Dumb question: Is there any organized opposition to conservative education ''reform'' in Congress?

Obama appointed a Secretary of Education who would have been equally at home in the Bush administration, at least as far as their policy toward K-12.

Is there any organized resistance in Congress to repetitive standard testing, teachers' union-busting, and stealth privatization through charter schools?

If so who is doing it?

My wife and I were talking about what we were going to do as far as education for our new baby, and she mentioned Montessori, Waldorf, etc., but nothing about public schools. I asked if she would consider public school if we happened to live near very good ones. She said even the best will have a very narrow, rote learning curriculum, and waste too much time not only on taking standardized tests, but practicing to take them.

What is really sad is she is an elementary school teacher and her school has been recognized as one of the best in the state.

I got my high school certification when I got my bachelors, but after subbing and talking to friends who taught, I realized that the curriculum was so regimented and lockstep, that schools weren't looking for teachers: they were looking for tour guides who could remember the script.

I teach community college, and for the time being, we have the freedom, to teach as we please, and consequently, motivate and excite our students.

When people like my wife and I who are actually left of the Democratic Party don't see public schools as an option, and don't see the Democrats doing anything to fix it except look for a way for Wall Street to profit off not educating our kids, our government is not working for us, and needs more fundamental change.

for 30 years?

no one joins them, so they quietly sit back down.

:dem:

-Laelth

Doing a quick Google search there is some organized opposition happening in the UK (it has been happening there longer than here), but in the US the opposition is small and scattered.

Right wing conservative movements are funded by Chamber of Commerce types, which is why right wing conservative corporatist movements gain so much ground. Movements for the left, populist, are small and self funded.

Even around here, many people are fine with it.

The Nation ran a really depressing issue on rightwing edumacation last week: http://www.thenation.com/issue/june-14-2010

In 1989 President George H.W. Bush and the nation's governors convened to establish a set of six national education goals to be accomplished by the year 2000. Among these were to ensure that all students enter school healthy and ready to learn, that at least 90 percent of students graduate from high school, that all students are competent in the academic disciplines and that the United States ranks "first in the world in mathematics and science achievement."

In 2010 none of these goals have been accomplished, and we are further away from achieving most of them than we were two decades ago. More children live in poverty and lack healthcare; the high school graduation rate has slipped below 70 percent; the achievement gap between minority and white students in reading and math is larger than it was in 1988; and US performance on international tests has continued to drop.

Far from being first in the world in math and science, the United States ranked thirty-fifth out of the top forty countries in math—right between Azerbaijan and Croatia—when the most recent Programme in International Student Assessment tests were given in 2006. In science, the United States ranked twenty-ninth out of forty, sandwiched between Latvia and Lithuania. These rankings and scores had dropped from 2000, when the No Child Left Behind Act was introduced. While the United States performs closer to international averages in reading, its scores also dropped on the international reading tests during the NCLB era.


And NOPE, our center-right Democratic Party leadership is blindly pushing forward with this crap.

and quite successful. While we are against the current direction education is heading, our voice doesn't count with the rest of the nation.