Democratic Group Forms To Talk About Education Reform
TALKING ABOUT SCHOOLS. Moderator Joe Boyd and panelists discussed education reform last Wednesday at The Grand.
Posted: Wednesday, August 6, 2014 12:51 pm
The California Democrats for Education Reform, a newly formed group that launched a statewide campaign last Wednesday, hosted a luncheon panel discussion with local stakeholders about how the political party can build a consensus and develop strategies that could improve the state’s schools.
“Long Beach is the kick off,” explained moderator Joe Boyd, who recently retired from his position as the executive director of the Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB). From his podium at The Grand, he emphasized that the California Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) will be hosting similar events statewide, listening to parents, teachers, union leaders and others to build solidarity.
“We lack the political consensus to make common sense reform a reality,” Boyd said. “So we are trying something new… We are playing a role in finding common ground and it starts today.”
Panelists in Long Beach included Long Beach Unified Superintendent Christopher Steinhauser (who took the day off work to attend the partisan event), TALB President Virginia Torres and Green Dot Schools Founder Steve Barr, who has partnered with Boyd to chair DFER.
Other guest speakers at the event included LBUSD board members Jon Meyer and Megan Kerr; Juan Benitez, the executive director of California State University, Long Beach’s Center for Community Engagement; Anselmo Feliciano, a teacher at Burnett Elementary; and Steve Neal, an assistant pastor and former Ninth District City Councilman.
The strengths of LBUSD were highlighted, with Steinhauser emphasizing that Long Beach’s graduation rates are higher now than ever. Steinhauser and other educators also were enthusiastic about the roll out of Common Core and the Local Control Funding Formula.
Weaknesses also were discussed.
Panelists focused on narrowing the achievement gap, increasing parent engagement and improving teacher training as well as increasing teacher input. Some panelists also said that despite money coming in from Democratic Group Forms To Talk About Education Reform - Long Beach Grunion Gazette Newspapers: Breaking News, Sports, Business, Entertainment & Long Beach News : Gazettes.com - News:
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Astroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups are often typified by innocent-sounding names that have been chosen specifically to disguise the group's true backers
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Students first Astroturf lobbying (only Better)
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- Promoting voucher programs that drain public schools of resources by using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private school profits, and specifying that those schools must remain unregulated.
- Offering private school vouchers with “universal eligibility” (using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private schools for the rich and others); “means-tested eligibility,” (using poverty as the first domino in an effort to privatize public schools ; and “universal eligibility with means-tested scholarship.” (Here, “scholarship” means using taxpayer dollars to pay private school tuition and/or profits.)
- Creating a scheme to deem public schools “educationally bankrupt” to rationalize giving taxpayer dollars to almost completely unregulated private schools, rather than addressing any problems.
- Setting up low-income students for failure in college by incentivizing early graduation for students in need of a complete high school education.
- Certifying individuals with no education background as teachers, a move that would weaken the quality of education, that fails to recognize there is more to teaching than knowledge of a subject, and that would undermine the role and competitiveness of professional teachers.
- Eliminating tenure for teachers in favor of “performance,” allowing districts to fire older teachers in favor of lower-cost young teachers.
- Undermining teacher’s unions.
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