Frederick M. Hess's Blog
...And Now for ED
by Frederick M. Hess • Apr 16, 2010 at 11:55 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
This morning, I hit on the week's first big win for the teachers unions: Florida Governor Charlie Crist vetoing an important teacher pay bill. The week's second big win for the unions was our earnest Secretary of Education's craven decision to curry favor with Senator Tom Harkin and the "Deficits? I don't care about no stinkin' deficits" crowd by endorsing Harkin's $23 billion scheme to ladle out new, borrowed dollars so that our nation's educational leaders might kick the can on tough choices down the road another twelve months. Because it would be "emergency" spending, Harkin sees no need to pay for or offset the cost of his "Keep Our Educators Working Act."
Harkin explained, "If there's one legitimate area where we can borrow from the future, it's education, because what sort of jobs will we have for my grandkids and great grandkids in the future if we don't have a well-educated group of young people today?" Harkin imagines, I presume, that our kids and grandkids will one day thank us profusely for putting them even deeper in debt so that districts can avoid trimming unaffordable benefits, taking a hard look at operations, closing underutilized facilities, or seeking more cost-effective ways to deploy staff.
Playing to the Cheap Seats in Florida and at ED...
by Frederick M. Hess • Apr 16, 2010 at 9:23 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
I almost titled this one "Red Letter Day for the NEA," which would have been just as apropos. This week both Florida Governor Charlie Crist and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan put on undistinguished displays of craven opportunism when, at telling moments, they wilted and opted to preen for easy applause from the cheap seats.
The result: Two big wins for the NEA and two substantial setbacks for those who believe we need to rethink teacher tenure, evaluation, and pay, or those who believe K-12 schooling needs to stop beggaring bucks from the kids we're supposed to serve.
The big news yesterday was Florida Governor Charlie Crist's decision to veto Senate Bill 6. While Sherman Dorn and other commenters on my Tuesday post fairly flagged reasonable concerns about the test-fueled rigidity of this ambitious but unfortunately heavy-handed legislation, I thought the bill a crucial opportunity to start reimagining teacher tenure and pay. The right move was for Crist to sign it, with the understanding that the legislature would take the next year or two to address some of the concerns about the single-minded focus on test results, reliability, validity, sample size, and test construction.
Unfortunately, in the face of bitter pressure from the Florida Education Association, Crist folded like a cheap suit. After a week of finger-in-the-wind waffling, he gave the NEA cause for another happy dance. NEA Presiden
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