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Schools Take the Back Seat Again
Eight years ago, President Bush entered office with some bipartisan credibility on education, rightfully proclaiming that schoolchildren suffer from the soft bigotry of low expectations. He and the Republicans quickly discredited themselves with low federal funding for reform. So long was Washington anesthetized that the Democrats still seemed in a coma this week as Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the three moderates the Democrats desperately needed for the stimulus bill, stripped more than $40 billion in school construction and general aid to schools.
"We hung tough," Collins said.
This hanging tough by stringing up public education finally stirred some Democrats into at least playing defense on the stimulus. After all, if so-called Republican moderates had such continued low expectations for education, then you know what the rest of that party was thinking. Despite all the up-front concessions from the Democrats, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky moaned, "This bill has only gotten worse. In my view, and in the view of my Republican colleagues, this is not the smart approach."
Tired of the Republican approach and signaling that Obama's outreach was resulting in more capitulation than compromise, Representative Henry Waxman, the Democrat from California, said of Snowe, Collins, and Specter, "It's been their way or nothing. We're losing a lot of the jobs that the president wanted because of it." Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa said, "I think our side gave in too much in order to appease a few people." Harkin later elaborated, "They took a lot of stuff out of education. They took it out of health, school construction, and they put it more into tax issues." Massachusetts Representatives Ed Markey, Barney Frank, and Jim McGovern wrote a letter saying they were "shocked" that the Senate slashed school construction while adding more money for nuclear weapons.
Most important, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said enough was enough. Saying the cuts to education "do violence to the future," the New York Times wrote that she "lit into Phil Schiliro, chief congressional lobbyist for the Obama administration and a former senior Capitol Hill aide, and had words for Rahm Emanuel, her former lieutenant, who is now President Obama's chief of staff." The Associated Press quoted her as saying, "We had to make sure the investment in education" was in the bill.
The Democrats could not get back a separate line item for new school construction. The best they could do is work with the state stabilization fund. The House originally proposed $79 billion. The Senate, cowed by Collins, Snowe, and Specter, had slashed it to $39 billion. The final agreement called for $54 billion, out of which $40.6 billion would go to local school districts. Out of the $40.6 billion, up to $10 billion could be used for school repairs. This, of course, was better than the shutout by the Senate. But no one knows what "up to $10 billion" really means, since the money comes out of the same pot that mayors and school superintendents need to fill other budget gaps and avoid layoffs.
Pelosi hailed the compromise as "historic and transformational." It was a start, but let's not get hysterical about transformation, when education advocates had to fight so hard for crumbling schools while Congress granted collapsing General Motors an 11th-hour, $3.2 billion tax break, and purchases of new cars can avail themselves of $5 billion of tax breaks.
In 1995, the General Accounting Office said that $112 billion was needed to renovate and replace the nation's crumbling schools. In 1997, the Republicans killed the mere $5 billion President Clinton proposed to repair them. With such complete neglect, the amount needed for repairs exploded to $266 billion by the time Bush took office, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Kansas State University. The need has stayed about the same ever since, and little in the federal stimulus package changes that.
Collins is proud of hanging tough. For America's schoolchildren, that means tough luck.
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10 Comments so far
Show AllWhy would anyone in power want a better educated society?
I am a Maine resident currently living in Oregon. CommonDreams is a Portland, ME operation. Snow and Collins are my Senators. They are both Women. Women usually have a lot more sense than Men around this issues of children - way more than those despicable Conservative Right Wing old white men.
Well, think again. I am appalled and disgusted by my two "moderate" Senators from Maine. Moderate, indeed! Tax Breaks for the Super-rich and Corporate entities - not a penny for the Education of Children and related infrastructure (sorely needed) maintainance and operational costs. How blatant and in-your-face does it have to get before you see the true colors of these two women that Mainers have been voting into office for decades now. Smarten Up !
I call on my fellow Mainers to turn these two... disgraces to the human race out of the high offices in turn at the very next election possible for each.
Retire these reviled by many pair of Systemic Criminals who have presided over the impoverishment of my beloved State of Maine - second only to Mississippi in the Federal Poverty index - and now the Citizens of the rest of the Country - post haste!
Norm Vincent
Bangor, ME
"Eight years ago, President Bush entered office with some bipartisan credibility on education, rightfully proclaiming that schoolchildren suffer from the soft bigotry of low expectations."
this is one the dumbest things d. jackson has ever said. the problem with destitute children is we don't expect enough of them. so we'll dumb down the entire school system via NCLB in the name of raising "standards".
i'm not going to quibble w/jackson's criticisms of the 'stimulus' bill and the cuts in education. but it isn't it time to rethink in general funding education primarily thru local property taxes?
I sincerely trust (and hope) that when the Dept. of Education budget is proposed that all of the school construction/renovation funding that got negotiated out of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan makes an encore.
It would be very proactive for some PR spotlight to be placed on buildings that are in obvious need of physical upgrading PRIOR to the formal budget request. And please, please, please don't show just crumbling inner city schools. I think many citizens would be shocked at how many public schools in some of our suburban communities are in substandard condition -- or worse (for the GOP) find out they aren't the only ones sending their kids to neglected buildings.
Single Payer...NOW!!
Gee, I thought all schools were to be like Sidwell Freinds
Problem is "we" have depended on the government to do everything for us for so long, that no longer do we even have the ability to think we can do anything for ourselves. Some are capable of thinking about what school vouchers and church-run schools really mean, and because they do want a good education for their children, without having them brainwashed into religion, opt for home schooling.
A community could get together and bring their schools up to grade, or rebuild them the same way that Habitat for Humanity builds houses. And as rush limbaughs said, schools should be paid for with local property taxes.
Unfortunately, thanks to the repugs, the majority of people seem to have adopted the same mantra - "NO MORE TAXES!" Our Sheriff's budget has shrunk so much we have virtually no protection, but bonds have been voted down for several years in a row. People really are stupid idiots.
"Eight years ago, President Bush entered office with some bipartisan credibility on education, rightfully proclaiming that schoolchildren suffer from the soft bigotry of low expectations"
CREDIBLE??? Are you kidding me?
No Child Left Without A Kick in the Behind was a 100% CORPORATE takeover of education.
By 2014, when 97% of children will have to pass the tests or be taken over by a corporate entity, guess how many local schools will be left standing. (and guess who owns the companies?)
What's INCREDIBLE is that those low lifes made sure that each and every school gets to be labeled "FAILURE" before the ship goes down. I just quit my job with the public school. Who can stomach cheerleading the kids when it's all a sham - they're going to fail.
IT WAS SET UP SO that all schools and children would fail. All the money in the world couldn't even get the 97% mark (only 10% of special needs kids even get a special test.) See clearly, 97% is not a challenge, it's a SET UP!
Don't forget, the whole "expectation" thing is just a smoke screen. Please, whoever the author is, pressure the teacher's unions to make it so that bad teachers are moved on.... BUT for god sakes, don't loose sight of the main problem - A SNEAKY LOW LIFE TAKEOVER OF THE ENTIRE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM.
Make em give it back. That's how tricking someone for their stuff is handled on the playground. Since ultimately kids learn from our example, it seems the best thing to do.
Sioux Rose
KAIKA: Right on! I read statistics and an evaluation analogous to your post in Harper's a few years ago, and I was shocked. I couldn't believe the set up was based on wanting the properties that schools are situated on, and/or converting away from public school to the always-championed-by-capitalism "for profit" substitute, as if it works! Every pillar of what this society is supposed to stand on is being eroded or sandblasted before our eyes. Definitely at work: the enemies within.
An excellent article, but none of it should come as a surprise. The sacrifice of a hopeful future on the altar of capitalism's bottom line - by providing Amerika Inc. with an uneducated workforce - has underpinned the American education system for the last 100 years.
Whilst you might not agree with the author's views of the bigger picture, the following essay may provide you with some further insights into the ongoing destruction of the American education system.
http://www.hermes-press.com/education_index.htm
"Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel"
- Socrates