Hillary Clinton Vows To Close Every Public School In The Country

I know, seems like crazy talk - and yet, here it is, in plain English:



The Federalist, a conservative Internet outlet, puts the Clinton comment in perspective: 

According to U.S. Department of Education statistics, there were just over 98,000 public schools in the U.S. as of the 2011-2012 school year, the most recent year for which complete data are available. Under Hillary Clinton’s proposed education plan to shutter all average and below average schools, that would mean that nearly 50,000 schools would have to be shut down, assuming that the median and average national school performance were roughly equal. Nearly two-thirds of those schools targeted by Clinton’s proposal–over 30,000–would be elementary schools.

Well, that's how the plan would play out initially.

But then, after you've closed half the schools in the country, you'd have to re-calculate the whole thing, as Mercedes Schneider points out:

A numeric average is a relative statistic. If I have a set of numeric values and I calculate an average using the set, by definition, some individual values will fall below average, and likely, some will be right on the average. If I remove these below-average and average values, the original average does not remain fixed– and if I average the remaining originally-above-average values, some will newly be below average, and likely, some exactly average.

...


Of course, closing “below average” and “average” schools only leads to a recalculated average among remaining schools– some of which would be “below average” upon recalculation– and some of which would likely be exactly average.

In short, by the end of the evaluation process, if we keep closing schools that are "less than average" we will end up with just one school left.

But even then, that school wouldn't be above average, since it would be the only one left.

As Schneider notes, under the Clinton education plan for closing schools, that one would have to go too.

An entire school closure plan for the country -  that, it seems, is what Hillary Clinton intends.

That would be the Obama administration's Race to the Top policies on super steroids.

Now perhaps she misspoke, perhaps she's tired from all the time and energy spent on the campaign trail, perhaps she doesn't understand what the word "average" means in the way that she used it.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps she is the same pro-charter, pro-privatization shill who sat on the board of Walmart for all those years getting set to do to the country's public school system what George W. Bush and Barack Obama could only dream of doing.

I'll say this:

I don't trust her, I don't like her and I wouldn't vote for her for any reason.

After this latest Clinton mess, I am so glad my union, the American Federation of Teachers, already endorsed her during this summer, a full year+ before the election.

One final point:

Since her pal, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has said multiple times he wants to "break" the public school "monopoly" and called for the "death penalty" for "failing" schools, perhaps Clinton can hire him as secretary of education to carry out her closure policies?

Given the destruction Clinton plans for the public school system, Cuomo sounds like he would be perfect for the job of Head School Closer.

Assuming Cuomo's not in prison, that is...or Hillary isn't, for that matter...