Two writers at Ed Week write letters to President Obama explaining that socio-economic conditions have much more to do with the achievement gap than "failing schools" or "bad teachers." (see here and here.)
It's great to write him and I definitely say publishing those letters in the press is an excellent strategy to push back against the Obama ed policies.
But don't expect any change in policies or attitudes toward teachers.
The only way you'll see any change in the Obama policies is when corporate-whore Obama gets sent back to Chicago.
Obama is just giving his corporate overlords the policies they want (and they in turn provided him with the money he needed to win in '08 and will provide him with the money he needs to try and win again in '12.)
The key is changing the mindsets of Americans to see that following education policies created by the same corporate predators who brought us the Tech Bubble, the Housing Bubble, the Credit Crisis and Financial Collapse in the past ten years is NOT a good idea.
I would have thought after the nightmares of 2007-2008, that message would be easier to sell.
But so far, Americans seem to think the problems in the country (and in education) are caused not by the increasing corporatization of the country and the greed of the governing oligarchy but by teachers unions.
So by all means, write letters to corporate whore Barack and publish them in the papers and on the blogs.
But don't bother spending money on stamps and sending them to the White House.
The administration is NOT listening to teachers, and even if they were predisposed to listen to teachers as opposed to despise them, Obama's need for corporate donations would supersede any of that anyway.
Change We Can Believe In?
Nope - just more corporate whoredom, er, business as usual.
Getting rid of Obama won't make a hell of a lot of difference if a Republican gets in. Sure, we expect this stuff from Republicans but we need a President who actually considers teachers and working people. Where will such a person come from?
ReplyDeleteAh, but if a Republican were trying to pull the same policies that Obama is pulling, I bet more Dems in Congress would stand up to him.
ReplyDeleteBush could only imagine trying to get through the Congress the kinds of ed policies Obama pushed through - from RttT to i3 - that are essentially legalized stealing for the for-profit charter and testing companies.