won’t get in the way of straight-up privatization. You’re looking at purely political deal making. They want privatized schools and he wants CC.
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This is off-topic so I apologize, but can someone in a public school tell me a little about this “dollars” system they’re putting in? The kids are given Monopoly (fake) money and it is taken away (according to some 5th graders here) if they “make a mistake”.
I’m not familiar with it and my own 5th grader doesn’t seem to understand how it works or what it is supposed to accomplish.
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BPISS I think is the acronym for this Skinnerian carrot and stick routine.
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Thanks so much. When I google I get nothing useful. I needed the lingo 🙂
They’re having them pay something the kids are calling “rent”- I have no idea what that’s about.
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Chiara,
Actually, it is PBIS, Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports. I just call it BPiss because that’s what I think of it.
Duane
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Must read: Kahlenberg Shanker bio: Bill and Hillary were in forefront of ed deform in the 80s and Shanker alliance with them was what started the ball rolling with union compliance. Thus the legacy of Dems support for deform began with the Clintons who started early deform programs attacking teachers in Ark.
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It’s not directly related, but it’s certainly relevant. People who (formerly) worked in the Clinton White House were central in the effort to gut the re-regulation of for-profit colleges.
Congress passed for-profit college regulations with the health care bill. There was then a huge (and successful- Duncan’s DOE capitulated completely to their demands) lobbying effort to gut the new regulations.
If you read the list of names of the lobbyists, they all came from the Clinton White House.
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Mr. Norm,
You are correct! The Clinton administration was crucial to education reform. Clinton’s legacy is deregulation and weakened unions. For-profit “colleges” were allowed to grow unchecked, Glass-Steagall was repealled. The Clintons did more to break apart what the New Deal accomplished than any recent politician other than Ronald Reagan.
Also, regardless of her campaign rhetoric quoted above, Hillary Clinton accepted very large 2006 and 2007 contributions from individuals who are at the funding forefront of charter school companies and Arne Duncan-esque education reform. The sums donated may be easily verified with a quick glance at public records from the U.S. Federal Election Commission, NY Post or Sunlight Foundation.
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YES. Add to that North Carolina’s role under Gov. Jim Hunt during this error. North Carolina in collaboration with Texas (yes!) was behind the whole “bi-partisan” Neoliberal testing “business” and its spread.
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typo?
error: era
Add to that North Carolina’s role under Gov. Jim Hunt during this era.
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This is the sad story of what happened to the new regulatory law on for-profit colleges when it got to the Duncan DOE:
“The battle got so testy that Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who has led Congressional hearings into the colleges, got into a heated exchange with Mr. Stein, the Education Corporation investor.
The senator said that during a hallway conversation after lunch in the Senate dining room, Mr. Stein promised to “make life rough for me” if Mr. Harkin kept up his attacks.
“I took it as a threat — it was one of the most blatant comments ever made to me in my years in the Senate,” Mr. Harkin said.
Mr. Stein, a frequent Democratic donor who had bought the lunch with the senator at a charity auction, would not discuss the details of the conversation. But he said Mr. Harkin’s account was “totally incorrect,” adding: “Under no circumstances would I would ever threaten a U.S. senator.”
For-profit colleges steal from poor people and veterans. All of the lobbyists who successfully rolled over Arne Duncan are high-profile Democrats.
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Honestly, I think Hillary has gotten aboard the Reform train. Many Dems are heading in a Neo-Liberal direction since that’s where the big donors are. I am glad she is backing de Blasio, but until we see who de Blasio chooses for Chancellor, I am keeping my fingers crossed. Obama fooled me once, but if de Blasio goes in a bad direction, my days are being a Democrat are numbered.
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What a moving letter! I agree that the last line of it rises to the level of poetry.
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If you follow the history of charter schools, you will find two names interwoven throughout it: Bush and Clinton. Clinton actually signed the first federal legislation supporting and funding charter start ups. As far as education policy goes, there is no difference between the Republican and Democrat policies.
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So very much of what is being pushed is science and math. Here language arts too is mentioned but so much of what is being pushed is that which utilizes one half of the brain. SO, what is being pushed and probably produced are “half wits”.
NOT sorry. That is what in my opinion is being pushed.
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This is a powerful letter, and I understand the motivation behind it, given that Obama has been such a cynical Trojan Horse for neoliberalism.
But it’s fundamentally mistaken, since the Clinton’s bear much responsibility for the poverty faced by the author’s students.
As George Buzetti points out, Clinton lobbied hard for passage of NAFTA – it passed the House by one vote – which immediately resulted in a cascade of runaway shops, many of them unionized and paying decent wages, to Mexico. NAFTA also led directly to the destruction of small scale corn and coffee growers in Mexico, forcing displaced farmers to immigrate north.
He also pushed through the WTO trade agreements, which override national labor and environmental standards, and have led to corporate supra-governance and loss of national sovereignty.
Bill Clinton also signed the law – euphemized, unsurprisingly, as “Welfare Reform” – eliminating Aid To Families With Dependent Children which had formed a floor beneath which wages could not sink. Since then, wages have predictably stagnated and income polarization has intensified.
Obama has so betrayed the traditional Democratic base that it’s tempting to speculate how Hillary might have done better, but all of these people are completely bought and paid for by those who control the political system. They are brokers for the ruling class, nothing more.
What needs to happen is not for teachers to expect someone on a white horse to come rescue them, but to rescue themselves by mobilizing and putting the fear of God into the political class, so that they are forced to attend to the needs of the people they now falsely claim to serve.
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Mr. Fiorello is very much on target. The Clintons starting the testing-accountability mania in Arkansas, and schools as well as the nation won’t be able to fulfill their potential if the middle class continues to decline. NAFTA and WTO trade agreements were supposed to lift us out of this decline, but they have failed miserably.
Despite all that, Hillary was less objectionable than Obama who publicly supported charter schools and the type of accountability he has since unleashed. He didn’t hide his agenda.
Thankfully, parents and teachers ARE beginning to take back control as seen in Indiana with Tony Bennett’s defeat and in New York City with DiBlasio’s Primary victory. In each case, the privatizers’ millions were defeated by people power. It’s about time, and there must be much more of it for politicians everywhere to get the message.
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Everyone needs to read Carl Bernstein’s Hillary Clinton book–don’t recall the title, think it was published in 2007 & can tell you it is quite a tome. I have read every book about the Clintons, and this is the only one that describes what went on insofar as the Arkansas Teachers Union and teacher testing. What really struck me was the revelation (to me, at least) that Hilary was really pushing this–Gov. Bill,not so much–the idea that “someone has to be the villain here,” and that that villain was going to be the Arkansas teacher(s). Makes one think.
Wouldn’t you like to see Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Alan Grayson up on the ballot?
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I found this link, retiredbutmissthekids–
http://newsok.com/arkansas-teacher-test-battle-spills-into-state/article/2058223
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Susan Ohanian and I covered the American Federation of Teachers convention as reporters in Chicago in July 2008. Hillary Clinton came and spoke to the teachers and others and then descended into the crowd, hugging people and talking with many (many of whom she knew). It drove the Secret Service crazy, but I photographed it and was impressed.
That night, I went over to the Hyatt, one of the convention hotels, and noticed young people holding signs that said “BARACK OBAMA” or just “OBAMA”. At first I thought they were mannequins. They weren’t talking, just pointing. So I followed their pointings to a lower level ballroom, where I was stopped by a phalanx of young Obamaites who wouldn’t let me farther.
“Press…” I said.
“Sorry…” was the answer — until they began threatening to have me arrested for being disorderly on private property (we were, after all, in Penny Pritzker’s Regency Hyatt Hotel).
“But he’s a presidential candidate and this is a very public reality…” I was saying. “Sorry…”
Eventually, I confirmed from one of the kids (who was actually embarrassed) that indeed Barack Obama was there at the Regency Hyatt Hotel. He was selling photographs of himself with wealthy people for $2,000 to $5,000 per photograph.
I still wanted to be able to report that I had personally seen the candidate (it was July 2008) at the Hyatt that evening, so I went to the parking lot exit, where Secret Service were tying up those wishing to leave (including some of the plutocrats who had just paid for their Obama photos).
Finally, the caravan of SUVs came rolling out, and THE CANDIDATE rolled down the window and waved briefly to all those worshippers. The men and women wearing all that fur from their photo ops with THE CANDIDATE were talking about how charismatic and intelligent he was… Etc.
The following day I was back at the AFT convention.
Obama was scheduled to “speak” to the teachers. Because he claimed he had “conflicts” in his schedule, he was beamed in from a National Council of La Raza event in San Diego, California. The official pretense was that Barack Obama was too busy to make the AFT convention, when the fact was he was stiffing the teachers (and our union) deliberately. At first, no one would admit that he had been “at” the convention (most of the delegates were staying at the Hyatt) a few hours earlier.
I asked about it at the AFT press office, where Janet Bass and others first claimed that Obama couldn’t have been at the convention hotel the night before, blah blah blah.
Finally, someone admitted that the AFT was being stiffed, but wouldn’t comment further for my stories.
I asked around. I learned that when he heard of what Obama had done, then AFT president Ed McElroy (that was the summer Ed ended his time as national president) had called — and gotten the usual Obama runaround on the phone until he uttered something appropriate and hung up the phone.
Those of us who knew “Barack. Call me Barack…” from his days courting us here in Chicago all the way back to the time he was in the Illinois Senate began to recognize the pattern of obfuscation and opportunism that continues to this day. A month after that, the official story of how Obama came to be the CANDIDATE was reported on the front page of The New York Times. Those who knew the historical facts knew that the Chicago Teachers Union (along with the Illinois Federation of Teachers) had put Obama in the U.S. Senate by backing him for the nomination years earlier against the “Machine” candidate, Dan Hynes. But I had to read The New York Times version of the Chicago reality before I could believe that they had literally whited out that Obama’s rise in Illinois had been with union — not plutocratic — backing. A couple of aging “New Leftists” got credit for pushing Obama’s candidacy locally — but not the former Vice President of the Chicago Teachers Union (my friend Howard Heath) who had actually made the stands that made the difference and put Obama in the U.S. Senate for that famous 2004 speech.
I still have my photographs of Hillary Clinton speaking — in person — to the teachers at Navy Pier in Chicago in 2008, then of her surrounded in the crowd while her bodyguards did their best.
And I have my photographs of Barack on the big screen delivering boilerplate and underlining the lie that I had almost been arrested to personally report.
Which of the two is the mensch?
The mensch is the one with the stronger handshake and the courage and interest to work a real crowd of real people — that’s who.
And Barack Obama, as everyone who has ever shaken hands with the guy knows, has the weakest handshake of any politician who every worked a crowd in Chicago.
That night I reported it, Obama preferred to get rich plutocrats to pay to be photographed with him instead of actually talking and listening to real teachers, including those who worked and lived blocks from his home.
Six months after Barack Obama lied to the teachers at Navy Pier in July 2008, he proudly announced that Arne Duncan, Mr. Charter Schools who had never taught one day in his life, was the best choice in the USA for U.S. Secretary of Education. You might say, we were suckered then raced to the topped back that year.
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Here’s a parody of New York State Ed.
Commissioner’s pushing of excessive
high stakes testing and the dubious
and unproven Common Core
standards:
This video never gets old!
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