Connecticut’s Governor Dannel Malloy vetoed legislation requiring the state education commissioner to have educational experience and qualifications.
He said it encroached on the governor’s authority to name anyone he wanted, regardless of qualifications.
Mayor Bloomberg took that path when he appointed publisher Cathie Black as schools chancellor. She lasted three months.
Will Governor Malloy be comfortable if the pilot of his next flight has no experience? Will he go to a hospital where his surgeons are fresh from college with no training or experience?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Regarding his taking his next flight or going to the hospital.
It “ain’t” nice to say
but
Maybe we should hope he would.
Obviously he wants ever more power
even if
he doesn’t use it for the benefit of his constituents.
THAT tells a LOT about him.
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Nauseating, disgusting, insane, power hungry, yes. But shocking? Sadly, in these times, no.
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Same thing happened here in Louisiana. Gov. Jindal convinced his bought and paid for Education Bd to allow John White to become State Superintedant of Education even though our constitution required certification, which John White did not possess. The rules never seem to apply to them…
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Same thing has happened in Utah, too. There used to be a requirement that the state superintendent had to be a certified teacher in Utah. The state legislature changed that about three years ago, in a bill sponsored by a senator notorious for his hatred of public education. Last fall, a lawyer was made the superintendent. He’s already made a name for himself by removing all the head state administrators (who had experience) and calling teachers, “kids who cried at Christmas because they didn’t get what they wanted” when teachers rallied for more per pupil spending.
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Why is it shocking? Malloy knows that an experienced educator would never support the policies of the “reform” crowd.
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Ignorance is not bliss; it’s just plain old, ugly ignorance.
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These governors are really showing their hands. They do not care about education; it is a political football, which they have decided to abuse for political and personal gain.
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Well heck, education is not brain surgery or rocket science —
It is only that without education we’d have neither …
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There is no penalty for this desire of governors to have complete authority in appointments to high office. Payola by design. Qualifications are deep pockets for the election of the governor.
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As a Connecticut resident, I keeping looking at our neighbor to the west (and, technically, south), knowing that whatever happens in New York will eventually befall us. Both states are heavily Democrat with neoliberal governors who loathe public education.
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Malloy is one of the monstrous faces of the movement to destroy public education in our nation. He should be arrested immediately and charged with criminal intent against the people of Connecticut.
The power and money are compliments of his hedge fund masters…let the eyes of the people of the United States see firsthand what a traitor in the process of sabotaging the functions of a democracy to destroy them looks like.
Eventually, the parents and citizens of Connecticut are going to reach the point where enough is enough and they will take it upon themselves…the governor will call in the police and national guard…and then the police and national guard will side with the good people of Connecticut.
Unfortunately, we are headed for more difficult times and revolutionary processes are the at the next level. This was a social, political, and economic war perpetrated but the billionaires and their crony politicians who are more than delighted to sell out the American people for their own power. What we are witnessing is the corruption that comes with unchecked and illegal usage of power.
This war waged by the 1% on the 99% was started by the oligarchs and hedgefunders to destroy American public education for power and profit.
This war that they launched against the good citizens will come crashing down upon them.
The attack on public education was never about bringing more meaningful public education to our students…it was a blatant power grab that has been bought off at all levels of government.
It is an attack on the United States…
It’s time for the people of Connecticut…of the United States…to rescue our society from the devils determined to destroy our way of life.
And then to punish the Malloys that desecrate and trod on our principles as American people.
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Shame on my Governor! May it be overridden! Disgusting.
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He rules as though he has absolute divine right because he won an election – therefore he must know the most about pretty much everything.
Heaven forbid we find out that winning an election isn’t a proxy for intelligence and that solid leadership means learning who you should listen to on some issues instead of directing them what to do.
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Remember…one does not have to be smart to be a politician, just full of shit
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There is smart, and then there’s politically smart.
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Another Dino (Democrat in Name Only), like Cuomo and Rahm. It would be nice to have a real liberal or left party.
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By commandeering control, the governor solidifies oligarch ownership of state assets.
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Arne Duncan is the model for this, so we can expect to see more of it from both parties across the country. With his BA in sociology (no training as an educator nor any graduate degree), Duncan was hurled to the top education job in the nation as Secretary of Education, and before that, he became CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, as was business major Paul Vallas prior to him, because then Mayor Daley got the state to delete the certification requirement. This is business as usual in education and politics: It’s not what you know but who you know.
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Don’t forget Ron Huberman and in Illinois, now Rev. Meeks
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Here’s a link to the previous Commissioner of Education, Stefan Pryor’s, biography, and the reason the legislature passed the bill that the governor vetoed.
Click to access commissioner_pryor.pdf
But it is the following aspect of his “educational experience” that most bothered educators in Connecticut and makes his veto all the more suspicious.
“In the mid-1990’s, Pryor served as Policy Advisor to the Mayor of New Haven, Connecticut. Pryor is a co-founder and was the first Board President of Amistad Academy, a public charter school in New Haven. Amistad is the flagship of the Achievement First network of schools. Pryor served on the board of Achievement First, which has opened more than 20 schools and academies in four cities in Connecticut and New York.”
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Jonathan Pelto’s current post on his “Wait What?” blog on the subject offers up the specifics of this politically motivated action.
http://jonathanpelto.com/2015/07/01/malloy-vetoes-bill-requiring-that-education-commissioner-have-education-experience/
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Malloy and other “Democrats” like him would not be able to do what they doe without the support of Democratic party leaders like Rosa DeLauro (who campaigned for Malloy, contributed money left over from her own campaign and in decidedly undemocratic fashion, actually called for Jonathan Pelto to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination for governor).
Money and cronyism rules in most places these days, but that is particularly true in CT.
If you want to get these people out, you have to vote out their support group along with them.
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Well, not to take a “the worse, the better” stance, but Cathy Black’s appointment as NYC schools Chancellor was in a perverse way the best thing that happened during those dark Bloomberg years: her gross obliviousness and incompetence was what finally showed people the contempt Bloomberg and his flunkies had for the public schools, and was the start of his discrediting. Her appointment and short, embarrassing tenure, helped open up the debate about the schools; before that, Bloomberg’s lies largely went unquestioned.
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