It's No Surprise

Michelle Rhee's latest antics are happening right at the White House's own backyard and are being cheered by these privatizers. What is going on in the D.C. Public Schools will happen nationally. Teachers be damned; there are just too many of them. And what will happen when people refuse to get into this shithole field? Well, the laws will change in the states so that noncertified, basically uneducated people will be "teachers," just as many are in third world countries.

After all, education is a waste of time and money for these "losers" in the inner cities; these students don't need real teachers.

Recommended by Joel Klein, who led the assault on the New York City public schools, Rhee was appointed Chancellor in 2007 by DC Mayor Adrian Fenty because of her well-known opposition to job security and other rights won by teachers over decades of struggle. Upon being selected to head the DC school district, Rhee declared that poverty and decaying neighborhoods were no barrier to educational success, only poor teachers were.

This is the same rubbish peddled by Obama and Duncan, under conditions in which they are slashing the resources available to teach students and are doing nothing to end the crushing level of poverty and social inequality that plague America’s cities and schools.

Washington, DC is one of the most socially polarized cities in the nation. About two-thirds of the children in the district’s public and public charter schools are eligible for a free or reduced price lunch because they come from low-income families. DC’s child poverty rate is 32 percent. The current unemployment rate in the city is 12 percent; and the official poverty rate rose 18.9 percent in 2009, up from 16.9 percent the previous year.

Like school districts across the nation, Washington, DC students and teachers have faced years of budget cuts, school closings and layoffs. Last year, hundreds of students walked out of classes and joined protests against teacher layoffs and other cutbacks.

Teachers, of course, are the scapegoats. Meanwhile, the administrators will leech off the taxpayers and do better than ever.