During the Obama administration, Roberto Rodriguez was the White House advisor on education. He vigorously supported the Race to the Top program, the Common Core standards, and high-stakes testing. All of these initiatives failed to improve student test scores and wasted billions of dollars.
Andrew Ujifusa wrote in Education Week (April 28) about the return of Rodriguez. He joins former Obama official Carmel Martin, another zealous advocate of those failed policies. Basically, they are switching places, with Rodriguez taking the job that Martin held, and Martin moving into the slot previously occupied by Martin. There is no indication that either has modified their support for the Bush-Obama bipartisan agenda.
President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he plans to nominate Roberto Rodriguez, one of former President Barack Obama’s top education advisers, to lead one of the most important divisions of the U.S. Department of Education.
Biden wants Rodriguez to lead the Education Department’s office of planning, evaluation and policy development. Rodriguez, a former special assistant to Obama on education policy who also previously worked in the Senate, is currently the president and CEO of Teach Plus, a teacher-advocacy organization.
The office Rodriguez would lead, if confirmed, has played a significant part in past presidential administrations. For example, Carmel Martin, who oversaw the development of the Race to the Top competition and the expansion of School Improvement Grants in the early part of the Obama administration, led the office. Under former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, the office was led by Jim Blew, who came to the department after many years of working to promote school choice.
As a deputy assistant to Obama, Rodriguez played a major role in developing and advocating for the president’s K-12 policy priorities.
Rodriguez defended Race to the Top in a 2012 Education Week article, saying that it was sparking major shifts for schools, such as the adoption of the Common Core State Standards. Both Race to the Top and the standards, of course, became controversial as time went on, and attracted criticism from Democrats as well as Republicans.
It would be gratifying to hear either or both explain why they the multi-billion Race to the Top failed, why Common Core had no impact (yet cost hundreds of millions) to implement, whether they have changed their views about VAM (evaluating teachers by student test scores) and charter schools.
It appears that Rodriguez and Carmel Martin will make policy, not Secretary Cardona or Deputy Secretary-designate Cindy Martens.
Biden is looking to the future with his sweeping domestic policy plans. But in education, he is looking in the rear-view mirror to the architects of Obama’s failed programs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Probably not a dime’s worth of difference between Rodriguez’s educational policies and those of DeVos.
”
Rodriguez defended Race to the Top in a 2012 Education Week article, saying that it was sparking major shifts for schools, such as the adoption of the Common Core State Standards.”
RTTT led to adoption of Common Core?
My , what an utterly unexpected surprise.
I’m sure Arne Duncan and Bill Gates must have been floored by that discovery.
RTTT required states to adopt national standards if they wanted to compete for RTTT dollars.
That meant CCSS
R2TT had concrete goals that states could adopt; points were awarded based on the implementation plans presented. If state earned enough points it literally won money. NY governor Cuomo drooled over the possibility of winning money as this was 2009 and the Great Recession was crippling state budgets. NY hit the jackpot – $700 million in R2TT prize money and here are the commitments that it took:
Adoption of Common Core standards in ELA and math
Administration of CCSS companion tests
Linking test scores to teacher and school evaluations
Ending restrictiifons on charter school caps
Implement a statewide longitudinal data mining system and a plan for data driven instruction
Plus some generic reform proposals to cover up the true agenda
These criteria also became the framework for Acne Duncan’s NCLB waiver program
And thus R2TT ushered in the most damaging set of education reforms in US history. Nothing inflicted more irreparable harm than the insidious act of linking test scores in just two subjects to the evaluation of all teachers 70% of whom did not teach a tested subject.
“Acne Duncan”
Winner! Winner! Chicken dinner!
Please, please, please . . . no Arne Duncan clones! Wasn’t Obama’s biggest mistake enough?
I think you misspelled “clowns”
In a related story, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation releases its new Couples Counseling App.
Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!! N
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
We cannot underestimate the influence of the charter lobby that supports the same failed mission of test and punish for public schools. We should use the contact form at the White House website to voice our concern and disappointment in Rodriguez’s appointment. We should remind Joe Biden of the promises he made to teachers during the campaign. If a large number of people flooded the inbox, perhaps Biden will understand that teachers are watching his decisions. We do not need public school representation as “window dressing.” We need substantive change.https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Lois Weiner’s talk posted by NPE today is a good accompaniment to this post. It seems to me that one avenue of engagement needs to be pushing the national unions to become adversaries of national ed policy rather than willing participants in the destruction of the teaching profession.
So he works for Teach Plus. https://teachplus.org/who-we-are/meet-our-staff/roberto-j-rodriguez
Here’s what Edwatch says about Teach Plus. http://greatschoolsforamerica.org/edwatch.php?org_id=000091
“Teach Plus was incubated by the U.S. Department of Education with almost $2.5 million — that’s taxpayer dollars. The organization pushes programs that support alternative routes to becoming a teacher. It’s CEOs pose as professional educators who speak for teachers and wield considerable political power. They promote the policy initiatives of the Billionaire Boys to privatize our public schools.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding to support the program’s expansion and create a national network of informed teachers – $4.5 million+.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding to support Teach Plus’s Teaching Policy Fellows, Teach+ Network, and Turnaround Teachers Teams — $5 million+.”
Politically active billionaires like Gates insert themselves into public policy, and what they present is accepted as “gospel.” There is no evaluation of their proposals, just acceptance that it is worthy “reform” and has value despite the multitude of Gates’ blunders and failures. Nobody voted for Bill and Melinda. They should not be allowed to dictate public policy.
Biden/Rodriguez are allowing Bill Gates to be the de facto education policy czar. The Gates Foundation’s hegemony over government policy is beginning to get more scrutiny in the press. His latest move to influence COVID vaccine distribution is particularly malevolent. Anthony Cody & NPE get credit for being the first to pinpoint the damage Bill Gates inflicted on US public education. We can join the chorus and amplify the damage he is doing to world health, too.
Gates inserted his outsized influence to stop the WHOs efforts to oversee worldwide cooperation among countries, the EU & vaccine researchers to relax intellectual property rights and distribute the vaccine to poor countries.
According to Alexander Zaitchik in April’s The New Republic, “The global research community would maintain broad and open channels of communication, since collaboration and information-sharing minimize duplication and accelerate discovery. The group also drew up plans for global comparative trials overseen by the WHO, to assess the merits of treatments and vaccines.
however, the optimism and sense of possibility that defined the early days were long gone. Advocates for pooling and open science, who seemed ascendant and even unstoppable that winter, confronted the possibility they’d been outmatched and outmaneuvered by the most powerful man in global public health.
In April, Bill Gates launched a bold bid to manage the world’s scientific response to the pandemic. Gates’s Covid-19 ACT-Accelerator expressed a status quo vision for organizing the research, development, manufacture, and distribution of treatments and vaccines. Like other Gates-funded institutions in the public health arena, the Accelerator was a public-private partnership based on charity and industry enticements”
https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines
Thank-you, Nancy! Now we know that public education families & students will continue to be at the bottom of the priority list at DoEd.
I have been working on a database of Biden’s education appointments.
It is not yet finished but it identifies those who are former TFA, or
champaign workers for Obama and Biden, others affiliated with
organizations known to have shaped prior policies, including NCLB and ESSA.
At least 13 positions have been awarded to people who worked on
Obama or Biden political campaigns.
Seven positions are occupied by people who shaped Obama’s first or second term
policies, Including Arne Duncan and John King.
The brief biographies for each nominee were often scrubbed. With
supplementary research (e.g. LinkedIn) I have been able to identify persons
who had little or no education experience but leveraged multiple short-term
internships as if these qualified them as policy experts. I also identified
Teach for America and recruiters for TFA whose biographies issued from Biden’s
press office did not mention these affiliations.
Thank you. The more concrete and obvious the color and caliber of Biden’s appointments, the more ammunition we have.
Most of these people are charter lobby policy wonks, not education experts.
I think they are loyalist to Obama, now Biden, not necessarily the charter lobby.
Laura,
Cant wait to read your data base.
There are over fifty entries. For this reason I have limited each entry to about 100 words, and my editing assumed anyone else who might use it has some knowledge of the significance and prestige attached to academic degrees versus
“certificates” of competency and work for IBM. The structure also corresponds to the architecture of the current USDE, with lines of responsibility and job titles availbe in two formats For that exercise, I used the current administrative structure of USDE, available as an infographic at https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/or/index.html and the list version at https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/index.html.
Mr. Biden promised his donors that nothing would fundamentally change.
At least he was being honest – to the donor class.
To the teachers whose vote he courted last year, he’s just been plain ol’ Mendacity Joe.
Say what??
Have you looked at the policies that Biden has already pushed that the “donor class” doesn’t want?
Do you think the donor class cares that much about education? Certainly some of them do, but it’s insane to think that the donor class would be happy with all of Biden’s progressive policies as long as the donor class can keep Race to the Top (or whatever) in education.
Biden is wrong on education. But he’s not pleasing the donor class on all issues, and things have already changed (albeit not on education)
Netflix’ Reed Hastings is likely pleased with the appointment. He’d like for local communities to lose the authority they have through elected boards of education. Evidently, the Biden admin delivers for tech industry oligarchs.
Speaking of business practices and goals in the tech sector, a Netflix VP was found guilty on charges of taking $500,000 in kickbacks and stock options in exchange for approving millions in contracts. The VP chose the name Unix Mercenary for his LLC firm that received the payoffs. Yep, that’s the value system Biden thinks should be inflicted on Main Street’s schools.
Good points!
Just sent an email expressing my concerns to the Biden administration.
I did too. I urge others to ask friends and colleagues to send an email to the White House expressing teachers’ concerns and disappointment.
I sent a note to my local Congresswoman. She is actually quite responsive to constituents.
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. The ed reform echo chamber prevails!
For a minute there I thought we were finally breaking free from Jeb Bush running US education policy, but we’re still stuck with the same echo chamber members who have run things for the last 20 years.
Public school students deserve better. They should have people in government who value their schools and intend to perform some actual work on their behalf.
This will now be the 4th anti-public education US President in a row. What a shame.
Convene the Ivy League economists and Gates and Walton consultants! It’s time to throw away another billion dollars on measurement schemes and crank up the public school bashing for another 4 years.
What a wasted opportunity.
“Fueled by economic-stimulus money and his own executive authority, Mr. Obama’s initiatives—including No Child Left Behind Act waivers and the launch of grant competitions such as Race to the Top—have pressed states and districts to:
• Hold individual teachers more accountable for the performance of their students on standardized tests;
• Remove restrictions on the growth of charter schools;
• Take aggressive action to turn around their lowest-performing schools; and
• Adopt common academic standards intended to prepare students for college and the workforce, bolstered by federal aid to help states develop common assessments.”
This is baloney by the way and unless ed reformers are completely innumerate they know it’s baloney.
Race to the Top was a net loss for public schools. They spent much more on the ed reform echo chamber mandates than they gained in “prize money”.
The Obama Administration didn’t even cover the cost of their “market based” reforms, let alone leave public schools in better shape than when they parachuted in with the list of demands.
The schools who took the money were played. They ended up with a bunch of consultant-driven mandates they didn’t want and they ended up paying for them out of local budgets.
Part of this is how the echo chamber operates. They promote only fellow believers, so we end up with an education policy that is pre-screened for adherence to the agenda.
Biden probably couldn’t find pro-public education people in elite education policy circles. They’ve been creating this echo chamber for 25 years. Anyone with a different view would have been screened out much further down the chain than this.
“Mr. Rodríguez has served in senior roles in the White House and the United States Senate. From 2009 to 2017, as Deputy Assistant to President Barack Obama, he developed and led the Administration’s education initiatives to build systemic change and improve opportunity and outcomes across the educational continuum. His efforts led to an increase of tens of thousands of additional children enrolled in early education; new partnerships to better personalize and redesign the high school experience to meet individual needs of students; creation of a new, national focus on excellence in STEM education; and an expansion of the Pell Grant to boost participation in higher education. Under his leadership, support for higher academic standards, enhanced teacher development and advancement, and deeper investment in America’s schools ultimately led to the enactment by the U.S. Congress of the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015.
Mr. Rodríguez spent eight years as Senior Education Advisor and later Chief Counsel to the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), former Chair of the United States Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. In this role, Mr. Rodríguez led successful bipartisan efforts that resulted in the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001”
Well, he certainly has the “correct” resume for ed reform! He’s been a lock step member of the echo chamber since the outset.
He’ll GUARANTEE no one veers even slightly from echo chamber directives.
I wonder what Biden’s version of NCLB and RttT will be- we know one thing- it will be echo chamber approved or it won’t happen!
The best thing about being a member in good standing of the ed reform club is you are guaranteed employment, for decades. They literally hire the same 150 people over and over.
“pensions” that would certainly bring Rodriguez to the door of anti-public pension, school privatizing advocate, John Arnold.
Rodriguez is a reason to vote out centrist Democrats and to elect justice Democrats.
Biden has repeatedly given support to unions. He should realize that most private charter schools are non-union. Teachers in most charter schools are paid less and have fewer benefits than teachers in public schools. If Biden wants to revitalize the middle class, he should support public schools.
I see that Mr. Rodriguez attended the University of Michigan, and he has a master’s degree in education from Harvard. Many Ivy League neoliberals support market based education.
harvard, the curse on the 99%.
I had hoped we’d get some productive, positive efforts towards the 90% of students in the unfashionable “government schools” but I guess not.
Once again we’re paying hundreds of public employees who are opposed to the schools our children attend. It’s ludicrous, but apparently we’re stuck with them forever.
I really hope Biden doesn’t do this. If he pulls another bait and switch like Obama did, running as pro-public education then hiring exclusively out of the “market based” choir, people will feel betrayed, and they should feel betrayed.
Don’t bring them all back. We’ve already tried this. We’ve tried it over and over.
My youngest child will graduate high school never having seen a pro-public education President or Administration. Enough.
Biden has already done this & he got no push back from the 2 teachers unions when it mattered prior to the election. They had the leverage then & the Dems wanted tRump gone so badly that they could have acquiesced.
If Biden appointed Diane Ravitch to a key advisory position it would go a long way in convincing the public, the 99%, that he supports both American democracy and majority rule. Also, it would show his committment to thwarting oligarchy.
“Over the past two decades, he has played a key role in virtually every major education policy effort and legislative reform at the national level.”
We’re getting more of the same.
Biden managed to break free of the economic policy of the last 30 years. He can’t find his way out of the ed reform echo chamber?
We’re definitely getting another elaborate measurement scheme- they’ll probably bring back the same economists to draft it.
And of course daily charter school promotion and marketing and daily public school bashing. Just so dispiriting.
Public school students had a lousy couple of years with the pandemic. Do we really need to bring back the Professional Public School Critics Association members to tell them over and over that they suck, their teachers suck and their schools suck? Couldn’t they have ONE presidential term with a positive approach? ONE 4 year stretch? Given what they’ve been through?
As long as Biden counts on Gates money, he will be beholden to him.. Obama got too many free passes on his horrible education policies. I think we should remind Biden of his campaign promises to at least let him know we expect better from him..
Go read the education “equity” policy recommendations in CAP. It’s the same old Race to the Top with new nouns and verbs. They replaced accountability with equity, testing with opportunities. (I can’t post a CAP link here because when I do, Word Press puts the comment in moderation for perpetuity.)
CAP is the friend of wealthy capitalists and the enemy of the 99%.
Media pretends it’s otherwise.
How is testing equity? Equity is deploying resources according to needs. What benefit to poor minority students get from testing? They get to bear the burden of a low score that can shuffle them into a separate and unequal Jim Crow charter school. That’s not equity. It racism.
retired teacher
A well-orchestrated PR campaign is the reason that recognition of racist intent has been so long in coming. Distraction exacerbated the problem- the informed public focused on the reformers’ profit motive.
It seems like no matter what is discussed or debated (here or anywhere); how frustrated and outspoken those who oppose the current approach are; or how ineffective and damaging current education programs and practices are PROVEN to be…Absolutely nothing changes.
It’s sickening. And profoundly discouraging. And damaging to American kids.
But whatever.
Nothing. Changes.
This is utterly disappointing. However, this is NOT a retread of the Obama Administration even if Biden does not change the DOE the way he is embracing progressive policies in other ways. Let’s remember that Biden’s appointments in all areas — including economic – were bashed here and Biden is already far more progressive than Obama was. Despite all those supposedly corporate-approved anti-progressive nominees that Biden made who have been bashed here, the Biden administration has done some good things.
The Obama Administration had Arne Duncan at the top. The Biden Administration has Secretary Cardona and Deputy Secretary-designate Cindy Martens at the top. Did the Obama administration have ANY voices that weren’t entirely owned by ed reform?
The Biden White House responds to people and reality, not just rich Wall Street donors. Of course those donors have influence, but so do the people. And making voices heard is important. But just saying “Biden is a corrupt tool of the donor class” is not a way to get other Americans to support progressive education legislation. Making the case and getting people to join the cause is what does it.
There are almost no progressives in Congress who have taken up the mantle of K-12 education the way AOC and others educated Americans about other progressive issues. And AOC and others were successful by explaining, not by bashing.
I hopeful that someone like Jamaal Bowman can take up the mantle for K-12 education and get progressives to join him to make a positive case for why education policy needs to change. I’d love to see Bernie or Warren add their voice. Because there are top people in the DOE like Martens who are not simply following the orders of their corporate reform overlords.
I’m just disappointed. I was hoping for a pro-public education administration instead of the same collection of people who haven’t been near a public school in decades.
Generations, in a lot of cases.
Representation matters and public school students have very few people in government who even ATTENDED public schools let alone support or value them. It’s rare to find anyone who attended a public college, let alone something like a community college.
We’re really going to do this again? We’re going to hire the Harvard debating team to run the public education system they didn’t use, wouldn’t use and don’t value? How has that worked out for public school students?
Chiara,
I absolutely agree with every point you just made. It makes me angry, too.
But I do know that Biden’s appointments in other areas were also just as disappointing, but it turns out that despite their backgrounds, it was not Obama 2.0.
So while I am disappointed, I am not going to assume that this means no change. I assume that the change will not be as progressive as I want, but that there will be a movement toward better policies, which is what has happened in other (non-education) policy in the Biden White House.
I had low expectations of Biden in all policy areas, and he has already exceeded them in non-education areas. So I am watching carefully to see if he also exceeds my expectations in education policy areas. I don’t think this is going to be Obama 2.0. I think this is going to be Biden 1.0, with elements of Obama and elements of a more progressive K-12 education policy.
It could be Obama 2.0. But so far, despite what seemed like very disappointing appointees, Biden has not been Obama 2.0 in other policy areas, and so until we see how it plays out, it may not mean the ed reformers call the shots as they did under Obama. I think ed reformers will get some of what they want, but so will people who support public education.
(A previous reply didn’t post, so posting again)
Chiara,
I’m disappointed, too. I’m just in more of a “wait and see” mindset because I was also disappointed in many of Biden’s other appointments and it turned out that the policies that the Biden administration was supporting in the non-education arena were far more progressive than his appointments led me to believe.
Hopefully this will be the case in education, just as it was in other areas. But agree that we need to be watchful and keep the pressure on.
hardest truth: “in education, he is looking in the rear-view mirror to the architects of Obama’s failed programs.”
The Rear View
(AKA, The Miller’s Tale)
The rear view mirror
Shows only rears
Absolon’s terror
Nightmare fears
As always, teachers have to fight off Democrats and Republicans. Been this way my entire career.
Eli Broad died. I should probably say something nice about him. I’m thinking. Still thinking. When I think of something nice to say about Eli Broad, I will say it.
When it comes to education politics, ever since the bipartisan, Bush-Obama, No Child Left to Race to the Behind, privatization and deregulation glut, there can be no middle. The people in the Biden administration who worked for Obama have a mountain to climb to earn anything other than scorn, and we don’t see them climbing; instead, we see them digging us out of the hole they dug.
Biden is forcing the destruction of public education. He is building his predecessor’s wall, too. Sure, he’s also doing some good. Electing Biden was a good deed. Apparently, no good deed goes unpunished.
“When I think of something nice to say about Eli Broad, I will say it.”
Ah, but you already said something nice about Eli Broad just above.
“Never speak dead of the ill”
Speaking dead of the ill
There’s really nothing worse
But speaking ill of the still
Is really not a curse
The Los Angeles Times published a long obituary of Eli Broad, one of the city’s most prominent citizens. There were a few critical notes. Here is one:
In 1999, he sold SunAmerica to American International Group for $18 billion, and he retired in 2000 to become a full-time philanthropist.
Flush with cash from the sale, he committed $2 billion to his philanthropies, including $100 million to create the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which supports school reform. It has spent more than $600 million since 1999 on a variety of initiatives.
As with the arts, Broad demanded a hands-on role in improving education.
He played a prominent role in the development of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s downtown arts high school. He personally helped recruit two superintendents, former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer and veteran educator John Deasy. But his ambitions ranged beyond L.A. and California.
In 2002, his foundation began to fund the Broad Prize, which targeted urban districts with large achievement gaps. It exemplified its founder’s philosophy of tying monetary awards to concrete results such as gains in student test scores. Disappointed in the slow pace of improvement, he suspended the prize in early 2015.
He also founded the Broad Superintendents Academy, the largest training program in the nation for urban school superintendents. Its more than 150 fellows, many of them from business, the military and other fields outside education, undergo a 10-month program heavy on corporate-style management techniques and have gone on to leadership positions not only in Los Angeles (Deasy is a Broad graduate) but also in New York, Chicago and other major city school districts. In 2019, Broad announced he was moving the academy to Yale University.
The wealth and vision that created these initiatives also made Broad a target of scorn by some education experts. One of his most prominent critics was education historian Diane Ravitch, who assailed Broad along with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and others as members of “the billionaire boys’ club” of business titans whose top-down reform efforts weaken the voices of parents and teachers unions.
“His Broadies are leading districts and states,” Ravitch wrote in her blog in 2012. “Some are educators, some are not. Some are admired, some are despised. But the question remains, who elected Eli Broad to reform the nation’s schools? He is like a spoiled rich kid in a candy shop, taking what he wants, knocking over displays, breaking jars, barking orders.”
None of this discouraged Broad. “Our role is to take risks that government is not willing to do,” he told Newsweek in 2011. “The fact that I don’t concern myself about criticism or pushback helps.”
A word of warning
Billionaires should know
That folks will hold no punch
When they are down below
And under dirt a bunch
Folks will hold no punch…but folks might drink punch.
“The fact that I don’t concern myself about criticism or pushback helps.”
BO (Billionaire Odor)
The billionaire
Has not a care
What people think
About his stink
He collected art but did not understand art. He fathered children — I will not say he raised them — he did not understand how to speak to them, and they stopped speaking to him. He threatened and intimidated his way to the top and did not know how to stop threatening and intimidating people once he was there. He meddled in education without understanding education. He attacked everyone. He understood no one. He taught superintendents to be like him, to threaten and intimidate schools and communities without understanding what they were doing or why they were doing it. Eli Broad was uncouth. In the dirt is where he always belonged.
FYI both Eli and Edythe Broad were graduates of the Detroit public schools.
You obviously thought about some nice things to say.
I tried to hold back. But let’s face it, Eli Broad would not have cared what I thought when he was alive. He dedicated his life to attacking me.
Diane,
I am very glad that the LA Times included your perspective in Broad’s obituary.
The NYT obituary “informed” readers that Broad was just an admirable education philanthropist whose only desire was to do good.
A Eulogy To Eli Broad
(Left coast Teacher versified)
Collected art but that was all
He don’t understand it
Fathered children, short and tall
But didn’t really fan them
Barked his way to very top
And there he barked to stay
Meddling was just a flop
But meddling was his way
Purchased every thing and one
But couldn’t buy the teachers
Now that he is finally gone
They’re cheering from the bleachers
“Collected art , but that was all
He didn’t understand it”
Thanks, Poet.
The Munchkins knew a thing or two
A song, you see, can set you free
Ding Dong! The Broad is dead. Which old Broad? The rich old Broad
Ding Dong! The rich old Broad is dead.
Wake up – you sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up, the rich old Broad is dead.
He’s gone where the goblins go,
Below – below – below. Yo-ho, let’s open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Ding Dong’ the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know
The rich old Broad is dead!
The president gave a shout out to Jill Biden during his address to Congress the other night. Maybe we’d get more traction by directing out concerns to her instead? Any connections to the First Lady, Diane?
While I like Jill Biden on a personal level, nothing she has said or done indicates any knowledge about or advocacy on behalf of any of the issues most of the junkies of this blog promote unconditionally.
I do not promote issues unconditionally. I promote them very conditionally. Diane shampoos them and I condition them.
Education and teachers is such a wide field – not a monolith. Simply being a wonderful teacher for one level of students, does not mean you understand K-12 public education . . . and it definitely does not mean you understand elementary education. We need early childhood experts at the table too – they have a unique and important lens.
Sometimes those who teach older students assume that if the K-12 system “got it right” then they wouldn’t have so many students who are behind. And without personal knowledge inside they system…. maybe Jill believes that Arne Duncan has the solution for the K-12 system to “get it right.”
You are definitely right, beachteach. There is a pecking order in education among educators that can be as pernicious as the one we fight against “outsiders” who think their money, power, and/or success from the “real” world makes them qualified to dictate what should go on in schools. Perhaps that is a bit of an overstatement, but anyone who has taught younger children knows where they fall in that pecking order.
No
How many votes of opposition are needed to stop this nomination? I wonder if the automatic opposition by so many republicans to everything Biden attempts to do, combined with enough democrat opponents might suffice, but I do not know. Giving Jeff Bryant as a reference, I would say that, Peter Downs, former St. Louis member of the school board elected in 2006, despite what Antonio French reported as 7-1 “opposition”, then savagely removed within 2 years by democrat Mayor Slay and an all-white racist Missouri state board of education would be an ideal alternative. https://www.amazon.com/Schoolhouse-Shams-Misinformation-School-Reform/dp/1610488342
The Gates’ echo chamber needs Rodriguez to implement its agenda. We can speculate Rodriguez is also in the echo chambers of Gates’ close neighbors, Charles Koch and, the Catholic bishops who achieve their public policies through state Catholic Conferences. (“School Choice Expansion among Legislative Successes of the Indiana Catholic Conference” , Today’s Catholic, 4-27-2021)
The odds are slim that the ed department of the Biden admin will pushback against the conservative Catholic majority on SCOTUS responsible for the Espinosa v. Montana verdict (public money for religious schools) or, the Biel v. St. James Catholic School verdict (exempted religious schools from civil rights employment law). Odds are also poor that tax-funded religious schools will be subjected to public accountability. After the success of the schools campaign steered by Gates, the Koch network and Catholic bishops, expect to see the unquestioned authority that colonialists covet.
IMO, Gates/ Koch identified and then exploited a sweet spot in politicized religion. The Gates-funded Bellwether wrote in a report that reformers should reach out to churches to achieve their goals.
Linda—I value your response—-you break it down in specific ways which help me make sense of it. But you speak in generalities. Is it hopeless to come up with specific numbers needed to stop this nomination?
Above in the comment thread, there is a suggestion that we contact our Democratic U.S. House Representatives and Senators to oppose the Rodriguez appointment i.e. Gates’ continued takeover of a U.S. government department. Today, I am going to e-mail Sen. Sherrod Brown. If enough of us write, I believe it will make a difference. (If my representative was Jamaal Bowman or AOC or, if my Senator was Bernie Sanders, my voice would matter.)
When I wrote to Sen. Brown about the appointment of Neera Tanden, CAP’s billionaire-funded, neoliberal leader, I received a reply that appeared to be more tailored than a general form letter. Supporters of America’s most important asset/common good do what we can do.
I frequently contact journalists about the education articles they write. Yesterday I contacted a student reporter at Michigan State University asking that the newspaper tell the truth about Eli Broad’s “philanthropy” in their announcement about his death.
Catholic bishops are paying a price for advancing the GOP agenda linked to social Darwinism, racism and sexism, and predatory capitalism, “Support for Trump within Church has driven some Catholic to the exits” (National Catholic Reporter, 4-29-2021
The corruption of this country is stunning. It never ends. Like the mice that are plaguing Australia , the rodents that infiltrate our institutions gnaw away at the foundation. One expects better, but few citizens actually grasp WHAT LEARNING looks like, so it so easy to con them into racing to the bottom.
Something people in the Biden administration should consider: people are out here fighting on behalf of him, who they are going to need. This week, in my home town of festus, I spotted a letter from a local veteran, filled with hate….but I studied it closely and it appears, from his facebook information to not be a local veteran, but rather from an outside professional distributor of hate—which triggered a reaction in this veteran strong enough to demand an explanation from the newspaper editor who published it.Some of his phrases….(protected by the first amendment for which I remain thankful)….”veterans who stood up to defend our nation are appalled by the current administration, and must look down upon our nation in complete and utter shame.”….supposedly a policeman for the VA–“Joe Biden (whom I refuse to acknowledge as our president)” …”if you, as a patriotic American believe that Biden and Harris have America’s best interest in mind are completely and utterly lost on what a president and American’s stand for”.
“veterans I work for are appalled and embarrassed, they hang their heads in shame and are disgusted as to where our country is heading”……..my first clue, his Grammar was perfect…no offense to my fellow veterans from Festus…..we do not write like this on daily basis. Stan Baker’s lovely wife Vicki, is always ready to weigh in: Vicki Baker
t1S9podnhsohrfend ·
😅🤣 O.M.G…biden’s as stupid as everybody thinks he is!! Irresponsible douchbag!!
It’s another of the shrews ploy to deflect responsibility of how events had unfolded on 1/6! She was in charge of security! She had everybody hold off because that was the plan she concocted so she can pretend to be traumatized by the unfolding of the event! Stay focused on the demon spawn PELOSI
I feel as if I can expose these people for what they are, even if they really are from Festus, that it is the kind of effort Biden and Harris, (who Vicki is using the patriotic viral news to characterize as running a bot farm)….Vicki is not a match for her husband Stan when it comes to name calling of Pelosi.
This repeat of Obama’s biggest mistake is taking a lot fight out of me.
Diane keeps fighting, we should too.
If Maryland taxpayers, public school parents, public school teachers, administrators and staff and, Democrats who believe in the common good don’t get behind a Democratic primary opponent to John B. King (running for Maryland Governor), they are digging democracy’s grave for the benefit of billionaires like Gates, Charles Koch and Walton heirs.
I find it fascinating how you can all see so clearly how little daylight there is between Democrats and Republicans on education, but you absolutely refuse, fingers in your ears, to listen to or even consider the possibility that it’s the same for every other policy area.
Look in the mirror.
By your standards, those on the left would be chiding Democrats in 1932 telling them they are not even considering the possibility that there is little daylight between FDR and Hoover.
By your standards, those on the left would be chiding Democrats in 1966 telling them how little daylight there is between Goldwater and LBJ.
By your standards, those on the left would be chiding Democrats in 1980 telling them how little daylight there is between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
I get where you are coming from. I was just as certain as you are that I “saw clearly” that there was almost no daylight between Carter and Reagan. I saw so clearly that I refused to vote for Jimmy Carter in 1980 and did everything I could to undermine and convince others how there was no daylight between Carter and Reagan. I helped enable and empower Reagan and everything that came after when his election turned this country sharply right.
I was as certain as you are that I was right to ignore all the areas where Carter’s policies were very different than Reagan’s and instead focus only on the places where there was not a lot of difference between their policies. That allowed me to lecture others, like you do, that they were refusing, fingers in their ears, to see the “truth” that I was absolutely certain about — that Carter and Reagan were not different at all.
I hope someday you can open your eyes and take your fingers out of your ears and even consider the possibility that it is NOT the same for every other policy area. I find it fascinating that you can’t see how much daylight there is between the Democrats and Republicans. But I do understand it because I was saying the same thing about Carter and Reagan. And the country was much worse because too many people believed that lie.
In my case….which I should probably not have mentioned here in the first place, I was wrong…he is from my home town,and he is a policeman for the st. louis VA. I wrote this apology…..Ladies and gentlemen…..I HAVE BEEN WRONG ABOUT STAN NOT BEING FROM FESTUS. I OWE PEGGY AND STAN AN APOLOGY. THE PERSON WHO NAILED IT DOWN SAID ACCORDING TO THE MAP, IT LOOKS LIKE A HOME ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF FESTUS.
SOME THINGS HAVE BEEN POINTED OUT TO ME…….HE REALLY HAS HAD A LOT OF CONTACT WITH VETERANS, AND HE NEVER SAID HE WAS TALKING ABOUT ALL OF THEM…HE SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN AFFECTED BY THE ONES WITH WHOM HE HAS SPOKEN. I HAD SUSPICIONS WHICH WERE EXAGGERATED. I TALKED ABOUT MUCH THAT WAS IRRELEVANT. PEGGY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR PRESENTING LETTERS OF OPINION, AND SHE PRESENTED THOSE OF A WELL EDUCATED PERSON FROM FESTUS, WHO HAS A LOW OPINION OF OUR PRESIDENT. HE WILL NOT FIND A SHORTAGE OF SUCH OPINIONS IN THIS COUNTY. I APOLOGIZE TO YOU PEGGY, AND ALSO TO STAN AND HIS WIFE VICKY. I WAS WRONG.
[…] The first hundred days are over, and education is slowly shifting from crisis management to finding a new normal. The Biden administration is poised to invest a historically huge pile of money in education, even as the education department has been picking up key appointees with Obama era gigs in their resumes. […]
[…] The first hundred days are over, and education is slowly shifting from crisis management to finding a new normal. The Biden administration is poised to invest a historically huge pile of money in education, even as the education department has been picking up key appointees with Obama era gigs in their resumes. […]