"FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU; FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME"

“FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU; FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME”

When the education community voted for Barack Obama, we thought we were getting a progressive reformer. Ten months later it looks like we got a right of center very Blue Dog Democrat. It was announced on 11.3.09 that he wants to bribe public education with a few dollars. In exchange for a few pieces of silver, teachers will be evaluated on the standardized test scores of their students.

I will not deal here with these tests and how their validity is seriously questioned by experts. The White House does not take into account how poverty and language affect the test scores. I have dealt with these topics in previous blogs. I will say at this time that in the Los Angeles Unified School District there are over 120 native languages spoken.
There are over 5,000 homeless children enrolled in the classrooms of Los Angeles and there is a special school for homeless children in downtown L.A. We know for a fact that only a small percentage of these students will score well on Standardized tests.

Standardized tests are normed every year. That means that no matter how hard teachers work, fifty percent of all test takers will score in the bottom half. The teachers can’t win under the Obama plan.
This proposal is like investing with Bernie Madoff. A few suckers will win, but 99% will lose. Obama is a democrat in the tradition of ex Democrat Ronald Reagan. The President has swallowed the urban myth that most teachers are bad and are being protected by corrupt teacher unions. He has drunk the Kool-Aide that teachers need incentives and competition. This right wing myth is a cruel hoax that will not improve education. With this plan who will want to teach students with learning disabilities? Who will want to teach English language learners, low ability kids or very poor inner city kids? All of these children score poorly on standardized tests and live with problems that preclude much improvement.
This plan would be like holding Doctors accountable for lowering the cancer rate or reducing birth defects.

Obama is not a progressive; he is a right wing Democrat with a strong anti-teacher and teacher union bias! His proposal for “reform” is just another repackaged right wing attack on public education and teacher unions.
No doubt many Obama supporters like me have a new slogan, “Never Again”.