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Thursday, September 6, 2012

K-12 is missing in action at the Democratic National Convention. « Fred Klonsky

K-12 is missing in action at the Democratic National Convention. « Fred Klonsky:


K-12 is missing in action at the Democratic National Convention.

If you were watching the convention, even the gavel to gavel coverage on CSPAN, you would be hard pressed to hear anything that referred to the last four years of education policy coming out of the Department of Education. Or plans for the next four years.
The Wahington Post’s Valerie Strauss compares the 2008 Democratic Party platform with the 2012 version. The tiny section that speaks to K-12 public schools drops any reference to teacher participation in creating new models of teacher evaluation in the 2012 platform. They actually said there needs to be teacher participation when they wrote the 2008 version. Although apparently Arne didn’t bother to read the 2008 version.
Remember that the National Education Association was the first union to endorse Obama and our 200 delegates make us the largest organization of any kind represented at the DNC.
If you thought there was a debate over vouchers or charters schools, you wouldn’t know it by reading the Democratic Party platform. The words don’t appear.
There are lots of references to high standards and compensation for good teaching. In case you miss what they’re talking about, I guess that means the Democrats are against compensation for bad teaching. Or this is code for merit pay. Who knows?
I asked several friends if they heard Arne Duncan last night. Most said they missed it.
So here it is.
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They didn’t miss much.