Karen Wolfe reports here the precise language of the amendments that were added to the Democratic platform on charters, testing, restorative justice, and other important topics.
This is heartening.
When the election is over, and I hope that Hillary Clinton is elected, we will count on her to remember the party platform.
We also bear in mind that policy comes from people, more than from the platform. It is important to get the platform right but even more important to see who is named Secretary of Education, and who is chosen for top education policy positions. Those of us who want to see better public schools for all children must keep up the pressure, now and in the future.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would hold off breaking out the champagne. It is a zero sum game. Any dollar going to a charter school is a dollar not going to a public school. When charters start taking their fair share of ELLs and expensive to educate children with special needs, I will eat my hat. For my union dues, I would prefer that Randi Weingarten advocate only for public school students and public school teachers. She should leave the role of education reform shill to Shavar Jeffries and the rest of the crew.
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Diane, I certainly hope I’m wrong, but if HRC is elected and actually works hard to change the direction that the last 5 presidents have been taking free independent public education in this country, I will be utterly dumbfounded. The platform is nothing more than chin music. The Democrats and Republicans close to the center of power how consistently shown either cluelessness or downright evil when it comes to education. It didn’t matter who was in the White House, which party controlled one or both houses of Congress, which Senator or Representative had his/her name prominently associated with the latest magic bullet bill that was going to put schools on “right” path once and for all: each administration and Congress did its part towards getting us into the incredible mess we’re in today. The skids are greased and they’re trying to push us all out the door.
I wish I could believe that Hillary Clinton has a better sense of things than did Reagan, GHWB, Bill Clinton, GWB, or Barack Obama. That she will appoint someone to run the DOE who really understands teaching, learning, teachers, kids, and the context in which they operate. That under a Hillary Clinton administration, teachers, kids, and parents will get back their schools, that we will enter into a paradise of learning, and that in conjunction with enlightened progressive programs, the neighborhoods in which our most deprived citizens live will get the schools they so badly need and deserve, economic opportunities in which the graduates of those schools can become engaged, and that the lion will lie down with the lamb.
But I can’t.
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Michael, I would agree with you that we cannot be entirely optimistic about the future of education under an HRC administration.
I think there is some reason to believe that she will better than Obama on education, and I am hoping for that, but no way to know for sure. I think that it would be naive to assume she will be perfect on education. But I hope better than Obama, who unfortunately, has been terrible in that regard. Hope isn’t enough though. We need to keep pressure on her to do the right thing.
Yet, I will certainly vote for her. The choice is between her and Donald Trump, who would be a disaster in many ways, not only education. In fact, I would probably vote for her over any Republican candidate, as any of them would be worse, even if not as bad as Trump.
I am very grateful to Karen and others who worked on education issues in the Democratic platform. Yes, the platform is not binding. Still, it makes a difference.At the least, it could help educate HRC and other Democratic leaders about education.
I agree with you that one cannot be greatly optimistic about the future of education in an HRC administration. Such great optimism would be naive. Yet, I think there is reason for some hope, for some degree of improvement, if not every thing that we would like to see. And–we need to keep after her to do the right thing.
In any case, there is every good reason to vote for her, to prevent the utter disaster (not only regarding education) of a Donald Trump presidency.
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Five presidents, 40 years, both republican and democrats, the education policy has been wrong according to you. That surely means that you believe that democracy has failed in the USA. This is wrong thinking.
Criticizing is easy, but coming with the right solutions isn’t.
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“I think there is some reason to believe that she will better than Obama on education,….”
Right, like John Podesta managing her campaign, the fact that she’s besties with Eli Broad, the fact that she has served on Walmart’s board and the fact that she is roundly endorsed by DFER. All good reasons for hope for public education.
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Dienne: I also agree that Hillary will be more reasonable that Obama. I say that because she always supported public education when she was state senator in New York. One of the reasons she has the reputation for “flip flopping” is that she listens and is keenly aware of public opinion. The big tell would be in who she chooses as the head of the DOE.
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@raj: isn’t criticizing my comment without offering any substantive suggestions doing precisely what you accused me of doing?
Isn’t putting words in my mouth about “the failure of democracy” a cheap rhetorical tactic that allows you to quickly turn my analysis of the last 36 years of educational policy-making on the national level into some moronic strawman for you to dismiss?
You appear to have no actual counterpoints to what I said. And that’s because you know I’m right that both major parties have failed us when it comes to public education. That’s not an indictment of democracy; it’s an indictment of the two-party system, capitalism, and the undue influence of money on American politics, in no particular order of importance.
And Hillary Trump or Donald Clinton will be more of the same, no matter what planks go into which party’s platform.
Further, those who are suggesting that things will be better, even marginally so, under a Hillary Clinton presidency – whether regarding education or anything else – seem awfully quiet about just why that seems likely, other than to raise the specter of that “monster,” Donald Trump. I’m not even mildly a fan of his – never have been and am far less so having recently read about his ties to that large piece of human waste, Roy Cohn. But seriously, are we at the point where we can’t even pretend to be voting FOR something? Even when I voted for such weak or highly doubtful Democratic offerings as Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Al Gore, John Kerry, Bill Clinton, and in his second run, Barack Obama, I had the sense that there were things about them I liked and could support. It was never ENTIRELY about the “monster(s)” on the other party’s ticket.
With Hillary Clinton, however, there are no illusions she can offer me of progressivism, feminism (see FALSE CHOICES: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton, edited by Liza Featherstone), or anything else that I will swallow. She is, to my thinking and that of many others on the Left, a neoliberal/neoconservative hybrid (see “Is Hillary Clinton a neoconservative hawk?” by Paul Rosenberg in Salon, Dec 26, 2015 and “The Danger of Hillary Clinton: She Is Not the ‘Safer’ Candidate” by John Sanbonmatsu in HuffPo Mar 1, 2016, for starters) who simply mouths whatever sentiments she thinks will get her votes, but whose deepest commitments are to herself, her bank account, and fundamentally anti-progressive ideology and policies. No chance will she fight for democratic institutions like public education when there are corporate dollars to pocket with promises of countless more to come. Sorry, educators: you have to beat the best offer on the table from your competitors on Wall Street, et al.
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Ditto to Michael’s post.
Robert Reich recently reported on a meeting with a Hillary Clinton aid where the aid confirmed she will not oppose TPP. Look at this conversation and you will see the two-face HRC politics at play:
CLINTON ADVISOR: “Look, it doesn’t matter what you or I think. The President wants the TPP, and the Party isn’t going to oppose him.”
REICH: “You mean Hillary won’t oppose him.”
CLINTON ADVISOR: “Hillary won’t, and Debbie [Wasserman Schultz] won’t, and neither will Nancy [Pelosi] or Harry [Reid] or Dick [Durbin] or Chuck [Schumer].
REICH: “But it’s terrible policy. And it’s awful politics. It gives Trump a battering ram. Obama won’t be president in six months. Why risk it?”
CLINTON ADVISOR: “They don’t see much of a risk. Most Americans don’t know or care about the TPP.”
REICH: “But they know big corporations are running economic policy. They think the whole system is corrupt. Believe me, Trump will use this against Hillary.”
CLINTON ADVISOR: “He can’t. She’s inoculated. She’s come out against the TPP.”
The most striking part of the conversation is when we see the core of HRC’s politics. As many of us have been saying, Hillary’s politics center around the manipulation of public perception, and this kind of politics is the exact opposite of Bernie Sanders’s politics of honesty and conviction. HRC will use her public renouncing of TPP as a shield against Trump, but then, she will go along with TPP when in office. In the article I linked, you can see more clearly why she will go along with it, and it shouldn’t be a surprise. She has effectively promised her donors that they will get what they want.
Hillary is on the side of Wall Street, The Corporations, The 1%, The Elite, The Masters, The Oligarchs. Anything that passes her administration in our benefit will be either a side effect, or something that millions of people loudly demanded.
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I would like to see a great deal of my past come back growing up in Iowa in the 60s and 70s.
We actually had a GOP Gov that was anything but what we have now in the party.
Gov Robert Ray was respected and liked by both Democrats and his own party in fact.
He was an advocate for public schools in every way and a wonderful supporter of the Fie Arts.
A humanitarian when the refugees came in from he end of Vietnam and welcomed diversity in our state.
We were among the top in education in our nation.
The Iowa basic skills then made for well- rounded students and teachers could spend quality time with each and every student as class sizes were 15 to 23 with a teaching assistant.
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I am hoping that you, Diane are selected to run our education department. I believe that women should be our leader, especially since it is a female dominated profession. I am still paralyzed over the fact that Dunce Duncan lasted 7 years. And now John King who is the reason why I lost my teaching position and my 2 licenses, after 10 years of teaching, making me homeless for the last 3 years. He never fixed the New York State Licensing Department nor its ridiculous and costly requirements. Now he is on the top and I live in a wretched S.R.O.at poverty level. There is little hope for this country if someone like you does not take over.
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Diane will not be selected. Hillary’s donors would never allow it. If Diane is selected by HRC, I will hang up my detective hat.
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Why would Hillary’s donors not allow it? She is the most competent candidate we have. We need to find a way to push out the sovereign ways of our government. Let’s think outside of the box instead of sit back and observe and find a way to force our government officials to do what’s right for all of the people.
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Diane Ravitch is against corporate reform.
Hillary is funded by, and allied with, corporate interests.
It would be wishful thinking, at best, to think that Hillary would appoint someone like Diane to Secretary of Ed. Not only are they ideologically in conflict, but even if Hillary personally believed that Diane Ravitch would make the best education secretary, she would have to stand up to her allies — the corporate elites — in order to make that appointment. We can safely predict that is NOT going to happen.
That’s the problem with being funded by big money. You have to be angelic if you are going to then turn around and say, you know what, I’m not going to give you what you wanted in return. Hillary is no angel.
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“You have to be angelic if you are going to then turn around and say, you know what, I’m not going to give you what you wanted in return.”
Oh, she will do it with the public, by the way — as I recently posted, that is how she operates, politically, by saying one thing and doing another. But that’s because she does not answer to the public. She will break her word and turn her back on “the people,” but not the elite corporate class who enabled her to get so far.
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I think it’s a given ed reformers will be involved in policy- they are so much the dominant group in DC that we haven’t heard from anyone else through two, two-term Presidents. It becomes self-selecting when it reaches a certain point. Ed reformers hire other ed reformers.
The best we can hope for, in my opinion, is some balance. A few people who are outside The Movement.
That won’t come from DC though- it never does. If it comes it will be bottom-up. They’ll be the last people to notice 🙂
Look how long it took DC to figure out that stagnant wages and income inequality were an ACTUAL PROBLEM. As late as 2012 they were all still insisting there was plenty of “opportunity” if people would just stop being so lazy and stupid.
It still amazes me that Democrats in leadership positions looked at the financial crisis and the aftermath and concluded THE US WORKFORCE was the the problem. They took no responsibility whatsoever. After much analysis and many experts they all decided that the 80% of people who are not managers were the problem with the economy. Remarkable.
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Chiara,
To be clear, Hillary is surrounded by ed reformers from CAP and other DC think tanks. Every name I hear is from CAP or TFA. I have no illusions.
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One of the reasons politicians walk a fine line is that they are beholden to deep pocketed donors. They do not want to alienate the money train. My best guess is Hillary would make some modest improvements in the first term. If she were to get a second, we would see more of what matters to her. Of course, this all depends on what happens in education in the interim, what the public demands and what is going on in the dysfunctional family known as Congress.
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Chiara, when the Democrats in leadership blamed the US workforce for the financial crisis, they also blamed US teachers for getting their students behind thereby putting our country economically behind and less competitive. I will never forget the video sent to districts throughout the land announcing the impending CCSS. Here it is…please notice how teachers are fully to blame for our economic meltdown.
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“,,,we will count on her to remember the party platform.”
And if she doesn’t? What’s your recourse? There is no recall for the presidency.
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Dienne,
She will or will not be faithful to the platform.
We have a choice: Clinton or Trump.
The danger with Trump, aside from being ignorant of all policy, is that he will do precisely what he says.
Unleash gun laws; deregulate the environmental oversight; appoint arch conservatives to the Supreme Court; build a $26 billion wall on our southern border; deport 11 million undocumented people; ban Muslim travelers; etc.
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I guess this is where we part company. I fail to understand why, when over a third of the country wants neither of the above, those two are our only choices. I refuse to buy into the neoliberal “There Is No Alternative”. We are not helpless. Those are not our only choices. Rejecting those choices takes courage and daring, but accepting those choices means certain disaster. It’s time to find the courage to throw off the shackles of “managed consent”. A vote for either Clinton or Trump is a consent to neoliberalism. I do not consent.
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Dienne,
All is still not etched in stone. She is still not “officially” the democratic candidate. And Bernie Sanders if willing has the choice of running on the independent ticket. Yes, this two party system is frustrating to all!
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Sanders and Clinton are going to a high school tomorrow. If these ed reform politicians aren’t going to affirmatively support public schools, I don’t think they should use us as props for campaign events.
What, specifically, has the Democratic Party done to support public schools in New Hampshire? What is their positive agenda for US public schools? They got their “accountability” piece- we’re all obediently lining up for the tests they worship. When does the good part start? It’s been 15 years. Show me a benefit to public schools.
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They should be held accountable for showing positive results, but that never happens. The assumption is charters are good, and public schools are failing. Where’s the evidence?
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Thankful for the work done by Karen regarding the Democratic platform. This is important work and provides the groundwork for pushing forward and perhaps at some point pushing BACK! I am working hard for a Hillary win in North Carolina, along with a new Governor and a veto-proofed general assembly. I am old enough to believe that perfect is the enemy of good…HRC is not perfect but she is good (not just compared to any Republican, but she is a good woman who is not perfect) and I will willing to work with that concept. I think we should continue to work very hard on influencing WHO is at the helm of the Dept. of Education – that is critical to me – and I believe collectively, we can influence that selection. Let’s try! I will continue to put my name on any effort that encourages HRC and the Democratic Party to LISTEN to teachers, parents and scholars (like Diane Ravitch) who know better than the reformers!
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If this platform carries any meaning at all, then we should get to see it in action with the current administration before the election. That is, if Barack Obama supports the Democratic Party he should support the platform. We should expect to see John King immediately stop fighting Lamar Alexander and the Senate over the importance of test scores and numerical school ratings. The complete cessation of all things Common Core. And charter chains, at least the ones with profiting investors, will be rooted out of our communities across the land, starting right now. Right now. And if Obama doesn’t change his profits over people, corporatizing agenda today, we should not expect Clinton to either.
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These are REAL suggestions that could be put in place by Obama through Executive Orders and could be implemented NOW. Let’s see if Hillary, who keeps saying she is in support of all of Obama’s decisions, will urge him to comply.
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Most people on the Left have been disappointed with the Democratic Party for a long time.
The optimism that surrounded Obama’s election in 2008 had soured considerably over many of his economic decisions and security state policies (even acknowledging the miserable GOP obstruction he was forced to battle forever). In the realm of education, Obama had eight years of opportunity squandered on a pedagogical philosophy that doesn’t work for the children and community that needed his leadership most.
That is an eight years we won’t ever get back.
That is an eight years–despite Obama’s brilliance, his eloquence, his thoughtful heart and mature philosophical observations–that our children suffered under his rule.
I am hoping that we on the Left are better organized, now more aware that the foes who support a brand of education we despise, come in the guise of the well off, Neo-liberal Democrats who have forged a fierce economic alliance with the perpetual-privatizing GOP.
We need to call these Democrats out on both the national level and that of our local school board.
If Democrats take money from the corporations and “philanthropists” who have such contempt for Democracy that they use their resources to supplant it, then, frankly, the hell with them.
Thanks Karen, for your ever watchful eye.
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The problem is that Billary takes money as fast as she can from these DFERs. In LA, as you well know Geronimo, she should be vilifying Broad, Milken, Welch, Wassermans, and others of our state’s billionaire privatizers and supporters of CCSA and TFA. She has not chosen to do this and she still welcomes their donations to her campaign and to her Clinton Foundation.
And this Wall Street cabal continues to pour vast amounts of cash into OUR school board, and other, elections to tilt the deck in their favor. Witness Charter School owner/director Refugio Rodriguez and how his dirty campaign won him a seat on the LAUSD BoE.
Note to the rest of country…both LeftCoastTeacher and Geronimo are exemplary teachers in LA and their comments always carry much weight.
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Thanks Karen…great link to your comprehensive article. I am not happy with the Dems, particularly the DNC, and some of the platform. I
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NO DEMs or REPs for me. Both parties work for the Oligarchy. I do not trust is $illary. She is like a spoiled child, same as Drumph.
Remember Arkansas, remember $illary’s past actions.
And the DEMs want us believe them?
We have had almost 36 years of yahoos in the White House … working for the Oligarchy who funds their campaign contributions. SIC!
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I would like to point out that history has some instances, notably Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson, who confounded all predictions about their behavior in the White House.
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