Dana Goldstein, veteran education journalist, reports that Hillary Clinton is striking a very different note with teachers and their unions than Obama did.
Obama’s education policies were shaped to cut the power of unions and to reduce teachers’ job protections. His administration was openly hostile to public schools and teachers. In response to the hedge fund managers at Democrats for Education Reform, whose favorite he was, and to the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, the Obama administration invested heavily in privately managed charter schools and forced thousands of public schools to close, based on their test scores. The burden of school closings fell mainly on poor communities of color, which were destabilized by his punitive policies.
Goldstein says that Hillary is taking a very different tack:
Clinton’s speech to the NEA was notable both for what she said and, perhaps even more so, for what she didn’t say. She promised to expand access to child care and pre-K, pay teachers more, forgive their college debt, construct new school buildings, and bring computer science courses into K-12 education. While a brief mention of successful charter schools (most of which are not unionized) was met with scattered boos, for the most part the audience of activist teachers greeted Clinton ecstatically, chanting “Hillary, Hillary!”
Following eight years of federally driven closures and turnarounds of schools with low test scores, which have put union jobs at risk, it was music to the NEA’s ears when the presumptive Democratic nominee promised to end “the education wars” and “stop focusing only on quote, ‘failing schools.’ Let’s focus on all our great schools, too.” And in a big departure from the school-reform rhetoric of President Barack Obama, the only time Clinton referenced “accountability” was to refer not to getting rid of bad teachers, but to giving unions a bigger voice in education policy. “Advise me and hold me accountable,” she said. “Keep advocating for your students and your profession.”
This speech, the first big moment for K-12 education in this general election, signals a potentially meaningful shift in Democratic Party education politics. The Obama era has been, often, a painful one for teachers-union activists. Obama launched his presidential campaign in 2007 as an ally of Democrats for Education Reform, a group of philanthropists (most with ties to the financial sector) who support weakening teachers’ tenure protections, evaluating teachers according to their students’ test scores, and increasing the number of public charter schools.
Obama held many positions with which teachers’ unions agreed, like helping teachers improve through peer mentorship programs and pushing states to embrace the Common Core national curriculum standards. Still, he represented a wing of the Democratic Party that thought unions held too much sway over education policy, and in 2008, the NEA chose not to endorse in the Democratic primary, while the other national teachers’ union, the American Federation of Teachers, endorsed Obama’s primary challenger, Hillary Clinton.*
As president, Obama followed through on his promises to union critics. He created a $4 billion program, Race to the Top, that tied federal education dollars to policies like evaluating teachers according to student test scores and weakening tenure protections, so underperforming teachers could more easily be fired.
Goldstein’s conclusion is premature:
It’s safe to say it is a new day for the Democratic Party on education policy. But here’s hoping that Clinton’s turn toward the unions doesn’t mean she lets go of some of the Obama administration’s more promising recent ideas.
It is too soon to say whether it is a new day for the Democratic policy on education policy. DFER has not gone away, nor have the billionaires who want to crush teachers, unions, and public schools.
And I wonder what the Obama administration’s “more promising recent ideas” are. I haven’t heard them. John King was known in New York for his zealous embrace of Common Core, high-stakes testing, opposition to opt out, and commitment to evaluating teachers by test scores. His brief tenure as Education Secretary does not show any disposition on his part to abandon those policies.
So, as the saying goes, time will tell. We should all give Hillary Clinton a chance to change direction. Heaven knows we can’t continue with the federal government making war on public schools and their teachers. If that’s what she means by ending the education wars, I am all for it.
Well, I had a lot I was going to say, but I think this about covers it all. Thanks.
You nailed it here.
Get the CorpProfiteer$ out of our classrooms, away from our children, stop treating students with heavy handed disciplinary tactics, stop arming and creating urban schools into armed camps, STOP NO EXCUSES, treat children with kind discipline, teach them to care and be kind to others…we can never be a kind society if we are treating our children, their parents and teachers with such shame and disrespect.
Hillary’s & Obama’s children attended the Sidwell Friends School. What if every school in America were a replica of such a school? What if every child were treated as if their parents were RICH?
STOP THE INSANITY OF COMPETITIONS at every turn! Our children do not have to constantly be compared and compete while in school.
Children did not pick their parents, their circumstances, their physical and intellectual abilities. #AllLivesMatter and it starts in the crib, PreK – 12.
How DARE our Nation preach around the world about Democracy and Human Rights!
How dare we! We have lots of work to do to heal our souls, raise kind children, respect their parents and teachers, respect our elderly…our curriculum is full of useless skills if we ignore and pretend that our decency, respect, care and responsibility for our fellow humans are not worthy – only test scores, being 1st, money, money, money and NEVER GIVING AN INCH to anyone.
The world is watching and judge us by our actions every day. We have created a MESS!
How’s it working for us?
Get the CorpProfiteer$, Reformsters, legislators & BILLIONAIRES out of our schools. We must start there. Our communities need their schools back, their jobs back, their safety and respect back!
Here’s Arthur Goldsteins take on the Dana’s fluff piece – Platitudes Ahoy from Hillary at NEA:
While it’s nice that these guys have finally taken the crucial step of paying valuable lip service to these things, the fact is they’ve done jack squat on the testing front, and John King is, in fact, trying to subvert ESSA to ensure that more testing be done, spirit and letter of the law be damned. And despite the alleged philosophical evolution of President Obama, I haven’t heard him raise a peep over King’s disregard for the law.
You’ll pardon me for not getting overly enthusiastic here, but I’ve watched our AFT President Randi Weingarten very carefully, along with our local President Michael Mulgrew, and I’ve heard a lot about what President Obama has said. Those words have not changed much for those of us who actually do the work. Things seem to get worse each and every year, no matter what they say. Here’s more on our commander-in-chief:
http://nyceducator.com/2016/07/platitudes-ahoy-from-hillary-at-nea.html
Arther Goldstein pulls no punches!
Hillary is bought and paid for by her Wall Street cronies. Sitting on the Walmart Board in Arkansas speaks volumes about her support of labor. Hillary will be most generous to “not for profit” quality charters. The stabbing in the back of traditionally credentialed public school teachers will proceed unabated.
Yes, let’s not get carried away here, Diane. Most of us know what HIllary is and who she represents (other than herself). Hillary says whatever suits the moment.
On the TPP we see Donahue President of the National Chamber say : Don’t worry what she says now in the end she’s with us . “If she were to get nominated, if she were to be elected, I have a hunch that what runs in the family is you get a little practical if you ever get the job,”
Call me a skeptic. Lets see what goes into the platform on every issue . Platforms mean nothing but if she can not even bring progressive views into the platform,it is a good indicator of where her Presidency will be.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2016/07/dfer-is-thrilled-with-dnc-platform-and.html
I don’t like the piece because it adopts the same frame as ed reform.
This:
“Obama wasn’t wrong about the excesses of teacher tenure. But in a system in which administrators find it difficult to recruit and retain proven educators to work in racially segregated, high-poverty schools, the challenge of firing teachers has never been the central one in overcoming the achievement gaps Obama hoped to close. He and his allies hugely oversimplified the relevant social science, which hardly points to teachers alone as being responsible for low test scores.”
It shouldn’t matter if “unions” opposed the Obama/ed reform agenda. She says Obama and his allies “hugely oversimplified” the problem, which led to bad solutions.
They were wrong. Their approach was wrong. It was wrong no matter what “unions” thought of it.
Public schools are more than labor unions. I’ve been a public school parent for 25 years and I went to a public school.
The Obama/edreform/media focus on labor unions is NOT shared by parents, in my experience.
We discuss all kinds of problems in our public schools here- funding (always number one), discipline. testing, attendance. No one outside of ed reform and people in DC spend this much time on labor unions.
There are two big private sector shipping companies- UPS and Fed Ex. UPS is unionized and Fed Ex is not. When we discuss how to send something in my office we don’t have a discussion that begins and ends with the relative merits of the Teamster organization. We talk about sending the parcel. That’s my experience with parents and public schools too.
If Obama backs non-union Fed Ex over union UPS and he’s WRONG about parcel delivery he’s still WRONG about parcel delivery, unions or no unions.
To me the biggest disappointment on public schools and the Obama Years was not the Administration- they came in with an agenda and they pursued it.
The biggest disappointment was the lack of pushback (or even any real analysis) by governors and state legislatures. They weren’t “bribed” or “coerced” into swallowing this stuff whole- 4 billion spread over 50 states isn’t enough to “bribe” anyone. Many Ohio public school districts spent more on RttT than they received.
They swallowed it whole because they are completely captured by the same ed reform lobby that captured the federal government.
Checks and balances failed miserably. They all ran off a cliff together. There was NO pushback, no analysis, no questions. It’s frightening how lockstep it was.
Actions count more than words. If Hillary is elected, who she appoints to run the Department of Education will probably reveal if she is going to do what she said. We will have to wait and see.
So HRC offers us a question that has to wait to be answered, but we already know what The Donald will do so keeping him out of the White House is vital.
But what happens of there is a rebellion at the GOP convention and we end up with someone else running for president on the Republican ticket?
None of of the GOP candidates that ran against Trump will support traditional public education. At this time HRC is a question mark, but there is no question mark for any of the GOP candidate no matter who it is. Every one of them is dedicated to destroying community based, democratic, transparent, non profit public education and turning our children, not theirs, over to autocratic, opaque, often fraudulent and inferior, child abusing, for-profit corporate charters.
I think that Mr. Trump would likely try to abolish the federal Dept. of Ed.
I think The Donald would like to get rid of the Congress and the Supreme Court.
And Trump would claim the selling price reflected his great negotiating skills, quickly sending the money to his personal bank account.
You hit the nail right on its head! Trump as President? He would fail the citizenship test my daughter-in-law will be required to pass to become a citizen. You never know what the successful candidate will do in office. I remember when HW said he wanted to be the education president and later said that was just a campaign remark. The way to hold politicians accountable is to vote every year in EVERY election. The racist and paranoid Republican base does that while the Democrats stay home, not enough moderate Republicans left to overcome their real party base. We do need Hillary to talk to Diane!
Something for Hillary to read. NAEP, Common Core and all that.
http://blog.independent.org/2016/07/07/school-may-be-out-but-the-criticism-of-common-core-isnt-taking-a-vacation/
Interesting news here. Wrong conclusion, though, in its specifics.
http://triblive.com/mobile/10626484-96/common-core-college
Thanks for the link Akademos!
Oh, come on… Let’s not be so naive…
Remember when Candidate Obama said the following?
“Don’t tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles in a standardized test. We know that’s not true. You didn’t devote your lives to testing. You devoted it to teaching. And teaching is what you should be allowed to do” (1:08 – 1:36).
(See for yourselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9EkX_gX6R8 )
Candidate Obama supported the kind of education I like; President Obama did not. I really don’t expect anything different from Secretary Clinton.
While I respect Goldstein, her assertions here are indicative of the “Igon Value Problem.” ( http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Igon_Value_Problem )
Her history is there, so shame on us if we believe anything she says. She will do whatever she feels will help get her elected, then proceed to do whatever she feels will help her get re-elected. She will bow to the big investors. How anybody could ever think that this woman cares about anyone except the American aristocracy, I don’t know.
It sickens me that she so blatantly panders to large unions at the moment, when we know she will stab labor in the back. But I guess it works, because apparently there are people who vote for whomever their union endorses.
Randi Weingarten Was Present When Governor Cuomo Rolled Out His “Break The Public School Monopoly” Rhetoric At A Forbes Event
http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2014/12/randi-weingarten-was-present-when.html?spref=bl
I ‘hope’ that Hillary can suddenly rise above all the pressure that will be coming from her millionaire and billionaire donors. Even if she does care, which is already a bit optimistic, she will have to care more about teachers than about herself, which is very unlikely to happen. While she might have made it to “the top,” if she becomes president, that does not mean she will be above blackmail and physical threats. If you think Obama was not nefariously pressured by powerful groups to do what THEY wanted, think again. TPP is good example.
Goldstein has an agenda…….don’t believe a word of it!!!
At this stage of the ed reform era, a decade and a half, one can only conclude that the teachers’ unions and many teachers suffer from battered person syndrome: abused, belittled, betrayed, but always loyal.
However, since there is any easy out, I have nothing but disgust for their loyalty. HRC is a master manipulator, and their puppet strings are showing in the sun light.
I was incredulous when I read this post. Narrowing the opposition to “teacher union activists” demeans the democracy of the United States. Americans don’t want privatized public education. They don’t want schools-in-a-box for their children. They don’t want the hollowed out communities that result from the loss of education dollars that act as an economic multiplier. What Americans do want is the cohesion and sense of belonging that comes from local schools, with democratically elected overseers. What they do want is for Wall Street and Silicon Valley, to contain their naked greed, rather than exploiting taxpayers and children. (And, in the case of the financial sector, they want the plutocrats to stop dragging down the economy and contribute to GDP. And, Americans want multinational corporations to stop leeching off of the nation, by avoiding taxes.) But, mainly, Americans want the nation rid of oligarchs and plutocrats. The fact that teacher union members may agree should be a subset talking point, for any journalist, including those in education.
And let’s not forget that Lily & the NEA is whoop-de-doing and patting themselves on the back for passage of the E.S.S.A. Yes, indeed, “Pay for Success” (courtesy of Golman-Sachs) is going to keep our kids from having special needs! Imagine–if EVERY child is in preschool (& does well, this based on “standardized” tests {most likely published by Pear$on})–very few or NO children will ever need special education services again!!
Greatest miracle since the parting of the Red Sea!
My husband and I took out a second mortgage to fully fund our daughter’s college education to become a teacher. She graduated in 2010 and did not land a teaching job for 3 years (while working “in” education). We’re still paying off the 2nd mortgage and likely in spring 2017 will sell our tiny outdated in-need-of-upgrading home for $200,000 if we’re lucky. Where is my student loan forgiveness?
I believe nothing that Hillary says. We’ll see IF she wins. I fear that each of Clinton and Trump will be horrible presidents, and more of the same as Obama. With Obama, impoverished blacks, browns, whites….never saw the punch coming. Who better to pull one over on all of us than Obama?
I’ll believe it when I see it.
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF: We should be leery of the promises to stop blaming and support teachers and to de-emphasize testing because that’s exactly what Obama promised RTTT was about.
The above graphic was taken from a 2011 promotional video that claimed RTTT would stop blaming teachers, stop narrowing the curriculum, stop punishing schools, stop the testing culture. The whole video is here:
So we know Obama broke his promises, but most disturbing is that Hillary and Obama share the same architect for education reform on their staffs, notably John Podesta who chairs Hillary’s campaign now, but the Obama transition team advisor who gave us Arne Duncan and encouraged wealthy donors to elect pro-education reform candidates alongside Jeb Bush.
I find Hillary’s applauding of charter schools to be ominous.