With the Congress debating Cap and Trade and especially the partisan fighting over health care, Obama’s plan for education went a bit unnoticed.

President Barack Obama announced an assault on public education that would go beyond the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” program. He outlined an education “reform” that would link teacher pay to the test performance of students and force state governments to shift funding from established public schools to so-called charter schools.

Tom Eley writing for wsws.org is reporting:

Obama outlined three “strategies” for so-called underperforming schools, all of them reactionary. “One strategy involves replacing the principal, replacing much of the staff, and giving the school a second chance,” he said. “Another strategy involves inviting a great nonprofit to help manage a troubled school. A third strategy involves converting a dropout factory into a successful charter school. These are public schools funded by parents, teachers, and civic or community organizations with broad leeway to innovate.” The second and third strategies—featuring “great nonprofit” groups and “community organizations”—indicate that Obama may see a role for religious groups in public education.

Merit-based pay for teachers will only discourage educators from taking positions at disadvantaged schools and among students who need the most help. Its practical effect, like No Child Left Behind, will be to shift funding out of the schools that need it most. It is a giant step toward the privatization of public education in America and the formalization of a two-tier, class-based education system.

Already, the quality of eduction for American children depends largely on the affluence of the area in which any given school is located. Much of US school funding is based on property taxes and other forms of local revenue, and certain states make available far more money per student than others. In this set-up, the public schools in the wealthy neighborhoods and suburbs are vastly superior to those in the inner cities, small towns, reservations, and other financially starved areas. Rich and upper-middle class families may also bypass public education altogether by sending their children to expensive private or parochial schools. Obama’s policies will serve to deepen, and make official, these disparities.

Make no mistake, Obama has proposed a class-based system of education. For the children of workers and the poor—who will not perform as well on standardized tests as the children of the rich—there will be financially starved schools and overworked and underpaid teachers. This will, of course, only worsen the education of the students, which will be reflected once again in worsening test scores. They and their teachers will pay the price through the reallocation of resources to the better-performing “charter” schools, which, like private schools, have no obligation to accept all students who might wish to enroll, and which routinely dispense with old union work rules and dismissal practices for teachers.

As usual with the ruling powers when it comes to education, it is always the teachers fault when things go wrong and the governments expertise when all goes right.  It appears that Obama’s educational policy is yet another policy that leaves the working class out in the cold…yet again.  Wall Street screwed Main Street…Auto Industry screwed the workers…..and now the teachers will be the brunt of the government assault on education.