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Expert: Teacher Bashing Could Lead to Corporate Takeover of Public Education

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YvonneCa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-14-11 11:24 PM
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Expert: Teacher Bashing Could Lead to Corporate Takeover of Public Education
Source: Grand Rapids Press

“The increasingly polarized education policy debate is not just about whether teachers feel the sting of public criticism or whether school budgets suffer another round of cuts. It’s not even about the hot-button issues getting all the attention like merit pay or charter schools.

“What’s at stake is more basic: Whether the right to a free public education for all children will survive as a fundamental democratic promise in our society, and whether the schools and districts needed to provide it are going to survive as public institutions.
“Will they be collectively owned and democratically managed, however imperfectly, by all of us as citizens, or will they be privatized and commercialized by corporate interests that increasingly dominate our society?”

Karp believes federal policy toward public education has changed from “a promoter of access and equity through support for things such as school integration, extra funding for high-poverty schools and services for students with special needs, and embraced a much less equitable set of mandates around testing, closing schools, firing school staff and distributing federal funds through 'competitive grants' to 'winners' at the expense of 'losers.'”

Karp said public education is under assault form both sides of the aisle, with the Bush-era No Child Left Behind and President Obama's Race to the Top.




Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/02/expert_teacher_bashing_could_l.html
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RKP5637 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-14-11 11:28 PM
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1. If so, we can march one more step toward a fascist nation. n/t
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abq e streeter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-14-11 11:30 PM
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2. Isn't that the whole point of the bashing?
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-14-11 11:37 PM
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3. I thought that was the idea. n/t
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Starry Messenger Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-15-11 12:33 AM
Response to Reply #2
7. Yep. n/t
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RufusTFirefly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-14-11 11:51 PM
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4. Good article. My only pet peeve is this line:
"Karp said public education is under assault from both sides of the aisle, with the Bush-era No Child Left Behind and President Obama's Race to the Top."

This reinforces the fallacy that this is somehow a bipartisan assault. The notion that there are two sides of the aisle these days is largely an illusion. There is the corporate Congress, which occupies all the choice seats. And there is the progressive peanut gallery, relegated to a cold, damp place with broken-down seats in a dark corner of Congress, where their voices can scarcely be heard.
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RKP5637 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-15-11 12:10 AM
Response to Reply #4
5. Yep, where their voices can hardly be heard from the basement, while the
corporate bought Congress pontificates upstairs against 'we the people.' I think they should all have their corporate logos on their corporate sponsored seats (asses).
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Reader Rabbit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-15-11 07:45 AM
Response to Reply #4
9. From my perspective, it *is* a bipartisan assault.
Obama and the DFERs are sticking it to teachers even more than the Republicans did during the Bush years. I haven't heard any elected officials speaking out against teacher-bashing; in fact, a lot of Democrats are going along with the "accountability" and "merit pay" BS.
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proud2BlibKansan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-15-11 07:27 PM
Response to Reply #9
11. +1
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proud2BlibKansan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-15-11 07:29 PM
Response to Reply #4
12. It is a bipartisan assault
Our DEMOCRATIC president praised the firing of the teachers in RI last year. And REPUBLICANS all across the country are stripping education budgets.

This attack is definitely coming from both sides.
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RufusTFirefly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-15-11 10:48 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. You're assuming that the Democrats and Republicans are on different sides
That's the problem.
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somone Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-15-11 12:12 AM
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6. That's the plan
Edited on Tue Feb-15-11 12:14 AM by somone
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LuckyLib Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-15-11 12:47 AM
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8. Very well said. Karp is the editor of Rethinking Schools,
a publication from a thoughtful and very well done non-profit educational materials publisher. A must-read for progressive educators and parents everywhere:

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/index.shtml


Actually, it's our legislators who should be reading it. They might learn something.
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YvonneCa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-15-11 03:39 PM
Response to Reply #8
10. The general public needs to read it and see the...
...speech. Here we are in the ed.forum. :(
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donheld Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-15-11 11:09 PM
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14. That's their goal
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