Peter Greene explicates for you what Arne Duncan really meant in his statement about the Vergara decision.
He concludes:
“God, just when I think the Obama administration has found every conceivable way to signal that they consider teachers vermin to be stepped on and crushed, they find one more way to drive that point home. At this point, I think the GOP would have to run a convicted ax murderer in order for me to vote Democrat in a national election. This is a whole new level of pissing on us while telling us it’s raining. This is a whole new level of disregard for the teaching profession– no, no, that’s wrong, because this is not disregard. This is assault. This is deliberate, lying with a straight face, cheering for the dismantling of teaching as a profession.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The attack on public school teachers
http://www.examiner.com/article/the-attack-on-public-school-teachers
Historians and history teachers remember the gilded age of the late19th century. Although there were struggles during it to overthrow the power of the oligarchs by populists, progressives, unionists, and even anarchists, it took the power of a few leaders in government like Wisconsin’s La Follette, NY’s Teddy Roosevelt ,and New Jersey’s Woodrow Wilson to lead us out of that era and toward a Progressive one..
Did I just say Wisconsin, NewYork, and New Jersey? I love historical irony.
What are we progressing toward?
Is this ironic? I thought Common Core was the baby of the progressives.
The CCSS in bi-partisan madness. Early champions of centralized standards and testing included Bill Clinton, when he was head of the NGA, and George Bush, Sr., when he was president. There are folks on both the left and the right who are comfortable with creating a Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth, and there are folks on both the left and the right who are horrified by the very idea.
Well it’s simple, don’t be a teacher and let the system collapse.
Like they are going to get good quality people with mediocre pay + no job security or a pension.
Yeah, cause everyone wants to hang out in room full of hormonal prepubescent and adoloscent kids.
LOL. Thank goodness there are still some who do. But if the deformers keep this up, there won’t be many.
They do not want quality people. They want a revolving door of temps.
How right you are. The powers that be don’t want teaching to be a profession,but they view schools as places in which human capital (children) will be trained in how to perform in low paying service economy jobs. They consider real education to be the province of the wealthy.
Its called a STRIKE…. a national STRIKE…. you hear that? A STRIKE….
Those days are over with, let’s be real.
Well, when the union represents the bureaucracy it is.
exactly, janine.
Yes. Yes. Yes.Yes. Yes.
If we had REAL UNIONS, they would call for a national walkout day to protest this. And then, in every state where due process is struck down, they would call for strikes until it is reinstated.
It’s time, long past time, for the teacher’s unions to start using this tool again.
There is little so heartwarming as having spent one’s entire life serving students, communities, and the greater good than to have that very career shattered by every possible benefactor of that life of sacrifice. It renders one’s life as meaningless and futile. It undermines generations of effort, learning, hope, preparation, love and dedication to some inappropriate “score” on a test. The hours we put in, the money we spent, the tears we shed, the care we provided for countless children and their families seems to be rubbed out with the stroke of a pen, the bat of an eyelash, the insensitivity of the unappreciative.
The new mode of evaluation is terrible. When it is delivered by an unprofessional, hateful administrator it is all the more devastating.
I feel that I lived a life that has now become a bad joke. After all, I did nothing that truly put money in the pockets of corporations. So I should be shelved. Worthless.
I feel badly for the people trying influence a discussion that doesn’t exist, or who think democracy exists when it doesn’t. Pretty much a waste of time because our political elite doesn’t care what you think.
Here’s the real Obama record on public education:
“The slow economic recovery is taking a toll on the nation’s public schools, reversing a multi-decade trend of increased funding and pushing student-teacher ratios to their highest levels since 2000.
U.S. schools actually weathered the recession itself relatively well. State funding, which accounts for about 45 percent of school revenues on average, fell sharply during the downturn, while local spending, which accounts for roughly another 45 percent, mostly from property taxes, was essentially flat. But federal stimulus dollars helped plug the gap, offsetting the worst of the state-level cuts. Both per-student spending and student-teacher ratios improved modestly during the recession.
Once the recession ended, however, so did the stimulus — long before state and local governments were ready to pick up the slack. Federal per-student spending fell more than 20 percent from 2010 to 2012, and it has continued to fall. State and local funding per student were essentially flat in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available.”
Thousands of paid ed reform advocates, so many orgs I can’t even keep them straight, a huge Department of Education, hundreds of lobbyists, and public school kids lose funding every single year under their leadership. They haven’t made public schools stronger. They’ve weakened them. All of them.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/public-schools-are-hurting-more-in-the-recovery-than-in-the-recession/
It seems like we have two major political parties and one educational policy. Are there any real differences other than (perhaps) their positions on vouchers?
No. Read any of Jeb Bush’s speeches attacking “government schools” and compare them to Arne Duncan. There is absolutely no difference,
They both sell ed tech product, too.
I think the DC people should wear sponsor patches, like NASCAR drivers.
“Jeb Bush, meanwhile, is very happy: “Judge Rolf Treu made a historic decision that will reverberate well beyond California.”
Uh..no.
We have two criminal gangs that differ only in their gang colors, red and blue.
They are sock puppets and windup toys. We’ve become a banana republic. It’s sickening.
this country DOESN’T have any political parties…. you have people playing charades, paid for and controlled by the plutocrats…. didn’t you see that Princeton report that came out a couple of months ago, confirming publicly that this country is now a plutocracy?
I must have missed that report. I’ll have to look it up.
Agreed. This decision and this administration’s reaction to it are both obscene.
It’s interesting how the DC crowd have dropped all the cooing now that the Common Core tests are in.
It’s such a betrayal of people’s good faith. All those maligned public school teachers busting ass to put their CC national test in, and now they’re pushing each other out of the way getting to the microphone to bash them.
They’re really completely cynical actors. Everything is a carefully calibrated campaign. I think people know it, too. I have not seen such disgust for politicians among regular people here in my adult life. It’s a complete loss of faith.
Arne Duncan is to U.S. education what Robert McNamara was to defense, a misguided zealot on a mission, doing enormous damage.
They’re getting ready to bail out the lenders on student loans. They’re going to offer “incentives” for lenders to re-finance.
Once again, the finance industry comes first in DC.
They’ll sell it as break to student borrowers, but it’s for the benefit of lenders, because students are defaulting on the loans.
McNamara had regrets.
I wonder if Arne Dunkin Duncan will live to recognize, as McNama did, how much damage he did.
He will more likely go back to playing basketball. Basketball players don’t have tenure do they?
Give Robert McNamara’s memory some credit-he at least eventually reflected on his role in the Defense Dept and the Vietnam War. I have yet to see any indication that Duncan has a soul or the capacity for self-examination.
I like to believe, Bonnie, that almost everyone is redeemable. Duncan has much to account for, certainly. He has done, is doing, enormous damage. But almost no one gets up in the morning and says, “I want to see how much damage I can cause today.” People believe stupid crap. They delude themselves and others. And some few then live to recognize their mistakes.
McNamara, for all his many and awful faults, was at least accomplished in his field before he took his job with the government.
What accomplishments has Duncan had? That he was a professional basketball player in the provinces of global sports? That his Mommy ran and after-school tutoring program?
As you have said better than anyone,Bob, the man is a wind-up toy, and at best is seen as nothing more than a useful idiot by Oligarchs who own his wind-up key.
We have one option, as far as process. We could abandon national Democrats, as they have abandoned public schools, and focus on state and local candidates as voters.
State ed policy can undo or mitigate a lot of the damage done by the anti-public schools DC/pundit/lobbyist/national crowd, and that’s just a lost cause, IMO. It’s lock-step. There’s not even a debate let alone any dissent.
Just skip the federal races and focus on areas where there isn’t complete capture, and there’s some connection to constituents. That’s an option, short of tuning out completely and just handing the thing over to 15 billionaires and their politicians.
There is another option. Ride this anti Common Core grassroots movement and kick the nationals out of public education.
yes yes yes
Judge Rolf Treu was appointed by a Republican. If the case makes it to the Supreme Court, it is more likely to get a fair hearing from Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, than Scalia and Thomas. If the Court did not have a majority of conservative/reactionary jurists, cases like Citizens United would have been decided differently.
The thought of voters skipping a national race like the one between Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and Josh Mandel, or Massachusetts’ Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown, or electing a Republican President, who will appoint Supreme Court Justices discourages me more than the pronouncements of a bully and hypocrite like Duncan.
Agree.
2000, Bush v. Gore SCOTUS and 2004, Kerry in Ohio, are enough to give the
most civic minded second thoughts.
Arne Duncan, leader of our country’s public schools and our country’s teachers is as anti-teacher and as anti-public schools as they come.
What a disgusting farce. This is sickening.
He’s the worst of the pack of henhouse foxes.
This judge spits in the faces of every teacher in the United States.
And Duncan applauds.
“This is a whole new level of pissing on us while telling us it’s raining.”
Sadly, I have to admit that this statement, while offensive to the civilized among us, is by no means a stretch. It reflects exactly what is happening to public school teachers everywhere.
Rarely is such language called for.
This is one of those times, isn’t it?
I come from a family of girls. We tinkled. My daughter pisses. She has three brothers. Tinkled on us just does not create the same imagery.
The oligarchs will not be happy until everyone is an at-will employee, until they have the authority to make whatever decisions they wish to make, in their sole discretion, regarding the lives of others.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. That’s why we have due process. But even that eunuch’s shadow of tenure is too much for these people.
Here’s the future of teaching as the Ed Deformers see it:
Kids show up to a room, hundreds of them, and fire up their tablets. An at-will, contingent employee earning something like minimum wage walks among them to answer questions and make sure the tablets are working.
Class size doesn’t matter. Teaching, there’s an app for that. Just ask Gates or Duncan or Rhee Mike Petrilli or any of these Deformists.
What a horrific day for our nation’s teachers and for our children.
Shame on these people. Shame on this judge and on Arne Duncan, Secretary of the Department for the Standardization, Regimentation, Depersonalization, and Privatization of U.S. Education, formerly the USDE.
Sickening.
I am reminded of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
We need someone like you, Bob, to direct the appeal.
Yes, yes, yes. This comment deserves stars across the board.
They basically want babysitters to sit and watch the kids play on computers for the entire school day. Are the kids learning? Who cares? If they’re poor, they’re considered nothing more than future McDonald’s employees.
Also, bad test scores mean you can turn that school into a charter school and cook the books to make it look like your school is doing well (when in fact it isn’t). Since charter school teachers aren’t unionized, you know what that means.
I’ll bet we don’t see any of THEIR OWN children in the “promo” (propaganda) ads. That’s right… THEIR OWN children are in a small class with a real live teacher, and a library that is open, recess time, teachers that are trusted to do their job………..you know the analogy: All children are equal, but some children are more equal than others.
I’m glad someone is saying this out loud–and thank you for that, Peter Greene.
We need to reframe this and use the words due process instead of tenure.
To quote Mr. Dylan, “A hard rain is a gonna fall,” and it will fall on
our students as well as ourselves. What Arne Duncan and Gates and
company want could not be more clear.
That ain’t rain that’s a fallin!
If you had told me thirty years ago when I began my career …
People will hate and depise public school teachers. They will take away their retirement, their rights, and their jobs to win elections.
I would have laughed. No one ever wanted to pay teachers well. But we are at the point where they don’t even want to pay anything at all. But the part that is painful is that …. It’s our traditional friends and protectors who are leading the charge.
Yes! When I went to college with altruistic intentions of “giving back” and helping those less fortunate than I, I felt good about becoming a teacher. I felt noble and unselfish. I made very little money…$6800 per year…less than the part time bus driver…but it felt good to be giving. I loved the kids and loved being there for them.
As time marched on and salaries finally caught up with other professional salaries, I knew it wouldn’t be long before there were wage freezes and cuts. Along with that came larger class sizes, more expectations from poorly delivered professional development, and of course, tests, tests, tests. It only got worse with the onset of NCLB and it became a big “competition” to have a highly rated school. Then VAM came along. We were then pitted against others in our own school. Some never shared or, if they did, it required bowing down to their way of doing things.
I was always one to share…worksheets, websites, freebies, tricks, manipulative, etc. But when others don’t, it becomes a job not a profession.
Internal strife is bad enough. There will always be disgruntled parents. There will always be nervous and unruly kus. But when there is a national effort to be slammed against the wall by the likes of Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, and Bill Gates, fuel is added to the fire of disrespect.
It is unhealthy to be a teacher and to have to endure the kinds of remarks that are inherent to the VAM and evaluations thrown our way by often misinformed supervisors and no educators with lots of money.
I am sad for the future of education in America. I don’t know who this will help other than a few opportunists getting rich by taking.
Whatever happened to giving???