How many high income public schools have been labeled "failures"? [View All]

http://www.zcommunications.org/the-fight-to-save-public-education-by-shamus-cooke

The Fight to Save Public Education
By Shamus Cooke

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Bush's plan further undermined public education: schools were labeled as "failures" and teachers were targeted as "incompetent." Obama's plan knocks down the pins set up by Bush; Race to the Top rewards states for shutting down public schools and opening up charter schools, many of which are private, and by firing teachers en masse. Both these steps are considered "progress" by anti-public education advocates (arch-conservative Newt Gingrich is on a national tour to promote the plan).

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Oddly, the national discussion over why students are testing poorly has been ridiculously crude, if not outright dumb. Both politicians and the media have focused the blame exclusively on teachers. No attention is given to the fact that so-called failing schools have been bled dry of funding. It is impossible for a teacher to succeed when there is not enough money to buy books for all the students or when classes are overcrowded, especially in schools that have students with special needs.

Poverty, and the countless social ills born from it, are the obvious reasons why students perform poorly (high income schools are never labeled as "failures"). By ignoring this glaring fact, politicians reveal themselves to have ulterior motives. And just like the "war on terror" benefited profit-hungry oil and weapons companies, the war on education has a host of corporations clamoring for an increase in hostilities.

To make clear that the war on education is just beginning, Obama revealed that Race to the Top is only in its first stage: the schools that don't win - by failing to close enough schools or firing enough teachers - will have more chances in the future. Obama's Education Secretary explains: " We want to come back round after round…We'd love to see this four, five, six years out - just keep growing it." (New York Times, (March 5, 2010). Of course, the more Race to the Top grows, the more that public education shrinks.

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