Category: Domestic Policies

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Domestic Policies Healthcare Immigration Immigration Reform News Politics

The Six Year Itch

From where I sit, last year was worse for the Republican Party and for progress than it ever was for President Obama. Yes, yes, I know what the conventional wisdom said about the president’s fifth year, but really, I don’t necessarily buy it. As a matter of fact, I think that when all is said and done by 2017, many people won’t even remember what the fuss was all about.

For example, the health care website was a dud in October and November, but as we speak, over 3 million people have signed up for health insurance through the portal and Medicaid, and the goal of signing up 7 million people by the end of March is eminently attainable. The Republican blahblahgosphere will say that not enough young, healthy people have signed up and that the death spiral will begin any time now, but since they’ve been wrong about everything related to the law (remember when the election of Scott Brown meant the end of the ACA?), why would we want to believe them now?

On immigration, the critics say that because there was no final bill last year that this was a failure for Obama. Not if we get a bill this year, and it’s looking more and more likely that we will. Not because it was a bad idea last year, but because the GOP has finally realized that they are national election toast of they don’t do something to help the Hispanic electorate that is running very quickly away from their party.

Likewise for the minimum wage, climate policy, appointees and foreign policy. In every one of these cases, the president won’t get Congress to sign on to his initiatives, but he’s laying the groundwork for later years or, most likely, for his successor who will most likely be a Democrat. At this point, Obama can do the most for this country by executive order and that’s what we’re likely to hear on Tuesday.

Most presidents, if they are remembered at all, are usually known for one or two major laws that transform the country. The ACA will be Obama’s main accomplishment, but I could see him also being remembered for the Consumer Protection Board and the president who saved the American automobile industry. Immigration would put him in the top ten lists of great ones. The right-wing knows this and that’s why their last-ditch efforts to derail anything Obama wants to do will be loud and scary. But that’s all they’ll be for years to come.

In the meantime, we are living through a trying time with a leader that history will remember fondly.

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Gun Control gun control Music Politics

This Artist Turns Guns into Musical Instruments

Pedro Reyes says being Mexican is like living in an apartment where an upstairs neighbor has a leaking swimming pool.

“Just what is leaking,” says Reyes, “is hundreds of thousands of guns.”

He wants people to think about the availability of guns in the United States, and the impact that has in Mexico.

At the University of South Florida in Tampa, he recently held a series of workshops and a performance, using theater to encourage a discussion about guns. It’s called “Legislative Theater,” a style of performance pioneered in Latin America in the 1960s to influence social change.

In Tampa, Reyes called his project “The Amendment to the Amendment.” Specifically, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms. Reyes asks his actors and the audience to consider if there are possible changes that might improve the amendment

Reyes believes art should address social issues like gun violence, even when they’re difficult and controversial. “We have to be allowed to ask questions,” he says. “If you are not allowed to ask questions, you are not free.”

Reyes also addresses the issue of gun violence in another way, by using guns themselves. His first project began in 2007 in the Mexican city of Culiacan. As part of a campaign to curb shootings, the city collected 1,527 guns. He used them to create art.

“Those 1,527 guns were melted and made into the same number of shovels,” he says. “So for every gun now, there’s a shovel. And with every shovel, we planted a tree.”

Now Reyes is working on a new project. It is one that transforms guns into something more musical.

An exhibition of the work is on display at the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum. It’s called “Disarm,” and consists of guns that have been turned into musical instruments.

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bridgegate Domestic Policies Education News Politics

NJ State of Emergency (and it’s not the snow)

Chris Christie was inaugurated for his second term as Governor of New Jersey today. It’s also snowing quite a bit. That will make his downhill slide easier and the crash at the bottom more pronounced. He’s embroiled in two scandals, both of which will turn out to have been his own making, and he made a state of the state address last week that was so devoid of usable ideas, it’s probably DOA in a Democratic legislature that is in no mood to compromise with him over controversial issues.

The Bridge issue by itself could probably be chalked up to election year hi-jinx by a guy who doesn’t understand nuance and positive energy. Now we have another scandal that cuts even deeper and shows a pattern of behavior among Governor Christie’s appointees and running mate that could touch him. The results will not be pretty.

The story involves aid for Sandy storm victims, but is tied up in election year politics and the desire Christie had to win a huge, forty-point plus victory over Democrat Barbara Buono this past November.

His administration chose an ad agency to promote the shore using Sandy funds, which might be OK except that the agency it chose cost $2.2 million dollars more that the other bidder and promised to put Christie and his family in the ads. Not bad in an election year where about the only issue Christie could run on, because the economy was still in a shambles, was Sandy relief. That makes the Hoboken issue that much more relevant, because the city really could have used any or all of those millions to, let’s say, help people who were flooded out or needed assistance with programs that might help them get back on their feet. Instead, we get the first-ever Lieutenant Governor making threats against a Christie supporter, Mayor Dawn Zimmer, to help a political friend.

New Jersey is already an ethical sewer. Did Christie and Guadagno really have to flush at that moment?

 Christie’s office did offer a rebuke to Mayor Zimmer, but never addressed the accusations against Guadagno and attacked MSNBC, the network that’s been the main mouthpiece for the story. That’s classic Christie and follows the larger Republican strategy when they’re challenged: discredit the opposition and call them names. Ouch.

But now Mayor Zimmer is talking with prosecutors at their request. Double ouch.

There will be more subpeonas and an occasional leak of juicy information and the result will be a prolonged period of stalemate where the governor wants to move beyond the scandals and the legislature wants to air every stitch of dirty laundry to lessen Christie’s influence.

As for policy, last week’s speech in Trenton wasn’t just a rehashing of his fight with teachers and other public unions: it was a renewed call to battle against them by proposing to take more of their income and break their power. The governor wants everyone else to contribute more for their pensions and health benefits, which would severely impact those middle class workers, while he works on a tax break for the wealthy and reneges on his promise to make full state pension payments.

That idea would be bad enough, but the real insight into Christie’s thinking is his not-even-half-baked proposal to lengthen the public school day and year. His lack of detail was stunning for such a high-profile pronouncement. Clearly, he’s going through the motions of checking off ideas from the conservative playbook in an effort to curry favor with the Republican right wing. Needless to say, reaction has not been positive, and for good reason.

First of all, where is the money coming from to install air conditioning and run electrical power for the rest of June and into July? Where is the money coming from to pay teachers past June 30? What will happen to shore businesses, camps, academic programs and enrichment activities that are a vital part of summer in New Jersey? Yes, the governor rightly said that the school calendar is outdated, but other industries have grown around it that are vital cogs in the economic and academic life of students and teachers. He hasn’t addressed that, and my guess is that he probably won’t. He’ll just spend time bashing teachers for not wanting to give up summer vacation, even though the summer is just another two months where most teachers need to find an income so they can eat or not lose their houses.

Chris Christie only knows one speed when it comes to doing his job, and it’s going to result in a crackup. A comeback is certainly possible, but the damage has been done.

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Domestic Policies News Politics

Christie Time?

Worried about a cold weather Super Bowl in a couple of weeks? Don’t be: Now that the subpoenas are out and Randy Mastro is in, there’s going to be plenty of hot air to warm the New Jersey Meadowlands and nourish the state and national news media for the game and beyond.

First up is the list of those individuals who have been subpoenad to testify in front of the legislature. This includes people close to Christie’s campaign and political offices and reaches into the day-to-day operations of the government. Let’s see how much they say, but given immunity, I believe we might hear some evidence that Christie had at least some knowledge of the Bridge lane closings.

Christie’s hiring of former federal Prosecutor Randy Mastro is evidence that the governor is taking this scandal very seriously. Mastro worked for Rudy Giuliani, another politician who liked to bully people and thought that he was above the law. Remember Giuliani time? That was when the mayor sent the message that it was OK to do anything to fight crime. We need to hope that we don’t see a text or e-mail that refers to Christie time, which would be the desire to win a reelection bid by more than 40 points. Which really sounds like it’s the real impetus behind the Bridge scandal.What a waste.

We’ve had our fun with this, but I don’t think the next few months are going to be fun for the governor. And rightly so.

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Domestic Policies News Politics

Christie the Vi(ndi)cti(ve)m

If Governor Chris Christie thought that Thursday’s news conference, that turned into a two-hour fiasco of alternately blaming others and apologizing without remorse, was going to be the end of the story about the GWBridge lane closures, then he was clearly mistaken. As usual with a scandal, the more we know, the more we want to know.

For example, who actually texted David Wildstein that they were smiling at the traffic jam? This is going to be interesting because presumably it wasn’t Bridget Anne Kelly, the Christie aide who went from loyal and brilliant early in the week to “stupid” and “deceitful” at the press conference. And speaking of Kelly, why didn’t Christie speak to her before firing her? What kind of prosecutor assumes guilt first and worries about whether they’re being just later? Answer: A prosecutor like Christie who obviously doesn’t care about the truth.

Questions about Christie’s political future are also a main topic, as this scandal shows that he either doesn’t have control over his own aides, or that he sent a message to them that this was politically acceptable behavior. In any case, this has severely damaged his national reputation. Conservatives were always wary of him; now moderates might be scared off by a man who has been resolute in the past, but just might have spilled over into vindictive in the national mind.

But the worst aspect at this point is that mayors from across New Jersey are now reviewing events of the past year and wondering if the negative attention they’ve received from Trenton is a result of them not endorsing Christie or running afoul of him because they disagreed with his decisions. This is the atmosphere that the governor has created for himself. Yes, his YouTube videos were entertaining for his supporters, but they are now a liability because, together with this scandal, they show a man who has no tolerance for opposition. That’s dangerous for a man who wants to be president.

It will be interesting to see what new information comes out about this and whether the narrative as we imagine it today has more moving parts to it.

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Domestic Policies New Jersey News Politics

Heavy Traffic: Christie Takes It From the Bridge

A big, messy, tragic, stupid, vengeful scandal had to come to New Jersey during the Chris Christie era, and thus, it has reached us now. Yes, it turns out that the governor’s staff knew about and directed the Port Authority of NY/NJ to gum up traffic to the George Washington Bridge on the first day of school in September in order to create massive traffic tie-ups in Fort Lee NJ., because the Democratic Mayor of Forth Lee would not endorse Christie for reelection (here’s a handy timeline). A women might have died because emergency workers couldn’t get to her for while. Schoolchildren were late for school. The town was paralyzed.

Christie is denying that he ever knew that his staff did this, feigning outrage at the mere thought of any kind of political retribution, tactics that the governor has perfected during his term in office. The episode shows an atmosphere of thuggery that’s ugly even by New Jersey standards, and its pettiness is surpassed only by how truly unnecessary it was. Christie was going to win the election by a large margin whether the mayor endorsed him or not, but I guess that didn’t matter. Even if we buy the governor’s denials, the atmosphere he’s created in Trenton is more noxious than any SuperFund site. And the Star-Ledger has it exactly right: this is Nixonian and the governor will pay a steep price for it with no EZPass rebate.

We are still at the beginning stage of this investigation and there will probably be more damaging revelations, but my sense is that this by itself will not end any chances Christie has for a national run in 2016 if he was not directly involved. That should either come out or his loyal staff will take the fall for him. Stay tuned.

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Domestic Policies Healthcare Immigration Immigration Reform News Politics Teaparty

The Final Push

Far be it from me to argue with one of the greatest historical minds of the 20th century, but we essentially have an executive that serves a six year term, even if we get two extra bonus lame duck years for our efforts. So it has been with most other presidents, and so it probably shall be with Barack Obama. This is his sixth year; if it doesn’t happen this year, chances are that none of his high priority agenda items will become law in 2015 or 2016.

That’s why 2014 represents the final push for immigration, tax reform, a higher minimum wage, climate policy and every other item on the left-wing wish list. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. History has taught us that the first push rarely results in success when it comes to big change. Look how long it took to get healthcare reform. Sometimes the push is necessary if for no other reason than to get an idea in the public’s mind and to prepare them, or to follow their lead, when it comes to legislation.

Like marriage equality, which coalesced into a major civil rights issue in a short amount of time, the push for rights for all people goes as far back as Stonewall in 1969 and the Supreme Court’s ruling for and then reversal on, anti-sodomy laws in 1986 and 2003. Progressives have been highlighting income inequality and the rising gap between wealthy and not for decades. Now that cry is becoming a major force in calling for a higher, livable minimum wage that just could pass this year. After all, most people, even Republicans, support it.

The same will most likely be true of climate legislation, immigration, privacy and energy. More and more younger people realize that their world is changing and that the United States either has to catch up to other countries who are already addressing the problems or fall behind to our economic and social detriment. The far right is beginning to lose its grip on the Republican Party, and while I don’t see a more moderate wing surging anytime soon, I do see a less strident GOP in our future. That’s good news.

This year will see one or two major pieces of legislation, with the rest of Obama’s agenda left to the next Democratic president and a more willing population. I think we are moving in the right direction, but like anything done well, this will take time.

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Domestic Policies News Politics

Looking Forward

It seems to be the season of making predictions for the next year, and I certainly don’t want to be the only self-appointed chronicler of the age to miss that boat, so herewith is my take on what we can expect for 2014.

The year will be unpredictable. A bold assertion, I know, but look at where we were a year ago. Obama had just been resoundingly reelected and the right was on the run. They gave in on taxes and spending and agreed to extend unemployment benefits for another year. They were talking about immigration reform and a bargain on spending. It seemed that the left had the right ideas and, led by the president, it would be a year of progress.

How did that work out? We know. Immigration passed the Senate. Sequestration clawed its way through all of the doomsday scenarios and became the budget template for the year. The House became the place where all good ideas went to die. The website was doomed to failure because nobody thought or had the money to test it. The right shut down the government. Unemployment payments have not been renewed. Our privacy either being stolen from Target or abused by the NSA.

So why am I so optimistic about the upcoming year? Because there are some terrific trends in American life that are trending in the right direction. Marriage equality is close to becoming the law of all the land. The Supreme Court will probably slow it down and rule at some point that states do have the power to prohibit it through their constitutions, but that will just be a temporary delay.  State barriers to marriage, and by extension to rights for all LGBTIH and GSD and other capital letters, is in our near future. This is a profound change and one that we need to be thankful, thoughtful and diligent about enforcing.

The next year will also see health care for all. Think about that one and smile. Health care for all. The United States will join the rest of the industrialized world, and some of the less industrialized, in making sure that sickness or injury doesn’t mean bankruptcy or worse. There will be more bumps next year related to insurance company payments and recalcitrant GOP obstruction, but this law is here to stay. And the better part is that the law will be strengthened in the next few years. It has problems that need attention and we are looking at the possibility that more employers will begin moving employees to the exchanges rather than covering them through company plans. As one of my conservative friends says, if you thought the fuss over six million people being told their insurance didn’t measure up to the ACA and had their coverage canceled, wait until sixty million people who have insurance through work lose it. This is your only warning.

There are other hopeful trends to watch in 2014. The move towards a livable minimum wage is not going away and will probably gather steam next year. The criminal justice system is recognizing that mandatory sentences were a fevered reaction to inner city crime related to drugs and has done more to create a new economy based on prisons, especially in rural areas. President Obama’s sentence commutations are a first step towards making sentencing more flexible without going back to the instability of the 1960s and 70s. The Dodd-Frank bill will force financial institutions to curb or make transparent some of the practices that led to the financial crisis. Wall Street will kick and scream, but they will need to abide by the new rules.

And immigration reform will, I think find some success in the coming year. The Senate bill will not be passed by the House, and a path to citizenship might not survive the political process, but this is an idea whose time has come. It might take four or six more years before it comes to fruition, but it will.

The House will stay Republican in November and the Senate will stay Democratic, if only by 51-49 or by a Vice-President Biden Tie-Breaking Constitution Special 50-50. Someone you never considered will announce, by year’s end, that they will be a candidate for president in 2016. Someone you thought was a no-brainer will say that they will not run.

And no, it will not snow on Super Bowl Sunday.

Have a very Happy New Year and continue to work to make the United States, and the world, a better, more humane, just place to hang out in.

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Domestic Policies Education News Politics

Imagining the Schools We Need

Wondering why American students are not performing at their best? Or why we struggle to solve the problems of children getting adequate resources so they can compete in the global race for knowledge, opportunity and equity?

No need. The answer’s right here and it doesn’t take much to figure it out. We’ve made education a commodity to be traded, cut, neglected and manipulated for the better part of the economic downturn, and even before, and the policy is catching up to us. School districts all over the country had to cut back on teachers, other staff, educational resources and worse, a commitment to enable all children to take part in what should be the world’s premier public school system.

It shouldn’t have worked out that way.

The corporate know-nothings who have wheedled their way into the public policy debate and, worse, have been elected to offices where they’ve had direct experience slashing budgets, blaming public employees and pulling money out of the system because they think it spends too much. Now we’ve reached the crisis point where schools are packing in too many students into classrooms without proper staffing and educational materials. The results are disappointing at best.

But they point to something that’s been underreported, and that is that America’s public school teachers are doing a fabulous job keeping the system afloat and educating our students to the best of their abilities. The shame is imagining just how much better the country would be if we committed to funding and supporting the people who do one of the most important paid jobs in the economy.

Imagine what we could do with class sizes that allow for debate, discussion and hands-on learning in every class. Imagine having enough staff to enable struggling students and those with classifiable learning problems to get the support they both need and are entitled to by law. Imagine having enough money to take students on more than one outside academic trip per year so that they could apply their knowledge to real-world situations.

Imagine a teaching staff that is respected, emboldened and confident that the culture supported its efforts. Imagine governors making full pension payments so the system doesn’t become a political battleground and an excuse to blame teachers and other public employees from being blamed for shortfalls. Remember that the only people making reliable pension contributions are the teachers; every paycheck. Imagine a system where teachers have input into curricular implementation, and where tests are not the end result of every learning task. Imagine a collaborative, supportive environment where veteran educators are respected for their knowledge, not blamed for being too expensive.

If you can imagine such a system, then we have our work cut out for us because if we keep going as we have for the past 10 years, then we will sink further behind countries that don’t need to imagine those school systems–they already have them.

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Domestic Policies Healthcare News Politics Teaparty washington

The Political See-Thaw

Yes, that sound you heard out of Washington was not just John Boehner’s rant against his conservative brethren, it might have been the long-awaited thaw in relations between the two parties in the Congress over the budget.

And you probably thought that Republicans didn’t believe in warming.

Well, don’t get too excited. After all, 94 House members voted against the bill and it looks like the Senate will manage only four GOP supporters when the bill lands on their desks. And this is a bill that I might have voted against because it basically sacrifices the long-term unemployed on the alter of perceived laziness and blame-the-victim politics that’s the hallmark of the Republican Party (though Patty Murray must be terrific at selling unpopular ideas). The bill does modify and correct some of the most egregious sequestration cuts, but this budget deal was played on the Republican side of the field.

Is this a thaw? Possibly, though there are significant snowstorms ahead. The immigration bill is stalled in the House and it would be a monumental achievement for a law that includes a path to citizenship to pass in that chamber. Then again, Boehner is not a dumb politician and understands that the Republicans need to begin courting the Hispanic vote, so maybe he can shepherd a modified version of the bill through his caucus. Of course, Democrats will jump all over any perceived weakness int he GOP approach and will run with it in 2014 and 2016.

The Senate provides another ice sheet for progress. Although the two sides came to an agreement to pause the confirm-a-thon until Monday, the Republicans are still smarting from having the filibuster rug pulled from under their Gucci-shoed feet. Two of the president’s DC Circuit nominees have been approved at the EPA Chief is up next. I see this as great progress and a future bulwark against Republican mischief via the courts in the years to come. “Young Democratic Judges” is a phrase I love hearing over and over.

So I’m not looking for a grand love-in on the floor of the legislative bodies over the course of the next year, but I do see a grudging push in the direction of getting things done, especially on the right. They can run against the health care law and probably keep the House and make inroads in the Senate in 2014. Their main concern, and a shiver up the spine, has to be the prospect of a Tea Party presidential candidate and the thought of defending 24 Senate seats in 2016. They won’t win the former contest and could do serious damage to themselves in the latter if they persist with the nonsense they’ve been peddling since 2010.

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Domestic Policies Education Healthcare News Politics teachers

Teaching, Unions and Social Justice

Giving of course my humble opinion, I believe we are at the high water mark of the anti-union, pro-market-force, evaluation-by-testing mania that’s gripped education. Or I could be seriously deluded and education is going through a profound change that will see radically different protocols for years to come.

Monday is the National Day of Action, where schools and community organizations are rallying to focus public attention on how to improve schools and promote social justice. There is a set of principles behind this, and it represents a concerted effort to fight back against the corporitization of schools that started on the far right, but has been moving to the center for a few years. Even President Obama supports the principle of more testing and teacher evaluation models that erroneously support it.

But a larger issue is also part of this debate, and that’s the role of unions and associations in public education. Perhaps it is true that teachers unions are facing a moment of truth and that they will need to adapt to the changing landscape rather that being able to pull the country back to a position that supports the idea of collective rights. Many people who should be supporting unions and what they’ve won for workers are in fact opposing them on the grounds that everyone should suffer in a free-agent world, not that they should demand the rights that unionized workers have. Employers have gained the upper hand in salary negotiations and with the coming of the new health care landscape, will most likely be able to stop offering insurance and tell employees to buy on the exchanges. Teachers generally have better protections because they have representation, but that’s led mostly to resentment, not mobilization by other industries.

Another challenge, and perhaps the biggest, is that the teaching staff population is getting younger. Far younger. Most teachers have been on the job for less than ten years. More importantly, they grew up in a nation that didn’t value unions. Yes, Ronald Reagan did say that he supported unions, but his actions in firing the air traffic controllers in 1981 is a far more potent reminder of the power of the president to shape the national agenda through actions rather than words. Most of the newest teachers were young during the 1980s and 90s when the anti-union rhetoric became louder and there were fewer steel workers, miners, and automobile workers to remind them what unions could do. The technology economy rendered union protections less important when the ethos was that you could create your own wealth. It’s still a powerful message. The problem is that it only applies to a few workers. Evidence is showing that many of these younger teachers are not as committed to unions or at least want them to change in ways that unions might not want to. The NEA and AFT will need to adapt, and at the moment it’s unclear what direction they will take.

The infusion of right wing money into the privatization and testing movement has also undermined effective education because it essentially said that teachers were to blame and that unions were anti-reform because they stood in the way of change. Yes they did, and for good reason; using tests to evaluate teachers and students is a terrible strategy. It saps energy from the system because teachers are tethered even more closely to a curriculum that defines what’s important to learn, what’s on the test, and discards everything else.

My subject, history (not social studies by the way; HISTORY) has been left in the educational dust for years as math and language arts skills have become the de facto national curriculum. Then science was added. I have no problem with this. But we are raising a nation of students who have limited historical knowledge because they have limited access to ideas because history is not a tested subject, therefore it must be less important. The same goes for the practical, industrial, visual and performing arts. This is the legacy of the corporate influence in education. Will the Common Core Standards help? We’ll see, but if they don’t, we’ll have wasted time that could have been better utilized.

Monday’s National Day of Action should be a day that reminds us of what effect the power of people can have when it’s channeled for social justice and education. These are the bedrocks of solid citizenship and point to a return of a society where all people, not just those who can pay for SAT Preparation classes, have access to a quality education and control over their own lives. The promise of corporatization and testing is a false hope that will leave students on the sidelines and teachers in a system that rejects the basic premise of effective schools that have a collegial staff and a collective ethic meant to educate every child.

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Domestic Policies Education News Politics

The Race to the Bottom

The know-nothings who decided that market-based reforms were just what the public schools needed can look to New Jersey for proof that what they have wrought is having its intended terrible effect on education. The corporate takeover is going according to plan. The worst victims are the students themselves.

One of the warnings that veteran educators tried to sound was that the growth of charter schools would create two levels of opportunity: one for parents who were proactive and worked to get their children into top charter schools, and the rest of the population that either couldn’t compete or was shut out and stuck in the now-depleted public system. That seems to be happening in Newark, if this article is accurate. Yes, there are some significant successes if you count the students who are thriving in schools that can skim the best off the top and can generally avoid recruiting the poorest and least-able students. Test scores are up. There are fewer disruptions.

But it’s a false success if it means that other students are denied that quality of education. Free market principles are great for businesses, stock markets, and competitions for talent and ability. It can be deadly, however, when it comes to education.

Public schools by law must educate all children. Think about that: all children. Not one exception. And they need to educate them so they will be productive members of society. What the know-nothings have done is to criticize the public schools as unwieldy, rife with union activism, and failing our children. What they’ve created are academies that are exempt from the public school’s rules and worse, have created winners and losers. That’s not what education is about. As a matter of fact, it runs against every rational, reasonable and moral imperative that undergirds an education system in a compassionate society. It’s wonderful that more students are doing well and are thriving in these new schools. For the losers, though, it’s a life sentence.

As for the teachers, the know-nothings created a new evaluation system  that is supposed to weed out the less effective educators from the classroom. What they’re created in reality is a time-wasting, money-sucking, mathematically-skewed nightmare that is taking money from school programs and budgets that can best be used in the classroom, and not on software that shows faculty members what an effective lesson looks like. We already know that.

With the Common Core Standards breathing down our necks, educators need more resources that students can use to learn, such as technology that works, interactive readings and mathematics lessons, and more time to plan collaboratively with teachers of other disciplines, grades, and expertise.

What we’re getting is a system that requires teachers to spend hours writing or rewriting lesson plans to meet the new guidelines, to meet with administrators to coordinate scoring rubrics, and to defend what we’ve always done in every other year, but now have to write down. If the goal was to create evaluations that mimicked the business world, then congratulations; it’s just as ineffective as your average corporate annual review.

Again, it’s the students who will really pay for the damage in time, in money and in lost resources. I give this new teacher ratings system about five years before the corporate world and the Koch brothers move on to something else they can try to ruin. Until then, the race to the bottom will be quick.

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