John Thompson raises a provocative and important question: who is inflicting more damage on teachers and students? Tea Party extremists like North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory or Secretary of Education Arne Duncan?
Thompson, a teacher and historian, describes the assault on teachers in North Carolina, whose governor and Legislature seem determined to destroy public education by expanding vouchers and charters and to dismantle the teaching profession by eliminating tenure, laying off teacher aides, and keeping salaries stagnant.
Thompson writes:
“Which sets of school reforms are inflicting the most damage on teachers and students? Has the right wing Tea Party’s most extreme assaults on public education hurt schools the most? Or, has the Duncan administration’s ill-conceived corporate reforms done the most harm?
“North Carolina was once touted as an exemplar of standards based reforms, and Wake County was praised for its socio-economic integration. Tea Party Governor Pat McCrory and Republicans are phasing out tenure and gutting salaries. As a result, mid-year teacher resignations in Wake schools have increased by an “alarming” 41% this school year. The number of resigning teachers who said they are moving to other North Carolina schools dropped, as there was an increase in teachers leaving for other states. Early retirements have tripled.
“The problem is so extreme that Doug Thilman, Wake’s assistant superintendent for human resources, said at a press conference, “Good teachers are having to make hard decisions to leave our classrooms for a better future somewhere else or in another line of work, in another profession – not in our public schools and not in our state.”
But then there is Arne Duncan’s mad idea that the way to “fix” schools is to fire half or all the staff.
Thompson writes:
“The mirror image of Wakes’ crisis is found in Chicago “turnaround schools.” Chicago’s Catalyst quotes Michael Hansen, senior researcher for the American Institutes for Research, who explains that the Duncan administration’s School Improvement Grant (SIG) are “under-researched.” High attrition following a turnaround has the potential to produce “more harm than help.” (emphasis by the Catalyst)
Ignoring educational research, these expensive turnaround campaigns begin with the mass dismissal of teachers. This immediately reduces the number of African-American teachers serving African-American communities, as well as reducing the experience levels of teachers. Catalyst reports, however, that “large chunks of the new staff–teachers who were hand-picked and spent weeks over the summer getting to know each other, becoming a team and learning how to spark improvement when the school reopened–leave within a few years.”
Catalyst reports “At 16 of the 17 schools that underwent a turnaround between 2007 and 2011, more than half of teachers hired in the first year of the turnaround left by the third year.” Moreover, “Among all turnarounds, an average of two-thirds of new teachers left by year three.” (emphasis in the original)
As the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) explains, such high levels of attrition is problematic because, “It can produce a range of organizational problems at schools, such as discontinuity in professional development, shortages in key subjects and loss of teacher leadership.”
I say that the answer to Thompson’s question is clear. McCrory is gutting public education in his state, and only in his state. Duncan’s idiotic idea of “turnaround” is harming schools and communities across the nation, laying off veteran teachers, reducing the number of African-American teachers, and generating harmful turmoil.
Let’s face it. Duncan has inflicted incalculable harm on public education, especially in urban districts. He became Secretary of Education after eight unsuccessful years as superintendent of schools in Chicago, which was and remains a low-performing district. He was unqualified to be Secretary of Education. In the past, we have had governors with no education credentials, but they at least had the good sense to recognize the reality of federalism, the limitations on their powers, and fact that control of education is a state and local function. Duncan has recognized none of these factors and has used federal funding to impose his will and his bad ideas on districts across the nation. It seems he won’t be satisfied until every teacher is inexperienced (preferably certified by Teach for America), every public school has been turned over to private management, every decision is tightly tied to test scores, and every teacher education institution is run by charter school teachers who grant advanced degrees to one another.
Duncan is a terrific basketball payer but a disastrous Secretary of Education. The real test of public education is whether it can survive two more years of his failed and harmful policies.
“…these expensive turnaround campaigns begin with the mass dismissal of teachers.”
Actually, it begins with the mass dismissal of *all* staff, including not only teachers, but paraprofessionals, custodians and lunch ladies. Damn those lazy, entrenched unionized lunch ladies ruining education for our nation’s children!!!
“Duncan is a terrific basketball payer….”
I’m not even sure that’s true. I think he’s just good enough to make the president look good and just smart enough to know to do so.
What “Duncan Administration”? These are the policies of the Obama Administration.
In my opinion, ed reform (despite the denials) is a political coalition, so looking at it as “which group did more damage” is a misunderstanding. To hold the thing together, everyone has in the coalition has to get everything they want. Republicans get teacher sanctions and the end of collective bargaining and less funding (lower taxes) and vouchers and Democrats get charter schools, the Common Core and the technocratic “accountability” measures.
I think that’s part of the reason it looks so chaotic and contradictory to an “outsider”. It’s part of the reason my state has 15 new mandates and no funding to do any of them WELL, even if I supported all of them, which I don’t.
Everyone in the coalition gets everything they demand, and it simply doesn’t matter anymore if one objective contradicts another, or if public schools can even conceivably do any of these things well and properly and carefully, at the same time. They contradict themselves constantly. How can you be funding TFA with tens of millions of dollars and AT THE SAME time complaining that teacher training doesn’t involve enough supervised time before teachers are launched? How can one faction of ed reform complain that school boards don’t provide consistent leadership because the members are elected and defeated, WHILE pushing policy that leads to these kinds of staff turnover in schools? Does consistency and expertise matter, or not? I mean, what the hell. How is anyone in an ordinary public school supposed to juggle all the priorities of all these factions?
Chiara Duggan:
“Everyone in the coalition gets everything they demand, and it simply doesn’t matter anymore if one objective contradicts another, or if public schools can even conceivably do any of these things well and properly and carefully, at the same time.”
Good point. I think they get what they want because there’s big money involved.
To me the battle for what is called education reform is being fought on two fronts 1) A massive campaign to suppress teacher wages, financed by big business and rich individuals through their “nonprofit” foundations (with the intent to reduce costs and eventually lower taxes) and 2) a power grab by Wall Street (private equity firms, hedge funds, and big education and tech corporations) to capture new markets and transfer public dollars into private hands. Both of these efforts are part of a society-wide effort to suppress wages generally and to privatize public services.
Intentional wage suppression is occurring against the backdrop of stagnating wages due to globalization, technology advancement, reduction in demand caused by the credit collapse of 2008, and de-leveraging (in certain areas, such as mortgage loans, though student debt keeps increasing but probably also serves as a drag on demand).
So all the efforts to reduce teacher pay–attacks on pensions, attacks on public unions, attacks on due process for teachers, growth of the low-paying charter sector, reduced pay increases for advanced degrees and years of experience, incentives for early retirement, and so on–all of these overt moves to reduce teacher pay are over and above the forces that are suppressing wages generally. It’s a double whammy.
And all of these efforts are paid for by moneyed interests. Bill Gates, for one, is intent on reducing the cost of public education (see his comments at Davos in 2013) and wants to do so by reducing both teacher pay and the number of teachers overall.
The rush to cash in on new education initiatives (expansion of charter schools, the Common Core Standards, online education, and so on) has been well documented in many places. The common denominator in all these so-called reform initiatives is that they’re supported by people with lots of money, either through high-priced propaganda, political contributions, or outright purchase (as in the case of the Common Core Standards).
If you look at the big picture, the contradictions do make sense. Ever since the federal government started enabling the “reforms,” first through NCLB and then through RTTT and support for Common Core Testing and VAM, the pace of adoption of assorted bad ideas has picked up. The government has joined forces with corporate power, cronyism and political money fueling the alliance. The backlash election of 2010, which occurred because the economy was still in the tank, turned the “reform” movement into a big rig with bad brakes careening downhill, crazy cargo flying out of the back at every turn. It was big money (the Koch brothers, ALEC, the Waltons, et al) that got things rolling.
My only conclusion is that, as others here have pointed out, the “reformers” don’t really care about education. The corporate hirelings in the “think tanks” may put up a good front, but their bosses have other goals in mind. That’s why the hirelings have to twist themselves into pretzels to justify what they’re doing. And that’s why the fact that all the contradictory bogus reforms are failing doesn’t seem to faze any of them. (When I say “them” I mean Gates, Broad, Murdoch, Klein, Duncan, Mitchell, Coleman, Petrilli, and many others… all the big reform lords, their vassals and serfs.) It’s like what TV insiders might say about a bad sitcom: it may not be all that funny, but everybody is getting paid. The moguls are investing for a long-term payoff, while the think tank VPs and Common Core trainers and TFA kids are trying to put food on the table.
I agree, it is a big political coalition, but it isn’t held together by ideology. Maybe it’s the raw money that’s holding things together. Or it could be something worse:
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/04/16/The-US-is-not-a-democracy-but-an-oligarchy-study-concludes/2761397680051/
In Massachusetts, if a person has NO experience in education, he/she can get a teaching license just by taking and passing a test; but if the person already has a professional level teacher license, in order to get a license in a new field he/she has to do a practicum and meet other requirements in addition to passing the test. How much sense does that make?
None! It’s not meant to! Unless of course you are a true edudeformer!
It’s simpler than that. It just that there are no meaningful differences between the two political parties anymore since both have been hijacked by the same elite interests destroying this country because they want more.
Finally someone who gets it. It does not matter if they have an R next to their name or a D they are two in the same bought and paid for by the same exact people. The longer we argue about Dems and Repubs the longer we the people will continue to get fleeced. If Romney won it would be no different today than it currently is. The elite who rule this planet make sure to place the 2 pawns in the game so that it provides the illusion of choice but in fact both will conform to whatever the elite want therefore it is a win win for them. They just simply make the two parties seems like polar opposites with divisive issues such as gay marriage and such which have no bearing on our lives at all but we the sheep fall for it hook line and sinker. The media also make the rational choices; Ralph Nader comes to mind seem like total lunatics to scare off voters. Who do you think owns the media? The same exact greedy elite pigs who want to turn teachers into minimum wage serfs. The only solution is not to vote at all until the common man with common sense is allowed a voice in the arena of politics. The Republicans and the Democrats sold out the public a very long time ago. Research and alternative news sources will lead all to the truth you just have to go out and seek it for yourselfs and trust me, you will be astonished at what you will discover.
100% correct!!!!! Thank you!
This is indeed the case, Susan. Anyone who thinks that there is a real difference between the Repugnican and Dimocratic parties now is not paying attention. Two gangs of thugs arguing over who gets the graft.
It’s undoubtedly an interesting question which in recent days has become even more intriguing. The tea party led state legislature in North Carolina has expressed interest in dropping out of the Common Core and not participating in the implementation of new common core aligned tests, such as Smarter Balance.
http://www.wral.com/lawmakers-propose-dumping-common-core-standards-in-nc/13591055/
It’s interesting to note that the the bill is sponsored by Republicans with intense opposition from Democrats.
While I disagree with some of the reasons conservatives in the state oppose Common Core, I can’t say I necessarily oppose the bill (even though the proposed new standards will be drafted by a commission that reports to the governor as opposed to the Department of Public Instruction).
Still, this political shift is further indication of a strange alliance growing against the common core. While liberals on the left are driving opposition in states like New York, conservatives and tea party members are driving opposition in states like North Carolina and Florida.
Democrats tend to like standardizing because they think that is what helping poor people is.
I was raised a Democrat. Common Core changed that.
“I was raised a Democrat.”
And I was raised a Catholic.
My condolences to both of us!
Thompson’s question and the development of his answer when coupled with Diane Ravitch’s editing, shows the gross damage that has been done to America’s future.
When Good Morning America recently spoke about the cancellation of a children’s program for their parents in NY, because the kindergarteners needed college and career preparation, the media made it fit, into a sound bite.
Progressives need sound bites. And, the media needs to be trained to go to a small number of sources, for those sound bites.
Matt Taibbi and Diane Ravitch speak with dynamism. Taibbi is on the ethical side of pensions. He could be a media ally for quality teaching?
Unfortunately this take-over has been aided and abetted by the sludge and compromised integrity of professional organizations that should have an interest in public education. Sludge means slow response to the cascading demand for rating schemes based on flawed metrics. Compromised integrity refers to conflicts of interest and lack of due diligence in looking at federal gift horses in the mouth.
Sludge. Why on earth did the American Statistical Association wait so long to assert that so-called VAM should not be used to judge individual teachers, when that practice began two decades ago and is still promoted by federal policies? http://www.amstat.org/policy/pdfs/ASA_VAM_Statement.pdf
Integrity. Why do so-called professionals in education operate in an environment where conflicts of interest no longer matter? One of the directors of Pearson International, serving since 2004, and still serving in 2013 is Susan Fuhrman, president of Teachers College at Columbia University and former head of the National Academy of Education. In 2009 for compensation from Pearson was about $100,000. http://www.pearson.com/content/dam/pearson-corporate/files/cosec/pearson_RA-2009.pdf P. 73
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2013/06/12/letter-teachers-college-students-slam-tc-president-susan-fuhrman
Integrity. Sharon P. Robinson, President of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) representing 800 programs has served on the board of the scandal-ridden for-profit Corinthian Colleges franchise since 2011. The scandals and lawsuits continue. Why is she still in that President of AACTE with compensation at $340,000 in 2012? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/davidhalperin/head-of-teachers-college_b_5078769.html
Conflicts of Interest? Why was AACTE so eager to sign on to the professional teacher assessment called edPTA, developed by Stanford scholars. Who in AACTE looked this gift horse from Stanford in the mouth? Why did the Stanford and AACTE outsource the marketing and distribution of edPTA to Pearson for online scoring of teacher candidates? Can either of these non-profit creators/endorsers of edPTA explain the Pearson price point— minimally $300 per student teacher—with Pearson’s free-lance scorers paid $70 per assessment? Where can I find a peer-review of the claims about reliability and validity packaged with this whole scheme?
Gift Horses. Vanderbilt University has had multi-year grants from USDE to promote pay-for-performance even though research (including their own) has long shown these schemes do not improve school performance or the culture of most workplaces http://www.epi.org/publication/books-teachers_performance_pay_and_accountability/ https://my.vanderbilt.edu/performanceincentives/files/2012/09/Executive-Summary-Final-Report-Experimental-Evidence-from-the-Project-on-Incentives-in-Teaching-2012.pdf p. 6
Sludge in Slow Motion. Among many others, Linda Darling-Hammond agreed to consult on the SMARTER tests for the CCSS. I wish she had declined and been the able critic and public intellectual speaking against Arne’s “must test em right now” agenda. Now, according to EdWeek, she sees that “good intentions” are not enough. Among other complications, some foreseeable, are these. The tests must have a price point schools can afford. Short and simple means lower costs, but also non-trivial compromises in validity, reliability, as well as coverage of the CCSS. The on-line plumbing for the tests is not present in all schools. Tests have to be reasonably short. There are limits on the number of days that schools can reserve for these tests and mind-bending issues in scheduling up to six hours of tests—about half of the time originally thought to be necessary for respectable coverage and reliability. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/04/23/29cc-promises.h33.html
Enough.
Thanks for that info, Laura!
Dear Diane,
Seriously! I would hardly call Pat McCrory a tea party extremist. I have had children in the CMS school system for 10 years and I saw things starting to change many, many years ago……bigger class sizes, less teacher’s assistants, less field trips, less choice for children who are advanced, later (4:15) school dismissal times so they can save money by staggering the buses causing to get home as late as 5:15 (and that is children going to their home school). It does seem to have come to a head in the last few years, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it has mainly been caused by Race to the Top that was basically forced on the states by our current President during the financial crisis. Things were starting to get bad and CC has taken it to a new level. I was glad to see you bring this point up in this blog. If Pat McCrory is an extremist, Obama is an extremist to the max!!
If everything Pat McCrory has done in education was “righted”……….look what we have left…..a one size fits all curriculum, poorly written left leaning dumbed down curriculum, testing, testing, testing, and more testing, and our teachers working for Pearson and Curriculum Associates and not our children.
Getting CC and the excessive testing out of NC is a good first step. I hope more changes are made soon.
Thank you for pointing out that Pat McCrory is only part of the problem. Our “extremist” President is the other.
This shouldn’t be a choice; both are terrible for different, but overlapping reasons.
Further, what is happening in NC is as much a part of a national agenda – ALEC, the Tea Party, the Kochs, Walton’s, and others.
The Tea Party is a distraction.
The Tea Party/Teabaggers is not really a movement, but rather a relatively small number of right-wing extremists who have been used by the Democrats as a scapegoat for their own hypocrisies.
It’s an Astroturf movement by such figures like Dick Armey and other Republican and conservative lobbyists who are manufacturing right-wing dissent to distract from the real left-wing dissent that is ignored by the media.
Think about it; what better way of getting the right-wing fascist message out there than giving it media exposure? And indeed, that is what we have.
If you follow the media narrative in America, there is no left-wing dissent. There is only right-wing dissent. This simultaneously legitimatizes the right-wing narrative and gives justification for the Obama administration to dismiss or crack down on ANY dissent-because a handful of right-wing fanatics are given media exposure.
The point is to get liberals to react, and it keeps working again and again.
No tea bagger or Limbaugh or Fox news nonsense can stand up to a strong left wing narrative for even a minute. How any of us could ever lose a debate with those talking points, or be frustrated or worry about it is a mystery to me.
The worry is the potential for violence from the right wing media, it is not the “ideas” they present that are the worry. Those ideas only have traction because so many are chicken shit scared to be real leftists, for fear of being too radical or something, because they are too weak and confused and cowardly.
Teabaggers et al, are moving into the vacuum created by this timidity and confusion and playing on liberal/progressive identification with the Democrats.
The reason people like Fox news, Glen Beck etc. is because it is entertaining and because they can pick up talking points that will drive liberals crazy. For the ruling class agenda to be advanced, it requires BOTH the right wing media AND the predictable liberal reaction.
That said, it is dangerous. We contribute to the danger by taking it so seriously (the “opinions,” not the pandering to bigotry and hatred – that needs to be taken very seriously) and reacting so predictably.
What better way to “legitimize” the center-right policies of the Obama administration than to contrast them to the full-blown, ultra-right insanity of Sarah Palin-like Teabaggery.
Democrats are using the tea baggers’ antics as a tool to stifle dissent from the Left. How dare we criticize Obama when doing so is to be on the same side as the tea baggers? Obama apologists won’t even listen to any argument from the Left against Obama’s policies, they automatically categorize it in the same category as the crap being spewed by tea baggers.
The tea bagger thing serves the purpose of making sure the intellectual liberals get all worked up about teabaggers, Palin et al and are therefore estranged from and irrelevant to the general public. It works like a charm, every time, to decapitate the working class.
Duncan didn’t just “become” Secretary of Education. Somebody appointed him. It seems some people can’t wrap their heads around the fact that Obama is the main driving force behind these education reforms. Obama is the enabler. He is a strong supporter of charter schools and the monied interests are there to “help”.
Reblogged this on jonathan lovell's blog and commented:
Arne Duncan: a terrific basketball payer but a disastrous Secretary of Education
It’s interesting that the reformers are claiming this as a civil right’s issue of their time. I would agree with them, but not for their reasons. The majority of these so called “bad” teachers are African American, inner city teachers. The majority of these African American teachers are either being fired or laid off and being replaced by white TFA or other types of programs like TFA. I believe we need to turn this conversation around on these deformers.
The state of Massachusetts has recently taken over two Boston elementary schools. Each has been “turned around” (I think of it as churned) several times. This has included mass staff dismissals and new staff have been hand picked by new administration, yet the schools have remained as Level 4 schools. That the schools have populations of about 88% poverty, 40% English language learners and 20% SPED kids will surprise no readers of Diane’s blog. (Remember too, some number of these kids have hit a triple, i.e. they are members of all three groups: poor special needs kids who are learning English – is there a VAM algorithm for that?)
Under the state takeover, our state commissioner, Mitchell Chester (national chairman of PARCC) has unilaterally given both schools over to charter management organizations (Bluepoint and UP Academy) to run. The first move that has been made at the Dever School has been to kill the dual-language program. That no one with a linguistic background has been included in the decision is obvious; Chester seems to believe that instruction in languages holds back language development. (See: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/04/06/dever-school-parents-teachers-assail-state-plan-scrap-dual-language-program/qfQea68Wy0qeV9Chs7jCiJ/story.html )
The second move has been to force teachers to work an extra 700 hours over the school year for a stipend which comes to $2.75 an hour. So who is going to staff the schools? Professional status teachers have been churned out. Other professional status BTU members are unlikely to volunteer for 700 extra hours at virtually no compensation. I’m at a loss to understand how education for some of our most needy kids is going to be improved.
Here’s a link to the state plan for the Dever. If you go to page 6, there’s a chart (which I could not paste here) with proficiency scores for ELA. They are unsurprising, given the school’s population. Actually, that 16% of 8 year old kids in such challenging circumstances score so well in a test in a language that is not their first is a testament to their teachers’ efforts and professional training.
Click to access Dever+Preliminary+turnaround+plan+submitted+March+7+2014.pdf
I suspect the charter managed schools will find staff because jobs for educated young people are scarce. Many with college educations are taking traditionally non-college jobs, and that is pushing high school graduates out of the low pay service jobs and out of work.
“is there a VAM algorithm for that?”
There’s a VAM algorithm for everything. It’s just that you are not a privileged member of the High Church of Testology and therefore not able to see “everything.”
I asked the question.
I believe that Diane gave the right answer.
Duncan has done much, much more harm
Something to ponder: Pat McCrory can’t replace Duncan, but Obama can. Pat McCrory can help rid NC of Common Core….and that is in the works.
I view it like this:
the Democrats let us fall down (via Arne, RttT), and the Tea Party is kicking us while we’re down.
It’s sort of like the trash compactor scene in Star Wars. From the left, we have the standardization brought by RttT, and from the right we have the austerity that is in line with the “no tax” Tea Party views. Together, they are equally moving in on us (like the walls in the trash compactor).
although I support a bill to drop Common Core.
It’s OK to support a bill introduced by a party other than your own. 🙂
That’ll be the day.
Archie Bunker. . . so true. If only. . .
Hello. Yeah Mr. Duncan left Chicago schools in ruin. Over 50 public schools were shut down in Chicago this past school year. More charter schools are on the way though!
This scenario reminds me of a book called, ‘Jennifer Government’ where all the schools are named after corporations. The future looks bleak.
Let’s be honest for a change. The “tea party” isn’t a real grassroots movement anyway but basically an astroturf outfit bankrolled by the billionaire Kochs. Arne Duncan and Obama are tools of the same billionaire class that runs the tea party bunch.
As I said, they all have the same goal, which is to loot public assets for private gain.
And as for Jeb. . . what about his Roman Catholicism? Is he slyly trying to help the Roman Catholic schools by being so gung ho voucher? (Nothing against Roman Catholics or their schools, just trying to figure out where Jeb might get some of his motivation).
Meaningless metaphor, again. The tea party movement is actually real grass roots. It’s the only real hope of returning sanity to politics. Certainly the Democrats have sold out, and many of the Republicans as well. Go Ted Cruz.
What era of sanity would you want to return to?
Seriously, is there a reference point for our goals?
This is a truly wonderful question, Joanna, the ‘best’ one that has been addressed to me.
I’m not sure sanity means return to an earlier time (e.g. pre Woodrow Wilson). In fact as I think about it, at the moment I can definitely rule that out (since although a pernicious progressive, Wilson was a thorough going racist).
Instead of returning to a specific time in the past “before things got corrupted,” probably we have to look forward in time to a cultural shift in which meaningless words don’t constitute a philosophy of life.
I seem to want to say that, as a culture we need to grow up, to mature, into a culture in which political discourse regains logic and reason, rather than as it is now, where words are the equivalent of stink bombs we monkeys through at each other.
I don’t look for a religious revival, such as we hear about in The Great Awakening, but rather its analogue without the specific doctrinal or dogmatic content.
At the moment that seems to me a bit of a vain hope, since it rests on the assumption that all citizens can learn to think logically. We give that lip service and call it teaching critical thinking, but in my experience contemporary critical thinking instruction in the schools amounts to a messy paste of political correctness and environmentalism. So, I guess my answer is that we do need a renewal of education, sort of akin to the prevailing aim of this blog, to promote better education for all. We know what we don’t want, over-testing to begin with, but that leaves what we do want in terms of educational content going begging because the CCSS have intrinsic problems as well as monumental problems entailed in the on-line testing regimen that seems to be part and parcel of the CCSS.
So far, however, I haven’t seen anyone here propose an alternative to the CCSS except perhaps a vague nostalgia for public education in the fifties.
Perhaps it does all come down to the question of what a real ‘civic’ education is. Diane frequently critiques charters and vouchers because they seem likely to destroy the public common school which is supposed to be the foundation stone of democracy.
I don’t think the public schools have delivered on that promise over the last 30 years or perhaps 40, because a majority of the voters were unable to see through an obvious charlatan like President Obama and elected him twice, and will probably elect Hillary to two terms as well in spite of her obvious ineptness as Secretary of State, and possibly her involvement in the cover-up of the events in Benghazi about which she seems to have lied to the American public about it, though just not as often as the White House itself. Poor Susan Rice. But then, she made love to her job.
What the Success Academies are doing, focusing almost entirely on Language and Math may be the only viable form that a reform of education can take in the present environment for education policy. It can’t happen in the public schools, because they are for the most part in love with their abusers, Barack, Arne, NCLB, RTTT, and the CCSS. Stockholm syndrome. Vouchers mean a lot of religious schools. Even private schools in my experience are infected by progressivism which prevents them from raising significant questions in a significant way. Unfortunately, I doubt the tea party program will be of much help. It tends to be a little backward looking to God, guns, and grits instead of Logic, Scholarship, and Realistic Thinking.
But thank you Joanna for one of the few REAL questions posted here. I’m not satisfied with my answer yet, but I think it looks in the right direction.
“in which meaningless words don’t constitute a philosophy of life.”
HU, please list the meaningless words that constitute a philosophy of life!
Thanks in advance!
It’s hardly an either-or. It’s just that the Democrats have the national stage now (and notice that’s one area the Republicans have made no attempt to obstruct). If, heaven forbid, the Tea Party were ever to get the national stage, they too could do a lot of damage.
I can’t help but agree, although the gutting of public education in NC is still pretty disturbing. Even though, generally, I support tea party goals, Dienne is probably right that a national tea party education policy would look more like McCrory’s than anything else.
Public school teachers need to address for themselves how to manage public schools for excellence in an era of decreased spending. Taxing the rich won’t yield the increased revenues which public school teachers think it will.
The only place to get the money is from the middle class, and as well all know, that is shrinking. Why is it shrinking? Because of Obama’s disastrous domestic taxing and regulation policy. Get rid of the Democrats in power and there’s half a chance. Keep them in power and there’s no chance.
My take, anyway.
Harlan, I agree with you in that I think we could work with the cuts (the austerity, if you will). . .it’s the standardizing measures that keep hands tied (that’s my take). And put the two together and it is especially challenging in new ways. We can certainly find (and certainly do find) creative ways to sustain public schools when they are offering what parents want and not what the Federal government required in order for the schools to get funding from their own tax dollars. I think it’s fine for there to be recommended standards in regards to academics, but there is a line and I believe it has been crossed.
Communities can find ways to offset cuts (not that I wouldn’t want there to be a little more support for public schools, but I do understand what happened in 2007 and 2008; perhaps the failure to renew a sales tax in 2011 has contributed as well).
Taxing the rich (who have all the money) won’t generate the revenue we think it will, so we have to shake down the middle class instead, which said middle class is dwindling and has less money every day. Could you explain that logic?
His logic is that if tax rates are reduced generally, the economy will grow, and the middle class will grow, and tax revenues will increase.
Except that that has been debunked repeatedly. How can anyone still believe that after living through the last 30 years?
Oops, my response to you ended up down at the bottom.
If you think Reaganomics was “debunked” you need to go back and reread the economic history of the times. FLERP understands my position quite precisely.
While there are bona fide grass roots elements among the Tea Party, on a practical level it was hijacked by the Koch’s of the world long ago.
That said, I prefer the enemy who makes no bones about his wish to destroy me, to the dissembler who promises support, but then tries to stab me in the back.
If the shoe fits, Mr. Obama…
Has it? I don’t know, when I read that an economic theory that’s inherently unprovable in the first place has been debunked, my eyes glaze over. The general principle that tax rates have some effect on the behavior of taxed entities doesn’t seem very controversial to me. The real questions are what are those effects at different tax rates. It’s a mathematical certainty that a tax rate of 0% will raise no tax revenue at all. And it’s not unreasonable to assume that a tax rate of 100% won’t raise much either (at least in the long term). But when it comes the possible effects of marginal changes of X percentage points from current rates, I’ll entertain pretty much any argument.
I do agree with Harlan that the middle class is where the tax revenue is.
In 2012, Reuters estimated the rich have over $31 trillion in wealth hidden in tax havens. It is not a tax issue, the problem is the massive, growing income inequality. Most of our nation’s wealth is concentrated in a few families. Productivity has increased at record levels, yet most Americans have not participated in the gains. Instability follows inequality. The question will be how the correction will be made.
The Tea Party is always “less government, just not MY government”. Free marketers love a free market till it negatively impacts them. Then they run to the hated Big Gubbermint to protect them.
Capitalism is a continuum of ideas – always changing and evolving. Right now, capitalism is stuck in a dysfunctional plutocracy incompatible with a representative democracy. A new, fresh, populist capitalism is needed, reinvented for The People.
Today’s capitalism incurs costs that eventually have to be paid by the public. It socializes the risk. Capitalists get to keep the profits, but they don’t have to pay for all the losses.
They buy influence on both ends–they buy concessions from the government that allow them huge profits and they buy protections from the government that shield them from losses. In that sense, capitalism is socialism by a different name, but instead of sharing the wealth, the capitalists get to keep it all and get more. This happens in all kinds of industries but especially in extractive industries like mining and petroleum and in finance.
That was my comment above. Here’s another take from the pope, via John Nichols:
http://host.madison.com/news/opinion/column/john_nichols/john-nichols-the-pope-takes-sides-against-king-money/article_44b0f213-9ed9-501c-b789-95e6baee34a1.html
The Church wants its cut. It must be going batty watching all this wealth being accumulated by godless men.
The debate about inequality has probably fixated on income because information on income is more readily available than information on wealth. But I do agree that wealth is a much better measure of inequality than income is. (I say “agree” because I think that’s what you’re suggesting, but then again I see you also write that “the problem is the massive, growing income inequality.”)
Check out Dean Baker’s opinion piece on how to answer the problem of increasing concentration of wealth:
“Piketty’s basic point on this issue is almost too simple for economists to understand: if the rate of return on wealth (r) is greater than the rate of growth (g), then wealth is likely to become ever more concentrated.”
Baker’s ideas on how to offset this trend:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23205-economic-policy-in-a-post-piketty-world
Definitely worth reading.
You are correct wealth is like a balance sheet, income is an income statement. Both important measures.
The rich have no money, at least not in the US. That is why they can’t be taxed or that taxing them doesn’t raise enough$ for public ed. In the mean time you and HU ask that we allow the rich to continue sucking profits out of the whole economy. You and them are like huge blood sucking leaches on the economy. A little salt in the form of massive tax increases on the rich and corporations is a good place to start. As far as the middle class goes, that is a source of public revenue to be tapped, more out of necessity than because it is the right thing to do. It happens to be the largest pot of money, which is why you guys would prefer it be tapped for public education funding, but only if you are allowed or in some cases forced by law to skim that $ source. It’s an immoral and greedy point of view you defend.
Government education plans…and observations from the dept of ed.
http://links.govdelivery.com/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTQwNTAxLjMxNzg5NjMxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDE0MDUwMS4zMTc4OTYzMSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE2OTMyNzM1JmVtYWlsaWQ9ZGViYmllZTQxM0Bhb2wuY29tJnVzZXJpZD1kZWJiaWVlNDEzQGFvbC5jb20mZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&102&&&http://www.ed.gov/blog/2014/04/taking-action-to-improve-teacher-preparation/
Not even close. Duncan, hands down. He is almost at the Robert McNamara and Dick Cheney level of culpability for harm done.