Obama's "Race to the Top" initiative, which is like a sledgehammer whacking ed deform deeper into public policy, is the conflation of at least three philosophies, if not more.
Neoliberalism. The first of these definitions sounds tame, the second like a hungry beast:"a political orientation originating in the 1960s; blends liberal political views with an emphasis on economic growth"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
"The policies of privatization, austerity, and trade liberalization dictated to dependent countries by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as a condition for approval of investment, loans, and debt relief." (6)
www2.truman.edu/~marc/resources/terms.html
Neoconservatism. The first makes you feel uncomfortable, the second is terrifying.
"A right wing political movement that opposes liberalism in political, economic and social fields."
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/neoconservatism
"Neocons - Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States of America, and which supports using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocons
Liberalism. A virtual potpourri of economic and social elements, such as:
The quality of being liberal; Any political movement founded on the autonomy and personal freedom of the individual, progress and reform, and government by law with the consent of the governed; An economic theory in favour of laissez faire and the free market
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/liberalism
"broad, large-minded, tolerant"
"having political or social views favoring reform and progress"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu
And all this doesn't seem strange anymore, because since Obama's been in office, he's morphed.
Gone are the autonomy, personal freedom, broadmindedness and tolerance.
Being fixed in stone is an opposition to all that – plus privatization and an imperialistic federal government that dictates policy to the states. (Who needs State Ed Depts anymore, come to think of it.)
Much to think about, but it feels like a tsunami.
Cartoon credits:
Neo-liberalism: azlanmclennan.com
Neoconservatism: pissedonpolitics.com
Liberal: cafebabel.com
The New Yorker, which I'm very angry with for the Steven Brill article
Since this blog is on hold while there's much to do at the school level against the threats to NYC public education, I'm leaving this reminder of the kind of battle we're in.
Danny Weil's essay in Counterpunch, from whence these two paragraphs: . . . What the Obama administration is doing, in tandem with the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is part and parcel of typical neo-liberal policy making: wielding federal stimulus funds as a financial weapon to force all states to increase the amount of charter schools they host as well as force those states that do not have them to pass legislation authorizing them. Through financial arm-twisting at a time of disastrous economic crisis, the Obama administration plans to use the power of the federal government to create a much larger national market for charter school providers, be they for profit or non-profit, virtual charters, EMOs or single operators.
This is deeply troubling, for many states which do not want charter schools or have found the experiment to be less than adequate and in fact damaging to kids and funding, for traditional public schools will now be forced to choose stimulus money over policy, a form of economic extortion and increased federal and corporate control over decision making, especially at a time when many of these states are literally financial insolvent. This is another example of how disaster politics operates, only this time the disaster is not a natural disaster but an economic disaster that threatens public policies.
Is anyone feeling like I am that we've been ripped off by this presidency?
My kids and half a dozen other people have been asking me why I'm so down on Obama these days, and it's really exhausting giving them an answer comprehensive enough to make sense to them.
That's why I was so happy to read the great NYC Educator piece of a few days ago, which does most of the job for me. RBE's just left a couple of things out that have bothered me consistently about the man from the start — in particular, the religion he wears on his sleeve.
Obama's faith-based anythings all scare me. I don't like pastors invoking, blessing, sanctifying or otherwise presiding over inaugurations, hearings, ceremonies, and sessions. That kind of thing tells the world that the opinions of agnostics and atheists like myself somehow don't count.
If, in fact, Obama relies on faith and myths for his moral compass, he should do all of us a favor and keep them on his side of the White House. The spaces reserved for We, the People are protected by an egalitarian, secular Constitution, and he and his advisors should "listen up." They're becoming deaf to a document that screams separation of church and state.
The Times mentioned today that the president takes advice from five pastors. No pun intended, but good god! Faith is a feeling, not a primordial truth, and when politicians flaunt it, they're choosing to be divisive. They're bonding with the like-minded and leaving the rest of us out of the loop.
There's other issues as well, like these:
Is Obama really protecting unionism in this country? From what we've heard this week, can't say for sure.
Is he doing enough about those bonuses going to AIG managers from taxpayer dollars? I don't think so.
Is he doing enough to make good on campaign promises to end gulags and wars? Likely not.
Is he bringing governmental officials who very likely committed treason to trial? Not so far.
So the real question is:
Is Obama the kind of progressive leader that could really make me happy? Most definitely not.
REVISED:
They've just posted the full ed segment on YouTube, so I can cite a few more clips from the show I saw last night that inspired this post.I can't believe what I just heard him say about teachers this evening. It's worse than what we've been hearing from Obama.Did they go to the same Professional Development class or something?Maher laid the entire blame for the all the ed problems the country has at the foot of the — wait for it: Teachers' Union.
"It's huge!" quoth he, and followed up with comments as inane as bad teachers go teach in the worst schools. What's wrong is the tenure system: he says that's "where the bad teachers go." SHAME ON YOU, Maher.
Maher's "articulate" guest, Professor Michael Eric Dyson (you'd have to have seen the first part of the discussion to know why I use that word) put him squarely in his place, saying that yes teachers should be held accountable, but at the same time, "let's hold the society accountable, as we owe these young people a chance to survive." He mentioned a whole lot of social issues, and he mentioned class size. Bill, I'm afraid, speaks from the seat of his pants.
It wasn't enough, though, to keep me tuned into the rest of the show. Maher cannot redeem himself from this one.
He's not my kind of man anymore, and actually, neither is Obama.
AVoiceIn just alerted me to this tidbit by Yoav Gonen in Saturday's NY Post, which I hadn’t seen. Administrators at a Bronx elementary school interrogated a class of 7-year-olds individually about their teacher - and then threatened to suspend those who told their folks, several fuming parents told The Post.
Education officials confirmed yesterday that they were investigating claims that as many as 20 second-graders at PS 70 in Mount Eden were pressured by Principal Kerry Castellano and other administrators to compose written statements about teacher Jonathan Alejandro's disciplinary methods.
Parents said they hit the roof when they heard about it. Students were promised McDonald's and other goodies for keeping mum, parents said.
"It's appalling! I'm raising my daughter not to hide things from me, and they're telling her to lie," said Rosa Caceres, who described her daughter, Loreal Luna, as an "emotional wreck" ever since last month's incident.
Angely Miliano said her 8-year-old son, Michael Mateo, was equally torn.
"My son was crying hysterically because he thought he was going to get in trouble with me," she said.
Administrators denied to parents that they had instructed the kids to keep quiet, but Miliano said she asked her son three times whether it was true.
"He said, 'Yes, they told me not to tell you nothing,' " she recalled.
Alejandro declined comment. Castellano did not respond to an e-mail and a phone call seeking comment.
Looking past the hype (it’s the Post, after all), we have a big problem here in this city. It’s the culture of insinuation, interrogation, and criminality that bedevils our profession and poisons our schools.
Each day since the inauguration, one columnist after another has tried to put into words how good it feels to breathe again, knowing that someone is finally at the helm of this great ship of state who can think, listen, evaluate, contextualize, and act appropriately to fight for the things Americans hold dear.
And then something like this story comes along, and we're reminded that if you're in any way connected to the school system here in New York City, your life is pretty much determined by the questionable vision of a single man, Joel Klein, and the enterprise he’s created at Tweed.
I suspect Obama’s going to make some decisions we won’t all like, but we’re happy to let him take the helm of this great ship of a country and do his best. That’s because his best mostly resembles the best in ourselves.
Not so with Joel Klein.
With him and educrats like him running inner city schools across the country, a lot of people will continue living under a pall, much like the one George Bush and his immoral oligarchy fashioned for us. It won't be made out of transparent cloth like Klein tries to tell us, and it won't be comforting. It will feel heavy, ominous and stifling, to teachers and to parents.
The sad part is that the more our new president gleams at the national level, the more we’ll see this chancellor and others who emulate him for what they are, fundamentally the wrong kinds of people to make decisions for our profession or for the kids we teach.
And I hope it's not too late.JOEL KLEIN knows very well how to take down a system, but has no idea how to nourish children, listen to parents, or support educators. If the man were an educator, he'd be a failed one — and by the way, the UFT doesn't like to make that point, leaving the rest of us to bring it up all the time. The fact is he's not, and so the question remains why is he even being considered for Secretary of Education? 
I've created a sidebar over on the right that contains links to recent blog posts, letters, and commentary on the legacy this chancellor is building for himself. Very few of these are positive or even neutral. Most are scathing and speak of the man's vision, record and character in the most negative terms.
Senator Obama, please trust us.
Klein's a poor choice of this cabinet post — even if the UFT isn't saying a word. (Which it's not, at least not on the main website. But, why am I not surprised. There's also no mention there of the ATR rally scheduled for Nov. 24th. Let me tell you about someone else who should never be considered for Education Secretary.)
Most of us wouldn't even want Joel Klein over for dinner, much less invite him to set policy for our children's education.
There's a funny little poll going over at Fred Klonsky's blog, and a more serious petition to President-Elect Obama against this dreadful nomination (self- or otherwise as it suggests below). It begins:
We, the undersigned, devoted thousands of hours of volunteer time to the election of Barack Obama as President. As Professional educators we were encouraged by the promise to have an open and respectful dialogue within the educational community about NCLB, its limits, and its failures.
Now, a trial balloon has been advanced in the media for Joel Klein, Chancellor of NYC schools to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education in an Obama Administration. (It is quite possible that Klein himself promoted the trial balloon.) Trial balloons are trials. They are floated to see how people will react.
This petition is a reaction. . . "
It sure the heck is.
Actually, there's a more general statement for the kind of Education Secretary some of us would like to see. They've got a petition going as well on their website:
Say YES to public education. Say NO to privatization.
Dear supporters of public education,
Many of you have by now heard the rumors of Obama's potential appointees to the position of Secretary of Education. This list includes several people whose records show a history of dismantling democratic public education in the name of private interests. As people committed to public education, this strikes a hard and fast blow in the euphoria that we have felt since Tuesday, November 4th. But it's not too late to make our voices heard once again. Let's build on the sense of representation and democracy we have just experienced to send a clear message to the Obama Administration.
Please click on ENDORSE THIS STATEMENT in order to sign the following statement that voices our concerns about the kind of Education Secretary that we want. Additionally, please FORWARD this message to your friends and colleagues who are also concerned about the future of public education.
Thank you!
The National Network of Teacher Activist Groups
The signatures on both of these petitions are mounting by the hour. It's obvious people are very unhappy with the way things have been going, and hanging out on the sidelines is not really an option.
Since writing this post, I got the chance to put up a revised version of it on Change.gov. Here's the link.
LearnersInherit just sent me a link to Obama's new website, Change.gov, to which I bounded immediately to check out what he plans for Education.
It's detailed and extensive, and has some things in there a lot of educators I know don't much like. Take, for example, this:
Support High-Quality Schools and Close Low-Performing Charter Schools: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will double funding for the Federal Charter School Program to support the creation of more successful charter schools. An Obama-Biden administration will provide this expanded charter school funding only to states that improve accountability for charter schools, allow for interventions in struggling charter schools and have a clear process for closing down chronically underperforming charter schools. An Obama-Biden administration will also prioritize supporting states that help the most successful charter schools to expand to serve more students.
Anything relating to increasing the funding for and the expansion of charter schools is more or less a swipe at public education. Why is he going in that direction?
Prepare Teachers: Obama and Biden will require all schools of education to be accredited. Obama and Biden will also create a voluntary national performance assessment so we can be sure that every new educator is trained and ready to walk into the classroom and start teaching effectively. Obama and Biden will also create Teacher Residency Programs that will supply 30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to high-need schools.
There isn't any performance assessment, voluntary or not, that can ensure that every new educator is ready to start teaching effectively. That's because assessments leave out the most volatile factor in the classroom: real children. Assessments will always be arbitrary. Experience and hard work make teachers effective. Why is Obama thinking an assessment at the start of a new career is going to get you a good teacher?
Reward Teachers: Obama and Biden will promote new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them. Districts will be able to design programs that reward accomplished educators who serve as a mentor to new teachers with a salary increase. Districts can reward teachers who work in underserved places like rural areas and inner cities. And if teachers consistently excel in the classroom, that work can be valued and rewarded as well.
Increase my pay when I teach more hours. I will not teach better, harder, more intelligently, or with greater adaptability if you pay me more money. Where is he getting this idea from, that more money produces better quality teaching? Bonuses for taking positions in inner cities won't cut it either. I have an idea: try lowering class size. Is that too difficult to understand?
Obama's site seems to be under construction, since there's a lot of repetition and funny stuff going on, like paragraphs on College Outreach under the Early Childhood Education section. In fact, when I tested the link above before publishing this post, they had taken the education page down altogether (temporarily, I guess, though it's still a day later).
Still, it's not just a matter of text editing. It's crucial that Obama puts together a program for America's children that comes from true blue educators — not corporations, think tanks, financial institutions or testing companies. He has to learn how to walk away from anyone wanting a piece of our education dollars. These people are in the business of education all right, but none of them have ever been much good at educating.
After I wrote this post yesterday, a comment showed up in another NYC ed blog about the failure of the chancellor's reforms. Joel Klein — a veritable darling of educorp — has certainly been around long enough for us to see some good stuff happening in city schools if it were there to be seen. Instead:
Klein has drained our schools of life, energy, experience and money.
That's worth repeating:
Klein has drained our schools of life, energy, experience and money.
I cannot imagine being a new teacher now in a NYC public school. Even if you come in with exquisite preparation, nothing works the way it did in your classes or your student teaching experiences. Yet, whole schools are now comprised of brand new faculty and administrators. And in every new small school which I have visited I find student artwork done with primitive materials -- construction paper, oaktag and markers. This is true for all of their assignments in every field of study. Students are creating charts by hand in a world where their counterparts in private schools can devise charts with computer programs and with the internet at their fingertips. They are producing hand drawn, stick figurines with magic markers and often, sadly, the writing on the posters they create is filled with errors of which a first grader should be ashamed. The flagships of the Klein administration are schools in which 30 or more children surround a 22 year old teacher who is working with little more than chalk and talk. And they are housed in old school buildings and forced to compete with other schools for classroom space. In the 21st Century. In The United States of America.
— Floraine Kay
People making decisions right now at the highest level should take her words very seriously.
I'm kinda digging web technology these days. Maybe we can start taking back the country from all the yahoos who feel so comfortable in saloons (Joe Sixpack), zealotry and institutionalized ignorance.
I was impressed, for example, with the MoveOn.org network of call parties. You volunteer to have one or more of these at your house, post the directions, and poof! you have 25 like-minded people fighting phonecall by phonecall for the American way right from your own living room.
This time round you didn't even have to speak to more than a one or two Republicans. Each person got some lists of MoveOn members in swing states, and our sole function was to get them to go down and volunteer for a shift or two at the Obama office in their town. The most hostile response was: "You meant to reach my son. He's at college. Me and him don't vote the same way. Bye, bye." Or maybe: "I'm not voting for McCain. I'm voting for Bob Barr," which I can handle because that vote's not going anywhere.
You can STILL sign up to call these swing-staters and ask them to volunteer. I've been doing it even without all those fun party people by signing up at: http://pol.moveon.org/obama/teams/, and hopefully you can, too.
At least try.
And if you need something to fire you up, let me tell you about the ALL-HANDS-ON-DECK! alert posted on The Chancellor's this morning.
It made me head out straight away to find a Contact Us link on the Obama website to tell him he should under no circumstances consider Joel Klein as his Secretary of Education. The site didn't have a such a link, but it did have something spectacular: an option to create your own blog right in the Obama internet heartland.
I could kick myself that I only found out about this option so late in the game. If only I had known about it a year ago, I would have tried to convince the senator that some of his educational choices were really turning me off.
Just a couple of weeks ago at the third debate I nearly fell off my chair when towards the end he called Washington's Michelle Rhee a "wonderful young chancellor." That was nine wasted months after my January post on Obama and his connections with Renaissance 2010 in Chicago. My main point at that time was:
The kind of unchecked privatization the country has experienced at the hands of the neocon ideologues over the past decade has meant that it is harder to distinguish the boundaries between governments and corporations. The players have a foot in each camp to varying degrees, and they are frequently all too willing to profit immensely from the public purse. The revolving door, as mentioned in the Shock Doctrine, has become a lofty arch.
How far each of the presidential candidates are willing to embrace the most manipulative and anti-social practices of corporate America is something that should be pretty much at the forefront of our thinking.
but there are also some George Schmidt paragraphs that are a must-read (he's the editor of the union rag Substance).
So here's the letter I wrote to him this morning via my new blog on my.barackobama.com: "Please don't choose Joel Klein for Sec'y of Education." (Don't choose Weingarten either, by the way.)
It works fine from my Mac, but in case you can't get it, I'm posting it here as well, with a link to AVoiceIn's inspirational shout-out at The Chancellor's.
Dear Sen. Obama,
I am working very hard for your campaign in ways that I can, but mostly, I am working very hard for students and teachers in New York City.
In your third debate, when you called Michelle Rhee the "wonderful young chancellor" in Washington, DC, many of us were horrified. We are equally shocked to hear that you might be considering Chancellor Joel Klein for Secretary of Education should you be elected president. Klein has no credentials in education. He had to be waivered in by the state commissioner, Richard Mills (who has just resigned), to take the job and has no understanding of how kids learn or the best environment for them to learn in. Through union-busting and some pretty heavy-handed, profoundly suspect legal techniques, he has been systematically depleting the system of senior teachers and replacing them with a stream of grad student trainees — cheap, manipulable, and often transient — who do not have the experience or all the skills to get the job done.
Children are not computer bytes, and they can't be fully defined or assessed by numbers. They must each find their way through a maze of information, social differences, and personalities, ingesting what they can under the particular circumstances they find themselves in. In New York City, politicians refuse to lower class size and do little to address the social issues of our poorest communities. The current chancellor knows this, and he doesn't much care. He's engaged in social engineering with the most powerful sector of our society, the corporations and the very rich.
Klein's original restructuring of the school system was a very expensive shake-up, and the two subsequent attempts no more than do-overs. He hasn't made schools in this city any better than they had been, because it's obvious students aren't doing so well and neither are the teachers. He excluded parents and the rank-and-file from the decision-making process, poured millions into machines to crunch data for no practical purpose, and he neither respects or defends truth. He has also hired an expensive PR machine to sell his malicious agenda to a disengaged public, and maybe even to you.
Below is an article written by a long-term educator [AVoiceIn] every bit of it is true.
Obama has got to keep hearing from us about the corporate takeover of public education in this country, about social engineering, and the complete violation of the public trust. That's our new job.
Soon into watching the Charlie Gibson interview the other night, I was already revving up to write a piece on Sarah Palin’s proclivity for wide-eyed, zealous missions that will cause more people to die.
Gibson was asking her about her obvious inexperience and hubris. She responded with what she values: Not blinking and Not thinking.
This world is getting too fast for people my age.
While I was making some mental notes of what I was planning to write on this idiocy, some techie was already posting the very same segment from the interview on YouTube.
Everyone can now see the terrifying reality of this potential future president who would be in a position to not blink and not hesitate our country into more wars, wired as she is to commit missions rather than diplomacy and believing that victory in Iraq is actually definable and possible.
Panicky then and panicky still that our good ol’ bean Barack Obama, modulated college prof that he is, has not been doing nearly enough to win any moderates over to his side, I’ve been thinking with a fair degree of consistency that we are all doomed.
Until someone sent me this Gloria Steinem essay this morning, which appeared in the LA Times.
I can’t say it erases my dark premonitions for the November elections, but perhaps there’s time for enough people to come to their senses and nullify the stupidity.
ADDITIONAL COMMENT 9.14.08:
Ednotes posted a link to the incredible anti-Palin rally that's just taken place.
Lots of pics, video, and a whole bunch of signs like this one:
Neoliberalism. The first of these definitions sounds tame, the second like a hungry beast:
And all this doesn't seem strange anymore, because since Obama's been in office, he's morphed.
