I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Temper, Temper!

Poor Rahm Emanuel: apparently his delicate sensibilities couldn't handle a simple question:



This reporter should be grateful that the easily offended Emanuel didn't go off on one of his obscenity-laced tirades...


If the report in the Washington Post's Answer Sheet is correct, he has chosen the Lab School, where Obama sent his own kids, where Duncan went to school himself, and where they will likely receive small classes, a well-rounded education and little high-stakes testing, the opposite of the regime he has chosen for Chicago's public schoolchildren.

This of course follows on the heels of:



Let's start calling this what it is: hypocrisy. These guys are forcing a corporate "reform" agenda on the few public schools that struggle and on the majority of public schools that are doing a great job. They are prepared to radically upend the entire teaching profession and subject our kids to a testing regime that will narrow the curriculum and destroy our children's love of learning.

Yet they have so little faith in their own program that they are opting to take their children out of public schools and put them instead in elite private institutions that brag on small class sizes, a rich curriculum, few high-stakes tests, and huge expenditures per student (despite a lack of kids who have special needs).

I said before that I was reluctant to bring up the personal choices politicians make for their own kids; but that was before they started imposing all of this garbage without any meaningful input from teachers or parents. Christie and Emanuel and the rest of this crew ceded the moral high ground long ago when they started bashing teachers and their unions for daring to point out that their schemes do nothing to address the core problems leading to the achievement gap: poverty, racism, language, and inequity of resources.

For all of their bluster and machismo, these guys are nothing but a bunch of cowards, hiding behind their children. Screw their indignation.

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