Our ongoing series, “Questions for Leo,” asks when Leo Casey is going to answer. Maybe he’d like to argue that NY City Council Members are not simply his puppets who ask questions that the teacher union writes on cue cards for them. Maybe he’d like to sing about how they’ve got no strings on them.
We plan on continuing to ask questions until they are answered or until we stop laughing… and we haven’t stopped laughing yet.
Leave a Comment » | 
teacher union | 
Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene
Arne Duncan of Friday Night Massacres fame has an op-ed in the WSJ today.
I’m not sure how someone can take 707 words to say almost nothing of substance, but Duncan somehow manages to do it. What little he has to say seems to be this — If we improve the quality of data about low-performing public schools they will experience pressure to improve and will respond to that pressure:
“When stakeholders — from parents and business leaders to elected officials — understand that standards vary dramatically across states and many high-school graduates are unprepared for college or work, they will demand change.”
Didn’t Duncan get the cue card from his teacher union masters that it is now spelled “steakholders“?
But more to the point, does Duncan really think that the central impediment to school improvement is that we lack information about how bad things are? Really?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for improved data, but it seems to me that we already have plenty to understand the magnitude of the problem.
In addition, it’s not at all clear how Duncan will get us to that dreamy, far-off land “when stakeholders [sic]”, “when parents,” “when educators,” and “when community leaders” will do the various things he describes once they have improved data. Does he really think that dangling $5 billion in federal funds in front of the states will get the improved data he wants let alone all of the proper responses to the information (that all of these folks already possess)?
Lastly, Duncan has the gall to repeat: “We must close the achievement gap by pursuing what works best for kids, regardless of ideology.” Given how he willfully has ignored the D.C. voucher evidence as he moves to kill that program for ideological reasons, he isn’t exactly credible.
Leave a Comment » | teacher union, vouchers | Tagged: Arne Duncan | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene
Leave a Comment » | charter schools | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
Well, howdy, cowgirl.
Are you the famous steakholder that the UFT had in mind when they wrote those cue cards with questions that NY City Council Members were supposed to ask?
(HT: Brian)
Leave a Comment » | teacher union | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Readers of JPGB who have followed our occasional coverage of the resurgence of socialism in America may be interested in this column of mine that just went up on The Public Discourse. It addresses Charles Murray’s lecture last month that makes what might be called the “larger” case against socialism – beyond its economic and demographic unsustainability, socialism also undermines all the social structures that provide higher meaning in human life, and would thus be undesirable even if it were sustainable. The lecture got a lot of attention among conservatives. I argue that Murray’s analysis is correct and very valuable as far as it goes, but that it’s missing a crucial element that’s needed to make the case complete.
8 Comments | economics | Tagged: Charles Murray, Greg Forster, Irving Kristol lecture | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
In today’s installment of our ongoing series Questions for Leo, we feature this 1997 photo of Leo Casey subtly indicating to the members of the New York City Council education committee that it’s time for them to pick up their cue cards and start asking the prearranged questions.
Since his appearance before the committee was more phony than a pro wrestling match, today’s question for Leo is: Do you smell what the Blob is cooking?
Below, the latest embarrassing expose on the UFT – yet another hilariously misspelled cue card.
Edited to correct a misspelling – I put an “e” in “subtly.” Yes, I have submitted my job application to the UFT and expect to hear back shortly.
1 Comment | teacher union | Tagged: AFT, cue card check, Greg Forster, Leo Casey, UFT | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster
Juan Williams has a new piece on D.C. vouchers and it is clear that he isn’t holding anything back:
“As I watch Washington politics I am not easily given to rage. Washington politics is a game and selfishness, out-sized egos and corruption are predictable. But over the last week I find myself in a fury. The cause of my upset is watching the key civil rights issue of this generation — improving big city public school education — get tossed overboard by political gamesmanship…”
Williams notes that Obama and Duncan pledged themselves to following the evidence on vouchers:
“all along the administration indicated that pending evidence that this voucher program or any other produces better test scores for students they were willing to fight for it. The president has said that when it comes to better schools he is open to supporting ‘what works for kids.’ That looked like a level playing field on which to evaluate the program and even possibly expanding the program.”
And the evidence has come in, he notes:
“What happened, according to a Department of Education study, is that after three years the voucher students scored 3.7 months higher on reading than students who remained in the D.C. schools. In addition, students who came into the D.C. voucher program when it first started had a 19 month advantage in reading after three years in private schools.”
But Williams accuses Obama and Duncan of violating their earlier pledge and disregarding the evidence. Instead, in a “politically calculated dance step” and implementing “a sly, political check-mate” Obama and Duncan have taken steps to kill the D.C. program.
Juan Williams then identifies the culprit in this story:
“The political pressure will be coming exclusively from the teacher’s unions who oppose the vouchers, just as they oppose No Child Left Behind and charter schools and every other effort at reforming public schools that continue to fail the nation’s most vulnerable young people, low income blacks and Hispanics. The National Education Association and other teachers’ unions have put millions into Democrats’ congressional campaigns because they oppose Republican efforts to challenge unions on their resistance to school reform and specifically their refusal to support ideas such as performance-based pay for teachers who raise students’ test scores. By going along with Secretary Duncan’s plan to hollow out the D.C. voucher program this president, who has spoken so passionately about the importance of education, is playing rank politics with the education of poor children. It is an outrage.”
What do you really think, Juan?
“This reckless dismantling of the D.C. voucher program does not bode well for arguments to come about standards in the effort to reauthorize No Child Left Behind. It does not speak well of the promise of President Obama to be the ‘Education President,’ who once seemed primed to stand up for all children who want to learn and especially minority children.
And its time for all of us to get outraged about this sin against our children.”
2 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: Juan Williams; Arne Duncan; Obama; D.C. vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene
Our ongoing series “Questions for Leo” features this video of Leo and a NY City Council Member discussing whether “s’alright.” Si. S’alright.
3 Comments | teacher union | Tagged: Leo Casey | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation published the results of the latest survey of where members of Congress sent/send their own children to school. The survey finds:
• 44 percent of Senators and 36 percent of Representatives had ever sent their children to private schools. Among the general public, only 11 percent of American students attend private school.
• While members of the 111th Congress practice school choice for their own families, they should also support school choice policies for all of America’s families. A failed amendment offered by Senator John Ensign (R–NV) on behalf of the popular and successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program would have passed if Members of Congress who exercised school choice for theirown children had voted in favor of the amendment. The future of the D.C. voucher program is now uncertain.Approximately 20 percent of Members of the 111th Congress attended private high school themselves—nearly twice the rate of the American public.
The Washington Post editorialized on the study this morning:
The gap between what Congress practices and what it preaches was best illustrated by the Heritage Foundation’s analysis of a recent vote to preserve the program. The measure was defeated by the Senate 58 to 39; it would have passed if senators who exercised school choice for their own children had voted in favor. Alas, the survey doesn’t name names, save for singling out Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), architect of the language that threatens the program, for sending his children to private school and attending private school himself…
Mr. Duncan, in a recent interview, spoke eloquently of his family’s choice of Arlington as a place to live because of what he called the “determining factor” of schools. He told Science magazine: “My family has given up so much so that I could have the opportunity to serve; I didn’t want to try to save the country’s children and our educational system and jeopardize my own children’s education.” We don’t think it’s too much to expect our leaders to treat their constituents with the same fairness and regard they demand for their own families.
Next year, I’d love to see Heritage go in to even greater depth. Let’s see how many Congressmen sent their children to Anacostia High, etc. Let’s put the over/under at one.
I’ll take the under.
1 Comment | vouchers | Tagged: D.C. vouchers, Heritage Foundation, Lindsey Burke, Washington Post, Where Congressmen Send their children to school | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Obviously this is what UFT was thinking of!
“I don’t understand!”
“There’s food in front of me, but I don’t want to eat it!”
1 Comment | teacher union | Tagged: Greg Forster, steakholders | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster
You are currently browsing the Jay P. Greene's Blog blog archives for April, 2009.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 