The Senate, in a narrow vote, ditched John King’s last-ditch effort to preserve NCLB accountability by regulation.
The oddly-named Every Student Succeeds Act was intended to rein in Arne Duncan-style federal dictates. King’s prescriptive regulations about how to measure “progress,” were meant to keep Washington’s control over state accountability systems.
Despite 15 years of failed accountability policy, every Democrat voted to defend the Bush-Duncan-King regulations.
Democrats really need to understand that rating students and schools by test scores is not a civil rights issue. It is invalid and just plain dumb. It hurts the neediest students most.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This news is a real indictment of our (teachers) union leadership, both AFTvand NEA. After 15 years of failed education policy from the federal government, not one Democratic senator understands this. The weakness of our lobbying and message is stunning.
Weingarten lobbied to keep this. The union may be weak but union leadership is corrupt and supports reform.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/obama-school-accountability-rule-scrapped-by-senate-235879
I suspect the Rs have their own reasons for doing this, and when we find out what it is … I’m guessing it’s more about freeing corporate and sectarian charters from any oversight at all.
Jon,
The Republicans wanted to strip power from Duncan and all future secretaries with ESSA. Now they have their own Secretary but they know she is clueless.
DeVoodoo is indeed, CLUELESS.
The Rs are against Common Core-High Stakes testing, the need of a Dept of Education and federal control of education. So we are endorsing charters and choice–can’t have everything…but some of us can keep trying!
Of course, Tennessee will stay the course, and will torture its kids more.
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2017/03/09/withdrawal-federal-education-regulations-wont-impact-tennessee/98979098/
I don’t know what will be more successful in the destruction of public education: Betsy Devos or ………. Democrats.
It’s relay where a Republican hands off to a Democrat who hands off to a Republican…
“The Reform Relay”
The relay of deform
Is simply of the form
Where Bush hands off
To Dems and (cough)
They hand it back still warm
I am slow, Poet: are you really talking about turd as the baton?
I was listening to PBS today, and they talked about how the founding fathers were obsessed with the Roman Empire, and how they try to model the new country after it. The Roman Empire was brought down by wide spread corruption. What do we have now?
“Civil whites”
Not civil rights
But civil whites
Who cower at the thought
To stand accused
Of racist views
That put them on the spot
Diane,
Thanks for taking a strong stand on this issue.
If the Democrats can’t figure out the difference between legitimate uses of tests and fraudulent uses (using tests that the student test takers have no incentive to excel on as a major evaluation of an entire school faculty, including those with no relationship to the tested students), they are condemning themselves to long-term minority status.
If you were the Walton-funded, Center for American Progress, the most influential organization in the Democratic party, receiving $2.2 mil. from the Gates Foundation (2013-2015), the only thing preventing you from “condemning yourself to perpetual minority status” would be….?
Hear, hear. I have NEVER understood how the “progressive” party could not only support but promote the punitive standardized testing of diverse student populations while falling enthusiastically in line with labeling our kids, schools and teachers as “bad,” “failing” and “broken.”
The democrats still.don’t.get.it. How many elections do you think they need to lose?
The Clinton/Obama/Neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party doesn’t care how many elections they lose (after all, you’d think they would have been a little more alarmed by all their legislative, state and local losses in recent years) as long as they still maintain control of the party and its fundraising.
Their dirty secret. revealed by the Podesta emails, is that they hate the Labor/Left wing of the Party far more than they hate Republicans.
Jimmy Dore’s programs expose the same issue and, many more truths we don’t want to acknowledge. A recent episode featured a clip from a question session with a San Diego, Democratic politician.
A Democratic canvassing volunteer asked the Representative what Democrats stand for. His answer was platitudes that could have come from either party. The election of Perez and Ellison’s appointment as deputy to the Democratic Party Chair, does not portend well for future Democratic wins.
“Platitude Attitude”
The Democrats stand for platitudes
‘Bout Mom apple pie
The disingenuous attitudes
That cover for the lie
Mom and apple pie
“Platitude Attitude”, sums it up perfectly.
BTW- Next time you take a hiatus, Poet, let us know in advance, we were worried (and care).
OK. Three cheers for the demise of some of Obama/Duncan’s odious education regulations. But, let’s be clear. This reversal is part of Republicans abandonment of all federal support for anything related to democracy, justice, and equity. The conservative anti-regulation mantra is about an every man (only men) for himself, dystopian worldview. Local control has always been the calling card for segregation and with it, protection of privilege. http://www.arthurcamins.com
Arthur,
State control is not local control, as the hapless denizens of DeVosistan can tell you. State control these days is corporate control, as corporate interests find it easier to buy up one state government at a time and pit them against each other in the time-honored whipsawing fashion.
It’s local corpirate board room control
Common Corpirate raiders, privateers of profit. Yo ho ho and a bottle of scum. Yar.
The Democratic Party continues to be GOP-lite… The Democrats support a lite-form of deregulated capitalism, a lite-form of globalization, and a lite-form of privatization. The NEA and AFT, like all other unions, have nowhere to go because the GOP is all in on each of these issues which led to the race-to-the-bottom in wages and the end of any kind of social covenant between the government and the voters…. and all evidence indicates that the Democrats want to continue relying on corporate donors instead of seeking out working class voters. Those voters who Democrats counted on because they had “nowhere to go” went for Mr. Trump on the belief that he would she things up. He’s done that… but not in the way a lot of his voters believed he would. We’re all paying the price for the neoliberal GOP-lite Democratic Party…. here’s hoping Perez comes to appreciate the progressive wing of his party.
I just read this article by Shaun King who explains the failings of the Democratic Party better than I just did: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-democratic-party-doesn-unpopular-article-1.2993659
And yet another eloquent article on this topic, this time by Thomas Frank who writes: “The insight here is that liberals don’t need to mimic the Tea Party in order to head off this powerful impulse; they merely need to be what they used to be – what they are supposed to be.” The whole article is great! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/09/dont-let-establishment-opportunists-ruin-resistance-movement