Seems like AFTie John didn’t give us the whole story on the edublog panel from the Yearly Kos meeting in Vegas. Leave it to TNR’s Ryan Lizza to do some reporting for us:
[Iowa Gov. Vilsack] sits on a poorly attended education panel with two know-it-all bloggers who dominate much of the session.
Hmmm…seems one of the bloggers was AFTie John’s favorite font of blueberry wisdom…
Also, AFTie John has revisited the tax credit issue that so surprised him the other day. But his response seems a little impoverished and static. Two thoughts, OK, just one thought plus a snarky comment. Snark first: AFTie John shows no concern about this horse tradin’ strategy, is the AFT now OK with trading education tax credits for teacher pay raises? Let’s hope not. More seriously, if Democrats had an aggressive reform agenda of their own, wouldn’t they have been able to get the pay raises and not had to eat the tax credits? Pay raises + choice versus pay raises and no choice…sure seems like if the Democrats championed choice on Democratic terms they’d be in stronger position…and worth noting Iowa has one of the weakest charter school laws in the nation (something Dem state legislator Phil Wise has been working hard to change) so the Hawkeye state is not a public school choice utopia in the first place.
Also, while you’re at AFTie HQ, worth pointing out that while they credit outgoing Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson with the devastatingly effective “soft bigotry of low expectations” line, they neglect to mention that it was Clinton Ed Secretary Riley who coined the phrase “tyranny of low expectations” from which the Gerson line is borrowed. Where’s the love?