Oldie But Goodie: When NYSED Commissioner John King Compared Himself To Martin Luther King Jr.

I thought I would repost some classic John King material form the past in order to remind people (as if that was really needed) just what a clueless arrogant man King is.

This post is from November 14, 2013:

NYSED Commissioner King Compares Himself To Martin Luther King Jr.

I bet you're thinking, nah, he didn't do that.

Yeah, he did - on Tuesday.

Jessica Bakeman had the story at Capital NY.

Here's the set-up:

ALBANY—In a keynote speech to teachers on Tuesday, education commissioner John King began by describing a cartoon about turkeys who revolt to avoid becoming Thanksgiving dinner, and he ended by comparing the state's adoption of the Common Core standards to the U.S. Civil Rights movement.

King spoke Tuesday morning to teachers from Hudson Valley school districts who traveled to Albany for a Common Core training, and he stressed thankfulness and perseverance.

OK, got the set-up?

Common Core PD with teachers who have traveled to Albany for Common Core training.

King talks about how he is grateful these teachers have ignored the "distractions" of the past few weeks and come to Albany to listen to him say how great the Common Core is and how important the work they are doing is - and then comes this:

As he neared the end of the 20-minute speech, he stressed that worthwhile reform efforts are difficult and require patience and commitment. That's true for the transition to the Common Core like it was true for the Montgomery bus boycott during the Civil Rights movement, he argued.

“Things that matter are hard, and they take sustained commitment,” he said.

Paraphrasing Martin Luther King, Jr., the commissioner said: “In a real sense, this afternoon, we can say that our feet are tired, but our souls are rested.

“Change is hard,” he continued. “It is challenging, and it is tiring, but the goal, their goal, was to advance the cause of civil rights. Our goal is to advance the cause of civil rights through educational justice, through ensuring that all of our students have access to the richest possible instruction that prepares them to succeed when they graduate from high school, in college and careers, and prepares them to be good citizens.

“It will be hard; it will continue to be tiring,” he said. “I am sure there are some sore feet in the room. It will continue to be tiring, but we must remain laser-focused on the outcome we seek for our students.”

Watch here (the Civil Rights talk starts at 17:13).

So now King is Dr. Martin Luther King and these teachers come to Albany to learn the Common Core PD and go back to their schools and teach this drivel to their colleagues are the Freedom Riders.

Unbelievable.

Commissioner King has a messianic complex larger than Merryl Tisch's husband's bank account.

Let me say something directly to Commissioner King:

Commissioner, you are not MLK, the Common Core is not the Civil Rights movement, and the Common Core Fellows or whatever the hell you call these teachers come to Albany for the Common Core PD are not Freedom Riders.

Got that, Sparky?

NYSED Commissioner King Compares Teachers Shilling For Common Core To Tuskegee Airmen

I know, I know - you think I'm making this up.

But remember, NYSED Commissioner John King once compared himself to Martin Luther King Jr. and the Common Core/testing education reforms King pushes to the Civil Rights Movement, so you have to understand that the Good Doctor of the Common Core is given to making grandiose comparisons.

Which is what he did today:

State Education Commissioner John King concluded his keynote address at the State Education Department’s 20th Network Team Institute with an anecdote about his late uncle Haldane King, who was a member of the illustrious Tuskegee Airmen during World War II.

King attended the Thursday unveiling of his uncle’s tombstone at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, and spoke about the “clarity of purpose” exhibited by the men who sacrificed so much for their country even in the face of racism.

The commissioner connected that sort of conviction to the work of teachers implementing the Common Core educational standards. “What we must each bring to this work is tremendous certainty about the goal — the goal of college readiness, career readiness, citizenship readiness for our students, which is what brought us to this work,” he said.

These Common Core shillery festivities were paid for by Race to the Top funds and the teachers attending this week of professional development on the Core are supposed to go back to their schools and train their colleagues in how the SED wants the Core implemented statewide.

While these "Common Core Tuskegee Airmen" in Albany appear happy to do their CCSS shill work, even Dr. King (John, not Martin) admitted the CCSS implementation isn't going too smoothly:

King acknowledged the controversy and criticism surrounding the rollout of the new standards. Only this week, Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino announced the creation of a “Stop Common Core” ballot line designed to tap into voter antipathy.

“There have been a lot of politics over the last four years around how this works,” King told his audience, “and I have no doubt that those politics will continue.”

Oh, you can be sure the political battle to put a stake through the heart of the Common Core Federal Standards and bury them in four different corners of the state will continue apace, Dr. King.

You and your merry men and women in reform can do your CCSS implementation work all you want.

You're losing the political battle with students, parents, teachers, the unions and many politicians - which ultimately means you're losing the battle.

Instead of comparing yourself to the Tuskegee Airmen, you should have used General Custer as a better comparison.

He too was an arrogant prick who thought he knew better than everybody else how to handle conflict, he too wasn't interested in hearing anybody's opinions on anything, he too was lacking in empathy and he too was a grand self-promoter given to making grandiose statements about himself.

In short, he was just like you, Dr. King, or should I say "Common Core Custer."

Common Core Custer.

There's a grandiose comparison for John King that fits.

NYSED Commissioner King Compares Himself To Martin Luther King Jr.

I bet you're thinking, nah, he didn't do that.

Yeah, he did - on Tuesday.

Jessica Bakeman had the story at Capital NY.

Here's the set-up:

ALBANY—In a keynote speech to teachers on Tuesday, education commissioner John King began by describing a cartoon about turkeys who revolt to avoid becoming Thanksgiving dinner, and he ended by comparing the state's adoption of the Common Core standards to the U.S. Civil Rights movement.

King spoke Tuesday morning to teachers from Hudson Valley school districts who traveled to Albany for a Common Core training, and he stressed thankfulness and perseverance.

OK, got the set-up? 

Common Core PD with teachers who have traveled to Albany for Common Core training.

King talks about how he is grateful these teachers have ignored the "distractions" of the past few weeks and come to Albany to listen to him say how great the Common Core is and how important the work they are doing is - and then comes this:

As he neared the end of the 20-minute speech, he stressed that worthwhile reform efforts are difficult and require patience and commitment. That's true for the transition to the Common Core like it was true for the Montgomery bus boycott during the Civil Rights movement, he argued.

“Things that matter are hard, and they take sustained commitment,” he said.

Paraphrasing Martin Luther King, Jr., the commissioner said: “In a real sense, this afternoon, we can say that our feet are tired, but our souls are rested.

“Change is hard,” he continued. “It is challenging, and it is tiring, but the goal, their goal, was to advance the cause of civil rights. Our goal is to advance the cause of civil rights through educational justice, through ensuring that all of our students have access to the richest possible instruction that prepares them to succeed when they graduate from high school, in college and careers, and prepares them to be good citizens.

“It will be hard; it will continue to be tiring,” he said. “I am sure there are some sore feet in the room. It will continue to be tiring, but we must remain laser-focused on the outcome we seek for our students.”

Watch here (the Civil Rights talk starts at 17:13).

So now King is Dr. Martin Luther King and these teachers come to Albany to learn the Common Core PD and go back to their schools and teach this drivel to their colleagues are the Freedom Riders.

Unbelievable.

Commissioner King has a messianic complex larger than Merryl Tisch's husband's bank account.

Let me say something directly to Commissioner King:

Commissioner, you are not MLK, the Common Core is not the Civil Rights movement, and the Common Core Fellows or whatever the hell you call these teachers come to Albany for the Common Core PD are not Freedom Riders.

Got that, Sparky?

Barack Obama And Martin Luther King

Glenn Greenwald looks at Martin Luther King's April 4, 1967 speech in Riverside Church on American imperialism and militancy and compares King's words with President Obama's policies:

King called the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today", as well as the leading exponent of "the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long" (is there any surprise this has been whitewashed from his legacy?). He emphasized that his condemnations extended far beyond the conflict in Southeast Asia: "the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit." He insisted that no significant social problem - wealth inequality, gun violence, racial strife - could be resolved while the US remains "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift" - a recipe, he said, for certain "spiritual death". For that reason, he argued, "it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war." That's because:

"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over."

Working against US imperialism was, he said, "the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions." For King, opposing US violence in the world was not optional but obligatory: "We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy . . . ." The entire speech is indescribably compelling and its applicability to contemporary US behavior obvious. I urge everyone who hasn't already done so to take the time to read it.

Barack Obama's grand inaugural ceremony will take place today on the holiday memorializing King's birthday. Obama will always be linked in history to King because his election (and re-election) as America's first African-American president is, standing alone, an inspiring by-product of King's work on racial justice. But this symbolic link has another, less inspiring symbolic meaning: Obama's policies are a manifestation of exactly the militaristic mindset which King so eloquently denounced. Obama has always been fond of invoking King's phrase "fierce urgency of now", yet ironically, that is lifted from this anti-war speech, one that stands as a stinging repudiation of the continuous killing and violence Obama has spent the last four years unleashing on many countries around the world (Max Blumenthal suggested that Obama's second inaugural speech be entitled "I have a drone").

And just so that the consequences of Barack Obama's drone bombings aren't theoretical, here's a couple of photos of victims of Obama's drone strikes:

 On November 15, 2012, Dennis Kucinch addressed the Congress on these policies:

“American drones in Pakistan have killed as many as 3,378 people. Drones in Yemen have killed as many as 1,952 people. Drones in Somalia have killed as many as 170 people. We've not declared war on any of these nations, but our weapons have killed innocent civilians in all of them. Highly reputable research shows that the number of high-level targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is estimated at about 2 percent.”

“According to The Washington Post, the Obama administration is working on efforts to institutionalize the practice of targeted killings by unmanned drones abroad. The volume of these killings challenges the morality and the legality of the attacks. We are creating a precedent for other nations that are developing the same technology. China has just unveiled a new drone”, he said.

 “The drone program has thus far been conducted with no oversight from Congress or any judicial body. Congress has a constitutional responsibility to ensure that programs that are being conducted in the name of our Nation are legal, transparent, and accountable.

On the day that Barack Obama takes his second oath of office with his murderous hand on a Bible once owned by Martin Luther King, I think it's important to point out that Barack Obama has more in common with Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush than Martin Luther King.

John King Celebrates MLK Day By Threatening To Steal Title 1 Money From NYC

How appropriate that NYSED Commissioner John King, the education reform functionary who does the work of Wall Street and the oligarchy by carrying out a corporatist vision and agenda for the New York State public education system, has issued a threat to strip the NYC school district of more than $1 billion, including $727 million in Title 1 money specifically meant to address inequities in funding, on the weekend we are celebrating Martin Luther King's birthday.

Oh, how the Kings have changed since 1968.

Whereas Martin Luther King said this:

“... For most of the past decade the field of education has been a battleground in the freedom struggle. It was not fortuitous that education became embroiled in this conflict. Education is one of the vital tools the Negro needs in order to advance. And yet it has been denied him by devises of segregation and manipulations with quality. 

“Historically, to keep Negroes in oppression they were deprived an education. In slave days it was illegal to teach a slave to read or write. With the ending of slavery and the emergence of quasi freedom, Negroes were only partially educated — sufficient to make their work efficient but insufficient to raise them to equality. 

“The walling off of Negroes from equal education is part of the historical design to submerge him in second-class status. Therefore as Negroes have struggled to be free they have had to fight for the opportunity for a decent education.... 

“...The richest nation on Earth has never allocated enough resources to build sufficient schools, to compensate adequately its teachers, and to surround them with the prestige our work justifies. We squander funds on highways, on the frenetic pursuit of recreation, on the overabundance of overkill armament, but we pauperize education.”

John King said this in a letter to NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott on January 18, 2013 :

“The Department requires that, no later than February 15,2013, NYCDOE provide the Department with a plan, timeline and budget to accomplish the following, consistent with collective bargaining to the extent applicable, by March 1, 2013,” King wrote, before laying out exactly how much cash the state’s largest district has already lost – and stands to lose – if this directive is not met.

“…It is unfortunate that I am forced to take these actions, but the 1.1 million children who attend New York City schools deserve the very best education we can give them,” the commissioner continued. “The ongoing impasse regarding evaluations continues to deny them that education; we must take action.”

Ah yes - the 1.1 million schoolchildren in NYC, many of whom are children of color, many coming from families who live right at or below the poverty line, must be given the "very best education we can give them" and so Commissioner King is going to strip the city of $1 billion in funding, including $727 million in Title 1 funding, if teachers are not evaluated using the state's APPR evaluation system.

Because what better education can you give the kids than forcing them to take high stakes tests all the year through so that their teachers can be evaluated using a value-added algorithm developed by the state that has been panned as error-riddled, biased and faulty?

Because what better education can you give kids than taking their teachers, putting them on the Great Big APPR Bell Curve and ranking them from "Highly Effective" to "Ineffective" via various methods and forcing them to compete with each other because the state is going to look to fire the bottom 10% every year?

Because what better education can you give kids than failing to provide the millions in funding owed their district by the state from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit?

This is such a great education system that I bet Commissioner King will take his own kids out of the rich private schools he sends them to and put them into public schools so that they too can enjoy the "very best education" John King wants for the children in the rest of the state.

Oh, wait - he probably won't do that, will he?

Not any more than Obama will take his kids out of Sidwell Friends where teachers are NOT evaluated by test scores and kids are NOT taking high stakes standardized tests in every subject in every grade all the year through and where class sizes are small and teachers are NOT replaced by computer programs owned by Rupert Murdoch or Merryl Tisch's brother-in-law.

What would Martin Luther King say about these two prominent black men, Barack Obama and John King, as they promote their corporatist agenda on public schools that serve many kids of color?

What would Martin Luther King say about their education reform movement that seeks to close as many schools as possible in minority neighborhoods and hand them over to charter networks and operators, that seeks to fire as many black teachers as possible and replace them with blonde Teach For America temps?

What would Martin Luther King say about John King's threat to strip all that money from NYC, especially the Title 1 money that is meant to help remedy inequities in funding, because NYC didn't put a corporatist education reform teacher evaluation system in place by some arbitrary deadline set by the governor?

When John King shows up somewhere to give some jive speech about equity and MLK's legacy on Monday, the official Martin Luther King holiday, he ought to be met with these questions.

What would Martin Luther King say about the education reforms you promote where the aim is to churn out compliant consumers and obedient workers who know just enough to get the work done but not nearly enough to know how badly they're getting screwed by this economic and political system?

What would Martin Luther King say about your despicable threat to steal money from poor kids because your hedge fund and Wall Street criminal friends, the wealthy men who put you into your job so you could do their bidding, didn't get their corporate education reform teacher evaluation system by January 17?

Fighting Obama/Duncan Is The Civil Rights Issue Of Our Time

Fred Klonsky has got this EXACTLY right:

One of the stock phrases that Arne Duncan uses in his speeches is the that “there is not a day that he doesn’t think about Martin Luther King.”

Duncan will say that his agenda of competitive school funding, school closings, charter schools, the undermining of teacher union contracts and the punitive use of standardized test results (it is becoming harder and harder to come up with a single term to describe his expansive plans for destroying public education) is the “civil rights movement of today”

According to the Civil Rights Movement and organizations of today, apparently not.

In fact, you could say that stopping the Duncan/Obama education agenda is the civil rights movement of today.

Ironic that the MLK, who was in Memphis to support the right of workers to strike, has been co-opted by corporate whores like Duncan, Klein, et al. to corporatize public education, bust teachers unions and socialize children to expect to work longer and harder to make subsistence wages.

Ironic too that the education reformers who claim to be so concerned about civil rights have created a two-tiered, segregated system just like the one MLK and other civil rights leaders of the 50's/60's fought to integrate.

Lastly, ironic that the first black man elected president of the United States is so frightened by criticism of white bigots that he would rather fire a government worker wrongly accused of racism against whites than actually investigate the charges and back her up when it becomes clear they are false.