Democrats for Education Reform

Previous winners:

July 29th, 2008

"It's always great when they come and say, 'My young man was doing this and I was pulling my hair out and now he's helping around the house, helping with his brothers and sisters, he's more responsible.' That makes you feel really good that they're living our creed at home and in the community. That definitely makes our chest stick out a little more."

-- Tre Childress, teacher at Urban Prep Academy, a charter school in Chicago, during the CNN series "Black in America". 

July 22nd, 2008

"I can unequivocally say that without mayoral governance and without a mayor who is willing to prioritize educational reform, no matter how muddy the political waters become, we would not have been able to achieve what we have in just one year in D.C. public schools."

-- Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools Michelle Rhee, speaking at a July 17th Congressional hearing where mayors and urban district leaders discussed ways to improve student achievement.

July 15th, 2008

"Education is an awfully good predictor of future earnings, and keeping bad teachers in classrooms filled with kids from poor families certainly helps to reinforce the cycle of poverty."

-- Ray Fisman, writing on Slate.com about our trouble in separating the effective teachers from the ineffective teachers.

July 8th, 2008

"If teachers learn new skills that serve their students better or they consistently excel in the classroom, that work can be valued and rewarded as well."

-- Barack Obama, speaking via satellite to a National Education Association convention in Washington, D.C.

July 1st, 2008

"Protecting jobs of adults without regard to how well their students perform almost certainly will lead to greater costs, stagnant academic achievement, and greater dysfunction of our public education system."

-- B. Jason Brooks of the Foundation of Education Reform & Accountability, on tenure. Due to the constrictive tenure system, it costs NYC schools about $250,000 to fire one incompetent teacher.

June 24th, 2008

-- Tom Pendleton, lawyer for the Wiley Community Charter School, which is providing teachers with a cash bonus if they agree to stay for an additional twelve months.

June 17th, 2008 

"Make sure the people you hire are the kind of people who are going to fight for kids. Ask, 'Is this somebody who is going to be eating and sleeping and breathing for these kids?' Those kind of people are not easy to find."

--John Bliss, principal of Urban Choice Charter School in Rochester, NY, on how to choose the best teachers

June 12th, 2008

"Our nation's economy and individual family income is tied to improving our skills through education. Americans cannot afford to sit back and watch its schools fail our students."

--Roy Romer speaking on the Education Equality Project on his blog, Ed in '08.

June 10th, 2008

"Charter educators took games and books and organized dozens of small classrooms while the national government scratched its head over what to do."

--Jeanne Allen, President of the Center for Education, speaking on the development of charter schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. 

June 3rd, 2008

"The Philadelphia Public Schools are a dysfunctional monopoly run by and for its employees."

--from Buzz Bissinger's A Prayer for the City. 

May 27th, 2008

"I like this school, you learn more stuff here."

--7th grader Evette Patterson on her school, the Confluence Academy, a charter school in St. Louis

April 23, 2008:

"Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it's widespread."

-- NY Times Columnist Bob Herbert.  

March 17, 2008:

"I think people understand that we can't continue to educate our children the same way."

-- Colorado Senate President Peter Groff, on his fast-moving legislation to empower schools to break free of state and district rules and labor agreements to implement reforms.

February 1, 2008:

"Life is not a scrimmage. Grown-ups who stick with dogma even though it condemns children to second-class lives should be put on buses and sent to North Dakota to hoe wheat for a year."

-- Garrison Keillor, writing on Salon.com.

January 22, 2008:

"Americans were losing control of their communities and their kids, and as they watched abandoned factories rot and metal detectors go into their schools, they could be forgiven for wondering whether either political party had a strong notion of what to do about it."

-- New York Times Magazine writer Matt Bai, in his book The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, And the Battle to remake Democratic Politics.

Jaunary 4, 2008:

"To date, the 2008 campaign's discussion of education and civil rights has been whittled down to the usual bland platitudes without the passion and drive necessary to give any African-American parent true hope that things will change dramatically for their children."

-- The Rev. Al Sharpton, describing how a Bloomberg presidential candidacy would impact discussions of education as a civil rights issue.

December 6, 2007:

"I believe every parent should be given the right to choose a public school or program for their child that is the best environment for that student."

-- Rep. James Clyburn (D-South Carolina,) majority whip in the House of Representatives, following a DFER event last month.

November 25, 2007:

"The Democratic Party has never been invested with power on the basis of a program which promised to keep things as they were. We have won when we pledged to meet the new challenges of each succeeding year. We have triumphed not in spite of controversy, but because of it; not because we avoided problems, but because we faced them."

-- Robert F. Kennedy.

November 15, 2007:

"This issue simply must be tackled."

-- NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, in a memo to NYC principals explaining the necessity of going through the bureaucratic process of improving teacher quality by getting ineffective teachers out of the classroom.

November 12, 2007:

"The Democrats tend to break your heart and the Republicans are just the boys you'd never go out with anyway."

-- Nora Ephron, writing on the Huffington Post.

November 7, 2007:

"Parents are flipping out."

-- Marci Rosa, a parent at Brooklyn's PS 261, on the city's new report cards for schools. The popular school got a C.

October 31, 2007:

"Of course, providing parents with the opportunity to choose from several different schools is meaningful only if those schools provide a high-quality education."

-- Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, explaining why he holds the charter schools that he authorizes accountable for results. (Peterson was recently a recipient of a DFER Education Warrior Award.)

October 30, 2007:

"[DFER's] founders, a small group of like-minded and politically active Democrats from New York's investment community, were motivated by a desire to spur debate about education reform within a political party that they considered too monolithic and risk-averse in its views on K-12 schooling."

-- Ed Kirby, writing about DFER in a paper presented last week at the Rick Hess confab on education entrepreneurship.

October 23, 2007:

"Paying for performance has long been a dream. This administration, working with the UFT, is making it a reality. I am confident that rewarding excellence will make a difference for teachers, for schools, and, most importantly, for the people who matter the most in public education — our students."

-- NYC Chancellor Joel Klein, writing in the New York Sun.

October 16, 2007:

"They're so busy fighting No Child Left Behind... If they would use some of that energy to implement the law, we would go farther."

-- Mary Johnson, president of Parent U-Turn, in the New York Times.

October 10, 2007:

"I am really thankful for organizations that are going to help push politicians, especially the ones who have been on the side of protecting the status quo."

-- Washington, DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee, in a speech to DFER last month.

October 8, 2007:

"I think what we've demonstrated is that with a radical change, you can break that pattern and create a very successful school . . . where kids will achieve . . . and will graduate with the skills they need to do whatever they want to do in life. There are a lot of schools that could use that intervention."

-- Scott Gordon, founder of Mastery Charter Schools, describing the stunning one-year turnaround at Shoemaker Middle School in West Philly.

October 1, 2007:

"Our education system is analog and our kids are digital."

-- Rep. George Miller (D-California) at a meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board.

September 26, 2007:

"Childrens do learn.”

-- President George W. Bush, talking about NCLB, a law his administration has done little to actually support/enforce since 2002, when it was signed.

September 25, 2007:

"In California, we have personally seen students who have not been taught, not been tested, and certainly not been reported because they do not have adequate English language skills even though they were born in this country. Because they are not included in the reports, districts suffer no consequences for their failure.”

-- United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez, in a letter to Rep. George Miller, expressing support for keeping NCLB strong.

September 21, 2007:

"Charter schools should be given a chance from sea to shining sea.”

--  Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., at Monday night's DFER launch in DC.

September 20, 2007:

"[Young teachers watch their friends] go off and get paid for their time and ingenuity [in other fields]. In teaching, you go as fast as the slowest person.”

--  Rep. George Miller (D-California) explaining why he supports higher pay for excellent teachers, a measure being strongly opposed by national teachers unions.

September 19, 2007:

"All the issues we dealt with in the ’60s, we’re having to deal with again in 2007. We’re back to separate but equal — but separate isn’t equal.”

--  Ernestine Tucker, school board member in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, referring to a plan to reduce crowding in popular schools by sending black students to lower-performing schools.

September 14, 2007:

"What is troubling is that the Committee draft bill's changes comprise a remedy more deadly than the ills it is trying to cure. It patches holes in NCLB's walls, but at the same time takes a sledgehammer to NCLB's foundations."

--  Charles Barone, former aide to Rep. George Miller (D-California) and former Democratic Deputy Staff Director for the House Education and Labor Committee.

September 12, 2007

"The more complicated problem confronting Congress is political.   Any meaningful accountability requirements are going to show that a lot of schools need to do better.   Minority students trail white students by, on average, four grade-levels in achievement by  high school.   Meanwhile, only one in two minority students finishes high school on time.  Those students do go to school somewhere – and it’s not just in the big cities."

--  DFER Boardmember Andrew J. Rotherham, of Education Sector, on NPR's "All Things Considered."

September 10, 2007

"Does this country want to make schools better -- or just make schools look better? If Congress is true to the noble idea that all children, no matter their races, family incomes or circumstances, can learn to read and do math, it must reject suggestions that make a charade of standards and accountability."

--  Washington Post editorial board, writing this morning on NCLB reauthorization.

September 7, 2007

"If all of the nation’s children are to get the education they deserve, Congress needs to strengthen the No Child Left Behind law. Mr. Miller’s draft contains some important reforms that deserve to become law, but much of that good will be undermined if states, schools and teachers are not held accountable for the quality of education they provide."

--  NY Times editorial board, writing this morning on NCLB reauthorization.

September 5, 2007

"My record is clean."

--  Dondald Winstead, Washington D.C. textbook czar, explaining why he has been able to keep his job with the school system even though he never seems to get the textbooks delivered to actual classrooms. Winstead was fired by former Sperintendent Arlene Ackerman in 1998 but later was reinstated after reaching a settlement with the school system. Part of the settlement involved removing records of poor peformance from his personnel file.

September 4, 2007

"People are not thrilled with an adequate school system. There is still a lot of noise and concerns. I think that’s right, but you can’t get from awful to great by making a speech, or by saying I’ve got a program."

--  New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, starting his sixth year at the helm of the nation's largest school system.

September 3, 2007

"But dumbing down tests, winking at students who fail them, giving a pass to teachers who can't teach and schools that don't deliver -- who benefits from that? Not the youth who will end up credentialed but unemployable. And not those school officials who have enough confidence in themselves and their teachers to welcome fair judgment."

--  Washington Post columnist Fred Hiatt, writing about Prince George's County Superintendent John Deasy and the anti-productive, anti-accountability climate in which he must work.

September 2, 2007

"We have to stand up together if these folks are going to do the right thing... if we speak as one, we speak with power."

--  National Education Association Reg Weaver, explaining the importance of watering down the federal No Child Left Behind law.

August 31, 2007

"The conversation has started. Where have you been?"

--  Sourpuss blogger PREAPrez, who has a lot more faith that charter school leaders are seriously engaging with teachers unions (and thinking about benefiting politically from such arrangements) than we do.

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