Friday, September 23, 2005
Aye Aye!
The Democratic Attorney General of CT goes to a yacht club and gives a speech attacking a law aimed at helping poor kids...
U.S. News' Anne McGrath gets Jay Greene to sit down and talk education myths.
Denis Doyle turns in a must-read remembrance of Sandy Feldman.
Based on last week's hearings, it's hard to know exactly what John Roberts will do if he's confirmed as Chief Justice and if the education world's legal experts know, they're not telling either.
But, this passage in a recent Jeffery Rosen TNR piece ($) about Roberts ought to give the anti-NCLB crowd pause...
The most notable area where Roberts would be more deferential to Congress than O'Connor relates to Congress's ability to condition the grant of federal funds on a state's agreement to respect federal law. This is Congress's most significant power over the states--just as significant as its power to regulate interstate commerce, if not more so. For example, federal civil rights laws that forbid state programs and institutions receiving federal funds from discriminating on the basis of race and sex depend on a broad interpretation of Congress's spending power. Similarly, Congress can use its spending power to circumvent the Supreme Court's attempts to strike down federal laws under the Commerce Clause. For example, after the Supreme Court held in 1995 that a federal regulation prohibiting guns in schools exceeded Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce, President Clinton pointed out that Congress could achieve the same result by denying federal funds to the handful of states that refused to prohibit guns in schools on their own.
Along with Justice Clarence Thomas, O'Connor was the Rehnquist Court's most energetic critic of Congress's efforts to impose conditions on federal grants to the states. In 1987, she dissented from a crucial case that upheld Congress's power to deny a portion of federal highway funds to states that refused to adopt 21 as the minimum drinking age. By contrast, Roberts, who participated in the case as an advocate, came to agree with the Court's majority. In a 1999 interview on public radio, Roberts said, "The basic principle is, if you pay the piper, you get to call the tune. And I think the federal government could say, 'If we're giving you money, and it's related to the area in which we're trying to get you to waive sovereign immunity, we can require you to consent to suit as a condition of getting those funds.'" This suggests that Roberts would give Congress more latitude than O'Connor to impose conditions on federal funds. Emph. added.
PM Reading...Who Lost Schrag? And Wilkins Channels The Boss...
OK, losing Alter is one thing, but losing Schrag is a whole different kettle of fish...excellent Peter Schrag column in today's Sac. Bee.
And, if you're in the mood for more in the same vein, Amy Wilkins responds to some recent back and forth in the Gadfly.
Give some love to Michael Lach over at Teach And Learn, he's moving the ball in Chicago.
In The Times, Hal Varian discusses the recent Hanushek Texas study.
Washington Post weighs-in with a very sensible editorial. Targeted, modest, and time-limited. While hardly surprising at this point, the Bush Administration's ability to mortgage the high ground on an issue in favor of playing politics still manages to astound...Edu Commentary readers weigh-in later...
Over at bold print blog Edwize it's all about the kids...except when it's about the contract! 158 comments on EdWize about the fact-finders report, no mention of what's good for the kids. Curious...
Also, at the same place, Leo Casey comes back about this post, nothing new except some links to random unrelated Edu Commentary posts to try to stick it to these guys. It's actually pretty tendentious in other ways, for instance no one is suggesting most teachers work less than 4 hours a day, the issue is what's in the contract. The bottom line here doesn't require the words Leo devotes to it. Read this, read where the UFT is on this stuff, and then read the fact finders report. Duh. Could it be that they saw different numbers than Leo is touting? Stay tuned...
By the way, in case the teachers' unions aren't convinced that they've lost elite opinion on this issue and are in the process losing the public, check out this line from Jonathan Alter in his recent Newsweek cover story about Katrina's broader lessons.
Democrats have offered little on education beyond opposition to NCLB. They've shown more allegiance to the teachers unions (whose contracts are models of unaccountability) than to poor kids.
Yikes. Plenty of time for Ds to fix this perception before '08, but not a lot to waste...More interesting question, when do people like SEIU's Stern decide that they can't be dragged down by this and really start publicly distancing themselves...that's some class warfare worth watching...
Back To School Law
It's not quite a Socratic dialogue...but taking time off from all their Katrina relief work, NSBA is hosting an electronic chat about pending school law issues. It's a good line up to answer a variety of questions that you may have on that front. Just don't ask them about the most important question on most people's minds...
Excellent Washington Post and NYT obits.
Over at This Week Alexander Russo has now decided to start refereeing what is and is not a blog (though he notes he doesn't really care). This is a slippery slope as everyone has a view though that, of course, is what makes the medium interesting in the first place.
Of course, some might argue that real blogs don't exploit unpaid interns loaded with cereal to do their work....And didn't he just laud some sup'ts (rightly Edu Commentary thinks) for blogging? Some argue those aren't true blogs either.
Swing!
At last, a true third way on school facilities...and this is a hell of a lot more interesting than Sara Mead's proposal...
Via Drudge.
Time looks at the education issue.
From the AFT:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sandra Feldman, who rose from her position as a second-grade elementary school teacher in New York City to become president of the 1.3 million member American Federation of Teachers, died last night after a long battle with cancer, AFT President Edward J. McElroy announced today. Feldman would have been 66 years old next month.
This is a loss on multiple levels. Obviously the personal dimension for her family, friends, and colleagues, but also for the AFT and the teachers they represent because she was no ideologue, was able to see the forest for the trees, and understood the stakes...in other words a leader.
Edu Commentary's take on Jay Greene's new book in the NY Post. Hechinger Institute's Colvin here in the LA Times. He's got more words...
Over at celebrity-blog EdWize Leo Casey argues that when Eva Moskowitz pointed out that the current contract there requires less than 4 hours a day of actual instruction it was teacher bashing (more on her horrific atrocities here). Yet here are actual UFT members pointing out the same thing (though in a different context). Are they calling teachers lazy or just pointing out that, well, the contract requires less than four hours? Good teachers do work more than this, obviously, so why not work that into the contract? Answer? This is where the rigid, albeit important, constraints of industrial unionism rub up against the more textured nature of the workplace in a profession like teaching.
Leo also argues that there is no problem with excessing and seniority provisions in the NYC contract. Well, if they are as minor an issue as he says then drawing a line like this on them sure seems like an ill-advised strategy since the union is getting clobbered on this issue (and don't be fooled, this isn't some conservative plot, it's liberal groups starting to analyze this...) The deal here is obvious -- reforms for money -- but it's not so easy because in fact reforms are an enormous issue because they cut to the bone in terms of how to deal with low-performing teachers and the power of veteran teachers. Yet every day the UFT waits to make a bold gambit their position weakens and amount of money seemingly shrinks...
The fact finding panel (which the UFT asked for, this was no gotcha) got specifics about the extent of the problems the rules contribute to and the number of teachers affected and were obviously convinced by what they learned and not by the UFT's take on this which was also presented. That data will be public at some point in the not-too-distant future.