I’m not sure why there is so much interest in Obama’s Secretary of Ed appointment. I mean education reform seems to be down towards the middle of Obama’s crisis-solving agenda. But when the name of N.Y. schools chancellor, Joel Klein emerged on the short list, the education blog pot started boiling—me included. My blog post from yesterday is among several picked up this morning by NYT’s Elissa Gootman.
Across the line, a collection of conservative, pro-voucher and school privatization groups are rallying their forces in opposition to Obama’s chief educational advisor Linda Darling-Hammond. Here, blogger Alexander Russo, whose kitchen-sink anti-Obama campaign ended on election day, carries their water and then accuses my brother at PREAPrez of “going Klonsky” on him. At least he spells our name right (unlike Mike Petrilli). But this is the first time I’ve seen Klonskyused as an adjective—as in going postal.
Sunday’s Washington Post(“Overhauling D.C. School Overcome by Violence”) offers a snapshot of Michelle Rhee’s nightmarish version of top-down school reform. Hart Middle School in one of D.C. poorest and most isolated communities, has fallen victim, not only to the district’s inequitable distribution of school resources, under-funding, and under-staffing, but to Rhee’s shock-and-awe reform policies as well.
Interviews with teachers, parents, students and police paint a picture of a troubled school that, far from hitting bottom with its placement on "restructuring" status, has fallen into an even deeper hole. It is overenrolled and understaffed and lacks the extra academic support promised by Rhee, teachers said.
New York City officials violated state environmental law when they began building a school complex on a contaminated site in the South Bronx without first coming up with a plan to ensure that students and the public would not be exposed to pollutants in the future, a state judge has ruled.
Hunting down liberals in academia
Wing-nutthink tanks like AEI continue rooting out university liberals and left-wingers. But researchers disagree with their basic premise:
No one disputes that American academia is decidedly more liberal than the rest of the population, or that there is a detectable shift to the left among students during their college years. Still, both studies in the peer-reviewed PS, for example, found that changes in political ideology could not be attributed to proselytizing professors but rather to general trends among that age group.
Despite crisis, Gates can't spend it fast enough
The global economy may be going to hell but the Gates Foundation says it’s got so much money, it has trouble spending it fast enough.An installment on Warren Buffet’s massive contribution to the fund, will bring in $1.8 billion that must be spent in 2009. Still, Gates only gives away 5% of its assets each year and with the other 95% invested in the market, the foundation is bound to feel the effects of the downturn. The Seattle Times reports that:
Next year's installment of Buffett's gift could reflect the market downturn, since the gift comes in the form of Berkshire Hathaway B shares. On Friday those shares were down by about 18 percent from the same time last year. The value of the Gates Foundation endowment was also down to $35.1 billion in October from $35.9 billion in June.
With school district budgets collapsing, power philanthropists like Gates, Broad and Walton will most likely increase their influence over public education policy and leverage their control over school reform projects even as their investments fail in other areas.
Union hater Mike Pachouli (I know that's not how he spells it) can't stand the idea that teachers and their unions were an essential part of Obama's successful campaign.
When my brother Fred at PREAPrezwrites about "the thousands of union teachers from solid blue states like New York and Illinois that spent their weekends in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin and turned those swing states blue..." Pachouli sneers and calls it an example of the "corrosive power" of the unions. Then he has the chutzpah to give Obama an ultimatum:
Are you going to side with Mr. Klonksy and his friends? Or are you going to deliver change we can believe in—including in k-12 education reform?
Is Pachouli really threatening Obama? Is he really saying to the President-elect, it's them or us? Not too bright a move for this badly defeated McCain/Palin hack who thinks that teachers having collective bargaining rights represents the greatest threat to all mankind . That remark, plus the misspelling of KLONSKY, makes Pachouli fresh meat for union prez Fred. My bro, ever the school teacher, ices the former Bush bureaucrat with a simile:
Mike Petrilli, former Bush Department of Education official advising Obama about schools and teachers is like having Dick Cheney advising Obama on Constitutional rights.
Only problem is that Palin-like Pachouli probably thinks that's a compliment.
My mailbox has been bombarded this week with emails from educators and teacher groups in New York. They are panic stricken over the possibility that N.Y. Chancellor Joel Klein may get Obama’s top education job.The NYT has been touting Klein, who has strong personal connections to Democratic big wigs like Caroline Kennedy and John Podesta. The Times makes it sound like opposition to a Klein appointment is coming solely from the teachers union. But I’m hearing it from school reformers, parents and educators of all stripes. While I was in North Carolina last week, at the Coalition of Essential Schools Fall Forum, Gotham teachers were all talking the same smack about Klein.
Right now, I don’t have any particular favorite for the job. But my hunch is that Obama’s transition team will recommend a governor or high-profile public school advocate, someone who is fairly neutral on the hot-button and wedge issues and someone who would use the bully pulpit to support public education and adequate funding.
I can’t even see issues such as standardized testing, privatization, vouchers, charter schools, etc… being high on Obama’s agenda in his first year in office when a New Deal for economic recovery and job creation is key. I am hoping he will ultimately support some kind of New Deal for Public Education, to keep the nation’s school districts from going belly-up and to finally ditch No Child Left Behind (or at least it’s most viral aspects). I’d like to see the Broader, Bolder Coalition unite behind something like that from outside the DOE.
Joel Klein would be the worse choice possible for Sec. of Ed. Why? First of all, he is an extremely divisive force—not what Obama needs right now. His appointment would be a pure power play coming from Mayor Bloomberg and the Ownership Society wing of the Democratic Party, pro-voucher Republicrats like DFER and the conservative think tankers, like Finn and Petrilli at Fordham.
Klein, along with Michelle Rhee in D.C., and Paul Vallas in New Orleans, has been a leading force for privatization of public school management, union busting, discrimination against special-ed and ELL immigrant students, and a defender of the worst aspects of NCLB. He is the main opponent of the Bolder, Broader group and his appointment could turn the DOE into a target for parents’ and community groups’ protests for years to come (maybe that’s a good thing). It would also cause a big rift with current Obama ally Randi Weingarten and the teacher unions.
Does a new Obama administration need all that? And why he would do anything to strengthen Bloomberg’s hand right now, I can’t even imagine.
A story in Saturday’s New York Times describes more Bloomberg/Klein failed policies in the district.
On a recent Saturday morning, as hundreds of anxious students lined up for the test outside the stately stone-gray facade of Brooklyn Tech, parents and students attributed the racial disparities to a lack of private tutoring, subpar middle schools that do not expose students to test material, transportation problems, cultural differences and a simple lack of motivation on the part of some students.
This despite, millions being spent by them for rigged evaluations and misleading PR. Remember the "Texas Miracle" scandal that plagued Rod Paige's term as Bush's secretary of ed? All in all, I can’t think of one good reason, political or educational, to have someone like Klein running the DOE. Can you?
For more reasons to oppose a Klein appointment see:
The African Studies Association (ASA) will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first annual meeting in historic Chicago, IL.
As part of the larger program, we will feature scholars, artists and community activists from across the country who will facilitate panels, workshops and discussions tailored especially to educators. It is a one-day (8am -4:30 pm) professional development event and is open to educators from Head Start to higher Ed.
In addition to learning about innovative ways to incorporate Africa into their curricula teachers will receive a CD full of teaching resources designed by Columbia University, a “How Big Is Africa Poster?” with a comprehensive curriculum guide and a text for use in the classroom, Africa: A Biography of the Continent. Lunch is also included.
Venue: Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers 301 East North Water Street Chicago, IL 60611 Date: Saturday, November 15, 2008 Time: 8 am-4:30 pm Registration: $25 http://condor.depaul.edu/~fdemissi/asa2008 Credit: Eligible for professional development credit (CPDU)
For more information: Toni Pressley-Sanon University of Wisconsin-Madison toni.sanon@gmail.com (608) 265-9151 Tage Biswalo University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign biswalo@illinois.edu (217) 244-5456
Across the line, a collection of conservative, pro-voucher and school privatization groups are rallying their forces in opposition to Obama’s chief educational advisor Linda Darling-Hammond. Here, blogger Alexander Russo, whose kitchen-sink anti-Obama campaign ended on election day, carries their water and then accuses my brother at PREAPrez of “going Klonsky” on him. At least he spells our name right (unlike Mike Petrilli). But this is the first time I’ve seen Klonsky used as an adjective—as in going postal.
