Meanwhile In Tennessee, The Race To Privatize Education and Pension Funds Continues

[NashVegas]

FYI, I now believe the ultimate goal is to get all remaining pension programs into privatized 401(k) plans, which will be administered by campaign contributors, as well as the school system, itself.

February 16: - http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/republicans-vote-strip-teachers-union-collective-bargaining-powers

Republicans on the state Senate Education Committee voted Wednesday to strip the Tennessee Education Association of its collective bargaining powers — the first item on the GOP’s aggressive agenda to undermine the teachers’ union.

Before his bill cleared the committee on a 6-3 party-line vote, Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Brentwood, criticized the TEA as a “fierce proponent for mediocrity” and labeled collective bargaining “an albatross” hampering children’s education.

We got a brand new Education Commissioner, straight out of Teach For America:

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110304/NEWS04/103040334/1970/NEWS04/New-TN-education-chief-right-fit-

Gov. Bill Haslam went outside the state and outside the schoolhouse to find Tennessee's next education commissioner.

Kevin Huffman is a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who has two years of classroom experience and a decade as an administrator at Teach for America, a nonprofit dedicated to taking bright young college students with no teaching experience and training them to teach in some of the poorest schools in the nation.

And now, this:

March 9 - http://timesfreepress.com/news/2011/mar/09/bill-changing-tea-members-state-board-passes-senat/?breakingnews

The state’s largest teachers’ union would lose its ability to appoint three members to the state’s pension board under a Republican-pushed bill that easily cleared the Senate today on a straight party-line vote.

All 20 Republicans voted for the bill while all 13 Democrats were opposed.

Sen. Delores Gresham, R-Somerville, the bill’s sponsor, questioned why the Tennessee Education Association, which represents 52,000 active teachers, should have the authority to name appointees to the 20-member Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System

[earthside]

1. "Race to the Top" Winner: Tennessee

Is this what Pres. Obama and Secretary Duncan envision for the future of our education system in the United States?

[NashVegas]

2. Probably Not

But it's what they're being paid to make happen, anyway.

I know some people - apolitical - doing the ground work in the local reform movement. They genuinely believe they are acting in kids' and everyone's best interests for the future and have no idea they're being used to put us on track to have something like the Soviet system of hyper-specialization, only the fascist version. When you tell them, they roll their eyes.