Friday, June 04, 2010

John Kline's Failing Grade In Education

StarTribune article that touts Congressman John Kline's record as working for cough, 'bipartisan' cough, agreement regarding the House Education Committee. If by 'bipartisan' the StarTribune means Kline wants to strip teachers from collective bargaining and promote charter schools that don't have the same standards as public schools, then yeah, I get it.

Kline who was named the ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee has the sole goal of leading the fight against the Employee Free Choice Act, which seeks to make unionization easier and break federal controls over education with more failed charter schools? Charter schools are nonsectarian public schools of choice that operate with freedom from many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools. In addition to poor academic performance, there have been many cases of financial and administrative failures. From USAToday: 'Independently run, publicly financed charter schools perform no better than comparable public schools, long-awaited federal data suggested Tuesday',

John Kline along with Mark Kennedy and John Boehner held meetings with Minnesota's school administrators to promote NCLB 'no child left behind'. Kline, who admits to promoting 'no child left behind', now says he soured on it after fielding persistent complaints from educators and parents....which just happen to coincided with Bush leaving office...hmmm...And even though he says he no longer supports NCLB, one of it's main tenet was establishment of charter schools encouraging states to hand over failing schools to commercial companies and nonprofit community groups that want to run them as charter schools. Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO, finds that charter schools significantly underperform overall compared to the traditional public schools they are supposed to improve on.

Once again, John Kline is still supporting failed policies to promote his own private agenda of braking unions and public schools.  Instead of offering real solutions to education issues in America, John Kline would have us believe that less federal funding, more teacher oversight, less unionization, and more failed privatization will help.  Kline hasn't been paying attention during his lessons on critical thinking regarding the failed lessons of NCLB and charter schools, no wonder NEA gives Congressman Kline an 'F' in education.

1 comment:

Minnesota Central said...

FYI : This week, Rep. John Kline (R, MN) Ranking Member on the House Education & Labor Committee held a teleconference with two dozen Orthodox Jewish leaders from a half dozen states, including NY, NJ, PA, FL, and CA.
Kline discussed federal funding and tax credits issues for private education, a major concern for the Orthodox Jewish community. Kline also took questions from the participants, and used the conference to point-out once again how Congressional Republicans can be more of a help on many of the issues facing the Orthodox community.

The Jewish leaders expressed appreciation that Republicans, hailing from districts with smaller pockets of Jewish voters, were making an active effort to reach out to the Orthodox Jewish community. Republican Congressional leaders have urged further discussion and invited the Jewish leaders to Washington to further the important duologue.