After you have read the full article, you may be surprised to realize that the teacher's unions are in the socialist camp of anti-capitalist, Constitutional reformists. While the teaching membership may not be unAmerican, their leadership clearly is -- if, of course, they agree with the agenda spelled out in the following. THAT is not entirely clear.
Neither is Obama's educational agenda. While the following outlines actual events, let's keep in mind that Obama's first educational reform decision was to close down a D.C. private school with 1,700 enrolled students. That little event does not fit the intentions described below. We hasten to add this observation: Obama has no plan about any agenda item. That is Midknight Review's theory. It works with the closing of GITMO, Iranian relations, dealing either an imperialistic Hugo Chavez (Venzuela) , whatever he is doing in Afghanistan, the national economy, the Stimulus, his management of TARP (let's not forget that Bush turned TARP over to Obama complete with 350 billion in the fund, healthcare (we have yet to realize just how haphazard was the planning stage for this piece of idiocy and, of course, education reform. Enjoy the read - jds.
By Kate Randall of the Peace and Freedom Party and the World Socialist Web Site.
13 March 2010
The Obama administration is spearheading an unprecedented assault on public education in the US. The White House and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are promoting a nationwide wave of school closures, teacher and staff layoffs, attacks on teachers’ wages and conditions, and an expansion of privately run charter schools—all in the guise of education “reform.”
This agenda is being carried out in school districts across the country over the angry opposition of students, parents and teachers. At a highly-charged meeting packed with parents and teachers on Wednesday in Kansas City, Missouri, the district’s school board voted to endorse a plan by the superintendent to shut down 28 of the city’s 61 schools and to cut 700 of 3,000 jobs, including 285 teachers’ jobs.
Enrollment in Kansas City Schools has eroded in large part through the siphoning off of students by charter and private schools. Kansas City, with a population of 480,000, presently has about the same number of public school students, 17,000, as were enrolled in 1890 when the city population was just over 132,000. This is down from a high of 77,000 students in 1964.
In Detroit, a proposed plan by a coalition called “Excellent Schools Detroit” would shut down and sell off as many as 70 public schools and open up charter schools in their stead. Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Director Robert Bobb has endorsed the business-backed scheme. Bobb, who has overseen the closure of dozens of schools and a huge cut in Detroit teachers’ pay, has won warm praise from Obama and Education Secretary Duncan.
The Detroit News on Thursday quoted Bobb as saying that he is “open to chartering DPS (Detroit Public School system) schools, selling buildings to charter school operators and turning schools over to charter operators.” In praise of the plan, Bobb told the News, “It has a very strong market-driven component to it.”
In California, school districts across the state are handing out thousands of pink slips to teachers in advance of the March 15 deadline when all public school employees must be notified of potential layoffs. The Los Angeles Unified School District, which faces a $640 million budget gap, voted March 2 to send layoff notices to more than 5,200 employees, including teachers, support staff and management.
On March 4 in Massachusetts, the state’s Department of Education released a list of 35 schools where the jobs and contracts of teachers are directly threatened by the Obama administration’s policy of closing down so-called “underperforming” schools. The Boston Public Schools responded by ordering teachers at six of these schools to reapply for their jobs.
Cash-strapped school districts nationwide are grappling with growing budget shortfalls at both the local and state level. “NBC Nightly News” reported Thursday that school officials in at least 34 of the 50 states have carried out cuts. Sixty-six percent of school districts across the country have cut jobs this year, while 83 percent project cuts for the 2010-2011 academic year.
Obama’s policies have encouraged these attacks on public schools. The administration and the Democratic-led Congress have refused to provide emergency funds to enable states and localities to close huge budget deficits resulting from rising unemployment and falling tax revenues, even as they handed over trillions in taxpayer dollars to bail out the banks.
The White House is seeking to exploit the fiscal crisis to push through its anti-public education agenda, tying whatever federal funds are on offer to attacks on teachers’ jobs and pay, the closure of schools in working class communities, and the expansion of publicly subsidized but privately owned charter schools.
Speaking before an audience of business executives at the US Chamber of Commerce March 1, the president welcomed the mass firing of teachers at a public high school in Rhode Island. Obama insisted that the 74 teachers and 19 other school employees at Central Falls High School, a “failing school,” had to be held “accountable.”
As with Ronald Reagan’s mass firing of the PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981, the White House endorsement of the Central Falls firings is a signal to state and local authorities across the country to demand that teachers accept lower pay, fewer benefits and longer hours, or face the loss of their jobs.
Teachers are being scape-goated for an education crisis for which they bear no responsibility. The media has fallen into line. The editorial in Thursday’s USA Today was headlined, “Unions protect bad teachers, harming kids’ education.” The cover story of the latest edition of Newsweek is entitled “Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers.”
Under Obama’s “Race to the Top” program, states are being forced to compete for $4.3 billion in federal stimulus funds. States that prohibit merit pay or the use of test scores in teacher evaluations are ineligible for funds. Those opening up more charter schools with new, lower-paid teachers will be rewarded.
Obama’s budget for 2011 contains sweeping changes in funding for primary and secondary education, radically altering the guidelines for the distribution of federal funds to schools with high concentrations of low-income students. A significant proportion of so-called Title I funds would be distributed to poorer districts—not on the basis of economic need, but according to their “performance.”
The unstated agenda behind these moves is nothing less than the dismantling of the public school system as it has been known in the US. It is to be replaced by a largely privatized system more directly based on social class and geared more closely to the profit interests of big business.
A Democratic administration that came to power by appealing—cynically and dishonestly—to popular hostility to war and the Bush administration’s pro-business policies, has become the vehicle for carrying out the type of radical assault on public education that had long been advocated by the Republican right.
Obama’s African-American background was utilized to mask his right-wing policies, lulling working class and young voters into believing he would be more sympathetic to their needs. In this mass deception, the liberal and phony “left” advocates of identity politics played a critical role. . . . READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE >>>>>
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