What gives? A second Friday has passed without another sneaky political trick to rob low-income minority students of educational opportunities while attempting to attract as little media attention as possible. It’s almost like Obama and Duncan have stopped trying — like they are just phoning it in.
Or are they deterred by all of the media attention they did get?
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Posted by Jay P. Greene
You know how fireworks shows end with a massive display to sparkle the eye? Well, this grand finale of the Famous Steakholder series similarly contains an explosion of steakholder images. Imagine the 1812 Overture playing in the background while you peruse these. Enjoy!
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Posted by Jay P. Greene
Despite Obama and Duncan’s best efforts to conceal their steps to kill the D.C. voucher program by acting on Friday afternoons, they have utterly failed at burying this story. The hits just keep on coming.
In the latest round we have Morton Kondrake picking up on the appeasement metaphor I used in my WSJ piece:
“In a demonstration of obeisance to union power, however, Congressional Democrats refused to re-fund a private school voucher program in the District of Columbia and the administration swallowed the decision. Obama and Duncan say they have hopes to “work with” the unions rather than openly confront them and capitulation on D.C. vouchers may have been a goodwill offering. Whether appeasement will buy cooperation remains to be seen.”
George Will seems to be channeling Juan Williams’ fury:
“As the president and his party’s legislators are forcing minority children back into public schools, the doors of which would never be darkened by the president’s or legislators’ children, remember this: We have seen a version of this shabby act before. One reason conservatism came to power in the 1980s was that in the 1970s liberals advertised their hypocrisy by supporting forced busing of other people’s children to schools the liberals’ children did not attend.
This issue will be back. In a few months, the appropriation bill for the District will come to the floor of the House of Representatives, at which point there will be a furious fight for the children’s interests. Then we will learn whether the president and his congressional allies are capable of embarrassment. On the evidence so far, they are not.”
Peter Roff writes in U.S. News and World Report:
“Former North Carolina Sen. and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards liked to go around talking about the “two Americas.” Where education is concerned, he may have been on to something. There’s one America for the elites, like members of Congress and the President and Mrs. Obama, who send their children to private schools; and there’s one for everyone else, the regular people who, at least in the District of Columbia, are seeing the educational dreams they have for their children shattered on the altar of politics.”
And Adam Schaeffer over at Cato has given Arne Duncan an award. Unfortunately for Duncan it is the Chutzpah Award.
All of this is on top of the greatest hits collections, volume one and two, as well as a bunch of other hot singles from the Washington Post and others too numerous to mention in this 30 second commercial.
How can Obama, Duncan, Durbin, and the rest stop this pain? One easy solution is to do the right thing, follow the evidence, and renew D.C. vouchers.
2 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: Adam Schaeffer, Arne Duncan, Baarack Obama, D.C. vouchers, George Will, Juam Williams, Morton Kondrake, Peter Roff | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene
Dan Lips and Lindsey Burke have a great piece on National Review Online today about how members of Congress (I’m looking at you Dick Durbin) and the Administration (you know who you are Obama and Duncan) either went to private school and/or sent their kids to private school, yet are willing to deny those opportunities to others.
Here’s the money quote:
“the D.C. voucher debate presents President Obama with a great opportunity to match his words with action. Before his inauguration, he published an open letter to his daughters explaining why he had sought the presidency. Obama wrote: ‘In the end, girls, that’s why I ran for President: because of what I want for you and for every child in this nation. I want all our children to go to schools worthy of their potential — schools that challenge them, inspire them, and instill in them a sense of wonder about the world around them. I want them to have the chance to go to college — even if their parents aren’t rich.’
President Obama now has the chance to live up to that promise by fighting to give low-income families the power of school choice that politicians take for granted.”
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Posted by Jay P. Greene
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.
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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.
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Posted by Jay P. Greene
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)
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Posted by Jay P. Greene
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
It has now been one year since we started Jay P. Greene’s Blog: With Help From Some Friends. With no more than an investment of $15 for domain registration and some time from Matt, Greg, and me, I think we’ve done pretty well over the last year.
We’ve written 507 posts and received 2,184 comments. The site has been viewed a total of 121,567 times (and that doesn’t include us obsessively checking for new comments). Readership started out slow but is now around 13,000 per month.
According to Technorati, JPGB is one of the more influential blogs devoted to education policy. JPGB has an authority rating of 100, which is a measure of the number of other blogs linking to our site in the last 90 days. The more blogs that link to a site the more “authority” it is said to have. As you can see in the list below, JPGB has a Technorati authority rating that trails Joanne Jacobs and Eduwonk, but leads most other education policy blogs.
But our goal has never been to maximize readership. Mostly, we just wanted a platform to express our views directly to others who wanted to see those views. With more than 500 posts, more than 2,000 comments, and hundreds of links from other sites, we ‘ve clearly succeeded.
A close second goal for the blog has been to have an outlet for amusing ourselves and each other. At that we have also clearly succeeded. I’ve had a great time working with Greg and Matt. Thanks for a great year!
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Posted by Jay P. Greene
Jay P. Greene's Blog 