Teachers Not Welcome

Despite all of the blathering platitudes about education, we know both political parties have been co-opted by neoliberal interests and are openly hostile to democratic institutions, including public education.

Obama should be denied re-election on his horrendous education policies alone.

Deval Patrick has clearly been co-opted, and therefore I don't want him anywhere near the presidency as long as he supports these fraudulent "reforms":

In his Tuesday night speech, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick described one of the transformations incentivized by Obama’s signature “Race to the Top” initiative, touting how Boston’s Orchard Gardens Elementary school “is turning itself around,” with changes including higher “teacher standards and accountabilities.” But the website of the Boston Teachers Union also highlights Orchard Gardens as an example – “of how blame has unfairly been laid on the steps of union teachers…” The BTU (an AFT affiliate) says that despite a “failure of leadership” that included six different principals over seven years, the reforms imposed there included ejecting the majority of the staff, including some who had never been evaluated. The BTU website also charges that the superintendent’s key “turnaround” proposals, most of which went into effect, featured “very little that resembles education innovation and a lot that looks like cost cutting and attempts to limit teachers’ voices in these schools.”

Asked about these criticisms, Boston Schools Superintendent Carol Johnson named greater integration of arts and engagement of parents as new innovations, and defended the removal of the majority of the school’s former teachers: “Principals, if they’re going to be responsible for the test scores, they have to be able to choose their starting line-up.” It’s easy to imagine why Governor Patrick didn’t make that argument directly in the convention hall.