I wonder if Mr. Obama has any *real* idea....

[Smarmie Doofus]

of just how crazy, vapid, trite, ill-informed and DESTRUCTIVE his ideas ( they're actually "Bush" ideas, warmed over) have been over the last 8 years.

Yes... buh-bye, Mr. Duncan.

Yes.... buh-bye NYS Regents Chancellor Tisch ( Yes. She of the billionaire, "CBS" Tisches).

OK: Not unrelatedly:

Nut-case ed "reform" principal ... the one who stacked the teachers' desks and filing cabinets (w/o warning) out on the curb for garbage pickup...

has decided to retire. ( actually she's being forced out. By "reform" hacks higher up the ladder.)
http://nypost.com/2015/10/28/desk-dumping-principal-gives-herself-the-heave-ho/

Which is FINE. Really.

But we are left with a series of conundrums that HAVE to be resolved: What was she doing there in the fIrst place?


Can people like Obama, Duncan, Gates, Walmart, et al credibly distance themselves from the ..... ummmm... ..."EXCESSES".... of the numbskulls they've systematically empowered ( e.g. principal Connelly) over the last 8 years?

Lastly: is it REALLY (let's be honest, here; I mean **** REALLY**** honest) a good idea, from a public education perspective to elect someone POTUS who has absolutely NO exposure or experience w. American public education? EVER.

As provider or consumer?

Reallly???????

[brush]

1. Huh? You're blaming Obama for a local principal's policies?

[Smarmie Doofus]

4. Principals don't make policy. They carry it out.

Welcome to the world of education.

[brush]

5. So are you blaming Obama for local school policies carried out by a principal?

Is this another "Thanks, Obama" slam that blames the first black president for everything that goes wrong?

I still don't get why you're associating the president with a principal who stupidly takes teachers' desk away because she wants them to stand all day, as if he signed off on that foolishness.

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. Ummm....... Yes. I *THINK*.

Isn't he POTUS? Hasn't he been for past 7 yrs? Or was that someone else?

Didn't he appt. Duncan... perhaps the only individual O could find , at least at Harvard pick-uo basketball games , more privileged ( i.e. inexperienced and IGNORANT about public ed in the continental USA ) than O himself to design and implement national ps policy?

( You don't think the above.... dumping ps teachers' desks and file cabinets on the street in the middle of a school day... is a reflection of that policy?)

No offense... you should read more. Start w. Diane Ravitch: her blog, her books. ( She used to think like Obama; and like you. Then she educated herself. Note: that's not *impossible*. And it's NEVER too late)



>>>>"Thanks, Obama" slam that blames the first black president for everything that goes wrong? >>>

Riiiiiiiight. Run for the hills. I guess every time an AA ... SAYS or DOES something STUPID... i must just hear it and perceive it as

"SHOUTING."


Good god.

[brush]

8. Obama's to blame for a principal taking teachers' desk away?

Last edited Sat Oct 31, 2015, 05:07 AM - Edit history (1)

Ok-a-a-a-a-a-a-y. Go with that then.

And you suggested I should read more.

Well, what I will do is read less of posts, starting right now, that suggest that the President of the United States is responsible for and maybe should be micromanaging a principal's actions in a local school — a principal btw, who was nudged into retirement because her superiors, who logic would suggest were the ones responsible, not the President of the United States, for oversight, were rightfully aghast at the silliness of her decision to ban the teachers' desks.

[Squinch]

2. Smarmie, you have made my day.

I actually know the desk dumping principal and she is a vile and sick human being. I had not heard before this that she was out.

Karma baby! She made a lot of people's lives miserable. Glad to see her go. I wonder if her "Igor," Manny Verdi, is going to be out too.

[Demeter]

3. None of them ever stayed in a Holiday Inn, either, I'll betcha

The problem is, they don't want to fix the problems we the People have.

They want to fix "problems" the 1% have:

paying taxes

seeing their spoiled-rotten heirs displaced from the corner office by urban geniuses that got free education at fine public schools and state-supported colleges

having unions, grassroots-based political movements, and other populist revolutions

workers able to save and retire

etc., all of which boil down to one basic thing: somebody else is getting something instead of me!

There's no fix for greed, no cure for that kind of hoarding. The French tried this:

?w=670

and it worked to a certain extent, but the fix wasn't permanent.

[eridani]

7. Obama is now against overtesting. Better late than never, sez I

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/10/30/obama-regrets-taking-joy-out-teaching-and-learning-too-much-testing

In a stunning turn of events, President Obama announced last weekend that “unnecessary testing” is “consuming too much instructional time” and creating “undue stress for educators and students.” Rarely has a president so thoroughly repudiated such a defining aspect of his own public education policy. In a three-minute video announcing this reversal, Obama cracks jokes about how silly it is to over-test students, and recalls that the teachers who had the most influence on his life were not the ones who prepared him best for his standardized tests. Perhaps Obama hopes we will forget it was his own Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, who radically reorganized America’s education system around the almighty test score.

Obama’s statement comes in the wake of yet another study revealing the overwhelming number of standardized tests children are forced to take: The average student today is subjected to 112 standardized tests between preschool and high school graduation. Because it’s what we have rewarded and required, America’s education system has become completely fixated on how well students perform on tests. Further, the highest concentration of these tests are in schools serving low-income students and students of color.

To be sure, Obama isn’t the only president to menace the education system with high-stakes exams. This thoroughly bi-partisan project was enabled by George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB became law in 2002 with overwhelming support from Republicans and Democrats alike.

Obama, instead of erasing the wrong answer choice of NCLB’s test-and-punish policy, decided to press ahead. Like a student filling in her entire Scantron sheet with answer choice “D,” Duncan’s erroneous Race to the Top initiative was the incorrect solution for students. It did, however, make four corporations rich by assigning their tests as the law of the land. Desperate school districts, ravaged by the Great Recession, eagerly sought Race to the Top points by promulgating more and more tests.