From the You Tube poster...The Philly Student Union
On September 29th, Sec. of Education Arne Duncan, Rev. Al Sharpton and Rep. Newt Gingrich came to Philadelphia to start their Listening and Learning tour for public education. But despite being a tour for "listening and learning", none of these men came to meet with students and community members who were already working to improve public education in Philadelphia. This video is footage from their closed door press conference, where the trio laid out their plan for public education in the United States.
We should apply the free enterprise system to our education system by introducing competition among schools, administrators, and teachers. Our educators should be paid based on their performance and held accountable based on clear standards with real consequences. These ideas are designed to stimulate thinking beyond the timid “let’s do more of the same” that has greeted every call for rethinking math and science education. Source: Gingrich Communications website, www.newt.org Dec 1, 2006
..."Support charters; insist on change for failing schools
We should encourage the spread of public charter schools--one of the happiest new developments on the education scene--so parents, educators, & students working together can enjoy the maximum freedom to explore options and innovations until every child has a genuine opportunity to learn. As a corollary of this, we must identify the worst schools. We should insist on immediate change for bad schools. To start with, there should be no tenure and no binding contracts in the worst 20% of schools. Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.208 Jul 2, 1998
In the video Arne Duncan casually talks of just shutting down schools that are problems. He just says it in an offhand manner like he has no connection to what he is doing. His casual manner is an insult to public schools and public school teachers in America.
But while Newt gets to go on the road trip, our Secretary of Education is setting up confrontations with teachers' unions and states. Does he treat other unions like this? Or it is just teachers' unions he scorns.
Threatening states and confronting unions is Duncan's tactic
Legislatures in New York, California and some other states have enacted laws that limit, to one degree or another, use of student achievement data in teacher performance evaluations. Both national teachers’ unions oppose the use of student testing data to evaluate individual teachers, arguing in part that students are often taught by several teachers and that teacher evaluations should be based on several measures of performance, not just test scores.
“This is poking teachers’ unions straight in the eye,” Mike Petrilli, a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research group that studies education policy, said of the proposed fund eligibility requirement dealing with student data.
Not only is Gingrich happy to see his dream fulfilled, now Jeb Bush is publicly saying how happy he is to see Obama taking on teachers' unions.
This is from Morning Joe.
He actually states how pleased he is to see this administration confronting one of their core constituencies, the teachers' unions. Harold Ford, who appears to be part of the panel on Morning Joe seems to agree with Jeb. He asked if Jeb approved of the goals which demand that unions "play by a different set of rules."
