EDWEEK Blog: President Obama on Shaky Ground...

[YvonneCa]

...With Teachers: Can He Firm Up Support?

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2011/08/president_obama_on_shaky_groun.html


Excerpt:

At this point, teachers are getting politically involved not to support Obama's candidacy, but to protest his policies. The Save Our Schools March a few weeks ago was attended by grassroots activists from dozens of states, many of whom are getting even more organized as they return home. Many of us were active campaigners and fundraisers for Obama in 2008. Not this time. This time, that energy is going into organizing to defend the schools in which we work from the policies his administration continues to pursue. It is Republican candidates who are promising to reduce the level of federal interference, though I have little confidence that they will actually do much to improve our schools. But at the very least, many politically active teachers have been removed as supporters of the President, and in a tight race, this loss of support could be decisive.

How could this be turned around?

What is called for is a shift in the trajectory of federal policies. Secretary Duncan has called NCLB a "slow motion train wreck," but his approach has been to use the terrible momentum of this law to push us down the wrong track of his favorite reforms. This is bad policy and is contrary to the law that set up ESEA in the first place. The Department of Education needs to step back and fundamentally reinvent itself as a listening and learning organization. Lynn Stoddard's petition captures this idea well:

Change the U.S. Department of Education from a dictator of school policy to that of a research, advisory and resource organization.

This shift would have huge implications. Secretary Duncan is fond of praising dedicated teachers for the work that we do, but when President Obama recently convened his roundtable of advisers on education, not a single teacher was even in the room.

President Obama knows where to find us. And the six million teachers in America could be decisive come November, 2012. But the way things are going, we are left feeling as if we can support him just about as well as he has supported us. Which is not very much at all.

[Jakes Progress]

1. The administration should listen.

They need to shore up this bastion of Democratic support before they are left wondering what happened.

A big help would be if arne found he needed to spend more time with his family.

[YvonneCa]

4. They have made progress in the...

...right direction. Teacher 'bashing' is tapering off. :)

[Jakes Progress]

5. Yep. But teachers aren't dumb.

We know when the election season starts. We want something real. Fire the point guard.

[YvonneCa]

6. No they are not. But the bashing woke a lot of them...

...up. Especially the ones who volunteered for Obama in 2008. As one of those teachers, I can't do that again without being VERY CLEAR on his education policies. Right now, he is straddling the fence.

[Jakes Progress]

7. I worked with a group of almost 30 teachers.

Hours and hours of sweat and planning and work from each of them. Not one is ready to do that again. We don't want words. I'm glad the bashing is growing less, but I don't see anything that will convince us that just as soon as they have our work again, they will not go right back to their current plan to wreck public education and destroy every teacher's union in the nation. They have not, are not, and show no signs of listening to the people who actually know how learning takes place and how schools work. I for one don't trust any word that comes from a department headed by arne duncan. He will lie like the cur that he is. Whether he fools a clueless president or whether he is that president's dog carrying out orders is not the point. Neither speaks well of the president.

[DrDan]

2. for good reason

[dtexdem]

3. Obama really is blowing it.

All those love-Obama folks on DU should note how the President is losing key elements of his, and Democrats', successful election alliances of 2008. Criticism from the left is not doing in Obama, rather Obama and his administration are doing in Obama.