As Jersey Jazzman reports, on some days Rahm Emanuel blames poor test scores on children’s home environment. On other days, he blames it on teachers.
What is he thinking?
Here is what Chicago is thinking: Rahm’s approval rating is down to 33%.
He is polling about the same as Bobby Jindal and Rick Scott.
Could it be that making war on teachers and privatizing public education is not only bad public policy but bad politics? Maybe these politicians, birds of a feather, underestimated the voters.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s hoping. Here in RI, Debbie Gist’s contract is up at the end of the school year. Maybe our governor will notice these numbers — but my guess is he’ll be distracted by a lot of green numbers coming from the Usual Suspects.
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Alas: NJ’s Chris Christie is as popular as ever, and he LIVES to war with teachers.
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2011/08/christie-insults-teachers-add-your-own.html
I predict, however, his post-Sandy popularity will plummet soon enough. Teacher bashing isn’t a great political strategy. Jindal, Scott, and Emanuel have learned this the hard way; hopefully, so will Christie.
As always, Dr. R, thx for the reposts!
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Right, the bottom line is, there are millions of parents who pick up their children after school. If the kids come home unhappy from monotonous test prep, aint nobody happy.
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Would you call this an unholy alliance. It makes the case that no matter what the political association there is a political/corporate
approval for unraveling this country. Will the pledge of allegiance
be reframed and reworded to reflect the next generations loyalty
oath for United States of Corporate America, Inc., land of the
indentured….and the children will sign the contract in First Grade.
Hmmmm! There will be no voting for a CEO….and the deceit beat goes on and on and on….
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In the meanwhile kids and teachers are dropping out and falling free fall without any safety nets (plop) — the real reason for all this lunacy.
When people finally wake up, the damage will be catastrophic. Gosh, I hope this is not true. But…
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That’s what Big Dada, er, Data is for — computing how to gerrymander your re-election on 30% of the vote.
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I wish that were the case here in Connecticut. Our unscrupulous and combative governor is not liked much, but not because of his attack on teachers. His going after the police and state worker unions has caused his popularity to drop. It seems like no one besides teachers can see behind Oz’s curtain regarding his push for school rheeform.
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I wish Chris Christie was suffering the same fate, but it seems quite the opposite. A post on NJ.com announces that the NJEA is supporting the opposing candidate, an there are over 600 comments most in support of Christie and bashing the leeching teachers And their union. The most comments of any other story on the site. Sickens me…. How are the teachers to blame for all this mess? We don’t decide how to fund education or how those funds are allocated. We aren’t even being involved in those conversations.
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There are people paid to get on there and bash.
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I seldom read online comments from readers. Many are mean-spirited and show the lack of intelligence of the writers. Reading them makes me anxious for the future of our society.
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Thanks Dee Dee I’ll try to keep that in mind. It’s keeping me up at night honestly. We all work so hard and I used to feel that we were not appreciated. Well that was tough, but lately it’s more than just “not appreciated” . Lately, we are being downright vilified! 😦
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Rahm’s brain? Remember those 1980s anti-drug commercials? “This is your brain.” (egg) “This is your brain on drugs” (fried egg). Rahm’s would be the latter.
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And his drugs of choice would be wealth and power.
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They have total control of the government what do they care?
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You’re right Lehrer….I should stay away from it.
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Prof. Ravitch,
Politicians criticizing the public education system is a redundant argument leading to no resolution. We all know that the formula for success in public education are simple, in order to manage/administrate effectively 7-10 years full time classroom experience is necessary. Ditto for opinions and observations by outsiders.
I have been teaching first year college students for the past three years in NYC and Westchester county (after 10 yrs. teaching NYC HS). I have observed that each year, the quality of student declines due to the poor quality of education in Americas public school system.
Do you have a master plan for the change to success? And how do we persuade government on federal and local levels to listen to US the experienced professionals and abide?
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