Duncan Bribery Turns to Blackmail and Extortion
From Firedoglake:
. . . .Race to the Top just announced their first two grant winners, Tennessee and Delaware, yesterday.
I hope we can be honest about what this actually represents: blackmail. It forces states to change their education laws to fit particular notions about how to manage public education in America. And it does so at a time of crippling state budgets, when the Race to the Top funds mean the difference between thousands of teachers laid off or kept on the job, between class sizes expanding or shrinking. Basically, Arne Duncan and the White House are leveraging crisis to make preferred changes in education policy.
And let’s be very clear about this: the changes sought are entirely at the discretion of Arne Duncan and the Education Department. These changes include ideas typically advanced by “reformers” like