Cahill, thinking he couldn’t make any inroads against the liberal activists in the party, left the friendly confines of the Democrats.
Suddenly, every suburban progressive, angry about the erosion of state support for their neighborhood school, is now confronted with a governor whose education agenda does nothing to help, and everything to hurt, their neighborhood school. Tim Cahill, who has been handing out school building assistance funds around the state, could have become the lone defender of public schools in a Democratic primary that would have responded to that message.
Now he’s an independent.
Tim Cahill is now out of a Democratic primary, just when Deval is at risk to lose his base. So what now? Will Deval face a primary from the left? What will Tim Murray do? Will Barack Obama rescue Deval from this mess?
There is a significant opening for a Democrat who will come out for:
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p>It’s crystal clear that Deval Patrick is not going to be that person. Tim Cahill isn’t either. Perhaps he could have, but he’s not gunning for people who like that agenda. He’s gunning for people who like the GOP agenda but don’t want to see themselves as Republicans, and people who don’t like Deval Patrick but still want to see themselves as Democrats. That group may be numerically larger, but I don’t think they are always rational voters, and I do think they are very fickle.
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p>So we’re picking the best of what’s left.
As you’ve posted before, Sab, there really doesn’t seem to be a progressive consensus on charter schools.
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p>I think it’s an issue of genuine moral complexity: Do you screw a.) otherwise high-achieving kids stuck in a crappy school, b.) kids left behind when their peers leave for a charter school? And if you decide you’re not going to screw either, well, how? Pour way more money into the system?
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p>I’m not sure of the effect of this initiative on suburban schools. I thought the hostile-takeover was going to be of failing schools, which are generally not in the leafy ‘burbs, like Burlington.
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p>I will say that I wish the teacher’s union was out front on issues of innovation, and not simply as a “no” to charters. They need to come to grips with the political trends that caused Menino to come out for charters; that prompted Obama to campaign on charters; and that added so much money in the stimulus for charters. From what I can tell, the public seems to be more concerned with a.) above, than b.)
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p>These things are happening for a reason. Maybe it’s stupid, but that needs to be demonstrated, not simply asserted. The union needs to address public opinion, not just the polar power relationship with elected officials.
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p>As far as picking winners … I’m not sure that we can declare the life sciences thing a flop yet. If you have documentation, I’m open-minded — I wasn’t a true believer in that policy choice a couple of years ago. Casinos and films, yeah, I agree.
It is true that there are plenty of progressives who love charters, as we see on this site. However, there are also plenty of progressives who don’t, and right now nobody is speaking to them. As with everything in life, it’s a matter of trade-offs.
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p>Regarding “pouring money into the system,” I don’t think that’s necessarily the answer. We don’t spend the money smartly in my opinion, and we spend an enormous amount of it on a very small population. It’s too nice a day to ramble on about how I would improve public ed, but I think it takes a lot more courage than money.
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p>Also, there is no “teacher’s union”. There are two large ones, and the AFT is a lot more interested in charters than the NEA. I agree that in terms of explaining things to the public, the teachers’ unions have done a poor job, not least of all because they are content to let many Democrats use them as their Sister Souljah.
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p>I don’t know if life sciences will be a flop, and I do believe that there’s lots of potential there. But these days, spending $2 billion on the ability of the state government to pick wise investments in this environment seems a big risk to me.
As I have posted many times…public education failed my kids after 5th grade in our town, and in fact, offers less and less for kids like mine [I don’t think elementary schools as they are now would have been able to meet my kids needs].
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p>In the old days, when my kids were in elementary school here in the 80s and early 90s, each school had a library, an actual librarian, and a school nurse and believe me, with their needs and issues that made all the difference in the world.
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p>There were also very experienced master teachers, all of whom have since retired [I don’t know the current crop] and with a really good teacher who knew how to manage a class room, had real libraries and a nurse on site to consult, they made it that far in public education here.
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p>None of the towns seven elementary schools any longer have “real libraries with librarians” or an on-site nurse. When it comes to dealing with severe ashthma, and anxiety disorder with panic attacks and OCD – believe it or not the nurse could tell the difference between anxiety and other things and help my kid sort it out and go back to class with phenomenal skill. Why were there fewer “special ed kids” in those days? Maybe because there were nurses and librarians. An experienced nurse can tell the difference between a panic attack and a heart attack as well – or better – than any emergency room.
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p>Hello? Anyone listening?
My town generally has adequate nurse coverage, but not real librarians. Don’t get me wrong – the paraprofessionals responsible for the libraries do yeoman’s work; my complaint is not about them so much as about the priorities of the decision makers. We don’t have vice-principals at the elementary level, but rather simply lead teachers whose only real job aside from their own classroom duties is to put out any fires if the principal is out of the building. They are not really administrators, but at best primus inter pares vis-a-vis the rest of the faculty.
My own thinking on the subject of charters has evolved over the years. I’m not a supporter particularly, as I said on the other threads, but I do support creative methodologies that work–and I don’t care what they originate from. Guess that makes me a traiter to the public school cause, but that’s life.
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p>The bottom line is I think public school teachers have a lot of difficult soul searching to do and they are, for the most part, unwilling to do it. To be fair, in general, teachers have been immune from having to do this sort of thing given the nature of our union employment. Times are changing. Reactionary hysteria in response to anything that feels remotely threatening will never move the Luddites of teachers towards better instruction. Indeed, these are the educators and administrations who will become the albatross around the profession’s collective neck. That can’t be allowed to happen.
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p>Managing change is never easy, but boy, something has got to give here because the ultimate losers in this entrenched tug-of-war is kids.
This is the real question, once you cut through all the crap. I’m genuinely not sure what the answer is.
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p>Raising the numbers of students in charter schools will indeed make the remaining population in district schools even more challenging — checked out parents, disabilities, high poverty, etc. But that will mean better opportunities for those who can attend a charter school and benefit from learning with more motivated and better behaved peers.
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p>I also think it’s worth clarifying what constitutes “high-achieving kids” in the context of this debate. In the districts the governor is talking about, white middle-class flight happened long ago, and the current population is, across the board, heavily minority and overwhelmingly low-income. Something like 80% of kids in Boston Public Schools are on subsidized lunch, and, excluding the exam schools, only 6% go on to graduate from a four-year college. These aren’t necessarily students who will thrive in any setting; this isn’t Newton South. Indeed, they are often “on the bubble” students such that their environment will play the dispositive role in their life path. I think it’s a pretty specious argument that working class parents should have to keep their kids in the district so they can be a role model of sorts for troubled kids.
I guess you forgot to include the possibility that Deval might actually win re-election.
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p>It’s true that this will be a very different election in some respects; his critics have some actual accomplishments (and fluffs) to criticize this time around.
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p>Still, we will win this one the same way we won the last one; reaching out, one voter at a time, to make the case as to why Deval is the best of all the candidates, even if he isn’t perfect. As he’s quipped many times, “I didn’t run for Saint, I ran for Governor!” There are evidently people who think they can do a better job. Maybe. Or maybe they just have nothing else to do that’s as exciting as thinking about all that power. Headaches is more like it, in my view.
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p>Deval has done a wonderful job at doing what he promised in his campaign: change and extend the timeline of state government, so that what we do is designed to produce dividends AFTER the next election. What a quaint idea, yet he has succeeded, in large part, imho.
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p>What he has not succeeded in doing in changing the culture of squabbling politicians and their critics (such as the members of this forum — me included, I must admit), and that is something that no one person can do. I hope we can all rise to the challenge of keeping the debate civil, informed, positive, and productive. It’s hard to break old, comfortable habits, but I have faith that we can all rewire our brains! It’s possible, believe me, but it takes work!
“If nominated, I will not run. If elected I will not serve.”
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p>As some may know, there is the kind of history between myself and the fellow who posts as “Burlington Maul” that brings to mind Delores Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals – the book which I am currently reading and heartily recommend.
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p>I would not say that Mr. Maul and I are “friends” – nor that his poll is a friendly one, even towards myself.
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p>We already have a Governor – his name is Deval Patrick and as far as I know he will run for another term and be elected to that term.
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p>Governor Patrick is most definitely the leader of his team and our state in very difficult times.
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p>I would wish that such talents and the data-set as I do have, which I believe to be valuable, were better used by Governor Patrick – but I do what I can do in my own way.
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p>However, I rather like being seen as a “fighting Democrat” and am, in my profession a “fighter” for what I believe in – in the courts, streets, hospitals and schools of the Commonwealth every day.
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p>Also, I always put “none of the above” in my posts so that folk who want to vote and don’t like the options I have given [whether humorous or biting options] can still vote.
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p>Word to the wise, Mr. Maul!