Polish those apples! Your turn to give the Obama-Duncanites a grade on education policy.

Much controversy on education these days. What do you, the best informed political commentators in the world, think about Obama's policies?

They not only haven't turned away from "No Child's Behind Left" but have even intensified the focus on high-stakes testing with "Rat Race To The Top". They've wholeheartedly embraced the charters-uber-alles approach funded by big bucks from Broad, Gates and others. And I certainly never thought I'd see the day when a Dem administration would demonize unions to this extent!

Sorry, Arne, no matter how good your jump shot is, if your grades don't improve, you're off the team. :P

Kudos to you, Salviati!

is beyond all reason.

Same shit, different players.

these days, as this admin's ed policy becomes increasingly indefensible.

but they're still here.

bar none.

crap, shit, anti-education, anti-child, divisive, ineffective, bogus, fraudulent deceptive theiving crap.

Clearly worse than even bush.

Unbelievable.

I feel another photoshop coming on...

F

antithesis is, since he seems to be conspicusouly absent from this particular thread. Maybe he's just not "ready Freddy". Giggle.

As the daughter of now-retired teachers, I will say that I've never seen such horrendous policies since the pre-teachers-union days. My parents began teaching in the early sixties, before the majority of teachers were even unionized and their descriptions of conditions, pay and policies are enough to curl your hair. I grew up seeing what they went through even with unions, and they were nowhere near compensated in appreciation or money for what they gave and did and same for the majority of teachers. And they don't have total control over the factors that go into their students' success. They can't ensure that the parents adequately feed and clothe their children or don't abuse/neglect them or that they will make them do their homework and care about their education. They can't follow each child home and make them do their homework.

Someone else said that today and it reflects how I felt going in about Education. At best I was hoping for a bit of New Deal for public schools. This doing the dirty work of Heritage and Cato and the other right wing think tanks I honestly did not see coming at all. I will never be that dumb ever again. This has been a real watershed for me.

Dems and even staunch liberals have fallen for the anti-teacher, anti-union, pro-privatization bullshit. Truly upsetting. It's frankly worse that it's coming from them and not just the usual suspects.

D+

I see bush-plus in pretty much every aspect of Arneism.

still he has a (d) next to him

There's no excuse for this crap.

Like he would propose teachers' jobs riding on the results of tests taken by kids who have no reason to give a shit if they do well?

Maybe Duncan's job should be determined by whether or not the teachers score well on a teaching skills test that the teachers themselves take, rather than one taken by potentially disinterested students. As a matter of fact, why not also give the teachers no reason to be interested in the results of the test, but still have Duncan's job ride on the results. Teachers deserve a day of fucking around like kids get on standardized testing days...

were treated the way they want to treat teachers.

backwards and counter-productive, unless of course, their interest is in not actually educating children. In that case, they get an A.

It would probably be a fallacious theory. Spurious even...