WEEKEND VALLAS QUOTABLES

Vallas (right) was beaten by Rod Blagojevich (left) in '02. 

Fran Spielman

Sources said Vallas alienated teachers unions by privatizing some New Orleans schools and forging partnerships with Connecticut Republicans in a desperate attempt to hang onto his job there. -- Sun-Times

Carol Felsenthal

[Paul's brother] Dean Vallas supported conservative Republican Brady against Quinn in 2010 because he thought Quinn lacked “the political skills to navigate around a Mike Madigan." -- Chicago Magazine

CTU Pres. Karen Lewis

"While he was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Vallas pioneered the corporate driven education model in our city. His policies continue to devastate our schools system, which recently suffered 50 school closures, deep and painful school budget cuts, and the loss of thousands of experienced school staff are key tenets of the Vallas model." -- Examiner

Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Connecticut Working Families Party

"It's not surprising Vallas is leaving town. His brand of corporate reform turned out to be toxic, and the voters have rejected him. But the last thing he deserves is a promotion." -- The Courant

Eric Zorn

Vallas, like Quinn, is a balding white guy in his 60s from a fading political era — he ran a close second to Rod Blagojevich for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2002 ... I like the Vallas choice in part for that reason — Vallas is the only candidate for lieutenant governor who's clearly ready to take over the top job if necessary.  -- Chicago Tribune

Hey, Arne Duncan!

Where's your pal Newt? Not touring together any more? Remember 3 bedfellows tour one year ago w/ Gingrich & Sharpton? Reaching across aisle? What happened? Why not tell us about it?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

The problem with billionaire philanthropists

A strong nonprofit sector, fueled by tax-deductible donations, is one of the great things about the United States and it's hardly new. What is unnerving is the scale of philanthropy today and the growing clout of super rich donors. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gives away six or seven times as much money every year as the Ford Foundation, which just a decade ago was the largest foundation in the United States. And there's plenty more where that came from: In 1982 the combined net worth of the richest 400 Americans represented 2.8 percent of GDP. Now that figure is around 10 percent. (David Callahan, Huffington)

Al Sharpton

Sharpton told the Daily News last week his National Action Network never got any of Bloomberg's money - "not that I know of."

CTU Prez Karen Lewis

Apparently the Tribune was unconcerned with the facts. Nor did the Tribune check its facts on the 241 teacher firings under Washington, D.C., schools chief Michelle Rhee, citing that 165 were "judged as the worst teachers in the system." It turns out only one-third of those dismissed teachers received poor ratings on a newly installed teacher evaluation system that has been proven neither valid nor reliable. But that would make the Tribune's persistent teacher-bashing, under the guise of protecting students, moot.

Can the editors truly make the next leap in their logic? That laying off 239 expert career teachers this year while Teach for America novices, 80 percent of whom will leave the classroom in fewer than three years, remain in classrooms, is in the best interest of students? (Letter to the Tribune)

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Duncan, Gingrich & Sharpton on Meet the Press

Duncan: "I just want to say, as a country, we need more good schools." Me: Why the hell didn't we think of this?

More Duncan: "Good charter schools are a piece of the answer. Bad charter schools are a piece of the problem." Me: DOH!

Duncan on DOE INVESTMENT: "We will only invest in those states and districts where student achievement is part of the evaluation." Me: Yes, let the anti-testers starve.

Host Gregory: "I mean, in 1995, Speaker Gingrich, you were an advocate of dismantling the Department of Education." Me: That was before he discovered it was a cash cow for corporate reformers.

NYT editorial: RTTT favors "boutiques" like TFA

The language in the application reflects timidity at the White House and in Congress, where some voices wanted to delay the fight over this issue until next year when Congress will likely reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The language also reflects the sometimes excessive influence of boutique alternative certification programs, which want to keep doors open for teachers who might be shut out under traditional criteria.

Here's Checker Finn at his humanitarian best:

It's a fact that employment was an explicit purpose of stimulus funding--Congress said as much--and with today's jobless rate over ten percent only a churl would deny the humanitarian value as well as the political appeal of this.

Then Checker the churl adds:

That said, turning schools into a jobs program--while well-run public organizations and private firms use the economic crisis to purge weak performers, cherry-pick talent, and position themselves to be more productive going forward--is a dubious way to tone them up for the 21st century.

THE "LISTENING" TOUR

THE BEDFELLOWS' TOUR

Slate (h/t Russo)

Newt selling Duncan's plan in Philly road show

Gingrich, a Republican, wants more charter schools and stronger charter laws in all states. "When you go to those kind of schools, you realize what is possible for all American children," said Gingrich. "If we have absolute proof it can be done, why aren't we doing it? We are literally risking the lives of these kids."

Duncan acknowledged that some have called for tighter monitoring of charter schools. In Philadelphia, for instance, federal authorities are investigating at least six charters for alleged financial mismanagement. (Inquirer)

Quotables

"Not the time for Dewey"

Given the existing constraints of imposed instruction and the demand for orderly, acquiescent behavior, what can be done to modulate the rigid authoritarianism? This is not the historical moment to anticipate a resurgence of Dewey progressivism with its focus on harnessing student interests to an ever-evolving co-constructed curriculum. (Penn Prof. Joan Goodman, Edweek)

Obama, please visit Chi-Town

PRESIDENT OBAMA, your young people are dying in the streets of Chi-Town. Please stop by Chicago on your way back from Copenhagen (Sun-Times columnist, Stella Foster)

Civil rights leader, Newt

The odd couple of Gingrich and Sharpton found common ground in the concept that education is the new frontier on civil rights. (AP Wire)

Rhee's broom

The broom -- poised to sweep out the old, the failed, her employees -- has become convenient shorthand, a quick answer to the question I ask one D.C. schoolteacher after another: What makes you think Rhee doesn't respect teachers? (WaPo's Marc Fisher)



Related: More on—Aw shucks, Newt isn’t running 10/4/07

The Bedfellows Tour

Arne Duncan is going on tour with strange bedfellows, Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich to promote the Race to the Top. Newt, as a leader of the most backward wing of Republicanism, launched a racist campaign against the appointment of Judge Sotomayor and has been rallying the T-baggers against Obama's health care reform. So the question is, does this version of united front around school reform represent an adjustment in Gingrich's approach to politics or is it a statement about the character of Duncan's reform agenda that makes it acceptable to someone like Newt?

I guess you can tell what I think.

Squabbles tearing the "bedfellows" apart

EEP's house of cards

There appears to be trouble brewing in EEP land. The unprincipled alliance between the "strange bedfellows," N.Y. Chancellor Joel Klein, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Republican wing-nut, Newt Gingrich, now appears to be coming apart at the seams. Shortly after the trio appeared at the White House two weeks ago, along with Mayor Bloomberg and Sec. of Ed Arne Duncan, preaching to their small choir the gospel of school privatization and unlimited mayoral control, the wheels began coming off.

First Gingrich twittered that Obama's Supreme Court appointment, Sonia Sotomayor, was "a racist." This put Sharpton as well as Duncan in embarrassing positions. How could Duncan be seen on stage, embracing the wing-Newt at the same time the wing-Newt was going off on his boss' most important pick? While Gingrich was forced to "take back" his abusive statements about Sotomayor, his attacks on Obama's policies have become even more strident and Limbaugh-like.

Meanwhile, Sharpton refuses to support Bloomberg's mayoral-control push. This also distances him from Duncan who has been threatening districts with loss of stim dollars if they refuse to give (urban) mayors control of the schools.

What a tangled web we weave...

More from Levy

I had to chuckle reading the NYT this morning. There was an op-ed piece by former N.Y. Chancellor and Wall Street (Citigroup) lawyer, Harold Levy, offering us the "5 ways to fix schools." And here I always thought there were 7.

Levy, who obviously hadn't yet discovered the 5 ways while he was still in power, now wants to make it "mandatory" that all kids go to college for a year. I suppose he hopes that will keep them out of the job market and off the unemployment line for a while longer and hopes that the feds will pick up the cost of tuition ($8,000 average for state colleges and $25,000 for private). As for those kids who want to take a year off after high school, to work or travel? I suppose we could arrest their parents. How will this "fix" schools? Maybe Levy will tell us later.

Levy, you may recall, helped engineer the back-door shipment of $500K to Sharpton via hedge-fund school reformers DFER which apparently bought Sharpton's temporary allegiance to the "bedfellows" club at EEP.

Duncan, Sharpton tour, but where's Newt?

Who got to Gingrich...?

Was it just the already badly isolated Limbaugh Party leaders and/or the badly embarrassed conservative EEP faction of the Democrats as well? The latter haven't said a critical word about their new-found bedfellow, Newt, even while Republican leaders beg him to tone down his racist comments.

After initially waiting a few nanoseconds to call Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist -- not to mention advising that she just ought to withdraw from consideration -- Newt Gingrich has had a sudden change of heart. (Gloria Berger, CNN)

...and why isn't he on the Duncan/Sharpton tour?

White education reformers were looking for a prominent African American to lend them credibility, while Sharpton needed the money because his non-profit, the National Action Network, was nearly broke. Considering the distastefulness of this financial back-scratching, it was surprising to see Sharpton received in the Oval Office -- alongside Newt Gingrich -- as an education visionary, just a few weeks after the donation story broke in the Daily News. And it's even more surprising, as Politico reports, that Sharpton and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will now be embarking on a five-city school reform tour. (Dana Goldstein, American Prospect)

What happened to "the civil rights issue of the 21st century"?

Who's with Newt? EEP?

A week ago, race baiter Newt Gingrich was at the White House, lecturing Obama about education being the "civil rights issue of 21st century." He's one of the three top leaders and spokesman for the "no excuses" EEP education policy coalition, along with Joel Klein and Al Sharpton. Now Gingrich is joining conservative wing-nuts Limbaugh and Tancredo ("National Council of La Raza is equivalent to the KKK") in calling Judge Sotomayor a "racist".

So the question is: what brand of "civil rights" are Gingrich and his bedfellows in EEP really talking about? Fellow Republicans are running as fast as they can from Newt, hoping to salvage some credibility among Latino voters. But will Klein, Sharpton, Bloomberg, and Duncan (who spoke with Newt at the EEP White House rally) and the rest of the EEP leaders follow suit and repudiate?

Check his travel receipts

Tom VanderArk, as usual, has his head up his rear end. Remember VDA? He was the education front man at Gates who pushed the idea that urban high schools were "too difficult" to fix and called for mass school closings in the black community before the idea was hip. Now he is promoting the Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Newt Gingrich, Al Sharpton crowd and their faux commemoration of the Brown decision.

VDA, posting on Huffington, claims he was just in Chicago where he supposedly visited Austin High School.

On the far west side of Chicago, Austin High School serves a population of low income minority students. The school was closed and replaced by four small schools in an effort to improve achievement and graduation rates. The building is old and the Oak Park neighborhood is tough. At nearby People's Taco, you shout your order through a hole and greasy tacos spin out of a bullet proof turret.

But VDA must have been high on greasy tacos. For one thing, Austin High isn't in Oak Park. For another, Oak Park isn't a" tough neighborhood'. It's one of the wealthiest suburbs around. Austin High School was closed all right, but wasn't replaced by four small schools. There are only three, including one good one, Austin Poly, which btw isn't a charter school. Oh, one more thing. It's PEEPLES (not PEOPLE'S) Tacos over on Chicago Ave.

So the question is--where was VDA really when he was supposed to be in Chicago? If I was his partner at Vander Ark/Ratcliff, I would ask to see some travel receipts before I reimbursed him.

More on the bedfellows' White House visit

"Don't read too much into it..."

An Obama administration source cautioned not to read too much into Mayor Bloomberg's recent visit to the White House with New Gingrich and Al Sharpton, saying it was Sharpton, not the president himself, who wanted Bloomberg included. He also wanted his Education Equality Project partner, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, to come along, too, "but Klein is apparently a bit too much of a lightning rod for criticism for the White House's taste these days."(Elizabeth Benjamin, The Daily Politics)

Duncan's new mantra

Mayoral control of the schools has become Arne Duncan's new mantra, his panacea for Detroit's failing school system. This, even though the former mayor is sitting in a jail cell. I'm not saying that mayoral control of Detroit's schools is necessarily a bad thing, but does this even begin to touch the real problems?

New media

The front page of a Chicago daily recently headlined these stories: A charter school facing closure, record turnouts for university elections, a poll showing that Chicagoans crave more openness in their government. It was a pretty robust report, but it wasn't in the Chicago Tribune or Sun-Times, the major papers in town. In fact, it wasn't on paper at all, but in the Chi-Town Daily News, a small but growing online upstart that is trying to succeed with a relentlessly local focus. (Boston.com)

Bedfellows

I don't think Bloomberg, Sharpton, and Gingrich are such "strange bedfellows." Do you?

It was the very image of the strange-bedfellow triumvirate standing outside the White House yesterday after an audience with the President - Mayor Bloomberg, Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich - that dominated most stories. But far more compelling is the nature of the bed the three, and countless others, have made for themselves, in the Education Equality Project. (Daily News)

C'mon. You gotta love Gingrich talking the "civil rights" talk to Obama.

"I think this is an issue that should bring all Americans together," Gingrich said, saying that education should be a civil rights issue for the 21st century.

Hey Newt! You must not have heard. Civil rights was an issue in the 20th century too when you were running for Congress from Georgia as a Dixie-Pub. Now you're attacking bi-lingualism as "ghetto language", calling for an end to multiculturalism in schools, replacing it with "patriotic education." So actually, civil rights is still the civil rights issue of the 21st century.

Note to Arne

Elizabeth Green at Gotham Schools reports that NYC Public Advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, sent a note to Arne Duncan, warning him to take Bloomberg's B.S. with a grain of salt. Green also wonders why only three bedfellows went to the Obama meeting. What happened to Joel Klein, the head of the "no-excuses" faction.

No more "miracles" please

No sooner had the Streets & San guys hauled away anther year's worth of homages from the expressway underpass near my house, where leaky walls had etched an image of the Virgin Mary (if you squinted your eyes) than I read David Brooks piece, "The Harlem Miracle."Now don't get me wrong. I believe in miracles as much as the next guy. For example, there was Kobe Bryant's incredible shot Friday night from near mid-court with one second left on the shot clock. Only not when it comes to public schools and the so-called achievement gap. It's just that I've just seen too many of them debunked recently. First there was the "Texas Miracle" that made the dropout rate supposedly disappear from urban schools and propel Gov. George Bush into the presidency. Then there was the the great "Chicago Miracle" called Renaissance 2010.

Brooks' miracle has the Harlem Children's Zone's Promise Academy, on its own, without any changes in the living conditions of Harlem' children, completely and totally eliminating the achievement gap between wealthy white students and poorer children of color. It must be true, writes Brooks, because a friend of his at Harvard visited the school and had an epiphany.

This is no knock on the Promise Academy. I'm sure that a small school with a good group of teachers and lots of resources can produce a jump in test scores. But let's cool it on the miracle talk please.