Did you notice Flypaper's ?quotable? bit from yesterday? It comes from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie: ?Teaching can no longer be the only profession where you have no rewards for excellence and no consequences for failure to perform.? I get it. Christie is a politician, and making broad, charged statements is what politicians do (when they aren't making narrow, vapid ones). But obviously teaching isn't the only profession in which workers are promoted and receive salary raises based on time served rather than excellence demonstrated, in which laggards are perennially tolerated. Are the bureaucrats at the New Jersey Department of Education judged by their performance?
The Rhee Coterie, of which Christie is a seminal part, is unsettling?education-reform zealots on parade. One wishes this crew would be less abrasive, less Manichean. They are currently the best public-relations tool the teachers' unions have.
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow