More on the sham that was SB7

No money in the state budget for mandated principal training

If you needed any more evidence to show why the anti-union, Illinois SB7, rammed through the legislature by corporate reformers and Mike Madigan, was a sham, look no farther than the budget. The Chicago News Cooperative reports that the state budget that Gov. Pat Quinn signed on June 30 is missing a key component sought by education advocates: money.

In the final days of the session, lawmakers stripped more than $500,000 from the proposed budget that was intended to help implement Senate Bill 7, a sweeping education overhaul that would streamline the process of firing poorly rated teachers. By eliminating the money at the end of May, lawmakers put a crimp in the bill they had approved overwhelmingly a few weeks earlier and which Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had praised as a national model.Mr. Quinn included the money in his budget, but the House erased it and the Senate agreed. 

“It’s not that the House doesn’t care — they do care — but it was just a question of priorities and having to make cuts,” said Jessica Handy, spokeswoman for Stand for Children, an advocacy group that helped write the bill. 

And so, like most of the top-down corporate "reforms" being foisted on schools these day, ie. "merit pay," longer school day, test-based teacher evaluations, expanded charter schools, etc... the states will have to go begging to the power philanthropists in order to get them going. More power over policy by the corporate reformers, less in the way of public power and decision-making over our schools.

Incredible! Makes you wonder once again, how the unions could have ever bought into such a process, let alone tout it as a "model" for the rest of the country?

******

Check out brother Fred's response to a cowardly, sellout, union bureaucrat who attacked him on Daily Kos, using the name kissfan. Hmmm, wonder which part of SFC's ass she's been kissing?