Eric Blanc asks in Jacobin why Elizabeth Warren does not have a plan for K-12 schooling. She has expressed various positions on education but her overall policy about testing, charter schools, and accountability are murky at best. He questions how different they are from the Bush-Obama strategies.
Blanc recently wrote a comprehensive book about the wave of teachers’ strikes of 2018-19 called Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics. During the strikes, he traveled the nation to talk to strike leaders and striking teachers to understand what was at stake.
He writes:
Elizabeth Warren has a commendably progressive platform on most issues. But her past approach to public education has been closer to that of free-market reformers than most people realize.
The Massachusetts senator’s track record on education has received little scrutiny. Not only was Warren until recently a proponent of market-driven education reform and so-called teacher accountability, but her current platform silences, staff appointments, and political equivocations raise questions about her commitment to reversing the billionaire-funded onslaught against public schools…
There are good reasons to doubt that a Warren presidency would reverse the policies of privatization and education reform that have decimated American’s school system since the 1990s. For someone whose campaign motto is “Warren has a plan for that,” it’s noteworthythat she has not yet issued any plan for K-12 schools — in contrast with Bernie Sanders’ ambitious Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education.
Much of what we do know about Warren’s past and present education proposals, as well as the composition of her staff, should be a cause for concern for teachers, students, and parents.
If Warren wants the support of public school teachers and parents, she must issue a plan that clarifies her plans on testing and privatization.
She needs to be crystal clear about whether she would eliminate the federal mandate for annual testing in grades 3-8, a leftover from George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, which has been an expensive dud. The testing has enriched the testing industry but had no effect on student scores.
Warren needs to take a stand on the federal Charter Schools Program, which is Betsy DeVos’ slush fund for corporate charter chain that are already amply funded by billionaires.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I so want to support Warren. But this is a deal-breaker for me. I’m with Bernie unless she comes up with a position like Bernie’s.
She needs to be crystal clear about whether she would eliminate the federal mandate for annual testing in grades 3-8, a leftover from George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, which has been an expensive dud. The testing has enriched the testing industry but had no effect on student scores.
Yes. Ending the testing mandate is job 1. Not only has it not affected student scores or achievement gaps, it has led to a great debasement and distortion of K-12 curricula and pedagogy. This second, extremely serious issue seems to be one that politicians understanding NOTHING about.
Diane…please comment on the recent Jacobin article on Warren’s history on vouchers and other school issues before she became a legislator. When I read the article this AM it was most disconcerting. Have you interviewed her? If not, please do.
I don’t think you should be concerned about what Warren did before she became a legislator just like you shouldn’t be concerned that Bernie Sanders opposed the Brady Bill and other gun control legislation.
What matters is what Elizabeth Warren’s positions are now. Warren — and frankly all the candidates — should have to sit down and answer questions from someone who supports public schools and knows the counterarguments and facts to ask follow-up questions if Warren decides to avoid answering by using platitudes. Someone like Diane Ravitch!
It’s so rare that anyone who mouths the platitudes of education reformers ever has to answer questions from someone able to ask follow-up questions and present facts that the candidates pretend do not exist.
I always think of Eva Moskowitz sputtering when John Merrow actually asked a well-informed follow-up question to one of her meaningless self-serving replies to a question about why her schools suspended so many students. She was sputtering and stammering and her body language was so revealing! And that was because she had pretty much never in her career had to answer a truly informed follow up question and she was completely unprepared if her misleading statements were challenged with facts and she had to defend what she just said.
I think Warren is an admirable woman and I believe that if she does support “public” charters she will admit to it and explain why. I think if she is asked good follow-up questions, Warren won’t sputter and stammer but will simply explain her reasoning.
If she does support charters, that is a deal-breaker for me in the primary. But I will continue to respect her as a person who happens to have a different opinion than me on this issue. I am certainly looking forward to hearing Warren’s rational for why she has that opinion and have her address the exclusionary policies of charters. But I know that Warren came to that opinion honestly and not because some rich billionaire is demanding she take it as a condition of his support.
I absolutely agree with you that I wish Diane Ravitch could interview Warren and ask lots of follow-up questions that would force her to elaborate on her positions and help us as voters better understand Warren’s positions and why she takes it. I’m actually crossing my fingers that Warren changed her mind like Bernie Sanders did! But if she did not, that will certainly impact my support of her in the primary.
This article confirms my misgivings about Warren, and it explains her poor NPE rating. If Warren does not understand the value of public education, she does not fully understand democracy or equity. Corporate, private charter schools provide neither. In my opinion Warren does not full grasp the the issue of civil rights. Why is the US government incentivizing the placement of mostly minority students in separate and unequal schools that are frequently owned by wealthy white individuals? Racism is a byproduct of privatization as are a loss of students’ rights. There are a multitude of problems created by privatization that guts communities and wastes resources. Competition that forces public schools to continuously lose money is not a winning game for public education. If Warren continues her avoidance strategy, she will only get my vote in an ABT scenario.
At the last debate Warren said that public money should stay in public schools. Did she really mean it, or is she playing the same semantic game that devious Democrats are known to play? Teachers and parents would very much like her to elaborate on her K-12 policy.
retired teacher,
Amen. You nailed it. Thank you.
And, good question.
That’s 100%, retired teacher. One has to be skeptical about her true intentions when, for example, she says she’d appoint a teacher as secretary of education. A real teacher or a TFA/charter teacher? All the candidates (except Bernie who talks about strengthening unions) including Warren talk about increasing teacher pay. Increasing salaries or test score merit bonuses? And it’s not the case that the federal government has much to do with paying teacher salaries anyway. Corporate privatization insiders purposely use feckless language that could be interpreted both ways, and are never specific. They are always hiding something.
Warren seems to be hiding something, and that’s very disconcerting because, as the article suggests, if she’s hiding something about education, what else is she hiding? Who knows? All issues are interrelated. Elizabeth Warren is THE second choice, but Bernie is the first choice. The chasm between them is yuge. We need a Sanders administration and everyone else is second best at best.
Really, is it necessary to say “hiding”?
When I actually see Warren asked about K-12 education in a forum that allows for follow-up questions from educated pro-public education interviewers, and she refuses to tell us her position about charters even when pressed, I will agree she is hiding. But as far as I can tell, she seems to still support some charters and she also supports public schools. You can’t parse her words out of context and imply they were said to deceive. That’s like saying that when Bernie was asked during the 2016 campaign about charters and he said “I support public charters”, the sole purpose of Bernie making that statement was to deceive the public. Because we all learned later that he would campaign for a DFER to make Virginia a pro-charter state just like California. Do you believe Bernie said that during the campaign to try to put one over on voters by misleading them? I don’t.
I wish we could stop that kind of mischaracterization and just address whether or not the candidates have positions we agree with, instead of deciding that their positions don’t matter because we know they are liars. It’s not true of Bernie and it is not true of the others running. Many of whom DO support charter schools, which is why I don’t support them. But I don’t support them because they have the wrong positions, not because I don’t “trust” that that they are honest people. Just like Warren.
NYCPSP,
It is not 2016 anymore. No one had a strong position on charters in that race. Not Hillary, not Bernie.
It is heading into 2020. Bernie has a clear, strong position. Warren waffles.
You can stop bringing up 2016.
Diane,
I’m not referring to 2016 alone. I’m referring to 1988 with Michael Dukakis. To 2000 with Al Gore. To 2004 with John Kerry.
In every instance, a Democrat whose was offering the types of policies that voters supported by a huge margin lost to a Republican offering policies that most voters didn’t even like.
Why? Because in all of those years, the media and the Democratic supporters of other candidates got their fun by completely destroying the character of the Democrat running. Those were all good and decent men with perfectly reasonable policies — some I agreed with and some I didn’t. Their Republican opponents were some of the worst and most corrupt people who ever ran for President. But by the time the election came around, the low-interest independent voters who usually decide elections had heard endlessly how even the Democrats felt they had to “hold their nose” and vote for their corrupt, lying candidate. The right wing used their propaganda to destroy a candidate’s character, and instead of standing up strong and defending their candidate (which is what Dems did when it was Obama that the right wing was smearing), they kept agreeing that the candidate was awful but they’d hold their nose and vote for him. Those candidates lost every single time. I don’t know what will happen if we see a repeat of the kind of casual character attacks on whoever wins the primary that we saw in 2016 and 2004 and 2000 and 1988.
If we don’t remember history, we are doomed to repeat it.
^^^FYI
I absolutely agree that Sen. Warren waffles. Or at least she has not made it clear what her position is. “Waffles” is a pretty loaded term because it’s very possible Sen. Warren has exactly the same views about public charters being good, but I will also support public schools” that she has always had. And it would be terrible if she makes it clear that she now supports the NAACP moratorium on charters, and that gets characterized as “waffling” because she used to support something else.
Talking about a candidate’s positions is of vital importance. I love that you are trying to enlighten your readers about what the positions are and helping to force candidates to make their positions clear.
What I object to is when a discussion of a candidate’s positions becomes all about WHY they take that position, and when certain female candidates take positions, people seem to feel free to claim without an ounce of evidence that it is because the candidate is deeply, deeply corrupt and dishonest.
If Sen. Warren doesn’t clarify her position, or it turns out that she is NOT “waffling” and has the exact same position she has had for years, I won’t support her. But I will know that she isn’t holding that position for some nefarious reasons, just like I knew it when Bernie held the same position.
For me, Warren really brings the “I will blindy appoint Bennet” fear to the forefront.
ciedie, please explain? (Sorry for being dense),
“At the last debate Warren said that public money should stay in public schools.”
Well, yes, if you count “public” charter schools as public schools. These are exactly the kinds of details people need to listen for, because this is the dance the candidates do to convince their voters while not scaring off their donors.
Well Bernie was counting “public charters” as public schools right up until a few months ago. In fact, it was very recently — long after Trump was elected — that Bernie worked hard to elect a DFER candidate in Virginia and then when he had the chance to help support Cynthia Nixon by endorsing her over the rabidly pro-charter Andrew Cuomo, adamantly refused to endorse her. Was Cynthia too much of a socialist for Bernie to endorse? Too pro-public school for Bernie?
Just saying that I am more than willing to trust Bernie’s very recent change of heart about privatization and charters. And I will trust Elizabeth Warren’s change of heart, once she is rightly put on the spot to clarify exactly what her position is. If Warren still supports charters, she won’t get my vote in the primary, period. If she (or any other Dem who is pro-charter) does get the nomination, I will gladly support her over the anti-public school, anti-democracy, proto-Fascist Trump.
But I know Elizabeth Warren is not trying to fake a position just like Bernie isn’t trying to fake one. In fact, none of the Democrats try to fake positions. They run on positions and far too often the people that support their opponents make up lies about how they are dishonest and really controlled by evil people. I always expect that from the lying Republicans who can’t win on the issues, but when I hear another self-described progressive or Democrat mimicking the Republican embrace of dishonesty, I get immediately turned off by their candidate.
I hope this election remains an honest discussion. No smearing candidates as only having positions because of some evil control by a billionaire. The Democrats have always been quite clear — you may not like Biden, but his positions are his positions and he isn’t lying. Same with Bernie. Same with Warren. Let’s all agree that not one of them is a liar or making promises they have no intention of keeping.
Vote for the one in the primary whose positions align with yours. But don’t reject Bernie or Warren or anyone because you say “I do agree with nearly all their positions, but I know Bernie/Warren/Biden is so corrupt he/she plans to do the bidding of evil people and is lying to us about everything.”
The NPE Action “2020 Presidential Candidates Project” identifies some problems in Warren’s views on public education, K-12. I think her views about postsecondary education are also troubling (e.g., her Senate bill 300), but that is another topic. I may have tripped on some additional information beyond that in NPE’s report.
https://npeaction.org/elizabeth-warren/
PART 1. Elizabeth Warren’s Presidential Campaign website.
“The problem is not vouchers; the problem is parental choice.”
This one-liner is from “The Two-Income Trap” that Warren co-authored with her daughter in 2003, and republished in 2016, with a new Introduction. I found the 2016 Introduction online. It is an update on the economic impact of the 2008 recession on two-income middle class families. The rest of the book was unchanged, including her troubling 2003 discussion of vouchers and choice.
Warren has been accused of supporting vouchers for private schools. She does not support them, according to the campaign website “Fact Squad.”
“FACT: ELIZABETH WARREN NEVER SUPPORTED PRIVATE SCHOOL VOUCHERS: Elizabeth believes that every child has the right to a quality public education, regardless of where they live. She has never supported private school vouchers.”
The Fact Squad is responding to claims by the American Enterprise Institute and America Rising that Warren and DeVos have the same proposals for vouchers. The Fact Squad says: “Elizabeth believes private school voucher programs are dangerous, cost taxpayers billions of dollars, would destroy public education, and have been used to further racial and socioeconomic segregation. She has never supported private school vouchers.
The Fact Squad commentary continues: “In The Two-Income Trap, Elizabeth Warren one of the leading bankruptcy scholars in the country— wrote about how the lack of investment in public schools stretched parents thin. Parents were buying houses they couldn’t afford because they were trying to provide their children with the best education.”
“Elizabeth recognized that the only alternative parents had to an underfunded and under-resourced school was to send their kids to private school. … “Elizabeth’s alternative was about allowing parents to live in houses they could afford without worrying about whether they were in a good school district, and she argued her alternative could eliminate the resource disparities between school districts. “Read for yourself what she wrote back in 2003” (link).
The Fact Squad links you to a one page pdf, about three paragraphs from her book The Two-Income Trap (2003) but unchanged in the 2016 edition. Here are excerpts from the one-page pdf.
“Short of buying a new home, parents currently have only one way to escape a failing public school: Send the kids to private school. But there is another alternative, one that would keep much-needed tax dollars inside the public school system while still reaping the advantages offered by a voucher program. Local governments could enact meaningful reform by enabling parents to choose from among all the public schools in a locale, with no presumptive assignment based on neighborhood. …
Under a public school voucher program parents, not bureaucrats, would have the power to pick schools for their children—and to choose which schools would get their children’s vouchers. Students would be admitted to schools based on their talents, their interests, or even their lottery numbers; their zip codes would be irrelevant. … Children who required extra resources, such as those with physical or learning disabilities, could be assigned proportionately larger vouchers, which would make it more attractive for schools to take on the more challenging (and expensive) task of educating these children. It might take some re-jiggering to settle on the right amount for a public school voucher, but eventually every child would have a valuable funding ticket to be used in any school in the area. To collect those tickets, schools would have to provide the education parents want. …
… Ultimately, an all voucher system would diminish the distinction between public and private school, as parents were able to exert more direct control over their children’s schools (65 endnote).
My jaw dropped when I read the pdf. Milton Friedman smiles.
I do not have a copy of this book but the Google search function for marketing the book has the pdf excerpt and much more of the text. The main point is that middle class parents with two incomes and children (in 2003) were having a hard time, and according to Warren, the cost of good-quality education was one reason. Warren claims that no one should have to buy a home based on its proximity to a good school. School choice is a virtue because it would change the housing market and free middle-class families from “ruinous” mortgages.
… “By selecting where to send their children (and where to spend their vouchers), parents would take control over schools’ tax dollars, making them the de facto owners of those schools. Parents, not administrators, would decide on programs, student-teacher ratios, and whether to spend money on art or sports.”
Click to access Voucher-Page.pdf
The FactCheck entry at Warren’s campaign website strongly suggests that she still supports school choice, vouchers for “public schools,” and schemes where “money-follows-the child.” Warren offers no clarification of who would be charge of these arrangements, other that “local governments” empowered to identify “locales” for school choice other than neighborhoods or areas defined by zip codes. I found no evidence of thinking about tiers of funding for public schools—federal, state, local.
Warren’s language from 2003 is replete with ugly reformist digs about “failing schools,” insensitive education “bureaucrats,” myths about school districts determined by zip codes (See the myth deconstructed at http://proximityone.com/zip-sd.htm). She supports school choice with vouchers– a “money follows the student system”—and a “one application” process for public schools not defined by neighborhoods or zip codes. I could find no discussion of the fact that choice plans allow schools to choose their students.
I found no update on these 2003 views at the campaign website. Warren and her campaign staff seem to be unconcerned that these ideas are deeply offensive to workers in public education and many people who support their public schools even if not parents and not in “two-income middle class” families.
The campaign website is silent about charter schools. That is a problem because the phrase “public charter schools” has taken firm root since 2003. The 2016 revision of The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are (Still) Going Broke, coauthored with her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi has no changes other that a new Introduction A useful orientation to the book with one review (in the light of her presidential candidacy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap
On ESSA and required tests
Warren’s is clear and consistent in supporting ESSA’s accountability measures which include annual statewide tests for ALL student in reading/language arts and mathematics in grades 3-8 and once in high school, plus tests once in each grade span in science for all students plus annual tests (K-12) of English language proficiency for all English learners.(But, In a session with teacher unions she registered a clear opposition to tests).
PART 2. .Elizabeth Warren’s Senate website
This has a dedicated “DeVos Watch” section. There you will find an eight-page report “DeVos Watch, Year One: Failing America’s Students, Prepared by the Offices of Senator Elizabeth Warren and Massachusetts Representative Katherine Clark.” https://www.warren.senate.gov/oversight/devos-watch
The Report has four main topics called “Findings,” each with several headlined points.
QUESTIONABLE ETHICS AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST. 1. Secretary DeVos’s Conflicts of Interest and Undisclosed Education Investments. 2. Top appointees at the Education Department have troubling ties to predatory for-profit colleges and student loan providers.
FAVORING FOR-PROFIT COLLEGES OVER STUDENTS. 1. Secretary DeVos has upended federal student loan borrower protections by postponing or eliminating regulations governing loan collection fees, borrower defense, and gainful employment. 2. Eroding Oversight by Terminating the Department’s Partnership with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). 3. Granting a Second Chance for Troubled Agency (The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools) 4. Allowing For-Profit Colleges to Escape Accountability, and 5. Impeding State Oversight of Student Loan Servicers.
WEAKENING PUBLIC EDUCATION. 1. Secretary DeVos’s Schedule Highlights Disdain for Public Education. 2. Undermining the Bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). 3. The Trump/DeVos Department of Education Budget Proposal Defunds Public Education (Almost $1 Billion in New Spending Directed Towards Charter, Private, and Religious Schools; Cuts to Programs Helping Teachers and K-12 Students from Low Socioeconomic Backgrounds; Cuts to Programs Helping College Students).
TURNING BACK THE CLOCK ON CIVIL RIGHTS. 1. Sexual harassment and sexual violence. 2. LGBTQ+ student rights. 3. Rights of students of color. 4. Backsliding from the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Responsibilities. Undermining the Bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Warren voted for ESSA and clearly likes the “accountability” measures it includes. The website says: “Congress passed ESSA in 2015 with bipartisan votes in the House and Senate. ESSA contained new provisions to make public K-12 education more accountable and equitable for all students. Secretary DeVos has undermined the law by failing to enforce key requirements.”
“For example, ESSA requires states to establish academic goals for schools and students, and mechanisms to improve low-performing schools. The Education Department is responsible for reviewing and approving state plans that meet these requirements. Independent and nonpartisan peer reviews of all 51 state plans (including the District of Columbia) have found that many state plans were incomplete and failed to detail how states would comply with all of ESSA’s requirements. 74
Endnote 74 above takes you to a report that is NOT independent and non-partisan. It comes from the Collaborative for Student Success. (2017, December 12) a non-profit funded by billionaire foundations intent on privatizing schools and shoring up the Common Core: Bloomberg Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, ExxonMobil, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. In no way is this review of state plans, (or another from Bellwether Education Partners, not cited) “independent” or “non-partisan.”
I think Warren and her staff are really wrong about federal policies for public education. Warren relies on a distinction between private school vouchers and public school vouchers that actually collapses, and in her own words: “Ultimately, an all voucher system would diminish the distinction between public and private school.”
Unless I am mistaken, Warren’s campiagn is designed to appeal to middle class voters whom she assumes will support ESSA and school choice aided by a “public voucher.” I found not an ounce of respect for public education as a civic institution, one governed by democratically elected school boards, with schools open to all and financed by many people other than parents. Warren seems to think of public schools as a reason for ambitious middle class parents to go shopping Here support of ESSA “enforcement” and ESSA’s required test scores are just what charter and choice advocates love to hear.
Thank you for that thorough report, Laura. What is the information about Biden?
I wrote a long post that disappeared but wanted to ask:
Didn’t Bernie Sanders also support ESSA? It says so on his campaign website and it doesn’t say he regrets it. Weren’t all the progressives supporting it?
If I wanted to vote for a primary candidate who had fought against ESSA, who would I vote for?
I also wanted to thank you for this incredibly informative post about Sen. Warren’s positions.
Yes, all the progressives were supporting it because Obama wanted it passed. The Obama WH pressured Dems to pass it late in December 2015 so they could claim a ” bipartisan win” in the 2016 election. The WH strategy was bipartisanship can work for the country. Hurray for us. But don’t read the fine print.
Patty Murray – ranking Dem & Lamar Alexander – Repub chair, pretended that ESSA had fixed NCLB’s test
& accountability measures. They paraded teachers up there to talk to the committee about the damage done by over testing but in the end, fixed little. Essentially, ESSA turned the decisions about testing over to states. It was a weak – tea fix that buried loads of free money to TFA, charters, and legalized social impact bonds/pay for success to fund universal PreK.
The ed-reform lobbyists were quite satisfied with the outcome.
Thank you for your research, Laura. I find this information deeply troubling.
speduktr,
I mentioned this in my reply below, but I wrote a long post about this that disappeared because I think that some of the criticism of Warren may really be just a misunderstanding of what Warren means by the word “vouchers”. She is talking about a system that would look a lot like San Francisco or New York City, where public schools were not zoned by neighborhood but were open to all students in a wide region. She is talking about a system where everyone in all of Westchester County could go to any public school in Westchester County so parents didn’t have to go bankrupt to buy a house in the “right” public school district.
I know she had used the word “vouchers”, but when I read her detailed explanation of “vouchers”, that’s what she means. Not a “voucher” to be used for private schools.
New York City kind of does this but with lots more restrictions. But I can live anywhere in NYC and for high school, my kid can attend a school in the Bronx or Staten Island or Queens. The DOE doesn’t call it a “voucher” system, but it is essentially a very close version to what Warren calls “vouchers”. I don’t know if her idea is either realistic or good, but if it is what I understand it to be, it is close to something that many progressive supporters of integrated public schools support. And I’m talking about people who hate charters and privatization.
I’d love to hear anyone else’s take on that who has the time to do a close read of Warren’s book and what she means by “voucher”.
Her comments may ring fewer alarm bells for people who live in the city, but as long as school funding is handled on a local level, her idea would not fly. Those of us whose communities function around local schools probably find this idea less attractive as well. If I still had kids in school, I would not like to see them scattered across the county for many reasons, which should be fairly obvious without too much discussion.
speduktr,
Yes, I can totally understand how her proposal would be problematic outside of cities.
I was just trying to explain that I don’t think she is offering “vouchers” as a way to privatize public education, but she sees it as a way to address the fact that the good public schools tend to be where one needs to be quite wealthy to live, and the places where poor families can afford to live often have the worst public schools.
Warren’s idea may very well be a terrible way to address this and lead to even more problems. My only point is that while her idea may not be good, it was not designed to “privatize” but as a way to address a different issue.
And I think we all know that no one has really figured out what to do about the fact that public schools whose catchment areas are neighborhoods where middle class and affluent parents can afford to live are generally significantly more appealing for all kinds of reasons (better facilities, academics, extracurriculars, sports, etc.) than public schools whose catchment areas are neighborhoods where poor families can afford to live. It’s the age old question because it also tends to increase segregation in schools, especially segregation by family income.
And outside of that loaded word “busing”, it is an issue that no one really seems to have any idea how to solve. I think some states — maybe NJ — started equalizing school funding so it wasn’t property tax based with rich suburbs having much more to spend than poor ones. But that didn’t seem to be an effective solution as well as being unpopular.
So I do credit Warren with actually being brave enough to try to address that issue, which probably came to her attention when she learned of families going bankrupt because the only way their kids could go to a good public school was if they could afford to live within its boundaries. Again, her plan that she calls “vouchers” (but is really about kids living outside a public school district getting to attend that district’s schools) is not necessarily a good way to address this. But I do think it was done for good reasons and Warren never viewed it as “privatizing” because it was simply about parents being able to choose a different public school even if they couldn’t afford to live in an expensive neighborhood.
Again, I could be mis-reading it. But that’s what it appears to be to me.
Gotcha. I don’t assign any ulterior motives to her thinking either, but I still think the plan is a non starter. Popular or not, equalized and adequate state funding seems to be a good start. We can provide a decent education to all children. Beyond that I think we are dealing with larger social issues that include providing decent living conditions and job opportunities for everyone. The schools cannot solve everything.
Yes I agree.
And thank you for saying that you saw no ulterior motives. I think progressives/Democrats would be so much more successful if we stuck to discussing the complexities of figuring out the right approach to how to address issues instead of always find ulterior motives for the people who may propose a different way — sometimes only slightly different! We should chose the candidate offering the better plan, but there is no need to attack the one offering a different plan as having ulterior (i.e. corrupt) motives.
Some candidates want Medicare for All and some want Medicare for All but people with good insurance — like many union members — could keep their insurance. I like Medicare for All, period, but I can see why someone else might want a plan where union members with insurance they really like could keep it. So while I would vote for the Medicare for All candidate, I wouldn’t accuse the one offering a plan where some people can keep their insurance of “being in the pocket of insurance companies” or only supporting that because CAP was telling them to. When that happens, the result is that during elections, independents end up thinking all Dems are corrupt and vote against their own interests for more “honest” Republicans.
Interesting, Laura. Warren supports Medicare for All because of the all the profiteering, price fixing and outrageous salaries in heath care. Gee, it sounds a lot like the private charter industry! If public schools are bad in a community, it is the job of the state and community to fix them instead of shipping children off to third party vendors in charters.
“Warren seems to think of public schools as a reason for ambitious middle class parents to go shopping. Here support of ESSA “enforcement” and ESSA’s required test scores are just what charter and choice advocates love to hear.”
Laura, this is so disappointing but appears to be an accurate interpretation of Warren’s ideas about public education. She frames her plan in terms of markets with no apparent recognition of shared responsibility. There’s no vision in her statements of public education as a community bond & a public good. The only incentive to schools to take “more expensive” kids (e.g. with disabilities) is to offer schools more money – not any sense that they deserve to be educated as full members of communities.
The notion that “public vouchers” will improve equity is absurd on its face. An isolating system of vouchers, (public or otherwise) will fuel competition among families and schools and increase segregation.
I think her team should read this & change her mind: https://southernspaces.org/2019/segregationists-libertarians-and-modern-school-choice-movement?fbclid=IwAR2M4-XxDt9isuO5G388pwDbwvYk_bRuUbe9EIm1OBsTMgLhUUgR-HxCkQ8
Yes, those are excellent points! Warren’s proposal for “public vouchers” do not sound like a good idea. You are right that we need to start talking more about shared responsibility and the public good. Maybe those ideas won’t win elections, but I would sure like to see a Democrat lose by standing up proudly and loudly for those ideals instead of looking at public education as simply a “market” with “consumers” of education.
I agree. As an anti-privatization education advocate in Florida and a close follower of the presidential candidates, I noticed that Warren has a plan for birth to preschool and for higher education but no k-12 plan. I have left numerous email messages on her campaign website asking about her k-12 plan and urging her to develop a K-12 plan similar to Bernie’s plan but have never received an answer. I like Elizabeth Warren’s other positions but this omission is glaring. I think we have to start bombarding her campaign and raise the issue directly with her and her surrogates whenever we can.
Warren’s birth to preK plan does not mention Head Start or that ESSA (that she voted for) includes social impact bonds to fund her plan for expanding PreK.
If ANYONE in this race understands the implications of SIBs for corruption it’s Warren.
The infrastructure for Head Start is already in place. It’s funding mechanism comes from the federal govt & goes directly to the schools. Head Start has no financial management company or bank CEO in between that money skimming profits & getting bonuses for kicking kids out of special ed.
If Democrats want to endorse universal PreK they should do so by expanding Head Start by lifting the income means test & fund it.
Yea!! These are exactly the kind of articles and conversations we need to have!
Warren’s ideology is (apparently) wrong about K-12 education. Not over the top wrong like Corey Booker, but her positions seem to be far too pro-charter for my liking. And she absolutely needs to clarify what her definition of “public school” is and whether she defines a “public school” to include private charters run by billionaire boards that don’t have to answer to any local authority. Does Warren include any private charters that are non-profit in her definition of “public schools”?
And if Warren does includes privately managed charters (as long as they are non-profit), then she should be forced to defend her position by answering questions from an interviewer who has the knowledge to present the counter arguments and follow-up questions. No candidate should be allowed to get away with mouthing platitudes to answer questions while the journalists just nod and go on to a new question.
Who knows? If Senator Warren actually sat down and explained why she feels that all the counterarguments and facts about how charters push out students and do other reprehensible practices don’t matter to her, she might make a convincing argument.
I don’t know if Warren would make a convincing argument. But I do know that all candidates should be asked the kinds of questions that require them to address why they don’t have a problem with specific charter practices that they seem to condone in their desire to expand charters.
The one thing that I hope does not happen is the thing that has led to the undermining of democracy. And that is when people who care a lot more about politics than the truth start throwing out smears to attack Warren because of her beliefs. The smears we saw in 2016, when opponents of a candidate insisted every position she took that they disagreed with was simply because she was corrupt and secretly did whatever her CAP overlords ordered. And if that happens with Elizabeth Warren, I hope those people are publicly identified as trolls who are more concerned with using ugly innuendo to smear a candidate than trying to illuminate the issues so that candidates have to make their positions clear and voters can support them.
I care about what Elizabeth Warren’s position on education is right now. I don’t care if Warren, like Bernie Sanders, is a latecomer to supporting public schools. I don’t care if last year neither of them were willing to speak out strongly against charters and were still endorsing DFER candidates and working hard to get pro-charter progressives get elected.
What matters is not what they did last year, but what position they have now, as long as they are made to clarify exactly what that position is, so that we don’t have to guess exactly what a candidate means when he or she says they support “public charters” (as Bernie used to say).
If Warren, like Bernie, is a latecomer to supporting public school, I don’t doubt either the commitment of Bernie or Warren to their latest positions even if it took them until 2019 to embrace them.
And if Warren still supports “good” non-profit charters that only look good because they exclude every single student that doesn’t make them look good, then she is clearly not the candidate for me. At least in the primary. I will gladly work for her or whoever the nominee is to defeat Trump in 2020.
I care about what Elizabeth Warren’s position on education is right now.
Me too. That is why i looked at her Campaign Website and her Senate Website.
Her Campaign Website is unambiguous. She is pro-choice. She thinks for public school vouchers are fine, not private school vouchers.
She does not address privately managed charter schools that market themselves as public.
The closest thing to a “public school voucher” is actually a federally authorized inter-district transfer of “tuition fees” for a student transfering from a low performing district to a school in a higher performing district. That kind of choice dates to NCLB, Obama’s Voluntary Public School Choice program.
Per=pupil tuition costs are usually based on instruction, pupil services, administration, maintenance and fixed charges. These and related calculations, whether used for school transfers or not, will be under strict scrutiny soon, because ESSA requires reports for per-pupil spending by school and income stream (federal, state, district, other) for the first time, not average cost breakouts for the district.
Warren’s Senate Website clearly shows she favors strict enforcement of ESSA, including NCLB’s testing requirements. She also want the state plans that were submitted to DeVos for review monitored for compliance.
Laura H. Chapman,
Thank you – I think your informative posts are amazing and I greatly appreciate when you post.
I do confess I don’t know enough about the nitty gritty of what happens at the federal level and ESSA to know exactly how to evaluate some of Warren’s positions as pertain to ESSA. But I thought ESSA was something that all the candidates, even Bernie, seem to refer to on their websites as if it was something that they are not condemning but had proudly supported. But I am very grateful that your posts are educating me a bit about those issues.
As a parent, I do care about where a candidate is philosophically with regards to public education and charters and I love that Bernie this year threw down the gauntlet that will hopefully force candidates like Warren to take a position on the NAACP’s call for a moratorium on charter expansion. She certainly has avoided taking a position. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like anyone has asked her in a forum where she’d have to make her position clear. Until then, I assume she doesn’t support it and that’s a dealbreaker for me in the primary right now.
Thanks again for your informative posts.
As long as her staff is ex-TFA types, she is not going to hear what is really going on. She certainly won’t hear it from the national media. You really have to be following education news to have any idea what is happening. Too many people still don’t realize that charters are funded with their tax dollars that were meant for their public schools, and that is the least of the grievances that should be widely known. With Warren’s background in tracking financial shenanigans, she should be all over the widespread charter school scandals. Bernie is not perfect, but at least he had the sense to respond to the pressure to retain staff who are actually understand the importance of the role of public education in our society. The reformy crowd has done an excellent job of seeding their acolytes into candidates campaigns and controlling the narrative prepared for their candidates.
cx: to retain staff who actually understand…
I agree this is likely, which is why I am hoping that someone like Diane Ravitch gets to ask her questions — and lots of follow-up questions — in a public forum in which Warren’s positions on K-12 education are made clear to voters.
I think if Warren was forced to directly address all the issues that critics of the ed reform movement have, especially with charters and testing, it would be helpful for us to know why she believes what she does. I also think in that kind of forum, the interviewer can make counter points and offer facts to Warren that I assume her ex-TFA staff never inform her about.
You are absolutely correct, speduktr. Part (& maybe all) of the reason Bernie didn’t hear you last time, Diane, was due to the wall his campaign manager & staff built around him, like Warren’s is doing now. So much depends upon the company one keeps (think Julius Caesar!). I had personal experience w/an IL gubernatorial candidate’s stubborn, egotistic & just plain ignorant campaign manager, who really hurt the candidate. (I did not & do not fault the candidate–I am fairly certain that he wasn’t aware of his c.m.’s shenanigans.)
I don’t know–being a MA citizen & voter & (sadly)–what counts in this world–perhaps you, Diane, or Carol could get Matt Damon’s Mom
(sorry, I know her first name is Nancy, but can’t come up w/the rest) to get past her “people” & get directly to Warren. Or–how about appealing to Matt Damon himself? (After all, remember, he was the only one Arne Duncan wanted to {in fact, was desperate to} talk to at the first S.O.S. D.C. March.)
It’s especially sad, having read the terrific, comprehensive New York magazine article about her (I’d recommended it several months ago: she has pledged to appoint a teacher to be Ed. Sec….too bad if that teacher were a TFAer!).
Oh, after “what counts in this world,” I meant to add “a wealthy celebrity” or a “rich, famous movie star.”
The rest of us are to be ignored.
I do care about her previous positions on public education, especially in the absence of a plan from a candidate priding herself on policy specificity and that CURRENTLY has a TFA alum as her education adviser. My read is that she is finessing the issue to mollify the donor class and perhaps actually still holds some of the anti-public school, neoliberal plans she had to disrupt the system.
I really wish you would refrain from using ugly language like
“mollify the donor class”.
When Bernie Sanders worked so hard for a pro-charter Democrat to turn Virginia — one of the last pro-public schools states – into the next charter-friendly California, did Bernie work so hard for a DFER Dem in order to “mollify the donor class”? Was it because Bernie was secretly “neoliberal”?
Those are ugly words and smears that are designed entirely to divide Democrats and do absolutely nothing to make the case for public schools.
We should certainly find out what Warren’s views are. But to make ugly characterizations that she has those views because she wants rich people to like her is beyond outrageous.
Bernie is allowed to have an opinion without me using nasty and dishonest innuendo that Bernie took that position to mollify some rich person. Bernie is allowed to have an opinion without Trump lying that Bernie took that position to help his “Muslim terrorist” friends.
There is no difference in those two attacks. Do you really feel you need to use Trump’s dishonest tactics against Elizabeth Warren? Why?
Trump will happily tell us why the nominee running against him takes his or her positions and it will always be in service to something corrupt. It’s the typical Republican playbook, Trump will accuse the nominee — whether it is Biden, Warren, or Bernie — of being controlled by some evil outside force. Just like you did to Warren.
Remember, people vote for Republicans all the time even if they don’t agree with all their positions. The Republicans know they can do whatever they want because they know some progressives or Democrats will always help them push the narrative the Democrat they are running against is corrupt, lying, and is secretly going to do the bidding of someone evil if elected. Voters would rather vote for an honest Republican than the Democrat who they “know” is a corrupt liar who can’t be trusted.
We call out people using Trump-like attacks against progressive candidates. Not give Trump more ammunition to convince voters that he is better than the corrupt, dishonest alternative.
Mollify the donor class is “ugly?” Maybe wrong—I don’t think so—but hardly ugly. She leaves her motives and intentions wide open by not taking a position when she’s a carving out an identity as a policy focused. She’s finessing the issue.
I’m about where you are in your thinking, Chuck. She has left herself open to speculation. It may be that she suspects her position will not be well received. Whether she is concerned about the big buck, neolib donors, I don’t know, but it certainly is a possibility. In any case, her non position position on public education may have the effect of mollifying potential donors whether her silence is calculated to have that effect or not.
You really should stop snidely attacking Bernie.
Diane,
I apologize as my intention is absolutely not to be “snide”. It is that the only way that seems to get people to understand how dangerous the character attacks they make on other Democrats are is to show them what it looks like when it is directed toward a candidate they like.
Suddenly they feel like the attack is snide or unwarranted or offensive. I was actually much, much kinder to Bernie than any of the people I responded to were to Elizabeth Warren. But since it was directed toward Bernie, people felt it was unwarranted. When it was directed toward Elizabeth Warren, it was perfectly acceptable.
There is a double standard here. I don’t know how else to point out that double standard except to demonstrate what it looks like when the kinds of things that are said about certain female candidates are said about certain male candidates.
You made an excellent post pointing out that Elizabeth Warren needed to be crystal clear about her position. I replied to it saying “Yea! These are exactly the kinds of articles and conversations we need to have”. Your post was perfect. It did not use words like “mollify the donor class” and “secret neoliberal”. You were not saying that Elizabeth Warren wasn’t trustworthy. You were rightly pointing out that it seems as if her position on K-12 education was pro-charter. That’s important to know for voters deciding which primary candidate to support.
I also said that people – and I did not mean you because you do NOT do this — need to stop using words like “mollify the donor class” and “neoliberal”. That means that it doesn’t matter what position Sen. Warren takes on anything — she cannot be trusted to be telling the truth.
I also said the same thing all through 2016 and I was shouted down and belittled as a worry wart. Everyone thought they could bash HRC’s character and talk about “holding their noses” to vote for this corrupt person and she’d still defeat Trump. In surveys of people right after they voted, the words voters associated with HRC was “corrupt” and “lying” “untrustworthy” and “dishonest”. She was not. She had some more conservative positions and some more liberal positions. That got turned into something it was not and it was the reason Trump won.
It’s bad enough that we now have two far right Supreme Court Justices who will probably serve my entire life as a result. But we are also in one of the most dangerous times for America and I really think there is only a 50/50 chance that our democracy survives.
So when I am posting in response to one of the character attacks that some self-described progressives so casually fling at other good Democrats, it is because that seems to be the only way to get to them realize how what they are doing sounds when it is used against a candidate they like. I think if we stop calling that out and if we let it continue the way it was condoned and even encouraged in 2016, the Republicans will do what they usually do and use it to convince voters that whoever wins the Democratic nomination is too corrupt to trust to be President. Even if you agree with that candidate on the issues.
No Democrat in my lifetime has won an election when too many members of his or her own party keep getting quoted all over the media about how they will grudgingly “hold their nose” and vote for the corrupt or dishonest Democrat.
It just tells the voters who are the ones who decide elections that if the Democrats themselves hate the guy so much, he (or she) must be really really corrupt.
Trolling Bernie is more like it.
LeftCoastTeacher,
I know I am an idiot for wasting my time believing you might actually read what I wrote and make even the smallest attempt to consider it.
Okay, you win. Elizabeth Warren’s position on education is entirely directed by the big donors who tell her exactly what her marching orders are and she steps to it. It really doesn’t matter what she says for the next 8 months, because we all understand that anything she says is clearly just a bunch of words she thinks will convince gullible voters to vote for her not knowing that she is evilly planning to privatize all of public education and outlaw teachers unions as soon she gets elected.
If Democrats do make the worst choice possible and somehow Elizabeth Warren becomes the candidate running against Trump, I’ll be right with you complaining about how we shouldn’t trust a word this co-opted tool of CAP is saying and making sure people know that Elizabeth Warren is entirely in the pocket of her billionaire donors.
Maybe I’ll hold my nose and vote for Sen. Warren but maybe I’ll say “you know, why bother, because she is certainly no better than Trump”.
Now do you believe I am a “real” progressive like you?
I understand what you are trying to say and agree with you; I just don’t think Chuck’s comment rose to the level of disdain that is sometimes evident from some commenters. There is not a candidate out there that is not concerned about what the voters think about their positions, especially those who donate to their campaigns. Bernie is smart in that it is much easier to be totally upfront about where you stand when your campaign does not depend on big donors. His style is to say what he thinks anyway. I found it very interesting when he commented in an on camera interview that he has worked across the aisle. From the way he talks, one might think he was totally unable to compromise. It was a relief to know that he did and could.
Our electioneering might be more honest if we went to public funding. Candidates might not have to be quite so careful about the way they parse their positions.
speduktr,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate it.
This is what confuses me:
Elizabeth Warren has the same positions on charters as Bernie had last year, right? Bernie this year issued an excellent plan and that is probably going to win him my vote, unless Warren elaborates a lot more about her position on charters and also endorses the NAACP’s moratorium on charters. But I just don’t see how anyone can say it is okay to make all kinds of innuendoes implying all kinds of corrupt motives for Elizabeth Warren’s position when they never did the same when Bernie held those positions a short time ago. No one is saying that Bernie was corrupt last year but now he’s not. He had one position that he believed was right and he got more information and correctly and admirably changed his mind. So if Bernie could hold that position last year without his motives and character being impugned, then why can’t Warren hold that position now without her motives and character being impugned?
But I want to make this clear — I am entirely in favor of people pointing out what Elizabeth Warren’s positions are and explaining why they are absolutely wrong and why Bernie’s position is 1,000x better. I think that is of utmost importance. I hope their positions can be discussed and questioned, and hopefully clarified. (For example, I actually thought the way Warren uses the term “vouchers” was really a matter of semantics and is not what people think, and I wish we could discuss that instead of everything being about motives and pleasing donors, etc.)
I think the best way to consider whether a statement is a discussion of a candidate’s position or an attempt to smear them is to substitute the name of a candidate you like a lot — usually Bernie Sanders is a good one to use — and rewrite the sentence so it is about one of his positions. If the sentence ends up being all about motives and innuendoes then what is the point when the discussion should be what does the candidate support, not impugning his motives? Think about how pro-charter folks ALWAYS imply that a politician who doesn’t support charter schools is only taking that position because they do whatever the teachers union tells them to. It’s a way to impugn that candidate’s character and get people to dislike him, because they are afraid of having a genuine discussion about the issues. I don’t think anyone who is progressive should be afraid to have a genuine debate. We should be able to discuss these issues without impugning the motives of candidates and implying they are trying to please one group or another in an attempt to get people to believe they are untrustworthy.
Vote for the candidate whose positions are most in line with yours. There is no need to malign the others because their positions on some issues are not the same as yours. And there is no need for anyone else to malign your candidate because they support a candidate with different positions. People are allowed to take positions without being smeared as tools of the teachers’ union or tools of the billionaire donors. Their positions should be criticized because those positions are wrong. But I always distrust people who want to focus on motives to smear a candidate because that sounds like every right winger who attacks progressives.
Your suggestion of substituting a candidates name is a good one, but frankly, in this instance, I did not react to the verbs chosen in the same way you did. I didn’t assign a positive or negative rating to the terms chosen. You did. If we were writing a news report, I think it would be more important to choose terms that would be very broadly seen as neutral, but this is a blog where people are expressing opinions. I don’t always agree with the thoughts of others and sometimes, I agree, it seems like people choose to use language they know is inflammatory. Your substitution idea might go a long way to curtailing this problem.
Please keep in mind that I’m a working teacher. I devote as much time as I can afford to keeping up with and debating education news and activism here, but my time is limited during the school year. I don’t have time to rehash 2016 ad nauseam. I don’t have time to read multiple long comments. Thank you for your understanding.
LeftCoastTeacher,
I absolutely appreciate that you are a committed teacher and I thank you for that commitment to your students and profession.
I have no expectations of you reading my admittedly overlong posts and I don’t blame you for having much better things to do with your time!
I only ask very politely that you please don’t mischaracterize a post you don’t have time to read as “rehashing 2016 ad nauseam”. That’s not what I was doing and while you probably didn’t intend it (or maybe you did), it was gratuitously insulting.
Thank you again as I have the utmost respect for teachers in the trenches and the demanding and endless work you do for our kids.
I posted this the other day, but worth repeating: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/09/the-prospect-of-an-elizabeth-warren-nomination-should-be-very-worrying
It’s not that Warren doesn’t have a plan for K-12, it’s that she knows you won’t like her plan, so she carefully mumbles around it with things like universal pre-k and affordable college and hiring a “teacher” as her Secretary of Education.
Unlike the stock market, for humans, past behavior is indeed the best predictor of future behavior, unless the person has had a “come to Jesus” moment (not in a religious sense) and has clearly articulated where their thinking went wrong before, what changed their thinking and what they’ll do differently going forward.
If Warren becomes president, she’ll be Obama all over again.
Exactly, she’s finessing the issue.
Whew, glad you made that exception because clearly there isn’t a single person running in the primary whose past positions have not been reprehensible in some way or another. Every single one.
But who gets to decide whether the big change they made when they “came to Jesus” meets your criteria?
“has clearly articulated where their thinking went wrong before, what changed their thinking and what they’ll do differently going forward.”
I am really interested in hearing a candidate who has changed their position explaining where their thinking went wrong and what changed their thinking.
Interesting that there was just a nationally televised debate in which K-12 education and charters was actually brought up as a subject! And the candidate i thought had a “come to Jesus” moment only wanted to talk about free college for all. If I was as cynical as you, I would be pretty sure he “punted” because he didn’t want to talk about K-12 education. After all, what kind of progressives would we be if we didn’t take the cynical view of candidates? Is there a committee that decides if the “come to Jesus” was real when the candidate punts the first time he is given the opportunity to talk to the American people on a national stage to make sure they understood his (new) stance?
Did you read the link I posted? Any response to that?
dienne77,
Thanks for asking and thanks for posting the article.
I thought that the article was quite interesting and while I have been leaning toward Bernie because of his K-12 education position, the article did give me even more reasons to support Bernie. I know you think I’m lying, but I voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary. I like Bernie a lot. The thing is, I also thought that HRC was a very acceptable alternative.
The irony is that this article actually made me regret even more that HRC did not have a chance to be President. She knew how to roll up her sleeves and get things done and I think she would have rivaled LBJ in being able to push through progressive legislation that would have shocked you – even better than Warren. I realize you think HRC was a fake, but that was the propaganda. She had been trying to do good since college — I am old enough to remember when SHE was the one the Republicans were calling the “socialist commie”! And while she took some wrong turns — as did all politicians — she also often saw that and became better for it. She was already coming around on charters — I could tell that from what she said at the SC Townhall when she so eloquently expressed why they were not the answer – and got loud applause. She was never the tool of any of her donors — she raised money to get elected so she could get legislation passed. She was actually interested in the nitty gritty of legislation. Oh well, her time has passed, and I’m not sure Elizabeth Warren has that LBJ-like political will to jump into the boring parts of getting legislation passed. And while the article really goes way too far in looking for reasons to distrust Warren, there were some criticisms that I thought were valid. It was disappointing, and frankly lessened my trust of the writer, that he used some Republican talking points as Warren’s weaknesses. I found that just as objectionable as I would if I read an article that used Republican talking points to play up Bernie’s weaknesses. When a writer has to use the Native American faux “scandal” as one of the worst things about Warren, then it just makes me think better of her.
My favorite part – probably because it aligns perfectly with my views – is when the writer nailed one of Obama’s biggest flaws — his unwillingness to fight and use his bully pulpit. It may not have worked, but I wanted to see Obama fighting and making clear what Democrats wanted even if it ultimately didn’t change anything. I absolutely know that Bernie will do that. My worry is whether he actually would be any good at the stuff LBJ was good at — the hard work of getting legislation through Congress. And I do worry that Bernie does minimize race issues – that he doesn’t really think that it is as important as the fact that African-American and white working class Americans have common economic interests. But those economic issues take a huge back seat when you cannot simply live your life — go for a walk, drive in your car, allow your teenage son to go out with his friends — without having to be on guard at every minute that some encounter will occur where you can’t predict what innocent response will end in great harm happening to you or your family. That is something white people just do not experience and I’m not sure that Bernie quite grasps that. If I was going to cynically criticize Bernie, I’d point to this sentence in the article: “I’ve generally been very encouraged by the effectiveness with which Bernie makes his pitches to right-wing audiences at Liberty University and FOX News.” Exactly. Bernie will remain very popular with that crowd as long as he makes sure not to talk about racism. Remember Bernie doesn’t really think they are racists. Even if they do probably think the policeman was always in the right when an unarmed African-American gets killed. I’m guessing Bernie isn’t mentioning Black Lives Matters when he talks to those “right wing audiences at Liberty University and Fox News”. A cynic could point out that is not all that different than another candidate not talking about raising taxes on the rich while in a room with Wall Street bankers.
Anyway, as I say, the article made some very good points that reinforced what was so important about Bernie. I would be happy if he won the primary, but the article painted a far too rosy picture of Bernie’s chances in the general election. Bernie has yet to experience the full effect of what happens when the right wing propaganda gets turned on him. That’s all being saved until the right wing has any reason to use it. But they will. And it’s not easy to win when the right wing has managed to paint you as a corrupt candidate who can’t be trusted. I realize that some progressives believe Bernie has already been attacked by CAP-supporting Democrats and the DNC, but that really is just pointing out policy disagreements. That is not what the Republicans will do. They will trash Bernie’s character until the voters won’t know what to believe anymore. They will start having doubts that anything Bernie says is trustworthy and start believing that his real loyalties are to someone else. It’s extremely hard for candidates to fight that propaganda, but if Bernie is the candidate, I will definitely be calling out those outrageous right wing attacks when they start coming for Bernie.
Anyway, thanks for posting an interesting article.
Beware of false equivalence. I was very critical of Sanders education policy last time around—I was confused and disappointed in his lack of attention to it, his naive belief that charters were public schools, etc. It simply was not on his radar in any significant way. He never wrote a book that would make Milton Freedman swoon. As they issue rose in prominence—thanks in large part to the tenaciousness of people on the blog—Sanders elaborated a position that is the most pro k-12 public education of any plan in recent history—and one that is fully consistent with his overarching governing philosophy. To this date, the policy focused Elizabeth Warren has no such policy. As I examine the history and policies of these two candidates, I see considerable differences between them, and serious red flags with Senator Warren.
Its along way to the primaries, and we must try to get through to Warren.
Bernie says the biggest concentration of his supports is teachers.
Understandable.
Sadly like others this is making me support Bernie over her
Be joyous- Bernie is the only reason the topic of wealth concentration found voice..
Interesting thread that shows differences between Bernie and EW. Simple and to the point. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1177039402997956608.html
Thanks for the link.
Although I have not read all the entries here, it makes for an enlightening discourse. Elizabeth Warren shows great capacity for expression and clarity. She is liked and admired by many, and is a possible president of the U.S. There is no one who the rich would like to influence as much as the President of this America.
There are few things as significant as the Education Policy of a country, and so the rich will want to influence the future president and the public should know the policies of those candidates, including one so popular as E. Warren.
The fact that she has not laid out a position on Education is worrisome. It speaks well for those who push for such a candidate to inform the public of her intentions. We will be affected by what the candidate does when the mantle is on that person.