Edward Johnson is an education activist in Atlanta and one of the sharpest critics of a school board and superintendent determined to privatize the public schools of that city.
He recently wrote an open letter to former President Obama, asking him to apologize for the failed Race to the Top competition, which built on the failed strategy of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind.
Via Email (info@ofa.us)
Open Letter to Barack Obama seeking apology for RttT Competition
22 May 2018 (revised 23 May 2018)
The Honorable Barack Obama
c/o Organizing for Action
1130 West Monroe Street, Suite 100
Chicago, Illinois 60607
Dear Mr. Obama:
“We are being ruined by competition; what we need is cooperation.”
—W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993)
Thank you for your interest in my voting. Voting, of course, is a cornerstone of democratic practice. However, education—public education—underlies democratic practice that aims to serve and sustain the common good and to continually advance on closing gaps with democratic ideals, as in “We the People ….” Unfortunately, your Race to the Top Competition strongly suggests a very different paradigm, a competitive, anti-democracy sustaining paradigm.
Frankly, Barack—may I address you as Barack since you addressed me as Ed? Frankly, it’s hard to figure why especially prominent Civil Rights leaders would forgo inviting you to a private conversation out behind the woodshed at the very moment you spoke the words “Race to the Top Competition.” Did they not understand competition made the Civil Rights Movement necessary more so than did so-called racism? That so-called racism is, in reality, but an insidiously malicious and hostile form of competition?
The point being, the aim of every form of competition has always been, and always will be, to produce as few winners as possible and as many losers as possible. Fine for sport competitions, but why would one facilitate attacking and harming the nation’s democracy-sustaining public educational systems by any manner of competition? Was cooperation between and among the states not an option?
All too often, the thinking is that winning means excellence, and losing means failure or “not good enough.” And that “competition builds character.”
But here’s the rub, Barack. In social systems, such as our public educational systems, people made losers by competition for no good reason invariably figure out how to win, if only in their own eyes. The massively systemic cheating on standardized tests that Atlanta experienced exemplifies the matter: A great many teachers and schoolhouse leaders the superintendent incited to compete for their job and bonuses for high standardized test scores figured they could win by changing students’ wrong answers to right answers.
We also have plenty other examples, including, notoriously: Dimitrios Pagourtzis, at Santa Fe High School, Texas; Nikolas Cruz, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida; Adam Lanza, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut; and, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, at Columbine High School, Colorado.
And consider, too, some people made losers by competition for no good reason very likely figured they could win by becoming police officers, or wannabe police officers—in the case of George Zimmerman, for example. Then to that extent, these winners turned policing into hostile competitions with the public that could not avoid producing notorious shootings of especially young “Black” males and other citizens for no good reason.
It really is quite easy to understand, in a word, why the U.S. pretty much leads the world in incarcerating its citizens and children. And that word is competition, meaning deeply inculcated drives to win at the expense of others, by whatever means necessary, so as to rationalize one is superior or excellent and others are not.
- Edwards Deming also teaches the wisdom that “when a system is broken into competitive segments, the system is destroyed.”
Specifically, Dr. Deming teaches the wisdom that:
“We have grown up in a climate of competition between people, teams, departments, divisions, pupils, schools, universities. We have been taught by economists that competition will solve our problems. Actually, competition, we see now, is destructive. It would be better if everyone would work together as a system, with the aim for everybody to win. What we need is cooperation[.]”
Barack, can you see the very name “Race to the Top Competition” necessarily meant breaking our otherwise 50 United States into 50 competitive segments? Can you see the Race to the Top Competition aim to expand the number of charter schools hence spread malicious school choice meant breaking local public educational systems into competitive segments? And, therefore, can you see “Chief Facilitator of Destroy Public Education” just might be a fitting aspect of your legacy as a former President of the United States? And that that would be an astonishing juxtaposition of paradigms?
Barack, if you can see these things, and because, as you say, “[t]here are no do-overs,” can you then at least apologize for having created the Race to the Top Competition and then for having foisted it upon the nation?
Kindly know until such apology comes, it will be hard to hear and appreciate any interest you express about my voting, or any matters. Sustaining and improving public education as a common good in service to democracy is just that important. And please, let’s have none of the nonsensical contention that charter schools are public schools.
Sincerely, I am
Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com
Bcc: List 1
LIKE!
Seconded.
AGREE! LIKE. Obama is / was so wrong about education.
Oh to receive my own personal apology in the mail: address it to FORCED OUT WITH IMPLEMENTATION OF RttT
Bravo! hear, hear! I have been saying this for years! You wouldn’t have your children competing at school to see who gets to eat that night. You compete with members of the “out group” not with people in your “in group.” Everybody knows this! We want no losers in our schools, so competition is an awful thing to do in our classrooms.
See this:
Mapping the Movement to Dismantle Public Education
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/50489-mapping-the-movement-to-dismantle-public-education
The website highlights a few of the state and regional campaigns to defund public education and promote private control. The organized campaigns are multifaceted and funded by far more political action groups with non-profit coordination for “collective impact,” a concept promoted specifically by Bill Gates for education funders…of course with a benign narrative of helping kids.
Dear Mr. Johnson, Barack doesn’t care. He bailed out the bankers and even supported them taking multi million dollar bonuses while being bailed out by the tax payer claiming the sanctity of contracts as of paramount importance. Barack also supported Francis Gallo, Supt of schools in RI, who stated that she would fire all 74 H.S. teachers if they refused to work a longer day without extra pay. Barack stated that their contracts should be abrogated if they refuse to go along. Barack doesn’t care about public education and its teachers. So the “sanctity” of contracts so fundamentally important for the banksters that nearly destroyed the world economy but did destroy the financial well being of many millions of innocent people apparently did not apply to teachers. I can only asume that Barack felt teachers were more responsible for the financial cataclysm.
You’re right that Obama doesn’t care and never did, but I’m glad that Ed Johnson had the chutzpah to put his thoughts to paper and send it off. It’s about time that “we the people” (the taxpayers) are starting to say what needs to be said.
AMEN!
This letter sums it all up. Wall Street is Charter Schools, pure and simple. I appreciate that this letter put in writing all that the real public understood what was going on. We are watching the erosion of public education and democracy in this country and I wont stand by and watch it happen. We need to fight for our children and our society, call out these fake educators and dont let anyone stop us. Parents stand together and vote out politicians who are owned by Wall Street.
No Child Race to the Top
by Jack Burgess
Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams die,
life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
Langston Hughes
If up were down, and black were white,
if Jesus were Satan, and you made a sect
of that, if yin were yang,
blood came from turnips,
and penciling bubbles was as
beautiful as painting
or singing, or god forbid,
daydreaming–or writing poetry–
it would be possible to combine “No Child
Left Behind” with “Race to the Top.”
If John Dewey were alive today
he’d be turning over in his grave.
Learn by doing, his legacy,
so kids today learn to take tests,
learn to get grades,
learn how little
we value them,
how bright we are.
We who sang songs,
read poems, wrote essays,
leave them the brain bending,
standardized,
multiple guess.
No wonder they turn away
to the electronic matrix,
taught that Reagan the Great
was the beginning of history.
Schools will be fracked,
will be squeezed until
profits ooze out,
but can the imaginations
of childhood be wrung dry
for corporate greed?
Will children really stop
gazing at the moon
and loving one another
for either political party?
Or just burrow more deeply
into the sweetness of cyber space?
Orwellian logic would have
it that love finds a way
when Big Brother is not looking.
I’ve taken to calling the Dems the Dumb-as-crap Party. The DCCC sent out an utterly clueless fundraising email a while back where they wrung their hands over DeVos’s harm to Obama’s education legacy and asked for money to stop all that. I informed them that education policy inder the Obama administration was an unmitigated atrocity and that it and Arne Dun-can’t were the gateway drugs that led us directly to DeVos. I’ve seen no more of that nonsense, but with micro targeting of political appeals, it may still be out there trying to revise history.
Because my love for my daughter, who was expelled from an evil charter school. And for the love of my son that was abused by the same evil charter school (principal, coaches, teachers) my son’s future is destroyed already, he’s not home, he’s Alone and working in the sun far away from home. His dream never came true because we don’t have the Money to pay a good lawyer or his college. Hialeh educational academy inc. Should he closed becaus the same Principal who delete and insert the corporation is still running that shelter. I mean charter. Both are sad and depressive because children and family of miami Dade county did nothing to stop those children abusers. That is why I stand up. Soon I will make a letter with a lot of information that will leave the readers stunned because if I’m Atlanta things are going wrong with charters, over here in dade county the public education is in intensive care.
Sincerely, Reibel Castillo.
That’s because Alberto Carvahlo is a shill for the corporate Charter School establishment.
Eso es porque Alberto Carvahlo es un chivo expiatorio para el establecimiento corporativo de Charter School.
That’s because Alberto Carvahlo is a shill for the corporate Charter School establishment
Interesting that is why replayed Spanish & English.
Well I have to much information that could help ours students because is unfair , you could be right 🤔
What we can do ? Expose the way I did ? I’m an activist civil rights violations agains ours students , if Carbajo is acting like the way you told me . Well that’s a problem.
Thanks you know my name I don’t know who are you . But thanks .
Eso es porque Alberto Carvahlo es un chivo expiatorio para el establecimiento corporativo de Charter School.
English
That’s because Alberto Carvahlo is a shill for the corporate Charter School establishment.
My son future is bleak if Miami Dade don’t bring back my son to the city , my son is a Mayor League Baseball prospect , he can play university then sight a deal sign an MLB . Now I have the truth and the prove those abusers as well Wiseness of the abuse have only 2 choice regretted help what they did or go to Court and the media my wed new one is ready to let go .
Thanks very much , just in case my English it’s not good enough for this BLOG ( my Spanish is perfect ) GEOGLE translation or paid a professional wed specialist it’s the ( my solution )
Wow you are an unknown person but help 👍🤝✌️
Thank you, Ed. Please keep us posted!
(If you don’t get an answer, don’t know who will!)
Oh, perhaps Reverend Barber-?
One need to look no further than this blog to see the terrible public school destruction & re-segregation taking place in Carolina(s) (perhaps the Kochs are having their evil way, after failing to re-segregate in Ashville not all that long ago).