is immobilized. Impotent. The explanation lies in its longstanding alliance with the teachers' unions -- which, with more than three million members, tons of money and legions of activists, are among the most powerful groups in American politics. The Democrats benefit enormously from all this firepower, and they know what they need to do to keep it. They need to stay inside the box.
Acceptable educational “change,” therefore, cannot “affect anyone's job, reallocate resources, or otherwise threaten the occupational interests of the adults running the system.” Moe says Democrats should instead get serious about 1) accountability, 2) school choice, and 3) the downside of collective bargaining—onerous rules, assignments based on solely on seniority, and absolute tenure. Moe hopes Obama will somehow make the changes Democrats should favor.
The New York Times’ David Brooks has identified a camp of educational reformers within the Obama network that is championing for education secretary either Joel Klein, the highly successful New York public school system head who Brooks says has been “blackballed” by the unions, or Arne Duncan, according to Brooks “the reforming Chicago head who is less controversial.”
Brooks worries the job will instead go to some uninvolved governor, with Linda Darling-Hammond [picture], a defender of the status quo who heads Obama’s education transition team, named deputy secretary. If it’s Darling-Hammond, she won’t be the Washington Post’s “ideal candidate ":someone who is not afraid to break with orthodoxy, who is more concerned with results than with ideology, who has a proven ability to lead large systems toward change and is passionate about regaining America's place as the best-educated country on the planet[, someone focused] on the only interests that matter -- those of America's schoolchildren.
Anyone betting on this kind of Washington Post-type outcome had better demand long odds.
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