Arthur Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (CIESE) at
Stevens Institute of Technology, takes aim at Democrats for compromising with Republicans on education issues. He cites Martin Luther King’s warning about the moderates who abandon their principles in an effort to placate their adversaries.
He writes:
“At King’s writing in 1963, he decried the entreaties of “moderates” to be patient, to engage in less direct action, to accept slow incremental changes. Today, the brakes on transformational change come with the dogma of pragmatism. Especially in education policy, the politics of social justice and equality denial have taken a more cynical turn. Instead of promoting and supporting the highest quality education for every child, currently dominant education policies promote the expansion of charter schools in which parents must compete for limited slots for some children. Worse, taxpayer-funded charter schools drain funds from existing public schools. Instead of a national and state system of equitable funding for every school based on progressive income and corporate taxes, politicians leave unchallenged reliance on inequitable local property taxes and state funding formulas. Instead of a full-fledged assault on poverty, the pragmatists settle for escape from poverty for a few. Instead of advocating for enriching and expanding democratic participation, bipartisan support for state takeovers of local school governance and promotion of private charter schools has subverted democracy while making no substantive improvement in reducing inequity.”
We have come to expect that free-market zealots will tear down our public schools. But why are so many Democrats–think Andrew Cuomo, Dannell Malloy, Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, Rahm Emanuel–siding with those who would destroy our public schools?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Cory Booker, Hakim Jeffries — people like this need to be called out
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We’ve got the head of the destruction, Obama, our President. He has done so much damage, and with King continues to do so.
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It’s the money.
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Randi Weingarten as well–a Dem superdelegate who has pledged to support (drum roll, please!) Hillary Clinton, the good friend of Eli Broad.
The whole thing is sickening.
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We’ve got to get rid of this super delegate garbage. The DNC seems not to believe in (small d) democracy.
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I suggest an organized civilized outright rebellion using all the college aged young adults who support Sanders. We should help mobilize them to help obliterate the delegate system OR form a third part where one-person-one-vote becomes the only mechanism.
The Democrats are to blame for all sorts of components gone wrong in our society, and education is NOT the only one. They have become the moderate GOPs dressed up in another name.
Never look at the style and branding of the name; look at the substance of the Democrats’ voting patterns . . . . and it will tell a horrific tale, but one that can be a parable for the rest of us.
Live and learn . . . .
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RANDI? Didn’t know this. Of course it means she cancels out 10,000 Bernie votes. If her constituency is teachers, that means she is denying us our voice
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Thank you for posting this! My Democratic friends always look at me like a dog listening to a silent whistle when I explain how the greatest failure of the Obama administration has been education. When I say President Obama took President Bush’s No Child Left Behind and put it on steroids, they’re even more astounded. Will be sure to forward this to them.
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I get the same response from Obama supporters. They have no idea of the harm he has caused.
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Follow the $$$$
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Both major political parties are equally bad for education, and the fact that NEA endorsed Hillary Clinton will not influence me to vote for her, “no matter what”. Some would say I am about to “throw my vote away” (though I’m not conceding Sanders’ loss at this point) — but I will not vote for Clinton if she does get the democratic nomination. If we can’t get someone who values public education as a nominee for either party, then at least we can show the democrats that the teacher-vote cannot be taken for granted anymore. To echo Michelle Alexander (author of the New Jim Crow), make the party EARN the teacher vote.
After all, if we must have charters, we should have vouchers as well — there’s no philosophical difference. Or we can end taxpayer support of schools, period. Let kids go to private schools, or if they can’t afford that, just don’t go to school. If the rich people don’t want to pay their fair share of public schooling, why should we middle class types have to do so ? And at any rate, I do NOT want my taxes to go to not-publicly-accountable-or-controlled charters — AT ALL. That’s just un-democratic — and so is Hillary Clinton.
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These Democrats are NOT moderates. They are ZEALOUS privatizers who are willing to throw urban and rural school districts to the wolves.
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for give me for going off on this tangent but I know there are at least two “readers”here who love David Foster Wallace… also it might be of interest to other teachers of ELA. http://blog.hrc.utexas.edu/2016/01/29/fellows-find_stephenburn/ David Foster Wallace (his notes on his teaching)
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This is why I started the Green Educators Facebook group. Check us out here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/greeneducators/
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I was there the day the strength of Dem failed …
It was after Chicago 1968. The Democrat leadership started playing the GOP game. But the Democrat base never really had their hearts in it, never really got that good at it. The soul of the party can still be saved …
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Democrats are worse because
1. they didn’t come up with “market-based ed reform” themselves – they’ve simply adopted every conservative plan, idea and policy and pasted it under “Democrats” and,
2. they deliberately mislead voters in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida and Wisconsin by claiming Democrats support existing public schools and Republicans don’t. That’s not true. They two Parties are identical in their abandonment of public schools in those states.
They lose points against Republicans on both originality and honesty.
At least Jeb Bush doesn’t travel the country claiming to be a great friend of public schools, like President Obama did and Secretary Clinton will.
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Clinton signed the New Market Tax Credits which is fueling the drive to profit from education. Corporations and billionaires seek tax credits and tax write offs when they invest in charter schools. The government is inviting them to “invest” in public education, and “Pay for Success” will have a similar impact on special education, preschool, and ELLs.
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I thought Condi was doing the work for him… Also, we had NH ads that showed how marvelous Jeb was in the FL schools and people in FL write that he wasn’t…. I would not excuse Jeb on this front he had an ad in NH that was laughable claiming how marvelous he was and as if he created the universe and it ended as if on the 7th day “the children began to learn” (that was the exact ending” the children began to learn” as if no education had taken place before he was Governor… it was laughable and idiotic/ very juvenile
At least Jeb Bush doesn’t travel the country claiming to be a great friend of public schools,
jeanhaverhill@aol.com
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The part that kills me is how they so consistently renege of their part of the bargain. Public schools were told they would get support from lawmakers if they adopted these testing schemes and teacher rankings, and lawmakers didn’t hold up their end of the bargain under NCLB. In fact, it got worse for public schools.
Next, we were told if we just adopted Common Core the promised “support” would appear, and now that isn’t happening either. Schools have higher standards but less support than when the Common Core marketing effort was launched.
Public schools cannot win at this game. It doesn’t matter what they do or don’t do. They can keep following these directives- I guess they don’t have any choice- but after 20 years I’d stop waiting for the promised “support” to appear after the mandate goes in.
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The blame game only includes blaming teachers and schools. We never hear a mention of policymakers role in allowing schools to deteriorate and their years of under funding. Cuomo ignored a court order for under funding schools, and he just gets to ignore it. Isn’t Synder responsible for the disgusting conditions in Detroit schools? He poisons an entire city in order for people to start blaming him for the state’s problems.
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THE GAME IS RIGGED: Following Citizens United, big money can not only legally bribe politicians by spending unlimited amounts in their name, they can threaten to spend unlimited amounts against them.
This forces voluntary compliance by both Republicans and Democrats, coordinated through media and astroturf outlets using coded expressions like “failure factories” and “accountability”. Those who attend the right functions, repeat these phrases (and vote accordingly) get the funding, right? It’s not corrupt unless there is a quid-pro-quo said aloud or written down.
The Democrats are guilty, since taking the White House, of trying to fix endemic problems in education through the USDOE which they haven’t the authority to do. But instead of creating jobs and increasing holistic supports in low-income neighborhoods, the Obama administration fell for the idea that more standardized testing will provide “valuable data” so we can once and for all figure out which students aren’t doing well.
Now that it’s caused mass civil disobedience, the President is putting band-aids on his policies, but remains unapologetic in his support for charter schools.
The charter idea is insidious, in that it was specifically designed replicate solutions to persistent problems across the entire system. Just the opposite, charter schools have been systematically avoiding the most problematic students through a rigged intake scheme, excluding kids whose parents are not on top of an application process to enter into a competitive lottery.
The cherry-picking then continues through suspensions and expulsions, resulting in a classrooms full of of calm, motivated, compliant learners who have better home support. Conversely, public schools in these areas have higher concentrations of disruptive or special needs students, making comparison impossible. Yet compare they do, holding up charters as models of achievement.
An organizer I know suggested to me this whole idea reminded him of the “talented tenth”, a concept he credited to W.E.B. Dubois that secured good educations for gifted children of color knowing the other 90% faced certain discrimination. The point was to have the better students “represent” the race. Decades later, resource starved neighborhoods still have high and low strata, deliberately set up to segregate instead of equalize.
My school took in students rejected by charters – one is in the shelter system and the other was bouncing between her grandmother and the streets. They have not been ideal behaviorally, but they have both improved in many measurable ways, including attendance and engagement.
As public school advocates, we need to insist fairness for all instead of accepting a half sandwich – or less. With charter schools, this is simply asking them to stop skirting the law that created them.
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Hi I wish someone would come to harlem community school district 5 it’s a real horror story we call it chartervill USA its a sad sight death ears have fallen on parent public school that have charter schools co-located look good have the best furniture and might I add air-condition yes do you believe that the charters schools in district are just simply the cream of the crop I could go on and on can you help us here in district 5 help inequality
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