I’ve heard from more than a few teachers in the past hour since I posted about the Rodel Teacher Council’s presentation to the State Board of Education. Many were unaware of what this very small group of Delaware teachers have been up to and how it could impact the future of their profession. I wanted to follow-up on that article with this set of “policy briefs” created by this teacher council. What could happen is this corporate education reform hocus-pocus is all of a sudden written into Delaware state code without anyone the wiser. This would be done by our General Assembly who Rodel has been making nicey-nice with in the past year. I would strongly urge all the local teacher unions and the Delaware State Education Association to get on top of this as soon as humanly possible and find out what the hell some of the teachers in their districts are doing with all this in the name of Rodel. I’ve been warning about these possibilities for a long time. But it will take much more than me to stop this from becoming the new reality.
For months, I’ve heard Delaware Governor John Carney talk about “public and private partnerships”. Funny how the Rodelians mention this very same thing in their policy briefs issued last November. If you think for one second John Carney is not under Rodel’s thumb, think again!
I’ve written about “Social Impact Bonds” before. Where companies come in and essentially make bets on student outcomes. Now we see “Innovation Funding”, also known as crowdsourcing, where communities “invest” in schools so someone can make a whole lot of money. As well, the state won’t have to pay for it. But all that comes with a price. The future generation of students who will be fully immersed in this nonsense will become nothing more than drones to the corporations as true local decision-making becomes a thing of the past. Meanwhile, all the “smart” and “wealthy” kids will be attending private schools paid for, in part, by school vouchers.
The below documents were created last November but they are making their rounds with the decision-makers in Delaware education. This is Paul Herdman’s ultimate vision folks. Everything else has just been a sideshow compared to this. They can come out with all the pretty and colorful presentations they want. But as long as people keep swallowing their pills, this will continue. It will never change until people demand our Department of Education, our legislators, and our schools stop adopting Rodel’s corporate greed-driven drivel. And for the love of all that is holy, will education stakeholders who really should know better please get off the Vision Coalition? All you are doing is prolonging the existence of Rodel. DSEA, DASA, and DSBA need to inform all those who pay dues to them of every single aspect of these policies and let their members decide how to deal with this. Decisions like this should not be brought forth by 22 Delaware teachers speaking for the entire teaching force in Delaware.
The Season Of Myths 