H
/T David Sirota for showing us what the fate of "School reform" in the last election, when the mainstream media ignored this story. Not only did "education reform" fail in Colorado and Idaho(details in Sirota's column), but also in Indiana:
In Indiana, the results were even more explicit. There, as the Indianapolis Star
reports, Superintendent for Public Instruction Tony Bennett became “the
darling of the reform movement” by “enthusiastically implement(ing)
such major reforms as the nation’s most expansive private school voucher
program; greater accountability measures for schools that led to the
unprecedented state takeover of six schools last year; an expansion of
charter schools; and an evaluation system for teachers that bases their
raises, at least in part, on student test scores.” For waging such a
scorched-earth campaign against teachers and public education, Bennett
was rewarded with a whopping $1.3 million in campaign contributions,
much of which came from out of state. According to Stateline,
Bennett was underwritten by “some of the biggest supporters of
education reform in the country, including Wal-Mart heiress Alice
Walton, billionaire financier Eli Broad and New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg,” and NPR reports that he also received big donations from private corporations that stood to profit off his school takeover policies.
Ultimately,
he was able to grossly outspend his underfinanced opponent, local educator Glenda Ritz, by more than $1 million. Yet, in the conservative union-averse state
of Indiana, he was nonetheless booted out of office in what the Star
called “the Election Night shocker.” That was thanks not to some
brilliantly vague personality campaign by Ritz, but to a substantive,
laser-focused assault on Bennett’s corporate-driven privatization
agenda. As the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
reported, she “attack(ed) Bennett for his school and district
accountability system, voucher program and use of student testing data
for teacher evaluations”; “criticiz(ed) Bennett’s policies as funneling
taxpayer dollars to private companies”; and slammed Bennett’s corporate
donors — all while she “advocated returning local control to districts,
ending the current administration’s focus on standardized testing and
spending more on early childhood education”; and pushed to “provide more
support for low-performing schools instead of threatening them with
sanctions.”
This is going to be the next big fight in WI. Unfortunately due to their unethical redistricting, we are powerless to stop it. The only chance we have is if we have a republican who will fight his party and champion public education. The prospects look bleek! It was beaten back in very republican anti union states like Idaho and Indiana and yet the private education profiteers will be lining up in WI to loot our coffers and fill their pockets.
The next two years will decide who wins. I
f convicted felon Scooter Jensen has a good two years that means education in Wisconsin has greatly suffered.
Do we make our children a priority or this guy?
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