Sirota: America’s dangerously removed elite
Friday, Jan 13, 2012 1:00 PM UTC
It's easy to cut public education funding when your kids go to private school. Just ask Christie and Emanuel
By David Sirota
Last week, my local Twittersphere momentarily erupted with allegations that Denvers public school superintendent, Tom Boasberg, is sending his kids to a private school that eschews high-stakes testing. Boasberg, an icon of the national movement pushing high-stakes testing and undermining traditional public education, eventually defended himself by insisting that his kids attended that special school only during preschool and that they now attend a public school. Yet his spokesman admitted that the school is not in Denver but in Boulder, Colo., one of Americas wealthiest enclaves.
Boasberg, you see, refuses to live in the district that he governs. Though having no background in education administration, this longtime telecom executive used his connections to get appointed Denver superintendent, and he now acts like a king. From the confines of his distant castle in Boulder, he issues edicts to his low-income fiefdom decrees demonizing teachers, shutting down neighborhood schools over community objections and promoting privately administered charter schools. Meanwhile, he makes sure his own royal family is insulated in a wealthy district that doesnt experience his destructive policies.
No doubt this is but a microcosmic story in a country whose patrician overlords are regularly conjuring the feudalism of Europe circa the Middle Ages. Today, our mayors deploy police against homeless people and protesters; our governors demand crushing budget cuts from the confines of their taxpayer-funded mansions; our Congress exempts itself from insider-trading laws and provides itself healthcare benefits denied to others; and our nations capital has become one of the worlds wealthiest cities, despite the recession.
Taken together, we see that there really are Two Americas, as the saying goes and thats no accident. Its the result of a permanent elite that is removing itself from the rest of the nation. Nowhere is this more obvious than in education a realm in which this elite physically separates itself from us mere serfs. As the head of one of the countrys largest urban school districts, Boasberg is a perfect example of this but he is only one example.
Read the entire piece at Salon.com
Robb
(39,665 posts)Last edited Fri Jan 13, 2012, 11:37 AM - Edit history (1)
Boasberg was CFO for the Denver School District for years before being unanimously appointed super by the school board.
Boulder is also the best liberal haven in a damn purple state. I don't know who's feeding Sirota his Colorado talking points, but he sounds like an idiot.
merkins
(399 posts)Robb
(39,665 posts)It was COO, not CFO. My point stands. Boasberg was tapped by the previous DPS superintendent Bennet -- now the Democratic Senator from Colorado.
Edited to add: Looks like he sent his kids to a Waldorf preschool. And since they've been in Boulder Public Schools. Because they live in Boulder and he commutes to Denver.
O the humanity.
arendt
(5,078 posts)So it is just another nail in Boasberg's coffin that he was appointed by Bennet.
Bennet is just another semi-rich suck up, like Rahm Emmanuel, who sees a chance to get richer by sending the middle class to a chop shop. An education chop shop in this case.
You're baseless smear of Sirota and your defense of these Charter School crooks tells me all I need to know about you.
MFrohike
(1,980 posts)I used control-f for both 2007 and formerly and could not find it in the text of either.
Robb
(39,665 posts)http://communications.dpsk12.org/newsroom/senior-staff-biographies/media-resources/
http://communications.dpsk12.org/newsroom/tom-boasberg-superintendent1/media-resources/senior-staff-biographies
... This is common knowledge. If you don't believe the district, here's a local news story from when he was hired:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/18442498/detail.html
It wasn't in the either of the original links.
Glen Bos
(16 posts)I couldn't get any of the links to work.
yardwork
(61,703 posts)As superintendent of schools in Denver, he's making policies that won't affect his family.
Peace Patriot
(24,010 posts)...and when he says that the elite is not only removing its children to elite schools where they receive a REAL education (not characterized by destructive, mind-numbing testing)--something that oligarchs have been notorious for, for, oh, thousands of years--but are ALSO seeking to destroy a good education for us serfs, we need to pay particular attention. Some of us were already aware of this traitorous effort to destroy public education; some of us were not. We all need to be aware of it and we further need to know that it is a fascist/corporate top priority not just to loot and destroy all "common good" social programs in the U.S.A., but also--and possibly primarily--to promote ignorance, stupidity and slavishness in our population.
Robb
(39,665 posts)arendt
(5,078 posts)Robb
(39,665 posts)It was Boasberg who banned his district from travel to Arizona when that state's racist immigration law got passed.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2010/04/29/denver_school_district_bans_work_travel_to_arizona/
DU approved.
ge626dfil
(51 posts)cbrer
(1,831 posts)The filtration, stratification, and delineating of American people has been going on for a long time. When we finally decide that it's OVER, and we're going to build a truly representative nation, THAT will be news.
Power to the People.
Many of us have been awake for a very long time. May 2012 be the year of REAL change, not Obama style change.