How sincere is Obama about education reform?
So, the president is “boldly taking on the unions” with his support for merit pay?
Lots of hype.
But manage your hope.
If he were serious about true education reform, he would never sign his name to legislation that kills the innovative federal school choice program for low-income families in Washington, D.C.
Even his own Education Secretary opposes the Democrats’ sneaky attempt to starve the program in the $410 billion omni-pork bill.
President Obama’s complete silence on the matter tells you all you need to know.
***
Update: 12:30pm Eastern. Dick Durbin is nauseating. He’s disingenuously arguing that he’s against “wasteful spending” and merely wants to ensure that the school choice funds are spent properly.
The only time Durbin cares about “wasteful spending” is when it’s for a few families in DC wanting out of rotten schools.
Update: 12:33pm Eastern. Durbin forced to admit that while he is Mr. Public Education…he sent his own kids to private Catholic schools…
Meanwhile, Henry Payne points out:
Detroit, Mich. — Detroit Public Schools, one of the nation’s most chronically corrupt systems, will receive $355 million from the federal stimulus package — with no strings attached, the Detroit Free Press reported Saturday.
Like much of the nearly $1 trillion fiscal package, the DPS money seems driven less by fiscal good sense than by political payback.
With a $1.5 billion annual budget, Detroit schools are currently running a $150 million deficit with finances so tangled the state of Michigan recently appointed an emergency financial manager to oversee its operations for the second time in ten years.
Since the emergency declaration, DPS has failed to hand over at least five financial reports that are required under the state’s mandated consent agreement.
Ranked in a recent Brookings Institution survey as America’s worst major urban school district, DPS only graduates 24 percent of its students. In December, the DPS board fired Superintendent Connie Calloway for incompetence. Calloway was the second super fired in three years and the eighth district administrator in 20.
DPS has been plagued by corruption. A 2001 audit found $600,000 missing or misspent. Another 2004 audit of the district’s central warehouse found budget over-expenditures of $1.9 million and that furniture bought as part of a $158,000 purchase order was missing.
U.S. taxpayers can likely kiss this stimulus money goodbye.
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Trackbacks
- Obama on Education: What’s Good For You Is Wrong for Sasha, Malia « Peace and Freedom Global Future
- Stimulus Subsidizes Corruption, Waste, Racism | OpenMarket.org
- Kick the Anthill » No SCHOOL Left Behind?
- Michelle Malkin » Liveblogging omni-pork debate in Senate
- The Learning Curve by Muckdog
- PoliGazette » Obama Gives Education Speech
- Buffet and Welch to Obama: Stop Pushing Liberal Agenda During Crisis! | The Great Illuminator
- Assessing Obama’s 5-point plan for education reform « Wintery Knight Blog
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This hype is probably air cover for his silence on the DC program.
Who determines the “merit” in this agenda? I’m betting it’s not the parents.
Not even Pinochoccio’s nose grew that long with his lies…When I start to have a family, I am going to send my kids to a private school even if that means not saving for my retirement.
GSP
“This is Sparta!”
Home School.
Home School.
Home School.
For someone who gets on TV to talk about his plan for this and plan for that….
…he sure the Hell doesn’t seem to have any Plan for anything, as far as I can see. It’s all about what he claims he wants as an end product, but never any idea of how to get there.
We have got to get rid of this loon and his insane congress. 2012??!!! Another 90 days of this debauchery and we’ll all be dead, and the rest of the world with us.
Can’t we have a recall election?
Yes…if they don’t go after home-schoolers next.
When he talks about “Standards for Teachers,” have no illusions. This won’t be about firing bad teachers. The law will actually require teachers to undergo additional training and certification, at taxpayers expense, as a payoff to colleges and the unions.
The certification racket is a left-wing tool to keep teaching colleges in business while limiting the supply of teachers.
Why doesn’t start by sending his own daughters to public school.
Of course they will. But there is strength in numbers.
You still need to be vigilant with your kids’ private school educations. It’s not just the teachers, it’s the text books they have to use.
BTW, why bother saving for retirement? The Teleprompter Jesus is just going to confiscate it anyway. After all, it’s “for the children.”
My dentist told me that her continuing education requirements are a crock, too. She said when the requirement was initiated, the seminars she attended were actually interesting. But as the market evolved, they essentially became nothing more than trade-specific infomercials.
So, instead of showing her how to do a new technique, she would “learn” that she could learn to do a new technique. (For a fee, of course!)
I am 90% certain this will be part of the “reform”. Homeschooling is dangerous, dontcha know?
Nothing will change. Liberals in Milwaukee have tried to “reform” MPS for years and it still is awful. In fact, we have THREE of the top 25 worst-performing schools:
“Change” we can believe in!
Money is not the only answer. Why do Asian children outperform their American counterparts? The expectations of the Asian parents outperform their American counterparts. Problem is, Obama can’t go there, he’d p off his base.
Obama is looking very Clintonesque these days; say one thing and do another. Or to put it another way:
“Read my lips; just don’t read my legislation!”
Yikes, those are some scary stats!
“How sincere is Obama about _____?” is a rhetorical question no matter how you fill in the blank.
If the democrats had their way 100% of children (minus their elite ones) would be required to attend public schools and become indoctrinated by the system in place for social orientation.
This system is what sets curriculum for our children from Pre-K through 12.
The NCSS (National Council for Social Studies) has set up teaching standards that ensures public good,interdependence,group think,diversity etc.
The wording they use is very innocuous seeming at first, but do not be fooled,
I had no idea how systemic this system of indoctrination had become before reading this site.
They are channeling our children into thinking about the global world in a very liberal way.
Fiction and Fairy Tales are used to teach about the Holocaust to young children, La Raza written Folk Tales used for reading, Intelligent Design is warned against, as is local business involvement with schools discouraged and preparing children to change the institutions that influence them (like our churches) is standard!
Parents need to be aware that long before it reaches your local school board, social engineers have set the curriculum for all the public’s children!
Parents, Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up To Be Cheated out of their liberty freedom and happiness.
Yep, gotta love it.
Oh – and several schools in MPS have problems with rampant violence. Bradley Tech is just one, where some fights dissolve into mob melees when students call their family members to come and join the battles. See: http://www.wisn.com/news/18702137/detail.html
Which is why my kids are either going to the Catholic school where I work, or a non-MPS public school. Unless we become independently wealthy, then I’m homeschooling them.
Good choice, Catholic school has worked well for my 4 children. I’m on the finance board of our school and we have a policy of never letting children leave the school because of financial problems, somehow we make it work. When I moved here to S. Florida and saw the problems the public schools experience, especially the middle and high schools, I vowed my children would never set foot in them. Good luck.
…about as sincere as a mouse pledging to protect your piece of cheese for you while you are not looking…
Education Reform: Close the Federal Department of Education and get the %#%$#% federal government out of education. Now that’s education reform.
The AP’s headline “Obama takes on the Unions”.
Uh Obama is taking on ONE Union, about ONE Issue.
It amounts to ” throw the chattering classes” something to show how thoughtful and in touch he is.
This on the day Card Check in introduced.
The only thing I am confident of is that if a kid has a lemonade stand a couple of thugs will stop to get their dues so it can be sent to the Democratic Party.
and who paid Odopeys education??? lol
he’s such a puppet.
Yep.
Looks and reeks like the same tame type of meaningless bu!!$**t as Clinton’s “Sister Souljah moment” in 1992.
Agreed.
He’s nothing but a minion of Soros, the NEA, and the rest of that ilk.
Oh sure Obama has his kids in that toney Quaker school, but he’s only waiting for the Moderate Taliban School for Girls to open in DC.
Proficient in reading 0%? Nice job NEA. Nice job idiot parents.
He does the stupid and dangerous things he says he will and then BS’s us about stuff like this.
We need new superhero. The anti-Obama – Abomo.
Abomo announces stupid and dangerous plans, but does the opposite. He announces plans that will actually accomplish positive conservative goals and carries them out!
About like all the other Democrats, government schools, producing large quantity of ignorant people, who can be turned into idiot Obamaloons.
This happened in my town today:
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/031009/web_lamarfire.shtml#mdw-comments
Classy, eh?
virtually all inner city schools are disasters. whether due to apathy of the parents, my view, or lack of money, every liberal’s view, is irrelevant. mr obama is going to continue subjugating blacks and latinos to welfare lives because he won’t take on the teachers union, because they bought him. so when i hear people cry we need more money for public schools, my response is why should i invest in this mess when all the people who are directly affected won’t invest in themselves.
Just musing, but if actual physical starvation was a possibility, would they pay more attention in school? BTW, my impression of the NEA is that they think Urban kids are stupid, and so let them slide…
I already did when they first passed it. Call me a pessimist if you will but it seems now that I am more of a realist.
His plan is to throw more of your money
at the probleminto the fire.They are already trying in California and I doubt this administration would do anything to defend something that actually works.
Amen!
PS-Sorry if I did not contribute anything original but there was just too much good stuff already here!
So it does.
But it doesn’t.
Barack?