Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, one and all. Intercepts will return Wednesday, January 7.

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1) Horseshoes and Hand Grenades
2) Holiday Hiatus
3) Last Week’s Intercepts
4) Quote of the Week

The people who collected $338 million this year for the specific purpose of getting higher salaries for teachers yesterday sent out a press release admitting they’re no good at it, and haven’t been for years.

That’s what you have to believe if you accept this stuff at face value.

Ask yourself what Stephen King or Shaquille O’Neal would do if their agents told them, “I’ve tried for 30 years and I just can’t get you what you’re worth.”

The International Committee of the Fourth International (in coordination with its Department of Redundancy Department) finds fault with President-elect Obama’s cabinet choices, especially Secretary of Education-nominee Arne Duncan:

Duncan, 44, a Harvard-trained lawyer like Obama rather than a professional educator, was tapped by Mayor Richard Daley to head the Chicago schools in 2001. He has built a reputation as an education “reformer,” a misnomer that is identified with the drive to privatize public education and subordinate it ever more closely to the needs of big business.

In Chicago, Duncan’s tenure has been identified with his “Renaissance 2010″ initiative, which has involved the punitive shutting down of low-performing schools in the city’s poorer neighborhoods and then reopening them after replacing the staff or forcing teachers to reapply for their old positions.

Other practices carried out under his direction include performance pay for teachers, the promotion of charter schools and forcing failing students to repeat years.

He is seen as a strong supporter of the “No Child Left Behind” initiative of the Bush administration, in particular the imposition of standardized testing and the rote learning that goes with it.

Bush’s former Secretary of Education Rod Paige called Duncan a “budding hero in the education business.”

In Chicago and many other urban districts, the policy has led to a kind of educational triage, in which poorer performing schools are shuttered and less able students are forced out. Just 51 percent of Chicago’s public school students manage to complete a high school education in 12 years.

Duncan’s nomination was strongly supported by the pro-Republican Chicago Tribune, which portrayed the debate over a new education secretary as one between “two warring camps—reformers who demand more accountable schools and defenders of the complacent status quo.” In general, the latter camp is meant to refer to teachers and their unions.

Obama, the paper argued, had to appoint someone willing to “smash skulls” or risk “telegraphing that the education industry has succeeded in outlasting the Bush push for increasingly tough performance standards in schools.”

Also backing Duncan was David Brooks, the Republican columnist for the New York Times, who argued that he possessed “the political skills necessary to build a coalition on behalf of No Child Left Behind reauthorization.”

The selection was praised by the Republican-aligned Thomas B. Fordham Institute, whose director Chester Finn, a former education department official in the Reagan administration, commented that Duncan “is a proven and committed and innovative education reformer” who is “not tethered to the public school establishment and its infinite interest groups.”

And Bush’s Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings praised Duncan as a “great choice,” calling him “a visionary leader and fellow reformer.”

Some of these same Republican and right-wing elements had also backed New York City’s schools Chancellor Joel Klein, but, as Brooks wrote in the Times, saw his appointment unlikely because he had been “blackballed by the unions.” Duncan was seen as a worthy substitute because he was “less controversial,” a “stealth candidate,” prepared to implement the same policies but with less friction.

Indeed, following the announcement, American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten commented positively, “Arne Duncan actually reaches out and tries to do things in a collaborative way.” The message was clear: the main teachers’ union is prepared to collaborate with the Obama administration in implementing much the same reactionary education policies as those promoted by the Bush administration before it.

A Rasmussen poll of voters reveals 66% of them believe the teachers’ unions “are more interested in protecting their members’ jobs than in the quality of education.” Party identification has a surprisingly small effect on this belief, with 78% of Republicans holding it, 66% of independents and 55% of Democrats.

Apparently one-third of voters have difficulty wrapping their minds around the concept of teachers’ unions doing what teachers pay them to do.

Now that President-elect Obama has selected Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan to be the next U.S. Secretary of Education, it’s as though a dam has burst and all the punditry that was building up has come flooding out. You don’t have time to read it all, so here are the short versions of the reactions so far:

* Checker Finn – Duncan good.

* David Hoff – Duncan supports NCLB.

* The Klonsky boys (Fred and Mike) – We have successfully curbed our enthusiasm.

* Business Roundtable – Kumbaya.

* Norm Scott – Klein Lite.

* USA Today - Duncan played basketball in Australia.

* Flypaper – Duncan is a canvas.

* Alexander Russo – If you knew Duncan like I know Duncan.

* Margaret Spellings – Duncan is a kindred spirit.

* Dana Goldstein – Duncan signed two competing manifestos.

* Dennis Van Roekel – We want more money.

Click here to read:

1) EIA Exclusive: More from NEA’s Post-Election Analysis
2) Last Week’s Intercepts
3) Quote of the Week