5.10.08

Since rebel union teachers and angry parents forced an agreement to turn L.A.’s Locke High School over to Green Dot and reorganize the school into small schools, the district has all but abandoned Locke and cut funding for non-police security aides. Now, just as Green Dot is about to assume responsibility, all hell has broken out.

Not songs of loyalty alone are these,
But songs of insurrection also;
For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel, the world over
--Walt Whitman


5.8.08

Petrilli advises Obama campaign: ‘”Walt Whitman is ‘ugh.’”

Now that Sen. Obama seems to have locked up the Democratic nomination, I’m getting a kick out of all the free advice he's now getting from right-wing think-tankers like Mike Petrilli as well as from conservative Republicrats. Where were they when the going got rough a few weeks ago? And why aren’t they handing out unsolicited advice to their soul mate McCain?

You may remember that it was DFER Republicrats who urged Obama to support school vouchers and split from the teachers union. They also pushed him to dump education advisor Linda Darling-Hammond. I must say that Obama has done pretty well rejecting such stupid advice.

But wait. There's more.

Here, Petrilli, implores Obama to “move to the center” on ed issues. Petrilli’s version of “the center” usually includes school vouchers and taxpayer support for religious charter schools and the Reading First boondoggle. He also wishes Barack would "channel Bill Cosby."

Petrilli is also one of the cheerleaders for the new McCarthyism guilt-by-association campaign against Barack. He wants the campaign to focus on Obama’s connections to Bill Ayers and Walt Whitman???

Ayers suggests that teachers structure their lesson plans to encourage the ideas in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, such as “love the sun and the earth and the animals, despise riches, give alms to anyone who asks... dismiss whatever insults your soul,” etc. Ugh.

Petrilli’s ugh-ing of perhaps this country’s most influential poet and poem shows what a boob he is. I’m guessing it’s the sexual themes in Leaves of Grass, that leave uptight Petrilli going, “oooh, gross!”

That puts him a shade below Bill Clinton on the cultural-boobery scale. You may remember it was the romantic Clinton who presented a copy of Leaves to Monica Lewinsky, after using his credit card to purchase the book, thereby creating a paper trail to the blue dress. Ugh! He also gave a copy to wife Hillary as a birthday gift.

Is Petrilli someone who should have Obama's ear? Even worse, imagine him teaching American Lit.

Ugh! Oooh, gross!

5.7.08

Yes, says Washington Monthly’s Greg Anrig.

One simple reason why voucher supporters have become disillusioned is that the programs haven't delivered on their promises. School choice advocates claimed that vouchers would have two major benefits: low-income kids rescued from dysfunctional public schools would do better in private schools; and public schools would improve, thanks to the injection of some healthy competition.

But I suspect that the real reasons for conservatives pushing school vouchers onto the back burner are:

1. It election time and vouchers are a loser so far as the majority of voters are concerned. Even voucher-ite McCain won’t utter the V-word.

2. When conservatives took control over the DOE, their strategy shifted from marginal pilot voucher programs to private management of public schools, including charter schools run by Edison-type operating companies.

Anrig may be nailing the coffin shut before there’s an actual corpse. Once the neocons have been booted in November, look for a revival of voucher plans—some of them even coming from Republicrat think-tankers.

5.7.08

"We don't work in the trenches... we teach children..." PREAPrez

Lately I have been writing a lot about the politics of fear. It's mainly been about election politics, which in the past month or so have been framed by fear of radical ideas and the new McCarthyism (guilt-by-association). While the politics-of-fear took a beating in North Carolina and Indiana, they are still very much alive in the world of education.

If you need any further evidence, check out what happened to my brother Fred (PREAPrez). It seems that Fred, a veteran teacher/blogger/local union president, was asked to contribute a piece on the CEA Blog by his union brothers and sisters in the Columbus (Ohio) Education Association, on the 25th anniversary of A Nation at Risk. But once they saw what he wrote, the offer was pulled back--not out of disagreement with the ideas in the piece, but out of fear.

In some ways, ANAR sets the tone for our current politics-of-fear climate by opening with a metaphor about foreign invaders taking over our schools and foreign competitors overtaking US in the global economy.

But obviously, brother Fred, who picked up some critical-thinking skills in his days in the public school system, took the request a little too seriously and did some truth telling about ANAR and from where the real risk of invasion lies in today's world.

As a result, his thoughtful piece on ANAR's 25th anniversary has been censored. CEA first asked him to remove some sentences that might cause a stir with superiors who might not want union teachers (all grown ups) to read. When Fred refused to pull the sentences (that's my brother). CEA bloggers banned his post.

But thanks to the information-age wonders of the blogo-network, you can read Fred's entire post below and give him some feed-back.

Feel free to reprint it and re-post it yourself.

In a time of what seems to be endless war and endless global enemies, I grow weary of metaphors like these.

Neither my colleagues nor I teach on the military front lines. We don’t work in trenches. We are not weapons in a global battle. And we have no interest in being part of an army in the struggle for global economic supremacy.

We teach children.

Some of my students are at risk. They struggle to learn to read. Many come into my room with learning disabilities and emotional issues. It is more difficult for local school districts to pay the cost of supporting our students.

Some come from families who are at risk. There are children with no parents around. They are living with an aunt or a grandmother. There are families whose parents are out of work with no prospects of getting work.

In the city where I live, dozens of students have been murdered right outside their schools’ front doors this year. Their classmates certainly feel at risk. All that the local political leaders can offer is calls for gun control and placing computer chips in bus cards so that students can be tracked.

Does this sound like it is competition from India that threatens our young people?

If a Chinese worker’s life is improved through Chinese education and economic development, why should the American people see that as a loss for them?

Looking back twenty five years later, it is the greatest of ironies that A Nation at Risk warns,

“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

Which power in the world is attempting to impose its will on others? Which power in the world, in defiance of the will of its own people and the people and nations of the whole world, is committed to preemptive and perpetual war?

Nations are at risk.

Our people are at risk.

But it is not the risk that is described in A Nation at Risk.

It isn’t the risk of educational mediocrity that is our greatest risk.

It’s the risk that comes form national political leadership who are bullies internationally and contemptuous of their people’s needs at home.

I was asked to write about what would American public education look like today if “A Nation At Risk” had never been authored?

There have been other government reports in the twenty-five years since A Nation at Risk. They all have said pretty much the same thing. NCLB is the inevitable result.

For those of us who work for a humane, people-centered system of democratic public education, we can resist the drive to make us part of their global economic wars.

Reports or no reports.