Jim Horn with Schools Matter has graciously allowed me to reprint his post dated September 14, 2010.
Love the prose, Jim.
Dora
DC Voters Repudiate Education Deform
The prognosticators on CNN like David Gergen and Paul Begala are already shaking their heads and clucking about the smashing of the Fenty/Rhee front for the corporate education machine. Begala is urging the audience to see the big money propaganda film, “Waiting for Superman,” a documentary made by a director who gets totally snookered by producers who are funded by the billionaire boys’ club. Gergen nods, yep. Another of the talking heads, a black one, notes that Fenty lost the black vote, even though he was trying to “save the schools.” All three nod. And so it goes.
Will the pundits ever ask the voters why they soundly rejected the arrogant, hateful, anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-parent, anti-public school approach to reform that sees the solution to urban education as cheap charters with uncertified white short-term teachers and no libraries or services for students with special needs? Cheap charters with high-priced CEOs running them, cheap charters that are based on a no excuses total compliance anti-cultural model of penal pedagogy that treats children as potential test scores who must be behaviorally and psychologically modified. Will the pundits ask the parents and the teachers and the children, all who want a say in how their public school run and their monies are spent, rather than being treated like enemies that have to be conquered?
Will Mr. Gray talk with the voters to see what kind of public school the public wants, rather than reporting to the Broad Foundation and the Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation? Parents and teachers don’t want schools to prepare mind-scrubbed test-takers and obsequious drones for the corporate state. Teachers want to be treated like respected professionals, and parents want to be treated like the people who love their children and who pay your salary, Mr. Gray. Mayor Gray. I like that. Let’s see what you can do with it. I’m hoping your people are preparing a pink slip right now for one of the stars of that new documentary on that popular new education reform movement in DC.
Last updated 12:35 am with this:
26,915 now. Gray 56.37%, Fenty 42.11%
Goodnight, Michelle.
Also, check out this morning’s post by Jim Horn
Seattle Education 
I am white and I have lived in the district for 40 years. My three step children all attended DCPS. All three bear the scars, Spanish teachers who didn’t know Spanish, English teachers who didn’t grade papers. So for people to act like DCPS were better before the “evil troika” came in finding warehouses of books undistributed and teachers who didn’t teach.
I voted for Mr. Fenty, not because I’m a racist-as all the whites who live in the district have been described-but because I thought he was better for the city. Mr. Gray is a really nice man, whether he is tough enough to take on parts of the city whose interest is in the status quo remains to be seen.
I was insulted by Mr. Molloy’s exultant column in which he implied that every one who voted for Fenty is a hate gfilled racist and I am insulted column that supporters of Fenty/Rhee hate Mr. Gray and want him to fail.
It is columns like his describing DC as “the caldron of hatred” which will make it harder for Mr. Gray to govern the city. I wish Mr. Gray well. Anyone who cares about the city must.