COME ON DEMS, LET’S GET REAL
Diane Ravitch has forward a draft of the Democratic Party’s platform for the coming convention. I must remember that it is just a draft and not the final iteration.
Even with the DRAFT stamp on each page, it contains tried and true words that mom couldn’t disagree with.
The education section is strange in its placement. Of the thirteen sections of the draft, education is listed at number 7. No, the listings are not in any alphabetical order. I would take that as a priority setting plain and simple.
Pre-K and K-12 are the last listing in the education section. Besides all of the traditional bromides about how important education is, there is a thread of division of public education into a number of parts. There are high quality community schools that will be high quality no matter what their zip code. It appears that the folks who wrote these lines are not in the twenty-first century, but are locked in the verbiage of the 1980’s and 90’s. There appear to be no specific suggestions as to how we will achieve this end. That was a problem then and is still a problem.
There are not for profit public charter schools. Those schools are approved to help elevate our children’s performance. Somehow we will see to it that those schools will give parents a choice of two good options.
The next grouping of schools are the for profit public charterschools. In these cases we will make them transparent and hold them accountable.They should not be cheating the public out of taxpayer funds. Does anyone really believe that the federal government has the capacity to close down such horrible places? It is my understanding that the word education does not appear in the federal constitution.
The draft intones some of the world shaking promises that they (the Democratic Party) will end such things as the school to prison pipeline, stop bullying, recruit good teachers, give teachers the resources they need to improve education. Since poverty is a critical element in the education of our children, will we eliminate poverty? In fact, how are we going to do all of these things? Have any of these folks stepped into a public school recently? Have they seen the marvelous things being done in a well resourced school and conversely have they seen a school where there are no chemistry labs, few pieces of technology and a staff that turns over every year? Have they seen a school where the turnover in students is 85% from the beginning of the year to the end of school?
Please, no more falderal from another era. Race to the Top did very little good. Stop giving billions to hedge fund managers who run for-profit public charter schools. Get down in the nitty gritty of teaching children- safe environment, excellent teaching, proper resources and good leadership. That’s about it for a k-12 platform.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I believe that everything said in the post is accurate and the best thing Democrats can do is remove the federal government from public education.
The one thing Democrats need to make sure of is that Democratic Governors like Connecticuts Dam Malloy is left out of any platform decisions since he has been selling off public education in Connecticut to every for profit group that he comes in contact with.
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I agree.
Now how do you get the Democrats to write that into the platform? Federal government should be out of state education decisions.
The lobbyists in the NGA have found out that they can control state ed policy as long as they’re in charge in D.C.
Too much money to gain by controlling the tests, software, etc with online learning right now.
The only way to stop that is gaining back local control at the state and district level.
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An email to the principal of an elementary school in Germany. My son is attending it as a guest student for the month of July. Bavaria has school through July.
Dear Fr. K – – –
You have a wonderful school and I tell my colleagues about it in the USA. Our elementary schools (especially the district I work in) are packed with technology – computer carts, Smart boards, etc. and I have always been against it because I feel it takes away from the basics our youngest students need to learn. My thinking has been unpopular. I am so happy to see an elementary school that seems to have very little technology – with students doing real hands on activities.
Thank you again –
D. Di Gregorio
___________________________
The schools here in Germany educate the child plainly. My son had many pages copied, was to circle the subject and predicate in sentences and worked on multiplication all without Smart board and the other junk used in elementary classrooms in the USA. Students here use fountain pens. The after school program ( starts 1:00 p.m.) serves lunch on tables that are set with metal flatware, real plates and a nice white napkin (paper). The food truck I noticed making deliveries said BIO on the side meaning organic.
If this “old fashioned” approach was embraced by a school district – it would be considered a boutique school. An increasing percentage of parents seek this out and it is a largely unaddressed “market” for public education – there will be a district that figures this out I predict – and it will be good for the students and the district will be all over in the news – and parents will flock to that town with a school system bold enough to be different in a good way.
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Killing K-12 public education at the altar of privatization may be the most bipartisan federal policy of the next 4 years (as it has been for the past 20), regardless of who is elected. Let’s quit deluding ourselves that Democrats care about public education. They only care about what Wall St. dictates. They’re on the same page as the most reactionary Repugs. I’m smelling a Clinton/Booker ticket.
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The Aspen Institute’s education programs (funded by Gates) provide proof. The Aspen Board includes Madelyn Albright and David Koch (his photo vanished from the website array a few weeks ago).
Isn’t the Dept. of Ed., the most captured of the federal departments?
Isn’t Ed. carrying out the plutocratic agenda of Aspen?
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Agreed; this is not the kind of platform that we wish.
HOWEVER
I have not yet seen the Republican party’s platform.
Whoever we vote for, the teacher’s unions, teacher’s themselves, superintendent’s associations, PTAs all must make their concerted voices heard. The Chicago teacher’s unions worked with their fellow citizens and have made their voices heard. They have led the way. Others must follow their lead.
As in all our history the people who have been left out of the political maelstrom have had to work for years and even then the complete list of what was wished has not been accomplished.
But
without that effort nothing would have been accomplished.
As someone stated in one of these blogs get off your backsides and work to accomplish that which you wish to accomplish.
The history of education is one in which progress was slow in coming but it came eventually.
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We can now stop it with the focus on the Dem party platform! It leaves a ton of space for charters, the reform movement and privatization in general! Period! Why would we think otherwise? There has been no too-loud-to-ignore movement on the part of unionized teachers. There has been no reclaiming and redirecting the narrative by us. There has been no reason for any democrat to truly take our side against the reformers.
At bottom the reformers have a narrative that is based in the rhetoric of civil rights and movements for social justice. We haven’t moved that peg in the slightest. Democrats have money and really sound rhetoric coming at them from the reform/privatizing side. On our side they see blood in the water: dying unions with leadership all too willing to sell out their membership (and dont think for a second that politicians and party people dont see the pathetic mass of union leaders like Weingarten for what they are: somewhat useful weak fools) Instead we thought opt out would cure what ails us. It Didnt.
As always we think we are the victims of awful politicians and private interest. And to a huge extent we are. However, we forget that we have (had?) agency and power too. One day maybe we’ll see we played this all wrong.
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“we thought opt out would cure what ails us. It didn’t.”
Opt-out NY is having a major influence on the future of Cuomo’s Regents reform Agenda. The new BOR headed by Dr. Rosa will be making recommendations to the legislature that should eliminate virtually every damaging aspect of this ed-policy disaster. Why conflate NY opt-out with a generic, and admittedly lame national platform plank they in years past no one paid any attention to?
I’d rather go down with a glass half-full but I understand your half -empty mind set. Time will tell.
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In fact many districts in NYS have completely neutered Andy’s dreaded and damaging test score evaluation component of APPR.
Writing a single SLO for all teachers, tied to a pool of Regents scores, has eliminated all local pre and post tests and has lifted all of the pressure on individual teachers virtually eliminating test-prep as the gold standard. So the use of test scores as 50% of the APPR evaluation has become moot issue. This alone will dramatically alter classroom dynamics and begin the return to sanity in NYS schools.
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The only way the only party we can ever hope will help restore public education to what it should be is the democrat party. The only way they will back away from the policies that make that impossible is to suffer consequences. A bi-product of those consequences might be the election of Donald Trump. It might be worth it to start collecting the dividends of proper attention to education in 2018 and 2020. It might not be worth it.
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“Progressive” Sen. Sherrod Brown, just found the charter school fraud in Ohio, last week. He still wants charters, he just wants operators like Fordham institute, which happens to be funded by the Waltons.
Martin Gilens’ research reported that those of us, among the 90%, have no impact in D.C. If it is, as I suspect, the plutocratic, bi-partisan, Aspen Institute that governs education, the only option is to run them out-of-town, on a rail. It’s unlikely, since Joe Biden just spoke to the group, which included Newt Gingrich. (Board members include Madelyn Albright and David Koch).
The US is an oligarchy.
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“Progressive” Sen. Sherrod Brown, just found the charter school fraud in Ohio, last week.”
Was he looking under his couch for it like Dumbya did for the WMD?
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🙂
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I just feel further and further way from “Democratic leaders” or “my representatives”.
I listen to them talking about The Working Class or The Middle Class and it sounds like they’re studying some remote tribe. I read an Obama interview in Bloomberg on “populism” and it’s all “they think”. Who are “they”? Why aren’t they “us”?
Democrats in DC are probably happy labor unions are all but gone- labor unions just get in the way- they annoy technocrats- but I think the decline of labor unions have hurt Democrats at least as much as it’s hurt labor unions. It’s severed the one connection they had to actual large groups of working class people. Working class people are so fragmented now- there’s no entity that even attempts to represent their interests. I feel as if Democrats have LITERALLY “lost touch” with them- they don’t hear from them.
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