With A Brooklyn Accent: How The Democratic Party Fatally Damaged Itself By Attacking Public Education

With A Brooklyn Accent: How The Democratic Party Fatally Damaged Itself By Attacking Public Education:

How The Democratic Party Fatally Damaged Itself By Attacking Public Education

Ever since the Clinton Presidency, the Democratic Party has been an advocate of top-down school reforms whose goal has been to make the nation more economically competitive and reduce inequality.

 Not only have these policies failed to achieve their stated objectives, they have destabilized communities where Democrats have traditionally found support, created widespread distress among teachers and parents, and given credence to the conservative critique of the DP as the province of technocratic elites who impose policies on people without really listening to them


Every Democratic politician who has promoted the following education policies, I would argue, has been complicit in the Party's decline


1. Promotion of national testing and test based accountability standards for public schools.
2. Closing of schools which are deemed "failing" and removal of their teachers and administrators.
3. Preference for charter schools over public schools, especially in high poverty areas.
4. Support for programs like Teach for America which de-professionalize the teaching profession.


These four principles have been pillars of the Democratic Party's With A Brooklyn Accent: How The Democratic Party Fatally Damaged Itself By Attacking Public Education: