Democrats for Education Reform

Previous winners:

August 30, 2007

"This draft is a work in progress, subject to change over the coming weeks."

--  Congressman George Miller (D-California) on draft changes to the federal No Child Left behind law.

August 22, 2007

"One of the things charters have shown us is that the bureaucracy is the greatest bulwark for the status quo and we have to break the status quo. The status quo doesn't work."

--  United Teachers Los Angeles president A.J. Duffy, describing why the union has decided to stop fighting charters and organize them instead.

August 21, 2007

"The Democratic Presidential candidates have the right instincts on merit pay. Pay for performance – so-called merit pay - undermines the collegial relationship among teachers, and there is no scientific evidence to show that merit pay plans improve student academic achievement."

--  National Education Association president Reg Weaver. explaining why his union is pleased that the presidential candidates are so soft on education issues. (Via "Arkansas Blog"... don't ask!)

August 20, 2007

"We're failing... We needed to examine what we were doing and come up with a better way to deliver services to our students"

--  Themia Gilman, principal at Silver Hill Elementary School in Haverhill. Mass., which has proposed converting to a Horace Mann Charter School to allow the school to ditch the district's curriculum guidelines and free up teachers from their union contract to better meet the needs of the low-performing students.

August 17, 2007

"We have achievement gaps in our system. These gaps are real, they're glaring, they're stark and they're persistent."

--  California State Schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell, at a meeting with education and African-American leaders in Sacramento this week.

August 16, 2007

"We will clean the house you refuse to clean."

--  Unnamed community activist, who supported the attempt of a long-failing middle school in San Diego to break away from the bureaucracy and form a new charter school.

August 15, 2007

"Holy cow."

--  Phil Rizzuto, the Scooter. R.I.P.

August 14, 2007

"The specific problem here is not the teachers. It's an evaluation system so bogus that it provides mediocre and poor teachers with a false sense that they're doing well -- and, just as bad -- fails to reward the highest performing educators for their excellent work."

--  Chicago Tribune editorial board, on a recent report by The New Teacher Project that looked at teacher evaluations.

August 13, 2007

"You should not always say everything you think when you are running for president, because it can have consequences."

--  Sen. Hillary Clinton, to fellow presidential hopeful Barack Obama during last week's AFL-CIO presidential forum.

August 11, 2007

"You're sitting here listening to the research but if you don't do anything about it, then you are part of the problem."

--  Carla Hernandez, 15, part of a team of Los Angeles students who studied why some of that city's high schools are so bad.

August 10, 2007

"All the negativity passes into the chicken."

--  A dude described as the high priest of Santeria, Frank Discussion, in a New York Sun story about a Manhattan principal who used black magic to try to improve her school. (Kudos to the newspaper for not blaming the bizarre episode on NCLB.)

August 8, 2007

"Truth told, getting textbooks on time, bringing cool air in the summer and heat in the winter, painting walls and fixing toilets are relatively easy tasks. Disrupting a culture of ineptitude and low expectations is far more difficult, particularly in a town where too many elected officials and citizen-advocates believe the government the employer of first and last resort... If Rhee and the mayor fail to radically and permanently destroy that culture, their efforts will be comparable to placing new, expensive furniture in a house crumbling from the weight of termite infestation."

--  Jonetta Rose Barras, writing in the Washington Examiner on the enormous task ahead for Mayor Adrien Fenty and his Chancellor Michelle Rhee..

August 7, 2007

"Total bullshit... I think I did better work in high school."

--  "Susan," a New York City Teaching Fellow, describing the graduate level coursework in education required to become certified as a teacher.

August 6, 2007

"Throw into that mix visits from seven Democratic and one Republican presidential candidates and it made for an interesting week...  They all got high scores on the Pandometer (it keeps track of the amount of pandering to the crowd), as is to be expected."

--  San Diego Education Association president Camille Zombro, and union vice president Marc Capitelli, describing the scene at Panderpalooza. (Hat tip, Antonucci.)

August 2, 2007

"The high school diploma is the bare minimum credential necessary to have a fighting chance at successful participation in the work force of civil society. Yet current high school accountability policies represent a stunning indifference to whether young people actually earn this critical credential."

--  Education Trust report on graduation rates, as reported in the NY Times.

July 31, 2007

"What the $#%@ are people doing in there?"

--  Green Dot CEO Steve Barr, pointing to the administrative offices housing 4,500 educrats in the Los Angeles Unified School District, in the latest Forbes Magazine.

July 29, 2007

"I'm not ready to move to Montclair yet."

--  Melissa Milgrom, a parent at P.S. 8 in Brooklyn, describing her growing concerns about what to do about middle school for her daughter. 

July 27, 2007

"A student's question about qualified teachers isn't a real concern, but a snowman worried about their snow child is?"

--  Marc Lampkin, of Ed In '08, commenting on the wasted opportunity in the recent CNN/You Tube debate to engage the candidates on serious education issues.

July 26, 2007

"We have to have every single person who's working in the District understand exactly what they're going to be held accountable for -- and not only what they're going to be held accountable for, but also how that links to student achievement."

--  Washington, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, making a return appearance in the DFER quote of the day.

July 23, 2007

"The first ingredient in education reform is to tell parents the truth."

--  Former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, via Charter Blog.

July 20, 2007

"Whatever the limits of what tests can measure, it's hard to argue that what they do measure isn't valuable or shouldn't be tracked. In the search for better ways to assess overall teacher effectiveness, student test performance gains belong in the toolkit."

--  The Urban Institute's Jane Hannaway, writing about the lack of available information on classroom-level teacher effectiveness.

July 19, 2007

"It's time folks recognized that [equitable distribution of teachers] isn't a quiet, polite technical assistance and implementation issue, but a hard-edged political problem."

--  DFER board member Dianne Piche, of the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights, writing in the latest Title I Monitor, via Eduwonk.

July 17, 2007

"If you live in a wealthy suburban area the odds are very high that your child will get a very good public school education. If you live in the inner city or you live in a poor rural area, the odds of that go down dramatically."

--  Sen. John Edwards, who proposed allowing kids to flee failing school districts by giving them vouchers - housing vouchers, that is.

July 14, 2007

“(NCLB) was passed because too many students in too many places were not learning enough. It wouldn't be doing its job if it left in place the practices that produced those unacceptable results. Grumbling, in education as in everything else, is the inevitable price of change."

--  Los Angeles Times columnist Ronald Brownstein.

July 12, 2007

“There was not uniformity about whether to support turning Locke into charter schools, but I think a lot of us felt that the only way to get some real change here was to do something drastic. We felt like we were all alone and we were losing these kids. I mean, I’m a chemistry teacher and I am teaching kids to add two and two together." 

--  Susan Slalina, a chemistry teacher at Los Angeles' Locke High School, explaining to Education Week why she signed a petition to convert the failing school to several charter schools.

July 11, 2007

“The Democrats who would be president are happy to propose more spending on education but are reluctant to impose any demands in return -- in other words, they are happy to sound like the same old Democratic Party, permissive and beholden. Yes, teachers are an important Democratic constituency, but aren't parents Democratic voters, too -- parents who might welcome a message about accountability and expectations? If, that is, one of the candidates were willing to deliver it."

--  Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.

July 10, 2007

“It's not by chance a miracle is happening here. It is because of the efforts of Green Dot in defying all expectations of the experts and showing their way can work."

--  Los Angeles Mayor Antonia Villaraigosa, at an announcement yesterday that the Gates Foundation had awarded $7.9 million to Green Dot Public Schools, an operator of unionized charter schools in Los Angeles. (Disclosure: Green Dot founder and CEO Steve Barr recently joined DFER's national advisory board.)

July 9, 2007

“We want to create a school where we absolutely nail the standardized test, but where the mission of the school is really focused on those larger, loftier habits of mind and habits of heart."

--  Luyen Chou, Park Sloper and founder of the planned Brooklyn Prospect Charter School.

July 5, 2007

“What happened to the children? Do you mean you spent a billion dollars and you don't know whether they can read or not?”

--  Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY), during hearing in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

July 4, 2007

"We will no longer describe failure as the resut of vast impersonal forces like poverty or a broken bureaucracy."

-- Washington DC Superintendent Michelle Rhee, at her confirmation hearing earlier in the week. 

July 3, 2007

“When it comes to education, Democrats are ineducable.”

-- Washington Post op-ed columnist Richard Cohen, describing how absolutely horrible the party's presidential candidates are when it comes to education.

July 2, 2007

"The more you get alternative models out there, the better. Even if charter schools never have more than a small piece of the market share, they nonetheless provide an alternative example people can look to for learning."

-- New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, outlining his administration's accomplishments in the first six months in office.

June 25, 2007

“There are millions of kids out there who are being failed by the system, and our party is looking the other way. It’s morally bankrupt and politically suicidal, and you can quote me on that.”

-- DFER co-founder Whitney Tilson, in the latest issue of Philanthropy Magazine.

June 20, 2007  

"We will never have equality of opportunity unless everybody can start from the same first step. Right now, if you are poor and non-white, you are definitely at least four steps behind."

-- Brian Bennett.

(Read more about Brian here.)