Obama School Reform Plan Relies on Big Business

Obama School Reform Plan Relies on Big Business
With Republicans gunning for the Education Dept., the President needs companies to help him fend off deep budget cuts

To help the U.S. compete with emerging economies such as China and India, President Barack Obama pitched Congress on a renewed focus on education in his Jan. 25 State of the Union message. "This is our generation's Sputnik moment," he said, invoking the U.S. response to the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of the first satellite. That feat, at the height of the Cold War, jarred American assumptions of technological superiority.

With a divided Congress and House Republicans gunning for the Education Dept., Obama's school reform plans may depend largely on Big Business. Administration officials say they have had more than 30 meetings and phone calls over the last year with executives about school overhaul. Penny Pritzker, who led Obama's 2008 campaign fundraising effort and is chairman of Pritzker Realty Group in Chicago, says she's "sure that business leaders will be asked to go to Capitol Hill to make the argument" for an improved public education system. Jeffrey R. Immelt, the General Electric (GE) chief executive officer, agrees education should be a part of his portfolio as head of Obama's new jobs and competitiveness council, Pritzker says.

Obama is proposing to make permanent a tuition tax credit program and to revitalize community colleges. The bigger challenge will be revamping President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind law, which expires this year. It requires schools to test students and show yearly progress toward goals or risk losing federal money. Obama wants to give schools more flexibility in demonstrating academic progress, reserving the harshest sanctions, including firing teachers, for schools in the bottom 5 percent in achievement. He also wants to give school districts the power to apply directly to Education Secretary Arne Duncan's Race to the Top program, which enables states with innovative programs to compete for federal funds.

Republicans have other ideas. John Kline (R-Minn.), the new chairman of the House Education & the Workforce Committee, said in a statement that his goal is to "pull back federal involvement in the day-to-day operation of our classrooms." More than half of the 22 Republicans on Kline's committee are members of the Tea Party Caucus or were endorsed by conservative groups such as FreedomWorks and the Tea Party Express. Committee member Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) has said he sees "no place for the federal government in education." The total Education Dept. budget is just under $47 billion, not counting about $17 billion in Pell grants.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_06/b4214027714785.htm

Business will dumb the population even further, if that's possible. They want rote learners; just smart enough to run the machine.

DU teachers have been trying to expose this for a couple years now. But many here accuse us of wanting to maintain the status quo - you know, the system that has no billionaires trying to reform it.

I am reading it now and it is fantastic. This pull-back of federal involvement in the day-to-day classroom operations coupled with Obama's stance of letting there be more flexibility in measuring academic success doesn't sound too bad. I do not like corporate involvement, however. Not one bit.

It's wonderful.

Not even Dubya was so bold as to try to destroy the essence of PUBLIC education.

This administration's education policy is a travesty and everyone (whether you have school-aged children or not) should be outraged. Pretty soon our schools will be like billboards on the side of city buses... advertisements targeting our children. Critical thinking skills will be de-emphasized in favor of rote, drill-and-practice learning, and students with special needs will be dropped by the wayside (unless their families have the $$$ for private instruction) because special education services cost a significant amount of money.

The flip side is, do we really want to live in a nation, in a local area where we are surrounded by dumb, Beck/Palin-worshiping, easily brainwashed citizens? I'm sure big business would love that, as well as all the others in power. But that's not the best thing for our society. It's going to take more than just the teachers (and their unions) to push back against this attack on public education. It's going to take parents and ordinary citizens who have a vested interest in having the best-educated, most qualified workforce and citizenry possible.

At this rate, only the affluent are going to be able to obtain a quality education. It kills me how people who have never had anything to do with public education, never sent their own children to a public school, seem to be the very people out to "reform" it.

that's bullshit. every year, another 5% fired = destruction of the union.

fuck obama. & the locusts behind him.

...businesses complaining that they had to devote too many resources to training new employees? They wanted the schools to do that for them.

This title can be used for EVERY Obama 'plan'.