President Obama’s education budget priorities wrong
by pureparents
PAA has serious concerns about President Obama’s education budget. Here is a one-page comparison chart detailing our positions regarding the President’s budget proposal. We sent a letter to members of the House and Senate education committees today which included the following comments, with our chart attached:
Our general concern is that the budget seems to reinforce the current corporate reform agenda of further privatization, school closings, more charter schools, larger classes, and the expansion of high-stakes standardized tests. In fact, the majority of US parents oppose these strategies, which have no significant track record of success. We instead support research-based proposals to improve our schools, including class size reduction, expansion of preK programs, support for a more well-rounded, challenging curriculum, and more parent involvement in decision-making at all levels.
We support the President’s budget proposals to:
- Raise much-needed revenue with new taxes on corporations, private equity, and the wealthy.
- Add $30 billion to prevent teacher lay-offs and $30 billion for school infrastructure needs.
- Eliminate the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Fund which takes scarce funding from public schools and gives it to private schools, with
