A reader (Mom/Speducator) has an idea for President Obama. Instead of going to Mooresville, North Carolina, to talk up the high-tech classroom, she says, how about this:
“Shouldn’t he have instead traveled to Chicago to offer support to the thousands of families whose lives will be in upheaval in a matter of months.”
In response to President Obama’s proposal to connect every classroom and use software that will enable every teacher to know what every student is thinking at all times, Michael Fiorillo has another idea:
“I applaud President Obama’s desire for oversight of young people’s brains, but his proposal doesn’t go nearly far enough.
“My edu-venture will remedy the shortcomings of bio-exterior technology, and guarantee a miraculous solution to the achievement gap.
“My super-miniaturized wifi receivers, combined with my patented KiddieChipsFirst technology, will allow Pearson to download its tests and product placements directly into the cerebrums of our most valuable assets, and allow our developing human capital to upload their responses, so that remotely-sited “teachers know what is going on in the student’s brains.”
Norm Scott, retired NYC teacher posted this on his website, Ed Notes Online:
We have Al Qaeda on the run but right now the biggest threat to our agenda is Karen Lewis and the Chicago Teachers Union,” said an Obama spokesperson.
“Our pal Rahm Emanuel has been forced to close 50 schools in retaliation for the strike led by Lewis and now suffers poll numbers so low they are getting close to the interest rate. He is actually being criticized for using money he saves by closing schools to put $100 million into building a new basketball arena where our president and Arne Duncan will be able to shoot hoops once their term in office is over. For that Rahm is being called the most loathsome politician in America? How dare they?”
“And some in the media have started ganging up on some of our allies like Michelle Rhee. And Arne Duncan’s poor record in running the Chicago schools for so many years has been re-examined due to the work of Karen Lewis’ union.
“And then to top it all our hand-picked crew to beat her in the election got only 20% of the vote despite being supported by our press pals at the Chicago Tribune, thus showing Chicago teachers will not go to the woodshed like the lambs being led by Randi Weingarten, our most important asset, who by the way we have supplied a military escort to protect, but let me point out that we are not using public money for Randi’s escort since Bill Gates is paying.”
“Getting Bin Laden was so much easier.”
Chicago Public Schools voted to close down dozens of public schools. As many as 40,000 children are losing their schools, many of who are children with disabilities. The vast majority of the children are African American.
Will the President and Secretary of Education speak out against this willful destruction of public schools and communities?
This is a dire situation. It is time for our leaders to defend children, communities, and schools.
There are questions of equity here that should be investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
There is no bright side to this ugly decision.
Norm Scott, retired NYC teacher posted this on his website, Ed Notes Online:
We have Al Qaeda on the run but right now the biggest threat to our agenda is Karen Lewis and the Chicago Teachers Union,” said an Obama spokesperson.
“Our pal Rahm Emanuel has been forced to close 50 schools in retaliation for the strike led by Lewis and now suffers poll numbers so low they are getting close to the interest rate. He is actually being criticized for using money he saves by closing schools to put $100 million into building a new basketball arena where our president and Arne Duncan will be able to shoot hoops once their term in office is over. For that Rahm is being called the most loathsome politician in America? How dare they?”
“And some in the media have started ganging up on some of our allies like Michelle Rhee. And Arne Duncan’s poor record in running the Chicago schools for so many years has been re-examined due to the work of Karen Lewis’ union.
“And then to top it all our hand-picked crew to beat her in the election got only 20% of the vote despite being supported by our press pals at the Chicago Tribune, thus showing Chicago teachers will not go to the woodshed like the lambs being led by Randi Weingarten, our most important asset, who by the way we have supplied a military escort to protect, but let me point out that we are not using public money for Randi’s escort since Bill Gates is paying.”
“Getting Bin Laden was so much easier.”
Earlier I posted President Obama’s proclamation on National Charter School Week, which happens to coincide with Teacher Appreciation Week.
A charter school teacher responded with this comment:
“I’ve been an educator in Columbus, Ohio since university. In my 8th year, I currently earn 34,000 before taxes at a 9-12 charter school. I can be fired at any time. I have no tenure, no union, and scarce resources to teach. I also act as a librarian, though I wear no such title nor do I earn pay for wearing this hat. Students come in and depart through a revolving door of enrollment procedures I am not privy to. I’ve seen two administrators at two different charter schools resign because they were stealing. One continues his work at another charter in the city. My family needs the money I earn, so I must teach, but I just pray a public school gives me a chance.”
Wayne Gersen has been working in several districts in Vermont. He is impressed by Vermont’s determination not to allow testing to be the be-all and end-all of education. The state is determined not to let NCLB wreck its schools and not to ask for a waiver that would allow Duncan to impose high-stakes testing. If only Obama did what Vermont does!
Valerie Strauss does an excellent job of deconstructing the disaster of Obama’s education policy.
Remember when candidate Obama in 2008 spoke of hope and change. That encouraged many educators to believe that No Child Left Behind would be ended, tossed into the dustbin of history, where it belongs.
Sadly, President Obama built his Race to the Top right on the flawed foundation of NCLB, and made teaching to the test a necessity.
As the for-profit charters proliferated, he said nothing.
As radical governors destroyed collective bargaining and teacher due process, he said nothing.
As cyber charters grew, garnering huge profits but terrible education, he said nothing.
As vouchers spread, he said nothing.
As privatization accelerated, he said nothing.
The very idea of a “race to the top” refutes the principle of equality of educational opportunity.
The Bush-Obama program will go down in history as a disastrous effort to force the children of America into a standardized mold, while unleashing free market forces to make big bucks with scarce dollars.
It will be held up as an example of what school reform is NOT.
The attack on unions flared into public view in 2011, when Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin attacked public sector unions, and thousands of people surrounded the State Capitol in protest.
Since so many radical Republicans took office in 2010, the effort to destroy public sector unions–especially the teachers’ unions–has accelerated.
Leo Casey explores the context of the anti-union movement here.
In state after state, legislatures have wiped out collective bargaining rights. That meant teachers would have no voice in the funding of public schools or their working conditions. Teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions.
The so-called reformers are closing public schools and turning the students over to private corporations. 90% of charters are non-union.
The questions that I keep asking are, where was Barack Obama as the efforts to destroy America’s workers gained momentum? Why didn’t he go to Madison in the spring of 2011? Why did he go instead at the very height of the Wisconsin protests to hail Jeb Bush in Miami as “a champion of education reform?”
Why did his Secretary of Education effusively praise some of the most anti-union, anti-teacher state commissioners of education in the nation, like John White in Louisiana and Hanna Skandera in New Mexico? Why have Secretary Duncan and President Obama said nothing in opposition to the attacks on teachers, the mass closure of public schools, and the growing for-profit sector in education? Why was the Democratic National Convention of 2012 held in North Carolina, a right-to-work state? When was the last time that the Democratic Party held its convention in a right to work state?
This article asks the obvious question:
Why does Atlanta’s disgraced superintendent Beverly Hall face serious jail time for the cheating that happened on her watch–which she ignored or encouraged by demanding higher test scores–while Michelle Rhee continues to fly from state to state, urging legislatures to follow the DC model?
The article says that Rhee emerged–so far–unscathed because she has friends in high places.
As for the DC model, let us not forget that John Merrow documented that the DC schools are in worse shape now than they were in 2007:
He wrote to the Education Writers Association, introducing his post about the leaked memo:
“I am also reporting that, after five years of Rhee/Henderson, the DC schools are worse off by almost every conceivable measure: graduation rates, truancy, enrollment, test scores, black-white gap and teacher and principal turnover.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 