Arne all excited that Obama and Christie agree so much on education.

[madfloridian]

In my mind Chris Christie of New Jersey is just plain rude, and he is especially obnoxious toward teachers. Arne's words here are an indication he has heard nothing teachers have said. He is ignoring those in education and pandering to the business world.

From the NJ Star Ledger:

Arne Duncan: Better education starts with best educators


Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesEducation Secretary Arne Duncan is pictured in this file photo. He spoke with Star-Ledger editorial page editor Tom Moran about school reform.

Education is the one policy area in which Democrats and Republicans are finding an abundance of common ground, where President Obama and Gov. Chris Christie agree on most issues.

Both favor tenure reform that allows schools to fire bad teachers and reward good ones. Both believe student performance should be central to that assessment and that standardized tests should be used to help measure progress. Both believe in expanding charter schools, especially in failing districts, and closing down persistently failing schools.

And he admits to spending hundreds of millions on standardized tests that are not so good because he doesn't want to "let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

I hate that term. For too long our party has used that "enemy of the good" foolishness as an excuse for doing things that are not proven to work. I despise that policy.

Q. But doesn’t this whole movement to raise standards and impose accountability hinge on having good tests? I’m not sure we have that.

A. It’s never going to be perfect. We’re investing $350 million in the next generation of assessment, so it’s going to be a choppy couple of years until we get there. We always let the perfect be the enemy of the good in education, and we have to stop that.

Diane Ravitch had more to say on this statement at her blog.

Arne Duncan says...

Here is the latest interview with the Secretary of Education. It begins with a stomach-turning but accurate admission that education is the one thing that President Obama and the teacher-bashing governor of New Jersey Chris Christie agree on. How’s that for a reassuring opening?

When asked why the evidence for the reforms he is pushing seems weak, Duncan replies it is because they are new and therefore don’t have a 50-year track record. Oh, please, they don’t have any track record at all, yet he is pushing these untested, invalid measures on schools across the nation. Of course, everyone wants great teachers and great principals and great schools, but nothing he is doing is producing those results.

The questioner gently asks why there were no “dramatic” improvements in New York City or Washington, D.C. or Chicago, where Duncan was in charge for eight years. The answer is so vague as to be indecipherable. Ten years of Duncan-style reform in New York City, six years in D.C., twelve years in Chicago, and nothing to show for it. Just have faith! Believe!

I can’t go on.

The very fact that Obama and Arne Duncan respect and agree with Christie on so much should sound some alarm bells. This is the man who among other things called a student an idiot and told him to shut up.

He called the nation's jobless "lazy examples of an entitlement mentality."

Chris Christie..the nation's jobless are lazy examples of an "entitlement mentality"

And last night he proved his bona fides as a Republican by proving he meets his party's other criterion, which is an absolute contempt toward the ordinary men and women who have been victimized by its policies. The night before the nation received its latest bad news on unemployment, Christie told a cheering Republican crowd that the nation's jobless were lazy examples of an entitlement mentality.

..."During another meeting he called a law student an "idiot" and told him to "shut up" before having the student, a former Navy SEAL, forcibly removed from the building.(Part of Christie's intimidation style includes hauling people onstage for a "conversation" - and then not letting them speak.)

If this administration thinks they are showing bipartisanship with such agreement, they are so wrong. It is showing a lack of caring and understanding of what the right wing extremists are about in this country.

[Douglas Carpenter]

1. hi Madfloridian, I wonder if you know about this tread about you on DU3?

link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021085611#post1


.

[No Elephants]

2. Thank you for two reasons.

First, there were a lot of nice things said about madfloridian on that thread, so thank you for that.

Two, I have gone to DU3 only about twice on my own. All the other times, it's been because a DU2 post has linked me to something in DU3, as your post did, whereupon I remember anew why I chose not to migrate.

I miss the old DU, but I will never find it at DU3. Or, for that matter, at this DU2, though I have found at this DU2 things to love.

DU of a year ago, though, it a friend who has gone forever.

[madfloridian]

7. No, I hadn't seen that.

Thank you for sharing. :)

[No Elephants]

3. Christie is a public school teacher hating thug.

And that's not even close to stating how awful he is.

ETA:

Just checked his wiki for the first time. A lawyer who grew up in the affluent area of Livingston.


Father an accountant. No mention of mom's profession, so maybe Dad did well enough to make this a one income family.

Wife an investment banker, who quit after 911 (She was at Cantor Fitzgerald, one of the lucky ones, I guess.)

The only elected office he held before Governor was freeholder of Morris County. Here is evertyhing Christie's wiki says about that:

Christie, at the time a resident of Mendham, was in 1994 elected as a Republican to the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders, with Christie and a running mate having defeated incumbent freeholders in the party primary. After that election, the defeated incumbents filed defamation lawsuits against Christie based on statements made during the primary campaign. Christie had incorrectly stated that the incumbents were under investigation for violating certain local laws. The lawsuit was settled out of court.<15>

As freeholder, Christie required the county government to obtain three quotes from qualified firms for all contracts. He led a successful effort to bar county officials from accepting gifts from people and firms doing business with the county. He voted to raise the county's open space tax for land preservation; however, county taxes on the whole were decreased by 6.6% during his tenure. He successfully pushed for the dismissal of an architect hired to design a new jail, saying that the architect was costing taxpayers too much money. The architect then sued Christie for defamation over remarks he made about the dismissal.<16>

In 1995, Christie announced a bid for a seat in the New Jersey General Assembly; he and attorney Rick Merkt ran as a ticket against incumbent Assemblyman Anthony Bucco and attorney Michael Patrick Carroll in the Republican primary. Bucco and Carroll, the establishment candidates, defeated the up-and-comers by a wide margin. After this loss, Christie's bid for re-nomination to the freeholder board was unlikely, as unhappy Republicans recruited John J. Murphy to run against Christie in 1997. Murphy defeated Christie in the primary.<17> Murphy, who had falsely accused Christie of having the county pay his legal bills in the architect's lawsuit, was sued by Christie after the election. They settled out of court; nevertheless, Christie's career in Morris County politics was over by 1998.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Christie



Seems as though he defamed his way to fame, to the extent that N.J. freeholders are famous.



As a lobbyist, he succeeded in keeping securities fraud out of New Jersey's Consumer Fraud Act. Now, there's a proud moment.

He was an AG in the D of J and also sat on advisory committees for Ashcroft and Gonzo, which suggest to me that he was well connected politically in a way most New Jersey freeholders are not.

His career as D.A. in NJ was full of controversy too. I cannot quote much more without rule violations, but check out the sections of his wiki about (1)claims of misue of deferred prosecution agreements, (2)claims of partisan attacks and )3)claims of cell phone monitoring and entrapment.

I guess succeeding as D.A. is so much easier if you don't have scruples? And, from his success as D.A. he got to the Governor's office.

Of course, Governor Goldman Sachs Korzine did not help matters much. I've heard his campaign against Christie included a lot of fat jokes, which did not help him, but Goldman Sachs was poison in any 2008 election anyway. Christie won handily, even with a former Republican indie in the race.



have i mentioned how much I enjoy Mr. Google and Ms. Wiki?

[Jakes Progress]

5. arne is a public school teacher hating thug.

And his boss keeps backing him.

You have to wonder how some of the ardent Obama choir would feel if something they have given their lives to were trashed and degraded by their guy. I mean suppose he were backing a reversal of Roe v Wade? Or suppose he were backing jim crow laws? If you spent forty years fighting for equality, mightn't those actions make you a little less enthusiastic? Well many of us have given our lives to improving schools and working to make the lives of all children better. This administration is pushing the very plans and programs that reagan started championing. Democrats used to fight that stuff. Now, too many cheer them because their guy backs them.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, historical perspective is a bummer.

[madfloridian]

6. We would never have let Bush get these plans through.

They are his policies, and we would have fought him.

Teachers have become scapegoats, and parents and students are off the hook with any accountability whatsoever.

[Enthusiast]

4. Thanks, madfloridian!

"If this administration thinks they are showing bipartisanship with such agreement, they are so wrong."

No, they think nothing of the kind. This is the Obama ideology, indistinguishable from the the one pushed by the GOP for the last thirty years.

[LWolf]

8. I remember my dismay

back in April of '08, when he said, in that infamous FOX interview:

OBAMA: Well, I think there are a whole host of areas where Republicans in some cases may have a better idea.

I think that on issues of education, I've been very clear about the fact — and sometimes I've gotten in trouble with the teachers' union on this — that we should be experimenting with charter schools. We should be experimenting with different ways of compensating teachers that...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352785,00.html

As far as I'm concerned, he hasn't gotten into nearly enough trouble with teachers' unions over his education policies.

[madfloridian]

9. Teachers are afraid for their jobs now, so they fear to speak out.

A few are, most are silent. It's an atmosphere that is not conducive to real learning.

[LWolf]

10. That's true,

and it includes me. :(

[madfloridian]

11. Since I'm retired, I just have decided to speak for some I know....

who must be quiet right now. I bit my tongue all the time before I retired. Things were getting bad even then. You know things are bad when a principal tells you not to say bad things about Jeb at the teacher lunch table. And yeh, that happened. Pretty sorry.

[LWolf]

12. You've been doing an incredible job,

and you should know how much we appreciate it. I actually didn't know DU2 was still up and running until someone at DU3 asked after you, or I would have been here a little more. Someone said you were here, so I checked in.

I don't spend much time at DU3; I've checked in a little this summer since I'm not at work.

[Jakes Progress]

13. There are very few Democrats left in government.

You can hardly call the current administration a Democratic one. The terms republican and Democrat have become the same as high school football teams. You just cheer for your guys. They are your guys because you cheer for them. No moral or principle is used as a criteria.

Maybe we need a thread nominating those that DU2 readers consider the still be Democrats.

Keep on with you good work.

[sabrina 1]

14. Hi madfloridian, too late to rec this post

Arne is a disaster. He's not the brightest individual to ever hold a position as important as this one. He was never fit for this job, he is clueless on the profession of teaching and demonstrated that in the most embarrassing ways more than once.

Someone who hates teachers does not belong in that position.

[madfloridian]

15. Hi there, good to see you here.

I agree with all you said. He is not qualified in any way to be in charge of education. What he is doing is hurting students everywhere, and he seems clueless.