Obama got one thing
right in his Aug. 5 address to the National Urban League at its centennial
celebration: “The status quo is not working.” However, this was hardly an
adequate response given the political context of his address. Obama was
speaking specifically to the concerns of several civil rights groups over his
administration’s “Race to the Top initiative.” The NAACP, National Urban
League, and several other groups recently released a report challenging “Race
to the Top” and introducing their own proposal for reform entitled “National
Opportunity to Learn.”
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One of the main
criticisms in the report was that “Race to the Top” simply continues 150 years
of elitist reform work, where communities of color are used as labs for
experiments in education and public policy. The report argues that rather
than using “communities of color as testing grounds for unproven methods of education
and change” the government should be
expanding access to methods that are already known to be effective.
The Race
to the Top initiative is the $4.35 billion of the original $787 billion
stimulus package devoted to education. That money should have been poured
into the widening state education budget gaps caused by decreased Wall Street
tax revenue. It should have been provided with no strings attached, since
it would have simply lessened the impact of Wall Street’s blunders. Instead,
the Obama administration and more importantly the corporate backers of the
Democratic Party are using the budget crisis as an opportunity to force
cash-strapped public school systems to privatize by tying funding to specific
reform measures. These reforms include adopting new standards and tests,
lifting laws against tying teacher pay to test scores, and lifting limits on
the number of charter schools that can be created in the state.
Of
course any initiative that blatantly sought to privatize the public school system
would have been met with mass outcry. This is why this agenda has been so
thoroughly masked and disguised with the language of “change” and “progress.”
Rather than concretely addressing the real concerns expressed in the “National
Opportunity to Learn” in his recent address, Obama simply accused these civil
rights groups of being “resistant to change.”
If Obama
and the ruling-class political party he represents were truly open to change, they
might consider the following actions: End all foreign U.S. military occupations
and use the trillions of tax dollars being siphoned away to fully fund public
education. Ensure that all schools have equal resources, regardless of the
property taxes paid by families. Make pre-school and higher education
free! The corporate sponsors of the two main political parties in the U.S. are
trying to exploit the current economic crisis to decrease the scope of public
education and increase their ability to make a profit from a child’s right to
learn. An organized movement of students, families and education workers will
defeat this agenda. Free quality education for all!
