Jay P. Greene's Blog

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Jay is in today’s Wall Street Journal making the case that appeasement doesn’t work in foreign affairs, nor does it work in education policy. A number of people, including President Obama, attempt to identify themselves as reformers by supporting charter schools, while saying they oppose vouchers.  They support evidence based reform, except when they don’t. Triangulate, obfuscate, repeat as necessary.

As Whitney Tilson and John Kirtley have noted: when they have finished with the 1,700 Opportunity Scholarship kids, they are coming after you Mr. and Mrs. Progressive Education Triangulator.  Far more students attend charter schools than vouchers in the District. Why stop with vouchers?

A professor of mine noted what a tragic mistake it was for Chamberlain to throw the Czechs under the bus. Not only was it deeply immoral, it was strategic suicide. The Czechs were well armed. Britain and France’s betrayal took substantial military resources away from the Allies and handed them to the Nazis.

Blah blah blah, Britain and France weren’t ready to go to war with the Nazis. They were much less ready after this cowardly mistake.  It’s called feeding your hand to an alligator.

The NEA sends a letter to Congress insisting that they kill the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, and they rush to obey.  A report shows the vouchers improve reading, the Deparment tries to spin and bury it. The UFT writes anti-charter questions for NYC Councilmen to ask, they dutifully read them off.

You can definitely see lips moving during this half-hearted attempt at ventriloquism.

(edited to add link)

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Go Juan go! Money quote:

This is an outrage to me. … This is so important that you give young people a chance to have an education in America and especially in a failing public school system like you have in the District of Columbia. This voucher system is a direct threat to the unions. And so I think everybody on Capitol Hill, that’s getting money from the NEA or AFT, they should be called on the table. They should ask them, ‘where do you send your kids to school?

And are you willing to say these kids getting the vouchers…and doing better than the rest of the kids, that these kids aren’t deserving of an opportunity to succeed in America?’ You just want to scream. Why Duncan and Obama aren’t in the forefront of education reform is an outrage and an insult to the very base that voted for them.

I’m keeping track of the Democrats who are standing up for what is right: Whitney Tilson, Anthony Williams, Kevin Chavous, Juan Williams. I’m sure there are more already, and more still to come.

Former head of the U.S. Dept of Ed’s research unit and current Brookings fellow, Russ Whitehurst, has posted a piece entitled, “Secretary Duncan is Not Lying.”  In it, he makes the case that Duncan was unlikely to have known of the final results of the D.C. evaluation while Congress was debating killing the program.  That may be, although it is hard for anyone outside of the U.S. Department of Ed to know what the Secretary knew when.  And it is certainly the case that others in the U.S. Dept. of Ed did know the results while Congress was denied that information in time for its deliberations.

But the main issue raised by the WSJ and the Denver Post is not whether Duncan is credible in saying that he was unaware of the study but whether he is credible more generally.  Obama and Duncan have declared that they will be guided by evidence, not ideology or predispositions.  But by burying the positive results in a Friday afternoon release with a negative spin and immediately announcing the desire to end the program, the credibility of their commitment to evidence is seriously called into question.

What’s more, Duncan claimed to the Denver Post that the WSJ had never tried to contact him about this.  So the Post columnist checked with the WSJ and “discovered a different — that is, meticulously sourced and exceedingly convincing — story, including documented e-mail conversations between the author and higher-ups in Duncan’s office.”  Again, Duncan may not be lying about what he knew about the D.C. voucher study, but his credibility about never being contacted is highly dubious. 

Why did Duncan suppress the positive results in a Friday afternoon release with no publicity and a negative spin?  Why falsely claim that the WSJ never attempted to contact him?  The Secretary may well not be lying about his knowledge of the study but his credibility in general is very shaky right now.