Re: Senator Obama and a question

[aburke5054@aol.com]

Give Obama subscriptions to Substance and the Examiner, put him on the 
EDDRA mailing list, and make him an honorary member of the Educator 
Roundtable.  That will bring him right around.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Tauna Rogers <taunar@plateautel.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 2:56 pm
Subject: [arn-l] Senator Obama and a question

As you know, it has been reported that in a statement to the Miilwaukee 
Journal
Sentinal, Senator Barack Obama, while skeptical, said he would be open 
to
private school vouchers if studies can show they work. It is my 
understanding
that a longitudinal study of the Milwaukee experiment is actually 
underway.

Here is a link to the video taken at the editorial board of the 
Milwaukee
Journal Sentinal session with Obama:
http://video.ap.org/v/Default.aspx?g=31914bb2-065d-4969-830d-00d6053e7ddc&mk&partner=en-ap

I like Senator Obama. I think he means well and will not be easily 
deceived by
psuedo research purporting to show that vouchers work. Nevertheless, it 
concerns
me that he has been a strong supporter of charter schools.

To my knowledge, there are no reputable studies showing that charter 
schools
outperform traditional public schools when controlling for 
demographics. And I'm
reminded of the Lubienski NAEP study as well as the federal DOE study, 
both of
which showed that charters do not outperform regular public schools. 
And there's
also the "Charter School Dust-Up".

Given his recent statement, it is a sure bet that Obama is going to be 
flooded
with studies claiming to show that vouchers and charters work.  Heck, 
I'm sure
he would be flooded with them anyway.

In addition to the studies I referenced above, I'm wondering what 
evidence Monty
Neill, Gerald Bracey, George Schmidt, and other ARN contributors would 
recommend
we get into the hands of the Obama campaign? And to Hillary Clinton's 
campain
too.

George reports on what is taking place in Chicago with the corporate 
hijacking
of public education but I wonder how knowledgable Obama and his team 
really are
about the underhanded inner workings of what is actually taking place 
there?

While I would gladly embrace true reforms intended to strengthen, 
improve, and
support public education (rather than scapegoat and discredit it), I 
believe we
cannot emphasize too strongly that nothing will help our nation's 
struggling
poor and minority students more than directly addressing the 
long-neglected
elephants in the classroom...namely poverty and its deprivations.

Tauna

P.S. I was heartened recently to learn that Linda-Darling Hammond was 
named as
one of Obama's education advisors. Is she the person we should direct
communications 
to?-------------------------------------------------------
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