I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Reformy All-Stars!

This Sunday, an all-star congregation of the reformyest of the reformy meets in New Jersey to sing the praises of "choice." And the lead tenor will be none other than the Pavarotti of privatization, Education Commissioner Chris Cerf:

New Jersey School Choice Summit

In commemoration of National School Choice Week, please join education reform leaders and supporters from across New Jersey for a timely, important, and uplifting meeting about education reform and school choice in the Garden State. 
Get your two dollar ticket now. This event will sell out.
Speakers will include:
Keith Benson, Allied Clergy of New Jersey
Derrell Bradford, NJ Better Education for Kids
Tony Bucco, NJ State Assembly
Chris Cerf, NJ Education Commissioner
Michael Doherty, NJ State Senate
Victoria Jakelsky, New Jersey Coordinator for ParentalRights.org
Gabriela Mosquera, NJ State Assembly
Gary Schaer, NJ State Assembly
Moderated by: Bob Bowdon, Choice Media
Two dollars - such a deal! Who's on the bill?

- Keith Benson is part of the professional voucher opportunity scholarship promotion industry here in Jersey. He will sing the praises of private schools without mentioning their ability to exclude whichever students they wish, which leads to a peer effect that accounts for their "success."

- I've been over the life and times of Derrell Bradford more than enough on this blog. For a while, you weren't allowed to mention me over at the B4K playground; then they decided to engage me, to their embarrassment. I'm sure Bradford will have plenty to say, once again, about how much more his billionaire-funded group cares about kids than teachers.

- Seated next to Bradford will undoubtedly be Mosquera, who collected a nice amount in campaign contributions from B4K even though the outcome of her race was preordained.

- Senator Doherty is sure to bloviate for a while, perhaps on the subject of ADHD and diet modifications, before going into his stock denunciation of giving state education aid where it is needed - namely, districts with many children living in poverty. Doherty specializes in ignoring all the evidence about funding equity so he can salve the consciences of his Tea Partyin' base.

- Carlos Perez is paid to spin the press about the "successes" of New Jersey's charter schools, even though the truth is pretty ugly. Charter segregation doesn't much bother Perez, who wants to bring the Chicago model he pushed to Jersey, in spite of the "educational apartheid" it created in the Windy City.

- Israel Teitelbaum is another voucher opportunity scholarship pusher. He calls choice a "civil rights issue," yet conveniently forgets to mention that the NJ Opportunity Scholarship Act would overwhelmingly benefit Yeshiva schools in Lakewood to the potential tune of $67 million. The plain truth is that there just aren't enough private schools in other urban districts to make much of a difference.

- Moderating this panel will be Bob Bowden, who I understand was once a journalist.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the group that the head of New Jersey's education system thinks he should be trading riffs with on a lazy Sunday. These are his people; his ideological choir-mates. He tunes his reformy harmonies to their sad, tired refrains.

Get your two-dollar ticket today, folks: you're sure to get a performance that's worth just that.

Been there...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, as long as we're going with the "All Stars" metaphor, I'd say this crew resembles mediocre baseball players of the performance enhancing drug era, whose statistics were based on lies.

Instead of of being juiced with steroids, HGH, testosterone, etc., these non-entities are juiced with billionaire dollars.

Take their subsidies from the 1%, away, and these people revert to the misshapen dwarfs they really are.

Duke said...

Nice metaphor. Should have gone with that...