Thomas Ultican left the private sector to teach high school physics and mathematics.

 

In this post, he surveys the wreckage of education “reform” policies and the damage they have inflicted on schools and teachers, students and communities.

 

Trump, he recognizes, is prepared to double down on failures.

 

The issue for all of us is to identify the strategies that will enable us to survive what lies ahead.

 

He concludes on a hopeful note:

 

With the coming of Trump and Betsy Devos, everything I read leads me to believe that the federal government will continue and accelerate the failed Bush/Obama education policies. However, it will be out in the open because there are no fake progressives in this group to hide behind. Americans of all stripes do not want their public education system parceled out and sold. Most conservative like most liberals believe in public education. They do not want their schools taken over by faceless corporations and distant bureaucracies.

 

A national consensus on the need to protect America’s truly great public education system is probable.

 

Education profiteers will over-reach in 2017 and we will make significant strides toward winning back local control of our schools.

 

Let’s agree that the best way to awaken the public is to call the privatization and profit movement out and name it. Name it. Say that they are stealing what belongs to all of us. They are not “reformers,” they are vandals.

 

That is the fight ahead.