Campaign Update: Obama Opposed to Public Online Education
The July 30 edition of Education Weekly reveals a troubling Obama campaign memo that maligns publicly-funded online learning solutions. The memo reflects an unsophisticated perspective on online education, referring to most online schools as “for-profit” organizations that would squander taxpayer money.
While many online institutions of higher education are for-profit, this has not dissuaded the federal government and the military from hiring online school alumni and placing them in senior positions (the current Secretary of Transportation and the Director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion program are both University of Phoenix alumni). Moreover, in the case of secondary education, many online providers are either non-profit or heavily funded by state governments.
The offending portion of the memo, which argues “many online schools are for-profit ventures and may siphon money away from public schools,” was part of internal communications regarding the campaign’s education policy. The conversation likely arose as a reaction to McCain’s proposal to pump up to $750M into building both public and charter virtual schools. This bizarre reaction is troubling, especially because educators tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic and will likely overlook this bizarre position.
[…] Here’s the posting on GuidetoOnlineSchools’ blog): http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/blog/2…line-education/ […]
This is disturbing. Either he is misinformed, or has no clue as to the facts surrounding online training. As most educators know, both, online training and face-to-face classrooms have advantages and disadvantages.
For example, a student who is homebound, can continue their education from the privacy of their bedrooms. Working parents are free from having to hire baby sitters for young children. Plus, they have the flexibility of busy schedules.
I agree, this is disturbing. I don’t think that he should be against online schools, because online schools are a help to the community. Home-bound kids who can’t go to school can do online schools if their parents don’t have the time to homeschool them. Besides that reason, we go to schools for education. Now all of this is because of money. But schools are about EDUCATION. NOT money. And I think that the parents have the choice of which kind of school they want to send their kids to. He’s worried about the money, but why do we bring money concepts into school if school is meant for education?!