President Obama released plans Saturday to overhaul the No Child Left Behind law, embracing the main thrust of the right-wing education plan adopted under the Bush administration, while proposing modifications that would in many cases make even greater inroads into the principle of universal, high-quality public education.
Most significantly, the administration plan would change the funding mechanism established in the bedrock Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), one of the last major progressive reforms enacted in the United States, substituting grants awarded on a competitive basis for a formula that awarded funded largely based on population.
While overall federal aid to schools would increase by 16 percent, to $29 billion, many low-performing schools in impoverished areas would face the loss of much of their federal funding if they fail to meet required benchmarks.
This approach builds on the “success”―from the standpoint of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan―of the $5 billion in competitive grants being awarded under the “Race to the Top” program...
State governments are using Race to the Top as a pretext for wholesale attacks on job security and wages.
In Florida, for example, the Republican-controlled state government is pushing for the adoption of a new state law, SB 6, that would require new teachers to take five-year probationary contracts, followed by a series of one-year contracts, meaning that teachers could face firing every school year. The law would also exclude salary from collective bargaining, with all salary determinations made by the state.
No Child Left Behind amended ESEA by favoring charter schools and other forms of privatization, and mandating a regimen of testing that has made it increasingly difficult for public school teachers to provide a well-rounded education for their students, rather than “teaching to the test” to insure that students meet the arbitrary benchmarks set by the law. This program has become so discredited among teachers and other education professionals that Education Secretary Duncan said the name No Child Left Behind would be scrapped, due to its association with rigid testing and harsh penalties on schools that fail to reach benchmarks. While there will be a new name, however, the basic regime will continue.
In his Saturday radio and Internet address, Obama painted the education initiative in rosy colors...
He claimed that the new education plan would provide rewards for progress rather than punitive treatment for schools that are failing, but there is plenty of punishment according to press accounts of the program.
The 70,000 public schools in the United States would be ranked in broad categories, with the bottom 5 percent required to choose among these alternatives: shutting down, replacing at least half their staff, firing the principal, or conversion to “independent management,” i.e., privatized as charter schools.
Schools in the next-lowest 5 percent would be placed on warning and threatened with similar action if they do not improve. Both groups of schools would fail to qualify for the additional funds offered under Race to the Top and its long-term successor program, ensuring that they were denied the resources needed for improvement.
Another 5 percent of schools, those with the widest achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups, would be required to narrow those disparities. This provision is a sop thrown to black and Hispanic lobbies in the Democratic Party, and would instigate conflicts within school systems along racial lines.
Rank-and-file teachers who posted comments on a union blog were angered by the Obama plan. One teacher wrote, “I am disappointed that we, as a union, are merely ‘disappointed’ with the president and Arne Duncan. We should be OUTRAGED.”
Another asked, “What do you think would happen to your country’s education system if the largest teachers’ union had a strike for one day to make sure what we are saying is heard? I bet parents and politicians would listen! Is there anyone in up there in NEA who is brave enough …?”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/educ-m15.shtml
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