Posted on 12/05/2008 5:19:19 PM PST by Lorianne
As in many other areas, the biggest education debates are happening within the Democratic Party. On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.
During the presidential race, Barack Obama straddled the two camps. One campaign adviser, John Schnur, represented the reform view in the internal discussions. Another, Linda Darling-Hammond, was more likely to represent the establishment view. Their disagreements were collegial (this is Obamaland after all), but substantive.
In public, Obama shifted nimbly from camp to camp while education experts studied his intonations with the intensity of Kremlinologists. Sometimes, he flirted with the union positions. At other times, he practiced dog-whistle politics, sending out reassuring signals that only the reformers could hear.
Each camp was secretly convinced that at the end of the day, Obama would come down on their side. The reformers were cheered when Obama praised a Denver performance pay initiative. The unions could take succor from the fact that though Obama would occasionally talk about merit pay, none of his actual proposals contradicted their positions.
Obama never had to pick a side. That is, until now. There is only one education secretary, and if you hang around these circles, the air is thick with speculation, anticipation, anxiety, hope and misinformation. Every day, new rumors are circulated and new front-runners declared. It’s kind of like being in a Trollope novel as Lord So-and-So figures out to whom he’s going to propose.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bill Ayers.
Pee Wee Herman
Bill Ayers, no doubt in my mind
Yikes. Don’t say that! That sent shivers up my spine.
If it IS Ayers, I’m jerking my kids out of school. They will be sent to a private Christian school nearby, or I will homeschool. Period.
If you are not ready to homeschool, consider seriously sending your kids to a nearby Christian school.
If he does, the hearings might be fun to watch.
From what I know so far, I vote for this woman:
Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D.
President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
http://www.rpi.edu/president/index.html
Actually Ayers will be the “reeducation” secretary.
I’m geussing it won’t be Bill Bennett.
Obomo will pick an anti home schooling, cradle to grave, revisionist, Socialist propagandist. Who it is doesn’t matter, as long as your children become good little Marxists who hate the old America.
How’s about Bill Ayers?
Nah Ayers will be in the “shadow” cabinet.
Joycelyn Elders
You’re all wrong. Obama is going to abolish the Dept. of Education because it sucks up over $50 BILLION every year and doesn’t do ANYTHING to educate a single person in our country. He has concluded we are all far better off if we keep the money in our communities and determine how to spend it at the local level rather than shipping it to a bunch of bureaucrat know-nothings in Washington DC.
Hey, I can dream, can’t I? Maybe this could be Obama’s “going to China” moment.
It would be Karl Marx if he wasn’t dead.
“Joycelyn Elders”
Not to be crude or vulgar, but wasn’t she the Surgeon General that wanted to teach teenage boys how to masterbate?
Whoever it is they will be either half-black/homosexual/trans-gender/lesbian/marxist/communist/pedophile or any combination of the aforementioned. Qualifications don’t matter.
We can tell that you are neither crude nor vulgar since you don't even even know how to spell "masturbate" ...:-)
But, yes, you are right...
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