…Republican Gov. Scott Walker giving a speech on education reform at Harvard University.
Gov. Scott Walker is scheduled to make a speech Thursday about education reform at a Harvard University conference, according to a news release.
The conference, Learning from improving school systems at home and abroad: International and U.S. state trend lines in student performance, will take place Thursday and Friday at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Program on Education Policy and Governance, according to the release.
Unbelievable!
Isn’t Walker talking on education reform analogous to James Holmes talking on gun reform?
Harvard? for real? Harvard sure ain’t what people think it is. But then it probably just is Rhee and Teabaggers renting the space.
Of course, Harvard is a private institution which has probably the foremost influence in the development of global institutions within the United States. Walker will be speaking for corporate sponsored, though also public funded through vouchers, charter schools. I wonder if Harvard will have anyone speaking for public education?
It’s darkly comical & extremely painful at the same time to realize how far down this country (& this State) has sunk. Harvard will surely come down a few percentage points on their esteem ranking for letting an intellectual & spiritual inferior like Walker give a speech there. Maybe Walker’s Sugar Daddy’s the Koch Bros made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. The love of power & profit are the root of most evil. Meanwhile this Country is deteriorating at an ever increasing pace. It is already a 3rd World for many & 4th World for some. ‘They’ said the the Great American Experiment would eventually fail & that is exactly what it is doing. With people like Karl Rove & Supremes the running the Country what did you expect?!
I can’t believe Walker is intellectually, academically, or professionally capable of writing on this topic as an authoritative source.
There is no doubt in my mind that the speech was “bought and paid for” by his outside handlers just as Walker has been “bought and paid for” as a governor by the same people.
Harvard University has been duped as many in Wisconsin have been.
And if Walker with his outside handlers is attempting a “makeover” as an authority on education, it calls to mind an old adage: “you can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear.”
I went to the News section of Harvard Kennedy School and found this.
Harvard just did a study on school-reform efforts by state and the results are a wake-up call. “The report warns that because rates of economic growth impact the future well-being of the nation, there is a simple message: A country ignores the quality of it’s schools at its economic peril.”
Iowa was the worst state, followed by Maine, Oklahoma, Wisconsin….
http://tinyurl.com/d47tvaj
I’m thinking they invited him to display a BAD example and Walker is too arrogant and stupid to realize it. I’m hoping someone records this because that’s one grilling I’d love to watch.
I await release of Walker’s speech to make a final judgement. Will it explain his cowardly “Pearl Harbor” attack on Wisconsin teachers simply because they wanted a voice through a union on their work conditions, a secure economic life, retirement and heath benefits?
Walker will be at Navy Pier in Chicago on August 9 to address the Heartland Institute, an climate change denial organization.
Protest, anyone?
Far be it from me to express anything approaching skepticism, but note the paradigm shift in Harvard’s Graduate School of Education – from a more progressive and humanist slant to a more corporate direction. The shift hasn’t been friendly toward public education. It is no accident that this shift occurring over a roughly 15 year period coincides with the reform efforts attuned to the emerging “Knowledge Economy” – which still lingers and infects education reform world wide. I don’t think the Kennedy School is far behind in its approach given the make up of the other keynote speakers at the conference:
New Leaders – note the Eli Broad type focus on “leadership” and “management” “policy” and “practices” rather than pedagogy or creativity or human development, the latter would all pertain to students and teachers – the former, not so much.
America Achieves? What is it? It doesn’t even have a web presence yet. But it is connected with New Leaders’ founder John Schnur so it is undoubtedly corporate reform.
The Lead Education Economist from the World Bank? Uh yeah, that would be the World Bank with its aggressive instantiation of the “Knowledge Economy” necessitating corporate education reform?
One of the co-authors of the paper on which the conference is based is Hanushek from Stanford’s Hoover Institution? Hoover? The Hoover Institution that is promoting the Milton Friedman Gala?
Andreas Schleicher from the OECD – as in the OECD which promotes all the aspects of the “European Education Space” without naming it as such?
I think Walker will fit in quite well.