I've been following this off and on for a little while now.
In Washington Michelle Rhee, the school chancellor, repeatedly went to war with the teachers unions over new contracts which would have installed merit pay and removed some tenure. Eventually a new contract with the teachers union was written up but the union had managed to get more pay. It seems Michelle's crusade for education reform in D.C. might be coming to an end.
Anyway, with the whole debate over health care reform, bailouts, and whatever the hell they are bitching about on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC these days it's too bad education reform is largely ignored. Obama came out against teachers unionsthe GOP undying enemy and supported education genuine education reform. With a democrat president in support of real education refrom there could have been some genuine improvement but the Tea Party is a bunch of myopic retards and some dumbass democrats thought healthcare reform would be the better thing to divide the country over.
On a sidenote, a new documentary coming out soon details how screwed up education is in this country as well as Rhee's attempt at reform in D.C. The trailer is bit sappy but the movie might be interesting.
Race to the top was part of the stimulus bill. A bunch of states got money they needed after they pushed through a bunch of great reforms. NJ missed out on $400 million due to an error filling out our forms -_-To the surprise of many educators who campaigned last year for change in the White House, the Obama administration's first recipe for school reform relies heavily on Bush-era ingredients and adds others that make unions gag.
Standardized testing, school accountability, performance pay, charter schools -- all are integral to President Obama's $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" grant competition to spur innovation. None is a typical Democratic crowd-pleaser.
Labor leaders, parsing the Education Department's fine print, call the proposal little more than a dressed-up version of the No Child Left Behind law enacted seven years ago under Obama's Republican predecessor.
"It looks like the only strategies they have are charter schools and measurement," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. "That's Bush III." Weingarten, who praises Obama for massive federal aid to help schools through the recession, said her 1.4 million-member union is engaged in "a constructive but tart dialogue" with the administration about reform.
In Washington Michelle Rhee, the school chancellor, repeatedly went to war with the teachers unions over new contracts which would have installed merit pay and removed some tenure. Eventually a new contract with the teachers union was written up but the union had managed to get more pay. It seems Michelle's crusade for education reform in D.C. might be coming to an end.
Anyway, with the whole debate over health care reform, bailouts, and whatever the hell they are bitching about on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC these days it's too bad education reform is largely ignored. Obama came out against teachers unionsthe GOP undying enemy and supported education genuine education reform. With a democrat president in support of real education refrom there could have been some genuine improvement but the Tea Party is a bunch of myopic retards and some dumbass democrats thought healthcare reform would be the better thing to divide the country over.
On a sidenote, a new documentary coming out soon details how screwed up education is in this country as well as Rhee's attempt at reform in D.C. The trailer is bit sappy but the movie might be interesting.
