Obama's National Public Education Plans (ah oh)

American Thinker ^ | March 27, 2008 | Lee Cary

[K-oneTexas]

March 27, 2008

Obama's National Public Education Plans

By Lee Cary
While Clinton's and Obama's health care plans attract attention, Obama's plan for public education largely goes unnoticed.  National Health Care is on his first term agenda.  Is National Public Education on his second?

When commentators accuse Obama of trafficking only in vapid bromides it means they've not read his campaign materials. The ethereal vagaries of his pep-rally speeches given on past election nights do not convey the full scope of his plans for federal social activism. Those are only spelled out in his written campaign materials. And reading them can be like wading through a room waist-deep in peanut butter.  But they do reveal his domestic agenda.

Both Democrat candidates openly advocate a form of socialized medicine.  Obama packages his proposal as a new national health plan.  On its face, it represents a politically "liberal" proposal.  But during the primary campaign in Texas, Obama resisted being called a "liberal."  He charged that those applying the label to him were engaging in the tactics of politics-as-usual saying, "Don't let them run that 'okey doke' on you." If he won't accept "liberal," he's unlikely to align with "socialist."  And one socialist-like program -- National Health Care -- is not enough evidence to make the charge stick.  

That's where his Blueprint "Plan To Give Every American Child A World Class Education" (pp. 20-23), and its linked, 15-page single-spaced document entitled "Barack Obama's Plan For Lifetime Success Through Education" points to another, broad, federal intervention.

Nearly all of the various programs summarized below will involve additional federal dollars poured into the vast and dynamic education industry, the Democratic Party's most powerful interest group. When you see the word "encourage" in the same phrase as "federal" or "policy", grab your pocketbook, because they want to spend your tax money.

Not just school boards, but consultants, testing companies, publishers, schools of education and a vast universe of other service-providers stand ready to reap more billions. Every time you "address" a problem you have to have studies, conferences, boards, consultants, facilitators, meeting planners, and on and on. That's just to get started, before anything is actually decided, much less created. Education is big business. Plenty of well-paying jobs, in and outside the schools. It will surprise no one that Obama is looking for "new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay".

You might want to scan through the litany of proposals that comprise much of his education plan, just to gauge the scope of his intentions: 

1. Zero-Five Plan
   1. Early Learning Challenge: Early care and educational programs for pregnant women and children from birth to age five to address gaps in services and enhance quality programs that serve all young children.
   2. Early Head Start: Quadruple funding and improve quality; $250 million dedicated funds to create or expand regional training centers.
   3. Voluntary, Universal Pre-School:  Provide funding to accelerate the trend toward voluntary, universal pre-school for all.
   4. Child Care Development Block Grant Program: Increase funding that remained unchanged under the Bush administration.
   5. Child Care Quality: Double resources within the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program to develop quality-rating systems for child care that reflect higher standards and supports for teacher training and professional development, improving student/teacher ratios, providing family support in child care settings, and increasing professional development and teacher training.
   6. Evidence-Based Home Visiting Programs:  Expand programs to all low-income, first-time mothers, assisting approximately 570,000 first time mothers each year.
   7. Presidential Early Learning Council:  Encourage dialogue among programs at federal and state levels, and within the private and nonprofit sectors, to collect and disseminate the most valid and up-to-date research on early learning.

1. Transform the Teaching Profession
   1. Teacher Service Scholarships: Pays for four years of undergraduate teacher education or two years of post-graduate in return for four years of teaching service.
   2. All Schools Accredited: [What will be the impact on home schoolers and charter schools?]
   3. Teacher Residency Program: Obama will supply 30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to what eduspeak calls high-need schools. 
   4. Career Ladder Initiatives:  Expanded teacher mentoring programs will pair experienced teachers with new recruits and provide incentives to give teachers paid common planning time so they can collaborate to share best practices.  These initiatives will provide federal resources to states and districts to help create mentoring programs.  Obama will provide $1 billion in funding to create mentoring programs and reward veteran teachers for becoming mentors.
   5. Reward Teachers: Obama will promote new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay. To be developed with teachers, not imposed on them.
   6. Middle School Intervention Strategies: Provide funding to school districts to invest in interventional strategies in middle schools such as personal academic plans, teaching teams, parent involvement, mentoring, intensive reading and math instruction, and extended learning time.
   7. STEP UP Plan: Addresses achievement gap by supporting summer learning opportunities for disadvantaged children.
   8. Professional Development Schools: Obama will provide $100 million to stimulate teacher education reforms built on school university partnerships.  
   9. State Leadership Academies: Obama will provide funding for academies to enable principals to develop the sophisticated skills they need and provide ongoing financial support.  Obama's plan will also support research about the effectiveness of various approaches to principal training.

1. Helping At-Risk Children Succeed in School  
   1. Additional Learning Time: Obama will create a $200 million grant program for states and district that want to provide additional learning time for students in need.
   2. The Success in the Middle Act: This legislation, sponsored by Obama, would provide federal support to improve the education of middle grades students in low-performing schools.  It requires states to develop a detailed plan to improve student improvement.

1. Redesigned Schools
   1. Reorganization: Obama will support federal efforts to continue to encourage schools to organize themselves for greater success by developing stronger relationships among adults and students, a more engaging curriculum, more adaptive teaching, and more opportunities for teachers to plan and learn together.
   2. Competitive Grants to Help Students Graduate:  Offers grants to existing or proposed public/private partnerships entities that are partnerships or entitles pursuing evidence-based models that work.
   3. Positive Behavior Support:  Obama will promote a more effective and just method of addressing behavioral problems in school.
   4. R&D Programs for Improving Science Education: Obama will double our investment in early education and educational R&D by the end of his first term.  Part of this funding will go toward improving science education.

1. Expanding After-school Opportunities
   1. Expanding 21^st Century Learning Centers Program: Obama will double funding for this main federal support for after-school programs to serve one million more children each year.
   2. [For more, read the Blueprint and linked documents.]

This is, obviously, not a full-blown plan to federalize the nation's public schools.  But it does represent a bold and intrusive step in that direction. Senator Obama sees  the state as an instrument to redeem us: 

"It is that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keep, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work."

Those fine words express an ageless, altruistic principle behind countless good works, but they are not among the principles our Founders laid down. Barack Obama's broad social engineering design for America has many facets. But transforming education will play a key role when and if its time comes.

And that should concern us.

[Slapshot68]

“Every time you “address” a problem you have to have studies, conferences, boards, consultants, facilitators, meeting planners, and on and on. “

And the kids still can’t read, write, add or locate their state on a US map.

[Para-Ord.45]

Hussein is a plagiarist:

Karl Marx Communist Manifesto

Planl # 10. Free education for all children in government schools.

[Para-Ord.45]

Plank # 10 *

[Hoffer Rand]

No, but a lot of academics, “experts” and bureaucrats have seriously padded their wallets.

[NRA1995]

Reward Teachers: Obama will promote new and innovative ways to increase the amount of female teachers boffing their male students

[K-oneTexas]

That is the Democrat Party ... they’ve whole-heartedly bout all Marx & Engels 10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c

[henkster]

Hussein is a plagiarist, all right. In this case, he plagiarized from the NEA. This manifesto was clearly written by that Marxist union. Every single word of it.

[henkster]

Oh yeah, I forgot. This whole rip-off is a “lowest common denominator” plan. Every successful school district will be a donor community for the under-achieving districts. The end result will be a huge bureaucracy administering a system where no one is getting educated, regardless of where they live.

True Marxism; equality of outcome.

[samtheman]

Government schools have two goals:

Provide oodles of money and benefits to the NEA.

Turn out good, loyal, Democrat-Party voters, who will vote for more money and benefits for the NEA.

Keep ‘em stupid and keep ‘em forkin’ out the cash.

[Eska]

Wouldn’t vote for a dem in a million years, but pre-school spending is cost effective in the same manner that breakfast/lunch spending is. Poor parenting is the biggest culprit affecting our schools; need some accountability in that reguard too.

[lilylangtree]

Is he also planning on providing reparations supported by the American taxpayers?

[RexBeach]

“Remember all the zillions of dollars we’ve spent over the past 30 years or so on public education in America? You know, all of those programs that didn’t work too well? Well, we’re gonna do a lot more of those. I just thought you’d like to know.” -Obama-Jama

[Typical_Whitey]

and the WWW (Wrights Whitey Whippers) will ensure that it happens too....

[junta]

Can’t be all bad Obabma might be a Creationist. But then again only Republicans get asked those types of questions.

[freespirited]

He wants to quadruple funding for Head Start. Apparently he didn’t get the memo about all the studies showing that from an educational standpoint, Head Start is useless.

I am sticking to my diagnosis. This con man is dangerous.

[MediaMole]

# Child Care Development Block Grant Program: Increase funding that remained unchanged under the Bush administration.

Block Grant = slush fund for corrupt city officials.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

For this I’d almost like to see him win - in that he could slam his head squarely against the fact that culture would negate many of these efforts (leaving aside entirely the question of affording the funds for this plan). Most f the “high need” students are in homes without any books, have single parents who do not understand the need for marriage and two parents in the raising of children, etc. etc. etc. Changing those dysfunctions in minority culture are going to be very difficult. But, for the opportunity to see him try, I’d almost be willing to pay my share...

[PhillyRepublican]

Obama’s bottom line here: Shovel even more money to the teachers’ unions for their support! Whether or not the little kiddies can count or read is irrelevant.