CorrenteCeci n'est pas une caption.
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National Education Association:
[W]e cannot support yet another layer of federal mandates that have little or no research base of success and that usurp state and local government's responsibilities for public education.
Who knew the NEA was full of racist teabaggers? There couldn't be any other reason to doubt Obama, could there?
... keep the heat on!
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Per capita health care spending (2007):
United States: $7290
Switzerland: $4417
France: $3601
United Kingdom: $2992
Average of OECD developed nations: $2964
Italy: $2686
Japan: $2581
-- Bob Somerby
The text of HR676 (Medicare For All) as PDF (30 pages). The FAQ. Compare HR3200 with HR676.
Medicare for All would save $350 billion a year (study in New England Journal of Medicine).
In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program*." -- Bill Moyers.
* Medicare For All.
Contact lambert_strether [dot] corrente [at] yahoo [dot] com (lambert strether) for all your pony needs. Overt and covert displays of realism ("cynicism") available at customer option.
The Village
is the few thousand people inside the Beltway who control the political life of the country; they are responsible for managing the Overton Window, for example. They are thoroughly bi-partisan. They all know each other, and they all fuck each other (both senses). The term "Village" (my term was Versailles on the Potomac) captures their provincialism, their pettiness, and how small (all senses) they really are. I believe Village is also the name of a horror movie that Digby had in mind.
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Incidentally, what does real education reform look like?
It's been so long since we've seen it that I think I've forgotten.
Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
Luckily, for us, though, Alfie Kohn remembers
the difference between education "reform" and real education reform: here and here.
Every apathetic citizen is a silent enlistee in the cause of inverted totalitarianism.—Sidney Wolin
real education "reform" isn't so hard.
the biggest challenge to libruls and progressives is admitting that at the level of school administration, there's a lot of bloat and corruption. fix that, and a lot of other problems are solved. i will just go on and say it: the reason we don't talk about this more often has to do with our unwillingness to criticize union people and brown people, who are unfortunately and frequently "the problem" at the admin level.
educators already know, have proven, can tell us, "what works." mostly, it's pretty simple. don't make "testing" central to education. spend money on educational resources that are effective, like, duh, books and computers. restart the conversation on what degree of parental involvement is needed, and change the social environment so that can get changed, esp for the poor.
as i work in education for a living, i have to say this: do you have any doubt that rich people do a good job of educating their kids? (for all they often don't take advantage of such, cf. Chimpy) but the Model for Educational Success is well established, no one in the business doesn't understand what it is. i can design a curriculum, right now, that will educate and stimulate 90% of american students and give them the tools they need to success in life and more. i'm not alone. it's a question of getting serious about education. which we're not, in this Age of Celebrating Stupid.
[long boring wax about teevee and celebrity worship and how it makes people want to be Stupid]
this age of celebrating squid
that's how i read it the first time anyway. we could do worse than to have our kids worship, say, pharyngula.
Oh, pharyngula! surely you jest?
Don't get me started...
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We can't afford not to have single-payer!
I don't agree
It was shown that the charter schools here in Michigan, who like to brag about their stripped-down administration and "business" method of delivering education, on average, don't do significantly better than the public districts in which they exist.
This is not to say that many public school districts administration aren't bloated, and that that doesn't create a problem, but I'm not so sure this is about the delivery of education as it is other factors.
On a more meta level of things, I think American children, particularly in urban districts, need to be reminded that we're no longer simply competing with suburban and/or upscale districts for economic empowerment, but other school districts around the world. I think that'd go a long way in beginning to set a high standard for education. Growing up in, and around, minority-majority urban school districts, I find that the communities are often extremely insular even for those that turnout kids for university spots, and I think that hurts students mightly. The president made what I thought was a very important point when he said that dropping out of school isn't just giving up on yourself but giving up on the nation. If you know you're competing with not just a kid in Grosse Pointe, but one in Beijing, as well, you'll hopefully give a second thought to your studies.
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
Somerby, who seems to know...
a lot more about urban education reform than I do has made me chary of claims for quick fixes to city schools. Personally, I'm not kneejerk when it comes to unions, "brown people," or charter schools.
But I can't imagine that good things will come out of the Democratic president pushing Republican frames and tactics in the name of "education reform."