After March 4 Protests End, Obama Makes His Move...

For many, if not most, of the hundreds of thousands who protested in defense of public education on March 4, there was a sincere belief that, if they shouted loud enough, Obama would listen.

On Saturday, Obama responded to these heartfelt pleas and demands: “Drop dead!”

It came in the form of proposals to “reform” the so-called No Child Left Behind Act passed during the George W. Bush regime. These “reforms,” like others coming from the White House these days, do nothing to reverse the corporatist attack on public education. On the contrary, they take them further than Bush and the Republican Congress could have ever gotten away with.

The centerpiece of Obama’s “reform” is doing away with the section of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 that awarded funding based on population, and replacing it with grants that schools and school districts would have to compete for.

Schools that fail to meet arbitrary “benchmarks” will lose much of their federal funding to other districts or private competitors, like charter and parochial schools.

This plan is the bastard child of Obama’s “Race To The Top” privatization scheme. It would essentially expand what the RaTTT plan did, which was reward school districts that “transformed” their poor-performing schools by attacking teachers and workers.

All of the worst elements of NCLB and RaTTT will be combined in this new scheme. “Teaching to the test” will continue to be the standard for schools, even though it has been thoroughly discredited. Meanwhile, the goal of 100-percent literacy in reading and math by 2014 is to be dropped — an admission that the Democrats have no problem condemning millions of poor and working-class youth to functional illiteracy.

In its place is a 2020 goal of “college or career readiness” for all graduates. Given that, for most working-class youth, “career” these days means going from one mindless low-wage job to another until they die (or end up in prison), this “goal” is particularly sick.

Finally, schools are to be ranked according to “success,” with the bottom 5 percent facing shutting down, replacing at least half their staff, firing the principal, or “conversion” and privatization. The next lowest 5 percent would be placed on warning.

These schools would not be allowed to receive funds from RaTTT or its successor.

Central to the corporatist plan to dismantle public education is the intensifying attack on teachers and teachers’ unions.

Obama’s support for the mass firing of teachers in Central Falls, R.I. (which is on a par only with Ronald Reagan’s attack on the PATCO strike in 1981), for the mass school closings in Detroit and, most recently, in Kansas City, Mo. (where 28 of 61 schools were closed last Wednesday by the school board), and for mass layoffs of teachers across the country, has been a signal for all elements of the exploiting and oppressing classes to demonize and attack teachers.

The capitalists and their “middle class” managers know that Obama could get away with pushing this race to privatize through because of the relationship between the Democratic Party and the business unions.

The officials of the two main teachers’ unions, the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association, may talk of how “disappointed” and “saddened” they are, but they will not lift a finger to oppose or fight against Obama’s plan.

Indeed, they’ve already committed to spend millions to get these same corporatist Democrats elected this coming November.

The fight to defend public education is a fight against Obama and Congressional Democrats. It is, thus, both economic (in terms of securing adequate funding) and political.

The Workers Party and the Workers’ International Industrial Union fight for the restoration of public education, massive increases in funding, rehiring and expanded hiring of teachers, abolition of charter schools, smaller class sizes, and reconstruction and renovation of schools as part of a wider fight in the interests of all workers.