Will the Real Hillary Clinton Please Stand Up?
Hillary Clinton with Eli Broad at the pre-ball dinner hosted by Eli Broad
at the Inauguration Ball of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009.
at the Inauguration Ball of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009.
Hillary Clinton has caused a major scramble by her supporters after she spoke at a small high school outside Des Moines, Iowa. In her remarks she told the students at Keota High School on Tuesday, December 22,
This school district and these schools throughout Iowa are doing a better than average job. Now I wouldn't keep any school open that wasn't doing a better than average job. If a school is not doing a good job then, you know, that may not be good for the kids, but when you have a district that is doing a good job it seems kind of counterproductive to impose financial burdens on it.
This has been seized on by her political opponents to claim that she said she is in favor of closing half of the schools in the United States that are doing an “average job”.
The U.S. News and World Report came to her defense Wednesday, December 23, saying her remarks “were taken out of context”.
Speaking about this, Diane Ravitch agreed. Sounding like a campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, Ravitch echoed U.S. News and World Report saying,
She mis-spoke. Hillary understands that the federal government doesn’t close schools. Period. A mistake. A slip of the tongue. An unthinking bow to corporatist ideology. She was wrong and she knows it. She has to walk back this careless statement. We don’t need any more school closings. Such closings have had a disproportionately harmful affect on communities of color. Talk about school support, school helping, not closings. That’s yesterday.
So where does Clinton stand on the Broad method of closing “low-performing” public schools in low-income communitiesand turning them over to charters?
In a December 17th article in the Wall Street Journal, “Clinton Views on Charter Schools, Teacher Evaluations Upset Some Schools Matter: Will the Real Hillary Clinton Please Stand Up?:
