The Education Wars III: Special Education Funds

Now it's special education students and funding that are getting the shaft from the federal government and school districts.

From further down in the article, which really gets to the point:

But supporters of special education say special-needs students are being shortchanged. The biggest rub: To shift the funds, schools must show they have met certain criteria, which may include graduation and drop-out rates of special-education students. To allow more districts to qualify, some states are ignoring or lowering the standards.

"This is a slap in the face," said Candace Cortiella, director of the Advocacy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-area nonprofit that advises students with disabilities. "This is historic funding that could have had a huge impact with [special-education] students, and states and districts have instead chosen to minimize the amount of good."

At the heart of the debate is a provision in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, a version of a statute originally enacted in 1975. The provision says that in years in which there is an increase in federal funding for special-needs students, districts already meeting certain standards can choose to reduce their local spending on special education by as much as 50% of the federal-funding increase -- and, in turn, divert the freed-up money to other uses.

In past years, increases, if any, in IDEA funding were generally small, so the provision -- intended to give districts some flexibility -- wasn't used much. But the Obama administration's economic-stimulus plan boosted IDEA funding by an unprecedented $11.3 billion over this school year and the next -- roughly equal to the total amount states received a year ago.

The Education Wars III: Arne Duncan

Too bad people weren't more aware of this 2008 article by Alfie Kohn warning readers about Arne Duncan.

To think Joel Klein was a finalist for the secretary of education job is even more mindboggling than Arne.

Snips for fun:

In fact, just such a person is said to be in the running and, perhaps for that very reason, has been singled out for scorn in Washington Post and Chicago Tribune editorials, a New York Times column by David Brooks and a New Republic article, all published almost simultaneously this month. The thrust of the articles, using eerily similar language, is that we must reject the "forces of the status quo" which are "allied with the teachers' unions" and choose someone who represents "serious education reform."

To decode how that last word is being used here, recall its meaning in the context of welfare (under Clinton) or environmental laws (under Reagan and Bush). For Republicans education "reform" typically includes support for vouchers and other forms of privatization. But groups with names like Democrats for Education Reform -- along with many mainstream publications -- are disconcertingly allied with conservatives in just about every other respect. To be a school "reformer" is to support:
heavy reliance on fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests to evaluate students and schools, generally in place of more authentic forms of assessment;

the imposition of prescriptive, top-down teaching stand-ards and curriculum mandates;

disproportionate emphasis on rote learning -- memorizing facts and practicing skills -- particularly for poor kids;

behaviorist model of motivation in which rewards (notably money) and punishments are used on teachers and students to compel compliance or raise test scores;

corporate sensibility and an economic rationale for schooling, the point being to prepare children to "compete" as future employees; and

charter schools, many run by for-profit companies.

The Education Wars IV: Obama's Race to the Top

is nothing but bottom-of-the-barrel politics based on a faulty premise, which is that public schools can be run on the same "competition" model as businesses.

It's classic neoliberalism, and it will fail. The idea, though, is to destroy public education.

As Awful as It is to Say This,

the election of Obama was not only NOT a "transformational" moment in American politics, but, as it is becoming increasingly evident, this administration is a continuation of the same old, same old, failed Friedmanite policies of the past thirty years.

As we have seen, more and more of the Obama supporters are becoming increasingly jaded by what they are seeing. Instead of moving this country forward, Obama is keeping this country stuck in a rut. More than a few of his policies, especially in the area of education, are hard right and NOT truly Democratic Party policies.

Of course he isn't alone, not by a long shot. Take that worthless piece of shit, the United States Senate, for example. It is perhaps even a bigger culprit in not getting much of anything done.

Unless it is handouts for Wall Street crooks, of course.

David Sirota, Like Matt Taibbi,

seems so shocked about Obama, and yes, Democrats, selling out to Wall Street interests.

It's bad because the Democratic Party is supposed to stand for the people, and now the people don't have a party representing their interests. It's the Democratic Party representing big business while talking populist rhetoric about helping the messes, and then there is the Republican Party that represents big business while pandering to the crazies.

Some choice, but that's all we've got.

Sirota:

When Senate Democrats ratified Obama's nomination of New York Fed chief Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary, they rewarded yet another shill who also fell down on the regulatory job. When those same Senate Democrats considered the nomination of Gary Gensler to head the agency regulating derivatives, they could have rejected him for championing derivatives deregulation as a Clinton official and then cashing in as a Goldman Sachs executive. Instead, Democrats backed his nomination and effectively told every other Gary Gensler-like parasite that misguided actions and corruption don't prevent future promotion.

And let's be fair -- it's not just Democratic politicians who are creating political moral hazard. Many Democratic pundits, activists and voters continued cheering on President Obama while he stuffed his administration full of Wall Streeters -- and many of these rank-and-file voices attacked as disloyal those progressives who raised questions. That told Obama he faces few consequences -- and even defense -- from his own base for promoting those who engineered the economic meltdown.

Readers were warned on this blog about Obama's neoliberal tendencies.

Why in the HELL is Matt Taibbi

shocked Obama is the neoliberal he ALWAYS was, not the pseudoliberal, pseudoprogressive rock star hero of the election campaign?

Why should ANYBODY be surprised he's giving handouts to Wall Street (while of course screwing over Main Street)? Why should anybody be surprised he is marginalizing or asking those who care about Main Street to hit the road? Why should anybody be surprised he is further manning his administration with Wall Street hacks? Why should anybody be surprised he's doing little about job creation, which is necessary to get this economy out of the ditch? Just ask WHERE all of the money donated to his campaign came from, and it wasn't just from small donors, either.

My initial belief of Obama being a "ringer" is coming to pass, I am afraid. I don't want it to be so.

Taibbi:

These are the kinds of voters whom Obama's gang of Wall Street advisers is counting on: idiots. People whose votes depend not on whether the party in power delivers them jobs or protects them from economic villains, but on what cultural markers the candidate flashes on TV. Finance reform has become to Obama what Iraq War coffins were to Bush: something to be tucked safely out of sight.

Around the same time that finance reform was being watered down in Congress at the behest of his Treasury secretary, Obama was making a pit stop to raise money from Wall Street. On October 20th, the president went to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York and addressed some 200 financiers and business moguls, each of whom paid the maximum allowable contribution of $30,400 to the Democratic Party. But an organizer of the event, Daniel Fass, announced in advance that support for the president might be lighter than expected — bailed-out firms like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs were expected to contribute a meager $91,000 to the event — because bankers were tired of being lectured about their misdeeds.

"The investment community feels very put-upon," Fass explained. "They feel there is no reason why they shouldn't earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don't want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown."

Which makes sense. Shit, who could blame the investment community for the meltdown? What kind of assholes are we to put any of this on them?

This is the kind of person who is working for the Obama administration, which makes it unsurprising that we're getting no real reform of the finance industry. There's no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America's racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads. Instead of reining in Wall Street, Obama has allowed himself to be seduced by it, leaving even his erstwhile campaign adviser, ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker, concerned about a "moral hazard" creeping over his administration.

Since the GOP is on the ropes and has run out of gas, it's time for the corporate/Wall Street interests to contaminate the Democratic Party. Obama was their tool.

Matt Taibbi

talked about the "change we can believe in," which is nothing more than the same old, same old:

The Education Wars

The Obama administration has a little bit of trouble with the truth when it comes to education "reform."
_____

The New York Times was less than truthful when it came to the Bloomberg/Klein record.

The Economic Mess

Is the Obama administration looking to screw people over (again) by attacking programs like Social Security?

I have said I didn't exactly trust him, so any talk about cutting SS, had better not leave the talking stage; in fact, it shouldn't even be in the thinking stage.

A snip:

That such comments portend an unprecedented attack on Social Security, the bedrock federal program for retirees dating from the Great Depression, was underscored by two articles posted Sunday on the Washington Post web site. One, entitled “Don’t Expect Retirement Help,” declared, “Uncle Sam won’t be of much help” to the millions whose retirement savings have been decimated, “with Social Security likely to face cuts in benefits.” The other was ominously headlined “A Flimsy Trust: Why Social Security Needs Some Major Repairs.”

It should be noted that these individuals—Obama, Geithner, Summers and Greenspan as well as the talk show moderators—are all multi-millionaires. The "hard choices" they speak of will not impact their lives in the least.

Beginning with Obama, they all exhibit a combination of callousness and ruthlessness that bespeaks not only themselves, but the ruling class whose interests they defend. Their touting of an economic “recovery” for the wealthy at the expense of the broad mass of the population must be taken as a warning.

All of the policies of the Obama administration have been focused on protecting the interests of a financial aristocracy that exercises a de facto dictatorship over the social and political life of the country. Now, the crisis which the bankers precipitated is being used to effect a permanent reduction in the living standards and social position of working people.

There will be no return to the already depressed wage levels and paltry social benefits that existed prior to the crash of 2008. Instead, a further redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top will be carried out through the destruction of all that remains of past social gains and an immense intensification in the exploitation of the working class.

If that happens, expect massive social unrest, even in the apathetic United States.

Obama's First Six Months

Even though it is still early in Obama's term, some trends are becoming obvious, at least to the WSWS.

Obama ran on the nebulous idea of "change," but it appears much of his term has been a continuation of the same old thing.

The biggest outrage is the fact he has been all too willing to help out the banking interests which plunged this country into an economic hellhole while seemingly treating working people with contempt, i.e., how he has treated the domestic auto industry.

So Much

for Obama being the anti-war symbol.

He never was anyway; that was wishful thinking among the nutroots who fell hook, line, and sinker for the media hype of last year's election campaign.

There should be no surprises he isn't what they thought he was.

The political trajectory of the Obama administration is so reactionary that it has evoked praise from its erstwhile right-wing critics, including congressional Republicans and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, who hailed the reversals on release of the torture photos and use of military commissions as a vindication of the “war on terror” policies of the Bush administration.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a top Republican spokesman on detainee policy, declared, “I agree with the president and our military commanders that now is the time to start over and strengthen our detention policies. I applaud the president’s actions today.” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called the decision an “encouraging development.”

It appears to be the same old, same old.

No Matter How Timid Obama's Policies Are,

the fact Dick Cheney is criticizing them is ominous indeed.

Why is Cheney doing this?

Cheney’s attacks on the Obama administration clearly demonstrate the contempt for the American people and their democratic rights which characterizes the American financial oligarchy. At one point in his appearance on CBS Sunday, he told interviewer Bob Schieffer, “What we’ve seen happen with respect to the Obama administration as they came to power is they have moved to take down a lot of those policies we put in place that kept the nation safe for nearly eight years from a follow-on terrorist attack like 9/11. Dealing with prisoner interrogation, for example, or the terrorist surveillance program. They campaigned against these policies across the country, and then they came in now, and they have tried, very hard, to undertake actions that I just fundamentally disagree with.” [Emphasis added.]

Cheney grossly exaggerates the actual change in policies by Obama. But it is noteworthy that he expresses particular bitterness over the fact that, to even a limited extent in the course of the 2008 presidential campaign, the American people sought to express their opposition to the anti-democratic policies of the Bush-Cheney administration.

He's mad the Republicans fucked it up so badly they couldn't even steal the last election. Besides, McCain wouldn't have let them.

No Shit, Noam

Via RedDragon62 is this interview with Noam Chomsky giving his opinion on the Obama administration's policies. Why should anybody be surprised Obama is inclined to not make substantial changes to policies?

The Best Health Care "Reform" Money Can Buy

Why am I not surprised by this?

Guess who's coming to the White House.

On Monday morning, representatives for the nation's major health care industry groups--doctors, hospitals, drugmakers, device makers, and insurers--will pay a personal visit to President Obama. But instead of pitching a fit about health care reform, as they have so many times in history, they will offer their assistance. They will pledge their support for Obama's goals and they'll offer to do their part--by taking steps that would reduce the growth in national health care spending by about one-fifth over the next decade.

The White House and Congress aren't going to do shit about health care because the vast majority of politicians in both parties are on the take from these big donors in the health care industry.

Our current health care system is on life support; hell, it is DOA. It's time for a new direction, but nobody has the political will to do it. Single payer rhetoric will be left to the grandstanding types like Dennis Kucinich, who isn't taken seriously anyhow and also won't do anything but spew out vegan-style red meat rhetoric to the so-called "progressives."

Many Supporters of Obama

are not very happy with his administration's decision not to prosecute Bush officials who sanctioned torture.

More of the "transformative politics" at work.

The Obama Administration

may not be looking at reality when it comes to the economy.

The deepening crisis is demonstrated above all in its effects on jobs and living standards for the working class:

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 24 million workers, 15.6 percent of the labor force, are either unemployed or working only part-time when they want full-time work. This is an increase of 10 million workers in barely a year.
• Forty percent of US companies said they plan to freeze or cut salaries this year, according to a survey reported by Reuters April 7.
• Companies have cut back in five employee benefit areas, including 401(k) matches and tuition reimbursement, according to a report in USA Today.
• The average 401(k) account plunged in value by 27 percent in 2008, according to the huge Fidelity Investments mutual fund.
• Personal bankruptcy filings are up 38 percent compared with a year earlier, according to Mike Bickford, president of Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, a bankruptcy data and management company. In all, 130,793 people filed for bankruptcy in March.

Evidence Abounds

the Obama administration is a tool of Wall Street interests:

Policies that are extraordinarily favorable to the financial elite that were put in place over the past month by the Obama administration have fed a surge in share values on Wall Street. These include the scheme to use hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds to pay hedge funds to buy up the banks’ toxic assets at inflated prices, the Auto Task Force’s rejection of the recovery plans of Chrysler and General Motors and its demand for even more brutal layoffs, wage cuts and attacks on workers’ health benefits and pensions, and the decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to weaken “mark-to-market” accounting rules and permit banks to inflate the value of their toxic assets.

At the same time, Obama has campaigned against restrictions on bonuses paid to executives at insurance giant American International Group (AIG) and other bailed-out firms, and repeatedly assured Wall Street that he will slash social spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

If Obama doesn't reverse course, expect a furious backlash.

The Republicans are counting on it. That is why they basically gave up last fall after the economy crashed. They expect to return to power in 2012.

The Administration

continues to help out Wall Street.

Boy, Do I Agree

with this sentiment on AIG:

Lawrence Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, declared in a CBS television interview, "The easy thing would be to just say, you know, ‘Off with their heads,' and violate the contracts. But you have to think about the consequences of breaking contracts for the overall system of law."

With this turn of phrase invoking the guillotine, Summers inadvertently put his finger on an essential element of the AIG bonuses furor. Like the nobility at the time of the French Revolution, America's ruling financial oligarchy is an entirely parasitic social layer, whose relentless defense of its wealth and privileges stands as the basic impediment to meeting the most basic needs of society as a whole.
In reality, the AIG bonuses are hardly an aberration. Citigroup's CEO Vikram Pandit hauled in $10.82 million of compensation in 2008, Reuters reported Monday. This payout came as the bank received a $45 billion capital injection from the US government.

Bank of America Corp. CEO Kenneth Lewis fared only slightly worse, getting $9.96 million as his bank also received $45 billion in bailout funds.

Moreover, these obscene pay packages and bonuses are only a small part of the money handed out to the financial elite.

And then there's this opinion piece, which basically says "Your money or your life."

What is wrong with this country is the massive wealth transfer upward to fewer and fewer hands while everybody else is forced into impoverishment because of it. By rights the bonuses should be denied, but who is bribing our politicians to continue with the obscene handouts? The same economic elite.

It's a Month into Obama's Administration,

so how is he doing so far? Not so great, according to the WSWS, predictably. Obama, in their eyes, is little more than Bush III.