The Education Wars

People were warned on this blog and other places Barack Obama is NOT a friend of education or of public schools; after all, he never attended them but went to exclusive private schools, and they aren't under ANY standards of "accountability" at all. So why should anybody be surprised he acts just like George W. Bush when it comes to the fraudulent No Child Left Behind Act?

But clues are now emerging, and they suggest
that the Obama administration will use a
Congressional rewriting of the federal law
later this year to toughen requirements on
topics like teacher quality and academic
standards and to intensify its focus on helping
failing schools. The law’s testing requirements
may evolve but will certainly not disappear.
And the federal role in education policy, once
a state and local matter, is likely to grow.

The administration appears to be preparing
important fixes to what many see as some of the
law’s most serious defects. But its emerging
plans are a disappointment to some critics of
the No Child Left Behind law, who hoped Mr.
Obama’s campaign promises of change would mean
a sharper break with the Bush-era law.

Joseph Biden campaigned on repeal of this shitty law, but Obama's real constituency is Wall Street and the privatizers, hence his appointment of the vile Arne Duncan as Education Secretary, so his stance on NCLB, riddled with lies and ignorance, is not surprising.

Now I would like to see the most far gone Obama supporters try to justify this. They can't.

This Opinion Piece

demonstrates why Arne Duncan was such a horrible choice for education secretary, but Duncan subscribes to what Obama also believes in regarding education, and that instead of the historic purpose of public education is to have an informed citizenry, necessary for a democracy, schools instead should serve as worker-producing factories for businesses.

There is nothing remotely "progressive" or liberal about Obama when it comes to education (or much else), and it was obvious all along to people who hadn't overdosed on the Kool Aid.

The contentious matter of teacher unions could be avoided completely since the public schools would morph into professional business employment training centers. Trainers would take the place of public school teachers who were formerly credentialed by the state's traditional methods. Deposed teachers could apply to become trainers too.

God help us all if this were to happen.