About That School Obama Highlighted in the State of the Union…
**Written by Doug Powers
In spite of the woeful state of education in many areas of the country, there are still reasons to be encouraged. President Obama outlined one such example in his State of the Union speech last week:
When President Barack Obama spotlighted a successful school in his State of the Union speech, he picked Bruce Randolph School in Denver.
“Take a school like Bruce Randolph in Denver,” the president said. “Three years ago, it was rated one of the worst schools in Colorado. Last May, 97 percent of seniors received their diploma.”
Wow, that’s an impressive turnaround. How did they go from bad to great? Well, that part of the story ended up on the cutting room floor during the SOTU editing process, for obvious reasons:
Bruce Randolph was a middle school when it opened in 2002. In 2007, Denver Public Schools gave Bruce Randolph School permission to operate autonomously. It was the first school in the state to be granted autonomy from district and union rules.
Each teacher then had to reapply for his or her job. A published report said only six teachers remained.
When the devil is in the details, simply ignore the details.
(h/t Chicks on the Right)
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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Categories: Barack Obama,Education,Unions
Sister Toldjah
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Ooops!
Sounds like a Pual Harvey…”now you know the rest of the story”!!
Whatever size shoe Obama wears, it must be equal to the size of his mouth. After all, that is where his foot often resides.
Oh dear, someone is in deep do for this little tid bit! I love it when bho gets slammed by his teams stupidity in fact checking.
L
Won’t make any difference to the teachers’ unions. Where else are they going to go? They’re stuck with the Obamessiah.
Funny how he chooses to highlight school that became successful by being privatized, then forgets to tell how it was privatized.
When ya can’t find a successful Government-run school, choose a private one and CLAIM it’s Government.
This lip service for quality education is coming from the same mouth that canceled a D.C. school voucher program that enabled parents to send their kids to quality schools. Win the Future (WTF)?
I don’t believe any of the crap that spews from his pie-hole. I doubt many people do.
How is in any way inconsistent with Obama’s Race to the Top? If you look at most of the schools that won the grants, one of the common denominators was extracting huge concessions from teachers unions, like merit pay. In Rhode Island, when the state education commissioner proposed reforms to better position themselves for the grant, the teachers in one district, Central Falls, refused to agree. So, the commissioner fired every single one of the teachers. Their tune changed but quick and agreement was reached. This would have never happened if they weren’t competing for the grant money.
You may not think that the federal government should have any role in education But conceding that it currently does, RttT has been much more successful than NCLB.
In Minnesota, we have lesbian-couple drama queens looking for publicity and equality in their high school, Champlin Park (Anoka-Hennepin School District). They just got their wish, without the help of Lady Gaga. The school board gave them school dance tickets as a couple. Now waiting to see who asks and receives tickets as polygamists, incestuous and bestiality couples. Students in Minnesota don’t receive diplomas. They get Certificates of Inclusivity from their liberal union teachers while marching to Pomp and Circumstance. No focus on American History, Math, Science, English, Writing or PhyEd. The core academics revolve around Democrat Social Experiments.
District Allows Lesbian Teens to Walk as Couple
Wow, Michelle, no wonder they hate you.
Can’t you just accept what they tell you as the God’s honest truth?
Why do you have to rain on their parade?
Keep it up, oh one who is worthy of much gratitude and respect.
Sometimse I am simply amazed at how inept this administration is; don’t these people research anything? It’s like using “WTF”, just how stupid could they be with that one!
Isn’t it interesting when the job security of the unions along with tenure are removed, how motivated teachers are to get the job done. Rewarding poor performance never produces achievement, except in the minds of the political elites. Leveling the playing field ruins the game.
My apologies Doug, I just realized it was you who wrote this.
But, then Michelle is the one who hired you right?
So I guess I wasn’t completely stupid, just a half wit of sorts.
That’s ok Jvette…you are still half a wit ahead of the libtards.
So, I got that going for me. LOL.
The leftists are too stupid to realize that if any school replaced over 90% of the bozos they have teaching now and replaced them with people who know the subject matter and how to motivate kids to learn then any school could be Bruce Randolph school.
Get rid of teachers unions and certification, let people teach who pass a background check, know the material, hire, fire, and pay based on merit, not seniority, and get the administration out of the way and watch academic achievement soar.
Isn’t it a hoot when the truth gets in the way of what the Glorious Leader has to say? I guess it’s “The State Of The Union Address” vs “The State Of The Union Address: OBAMA STYLE” presented in the government-appropriate reverse order, of course. It is a shame that I used to be interested in what the president and our government had to say about things. Now, I don’t even turn on the tv because I know that it’s all just lies,bullsh*t, and a waste of my time. In the words of Dennis Miller,
“If I want to see a roomful of big asses, I’ll watch the Kardashian show”.
Wow, if anything close to this ever happens in the Socialist Republic of Pennsylvania, I will truly pinch myself!
How did that happen? How did the NEA and local unions allow this? Now they’re going to have to rein it back in so it won’t show up the union quagmires that are performing much worse.
They probably didn’t expect it would do so well. Oh, look! Something else that was unexpected besides the unemployment numbers. I guess the truth was unexpected, too!
Did Doug use the word inconsistent?
Or was Doug merely implying that Obama chose not to sound like Chris Christie in his SOTU speech?
Are you claiming that it was some feature of RttT that allowed the commissioner to fire every single one of the teachers? How was the commissioner allowed to fire tenured teachers in mass?
I’ve never watched state of the unions except once in HS for an assignment.
Those boring speeches are just another campaign forum and full of lies.
Ordinarily, I’d say it’s amazing how many people get suckered by the guy in a suit talking, but it’s been that for 12,000 years.
I haven’t watched any either. It doesn’t really matter who is talking, all you hear is about how some gov’t largesse is going to fix every problem and the good ole US of A is just one gov’t program away from the land of unicorns and rainbows. Yes, that goes for Republicans as well as democrats.
What I would like to see is the next prez say exactly what John Stossel said on his pre-SOTU show. Can’t find any video of it, but it starts with —
Then stick to it!
No. But it is a reasonable conclusion. Doug, would you like to clarify?
No. I clearly said it was RttT that MOTIVATED the commissioner to fire every single one of the teachers.
I think my suggested conclusion is more accurate.
Um, there is no shortage of motivation to fire bad teachers. The problem has never been motivation. The problem is unions.
Again, how was the commissioner allowed to fire tenured teachers in mass?
Oddly enough, getting rid of bad teachers whether the union likes it or not has been on the Conservative agenda for years. If RttT helps – fine. My guess is that if you had gone to Obama three years ago and suggested ignoring the school district and unions, and firing all the teachers and only taking the good ones back – he would have thought it an anti-progressive idea. Claiming success for something that he would have opposed but – oh yeah it’s successful – is disingenuous at best.
It’s almost like they were educated in public schools.
So are you suggesting it is Bush’s fault? I figure we should all infere that is the meaning of the statement, just as you infered that Doug was saying Obama was inconsistent.
You are free to do so. But I am right. Doug clearly thinks that this detail regarding the school is something Obama would want to hide when in fact it is very consistent with his overall approach in this area, as embodied in RttT.
Of course there is. What a silly thing to say. Just because school districts/commissioners/executives don’t WANT to pick a fight with powerful teachers unions doesn’t mean they don’t have the means to do so, even if woefuly underutilized. RttT was simply a very effective motivating tool. The RI commissioner felt that the potentialy huge windfall from the grant was worth the fight with the teacher’s unions, as I am sure many other states did.
I think you should look at some of the statements Obama made during the election, and especially the primaries. Obama spoke up early and often for merit pay. He was most definitely not the teacher’s unions most popular candidate in the primaries. The national NEA didn’t endorse any Dem. primary candidates, but I think most of the local chapters endorsed Clinton. I know New Hampshire’s did. After Obama won the nomination, the national NEA did endorse him, but the vote for him was significantly lower than it was for Kerry, Gore or Clinton and his speech to them had a mixed reception to say the least.
Did he mention mass firings specfically? I don’t know. But he was not nearly as “progressive” on this issue as you make him out to be.
Who has the money to fight those lawsuits? The unions make it way to expensive to battle. Again, the lawyers win.
Seems to me the ole Sock Puppet had nothing to do with the success of this school. Seems to me like the school itself, by being granted autonomy from district and union rules the school itself took the situation in hand and determioned what that school was going to be.
Of course not. This school instituted those reforms in 2007. Obama was simply using it as an example of the success of an approach like RttT, which motivates local, often radical, reform rather than imposes top down mandates like NCLB. From his speech (omitted by Doug):
Wasn’t NCLB a Kennedy legacy? So it’s Teddy’s fault!
Has BHO ever given the complete story in any speech he has ever read?
LOL. Nice. It seems the only manufacturing left in the US is public education. They produce loser Leftist teachers as a byproduct of toxic student education processing. Maybe we can export those “teachers” to China? They can teach “English as a third language”.
“When the devil is in the details, simply ignore the details.”
You should have said, “When the devil is in the details, devils simply ignore the details.”
Of course it is. You don’t think Obama wants to hide the fact that the school only recovered because they fired all the teachers?
Again, Obama didn’t want to sound like Chris Christie.
There’s a big difference between motivation and determination. Again, there is no shortage of motivation to fire bad teachers. There is, however, a huge shortage of determination to pick a fight with powerful teachers unions.
If RttT merely provides a slight reward incentive for those willing to risk the commitment of vast resources to fight the powerful teachers unions, then RttT inspired successes will probably be few and far between.
I’ll ask you again, how was the commissioner allowed to fire tenured teachers in mass?
First, you are confusing the schools. Second, the school is a long way away from “recovering.” Third, Obama specifically made mention of the firing.
So, um….yeah. He’s not hiding from radical solutions at the expense of the teachers unions. He is endorsing them.
Only in degree. And any pent up motivation really isn’t worth much until you get past the tipping point, so to speak. So if you want to quibble over “motivation vs. determination” while ignoring the fact that this action was done specifically to help the state show it was serious about educational reform specifically to better position itself for the RttT grant, go ahead.
You consider $500 million first prize a “slight” incentive?
I don’t know. And slight correction, the school superintendant fired, but the commissioner had to approve. You can feel free to research the applicable statutes and regs for more specifics. What I do know is that they were fired. And what I am 99% sure of is that it was not because of any new authority granted in the RttT program.
And by “details”, can we assume you mean “White House”?
He certainly hid it from his SOTU speech – which was Doug’s point.
How many first prizes are there?
That’s too bad. I was hoping that RttT might have addressed the issue. We’ll see whether or not RttT has widespread effects. I’m not believing these grants will be effective.
Btw, my point is that the incentive isn’t merely the potential payout. It’s the expected payout which is calculated by multiplying the payout by probability of winning the payout. If the program is competitive, then the expected payout may be only a “slight” incentive.
This is nothing more than a feint by, “Sister Souljah” moment from the group of elitists, America-destroyers, socialists, opposite worldview-holders, statists, collectivists, etc., that is currently in power in Washington.
The sun would rise in the West the day that the socialists would cross the teachers’ unions by dismissing incompetent teachers; and by demanding competent, actual instruction of our schoolchildren.
I’m willing to give him credit for every lousy teacher fired in this country – it’s a bipartisan effort I can support. But I think he’s a big fat liar so I’ll withhold judgement pending more action.
There actually IS a big difference between “hiding” something from a speech and not mentioning specific details in a speech that is almost, by definition, about big ideas and aspirations rather than nuts and bolts.
Why don’t you look at the amounts given to all the states that won and tell me if you think that any of them are “slight.” We are not talking about handing out 2 for 1 coupons to Denny’s. And, ultimately, the proof is in the pudding. Whatever the dollar amount, the fact is the states (most anyway) did fight to get these grants. So it clearly wasn’t “slight” to them, no matter what calculation you want to use.
How? By federally mandating that schools fire all their teachers?
He didn’t omit nuts and bolts. He omitted the mechanism of action which allowed the change. Do you specifically disagree that mentioning the mechanism would have made him sound like Chris Christie, and that he would have wanted to avoid that?
Of course states fight to get fed grants. States establish lotteries, too. That doesn’t mean that individuals that much incentive to buy tickets. Likewise, individual school systems don’t have much incentive to fight powerful unions simply because of these grants.
Gee, can you think of anything better? Or is this merely representative of your limitations?
I truly have no idea why you keep mentioning Chris Cristie. And I don’t know whether or not Obama wants to sound like him in this, or any, context.
But it was the SOTU, not a education policy white paper. He has numerous times in many contexts endorsed policies which are hated by teachers unions. He chose to a school that shed its unions. He presumably knows that people can google and find out more about Bruce Randolph and what they did.
So…you claim they were fighting hard to get these grants but were not sufficient incentivized by them? Truly bizzare.
And your analogy to a lottery might be a little less silly if, to get a chance of winning the lottery, you had to fill out a massive application and undergo severe changes in lifestyle and had a better than 25% of winning something significant rather than merely plopping down a dollar for a one in half a billion chance at a huge payout. But you don’t, so it is.
Gee, I guess I don’t really need to. It seems clear the RttT already tacitly encourages such actions where necessary, seeing at least one state took that extraordinary step. A state, which probably not so coincidentally was one of the winners in the second round to the tune of $75 million.
Clueless
He presumably knows that a tiny percentage of SOTU speech viewers will google
There’s a massive difference between a state winning a grant and an individual school system being motivated by a state’s chance to win a grant application.
I assume you aren’t smart enough to understand the lottery analog. You weren’t smart enough to understand the comparison people made about Obama’s potential to handle a hostage situation. It seems as if comparisons are lost on you unless they represent the same exact scenario.
A 1% chance to win $10,000 can be adequately compared to a 0.1% chance to win $100,000. The resources required to bet can be scaled as well. The analogy is germane.
I would not say Christie sounds clueless in any case.
The state gave the school district 4 options for reform or to fire all the teachers. The teachers unions would not agree to any of the 4. And, in any case, the difference in motivation is hardly as big as you claim. Unless you believe that the state education budget does not have any significant effect on the local school budgets.
People weren’t making a comparison. They were saying there was no comparison to make at all. I was the one claiming a valid comparison of one hostage situation to another (which, is a hell of a lot more valid than trying to claim a grant application is like a state lotto). Maybe you should, as I suggested there, go back and actually ready what was written.
I have nothing against comparisons. I have a big problem with stupid ones. And there are several reasons why your analogy is, to put it bluntly, one of the stupidest I have ever come across here. Not the least of which are the massive disparities in odds, the fact that a lottery is pure chance whereas you can directly affect your ability to win a grant through your actions and the fact that the cost of participation is much, much higher.
Scalability is one thing. Calling an apple an orange is quite another.
Scalability is one thing. Comparing apples to oranges is wholly another.
The overall state budget doesn’t provide any individual school with the fortitude to take on powerful unions. Unless the state specifically promised to underwrite such a battle, why would an individual district rely on the state to help – regardless of what the state was receiving from the federal government?
Tell me again how many school districts exist in the US and tell me again the number of grants going to individual school districts?
Except the analogy wasn’t comparing apples to oranges. It was comparing fruit to fruit. The analogy is agnostic to the type of fruit being compared.
No. It was trying to compare something more analagous to a pay raise with being hit by a meteor. Absolutely, insipidly stupid.
Another inane assertion. A grant hardly has to go to a school district individually for a school district to directly benefit from the grant.
I suppose you also think that a child would not benefit from his parent getting a $20,000 pay raise simply because the child does not directly receive the cash.
Ya know, it’s one thing for you to ask questions about an analogy that you don’t understand, but you make yourself look like an idiot when you assume something that you don’t understand is stupid.
Here it is, idiot. The child MIGHT benefit.
1. The parent might might be estranged from the kid.
2. The parent might spend all the money on a new expense.
3. The parent might foolishly invest all the money in a ponzi scheme.
4. The parent might simply be a deadbeat dad.
5. Do you honest need any more examples of how the kid might NOT benefit?
The question isn’t whether the child might benefit, the question is whether the kid will feel comfortable relying on the parent’s raise to initiate a costly endeavor such as paying lawyers to fight a teachers’ union?
chap, I can picture you as a kid going around town promising to purchase bicycles, toys, and friends simply because your father received a raise and you were CERTAIN to benefit from it. How did that work out for you?
Riiiight, the only reason the union slap didn’t get mentioned was that it was such a minor detail in a grand speech about Hope’n'Change. And I’m the Queen of Sheba.
So tell me, chap, if, just hypothetically, that little “bolt” did get a little more prominent mention, do you think that would have led to greater political pressure in towns, cities, and states all across the country to take the schools back from the parasitical unions?
Actually, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, because the answer’s pretty obvious.