HORSES WITH FEATHERS

response to email to 4LAKids

A longtime 4LAKids reader – a retired teacher/administrator/union leader (once an educator/always an educator!) - writes, apropos of last week's “Cheerio” rant [http://bit.ly/7K282r] - about NCLB/Race2theTop/Public School Choice (all horses of the same feather) - and the previous one “Y2K+10” [http://bit.ly/4GG9Ys] and the Grab4theMoney rush to deregulate Public Education:

“Good analysis of the trend in education in the first decade of the new millennium.  We have a new breed of politician/educators or politicators.  We used to have the Deweys and Hunters of the world who were actually looking at how children learned....now we have the Cortines and Mitchells of the world who are looking for ways to placate their political benefactors.  You are correct.....actual student learning is not discussed or considered.....that is too much like pragmatic work.”

●● 4LAKids wrote previously about the penchant for US Secretaries of Education and the presidents they serve to look wistfully upon their previous employment as Civic Miracles/Paradigms of Wonderfulness. [IOUs ON IOUs 12July09 http://bit.ly/A7Yax]  That penchant and those paradigms are further developed in a series of articles in the Washington Post here. http://bit.ly/92k8J7