The Skills Commission's earlier 1990s work advanced the scheme and laid the groundwork for NCLB. It came out of its "America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages" report on non-college-bound students. It called them "ill-equipped to meet employer's current needs and ill-prepared for the rapidly approaching, high-technology, service-oriented future." It recommended ending an "outmoded model" and adopting a standards-based learning and testing approach to enforce student - teacher accountability.
Both Commission reports reflect a corporate wish list to commodify education, benefit the well-off, and consign underprivileged kids to low-wage, no benefit service jobs. It's a continuing trend to shift higher-paying ones abroad, downsize the nation, and end the American dream for millions. So why educate them.
School Vouchers
They didn't make it into NCLB, but they're very much on the table with a sinister added twist. First some background.
It's an old idea dating back to the hard right's favorite economist and man the UK Financial Times called "the last of the great (ones)" when he died in November 2006. Milton Friedman promoted school choice in 1955, then kick-started it in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. He opposed public education, supported school vouchers for privately-run ones, and believed marketplace competition improves performance even though voucher amounts are inadequate and mostly go to religious schools in violation of the First Amendment discussed below.
Here's how the Friedman Foundation for Education Choice currently describes the voucher scheme: it's the way to let "every parent send their child to the school of their choice regardless of where they live or income." In fact, it's a thinly veiled plot to end public education and use lesser government funding amounts for well-off parents who can make up the difference and send their children to private-for-profit schools. Others are on their own under various programs with "additional restrictions" the Foundation lists without explanation:
-- Universal Voucher Programs for all children;
-- Means-Tested Voucher Programs for families below a defined income level;
-- Failing Schools, Failing Students Voucher Programs for poor students or "failed" schools;
-- Special Needs Voucher Programs for children with special educational needs;
-- Pre-kindergarten Voucher Programs; and
-- Town Tuitioning Programs for communities without operating public schools for some students' grade levels.
What else is behind school choice and vouchers? Privatization mostly, but it's also thinly-veiled aid for parochial schools, mainly Christian fundamentalist ones, and the frightening ideology they embrace - racial hatred, male gender dominance, white Christian supremacy, militarism, free market everything, and ending public education and replacing it with private Christian fundamentalist schools.
In March 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in Lemon v. Kurtzman against parochial funding in what became known as the "Lemon Test." In a unanimous 7 - 0 decision, the Court decided that government assistance for religious schools was unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. It prohibits the federal government from declaring and financially supporting a national religion, and the First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;...."
That changed in June 2002 when the Court ruled 5 - 4 in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that Cleveland's religious school funding didn't violate the Establishment Clause. The decision used convoluted reasoning that the city's program was for secular, not religious purposes in spite of some glaring facts. In 1999 and 2000, 82% of funding went to religious schools, and 96% of students benefitting were enrolled in them.
The Court harmed democracy and the Constitution's letter and spirit. It also contradicted Thomas Jefferson's 1802 affirmation that there should be "a wall of separation between church and state." No longer for the nation's schools.
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
The author has problems with every aspect of our education system except two: unions and the maintaining the status quo. It would have been nice to hear his take on the role unions play in determining every aspect of running our schools. It would have been nice to hear a comment on the fact that the rise of unionism in the schools parallels the decline of education in this country.
His viewpoints coincide with those of the unions. It is clear that the teacher's unions are not acting in the best interest of the children of this country. They oppose every reform, good or bad. If we truly want to improve education in this country then we have to limit union input into the educational system.
Charter schools can be a good thing. My son transferred to one after he stood up to a teacher trying to indoctorinate him in the public schools. I was called in for a 'teachers meeting' and sat in a room full of progressive, like minded unionized robots who were interested only in making my son toe THEIR line. In stead of using what my son said as a basis for dicsussion the teacher turned the class loose on him like a pack of rabid dogs because she did not agree with what he said. My son stood up for himself and recognized what happened and kept on arguing. This was not permitted in our Fascist school systems. Submit or else, so I was called in so I could help him see the errors in his ways. Big mistake on their smug, know-it-all part. He was in a charter school the next week. The charter school he went to was entirely different. Teachers cared about the students and worked hard to ensure they succeeded. Why? Because their salary increases and their jobs depended on it. They did not have a union protecting their smug political attitudes and teaching incompetence. Teachers, students, and parents at the charter school worked on one goal, the education of that student. A marvelous school. I would suggest to the author that he go visit a local charter school and a local high school and see what the differences are if he can in one visit. Talk to the parents instead of reading so called research by politically motivated and union financed or influenced groups.
All charter schools are not perfect by any means. But in my case I am glad that I had a choice. If I hadn't been working I would have home schooled my son. It is too bad others who are trapped in union run school systems do not have a choice if their school in a cesspool of educational incompetence. The unions don't want people to have that choice because it will be their death knell and they know it. The author knows it too because that is why he finds nothing but fault with all reform efforts. He wants children under the thumb of teacher unions. Teacher unions fight against reform like NCLB because they do not want to be held accountable for educating the children they deal with. I would have loved to have worked in a job where I wasn't accoutable for what I did. Be responsible? It isn't the Progressive/union way. The author wants to make the President responsible for want goes on in the classroom or whether school XYZ is successful or not. That is flat out ridiculous. The teachers, the administrators, the parents and the students are responsible, not some out-of-touch politician sitting in Washington no matter what his or her party is.
President Bush and Senator Kennedy should be given a little credit for trying to do something to end the evil stranglehold unions have on the educational system. No one else dares to buck the unions. The Progressives sure won't so you will not see any meaningful educational reform if a Democrat gets elected. More money for education (teacher's unions) doesn't equal reform. $25,000 / child is spent in Washington DC and they have one of the worst educational systems in the US. Money is not the answer. Accountability is. Non-unionized schools are.
by
Mad Jayhawk (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 313 comments)
on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 7:03:55 PM
There is no connection (unless you want to create one in your mind) between the teacher who promotes certain views in the classroom and the Unions. BTW, the comment above does not say what particular views of his son were considered and why the teacher was so upset. Big deal, really. BTW, the schools are not 'run by the unions'. They are run by school boards and those boards are elected by the local taxpayers. THAT is the problem. Public education in the US is paralysed because of the local taxes' funding. It has to be national, standardised, equal and have the same level from top to bottom. As for the non-unionised schools- private or charter- so be it if you can afford those. But unions themselves as the ones of professional people are a blessing as soon as the schools are in sorts toys of the local governments.
Returning back to the comment above: Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. You always find what you seek. Wrong method of teaching can be interpreted as 'union bias', etc. The US public education suffers from one and only one disease- IT IS NOT PUBLIC!
That's the issue. And no homeschooling can correct that.
by
Mark Sashine (51 articles, 19 quicklinks, 244 diaries, 3462 comments)
on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 8:57:19 AM
2 comments
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