Has any Democrat promised or tried to take public ed policy away from 1%?
My wife and I are both educators, and she is a K-12 teacher, so we know pretty intimately the policies the 1% are forcing on our public schools: narrowed curriculum to fit the test (and the 1% sell the texts, software, and tests), then using those test results as an excuse to close schools, and replace them with scam charter schools that they also profit from.
All the while the 1% are demanding nothing of the sort from the schools they send their children to.
Most public school teachers want to do a good job but their hands are tied by top-down curriculum, and politicians who bitch about schools but won't mandate smaller classes or more social services, which might require them to raise taxes on their 1% patrons.
Obama is clearly behind this policy, and I haven't read anything from anyone in the Senate who has called this "education reform" what it really is an attempt to make education a cash cow for contractors who will make generous kickbacks to those who give them the contracts.
Who is opposing this in a position of power?
We have our kid in private school to avoid the overcrowded classes, mindless drills for test, and PUBLIC announcement of individual test scores, but we can barely afford it. Keeping her there will probably preclude saving for her college or us ever buying our own home.
The candidate who bluntly calls this the corrupt, crony serving policy it is and pledges to end it will get my support, as well as most teachers and a lot of parents across the political spectrum who are sick of this.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Jeb Bush and testing:
WASHINGTON — Jeb Bush is one of the country's most visible advocates of Common Core, forcefully defending the K-12 standards even as it puts him at odds with a conservative base he would need to mount a viable campaign for president.
Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education has collected millions of dollars from pro-Common Core organizations — from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the for-profit education giant Pearson — giving critics something to sink into and drawing attention to the venture that has allowed the former Republican governor to expand his profile beyond Florida.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/jeb-bushs-common-core-problem-strikes-at-heart-of-his-foundation/2182256
My point: Bush has made a lot of money from his ties to testing firms that benefitted from his education initiatives.
Arne Duncan and testing:
Barack Obama's selection of Arne Duncan for secretary of education does not bode well either for the political direction of his administration nor for the future of public education. Obama's call for change falls flat with this appointment, not only because Duncan largely defines schools within a market-based and penal model of pedagogy, but also because he does not have the slightest understanding of schools as something other than adjuncts of the corporation at best or the prison at worse.
http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/81572
bamas-betrayal-of-public-education-arne-duncan-and-the-corporate-model-of-schooling
In my opinion, Duncan is definitely a privatizer. He was one in Chicago.
Follow the money works for me. There is a lot of money to be made in selling tests, and even more money to be made by destroying public education and replacing it with a profit based system.
without the Washington Generals!
Agree totally.
