“For the Department of Education to say, ‘Everybody else has to sacrifice, but our pet programs must be spared’— that makes me so angry I don’t even know how to say it,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has often been more supportive of administration initiatives than the National Education Association.Why, she is so angry that she can't speak anything bad about Arne Duncan. Randi is usually without a loss for words, as she was when she helped her bosom buddy, Michelle Rhee, craft a deal for DC teachers that destroys seniority, guts tenure, and makes test scores the primary criterion for evaluations. Weingarten would never be where she is, of course, without the help of Bloomberg's millions, and she deserves the wrath of every AFT teacher who cares about kids and the profession of teaching.
Voting her out is a vote against Rhee, Gates, Broad, and Arne Duncan. In other words, it is a vote against corporate schooling.
Well said, Mr. Horn.
ReplyDeleteThe influence of corporations in this country is insidious. The overt and covert push for the business model in education is but the extension of yet another corporate tentacle in their relentless desire to control everything in this country.
It amazes me how in so many places and at so many levels, those who claim to know what is best for education have spent little to no time in a classroom as a teacher. Moreover, many of these "saviors" have spent zero time in a public school classroom even as students, as so many are products of private education like, for example, Michelle Rhee, a graduate of an elite private school, Maumee Valley Country Day.
Would corporations ever tolerate the reverse? By that I mean, would classroom teachers be able to be placed in CEO positions with no knowledge of or background training in various industries? I think not.
It's bad enough our government has become a corporatocracy: "government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation." We must not let this corporate cancer overtake pubic school systems.
Out with Weingarten!