The House that Bush Built
Billyan errs and Common Cores
Rickety stairs and creaky floors
Leaky roofs and shaky stoops
That’s the house that Bush built
Flooded basements, cracked
foundations
Broken casements, termite nations
Sagging beams and cracking seams
That’s the house that Bush built
Failing kids and firing teachers
Software bids and testing leechers
Standardizing and capitalizing
That’s the house that Bush built
In a comment, I told SDP that the only thing missing was how Obama and Duncan reinforced the foundation of this awful building.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“In a comment, I told SDP that the only thing missing was how Obama and Duncan reinforced the foundation of this awful building.”
And it still utterly dominates the federal government. Bush-Obama-Trump.
My youngest child will graduate high school having had lockstep ed reform governance his entire time in public schools. No dissenters permitted, or hired.
DeVos has really taken “echo chamber” to a new level. She speaks exclusively to reform outlets and recites every single ed reform slogan of the last 20 years.
It’s remarkably uniform too, despite claimed differences in ideology. The Apple billionaire recites the exact same nonsense about “factory schools” as DeVos does. I can’t tell the difference between anti-public school rhetoric from the US Department of Education and rhetoric from any of the ed reform lobbying groups- which shouldn’t surprise anyone- it’s a complete closed system. They go from government to the lobbying groups and then back again. I don’t think you can get a job in DC without reciting the approved lines.
It’s ludicrous when you think about it. The federal government seems to have made a conscious decision to exclude some 90% of families from their work on “public education”. It’s nuts. It’s as if everyone who works for the Social Security Administration said “we’ll just do this other job that we prefer- we agree ideologically with 401k’s as a system so we’ll just serve them”. I don’t know what public school families pay any of these people for. I can’t come up with anything. Did we hire 10,000 professional public school critics? Is that the job?
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This country is still back in the “Plantation Model” and we’ve never left it … just different environments.
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It always seemed like a shame with the Obama Administration. There was no real reason to attack the existence of public schools. They could have put forward some positive plan to improve public schools- I don’t think anyone who supports public schools denies they could use improvement.
But they bought the whole ed reform baloney about how they were brave warriors fighting public schools and approached it in such an adversarial manner they’ll never, ever be trusted. It was almost like they were showing off- proving to some group of elites in their own circles that they would OPPOSE the status quo! I think a lot of people who supported Obama were shocked. They’re cheering when teachers get fired? What?
Also- the absolute sneering superiority when any of their schemes were questioned. It wasn’t that they were obsessed with testing- oh, no- it was that stupid “moms” were coddling their kids. Obama once bragged that he “dragged” people to ed reform “kicking and screaming”. My goodness. Think about how much contempt you have to have for people who work in public schools to insist they have to be “dragged” to do better work or serve kids. There was an assumption of bad faith that was really unwarranted. They never wanted cooperation or collaberation. They wanted to conquer. Their own public schools. That’s just nuts. And ultimately counterproductive.
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“There was no real reason.” Yes, there was. The real reason- the 800 lb. gorilla, tech tyrant from the state with the most regressive tax system in the nation. Obama gave the medal of freedom to Gates while he trampled democracy without impediment.
Whether Obama knew about the Gates/Z-berg investment in schools-in-a-box (anticipated ROI, 20%) or not, he knew he was facilitating oligarchy for America’s most important asset. That was the goal/reason in and of itself.
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If Poet adds a stanza it could wax about the lackeys at Bellwether (billionaire-funded) who recommend reformers “reach out to churches” i.e. employ theocracy to destroy the common good and to put in the dust bin, democracy and the separation of church and state. Walton heirs, Gates and Charles Koch recognize an opportunity.
If they were altruistic they would provide scholarships to the Catholic schools they praise to the hilt. Speaking of- in an article at Manhattan Institute (Koch-linked) , “the new kind of Catholic school” is described. The “new” school seeks to “emulate the success of strong charter school networks by incorporating blended learning and buying Common Core-aligned curriculum, Core Knowledge and Math in Focus”. (“Pray We Save Our Schools”)
Paint me surprised. By all that’s holy, I hope their God turns a deaf ear.
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Linda, can you post a link to that article from the Manhattan Institute? thanks
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Internet search “Pray We Save Our Schools” “Manhattan Institute”
One focus of the 2014 article is the expansion of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School throughout the states. The network is in about 1/2 of the states with N.C. and S.C. planned next. At the Cristo Rey site, the states and cities are listed.
Gates coupled with the Cassin Educational Initiative Foundation to provide $18.9 mil. for 12 schools modeled after Cristo Rey. The founder and chair of Cassin is on the Board of the Drexel Fund. The Cassin Foundation posted its intent, “grantees bring Catholic or other faith-sponsored education…”
At least one article praising the schools tout students working 5 days a month in jobs like data entry and filing, while returning their pay to the schools.
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The house that Bush built is in need of a total remodel. It has termites, mold and it sits on a shaky foundation that is sinking. We keep pouring money into it, but new problems emerge, We may have to knock it down, cut our losses and start over with a professional architect and builder.
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Aspen reported proudly that the takeover began with neoliberal, Clinton.
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It was the era of bipartisanship, the era of no one standing up for everyday people and instead both parties supporting only the greed of billionaires. Let’s hope and vote that that era is over.
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It won’t be over as long as the Center for American Progress is influential with Democratic politicians. CAP’s board chair is Tom Daschle who has the lobby shop, BiPartisan Policy Center.
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The Democratic love affair with charters is definitely on the wane.
The only Democrat governor who pledges allegiance to charters is Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, a former hedge fund manager.
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This guy is consistently amazing.
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SomeDAM, you’ve done it again! I needed this today.
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On another note (Twitter)….Mike Petrilli is complaining about those “bad teachers” that are in his children’s public school (all white and very wealthy school district just outside of DC). Apparently, he seems dissatisfied with the common core curriculum (math especially) and how it is being taught to his children (by those bad teachers). The Principal seems to have brushed his displeasure aside and he wants to form a “secret” online parent group. All Mikey has to do is look in the mirror and blame himself for what we have in our once great MD schools. Because of Mikey and his ilk, we are saddled with CC, PARCC and testing madness. I find it funny that he doesn’t like for his own kids what he has helped to force onto everyone else’s children. KARMA!!!
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Hypocrisy is standard fare for Republicans. It’s reached the level of an art form for them.
Marylanders have Fordham’s founder, Chester Finn, on the state board of education.
Fordham has a huge education footprint in Ohio. The Ohio senate education committee chair, a Republican, who never met a common good she liked even said vouchers make no sense. Yet, Ohio has more of them than any other state. Most of the money goes to Catholic schools. We are learning more about how U.S. and state laws and, the judicial branches, are linked to conservative, rich Catholics exerting political influence. Paul Weyrich and Leonard Leo have done a lot to please them. Steve Bannon’s cronies have even taken on the Pope and criticized him for advocating for Christ’s teachings about the downtrodden.
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I live in MD and Chester Finn is a stain on public education…. appointed by Gov Hogan (union teachers are thugs). We have nothing but CC and test prep as curriculum thanks to the crew at MSDE. Of course they are telling us that they have severed ties with PARCC, but we are getting a new PARCC test with a different name this year.
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The irony is rich.
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It is indeed.
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Irony- The Koch-linked Manhattan Institute posting an article titled, “Pray We Can Save Our Catholic Schools” with the final sentence, “…if Albany politicians ignore the usual education special interests and did the right thing for the city’s poor kids”….as if …the social Darwinist Koch’s had a reputation for caring about the poor and the Catholic Church wasn’t a vested interest.
What did the Catholic Church do when policies of the British overclass led to starvation of 1,000,000 Irish?
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Thank you, as always, SomeDAM. So many delights from your teeming brain.
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Team-ing brain.
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The Center for Media and Democracy posted about a recent fundraiser for Susan Collins in Maine. It was hosted by Leonard Leo, who is Catholic with 7 kids. Leo (the Federalist Society) has been stacking the courts with conservative judges. The home where the fund raiser was held was bought for about $1,000,000 less than its appraised value. The sellers are heirs to the WR Grace fortune (chemicals). The senior Grace was head of the U.S. branch of the conservative Catholic order, Knights of Malta (Leo also belongs).
Reportedly, the purchase occurred around the time of the Kavanaugh hearings and the time that Leo paid off the mortgage on his primary home.
CMD’s head added, “Leo promised his allies that he’ll return the law to the pre-New Deal era.”
A significant part of the education privatization goal is to destroy pensions – they are too New Deal for billionaires like Gates and other right wing conservatives like him.
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https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wr-grace-pays-over-63-million-toward-cleanup-and-restoration-hazardous-waste-sites
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J. Peter Grace had 9 kids.
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This is a truly superb book, one I highly recommend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Civil_Action
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And lets not forget who laid the foundation upon which that house was built:
NCLB was coauthored by Representatives John Boehner (R-OH), George Miller (D-CA), and Senators Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Judd Gregg (R-NH). The United States House of Representatives passed the bill on December 13, 2001 (voting 381–41),[8] and the United States Senate passed it on December 18, 2001 (voting 87–10).[9] President Bush signed it into law on January 8, 2002.
And hence, standards based TEST-THREATEN-AND PUNISH was born.
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I will forever be curious as to why NCLB was never challenged by any state for being unconstitutional. A punitive law for which compliance was literally impossible(100% proficiency by 2014). Twenty five million very non-standardized children and not one of them could fail without penalty. Imagine a federal law that required you to drive on a highway with a speed limit of “zero mph”. Essentially a law that you were forced to break. This all stemmed from the bogus idea that all kids can learn the same material at the same pace.
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I’ve had the same thought as well. IMHO it was a perfect example of federal overreach. Conservatives and some Democrats probably kept quiet because NCLB was a vehicle of privatization. Many conservatives today tolerate #45 because he is a means to an end.
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Originally they believed it would be re-written before 2014. Then as the due date closed in they were afraid to admit the truth: all kids can’t learn (as required). The urgency and implications of the NCLB deadline (zero states in compliance) spawned RTTT and the Duncan Waiver both of which required the implementation of the Common Core standards (or alternate), companion tests (PARCC, SBAC), evaluating teachers with test scores, and data mining. A downward spiral that cost taxpayers billions of dollars, undermined trust in teachers, constrained curricula, and made most kids into testing failures who now dislike school more than ever. Heck of a job Johnny, Georgie, Teddy, Juddy, Bushie, Barackie, and Arne!
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It was impossible for 100% to reach the impossible goal of 100%.
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Impossible Claims
“Always, totally, never”
“One hundred percent , forever”
Words that nature deems
Impossible, it seems
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The roots of NCLB & ESSA junk science go back to Newt Gingrich’s assault on the federal agencies in 1994 and concurrent Republican assaults against the Clintons. Gingrich destroyed Congress’ intellectual infrastructure & brought Dems to their knees.
A byproduct was the idea that bipartisanship was a goal in writing legislation. But without the research infrastructure, both parties turned to lobbyists & corporate attorneys to write laws.
David Dayen’s article on the current bipartisan effort to undermine our pensions with the SECURE Act provides a detail that haunts all legislation today.
“The SECURE Act’s breezy journey to passage reflects the role of industry in the nation’s legislative process. After Newt Gingrich’s revolutionaries took over the House in 1994, he set about dismantling the chamber’s intellectual infrastructure, slashing the budget for staff and dissolving collective research assets. The point was not to save taxpayer money but to effectively privatize the lawmaking process. With just a handful of underpaid staffers, members of Congress outsource the crafting of legislation to lobbyists and corporate attorneys.”
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“The SECURE Act’s breezy journey to passage reflects the role of industry in the nation’s legislative process.”
Recall the ESSA’s breezy journey to passage where Lamar Alexander & Patty Murray worked together to give the Obama WH & bipartisanship a win? Duncan walked out of that vote pleased with the rotten billions in gifts to TFA, testing, charter chains, social impact bonds- you name it- it’s in ESSA. Let’s hear it for a bipartisan victory!
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Miller, Kennedy and Boehner shared a religion. Kennedy and Boehner “raised millions for Catholic schools”. Miller, while in office, was an integral part of school privatization policy. Last fall, he was working with the BiPartisan Policy Center’s new initiative focused on colleges. He had a leadership role in a Gates/Arnold sponsored event at BPC.
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George Miller still thinks NCLB was a huge success.
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George Miller was described as Nancy Pelosi’s most trusted confidant.
She chose him as chair of the Democratic Policy Committee in the mid 2000-2010 period.
Diane, you have played a substantial role in wresting education policy from oligarchs who infiltrated the Democratic party. Thank you for your tireless efforts.
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The original title was The House that Gates Built.
Only the name was changed to indict the guilty.
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Billyan errs” was a reference to Bill, of course.
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Billy is all errs and no ears
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Putting on Billyan errs
The mark of the Billyan err
Is waving hands in the air
Though some see savoir faire
There’s really nothing there
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Dubya Bush, Billy Gates, put ‘em together you get Norman Bates.
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LOL
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Reform is the Norm
Reform is the Norm
Bates, that is
A shower’s a storm
Such, it is
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Bill “Norman” Gates of the Bates Hotel:
Test, bait and switch to the Gates of hell.
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Excellent! Another fine rhyme, Sir Poet!
I was speaking with some people at a dinner a couple of weeks ago while on vacation. I don’t really know them very well so they didn’t know my thoughts on education. They did know that I was a teacher, however.
They were bemoaning Bush/No Child Left Behind and talking about how eight years of Obama came close to repairing the damage. “But now we have Trump and DeVos”, they lamented.
They were extremely surprised when I started talking to them about my take on the Obama and Duncan years. In fact; at first they didn’t believe me. But I was definitely able to open their eyes a bit to the point where they could see DeVos as an extension of the previous three administrations’ policies.
Obama was (and still is) a well spoken and intelligent human being. But he was no friend to public education. It’s a shame that he was able to camouflage that, so effectively, throughout his two term presidencies.
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