Ravitch says George Will understands Chicago schools better than Obama, Duncan or Emmanuel.

[Smarmie Doofus]

Mr. President: When even George Will is to your left on corporate ed "reform" IT MIGHT BE TIME TO REEXAMINE SOME OF YOUR FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS.

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/06/george-wills-surprising-take-on-the-chicago-battle/



George Will’s Surprising Take on the Chicago Battle
July 6, 2012 //
8
George Will is confused about who is right and who is wrong in the battle between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Teachers Union.

And that’s a good thing, because one would expect this doughty conservative to stand firmly, loudly, and uncompromisingly in opposition to the union.

But he didn’t.

Granted, he doesn’t know that CTU is part of the American Federation of Teachers, not the National Education Association. And he doesn’t know that the name of the NEA was settled in 1857, not just recently to deceive people and “blur the fact that it is a teachers’ union.”

Granted, he thinks the auto industry was fatally wounded by its unions, not by its shortsighted managers, who never figured out that American consumers wanted fuel-efficient cars, not gas-guzzlers.

And then too, he makes the common error of claiming that spending on education in the nation is up while “educational attainments have fallen.” One of his researchers should have looked at the latest reports of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and told him that test scores are at their highest point for every group in history.

But he then does something startling. George Will rejects the central premise of the reformers’ argument. He abandons the “no excuses” philosophy of Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan. He says that poverty and family collapse affect students’ ability to succeed in school. He says that social order in Chicago is in disarray, even though Arne Duncan and former Mayor Richard Daley proclaimed their plan to be “Renaissance 2010.” Reminder: 2010 is past and gone. There was no Renaissance. What remains of those “reforms”? Little progress, if any, and a legacy of crumbling families and weakened communities.

[Scootaloo]

1. And he only does so on the belief that it makes obama look bad

Maybe call it a "stopped clock" moment, if you want to e generous, but anyone who's read George Will knows he does not believe this. Rather he just wants to lay "social disorder in Chicago" at the feet of the Obama administration.