From: brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder)
Subject: Re: Clinton's Education Policy (aka reform is dead)
Organization: Quake Public Access
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 01:56:24 GMT

In article <BzFBpt.1164@austin.ibm.com> curt@ekhadafi.austin.ibm.com (Curt Finch 903 2F021 curt@aixwiz.austin.ibm.com 512-838-2806) writes:
>In article <92351.173810U38026@uicvm.uic.edu> <U38026@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:
>>What is the Government Doing About Public Education?

>As little as possible.

Of course.  Government officials are in teh business of getting and keeping
political power.  Educating children has nothing to do with that, so why
should you expect them to show any interest in it?

>*8   EDUCATION'S DARTH VADER:  TEACHER UNION AND ALLIES
>     Election 1992 produced major setbacks for education reform,
>Chester Finn writes in a W.S. JOURNAL op-ed.  The Clinton-Gore
>victory was not the only disappointment for reformers.  Finn
>writes that several state and local initiatives, including the
>defeat of a statewide school voucher program in Colo., also were
>"blow[s]."

As was the "dirty tricks" campaign that kept the schools choice initiative
off the California ballot.  Teacher's union members were out putting petition
gatherers under "citizen's arrest" for threatening their jobs.  They also
intentionally invalidated large numbers of petitions by signing their names 
HUNDREDS of times.  This drove the "bad name count" over the limits and
the court ordered a hand-check of all 6 million signatures...obviously
this was impossible to be accomplished before the election.

>     Finn blames the "education empire," made up of teachers
>unions and their allies, for the initiatives' defeat.  The
>education establishment had been "plenty vex[ed]" by education
>reform's shift in emphasis from resources to results following
>the publication of "A Nation At Risk," according to Finn.  And
>their ire was further raised by the nation's focus on national
>goals, standards and tests, and the emergence of alternative
>certification and charter schools.

I have long said that putting the NEA in charge of education policy is like 
putting the Teamsters in scharge of highway policy.

What really annoys me is their tactic of trying to pose any attack on the
unions as an attack on the value of education.  It is precisely because
I value education that I hate the unions.

>     These new ideas encourage competition and comparisons, both
>of which "alarmed" the education establishment, whose "power base
>[is] in local school boards and collective bargaining
>agreements," according to Finn.  But he adds that privatization
>and school choice pose the "greatest threats" to the
>establishment, for whom Finn writes that four more years of the
>"George Bush crowd fanning these flames" may have been too much.

One has to expect that when REAL reform comes along, the parasites who
have been profiting on the current corrupt system will complain.  In fact,
I would go so far as to say that any "reform" that doesn't gain the
disaproval of the unions is phoney.

>     He writes that although Clinton's "school reform instincts
>appeared sound 

His "instinct" is to say whatever his audience wants to hear without
being specific enough to ever be held to any particular opinion.

>... so heavily is Mr. Clinton in thrall to the
>teacher unions that their leaders are boasting of the influence
>they'll wield."  The "education empire" plans to:  Stop the
>privatization-and-choice movement before it spreads; promote
>standards that really aren't; frustrate the creation of serious
>means testing; revive the emphasis on resources; and not
>seriously analyze liberal proposals for ed reform, while
>"dissecting" others.

Fortunately, the more active they are in opposing these popular reforms,
the less they will be taken seriously as a force in favor of good education.
Education choice programs are VERY popular with the public.

>     Finn predicts that "someday, education's consumers may yet
>prevail," because they control the purse strings.  "But the 1992
>election was a blow to education reform that will not easily be
>parried," he concludes (12/16).

It will be when the "power of the purse" is actually in the hands of the 
customers and not in the hands of bureaucrats.

--Brian
 
Newsgroups: misc.education,alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american,soc.women