Wednesday, January 27, 2016

I Kid The Governor. Mostly.

My first real job was as a translator, which paid quite nicely. Now, I just do it for free, because I'm a good person like that.

From an excerpt of Governor Bruce Rauner’s State of the State address on education:

“The key to rising family incomes, more high paying jobs, and a better life for everyone in Illinois, is to have a high quality, fully-integrated education system from cradle to career, from early education, to K-12 public schools, to outstanding community colleges and universities, all the way to coordinated job training and technical training later in life.”

TRANSLATION: I can do basic math, probably because of my stellar suburban education. I plan on screwing you all your life.

“To drive that result, we are committed to eliminating wasteful bureaucracy, putting more money into our classrooms, freeing up our teachers to teach, and holding our schools truly accountable for results.”

TRANSLATION: I have to say some stuff about waste, I think new desks are nice, I plan to blame teachers and administrators just like everyone else has.

“We have ten long-term goals. This legislative session we will begin to: Work closely with President Cullerton to significantly increase state support for education, focusing our additional resources more on low income and rural school districts so we can provide high quality classrooms in every community, without taking money away from any other districts.”

TRANSLATION: I plan to blame Cullerton when things still suck and poor children are still neglected. People who golf on private courses or know how to use french presses will be unaffected. 

“Provide proper funding for early childhood education while setting rigorous benchmarks for program performance, so we can continue to be national leaders in this important work.” 

TRANSLATION: I plan to take credit for others’ work. “Proper” is an undefined term on purpose. 

“Give school districts more flexibility when it comes to bargaining, contracting, and bidding, to save taxpayers money, while enabling districts to pay higher teacher salaries.”

TRANSLATION: Friends, It’s “give the contract to my friends” day. Make that year. Make that four years.

“Empower our universities and community colleges to reduce their administrative costs, work rules, pension liabilities and unfunded mandates, and then offer additional financial support to those schools that show real progress in putting more resources in the classroom.”

 TRANSLATION: After you figure out how to make fewer low-paying administrative jobs take on more responsibility for work real people used to do, you’ll either suck and I’ll replace your failing functions with a private partnership to make my friends richer OR you won’t need additional financial support because you’ll already be saving money and getting the job done! Also, screw your pensions. Win-Win-Win!

 “Support more partnerships between high schools, community colleges, and local employers so that our young people who are not going to university, can receive the training to step into good paying careers beginning in their teenage years.”

 TRANSLATION: I'm totally into m
ore corporate-led curriculum-building so that our students can be the best and brightest worker bees ever, starting at a young, under-exposed age so they don’t know and won’t care about what they are missing, in an economy that works to make me and my friends richer.

 “Develop a comprehensive, consistent, objective student growth measure, not necessarily based on the PARCC system, so we can track our students’ progress in each grade towards college or career, holding our schools accountable for results while eliminating unnecessary testing and bureaucratic mandates.” 

TRANSLATION: More tests! Hopefully, ones that make me and my friends richer.

“Support programs that create more quality school choice options for low income children stuck in failing schools.”

TRANSLATION: Charter, anyone?

“Create new quality schools of choice for our disconnected youth as a way to get them back in school.”

 TRANSLATION: Alternative charter, anyone?

“Consolidate the majority of our councils and task forces under the P20 and Early Learning Councils, in order to decrease bureaucracy, increase high-quality outcomes for our learners, and improve the coordination of these working groups.”

TRANSLATION: The committee about the committee on committees will now be one committee. With a few sub-committees.

“Create a Cabinet on Children and Youth so we can better align our health and human services with our cradle to career education initiatives, in order to provide higher quality, fully integrated services for our young people.”

TRANSLATON: I’m hiring another one of my friends for a six-figure job.

 “This education agenda is bold and transformative. Change is difficult. But by working together, we can make it a reality. The people of Illinois deserve nothing less than the best education system in America.”

TRANSLATION: The people of Illinois are about to learn yet another lesson on representative governance. The lesson is: we don’t have it.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for the translations. They ARE spot-on and you are good that way!

    ReplyDelete