Joseph Ricciotti, a retired educator, asks the question posed in the title: Why are Democrats in Connecticut acting like Republicans?
He cites the advice of two veteran Connecticut teachers who expressed the hope that Governor Dannel Malloy would replace outgoing Commissioner Stefan Pryor with an educator. Imagine! An educator as state commissioner of education!
He writes:
It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist for Gov. Malloy and President Obama to know that the Democrats across the nation lost in the mid-term elections because they governed like Republicans.
What will it take for Malloy and Obama to understand that teachers are among the Democrats largest constituency and cannot be taken for granted. In simple terms, teachers and parents are disgusted with the privatization movement with its focus on high-stakes testing and teacher evaluations tied to the tests.
It is a well known fact that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has earned the dubious distinction from many teachers and parents as a misguided, non-educator secretary with his agenda of testing, punitive accountability and, most of all, Common Core.
In essence, these principles are Republican principles and Democrats cannot win elections by acting like Republicans. If, for example, Jeb Bush were to be president, Common Core would undoubtedly be his highest priority.
Commissioner Pryor, another non-educator, also shares this vilification in Connecticut as both Pryor and Duncan should be replaced with educators that meet the criteria suggested by the award winning teachers from Ridgefield.
The Connecticut Department of Education under Pryor is now an agency without credibility, driven by special interests, charter school advocates and ideologies that are not based in reality. Pryor and other corporate reformers have discounted the real factors that hold children back: poverty, fear and instability.
Sadly, it is their belief that “bad teachers” are responsible for troubled schools and that the student SBAC tests aligned with Common Core will somehow expose “bad teachers” by partly basing teacher evaluations on student test scores. In essence, these beliefs are systematically destroying confidence in public education and, as a result, Commissioner Pryor has lost the confidence of teachers and parents.
It is time for new leadership and a new direction for public education in Connecticut.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Beats me. I think Democrats are going for complete Republican control at the state level.
“Republicans now hold all the reins of power—the governorship and both houses of the state legislature—in 23 states. That’s up from just nine before the 2010 elections. There are now more states under single-party control than at any time since 1944. ”
Maybe they don’t care. All the operatives and policy people and orgs and media outlets are getting paid whether it’s R or D, and really what’s the difference? If they lose the elected office they just move smoothly into the influential private sector job they got as a result of the elected office, where they lobby the person who won. No one ever gets kicked out of the club.
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I have had the same concern for some time. Why are Democrats acting like Republicans when it comes to education? Cuomo has it in for teachers and schools. They won’t consider educational research or education experts. They paint all education with the broad brush of failure…refusing to acknowledge actual public school successes. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but if I were I’d wonder if a political pack has been made regarding doing away with public education. A pack where all the politicians get a payout and promise of financial support if they cooperate. I often wonder how doctors or lawyers would react if this were happening to their profession.
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They are all drinking at the same fountain of neoliberalism, which means they want crush labor and privatize public services.
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I saw on business sites yesterday they were celebrating that there were many fewer public sector jobs since 2009 but more private sector jobs.
How many of those “private sector jobs” they “created” are government contracting, I wonder? Does anyone know? If I privatize 10% of a whole public sector (like public schools) do I get to claim “smaller government” and “private sector job growth”? Wow. neat accounting trick. Presto chango. They really ARE creative!
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I just read one of the best descriptions of neoliberalism by Emily Vuong, a doctoral student in economics in Australia. She states,”Neoliberalism has been described as ‘little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy. It’s the old Gordon Gekko rhetoric, “Greed is good,” with a fancy name.
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Anyone who doesn’t understand this by now is simply not paying attention. Democrats and Republicans worship at the same alter – money. Wall Street has that money. Wall Street wants privatization. If you want money from Wall Street, you do what Wall Street tells you.
The only counter for this is a viable third party. All of those people who sigh and claim they’re fed up with both parties need to start putting their money and their votes where their mouths are. I’m really tired of the excuse that a third-party vote is a throw-away that will get the “wrong” party elected. The wrong party gets elected every single time – it doesn’t even matter whether it’s the Democrats or the Republicans.
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You are correct on all fronts. I’m just glad more people are starting to see the light. A little late albeit but still promising nonetheless.
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“He’s made a decision to move on,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said during a campaign stop in New London on Monday. “He’s done good work, and I hope to have a good working relationship with him.”
Once you’re in the club you’re in for life. He did his three years, which seems to be about the limit for ed reformers. It doesn’t actually matter where he officially “works”. Public sector-private sector is seamless. He went from government contractor to government. Now he can go back to government contracting or government, whatever. Same people.
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Ideologically, it’s no longer about Democrats vs. Republicans. It’s about the moneyed political class supporting the super-moneyed class who continue to work against the interests of the many. Sad. The quaint designations of Democrats and Republicans only remind ourselves of what we could have built if we’d been more vigilant.
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I swear, I had a ‘what the” moment last night when at the end of The Bill Maher, show, the last LINE in his ending monologue ‘New Rules” — he talked about the police action in nY and went on to say, …”and you can’t fire tenured teachers!”
HUH?
Someone has to tell him that in California alone tens of thousands of tenure teachers were charged with anything and everything, and every single one was fired BECAUSE the administrators of schools are not sworn under penalty of perjury so they cannot be sued for the abuse of due process WHICH IS THE OPERATING PROCESS TO REMOVE ANY TEACHER.
it is the process across America that I have put forth since 2004
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
The ‘gotcha squad that Betsy Combier has chronicled for over a decade
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.html
liars with impunity under the law, got me in 1998 –and I was a celebrated educator with all the proof.
Ya know folks… the cop who signs your summons is ‘SWORN UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY” which simply means that if he signs it, it is TRUE, OR you have the RIGHT to see and present evidence in a REAL COURT, not some kangaroo version in some cockamaime ‘hearing.’ that the union permits when it does not stand up for teachers at grievance hearings.
I don’t wanna start trouble….BUT— ALL OF YOU — WHO KNOW THAT YOUR JOB IS IN THE HANDS OF PEOPLE WHO CAN LIE AND PUT YOU OUT, write to him and his producers at HBO, and at his site or youtube, say “shut up Bill, when you don’t know what you are talking about…cause it aint funny!
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Bill Maher is a an Obama loving partisan dirtbag. I can’t listen to that fool for more than minute before wanting to throw the remote through the television. Wake up people all of the media is owned by a handful of corporations which basically means you are receiving the same messages just disguised as something else.
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I woke up long ago, when Marshall McLuhan wrote The Media I the Message” and Vance Packard explained “The Hidden Persuaders” when television was new technology and no one realized that some day they would be selling g lies about more than dish soap and deodorants. I have taught media studies forever, and I saw this
http://billmoyers.com/segment/john-nichols-and-robert-mcchesney-on-big-money-big-media/
and I know that the dark money is controlling everything…
http://billmoyers.com/2014/09/22/5-signs-dark-money-apocalypse-upon-us/?utm_source=General+Interest&utm_campaign=94370722aa-Midweek_0924149_24_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4ebbe6839f-94370722aa-168347829
The destruction of public education is nothing compared to the destruction that the TTP will bring to our laws and our land. The central issue of our time is the reality of widening inequality of income and wealth. Everything else — the government shutdown, the fight over the debt ceiling, the continuing negotiations over the budget deficit — is a dangerous distraction. The Right’s success in generating this distraction is its greatest, and most insidious, triumph.
It is just that his last line was so unnecessary in that piece about the NYC cops and their behavior to the mayor… For me, it was a defining moment, of this war on teachers.
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Citizens United. Only plutocrats can run and win.
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Is this psychotic , or what? Duncan etc are Democrats. If anything they are in on it. What do you think?
Sent from my iPad
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They don’t truly believe that bad teachers are the problem; that is just the frame within which they have chosen their narrative. They have been disproved time and again, but their agenda is to dismantle public education and funnel public taxes into the the hands of their cronies. Period. We have to stop writing what they want written; their goals are the only truths…all else is means to an end, rhetoric, masterful manipulation, and back door deals. They are ruthless.
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Donna YOU got it… Please see my comment on this page !!!!!
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The Democrats govern as Republicans because it enriches them, both as a Party and as individuals.
The Overclass has known for over a generation (if not always) that it’s important to “butter both sides of your bread,” and contribute to both parties. Democrats are able to take in hundreds of millions of dollars from Wall Street and Silicon Valley, contingent on their remaining captive to their every wish. Their seeming paralysis and abasement before Republicans with stronger beliefs and stiffer backbones is in fact quite lucrative.
Additionally, as writer and former congressional staffer Matt Stoller has pointed out, their actions (and strategic inaction) are not done with an eye toward re-election, but rather toward their post-electoral careers, where the selling out of their ostensible constituents is a valuable currency in marketing themselves as prospective employees and representatives of the very industries that previously funded their campaigns, and where the real money is to be made.
Bill Clinton has reportedly earned over $200 million dollars since leaving office, and you can just tell that Obama is greedily and competitively looking to exceed that. Toward that end, and in keeping with his long history as a betrayer of the people he claims to speak for, he’s having his factotum Rahm Emanuel grab twenty acres of public park land in Chicago for his Presidential Library, a well-established slush fund for former Presidents.
While there are honorable exceptions to this dynamic, the dirty secret is that these are wars that Democrats covertly love to lose.
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Truth is Democrats act like some Republicans, not all. It is the Tea Party Republican extremists who are pushing that party’s leadership to question Common Core and Duncan’s testing nightmare, and the same thing could happen to the Democrats if only a progressive party would form on the left under the leadership of folks like Bernie Sanders and , possibly, Elizabeth Warren and Jerry Brown. But it seems like money talks and loyalty to our failed President rules, so that no progressive changes will happen until the next election at the earliest. And with Hillary waiting to be crowned, that is doubtful.
When a Luddite like Ted Cruz leads the charge this year to gut the Common Core and standardized testing mandates of the DOE, will anyone be surprised if Cory Booker filibusters?
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One thing I thought was positive was the clip where the NJ lawmakers questioned Cami Anderson. I don’t know if you-all listened to it, but they were really angry that she doesn’t show them any respect.
Of course she doesn’t show them any respect. They completely relinquished any duty and responsibility they had to a small group of unelected ed reformers and contractors.
I thought it was great they figured that out. Lawmakers risk irrelevancy. with “relinquishing”. We don’t need them at all if their role is to pay contractors to provide services. Anyone can do that job. We could actually outsource THAT.
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Because they are all working for the same constituency: Big Money.
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I don’t think they really believe that “bad teachers” are to blame. They know that’s not true-but where would the profit be in attacking poverty?
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