The Education Wars III

There is little doubt at all President Obama is the most anti-public education president in the nation's history. The fact he appointed his buddy Arne Duncan to the secretary of education post tells it all.

Charter schools are by and large jokes; the truly scary part is existing public school districts are being privatized. Anti-public school billionaires like Eli Broad and Bill Gates are infecting school districts with their crackpot notions school districts can be run on business models and giving out oodles of money to make their privatized paradise come true.

Teachers are collateral damage. Kids are being screwed because they have no stable educational environment.

Ravitch:

Two things are becoming clear to me: One, people who have an agenda will pursue that agenda regardless of evidence. They will tell you that conditions weren't exactly right, that the bonus should have been larger, that the program should have been tweaked this way or that way. But the bottom line is that teachers got bonuses, and the impact on student achievement (using those same lousy measures that we complain about) was hard to quantify.

The other is that the Obama administration has an education plan that was written by corporate-style ideologues. They are determined to fasten a business plan on the schools and will not be deterred by arguments or evidence. If incentives and sanctions work in the business world, then by gum, they will work in education. If deregulation is what the corporate sector wants, then why not foist it on the schools as well.

So, the outline of the Obama education vision is emerging. It is a business plan, designed by people who know nothing about schools and care nothing about evidence.

It takes a Democrat to destroy public education.