Donna Garner: How can the Obama administration take over the control of our nation’s public schools and impact the entire future of our nation? It is easy. All they have to do is to pressure teachers to teach each and every day whatever is on the national assessments that are tied to the national curriculum that is tied to the national standards. Then by making sure that individual students’ scores are tied directly to their individual teachers and that those teachers’ performance scores are made public, the Obama administration will have achieved its goal of forcing teachers to indoctrinate their public school students.
U.S. schools chief to push disclosure of education data
Education secretary Arne Duncan will call on districts across the nation to make information on teachers public.
Arne Duncan
By Jason Song | August 25, 2010 | Los Angeles Times
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will call for all states and school districts to make public whether their instructors are doing enough to raise students’ test scores and to share other school-level information with parents, according to a text of a speech he is scheduled to make Wednesday.
“The truth is always hard to swallow, but it can only make us better, stronger and smarter,” according to remarks he plans to deliver in Little Rock, Ark. “That’s what accountability is all about — facing the truth and taking responsibility.”
The lack of public accountability in California’s schools compared with those in some other states could have been a factor Tuesday in the state’s failure to win any money in the federal government’s competitive Race to the Top education grant program.
State officials had hoped to get up to $700 million, of which $153 million would have gone to the Los Angeles Unified School District. Among the factors judged most heavily in the competition for the money was whether a state linked teachers to their students’ standardized test scores; the Obama administration used the grant competition to spur its vision of reform nationwide.
The winning applicants are Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. In the first round of the competition, earlier this year, California also lost out: Only Delaware and Tennessee earned grants from a fund that, all told, will distribute $4.35 billion.
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The Obama admin. is responsible for this??? I’m gathering Ms. West has never heard of Charlotte Iserbyt, never heard of “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America,” and didn’t know the U.S. government has been destroying children’s minds for at least 70 years.
Relative youth is no excuse for failing to know history…. the day you and your “cohorts”, Ms. West, expand your alleged disgust with the Obama admin. to a disgust with what has occurred in govt. throughout the 20th century (at least), you a re doing nothing but fomenting the already dangerous racial schism that exists in this country.
Donna Garner writes:
“Actually I think this person is saying that the federal government has been taking over our public schools for a long time, and that is definitely true. This is what Charlotte Iserbyt and many of us were saying way back in the 1980’s. However, many of these people are not close enough to the schools now nor are they current enough about what Obama is doing to comprehend the rapidity at which he is pushing his agenda. As I have said many times, while the country was all caught up in fighting the federal takeover of the health system, Obama/Arne were taking over the public schools.”
DK…I share your long-held disgust with the public education system. I’m guessing most of our contributors and readers do too. We probably all agree on more than not in this regard.
I’m not sure where you’re coming from with your admonition of Sibyl…seems out of left field. It’s odd that you just assume this site has never covered the failures of public education beyond Obama’s role.
Our “alleged disgust”? I’ll respond since I consider myself a co-hort. Let me assure you, we’re genuinely disgusted, there’s nothing alleged about it.
Hey, Obama IS the president, his admin IS currently shaping policy, that’s what this particular story happens to be about. It does nothing to refute or ignore other factors in the long history of public education’s demise.
You seem to take offense over nothing at all. Failing to bend to the sensibilities of those who are dedicated to being offended, while intending no offense, is far different than actually being offensive.
No Child Left Behind was introduced by the Bush administration. Well intentioned, it created the latest round of teaching-to-the-tests.