"His terribly misguided $4.35 billion competitive grant program is, apparently, more important than health care reform, the economic recovery program, improving the student loan program, increasing Pell Grant payouts, and, well, anything else he has accomplished since becoming president."

Valerie Strauss is quite correct. The President has made a fool of himself again. And is there anything more "transparent" than choosing the Urban League for this speech?

Superintendent Lester says "I think that's the dumbest thing I've seen coming out of education in my years in education,"

Or perhaps in anyone else's. Could it make NCLB look good?

Change you can believe in.

Audacity of hope.

Community Organizer.

If you were seriously ill and all your doctor did was order expensive tests--you certainly wouldn't get better. You'd start to question your doctor and a medical profession that doesn't cure, but is only able to diagnose the sickness.

Race to the top is a regressive policy and it does nothing to correct the civil rights monstrosity that is our public school situation.

Like any other Obama policy, this one is completely ridiculous. Inexperience and incompetence are the new standards in politics as demonstrated by both the Bush and Obama Administration. And using Rhee(gression) as their postergirl makes this program look even worse than NCLB.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the article, but I just saw a program on Link TV about shamanism. I learned a good answer to those who hold up the individual and individualism as the end all, the idol of western culture: INDIVIDUALS DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, BUT NOT BY THEMSELVES. I wonder what all those who grew up with the ideals of Ayn Rand have to say about this concept. Rand's political views, reflected in both her fiction and her theoretical work, emphasize individual rights (including property rights) and laissez-faire capitalism, enforced by a constitutionally limited government. She was a fierce opponent of all forms of collectivism and statism, including fascism, communism, socialism, and the welfare state, and promoted ethical egoism while rejecting the ethic of altruism. Does this sound familiar? It is the basis of our corporate culture, which is destroying the earth as an ecological system which will support us. It is the central ethos of neo-conservatism. It is the religion of corporate culture, which Obama is a leading exponent and protector of. 'Race to the Top' seems to be a result of this type of thinking. When Obama talks about accountability, one wishes he would have applied accountability to Wall Street when he gave billions of tax dollars to the same people who led the country into financial ruin.

What can we expect from a Secretary of Education who has no experience in education?

"In the first year, 70% of students who were tested were found to have untreated vision problems. By building a network of existing providers and agencies, identified needs were met. Children who needed glasses were given them." --

So simple. So heart-breaking. Children who simply need glasses.

Last week I read a similar story coming from Burlington, Vermont about a school with a high-poverty, high-refugee, high-English language learning population and a dedicated, respected principal. In order to get the stimulus funds, the school district had three choices: convert to a charter school (Vermont doesn't have charter schools), fire the principal and half the staff, fire the principal and transform the school. The principal had to go; at least Burlington played the game well and gave her another job. In these difficult economic times, they felt compelled to take the money. There's a story such as this every week.

None of this should be a surprise. Obama made it clear even before the primary that charter schools were the only idea he had about education.

And in his speech the other day his arrogant dismissal about when "you shake things up" people are bound to get upset went unpunished. When our leaders talk to us like that, we should leave them in the room talking to themselves.

I am not at all optimistic that there will be sufficient criticism of his "race to the top," with its implied message of "losers trampled at the bottom." The people this policy will most hurt have no political power.

Will some of the civil rights leaders have lunch or a ride on Air Force One with the President and suddenly change their opinions or will they hold strong to reality and what is right for citizens? I have to ask since members of Congress and the media fall all over themselves to promote ideas from the President after such meetings.

I heard part of the speech and it made me retch. The Chief Corporate Public Relations Manager lecturing people, using right-wing rhetoric, about how anyone who does not agree with the (privatization and corporatization of public education) is "afraid of progress".

How Orwellian. In Newspeak, "the way forward", "progress" and "reform" mean the exact opposite of course. We need to have courses at all colleges and universities dedicated to this new language.

My knee-jerk reacton was to think "somebody oughta slap the arrogant, smirk off his lying face"

Only a D-pres can get away with this scheit.

Remember, no corporate state wants an educated populace. Being able to think and evaluate makes it harder to swallow lies and propaganda. Therefore, education is becoming or has become a process whereby the students are drilled endlessly in memorizing the answers to government tests so the school can continue to get money. These little robots are also to be bombarded with propaganda so they will come out as little "patriots," worshiping the flag, hating foreigners and knowing that the government is always right

These students form a huge pool, willing to join the military, do what Big Brother or the "leader" of the moment tells them, inform on anyone, including family, that is critical of the government and its policies. This strategy works.

In Germany, the Hitler Jugend, in Russia, the Young Pioneers, and in the "United" States, the average school student.

Remember, Oceania is at war with Eurasia. It has always been at war with Eurasia. Last week the chocolate ration was lowered from 100 grams to 50 grams. This week, it was raised from 20 grams to 50. Hurray for Big Brother!

Double-think!

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

How the mighty have fallen, but not far enough. I fear the government must be rated doubleplusungood, and so are we for putting up with it.

When Arne Duncan was in charge of the Chicago School system, one of my friends in Chicago forwarded a couple of newspaper articles to me. Arne was closing schools, firing teachers and also janitors, etc. The articles were about parent protests of Duncan's closings, etc. And, Chicago also has at least 6 military academies that are high schools. I'm sure that implementation of additional military academies, across this country, are also on their agenda.

I was NOT surprised when Obama appointed Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. All the media could talk about was that Duncan and Obama were basketball buddies and -- what would this do for the NBA?

Truthfully, I was as depressed by the Duncan appointment as I was by the Geithner and Summers appointments.

The issues are all connected -- from big oil and energy interests, to the MIC, to education, to health care, to big media, to big finance and Wall Street, to the collapse of our environment, etc. The list goes on and on.

Not all charter schools are madrassas or corporate franchises. And the original intent of charter schools was "a test enviroment". They tested new teaching and administrative methods, and if the research proved sound, the results were to be implemented in the state's public school system.

Some great new research and methods have found it's way to the US school system at large. but the purpose is not well structured under a federal, or state, management. It has definetly changed from "let's test new things to improve our current schools" to "let's outsource our public schools".

Test scores are quantifiable. Quality Education is not. Test scores, and text books and many other things, are private industy (with an absolutely HUGE market- think of just how many schools and students/parents there are.... and everyone has to go to school). So these companies pushed and pushed. They may have started out benign, but all for-profit enterprises grow the same.

Then enter more and more the politicians. They listen to campaign contributions sure, but more than that- it's the quantifiable data.... so easy to understand build around. Just think, which is easier to understand, to rate, to see progression, to establish competition, to vilify if needed: A school that goes from 800 points to 1000 points, on a national scale, or a school that goes from good to better on a local scale. I probably didn't say that well, but the point is numbers are easier to understand. Educators seem to say (and I agree) people are not numbers. this is not the DOW, it's people.

It would be difficult to move away from the numbers game; we're so fixed on the DOW, the GDP, the annual profit growth... we all use these numbers to evaluate progress. We don't use the "Quality of Living" to do so- that's less quantifiable. And further, we think growing profit is the measure of success. I would say quality is better than quantity.

Personal story, with names removed, Person A had a business focused on quality- they ahd few clients, but stuck with them and gave them the best year after year. Those few relationships strengthened, trust was increased, more was able to be done because there was devoted more time and attention. The clients became life-long clients. Person B took over the company and focused on Quantity. they got as many clients as possible, focusing on less attention and more production... the same model was given to as many as possible, and less attention meant that more clients would leave... but as long as there were clients to take there place you could burn through as many as possible. Both business models made the same amount of money over time. (A) made the most at the end, (B) made the most at the beginning. The deciding difference was that (B) ran out of clients and had to close.

We need to the school authority to be local as possible, with resources provided at the top... and those resources distributed on an equitable scale, and the scale determined on real, human terms. We need to give politicians and voters something as easy as test scores to understand- for they will do the same crap they always do, let's give them better tools.

I would rather see a Principals Acedemy, and State Academies... we talk about teacher development, but administrators need focus too. I would like to see a more business-like approach to the USE of charter school research (that the purpose is to start charter schools to improve the public schools- charter schools being shut down or re-focused once their initial results are disseminated to the public schools, that we test new approaches to increase Quality, not test scores, and that those are applied to the main school systems in an efficient way.)

There is no blanket approach. We need to apply many teaching, administrating, funding and regulating approaches. But the underlying truth should be understood by all.... people's minds are not commodities, they are orgainic emotional things and all are different individual and by circumstance. You can make a quick buck now, or you can profit later.... but remember if you make it now, you won't be able to make it later.

Obama's teachers obviously are failures.

"Education reform" has a long and incompetent history behind it.

Its roots are first, an ideological belief that teachers unions are behind all educational problems because teachers get too much money and can't be fired at will. In practice, people are running away from teaching as a profession because teaching is such a terribly abused profession. Don't ever become a teacher! The remaining teachers have no problem going on strike simply because there are no scabs anywhere to be had. To appease the ideologues, our country regularly throws bunches of teachers in jail every year for striking. Large sectors of the corporate-friendly media cheer when masses of teachers are fired in Central Falls, RI and in Washington, DC.

Tying teacher employment to student performance tests is a good way to get rid of union activists among the teachers. Simply assign the union activists to the dumb classrooms!

George W. Bush's Texas plunged into "education reform". The two best ways to improve average student performance on 10th grade aptitude tests are, don't ever let any 18 year old dumb students out of the ninth grade, and Texas did this over and over and over again, and always telegraph the answers to your students during the test. Otherwise the teacher has to erase test marks from the answer sheet later and that gets clumsy.

The second root of "Education reform" is standardized tests. School districts pay private companies huge sums of money to come in and teach students how to outguess the SAT test. It turns out that the SAT mathematics test in particular is an easily cracked bunch of monkeypuzzle, and so money for guessing games can buy better colleges for students. What America gets is a generation of burned-out guessers.

The Massachusetts MCAS test had its stupid side (a reporter once asked the Lieutenant Governor a particular dorky, largely irrelevant question and she didn't know the answer). The MCAS had its realistic side too. I liked some of the MCAS problem-solving math questions. Recently the state had to dumb down the MCAS to adhere to national standards. Too bad!

Real schools should be set up for the benefit of each student and for the benefit of the community. Schools would teach citizenship. Schools would teach some kids how to manage their own businesses. Schools would teach kids how to fight fair during marriage arguments.

The real secret of the American educational system, as opposed to China's system, is that kids are taught to be self-initiating dreamers. Kids in America went out and invented the light bulb and the Internet. For fifty years, every other country's kids have known more calculus than American kids, but no other country's kids were as inventive. "Education reform" strangles this dreaming and inventiveness with piano wire. The kids are robots to be hopped up on Ritalin and then put into boxes.

"Race to the Top"

This is Reagan's "trickle-down" lie re-marketed.

Previously, the greedy sadists promised to piss down on the majority.
Now, the greedy sadists demand that you compete with each other on an ever-increasingly steep mountainside of deceit and obfuscation for the goal of some of their piss.

The only constant is that the sadists think their piss is the water of life.

Obama's skin color is the latest obfuscation and makes a pun of the title.

The message given to us is that a conscience is too much weight and will keep you from reaching the top.

What we are failing to see is that this is a mountain made of indifference, decay, and noxious gases. We need to get away from it.

The groups behind the counter "Framework" are failing themselves by trying to be polite and conciliatory.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guardians, watch the watchers, etc?

The good news is the money will privatize education so the students will become profit centers and learning will get put in its place last place. Rote training for work to get a job at the exhalted rate of minimum wage is the primary educational goal. Another program which become the opposite of the stated goal. This has been the pattern for at least 3 decades. Welcome to bizarro world/wonderland. For the principal I hear the queen of hearts decry off with his head.

Am I ever thankful that my three sons went to school under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon!

The principal in this this story understood the heart and soul (and the reason for success) of education based programs like the Head Start program. Ask people (of any age) to learn when they are hungry, and not well, and can't see or hear properly, and you won't get anywhere. Ask children to learn when their families are in constant crisis and they most often can't. If we say we educate a whole person, we need to see and listen to and care about the whole person in order to do that.

Support families and put your energies into everyone's well-being and your learning environment will be transformed into a better environment in all ways.

SO.. this fellow gets it and makes the changes that need to happen in order for a community to heal, and for putting heart and soul into a learning community, he gets the boot.

I am so disappointed in this country, and in this president... my heart breaks while I write this. The idea of considering a learner as a whole person in a family constellation is a simple concept and we have proof that it works over time.

For years I worked in programs that put well-being of families and children before test scores. What the Bush Admin did was to push their testing nonsense down the throats of educators who just want to practice the art of education.

When even three year olds in Head Start had to pass standardized tests, the soul of that program began to wither. Some of that testing is gone, but the guts are still ripped out of these programs that make differences in people's health and well-being.

Yeah...I am disappointed. Happily, I work now in non-commercial radio. We broadcast Democracy Now and other truth-telling programs... programs made by real people who talk about real issues and spin real music. Maybe here I can make a difference. In education I could not.

What was educationally significant and hard to measure has been replaced by what is educationally insignificant and easy to measure. So now we measure how well we’ve taught what isn’t worth learning!

--Dr. Arthur Costa, education professor emeritus, California State University, Sacramento

An informative article wonderfully enhanced by each and every comment from voices that know what education is really about. Just fantastic.

"The saddest part is that the majority of students don't have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. . ."
Erica Goldson, Valedictorian, Coxsackie-Athens High School, NY
full speech: http://americaviaerica.blogspot.com/

The great thing about school is that, if people have a good one, then they are really encouraged to think and ask questions. Then, when people get out into the world, it suddenly seems a horrible thing to do to ask a question.

However, if students aren't valued for thinking, then we end up with really stupid people making even dumber decisions. One of my favorites was the person that decided to make a wonderful photo of Air Force One zooming by in NYC.

Dud, I guess that person didn't realize that maybe he should have informed the authorities that it was coming, instead of terrorizing the population. However, when a person is only focused on the end product, the process can sure get screwed up.

I also liked the one in the Gulf war when that soldier Jessica, and her team got lost, as it seemed people weren't using the GPS correctly. It's nice to have technology, but if people can't figure out how to use it, then what good is it?

The BP disaster had people on the spot asking the right question, but then some bozo off shore, with a job title, overruled them. Who was that bozo? It seems like most of our oil disasters have some problem that either wasn't looked at, or a question which should have been asked wasn't. Questions are not appreciated in most places.

The future wanna-be rulers of Oceania may want to think over the idea of having a stupid non-thinking population. These untrained minds, but excellent test takers, just might kill you by accident. You Oceanains of the future really need to read the Darwin Awards before you continue on with this stupidity of what you think education is.

But then, I think you really have to have excellent government before you can have excellence in education. I wonder how Congress would do on the high school exit exam? How would we get that law passed? it would be great to have an automatic recall based on pass/fail ; maybe it could be oral exams too, live on C-span!