Re: [arn-l Digest] Vol. 4 No. 658 Messages: 12

[Scott Hays <shays@ccwebster.net>]

On Dec 15, 2010, at 3:20 AM, aburke5054@aol.com wrote:

> Like I said, the forces of counter-revolution mobilize quickly when  
> the status quo is threatened. We saw that when the financial  
> industry mobilized itself to resist financial reform and the health  
> care industry mobilized itself to fight health care reform. Big  
> surprise that the education industry mobilizes itself to fight  
> educational reform.
>
> The malarkey that education reform a la NCLB promotes the interests  
> of corporations and not public education was exploded a few summers  
> ago when the nation's civil rights establishment rose up to oppose  
> legislation that would have weakened NCLB's accountability  
> requirements, the very same requirements that you claim are part of  
> the nefarious corporate agenda. That line of bull has lost teachers'  
> unions a huge amount of respect, so much so that teachers' unions  
> are now openly criticized by liberal and progressive politicians and  
> by civil rights leaders as a prime roadblock to improving schools.  
> Why you continue with the same misinformation, disinformation, and  
> bare-faced deceit is beyond me.

Art, you are a fairly intelligent being, so I again call you on your  
loose use of words and sloppy recollection of fact.  When civil rights  
groups "rose up" to defend NCLB's accountability requirements "a few  
summers ago", they were defending but a small part of the overall  
legislation, particularly requirements that districts not hide  
reporting data on selected socio-economic groups and/or classes of  
students.  You know as well as the next guy that most people on this  
list concur with that sentiment.  What you continuously refuse to  
recognize, and apparently purposefully blur (because so many have  
grown weary of pointing it out to you), that those same civil rights  
groups oppose the broader mandates of NCLB.  Because you so carelessly  
blur these realities, it is no wonder that you have an equally hard  
time distinguishing between "liberal" and "progressive" politicians,  
and can lump them altogether in one non-discriminated mass.  But  
labels always work better than facts, and may help to explain why you  
seem to have such a hard time with the concept of "revolution" and  
"status quo".  I don't know what Alice-in-Wonderland world you live  
in, but it used to be that when a mayor or a corporate entity or even  
a centralized "unified" school district tried to muscle governance  
from a local, democratically elected school board, the citizens and  
employees of the school about to be swallowed rose up to protect it  
from the "establishment".  I will concede that often it was "liberals"  
who led the effort to centralize school management for the sake of  
"efficiency" and "maximization", but that's just another example of  
how the use of labels makes it so easy to blur distinctions about  
what's really going on.