Obama education plan boosts privatization, victimizes teachers

[Hannah Bell]

The Obama administration on Monday named Tennessee and Delaware as initial winners in its “Race to the Top” education initiative... Tennessee will get $502 million and Delaware, a much smaller state, $107 million.

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Features of the winning applications (paraphrase):


- Merit pay

- Student test scores as evaluation measures for teachers & principals

- Statewide adoption of all planned changes (100% sign-on from state school districts, majority sign-on from state teachers' unions, 93% in TN)

- DE removes teachers rated "ineffective" for 3 consecutive years from classroom, by law. Definition of "effective" = achieves defined percent of improvement on student test scores.

- Low-performing schools have two years to show improvement, are then penalized

- TN legislation now allows new “Achievement School Districts” to replace "failing" schools.


Note: The heavy lifting will be done by contracted "non-profits" apparently, see "Let someone else do the work" here:

http://nashvillejefferson.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/does-tennessee-have-a-plan-to-turn-around-failing-schools-hint-not-really/

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The education “reform” bill passed both houses of the Republican-controlled state legislature by huge bipartisan margins... The bipartisan approach continued in the grant application, which was cosigned by all the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Bredesen as governor in the November election...

The decisive role of the teachers’ unions was demonstrated in the states that lost as well as those that won. Florida and Georgia were considered leading finalists, but the largest teachers’ union in Florida opposed the plan, and the Georgia Association of Educators complained that it had been left out...

The actual amount of money going into the Tennessee schools under the Race to the Top averages only $540 per student — a pittance that will not make up for the cuts generated by the economic slump, which slashes property tax revenue, and state budget cuts...


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/rttt-m31.shtml


"Sold your birthright for a mess of pottage..."

“Obama’s education proposals demonstrate that social inequality in America is so advanced, and the power of the financial aristocracy so immense, that no public service or program, including education, that is not openly based on class privilege and status can long survive.”

[truedelphi]

1. Whenever I have the inner strength to purchase a newspaper,

There is always a story about how some San Francisco or Oakland school has vastly improved its scores over the last three years, even though the location is in a poor district, with kids whose families are transient. (And in many cases, return south of the border for a year or two and then come back.)

But it doesn't matter if you are accomplishing the near impossible. The Powers that Be expect the teachers to somehow do the actual impossible.

And they somehow think that shutting down such schools will WHAT? Improve things? For whom?

Meanwhile TV commercials are suggesting that our kids can be schooled anywhere they want to be - there is no need to have schools. Just laptop computers!

Schools are just so pre-Techno revolution.

[upi402]

2. Going to online textbooks as well

Florida always shocks me as to how conservative it is. There are so many party people and many Jewish people I know are progressive. It must be the Christians and the Cubans wagging the dog.:shrug:

[truedelphi]

5. Online textbooks. So very nicely Orwellian.

How better to keep reality and the things that are important about reality to stay fluid and in continual state of flux than to have all information online.

I suppose it is only a matter of time that kids in Southern classrooms will be reading about how the South won the Civil War.

[jeanpalmer]

3. "Student test scores as evaluation

measures for teachers & principals." "DE removes teachers rated ineffective for 3 consecutive years from classroom, by law. Definition of "effective" = achieves defined percent of improvement on student test scores."

How simple-minded can they get -- reducing a complex task like teaching to test scores. No consideration apparently of the effort put in by either the students or the teacher, or the abilities of the students. Isn't the principal responsible for supervising and evaluating the teachers? That's how it works in other professions. Unless teaching defies the principles of supervision and can't be evaluated by OBSERVATION. How about mandating that the principal spend 5 days a year in each classroom, and if he/she sees any shortcomings gives feedback to the teacher and works on improvement? Maybe he/she will find out it's not the teacher who's ineffective, but the students. Any harm in looking? Again, that's the way it works in most other settings.

No it's easier to just look at the test score, and fire. And these idiots won the award? No wonder they're having problems.

Not surprising either that the hijacked Dept of Education would give them an award.

[MadHound]

4. More corporate education insanity,

I'm so happy that my state didn't win this competition, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. One of the local districts is going to merit pay of its own volition anyway, sheer insanity.

Meanwhile another generation of kids is going to be lost. My wife works at the college level, and it's already painfully apparent how much damage has been done by NCLB, this is simply going to make things worse.