Why I Support Tom Torlakson,
I, and the Sacramento Progressive Alliance supports the
re-election of Tom Torlakson for
California Superintendent of Public Instruction.
If you believe in public education, if you think preparing
students to live and work in a democracy is an important role for state
government- then this election is important.
The election will set the direction of school improvement for the next
four years.
You and I have a choice.
It is not a perfect choice, but the options are stark. We can continue
with the current improvements in k-12 education (Torlakson), or we can move the
state down the road of test driven, corporate neoliberal model of schooling
(Tuck). Wisconsin, Indiana,
Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, are following this
route- and their schools are failing.
Current scores on achievement tests for California students
are too low. This is primarily a result
of California’s underinvestment in children, its lack of support for children
in poverty, and California’s low investment in
k-12 schools for the last thirty years.
We can not improve the schools without improving funding for
schools and support for children living in poverty. That argument being made by Marshall Tuck is
a fraud.
Tuck is probably not
a bad person. However Wall Street and
Silicone Valley billionaires are spending millions to elect Tuck because he
supports a corporate takeover of public schools to make profits- extreme
profits- for private corporations. This
is a selling out of the California Dream! Electing Tuck is a part of a nation
wide effort to scapegoat teachers and to undermine their due process
rights. This campaign is an integral
part of the neoliberal project to curtail and to restrict unions.
Marshall Tuck promotes the federal educational efforts to
use more high-stakes , standardized testing and to use the results of these
flawed tests to evaluate teachers and schools.
He has made a major campaign issue of supporting the Vergara decision
that would limit the right of a teacher to a hearing before being dismissed and
would increase the time for a probationary teacher to gain
permanent status from two years up to as much as ten years. Tuck has fervently promoted this false road
to reform while not joining with
teachers and other groups to improve funding for k-12 education. In other
words, to Tuck lack of money is not the problem- the problem is teachers. There is no significant data supporting this
viewpoint. It is a cornerstone of neoliberal ideology.
The Tuck campaign is an effort by many anti - union philanthropists and a
group of Democrats, to gain control of this office . They have over 4.7 million dollars for
this campaign. Corporate advocates want
Tuck in office to support the anti tenure decisions and anti teacher due
process procedures of the Vergara v. California case.
According to the Torlakson web site, major funders of Tuck
include:
"$500,000 from Carrie Walton Penner, whose family made its fortune
running anti-union, low-wage paying Wal-Mart. The Walmart 1% website reports
that Penner's biography includes serving on the board of the Alliance for
School Choice - a school voucher advocacy group.
$300,000 from John D. Arnold, a former Enron trader and funder of
efforts to persuade governments to cut public employee pensions.
$1 million from corporate CEO Eli Broad. He drew statewide
attention when it was revealed he had donated $500,000 to a group with
ties to the Koch Brothers to defeat Proposition 30 and pass Proposition
32.
Here's how Parents Across America, a public school advocacy group,
described Broad's approach: "Broad and his foundation believe that
public schools should be run like a business. One of the tenets of his
philosophy is to produce system change by 'investing in disruptive force.'
Continual reorganizations, firings of staff, and experimentation to create
chaos or 'churn' is believed to be productive and beneficial, as it weakens the
ability of communities to resist change."
For background on the financing of the corporate “reform” crowd see
http://choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com/2014/10/profits-for-corporate-school-reformers.html
If elected, Marshall Tuck would appoint a series of “corporate reform” advocates to key policy
positions in the California Dept. of Education, this is what Arne Duncan did in
the U.S. Dept of Education to create Race to the Top, an extension of the
effort on testing, and several other not helpful school policies.
Tom Torlakson, the
incumbent, has long recognized the need for improving school funding. As a legislator he authored the Quality
Education Investment Act which brought three billion dollars to schools, and he
was a leading campaigner for Proposition 30 in 2012 that has restored school
funding. Currently he supports extension of Prop. 30 taxes which has
begun to
restore funding to California
schools after the devastation of the national economic crisis when over
30,000 teachers were dismissed in this state. Schools in other states without
new taxes currently continue to reel from austerity budget cuts. See for example Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, North
Carolina, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and more. Tuck avoids responding to questions as to
whether he supports extending the
current funding sources.
Tom Torlakson continues to work to fund the schools. Tuck is selling the snake oil message that we
don’t need new funds, just “new thinking”.
This corporate campaign of misinformation is a reason that Michelle Rhee
and the Sacramento Bee among others support Tuck. Rhee can not vote in this race as it was
recently revealed that her legal residence is in Tennessee, not in Sacramento. It is unknown
where she pays taxes, if at all.
Some readers may know that I spent the prior 35 years working to improve
school opportunities for low income and minority students ( now they are the
majority of students). See my book, Choosing
Democracy: a Practical Guide to Multicultural Education. Torlakson has not done enough to improve
our schools. However, his opponent,
Marshall Tuck is much worse.
Education Week has noted that influential advocacy groups that generally
oppose an agenda to support public schools and classroom teachers – including
Democrats for Education Reform, Stand for Children, and StudentsFirst – are
throwing large amounts of money into specific races. Right wing organizations backed by the Koch
brothers and Karl Rove, along with the corporate sponsors listed above, are significantly out-spending teachers unions
in these races – including
in California. These are the folks that wish to dismantle our public education
system and to create a private, for profit,
education system for themselves. These are the enemies of public schools and of
democracy. Marshall Tuck is their candidate in California. He must be defeated.
As you consider your vote, please consider carefully the role of the
corporate school reform crowd in financing and advancing one candidate. Please join me in voting for Tom Torlakson.
Dr. Duane E. Campbell
Democracy and Education Institute
No comments:
Post a Comment