An Annotated Field Guide to 2020 Presidential Voters | Eclectablog

An Annotated Field Guide to 2020 Presidential Voters | Eclectablog

An Annotated Field Guide to 2020 Presidential Voters

Democrats…

You supported Amy Klobuchar, or Pete Buttigieg, or another “more centrist” candidate in the primaries; now voting for Biden…

You consider yourself a moderate; thoughtful, empathetic, perhaps fiscally conservative yet socially liberal; you were attracted to the intelligence of Pete, or Amy’s “seriousness”, but believe that at this point, they would want you to vote for Biden, too.

 

You supported Elizabeth Warren in the primaries; now voting for Biden…

You still can’t believe that more persons didn’t see the qualities in Warren that you thought made her the best choice among the Democratic contenders. Intelligence, experience, humor, policy depth–come to think of it, the same qualities that led you to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. But as you put away your disappointment after Warren withdrew from the race, the decision to vote for Biden took about 5 seconds. Because, come on.

 

You supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries; now voting for Biden… CONTINUE READING: An Annotated Field Guide to 2020 Presidential Voters | Eclectablog

Compare the town halls: How Biden and Trump will bring educators out of the pandemic - Education Votes

Compare the town halls: How Biden and Trump will bring educators out of the pandemic - Education Votes

Compare the town halls: How Biden and Trump will bring educators out of the pandemic

By Amanda Menas

On the night that was supposed to be the second presidential debate, Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump appeared at separate events presenting their vastly different visions to voters.

“The words of a president matter,” Biden said of Trump’s actions regarding the coronavirus pandemic during his town hall on ABC. “When a president doesn’t wear a mask, or makes fun of folks like me when I was wearing a mask, for a long time, then people say, ‘Well, you know, it mustn’t be that important.’”

Biden presented his vision of leadership to bring back the American economy, workforce, and middle class out of the recession caused by the pandemic and Donald Trump’s failed response. He pointed to his leadership throughout the spring in calling for school closures and reopening safely by listening to the experts, while Trump lied and hid the facts from the public.

“You can open businesses and schools if in fact you provide them the guidance that they need as well as the money to be able to do it,” said Biden about his school reopening plan if elected. Biden noted that Trump’s administration told the American public that they would provide masks for every student and teacher, and then subsequently walked it back. “We need more teachers in our schools to be able to open and smaller pods. We need ventilation systems changed,” Biden said.

Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, have failed students, educators, and the American people with their response to the pandemic. Trump even failed to take CONTINUE READING: Compare the town halls: How Biden and Trump will bring educators out of the pandemic - Education Votes

Open Letter to Joe Biden: Ed Sec “That Has Been in Public Schools” is Not Enough

 Open Letter to Joe Biden: Ed Sec “That Has Been in Public Schools” is Not Enough

Open Letter to Joe Biden: Ed Sec “That Has Been in Public Schools” is Not Enough

Dear Candidate Biden:

On September 01, 2020, I saw part of the interview your wife, Jill, did with CNN contributor, Biana Goldryga, on the topic of K12 education. In that interview, Jill said that you plan to replace Betsy DeVos as US secretary of education “with somebody that has been in the public schools.”

On the surface, that sounds fantastic. On the surface.

The problem is that the education reform movement specializes in its members having temp time “in the public schools” as a resume-padding device designed to catapult them into leadership positions in K12 education, such as district and state superintendents. So, technically, one of these classroom-exiting, sleight-of-experience resume padders could slide right on in as the next secretary of education, without spending but a moment’s time as a classroom teacher, and you, sir, might not know the difference because the person is *technically* able to declare having been “in the public schools.”

In fact, hearing Jill Biden say that you plan to appoint as next ed sec “someone who has been in the public schools” makes me realize that being “in” the public schools doesn’t really commit to having as ed sec someone who has spent time in the classroom at all, much less years enough in the classroom to see a wave of ed trends come and go. I’ll pursue the classroom longevity issue in more detail shortly; for now, I will assume that Jill Biden’s use of “in the public schools” means having been a classroom teacher “in the public schools.”

Let’s return to the education reform movement’s penchant for churning out token teachers who really desire speedy procurement of positions of power and influence over the K12 classroom, not an actual classroom teaching career.

The principal vehicle for this career catapult is ed-reform teacher-temp agency, CONTINUE READING:  Open Letter to Joe Biden: Ed Sec “That Has Been in Public Schools” is Not Enough

Biden Plans a Speech Faulting Trump Over Reopening Schools - The New York Times

Biden Plans a Speech Faulting Trump Over Reopening Schools - The New York Times

Biden Plans a Speech Faulting Trump Over Reopening Schools

On Wednesday, Joe Biden will seek to put a spotlight on President Trump’s handling of the pandemic, particularly when it comes to safely reopening the country’s schools.

Joseph R. Biden Jr., pressing his argument that President Trump is failing the country with his handling of the coronavirus, plans on Wednesday to make the case that Mr. Trump is hurting the nation’s parents, teachers and schoolchildren with his push for schools to reopen.

Mr. Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, a community college professor, are scheduled to receive a briefing in Wilmington, Del., from a group of experts, including Sylvia Mathews Burwell, who served as secretary of health and human services for President Barack Obama and is now the president of American University, and Linda Darling-Hammond, the president of the California State Board of Education.

Mr. Biden will then give a speech on what his campaign described as Mr. Trump’s failures on the pandemic as well as Mr. Biden’s plan to reopen schools safely.

Symone Sanders, a senior adviser for the Biden campaign, said Mr. Trump was “barreling forward trying to reopen schools because he thinks it will help his own re-election.”

“We believe this is a key contrast for voters,” Ms. Sanders said. “President Trump, who continues to ignore the science and has no plan to get the virus under control, and Joe Biden, who is working with the experts and putting together an effective plan to beat the virus and reopen schools safely.”

Mr. Trump has demanded that schools reopen this fall and threatened to cut federal funding for school districts that defied his wishes. But his effort to pressure schools did not have the effect he desired, and many districts decided to begin the school year with remote instruction.

The lone exception among the country’s largest school districts is New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio reached a deal with unions on Tuesday to begin remote and in-person classes on Sept. 21, 10 days later than had been planned.

In July, Mr. Biden released his own plan for safely reopening schools, which emphasized deference to local decision-making on whether and how schools could reopen in a safe manner. His plan also called for Congress to pass an emergency funding package to help enable schools to adapt for reopening. CONTINUE READING: Biden Plans a Speech Faulting Trump Over Reopening Schools - The New York Times

Biden Offers Hope for Turning Around Awful DeVos Education Policy | janresseger

Biden Offers Hope for Turning Around Awful DeVos Education Policy | janresseger

Biden Offers Hope for Turning Around Awful DeVos Education Policy

This summer some people have said it seems like deja vu all over again. In 2009, right after Barack Obama was elected President, Education Secretary Arne Duncan used over $4 billion of the public education dollars Congress had appropriated as part of a huge federal stimulus package and attached rules that made states adopt Duncan’s own pet programs in order to qualify for the money.  Now Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration have distributed CARES Act dollars in a way that favors DeVos’s favorite charter schools and private schools at the expense of what she calls “government” schools—the ones our society counts on to serve 50 million of our children.

The Secretary of Education—and in the case of Payroll Protection Program dollars, the Small Business Administration—can control the distribution of education stimulus dollars, because dispersing relief money is administered by the administration without direct Congressional oversight unless prohibitions for particular practices are written into the enabling legislation.

You will remember that as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Arne Duncan administered a $4.3 billion Race to the Top Program, a $3.5 billion School Improvement Grant program, and a $650 million Innovation Grant program. Duncan and  the U.S. Department of Education conditioned these grants on getting states to change their own laws to adopt what were later recognized as the most controversial priorities of Arne Duncan’s Department of Education. To qualify for Race to the Top, for example, states had to promise to evaluate teachers based on students’ test scores, agree to controversial turnaround plans that included school closure and privatization, and adopt “college-and-career-ready” standards, which, in practice, meant they were agreeing to adopt what became the overly constrictive, unwieldy and expensive Common Core and accompanying tests.  Underneath all of these programs was also a big change in the philosophy underneath federal education policy. Despite that races with winners always create losers, Duncan modeled his trademark education programs on the way philanthropies award funds: through competition. As the CONTINUE READING: Biden Offers Hope for Turning Around Awful DeVos Education Policy | janresseger