Obama prefers charter schools to regular public schools. He is a force for privatization.

[Karmadillo]

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2009/11/obamas-education-vision.html

Obama's Vision for Education
by Diane Ravitch

I have been trying to ascertain what President Obama plans to do to reshape the federal role in education, and the outlines of his policy are becoming clear. So far, we have not heard much about what he will do to fix the No Child Left Behind approach, but the signs are not encouraging.

One point is clear: He prefers charter schools to regular public schools. After his election, he first visited a charter school, not a regular public school. The day after the 2009 election, he and Secretary Arne Duncan visited the Wright Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, which caps its class sizes at 20. That is a class size, by the way, that is out of reach in most urban public schools. The president seems eager to turn over as many public schools as possible to private management. I find it laughable that so many of his critics call him a socialist and a man of the left, when in education, he is quite obviously a force for privatization of public education.

The president is a strong supporter of performance pay. In his visit to the charter school in Madison, the president took the opportunity to remind the nation that teachers should be evaluated in relation to their students' test scores. The funny part of this was that he "went off script" to tell everyone that his daughter Malia came home from school with a 73 on a science test. Logic should have compelled the president to demand an immediate investigation of Malia's teacher, who had obviously failed in her responsibility to make Malia an A student. But, no, the president said that Malia, apparently upset by her low grade, had "started wanting it more than us," and on her next science test, she got a 95. The president did not seem to realize that his little family story had undermined his campaign to blame teachers if students did not score well. Malia got a low score initially because she didn't try hard enough, not because her teacher was ineffective.

Too bad that no one in the U.S. Department of Education briefed the president and the secretary on the latest merit pay evaluation. This one, produced by the National Center on Performance Incentives at the request of the Texas Education Agency, reviewed the results of the nation's largest merit pay program (PDF). Called the Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) program, it handed out some $300 million over three years to teachers in 99 high-poverty schools. The plan relied on test scores, and the performance of individual teachers.

The good news: The teachers liked the extra pay; they collaborated to get extra pay. Teachers had positive attitudes about the program, whether they got the bonuses or not.

The bad news: The program had an "inconclusive" impact on student achievement, which the evaluation characterizes as "weakly positive, negative or negligible effect" on gains.

more...

[FLAprogressive]

1. more inconvenient truths

[MichiganVote]

2. Class sizes of 20? What a joke that is in Michigan.

[Kalyke]

39. My son goes to a public school in Tennessee: Class size 14.

Edited to add: And we don't live in a rural area - we live in the third largest city in the state.

[madrchsod]

3. duncan should be fired but he`s obama`s b-ball buddy

here in illinois there seems to be a shortage of juniors in some high schools...somehow between the sophomore and senior year the junior class shrinks. it`s a clever around testing.

[stray cat]

4. There are reasons there are waiting lists and lotteries for some schools

Some parents want their kids to get a decent education.

[Smarmie Doofus]

5. This is not an area about which the president knows much.

The kids were enrolled in posh private schools in Chicago ( despite the fact that they were zoned for Chi public schools ; which, the story goes , had been miraculously transformed by leading ED "reform" icon Arne Duncan... now Sec of ED) and are currently enrolled in posh DC private schools ( despite the fact that they are now zoned to attend DC public schools headed Mr. Duncan's ideological and philosophical twin, Michelle Rhee.)

Advice for the president:

1. find out what you are talking about.

2. form an opinion.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

17. Don't forget that he went to one of the top private high schools in the country

[Smarmie Doofus]

37. Coach Dunkie went all- private also.

>>>>>
Education
Duncan attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where he aspired to a future career coaching basketball or playing the sport professionally.<2> He then graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a bachelors degree in sociology in 1987. His senior thesis, for which he took a year's leave to do research in Kenwood, in inner-city Chicago, was entitled The values, aspirations and opportunities of the urban underclass. Though unpublished, it was later cited by other authors.<3><4><5>>>>>

At the risk of winning the "understatement of the year award", one begins to see a pattern emerging.

Edit: the snippet's from Wiki, btw.

[madfloridian]

6. Don't get me started.

:mad:

[LWolf]

7. True.

Which is one of the biggest reasons I didn't want him nominated.

[sandnsea]

8. His little story shows he clearly has no desire to blame teachers

As does every speech he's ever given and policy he's ever proposed, if a person chooses to take it in its entirety, like any honest and truly enlightened person would.

[madfloridian]

13. He and Arne do blame teachers. Yes, they do.

They have set up confrontations forcing states to change rules they have if they want to get the 4.3 billion.

They are intentionally privatizing the schools.

[tonysam]

27. School districts are being infected with privatization mantra

It isn't just the movement for charter schools, which by and large are jokes; it is the more insidious movement of privatizing existing public schools. Many districts are now being headed by superintendents graduating from the "Eli Broad Academy," which teaches these leaders to treat schools as little more than businesses to be run on business models. Teachers are treated like crap and the movement now is to gut tenure laws and regulations in order to get rid of the more expensive teachers and replace them with what I call cheapo bimbos. The latter find they will never reach "tenure" and not be able to be vested in retirement.

[roody]

29. and busting the unions

[C_Lawyer09]

9. THE WASL

Leave it to bureaucrats to endorse a test wherein students must write several paragraphs about how to solve simple math problems. If I wouldn't have been sent to be an Army Recruiter I'd never have believed it. The GED kids test scores were more often than not just as good or better. More than half of HS grads I interviewed couldn't answer the following two questions correctly. Read this word(chaos) to me, and what is half of 7.5. This is explanatory of why fifty percent of America thought Iraqis planned and/or executed 9/11. Crazy.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. Wow. +100,000,000

Really nails it.

[ProSense]

11. I think this statement by Randi Weingarten sums where this debate is heading

Statement by Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers, On Federal ‘Race to the Top’ Regulations

The U.S. Department of Education is publishing final regulations for its Race to the Top grants, which are intended to encourage and reward states that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform.

WASHINGTON—We applaud Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for his efforts to make schools better for students—a goal we share.

The Department of Education worked hard to strike the right balance between what it takes to get systemwide improvement for schools and kids, and how to measure that improvement. (One example of the effort to achieve this balance is in the Race to the Top criteria for teacher evaluation. As we wrote in our comments on the draft regulations, “RTTT is an unprecedented opportunity to … develop meaningful and effective teacher evaluation systems that can measure teacher performance and inform decisions in a way that helps students and is fair to teachers.” We are pleased the department heard our call for greater teacher involvement in evaluation systems.) Clearly, the department recognizes that schools succeed only where there is a culture of collaboration and all stakeholders work together to improve teaching and learning.

We know that many states have begun the application process, but that not all are involving teachers and their unions in a meaningful way. We take Education Department officials at their word when they say they will look for meaningful collaboration in the state Race to the Top applications.

Teachers and principals are central to any effort to improve schools, but they can’t do it alone. The best Race to the Top grants will develop specific supports for students and staff, such as early childhood education, professional development, and community schools that provide wraparound services for students and their families.

Policy is made in Washington, but reform happens where students are taught—in the classroom. Race to the Top creates a real opportunity, but it will work only if all stakeholders come together to make it work. We are looking forward to what we learn—not only about what works but about what doesn’t—as a guide for federal education policy, including the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

[madfloridian]

16. You quote her constantly.

Do some research. Many teachers in that union are furious with her and think she sold out the union.

[ProSense]

20. You and others have quoted her when she said something negative about the plan. n/t

[proud2BlibKansan]

32. Count me in that list

I am an AFT member who is livid with Randi over this issue. In fact, I don't know any members of our local who agree with her.

[sandnsea]

18. Oh noes, the head of the AFT supports this

and a Hillary supporter to boot??

My my my.

[tonysam]

26. Weingarten was totally in bed with Joel Klein

The union in NYC is going into the shitter, just as the union in D.C. is going into the shitter. Teachers' unions are turning into little more than social clubs.

When push comes to shove when teachers are fired, and few are fired for real reasons, the unions can always be counted on to defend administrators.

[AllentownJake]

12. The President didn't have a Public Education

[SammyWinstonJack]

36. +1 nt

[dflprincess]

14. So, I'm curious.

Why are the teachers always blamed? Why aren't parents assessed fines when their children fail to do well at school?

Malia and Sasha are fortunate in that not only can their parents send them to excellent schools but, even if they're parents were legal aid lawyers in Chicago and the girls were in public school, they come from a home where education is valued.

Too many parents don't pay attention to what they're kids are doing in school because it's just so much easier to blame it all on the teacher.

[olegramps]

35. Of course its the teacher's fault.

Every time that I have heard of a young person's success, they have attributed it to their parents or a mentor's involvement. In the vast majority of cases where we hear of young people who have failed we also hear that they were not properly supervised and encouraged to excel. We see young people who come from abject poverty succeed against terrible odds because of a parent who was constantly exhorting them to do their best. It sure isn't the teacher's fault that too many kids show up without any desire to learn and end up dropping out or in the case of many young girls getting pregnant. In the majority of cases the blame can be laid at the parents' doorstep for putting their children on the road to a dead-end life style.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

15. Red flags scattered all around

Zbiggy, Rahm, Biden, Goolsbie, Vilsack, Rubin, Gates and in this case Arne Duncan. Why is this so hard for folks to figure out?

K&R

[QC]

33. Some of us here always knew that he was about as liberal as Steve Forbes,

but most got hounded off the site during the primaries.

[Karmadillo]

38. But we feel so much better when we pretend reality is what we want it to be.

nt

[Peregrine Took]

19. Charter school teachers = longer hrs, lower pay, higher turnover.

Sounds like a "lose lose" scenario

[imdjh]

21. It isn't all about teachers. Some of it is about One Size (doesn't) Fits All.

They decided to start high school very early in the morning in Pinellas. Every high school has the same schedule- except the charter schools. Teenagers aren't supposed to be getting up at 5am unless they live on farms.

[mzmolly]

22. "One point is clear: He prefers charter schools to regular public schools."

Clear? :eyes:

[ncteechur]

23. You're wrong. He clearly thinks there should be more charter schools. He never said he preferred

charter schools.

[madfloridian]

28. He wants to double them.

He chose the main advocate for them to be the Sec of Education.

Of course he prefers them.

[msongs]

24. Obama prefers billions for the military to spending more on public schools nt

[tonysam]

25. Yes. Yes. Yes.

His appointment of Arne Duncan, an enemy of public education, as education secretary tells it all.

Obama is the most anti-public education president in American history. George W. Bush has nothing on him.

School districts all over the country are being infected with terminal rot spewed by the likes of Eli Broad and Bill Gates. Public school districts are being killed from within, and on purpose. And our "Democrats" are joining in the anti-democratic movement to destroy public education and turn them into private businesses.

[TheKentuckian]

30. Obama badly needs more educational views around him

The charter schools are the same put X amount of kids in a room and bowl right down the middle stuff that is the root of the original problem that we've been making worse and worse for the last 30 years and further jacking up and dividing the funding would be another giant leap in a series of seemingly unending small steps toward crapulence.

We have never addressed the real flaws with the system-stupidly sourced and generally insufficient funding coupled with blindly, callously, and stubbornly flailing at teaching all kids all subjects the same way with a healthy heaping helping of uninvested parents and students.

We're so far off the tracks now that the solution for poorly performing schools is letting the brightest students go elsewhere rather than what I thought we all had committed to which is bad schools don't have a place in our country because we believe to the fucking core that each and every child needs and deserves a high quality education not just the cream of the crop at whatever random time.

The good part of American Exceptionalism, the part we earned, sacrificed, and had vision enough to create has totally been traded out for dumbass cowpoke our shit is like angels, baby smiles, sunshine, honeysuckle, love at first sight, and twinkling stars all rolled into one American Exceptionalism.

I think Duncan really grabs his attention because he gives the illusion of doing things differently but he's not talkin about much for real. Obama needs to get beyond the usual suspects with names and who know all the right people. That's his biggest flaw in general but education is a tougher area than most because the usual suspects have a fairly tight spectrum of views on approaches.

[Enthusiast]

31. It's as if a some right wing

information source has President Obama's ear. I'm not at all happy about this.

Obviously education in this country is in dire straights. Something effective needs to be done and quickly. There are no answers that I can see.

[QC]

34. Only Richard Nixon could have gone to China

and only a Democrat can kill public education once and for all.

[Mithreal]

40. Truth

[Mithreal]

41. Something makes me think Malia will never

have to compete with child workers and slave labor like most of us.

[Karmadillo]

42. It's the American meritocracy at work.

nt