{"id":397,"date":"2005-10-27T04:42:56","date_gmt":"2005-10-27T08:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=397"},"modified":"2005-10-27T04:42:56","modified_gmt":"2005-10-27T08:42:56","slug":"whose-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=397","title":{"rendered":"Whose choice?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A first cynical response by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/users\/demoneyes\/\">one British parent<\/a> to Tony Blair&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk_politics\/4372216.stm\">education-reform speech<\/a> promising more parental choice:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It appears that the education bill basically does the complete opposite of what they&#8217;re saying. Schools will have the freedom to select&#151;but not by ability. LEAs [Local Education Agencies] are not being stripped of their powers, they&#8217;re being extended&#151;all they&#8217;re losing is the word &#8220;education&#8221; in their title. &#8220;New powers for parents&#8221; is the right to be consulted (and ignored). Schools will &#8220;employ their own staff&#8221;&#151;but only under the national pay\/conditions agreements. And funding will still come from the local councils from which they&#8217;re supposed to be being &#8220;freed.&#8221; &#8220;Our three priorities are doublespeak, doublespeak, doublespeak&#8221; one might say&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I know Phil, so maybe I&#8217;m biased, but he&#8217;s generally a sharp fellow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A first cynical response by one British parent to Tony Blair&#8217;s education-reform speech promising more parental choice: It appears that the education bill basically does the complete opposite of what they&#8217;re saying. Schools will have the freedom to select&#151;but not by ability. LEAs [Local Education Agencies] are not being stripped of their powers, they&#8217;re being [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-6p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}