One hard political fact [repost]: Obama the Worst Education President in Modern History

Below is what I posted about two weeks ago. The Democratic Party seems utterly oblivious at the national and at the state level to the support they are losing every time the President opens his mouth on education and "Race to the Top in Particular." The clumsy pandering to teachers in the first line of the State of the Union was hardly sufficient to offset the obtuse comments about "successes."

If the Democratic Party in Michigan can't respond in some way or detach itself from this national lead they should save themselves some money in November 2014:

Those in K-12 public education and those in higher education (outside the top 20 or 25 institutions who are simply too big and too rich to be buffeted by any political winds) will need to adjust quickly to one simple disturbing  political fact  if they are going to have any hope of even slowing the broad and sweeping threat of education "reform" that promises to destroy the most precious of American institutions.

And that fact is not  that some very rich and powerful folks -- the Waltons, the Kochs, the Broads, and the Gates Foundation -- all consider them enemies.

K-12 teachers, unions, university faculty, administrators and any who believe in public education will have to admit to themselves that President Barack Obama is the worst President on education in modern American history.

Based solely on his appointed and continued support of Chicago basketball and Harvard pal, Arne Duncan, and Duncan's continued faith in high stakes testing, school closures, and attacks on teachers http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/01/14/arne-duncan-school-expectations-are-too-low-in-the-un... as a means to "reform" education, Obama's administration would have to be considered an abject failure.

When one considers, in addition to Duncan,  the  ill-conceived "Race to the Top" legislation that has allowed so much damage to be done to schools in Michigan and elsewhere, it is impossible to call this administration's actions any thing other than tragic in scope.

And history surely will record it that way.

This assertion, I know, flies in the face of all political affect, all sentiment, all hope, but it is nonetheless true.

Obama's election for most universities and schools was, of course, a celebratory event.

Not only had the Presidential race barrier been broken sooner than any hoped, the man seemed as "Professorial" as former Princeton Professor and President Woodrow Wilson -- who made the leap from education to world stage in a grand and quick fashion. Obama's intellect, academic achievement, and detached, cerebral manner seemed, too, to have paved the path to his success.

For many in the academic world, then, he was and still is the "messiah" in a way mocked by those on the right.

But he stands poised to do now to higher education -- something he started before the Obamacare website debacle -- what Duncan has done and will continue to do (with the President's unyielding support) to K-12 education. Indeed, it will be a great irony of the year that just as the potential successes and value of Obamacare are becoming visible to close watchers, the President is setting down another path of disaster. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/22/fact-sheet-president-s-plan-make-college-more-...

He is getting set to wage "reform" war on universities and schools -- other than Harvard and Yale, of course -- that do not meet the political and profiteering winds of reform. At his education summit you will hear much about data and career readiness and on and on -- http://swampland.time.com/2014/01/16/obama-to-host-education-leaders/.

But if you want to get a sense of the Obama/Duncan disaster in full attend to the rhetoric Obama allows for socio-economic factors in academic achievement in the coming days and, then, compare that rhetoric to the complete and nonsensical disavowal of socio-economic factors by Secretary Duncan.

In short, for elementary schools in Chicago (Mayor Rahm!), race and poverty are supposedly non-issues. For Harvard and Yale and higher education those factors suddenly will be meaningful.

The profound disconnect registers the utter failure  of the Obama administration to understand education and, in particular, education reform in America.

And educators and education of all stripes are simply going to have to come to terms with that soon. You are right to go after Duncan -- but Duncan is Obama's Secretary of Education for the duration. And that is a fact. Own it.