The Most Important Race on the Ballot is the One No One is Talking About
http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/
By Jim Miller
This fall in San Diego the Peters vs. DeMaio and Kim vs. Cate showdowns are getting all the attention, but my pick for the most important race on the ballot is one that nobody is taking note of at the statewide level—and that’s a problem. The race in question is for . . . (wait for it) . . . State Superintendent of Public Instruction!
O.K. I know, Superintendent of Public Instruction races don’t usually get peoples’ hearts pumping, but if you are dismayed by the full-court-press assault on teachers, public education, and democratic local control over schools, you should help re-elect Tom Torlakson, who has been steadfast in his support for quality public education in California.
Indeed if you care about the direction of education in California this is a crucial race because it will make a real difference. The contest between the incumbent, Torlakson, and his opponent, Marshall Tuck, is a battle royal over who owns the future of our schools: the public or corporate interests.
Torlakson has a master’s degree in education and has taught at the high school and community college levels. He knows education from the inside out and has been a strong supporter of excellent public schools both as a legislator and in his current position as Superintendent.
What Tuck does offer is the same old stale union bashing that serves as cover for a robust privatization agenda.
Of central importance, Torlakson also understands the need to increase school funding and was an active advocate for Proposition 30 that helped save our state’s schools from certain devastation. He has not joined the “blame the teachers” chorus sponsored by the corporate sector, preferring instead to work with educators to improve our schools for our kids.
Torlakson is also a strong believer in lifelong learning, from early childhood to higher education, and has worked to increase career and technical options for California’s students as well. At a time when we see destructive, pitched battles over education in places like Illinois, New Jersey, and elsewhere around the country, Torlakson has offered an alternative model of cooperation and collaboration that is far more likely to get results than the slash and burn tactics favored by his opponent.
Torlakson’s opponent, Marshall Tuck, is a former Wall Street investment banker who now works as a CEO for a charter school company and has no classroom teaching experience or any expertise whatsoever with regard to education. What Tuck does offer is the same old stale union bashing that serves as cover for a robust privatization agenda.
Tuck failed to support Proposition 30 and his major backer, Eli Broad, donated $500,000 to try to defeat 30 and pass Proposition 32. Although he is running as a Democrat, Tuck is really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Indeed, as the LA Progressive noted back during the primary:
Many of us hoped that when right-wing business banker Marshall Tuck was ignominiously forced to step down as the “CEO” of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS), that we might have heard the last of Tuck altogether. Tragically, the Eli Broad-trained neoliberal operative was preparing for a run for California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction seat. Despite never having taught a day in his life, nor having any background in pedagogy or child development, Tuck entered the race knowing that he could count on mountains of cash from the corporate education plutocracy aiming to — in the words of Tuck’s fellow arch-reactionary Grover Norquist — “drown [public education] in the bathtub”.
That’s why Tuck’s big backers opposed Proposition 30 because in their estimation, fostering austerity and budget cuts in the state’s education system is an effective way to open public education in California to “disruption” and piecemeal privatization.
So really Tuck’s agenda is not a particularly popular one in California or even in the nation at large, as the most recent opinion survey on education shows an overwhelming majority of people supporting both public schools and teachers. But the “D” next to Tuck’s name and the millionaires and billionaires behind his candidacy make him dangerous. In fact, current polling shows Tuck and Torlakson neck and neck with a huge number of undecided voters.
In deeply blue California, one would think Tuck would be having trouble, but in an off-year election, really bad things can happen particularly if rich folks are spending lots of money to ensure their desired outcomes.
But we should not allow apathy and/or ignorance to win the day when it comes to how we educate our kids and whether our public schools stay genuinely public. So let’s keep a strong advocate for public schools in office and not get fooled by a Manchurian candidate. Please tell your friends, family, and neighbors to re-elect Tom Torlakson. It really matters.
And don’t forget Betty Yee—another under-the-radar progressive champion.
And don’t forget Betty Yee—another under-the-radar progressive champion. Betty Yee is running for State Controller, and she is precisely the kind of Democrat we should be supporting as the Democratic Party is increasingly being colonized by corporate interests (and Manchurian candidates like Marshall Tuck).
As she noted recently:
You see, Democrats, we are just as guilty of getting sucked into the influence of money and power about which we criticize Republicans. It is time we have politics shaped by our values, rather than our values shaped by politics. If not, I believe Democrats will continue to lose ground with respect to the electorate. … Democrats, when are we going to recognize and rise up against being bullied by the system that equates power with money? When are we going to rise up to redefine power as the ability to deliver results to the people? [We] need to redefine our values so everyone has a seat at the table, not just those with the biggest bankroll.
Right on. Yee recently beat John Perez’s insider primary candidacy and would bring a real independent, populist voice to a statewide office where she would not just manage the state’s checkbook but influence economic, environmental, educational, and labor policy. We need more people like her in California politics. Vote for Betty Yee.
Jim Miller
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If they privatize the public school system, the next thing will be student loan debt taken on by K-12 children’s parents in order to attend a better school. It won’t just be college students paying to go to school.
Thank you for this insight. Students here have a hard enough uphill effort to get a quality education that can lead to college they can afford. Anybody who will make it harder by chipping away at their public education standards making it harder then for California students to compete in state (with wealthy out of state comers), let alone out of state is really bad, scary.
Private “colleges” that are barely accredited and only seem to exist to cash in on veteran’s benefits will find a partner in Tuck then if he gets the chance to gut much public K-12. I went to school in Georgia from ’65 to ’71 and ’76 to ’79 and take my word for it, piss-poor education for whatever reason is bad for all. Of course in Georgia the rush to replace public school with all kinds of “Christian Academy this or that” was to keep segregation. Now look at Georgia. I hope Torlakson has the $ and support. (The students in Denver who won’t stand for watered down education their Board has tried to serve this year, fundamentalist literature instead of world lit, etc. makes me hopeful. Our students here should settle for nothing less either).
Originally my comment was going to be much different until some of us researched these two candidates a little more.
Torlakson is the one to choose and without going into great detail about him as a lot is said in the article by Mr. Miller lets discuss the future of education and why who we choose for any position in education is dire and extremely crucial.
A war is continuing to be waged on US Education as whole. After the sixties education became the view of the “next great oil well”. Endless boundless amounts of money to be handed out by our Federal Tax Dollars. The great next investment to be ear marked for candidates with the next great technological scam. To make corporations seen as the great hero’s was the trick and thus was launched great efforts by many to undo public education as a reliable means of affordable education. As such this undertaking went better than planned. Schools infrastructures like electrical wiring’s, lack of books, lack of teachers, underfunded classrooms, plumbings with rusted pipes, the lack of care by certain district leaders became the norm and notice how hard it is to change the hold of district leaderships.
So Corporations started donating to school districts and helped elect new leaders. Then somewhere along the way Charter Schools became the next great bucket of answers. Some Charters are good and others are just money making machines.
But now is the problem, its out of control. New technologies are a priority and as an emerging product line its urgent that these new untested and unproven technologies be installed in classrooms. All of which have failed and children have gotten hurt.
This is where I question Tucks loyalties. Tuck never worked in public education but made a great profitable Charter and there lies the difference. Education was never designed to be controlled by politics or corporations. Charters rely on for profit companies to donate to them with corporate strings attached.
Public education was originally thought of as a philosophy that went something like this. A teacher can make good money helping parents teach their children to read, write, do math, science, history, art, biology, chemistry…etc. the list being nearly endless. The funding originally was to ensure schools received monies needed to stay in operation based on the knowledge that a citizen can’t contribute if a citizen is uneducated.
Now the fight is no longer about whether the citizen is educated, but how the citizen is educated, and by who, whose going to control what type of education the citizen is going to receive? This is the fight of today and looks to be the fight over the future of education.
Since when are our children considered property of the mineral industry? Since when is our children’s intellect the property of prospectors, investors, and shock and awe industrialists/lobbyists? Since education became recognized as an American Institution? What, this gives lobbyists and education professionals direct access to student records and to speak one on one with students without the permission or knowledge of parents and district leaders? Its been happening. I know this as do many other parents and teachers. But stopping this process of direct access to children is almost impossible. But can be made a reality if a leader can step up and return the public education institution back into its original financial design and put an end to this money scam making machine that allows war to be waged on our children and the future of American Education. As it is we’ve got books banned in education and the list is in the thousands? Why? Because education is seen as a combination of church and political niceness and not a place of truth or controversial dialogs that instill critical thinking? So this leaves new books to be written so parents don’t have to be offended that their child is learning a reality, a truth, or a politically charged topic about the parents/families role in American History. This has been the ongoing push in book banning. Hitler did this and the same trend of Hitler’s legacy is happening now…for over thirty years and continuing.
Church’s don’t fund public schools, but their belief and political arms do decide what books are “ok to teach with”. There is no difference here where the dark side takes control of a neutral teaching facility and decides what books are ok to teach with so there is no threat to the controlling/occupying force over education. The movie called “Harry Potter” is almost an exact mirror of what a dark force does to education when it occupied Hogwarts. Our public schools “Hogwarts schools”(neutral facilities) are occupied by hostile forces.
Public education was set up as a neutral facility. But this is no longer the case. Its occupied by corporate interests, prospecting interests, financial firms, trustees, board of directors, lobbyists, church zealot fanatics, and politicians. Granted this is real world stuff but it makes for the mess and chaos that truly makes a teachers role a war zone; by which, the child sees education as a joke and waste of time and truly I don’t blame these kids. What the child sees is the hostility of education and its not safe to question authority but be forced to submit to the occupying powers. Any intelligent child knows this goes against the freedoms that lie in our constitution which is why most schools don’t teach civics, or constitutional history.
Technology that is strategically being tested and proving to be a waste of tax payers dollars should be dismantled and shelved until they are proven reliable and responsible. Right now our classrooms need more teachers per student, buildings need repairs, plumbing replaced, rusted water systems replaced, air/heating systems replaced, buildings shored up to meet earth quake safety codes. The list is long and problematic. But its just considered part of political alliances that these problems are acceptable right?
Until the technology is proven to work correctly without turning children’s data over to unknown and hidden entities its best to put money where it belongs… in teachers contracted to teach and not to be political mediators. Turn principals into making sure the money goes where it needs to go and not to one political influence. Turn districts into the leaderships they were designed to undertake and not be martyr’s to corporate/political aggressive influences. Stop turning schools and children into illegally run experiments.
Finally, stop banning books and start putting books back on the school library shelves that were wrongfully banned. Keep lobbyists out of education permanently.