Colorado Democrats reject Democrats for Education Reform

[Reader Rabbit]

Delegates at the Colorado Democratic state assembly Saturday sent a clear message to the state chapter of Democrats for Education Reform: You don’t have a place in our party.

After booing down the head of the education reform organization, who described herself as a lifelong Democrat, delegates voted overwhelmingly Saturday to call for the organization to no longer use “Democrats” in its name. While it’s unclear how that would be enforced, the vote means a rejection of DFER is now part of the Colorado Democratic Party platform.

https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2018/04/14/colorado-democrats-overwhelming-reject-democrats-for-education-reform-at-state-assembly/



The recent teacher uprisings are a perfect opportunity for our party to gain support in red states. Disavowing anti-teacher education reform (sic) groups would be a great first step in such a campaign.

[GulfCoast66]

1. Good!

The Colorado Democratic Party soundly rejected a group pushing vouchers and Charter Schools. At a time when tearcher Unions are finally showing some teeth the last thing our party should do is support policies disempowering those very unions.

I will give the backers the benefit of the doubt and assume they are nieve. But even then they are carrying water for Trump, Pence and the Koch’s.

[Wounded Bear]

2. I was wondering about that name...

any more, I'm really suspicious of names that sound too good to be true. Do the labels really describe what they are about? The right does this all the time, using bogus patriotic labels.

Reform is a popular label to put in a name of something. All too often it means tear everything down and "free" things up for some bullshit "market" solution to a problem wherein everything must be profitized.

Sounds like they did good.

[Reader Rabbit]

4. To be fair, it's a bipartisan effort.

Or, at least, it has been for the past decade and a half. Senator Kennedy was a huge backer of the so-called No Child Left Behind law, and President Obama initiated Race to the Top, which has been described as "NCLB on steroids."

I know it's not something that a lot of Democrats want to talk about, but Arne Duncan, Obama's Secretary of Education, was our version of Betsy DeVos—never worked in—or even attended as a student—a public school, presided over the decimation of the Chicago Public School system, and pushed policies designed to destabilize public schools.

[GulfCoast66]

5. I do think that in a perfect world some of these things could work,

If targeted very selectively at real trouble spots.

But as long as republicans are running things they will use so called ‘reform’ to steer money and resources to their business interests and religious zealots in an attempt to get the public to give up on public education.

[mountain grammy]

3. Good!