Why I will no longer support Barack Obama

[chervilant]

In his State of the Union address, President Obama said:

“In South Korea, teachers are known as ‘Nation Builders.’ Here in America, it’s time we treated the people who educate our children with the same level of respect.”

Mr. Obama's words are hollow. His appointment of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education belies his assertion that educators should be treated with respect. Duncan, and a handful of corporatists, are working diligently to privatize public education and destroy teachers' unions. Corporatists masquerading as "education reformers" are promoting the meme that 'bad teachers' and 'villainous unions' are the reasons that public education is 'failing.'

Here is a blog written by an exceptional educator:

http://www.teach4real.com/2011/02/01/cutting-through-bone/

It is a must read for anyone who mistakenly believes that Mr. Obama is serious about improving public education. The author of this blog, Matt Amaral, notes that California's Jerry Brown is exploring tax cuts that may result in eliminating six weeks from the school year. Funding cuts across the nation, and massive teacher layoffs, have eroded our system of public education nationwide.

A seminal study of public education in the US (The Coleman Report, 1966) substantiated that the strongest predictors of academic achievement are a student's family and peers. Instead of motivating educators to explore ways to capitalize on these important predictors, this study was "widely interpreted as saying that schools {do} not matter." Our system of public education has gotten short shrift ever since.

Research repeatedly demonstrates that standardized tests do not correlate with age-appropriate knowledge of core subjects. Yet, federal funding is tied to standardized assessments, and schools persist in subjecting all students to expensive standardized tests. Do these tests measure academic achievement?

The most current comparative assessment of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world (the OECD PISA report) ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science, and a below-average 25th for mathematics. The United States is just NINE away from the bottom in math! Clearly, our much vaunted standardized tests are not accurate measures of our children's academic success.

By the way, Obama's observation that South Korea calls its teachers "nation builders" has been met with skepticism and ridicule, since no one can find any reference to this phrase in connection to South Korea OR its teachers.