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Liberals Aren't Truly Opposed to Merit Pay for Teachers. They Just Don't Know What It Is.
Where were we? Oh, Larry James. He's one of the city's smartest true liberals, a rare combination of practical political savvy, business know-how and morally inspired idealism. So I was worried.
He said in his essay that a new city manager for Dallas must be someone capable of "engaging public education in Dallas as a key determinant for long-term economic revitalization." I believe that, too. But my experience over the last year has been that many of my liberal friends who say that kind of stuff don't really believe it. That is, they say they believe until they get to the point where we have to talk about how.
Engaging public education? Are we not knee-deep already in a pretty concerted effort to do just that in the Dallas public school system? A school superintendent who is all about reform just completed a year in which he and his team achieved all of their important objectives on the road to meaningful change. But at what harrowing cost?
For bringing the city's school system several ticks down the road to real reform, Mike Miles' reward has been to barely avoid getting Michelle Rhee'd right out of town, being stripped of lucrative pay bonuses and put on probation by the school board like a kid in the corner wearing a dunce cap. I guess if he had actually failed to accomplish one of his objectives, they would have taken him out back and shot him.
He said in his essay that a new city manager for Dallas must be someone capable of "engaging public education in Dallas as a key determinant for long-term economic revitalization." I believe that, too. But my experience over the last year has been that many of my liberal friends who say that kind of stuff don't really believe it. That is, they say they believe until they get to the point where we have to talk about how.
Engaging public education? Are we not knee-deep already in a pretty concerted effort to do just that in the Dallas public school system? A school superintendent who is all about reform just completed a year in which he and his team achieved all of their important objectives on the road to meaningful change. But at what harrowing cost?
For bringing the city's school system several ticks down the road to real reform, Mike Miles' reward has been to barely avoid getting Michelle Rhee'd right out of town, being stripped of lucrative pay bonuses and put on probation by the school board like a kid in the corner wearing a dunce cap. I guess if he had actually failed to accomplish one of his objectives, they would have taken him out back and shot him.
The complete article is at http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/11/liberals_arent_truly_opposed_t.php .
