Obama Loses The Elites

From one of the deans of conventional wisdom, Mark Halperin:

"With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle."

I sent an email to Halperin telling him that President Obama has also lost educators and teachers. Here is that email:

Mr. Halperin,

I am a veteran NYC teacher with 10 years experience.

I think the Obama administration's education policies are a travesty. He ran his campaign vowing to end the worst excesses of NCLB; but his RttT program has suckered states into adding standardized tests in every subject at every grade level in order to track the stats of students, teachers and schools. He has added NO money to classrooms (I have 170 students this term, no money for new books, a hole in the roof of my classroom that is 3 feet by six feet) but has added plenty to top-down reforms that privilege testing and data tracking over curriculum and resources for schools.

I also want to note that candidate Obama ran against scapegoating teachers for all the ills in public education. But now President Obama has decided, along with much of the media elite, that teachers are THE problem in schools and if we can just find a way to fire many of them, everything will go swimmingly.

The morale among my colleagues is very low. We feel, as Diane Ravitch has been saying most eloquently, that President Obama has decided to double down on failed policies like charter schools (the CREDO study shows only 17% of charter perform better than traditional public schools while 37% perform worse), merit pay (the Vanderbilt study show merit pay does NOT increase performance by either teacher or student), and teacher evaluations tied to test scores (NYU economist Sean Corcoran has shown how value-added analysis of test scores has a MOE of 20%), and scapegoating of teachers and schools that are irreparably damaging our school system.

So as you write about all the people in this country who have lost faith in President Obama, you ought to add educators. I understand that most media elites these days perhaps agree with the Obama administration rather than educators about reform, but as a 10 year vet I can tell you that these policies are doing irreparable harm to students and schools and if they are not stopped soon, you will see a future generation even less educated, less skilled and less emotionally and socially developed than the current ones.

PS: I work in a school that primarily serves students of color. You would be surprised how many of my students have also lost faith and hope in President Obama.

Halperin is one of the Morning Joe crew and regularly bashes teachers and schools.

But I thought it would be good to send him this email anyway.

As for the CW that Obama has lost the elites and most people think the White House is
"over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters, I think that is dead right."

What is it that they say about even a blind squirrel finding an acorn sometimes?

Well, Mark Halperin found an acorn with this statement.