Sample standardized test question of the week: Who is the least popular person in the Hillary Clinton campaign this morning?
Answer: The poor soul who scheduled Hillary to speak BEFORE Barack Obama at the National Education Association pow-wow in Philly.
I have a whole bunch of unrelated points to make, so hang tough, troopers.
1. Check out the YouTube speeches below to see how easy Hillary made it for Obama to present himself as the common sense education dude. (I’ll get to the substance of his speech in a minute.) Hillary is worried that kids aren’t taking field trips anymore because they are taking too many tests; Obama is worried about our growing achievement gap, equality, and international competitiveness. Hrumph. Compare and contrast. Which candidate brought more of a sense of urgency to the table?
2. I do want to post the clips from the speeches so you can see for yourself. This is important because I have an important disclosure issue here. While DFER has not endorsed a candidate, and our board members are individually backing several candidates for president, my wife and I both have maxed out on $2,300 contributions to the Obama campaign. This doesn’t mean we won’t max out to other candidates as well, and we very well might, but you should know that.
3. Even the Philadelphia Inquirer noted that Obama’s appearance before the 9,000 NEA delegates was different from the rest of the field. “Obama’s endorsement of merit pay for teachers was the first note deviating from the promise-anything tenor of visits by several presidential candidates to the union this week.” That’s why it is called Pander-Palooza, folks.
4. But yes, as Eduwonk notes, the real news is that Obama waded into the one place in America which for several days this week claimed the highest concentration per cubic inch of persons opposed to merit pay and called for something that sounded a little bit like… merit pay. This is not a small thing. Sure, he had to do a rhetorical kabuki dance of sorts (he wouldn’t use test scores as sole determinant, he would let teachers decide how it would be crafted, etc.) but he went there. Previous candidates like John Kerry were taken to the woodshed by NEA President Reg Weaver and forced to stop all talk about merit pay, something I described in my book and Robert Gordon described in The New Republic. When you are running for president as a Democrat, you are supposed to play along with the idea that there are no teachers who are better than others – they are all great. Another Philadelphia Inquireranalysis called it a “faint endorsement of merit pay” but noted that not only did Obama not get boo’d or hissed, teachers were literally crawling on the ground to get a better viewing spot.
5. Nonetheless Jeff Berkowitz in Chicago wasn’t impressed. And Mike Antonucci says it wasn’t a Sister Souljah moment at all. And since the teacher delegates actually seemed to like the speech, one DFER friend emailed in a headline suggestion: “Rift Grows Between Union Head, Rest of Universe.”
6. Some of my friends in the school choice world were tremendously disappointed that Obama made no mention of charter schools and went out of his way to badmouth vouchers. I wouldn’t worry about the charter schools piece quite yet. He’s out there on it already. You have to remember what the point of the speech was: to show the American public that he was a heck of a lot more interesting than Hillary on education issues. He did that. Nailed it. Now the key will be to see how the candidates react. Will Hillary get some attitude? Will someone like Bill Richardson have an opening to talk about kids and families? Will Obama convince himself that his speech was so good his work on education is now complete? There is still plenty of time to develop common sense strategies which will promote the fundamental reform of America’s school systems. Will anyone go there?
Check out video of some of Hillary’s speech here.
Obama speech footage is here.