Say anything nice about charter schools, and you are sure to get letters full of rage, false charges and praise for unions. The attacks, often from teachers, follow a format that appears to be scripted by labor bosses and echo the class-warfare bile of Mayor de Blasio.
To wit, charters succeed because they weed out problem students, they discriminate against those with disabilities, and their operators, especially Eva Moskowitz, got special favors from the previous mayor.
Ergo, everything charters achieve is suspect and their methods won’t work on a broad scale.
“Charter schools claim to educate students with disabilities but those disabilities are mild, while the public schools are serving every child,” reads a letter from one misguided fourth-grade teacher.
The claim is false and the comparisons to traditional schools wildly misleading, but the repetition of similar charges in letter after letter is revealing. As I’ve argued, unions and so-called progressive politicians see successful charters as an existential threat, and so they must be stopped, facts and innocent children be damned.
The threat is to union jobs, but more broadly, to the equality ideology that animates the left wing of the Democratic Party. That ideology is a form of creepy collectivism that favors mediocrity for all over excellence for some.
“Do you know what else charter school children and parents have, motivation, otherwise they wouldn’t be there, they would not have undergone the process to get in,” writes the grammatically challenged educator. “Public schools serve every child, even those whose parents sadly don’t even care enough to bathe or feed them.”
Oh, the illogic. Parents who care about their children are a problem because their children have an advantage. This is the ultimate upside-down argument, making devoted parents and excellent students evils to be crushed.
It is a version of the poisonous accusation by some that successful black students are “acting white” and therefore traitors to their race. The inference is tragic — that authentic blackness equals failure in the classroom. In this case, the accusation is aimed at all involved parents and top students.
The teacher also defends America’s poor international ranking in education, saying it is because “WE EDUCATE EVERYONE. We educate the poor, the moderately to extremely disabled, students who don’t even speak English.”
Of course, charters educate those kids, too, but they do it better. Which brings my pen pal to her wackiest charge — the occult.
“As a teacher I can tell you that there is magic that goes on in every classroom,” she writes. “That magic isn’t under the sole dominion of Eva Moskowitz, although it does seem like witchcraft in the way she’s managed to secure public financial benefits as well as private ones, all the while keeping her books closed to public scrutiny and bringing in a $487,000 salary for herself.”
Envy used to be a sin, but de Blasio’s vendetta against Moskowitz is apparently contagious. But just as her rage carried her round the bend, this teacher recovers to recite union talking points. To wit, it’s all about the money and respect.
“Magic happens when good teachers who really know and care about their students are treated like professionals, have their voices heard and are given the time, materials and professional latitude to invest in what they deem will work best for their students.”
In other words, forget standardized tests, teacher evaluations and wholesale failure. And by the way, the $21 billion the city is spending on education isn’t nearly enough.
How much is enough? Silly question. The answer is the always the same: more.
It has been that way for 40 years, as the once-great New York system declined thanks to two destructive trends. One was the rise of money-sucking monolithic unions, and the other was the disintegration of urban families.
The combination has been near-fatal. The money exploded, but education declined and generations of students have been sent into the world unprepared for success.
Yet, to the system’s defenders, no competition is allowed because change will produce winners and losers. That means inequality, and inequality is always bad.
That, in a nutshell, is the argument against charters and against excellence. On both counts, it is nuts.
Pol’s cry: Poor me!
Here’s a winning argument — members of Congress are underpaid. Bring it on!
Virginia Democrat James Moran tells Roll Call that the $174,000 annual salary isn’t enough to live decently in the nation’s capital, and he wants members to get an additional allowance.
“This is the board of directors for the largest economic entity in the world,” he said of Congress.
Whoa, Nellie. If America were a company, it would have gone bankrupt and members of Congress would be jailed as Ponzi schemers for committing fraud against taxpayers.
Moran dares argue for a raise only because he’s retiring. Any of his colleagues who also find it impossible to live on the salary they accepted when they took the job would serve their country best by following his lead.
Step right up, this way to the egress.
Discriminating against dissent
It’s getting harder to separate the news from parody. Take the case of the tech whiz who was fired because he opposed gay marriage — six years ago.
Brendan Eich, who invented JavaScript and was a founder of Mozilla, was forced out as Mozilla’s CEO only days after getting the job when a $1,000 donation he made to California’s anti-gay marriage referendum in 2008 surfaced. Militant activists called for his head, and the company’s craven board obliged.
“We have employees with a wide diversity of views,” Mozilla’s chairwoman wrote in apologizing for Eich’s hiring. “Our culture of openness extends to encourage staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions.”
Ah, yes, a “diversity of views.” The original concept of dissent from the majority is now an Orwellian sledgehammer that demands absolute conformity to orthodox liberalism.
At Mozilla, as on too many college campuses and other places that should know better, the only acceptable discrimination is against a difference of opinion. All creeds, religions, races and sexual orientations are welcome — as long as everybody thinks alike.
What a country.
Just rich-ing and moaning
The Supreme Court ruling that abolished aggregate limits on individual contributions to federal candidates and political parties provoked hyper huffing and puffing by the usual suspects, but it’s hard to top the blowhards at Public Citizen.
Officials there claim the court “dealt a stunning blow to democracy” and said the ruling “essentially gives permission for wealthy people to do all they can to buy the government. As long as they don’t collect a receipt for the purchase, it’s no longer considered corruption.”
Wait, there’s good news. The group says it is devoted to passing a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision.
That oughta keep ’em busy for 100 years or so.
Call hr Hill-uhh-ry
A headline says, “Hillary struggles to list accomplishments during tenure as secretary of state.”
Well, she’s not a magician.