Unsurprisingly, around 40 percent of surveyed teachers and parents said that they doubted student achievement would improve in the coming five years. The survey also found a close association between budget-cutting and job dissatisfaction.
The survey exposes the damaging results of President Obama’s public education policy three years after its launch. These years have seen a tidal wave of cuts to public education, with no let-up in sight. In the same period, trillions of dollars have been handed over to Wall Street and spent on Washington’s neo-colonial wars in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.
Obama’s “Race to the Top Initiative,” like George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” before it, is based on the notion that money should be rewarded to “successful” charter schools and diverted away from “failing” public schools. Success is to be measured by standardized tests and school districts’ and state governments’ willingness to tear up the work rules that have long governed teaching. The unstated goal is to create an openly class-based system of public education in America.
As bad as Bush was on this issue, Obama is far, far worse and more damaging. Teacher satisfaction has notably gone south ever since Obama was inaugurated.
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