WSWS: Obama education plan to push competitive funding

[tonysam]

Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site takes a look at Obama's latest hit:

President Obama released plans Saturday to overhaul the No Child Left Behind law, embracing the main thrust of the right-wing education plan adopted under the Bush administration, while proposing modifications that would in many cases make even greater inroads into the principle of universal, high-quality public education.

Most significantly, the administration plan would change the funding mechanism established in the bedrock Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), one of the last major progressive reforms enacted in the United States, substituting grants awarded on a competitive basis for a formula that awarded funded largely based on population.

...

State governments are using Race to the Top as a pretext for wholesale attacks on job security and wages. In Florida, for example, the Republican-controlled state government is pushing for the adoption of a new state law, SB 6, that would require new teachers to take five-year probationary contracts, followed by a series of one-year contracts, meaning that teachers could face firing every school year. The law would also exclude salary from collective bargaining, with all salary determinations made by the state.

No Child Left Behind amended ESEA by favoring charter schools and other forms of privatization, and mandating a regimen of testing that has made it increasingly difficult for public school teachers to provide a well-rounded education for their students, rather than “teaching to the test” to insure that students meet the arbitrary benchmarks set by the law.

...

Rank-and-file teachers who posted comments on a union blog were angered by the Obama plan. One teacher wrote, “I am disappointed that we, as a union, are merely ‘disappointed’ with the president and Arne Duncan. We should be OUTRAGED.”

Another asked, “What do you think would happen to your country’s education system if the largest teachers’ union had a strike for one day to make sure what we are saying is heard? I bet parents and politicians would listen! Is there anyone in up there in NEA who is brave enough …?”

They'd be fired and the scabs would take over. There are too many unemployed teachers right now.

WSWS

[corpseratemedia]

1. way to drive away americans interesting in teaching

its already so bad and in a lot of state universities (at the adult level) there is virtually NO livable income to be made as so many positions have gone p/t - plus zero job security with budget cuts or personnel/student problems, people can be easily dismissed, while administrators are firmly entrenched with their six figure incomes.

They want to make K-12 as economically insecure as adult teaching, where teachers become cheap replacable cogs.

Enough for me to never vote for this man again. I've had it. When I started teaching they called this crap the "female tenure track." Now it's every teacher's track.

(I'm a female.)