Dana Goldstein, journo-ed historian for the corporate foundations, covered the Clinton speech at the NEA Convention last Tuesday. She was there to find reason to spin a story up that would present Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate determined to break from Obama-Duncan policies that have run public education into the ditch and left the teaching profession demolished and despondent:
As if to confirm the difficulty of Goldstein's impossible task of portraying Hillary as opposed to the corporate education privatization reforms that Obama continued from Bush, this was DFER's response to Clinton's NEA speech, which WaPo published on July 5, the day before Goldstein's puff piece appeared in Slate:
This speech, the first big moment for K-12 education in this general election, signals a potentially meaningful shift in Democratic Party education politics. The Obama era has been, often, a painful one for teachers-union activists. Obama launched his presidential campaign in 2007 as an ally of Democrats for Education Reform [DFER], a group of philanthropists (most with ties to the financial sector) who support weakening teachers’ tenure protections, evaluating teachers according to their students’ test scores, and increasing the number of public charter schools.A shift? Or at least a signal? To a potentially meaningful shift?
As if to confirm the difficulty of Goldstein's impossible task of portraying Hillary as opposed to the corporate education privatization reforms that Obama continued from Bush, this was DFER's response to Clinton's NEA speech, which WaPo published on July 5, the day before Goldstein's puff piece appeared in Slate:
Many of those same charter advocates welcomed Clinton’s remarks Tuesday. “We were happy to see her specifically affirm her support for high-quality public charter schools,” said Shavar Jeffries, president of the pro-charter group Democrats for Education Reform. “Her statements today reiterate her commitment to reform.”
Four, or possibly eight more years of the test and punish regimen are well deserved by public schools teachers in this country for our willingness to oblige and please our tormentors. Our biggest failing is our refusal to read and think critically about the quasi-intellectual arguments bombarding us. Let us not be surprised that the most punitive sanctions are reserved for those of us of color and not of color who have chosen to build our careers teaching in urban communities suffering from hundreds of years of racism, segregation in housing, discrimination in employment, preferential incarceration and the perpetual backlash of white privilege.
ReplyDeleteAbigail Shure
Thank you. It's no surprise that Goldstein maintains her corporate position, but I'm glad it did not go without refutation.
ReplyDeleteDana Goldstein has been shilling for the neoliberal corporate education reform camp for so long, would she even understand anything outside of her corporate bubble?
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