Obama Tells Teacher: You Need To Be Held Accountable

From Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post:

The president went on Friday to Florida, where he shared the stage with former Republican governor Jeb Bush. Obama said,


"We are also honored to be joined here today by another champion of education reform, somebody who championed reform when he was in office, somebody who is now championing reform as a private citizen -- Jeb Bush...The truth is I've gotten to know Jeb because his family exemplifies public service. And we are so grateful to him for the work that he's doing on behalf of education. So, thank you, Jeb."

President Obama immediately got some flack for this. Jennie Smith, the one teacher on the Educator's Roundtable that followed, expressed her views:

"I expressed to the President how I (and so many like me) felt about this apparent collaboration with the Bush privatization agenda. I told him directly that I and so many other teachers were very disappointed to see him on stage with Jeb Bush, considering the assault on public education he has led in this state and how his foundation has continuously tried to eliminate our contracts and our collective bargaining."

President Obama's response? Jennie Smith summarized:

"Education should not be a partisan issue, and we must work together in a bipartisan fashion to enact reform. He said that he was aware of the decertification issues for our unions and that he did not support that, but that we had to be willing to compromise in the interest of improving education for our children, and that teachers had to be willing to be held accountable. He said that instead of fighting reform, we should get in front of it and lead it.

I AM getting in front of reform - as a progressive educator who believes the high stakes testing and top-down, corporate-driven reform pushed by both Bush and Obama is harmful to children, teachers, school and American society as a whole, I speak out against it on the Internet, to my friends and family and to my co-workers and fellow educators.

As for teachers needing to be held accountable, when will President Accountability hold the bank crooks accountable for their crimes?

It seems to me he could start by reading Dana Milbank's column in the Washington Post and hold Citigroup accountable.

Then he could hold ALL the other banks and financial institutions that are exploiting the mortgage problems people are having or worse, first caused the problems and then exploited them.

Until the day comes that Obama holds the people and institutions that nearly brought the economy to collapse in 2007-2008 accountable, Obama can take his teacher accountability movement and go FUCK himself with it.

The rampant hypocrisy of this guy just burns me up.