Joe Williams' Blog
September 28, 2007
Job One For Rupert Murdoch At WSJ
(Warning: Potential sexism ahead. Proceed with caution, unless you work at Bloomberg LLP, where reading this kind of post may be applauded.)
Mr. Murdoch, you clearly know what I'm talking about here. Can you please ask the folks who create the trademark mug shots to draw in Margaret Spellings eye glasses?
You can take the girl out of the SLG's, but you can't the SLG's out of the girl.
Purrrr.
Oh yeah, and the WSJ has an editorial today on NCLB which makes a point that we made here yesterday about the Bush administration's bizarre enforcement of NCLB:
Continue reading "Job One For Rupert Murdoch At WSJ"....
Posted by Joe Williams on September 28, 2007 8:41 AM
September 27, 2007
Bush and NCLB
Like everyone else in the blogosphere, I had some fun with President Bush's remarks this week that "Childrens do learn."
And it seemed to get some serious ink in the morning papers as well.
If only all of us had given this kind of attention to Bush's enforcement of NCLB the last few years. Or lack thereof.
If Bush had been serious about the law, he might not have to be working so hard to shore up support for its reauthorization. He had the bully pulpit and could have used it to take shots at school districts which were sabotaging attempts to let kids transfer out of failing schools, to poke fun at ridiculous school improvement plans and bogus reorganizations at failing schools, etc.
But he whiffed.
Posted by Joe Williams on September 27, 2007 12:13 PM
L.A. Meanies!
So these people in Los Angeles, Richard and Melanie Lundquist, want to give $50 million to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's efforts to turn around some long-failing high schools. And Mrs. Lundquist says she wants to help raise even more private money to help save these public schools.
But there's a catch.
It seems the Lundquists don't want to just throw their money down the drain. They want to make sure the students in those schools actually benefit from the significant private boost.
According to the L.A. Times story on the gift: "The schools must show progress on several fronts, including test scores, graduation rates, dropout rates, safety, parent satisfaction and other measures still to be determined."
Oh boy. Didn't they get the memo that children are much more than a test? That they carry with them the baggage of a cruel society and that schools alone can't be expected to teach kids?
How dare these people attach inflexible, one-size-fits-all conditions to their $50 million donation. If they really cared they'd just hand over the larger-than-life-sized check and walk away!
Can you imagine what would happen if the federal government tried to make sure that kids were actually better off because of billions of dollars worth of investments sent to local schools around the country? Oh wait, we tried that... and now its under fire from the education cartel.
Note to A.J. Duffy: You need to stop this thing in its tracks before it spreads!
Hypothetical thought of the day: Who would make a better Secretary of Education, Mrs. Lundquist or Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor turned NEA lobbyist?
Posted by Joe Williams on September 27, 2007 11:28 AM
September 25, 2007
New Haven Mayor Needs A Hug
New Haven Connecticut Mayor John DeStefano is feeling blue because members of the group ConnCAN have been quoted a couple of times in news stories on education reform.
Here's one of the quotes in question, from ConnCAN Research Director Marc Porter Magee, on New Haven's SAT scores: "At the rate of increase, from 2007 it would take New Haven 129 years to reach the state average."
Oh no he didn't!
Here's the other one, from ConnCAN Executive Director Alex Johnston: "Our public schools have been set up to provide stable employment for a large number of folks."
Snap!
You can't blame the mayor for wanting to declare a little DeStefano Time on this one. Every city agency should be mobilized! This is about saving the children now. Words can hurt! How are the New Haven Schools going to get any better unless we make everyone feel good about them?
Posted by Joe Williams on September 25, 2007 9:28 AM
DFER Is Hiring
Please forward to anyone you think would be effective. Thanks.
Posted by Joe Williams on September 25, 2007 8:55 AM
September 24, 2007
Who Speaks For The United Farm Workers?
Nearly two weeks ago, I posted on one of the strange coalitional line-ups surrounding the reauthorization of NCLB, namely how odd it was to see a union like the United Farm Workers lining up on the opposite side of the National Education Association. (I noted that this was all relatively speaking, since there seems to be so much nuance behind everyone's various positions on NCLB that it isn't a clean coin-flip.)
I thought it was pretty interesting, and others like NEA's Joel Packer and EIA's Mike Antonucci have also found some of the splits here to be noteworthy.
But not Old Man Casey or the artist formerly known as PREA Prez, both of whom seemed to think it was total bullshit that an organization that was started by Cesar Chavez might actually have concerns about how the children of farm workers are being educated by their local public school systems. (You can read the letter after the jump and decide for yourself - but be warned, it's a doozie.)
What is interesting here is that neither of these guys is just an armchair blogger who spouts off on stuff here and there in their free time. Both are elected teachers union officials, aka "Teacher Voice" as they never get tired of telling you. In Leo's case, he's a vice president with the nation's largest local. With little more than a Google search, Leo seemed to conclude that the United Farm Workers couldn't possibly be supportive of NCLB. That's teacher territory only, I suppose.
(This seems to be one of those anecdotes which gives credence to the complaints many of us hear from organized laboristas that teachers unions tend to take them for granted.)
So, who speaks for the United Farm Workers, teacher union bloggers or... Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers???
*** Note: I didn't link to this letter because I don't think it is online. I simply did what Leo could have done: I asked for a copy after it came up in Sonia Hernandez' testimony at the House Education and Labor Committee hearing.
*** Note II: I took the liberty of bold facing some of the really yummy parts.
*** Note III: Leo accuses ME of besmirching the good name of Cesar Chavez? Good grief.
UPDATE: PREAPrez corrects that he should be known as the "artist formerly known as sourpuss" and complains that I didn't make reference to the Jack Coons paper which quoted Cesar Chavez saying he couldn't support vouchers or he'd lose a bunch of cash that Al Shanker was sending the UFW's way. There. Let it not be said that I don't cave to elected "teacher voice" like everyone else!
Continue reading "Who Speaks For The United Farm Workers?"....
Posted by Joe Williams on September 24, 2007 10:54 AM
Add Chicago Tribune and The Detroit News
To the list of newspaper editorial board urging Congress not to move backward when they come up with changes to the federal No Child Left Behind law. They join others, like the Washington Post and NY Times in urging Rep. George Miller and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to hold tough amid all the pressure they are feeling right now from groups like the NEA.
The Detroit News editorial not only urges Congress to keep NCLB strong, it urges Michigan education leaders to get real about dealing with schools that have been failing their students for years. (They want 'em closed down.) They note that leaving things up to local school districts would be a great idea, if only the local districts we're talking about had the "political will or ability" to take drastic measures to turn around their schools.
"While we are strong advocates of local control rather than federal intrusion into education, too many school districts use that mantra as an excuse for local negligence," the Mo-Town scribes argued.
Meanwhile, in the Windy City, the Tribune editors concede that NCLB isn't perfect, but that proposals like one from Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy to eliminate testing requirements as part of NCLB would "allow states and schools to evade responsibility."
Posted by Joe Williams on September 24, 2007 10:12 AM
