Obama Makes Me Cry

I was having a great Obama day on Tuesday. The family was out with the dog, I felt so happy and proud to see our first Black first family in the limelight. And then I read Sam Dillon's NYT article about education : "Education Standards Likely to See Toughening"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/education/15educ.html

And I wanted to cry. I began to ask myself why I had spent all those hours during election weekend canvassing, calling, hoping, asking the electoral college gods to spur fortune, "that strumpet", to our favor. Why, as an educator, should I vociferously fight for Mr. Obama, if this is what we get:

Arne Duncan saying he wants to be "a catalyst for the development of national academic standards."

What happened to local control, community involvement, and autonomy?

What comes out of this article is that Arne and the Obama administration are pursuing "more of the same failed bush administration policies" to fix education. By the way does my quoted rhetoric sound familiar to you? If it does, it's because that's the rhetoric Obama used to call McCain the same as Bush in the election. Irony.

What's really dissapointing is the cheer-leading sils on the so-called progressive left that just love president Obama's plan.

The Center for American Progress: " 'They’re putting money and ideas behind what they think are the changes needed in public education,” Ms. Brown said. 'That signals their seriousness about major reform.' "

Randi Weingarten, of the so-called stick in the mud unions said she would "give the new administration the benefit of the doubt". The unions rocked it for Obama in the campaign! They should be all over his ass, making sure his education plan is bold, new, and progressive, instead of boring, old, ineffective, and not good for students! Sheesh.

Congressman Sestak was on campus on Monday and he loved Obama's education plan to death.

Listen, I love Obama as much as the next guy, but we need some people to stick up to him and tell him what is what. I thought the benefit of having a moderate democrat in office was so that we could push him to the left.