You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had
On Wednesday, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof wrote:
Good schools constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies. Yet, cowed by teachers’ unions, Democrats have too often resisted reform and stood by as generations of disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools.
Matthew Ladner, Andrew Rotherham and a few of my readers seem to think this calls for a “Who Lost Kristof?” angle, something I’m always happy to highlight. And to be sure, Kristof is being slammed where you would expect him to be slammed.
But if Kristof was lost to the education establishment, it happened no later than last March, when he wrote “Obama takes on the teacher unions,” and opened with:
President Obama gets an A+ for his education speech just now. He made all the traditional and necessary points that one would expect a progressive Democrat to make — such as the crucial necessity of more early childhood programs — but he also added elements that will make teachers’ unions uncomfortable. And, frankly, that’s terrific. The Democratic Party has been too close to the unions for too long, and their interest is not precisely the same as the students’. The unions would be failing their members if they didn’t cry foul when bad teachers were pushed out, but that’s what we need more of. Education reform is going to mean challenging the unions, and Obama signaled that that’s what he plans to do.
I think it might be time to retire the “Who Lost…?” series, as it is no longer news when a moderate Democrat or mainstream liberal criticizes the teachers’ unions. That, my friends, is real progress.
So I leave you with this sentiment from the late, great Muddy Waters:
