Re: Why the Wall Street Journal Loves to Hate Public Education

[aburke5054@aol.com]

It's hard to argue that public education is being dismantled when there 
are more kids in public education than ever before, we're spending more 
money on public education than ever before, people are generally 
satisfied with their local schools, and teacher satisfaction is at a 
20-year high (in 2006, according to the MetLife survey).
But you see the Apocalypse everywhere - the economy, society, education 
- driven by a conspiracy of the media, the professions, economic and 
social conservatives, ecumenicals, well-off Americans, business 
leaders, civil-rights groups, and liberal and progressive groups of all 
kids.  it's almost like you see the world through some horrible filter 
that blocks everything except your disgruntlement.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Horn, James <jhorn@monmouth.edu>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Mon, 24 Dec 2007 8:20 am
Subject: [arn-l] Why the Wall Street Journal Loves to Hate Public 
Education


Why the Wall Street Journal Loves to Hate Public Education


A few newspapers (more foreign than domestic) carried stories this week 
on the
record bonuses being carted off by Wall Street execs this Xmas season, 
just days
after the Fed fed the quaking and corrupted banks fresh bundle of dough 
to make
their holidays brighter and their complicity in the mortgage pyramid 
scheme seem
a little less prominent. If they won't loan to each other, just let the 
Fed feed
all of them, right?

Such good will toward corporate CEOs points up the reality of 
modern-day
capitalism, where all the benefits are absorbed by insiders and all the 
risks
are taken by outsiders: that is we, the outsider people, who function 
as the
liability insurance policies for every failed scam that our MBA loan 
sharks can
devise in order to rob from the working and the poor. That is how this 
Xmas
season 2 million people are faced with losing their homes, while CEOs 
are
receiving record bonuses despite the worst year in decades for 
shareholders:

    (Long Island, N.Y.) Wall Street had its worst year in a decade but 
that
didn’t effect bonus checks which rose 14 percent on average. You would 
have
thought that the worst year in decades may have warrented no bonuses 
this year,
but that just wasn’t the case at all.

    Approximately 60 percent of the $49.6 billion in compensation the 
four
biggest US investment banks will pay this year is for bonuses. That 
relates to
approximately $30 billion in bonuses and that is only from Goldman 
Sachs Group
Inc., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Bear Stearns Cos., and Morgan 
Stanley.

    Interesting [sic] enough, investors that held these banks’ stocks 
this year
saw them spiral down by practically 45 percent. And, the stocks have 
not quit
falling. Investors surely can’t be happy with losing on their stocks 
while bank
executives rake in their portion of $30 billion in bonuses. . . .


None of this is of interest to the Editorial Board of the once-great 
Wall Street
Journal. In fact, they are focused this season, not on accountability 
for Wall
Street scamming and outright thievery, but, rather, on making poor 
children and
public employees accountable in the neglected and crumbling public 
schools of
the Nation's Capitol.

In a fawning tribute to the new DC Schools Chancellor, Michelle Rhee, 
the WSJ
did what it does best through its editorial pages: 1) divert attention 
from the
excesses of a tornadic and rampaging consumer capitalism, 2) advance 
the
interests of the Oligarchs of the corporate welfare state, and, 3) 
promote the
virtues of selfishness at the expense of democratic institutions. And 
Michelle
Rhee is a perfect acolyte. She is smart, ruthless, and blinded by her 
own naive
zeal and iron ambition, qualities that recommended her in the first 
place to
head up the destruction of public education in Washington, DC.

So while Michelle Rhee, egged on by a Mayor who is in the pocket of the
plutocrats, finalizes plans for firing whomever she wishes and closing 
whatever
schools she chooses, the WSJ Editorial Board celebrates accountability 
in
action, individual choice in practice, and social justice on the move 
in DC.
What they do not focus on (besides the corporate sewer that feeds them) 
is the
dictatorial and anti-democratic seizing of power by the Mayor, the 
cheap charter
chain gang schools that are offered as the only "choices" to crumbling 
and
neglected public schools for poor children, or the marginal private 
schools or
religious schools that are the only other "choices" for the children 
who have
been handed annual vouchers that would buy 9 weeks of tuition in a top 
notch
private school. And what does Rhee have to say?:

    "For way too long in this country, choice in education was 
something that
was reserved for rich people in the suburbs"

One has to wonder if she said that with a straight face. The WSJ 
editorial
closing with this flourish:

    People have tried to get her to commit to a ratio of public schools 
to
charter schools. Ms. Rhee won't play that game. "I don't enter this 
with
defensiveness, about protecting [D.C. public schools'] share of the 
market. I
believe we should proliferate what's working and close down what's not. 
Period."

    She says she keeps hearing from worried city council members that 
some
teachers and administrators are frightened of her. They are feeling 
pressure and
that's a problem. Her answer? Get used to it. "I'm going to hold people
accountable and I'm going to hold their feet to the fire. If they're 
feeling
pressure--good! I feel pressure every day because I have the education 
of 49,000
kids in my hands."

And if she fails to deliver the pre-approved solution of disbanding the 
public
schools, she might find herself teaching school again, who knows. 
Michelle Rhee
could, indeed, become the new model public administrator, offering an 
exemplar
on how to cross the unsteady moat into the protected castle of private
privilege. She may, indeed, become the new poster girl for how to crush 
what is
in your hand and below your boot in order to power your way to the Top.

from Schools Matter, Happy Holidays and Save the Republic.






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