Mark Towner's Spyglass Spots: 'Collegiality vs. Excellence, Or 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

August 21, 2007
Collegiality vs. Excellence, Or 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'
I was going to blog about the Sunday debates between the Democratic presidential candidates, but it turns out the statement that the National Education Association (and its president Reg Weaver) put out afterward proved to be far more interesting than any of the carefully scripted/guarded comments that came out of the candidates' mouths.
(And in case you spent the weekend maniacally scrubbing your Wikipedia entry edits and missed the debate itself, you can watch the pertinent parts here. But trust me, there is nothing really there. Some words coming from candidates' mouths, but it's pretty much all bells and whistles baby. Even EdIn08's good cop only had nice things to say about the questioners, and not as much to say about the answers, displaying how low the bar has been set - even in Romerville.)
My take on the significance of the "so-called performance pay" discussion (and the NEA's subsequent public statement) is closer to the strand that David Hoff is following over at Education Week's NCLB: Act II blog. David noted that three of the candidates sit on a Senate committee that may be taking up the "so-called performance pay" issue as part of an eventual reauthorization of NCLB.
With that in mind, you can understand why the candidates are under so much pressure to be as boring as they are on education issues - even as a couple hundred thousand high school students prepare to become dropouts between now and the 2008 general election. The NEA's statement following the debates tells you a lot about what is happening behind the scenes, who really dominates the education discussion in this country, and why concepts like teacher "collegiality" almost always trump concepts like excellence, performance, etc. (And I'm probably reading too much into this, but it almost reads like a "Don't get too big for your reform-sounding britches" message to Barack Obama, who has called for merit pay, but only in cases where the teachers design the pay schemes.)

The NEA's audience here isn't the presidential candidates or the public at large. It is aimed squarely at members of Congress who dare cross the union by offering plans in NCLB to reward successful teachers for the hard work they do.

Congratulations Reg Weaver, for making it onto today's "DFER Quote of the Day."

http://www.dfer.org/2007/08/collegiality_vs.php#more