John J. Miller, who wrote a segment of Fordham's recent Catholic schools report, has a nice piece in the most recent National Review that traces the beginnings of school choice--charters and vouchers--in Washington, D.C. (Right now, it's available only to subscribers, but once the NR brass makes it public, I'll be sure to repost the link.) It helps clarify at least one thing about the city's Opportunity Scholarship Program, which Eleanor Holmes Norton and her Congressional colleagues??are planning to kill: The burden of explanation rests with them. That is, OSP supporters include a wide range of people: Conservative Republicans; liberal Democrats; Washington, D.C.'s mayor and schools chancellor; Marion Barry; private school administrators; parents whose students are enrolled through the program. If Norton and Congressional Democrats choose to stick their finger in the eyes of such a truly diverse and widespread crowd, they 1) will need to justify their actions with some convincing arguments (which have heretofore hid), and they should 2) be ready to receive some serious backlash. The battle is over a specific policy that involves only D.C., but it's??going to make??national news... and it's unlikely that our presidential contenders can be silent about it. (If McCain wants some easy education points [points he's mostly lacking], he might want to jump in on the right side of this fight.)
Naomi Schaefer Riley takes it to the college-entrance-tests-are-biased crowd--especially those within it who profit from the very tests they decry.
A lot of normally smart and generally sincere??people have just made the dreadful blunder of affiliating themselves with Al Sharpton, one of America's more unlovable figures, whose fingerprints can be found on an appalling list of divisive, racist, anti-Semitic, violent,??and often bloody episodes over the past quarter century. (For starters, see??here and here.) This man doesn't deserve to be dignified with the label "civil rights leader" and we find ourselves wondering what the likes of Joel Klein, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Kati Haycock, Joe Williams,??and Andy Rotherham think they're doing. (For a full list of this dubious new coalition's members, see here.) Though many of the group's principles are sound (see here), if one is known by the company one keeps, a lot of people with solid reform reputations have just blemished them by association with Sharpton.
Update: Yet more evidence that Sharpton is greedy and opportunistic.
Mike and Christina discuss a recent rash of education reform proposals.
Regarding the news that Al Sharpton and Joel Klein will team up to bring fresh ideas into education, unions be damned, New York teachers union head Randi Weingarten had this to say:
"Too often what happens is that when people get into this, they blame all the people who have been toiling in this field without the resources and without the public focus on it," she said. "It's like saying that those of us who have been frontierspeople in this fight for equity for the last 50 years are the ones who should be faulted, as opposed to saying, 'We'll join you ready for duty--what can we do to help?'"
These words illustrate more clearly than any Weingarten has uttered that the UFT puts its own interests before those of students. Two reasonably well-respected public figures propose new ideas for closing the achievement gap, and Weingarten issues a self-pitying apologia so obsessed with the plight of her union that she fails even to mention the students for whose future she is supposedly so concerned. Time spent toiling aimlessly in the field and starving in the wild frontier, which Randi would have us believe are her union's main claims on Al Sharpton and Joel Klein's attention, are not the criteria by which serious ed reformers judge applicants to their club. They're more concerned with what you can bring to the challenge of educating kids.
In this week's Gadfly, published mere moments ago, one can find a riveting examination by Checker of what we mean when we talk about "international benchmarking." We pull no punches regarding Eleanor Holmes Norton and the minions of A.J. Duffy. And Checker explains why Fordham now makes movies.
Greg Toppo's story in??USA Today about the rift between two segments of left-leaning education types is noteworthy. Education has for some lengthy period been relegated to the outskirts of political conversation, and it's refreshing to see it command a little spotlight, however briefly. The story, summed up, is this: Al Sharpton ("a political gadfly," writes Toppo) and Joel Klein have teamed up to do right by poor and minority children, and part of their agenda might run afoul of teachers' unions, which have traditionally been partners of civil rights organizations and personalities such as Sharpton. What does Randi Weingarten think about it?
"Too often what happens is that when people get into this, they blame all the people who have been toiling in this field without the resources and without the public focus on it," she said. "It's like saying that those of us who have been frontierspeople in this fight for equity for the last 50 years are the ones who should be faulted, as opposed to saying, ???We'll join you ready for duty--what can we do to help?'" ??
The above is called peevish whining. Weingarten is scandalized, it seems, that some are not ready to "join" her and would rather put forth ideas of their own. But what are Weingarten's ideas other than sound bites and continuation of the failed status quo? And what does Richard Kahlenberg think about it all?
Education historian Richard Kahlenberg said that while unions' and civil rights groups' interests "are usually aligned," this isn't the first time they've clashed. "It's been an uneasy alliance over the years."
Kahlenberg, the author of a recent biography on legendary American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker, said a deep rift between the groups "would be disastrous--these are two groups that are essential to the fight for equal opportunity in society, and more narrowly ... both groups have an interest in making sure schools are properly funded. So to declare war on the teacher unions, I think, would be a huge mistake."
Kahlenberg's claim that the interests of teachers' unions and civil right's groups "are usually aligned" deserves scrutiny.??That was true in the 1960s, but what about today? Sure, both entities are left-leaning and want to see Democratic politicians in power, but what about their core interests and missions? Civil rights groups, as they're generally and basically understood, are organizations that seek to obtain equal opportunities for black people; many of their leaders??believe that the education of today's young blacks is, in fact, the seminal modern civil rights struggle. Those who claim that teachers' unions support this goal, that they work on behalf of equal opportunities for black students, are, I think, misguided--at best, a mountain of evidence lies between their claim and the truth.
The??education alliance between our friends on the left is uneasy:??one faction believes??educational progress can come only from the type of innovation that the teachers' unions stymie, and??another faction supports the unions and ascribes k-12's failures to broken homes, broken hospitals, broken neighborhoods, and broken societies. If the quotes Toppo garnered from Weingarten and Kahlenberg are representative of the level of thought that the latter group is proffering, if this is indicative of the quality of the latter group's goals, then in this disagreement--I can't believe I'm writing this--Al Sharpton's is truly??the side of ideas.
"In a major legislative success for Gov. Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana Senate voted 25-12 Wednesday for a bill that would let up to 1,500 low- to middle-income students in New Orleans attend private schools at taxpayer expense."
I've been arguing lately that John McCain needs to distance himself from NCLB, because it's unpopular with his base and, increasingly, with the general public. Plus, as I told Education Week, everyone knows that the law needs some reworking. Without saying so, he cedes the "mend it, don't end it" line to Barack Obama--who can claim to be anti-NCLB and pro-school reform at the same time.
Well, forget about that. At a reporter roundtable we hosted this morning,* McCain education advisor Lisa Graham Keegan offered a glimpse at the Senator's nascent education plan. To my ears, it sounds like a major departure from No Child Left Behind as we know it. And I wasn't the only one hearing that. Let me rely on the reporting of real journalists. First, Michelle McNeil at Education Week's Campaign K12 blog:
McCain... wants to move away from sanctions and instead use tutoring and public school choice as "opportunities" for children and families rather than as punishments for schools. And perhaps more importantly, he wants to make the aid available to families immediately without waiting two or three years. And maintaining the current sanction of restructuring schools at five years if they are failing to meet adequate yearly progress isn't a priority for him, either. In addition, McCain will work more closely with governors to come up with other options for addressing failing schools, [Keegan] said.
And Maria Glod at the Washington Post quoted Keegan thusly: "The federal government cannot position itself continually as the bully in this. No more will we say that's what 50 states are going to do, because he doesn't believe that's our best hope for improvement."
Keegan also mentioned McCain's interest in??a growth model that would provide incentives to accelerate the performance of high achieving students, and she wouldn't commit to keeping the 2013-2014 deadline for getting all students to "proficiency." All this adds up to a major shift in policy (not necessarily the shift I had in mind, but still).??
However, the details are quite sketchy. The reporters pressed Keegan on the absence of a formal plan from McCain. She promised one was forthcoming (by back-to-school) but she also turned the tables on Obama. Referring to his proposal, released last fall, she said, "It's very easy to write a detailed program for an old system."
* We plan to host these roundtables monthly with a variety of newsmakers in education. We're working with the Obama campaign to schedule a session with one of their k-12 advisors in July.
Teachers, we are told (mostly by teachers) are professionals--and they require treatment befitting such. Alas, the facts don't always support the claims. Take, for instance, last week's protest in Los Angeles, in which some 75 percent of that city's public-school educators left their posts and their pupils to stand outside their schools, wave signs, and demand that state budget cuts in education be rescinded. They were prompted to this display of unprofessionalism by the United Teachers Los Angeles, a union led by A.J. Duffy, who noted that any teacher not following his commands "will be crossing a picket line." One's mental image of a professional isn't usually that of a brow-beaten employee who, threatened by union bosses, is forced from his place of work onto the street and there made to march and holler. Professionals generally retain autonomy. They are devoted to their work. They do not leave their jobs whenever legislators displease them. They do not actively undermine the purported goals of their institution. Teachers: if you want to be viewed and treated as professionals, you'll need to act accordingly.
"Budget protest takes L.A. teachers out of classrooms," by Jason Song and Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times, June 7, 2008