Arne Duncan Praises Astroturf E4E

The best thing to happen to New Orleans was hurricane Isaac and Educators 4 Excellence. ---@ArneDuncan (satire)

WHEN EDUCATION Secretary Arne Duncan praised Hurricane Katrina a few years ago as the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans--because it enabled the closure of most public schools and their replacement with charter schools--he was forced to apologize.  --- Socialist Worker, Aug. 29, 2012 (not satire)

U.S. Dept. of Ed Secretary Arne Duncan mentions E4E in back to school remarks --- E4E bulletin (not satire but should be)

E4E logo

Astroturf organization E4E is crowing about Arne Duncan noticing them. Yes, as E4E tries to buy its way into schools but fails to fool many teachers into believing E4E is interested in real reform - class size is a no, no, while every single aspect of ed deform is Aplus – the powers that be like Duncan and the NYCDOE keep trying to pump life into them (E4E Buys Its Way Into Schools Using Tweed Contacts). The goal of course is to try to undermine the teacher unions.

E4E certainly doesn't want to even mention the impact on poverty and what activist teachers like those in MORE are doing to bring back the conversation about what this country needs to do about it, something E4E and allies want to bury.

Susan Ohanian has a blurb that counter the E4E/deformer line. Here is an effort to push a deeper conversation about poverty into the mainstream political debate.

Talk About Poverty: Mariana Chilton's Questions for Obama and Romney
Greg Kaufmann
The Nation blog
2012-08-24
http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1417

And E4E pals @StudentsFirstNY faced a protest by real students:
Channel 12 news video: NYC students protest @StudentsFirstNY policies & their honoring of anti-immigrant pol http://goo.gl/433Jf

I'm always glad to help my friends at E4E out. They are so excited to report the news as they blared in the headline of their weekly report:

U.S. Dept. of Ed Secretary Arne Duncan mentions E4E in back to school remarks

August 29, 2012 Last week, Arne Duncan stopped by Perry Hall High School (Baltimore, MD) to talk with more than 800 Baltimore County teachers. In his message, Arne mentioned Educators 4 Excellence as an example of how, "As a country, we’re beginning to change those dynamics and teachers are leading the change–through their unions or with grassroots groups like Teach Plus and Educators 4 Excellence."
Watch the clip below (start at 17:31):

Arne certainly knows how to distort things. In Baltimore, over 50% of the teachers were rated unsatisfactory after a new evaluation system (supported by E4E and Duncan - and I bet the union too) was put into place. Do you think E4E will ever get that most teachers do not consider Duncan a friend of teachers?

Duncan and Co. have already wrecked public education in several cities. Detroit's ravaged economy and declining population were as a pretext for an aggressive bipartisan assault that's already led to the closure of 100 schools. Today, Detroit has two school systems--the Detroit Public Schools and a state-run Education Achievement Authority--that compete to attract students, with 35 percent of Detroit kids attending charter schools. In Philadelphia, school authorities, backed by Democratic Mayor Michael Nutter, are seeking to dismantle the entire school system, handing operations over to an array of nonprofit organizations, charter school management groups and academic institutions. ---- Socialist Worker

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The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.