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.

[pnwmom]

1. Lots of luck with the Rethug candidate. n/t

[Tunkamerica]

2. I've heard that republicans don't want to leave any child behind

sounds pretty ace

[Buzz Clik]

3. +1

(brought the rec total back to zero -- where it belongs)

[earthside]

5. Obama is Bush ... on education.

Indeed, 'Race to the Top' or whatever you want to call the Obama education policy is Bush's 'No Child Left Behind' on steroids.

I certainly won't blame teachers for skipping the presidential contest in 2012 if Obama is the Democratic candidate -- it is the giant flaw in the two party system -- how do you hold elected officials responsible when both candidates on an issue are horrible? (Although on education we seem to have real inside-the-beltway bipartisanship: the Repuglicans are all on board with the Obama/Duncan/Bush/Spellings effort to charterize and privatize our schools.)

Teachers voting against their own jobs, their own union, their own children, their own students ... how is that an option?

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. His pathetic shilling for the moronic "Superman" movie.....

... is a window into how utterly clueless he is about this topic.

It is, I tell you, *embarrassing*.

Edit to clean up my language.


Grrrrrr.......

Plus which:

If he doesn't know anything about public schools in the USA ( which , manifestly, he does NOT)why can't he just preface everything he has to say with " I don't know anything about public schools, but....".

At least one could give him credit for *honesty*.

[pnwmom]

7. I WOULD blame teachers for skipping the election.

No one should be a single-issue voter, including teachers. Teachers are well-educated enough to understand that there are many important issues that will directly affect their students -- health care, economic issues, etc. -- beyond issues specifically related to education. Letting government fall into the hands of the Rethugs would hurt their students in many ways.

[chervilant]

10. Sigh...

Really? So, what would you have these disenfranchised voters do, vote for a Bush-lite candidate like Obama? Really?

Have you read Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein? Are you aware that the US is still wasting resources and our vital youth in Afghanistan and Iraq (not to mention the huge swath of death and destruction we've visited upon the citizens of both countries)?

You think it's okay for the Democrats to pony up a candidate who cares more about the uber wealthy than the hoi polloi?

This is not EVEN remotely acceptable to me.

[pnwmom]

11. Better Obama than any of the Rethug candidates.

That will be the choice, not some 3rd party pie-in-the-sky.

[Hannah Bell]

13. there is no choice whatsoever. obama is continuing bush's policies.

and not just on education.

[pnwmom]

14. Some, yes. But not on health care.

Not on minimum wage. Not on Social Security and Medicare. Not on DADT. Not on global warming. Not on jobs and high-speed rail. Not on women's right to choose.

Obama's Presidency is more progressive than W.'s, and much more progressive than any of the crop of Rethugs coming up.

[Hannah Bell]

17. Triangulation. The basic orientation is the same on all policies, & each party uses the

other as a boogey-man while the essential corporate austerity agenda proceeds.

There's no choice whatsoever.

[pnwmom]

18. Of course there's a choice. The positions I listed are completely opposed to each other. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

19. keep telling yourself so. fewer people are buying it.

[chervilant]

16. So...

you are all about ending election fraud, but you'll bend over for the corporate megalomaniacs who fork over the big bucks so that ALL of the candidates are their lackeys...

[MichiganVote]

23. So who made you GOD? If people are truly free to vote their conscience

I believe that includes teachers. Or would you deny teachers that right?

[chervilant]

24. What?

Perhaps you should reread my post. I would not deny anyone the right to vote their conscience. I was speaking for myself, and only myself.

Reading anything else into my post is an epic fail.

[chervilant]

25. oopsies...

I was sitting here wondering why you didn't address pnwmom's disdainful post, and it appears that she was the person to whom you addressed your response.

:eyes: at myself...

[chervilant]

9. hmm...

Help me understand:

1) How does your sarcasm contribute to this discussion?

2) Why do you automatically presume that I'll support a Republican?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. If we keep saying, "we MUST support __________, because he's the Democrat, and the other guy is worse!", then we'll get what we've been getting. I'm not willing to settle for that. I am ramping up my activism, and I intend to advocate for a candidate who ISN'T in the Corporate Megalomaniacs' back pockets.

[downeyr]

26. Great post!

[vi5]

4. But we need tax cuts!

Clearly that is more important than education.

[Orlandodem]

8. Obama will have to win without me in 2012 and for all I care the Tea Party guts the

Department of Education. The DOE is the epicenter of the scourge known as Race to the Top.

[adnelson60087]

21. hear hear. If that's what it takes to get the public

to stand up and recognize how ridiculous Obama/Bush's actions are towards the future of our nation's citizenry, so be it.

[Hannah Bell]

12. he's a freaking hypocrite.

[Boojatta]

15. "age-appropriate knowledge of core subjects"

On what basis is it decided that some knowledge is "age-appropriate"? If students already have knowledge that is "age-appropriate" for older students, then should they go to sleep like the hare in the story of the tortoise and the hare?

Research repeatedly demonstrates that standardized tests do not correlate with age-appropriate knowledge of core subjects.

[chervilant]

22. Actually,

an assistant principal once told me that I couldn't tell my students why we teach them the 'magic box' (a precursor to factoring trinomials), because their 'brains weren't evolved enough for them to understand it.' She said this to me with a straight face, so I can only presume she truly believed it. In case you're unclear, I taught my students why we learn 'magic box' and had them writing their resulting trinomials. They had no difficulty understanding these concepts.

Another bone of contention for me: IQ tests. Contemporary research shows that if you take away the temporal element of IQ tests, almost all research subjects score 'near genius' on the test. I tell my students that this means that we all learn in different ways and at different paces, but we ALL LEARN! I encourage my students to understand that there is no 'average' or 'near average' intellect (a lie they've been saddled with during their entire academic careers), and they are just as capable as the next person of learning and understanding math.

[adnelson60087]

20. If Obama cared about teachers, he'd listen to us

instead of his money-men. But he doesn't. He sees US as THE PROBLEM.