Piers Akerman
PSSST. Want to know a secret? I agree with Julia Gillard on the need for greater transparency in our education system.
She almost blushed when I told her this on Sunday. In fact, I urged the Acting PM to make a move now, while Heavy Kevvie’s overseas making it in Mandarin with his Manchurian mates, but I suspect that, while she liked the idea, she won’t be acting on it any time soon - and she certainly won’t be boasting of my support to her factional friends.
La Gillard has recently returned from a visit to New York where she had an epiphany. She met Joel Klein, who in six years as Commissioner of New York City’s schools system has turned the tide of education around.
Klein is a former trust-buster. Under former president Bill Clinton, he led a 700-lawyer anti-trust team that prevailed in a majority of landmark cases against giant corporations such as Microsoft, WorldCom/Sprint, Visa/Mastercard, and General Electric.
Public education in New York City, as in every state in Australia, had been controlled by massive teacher trade unions with huge war chests which in the US they opened to the Democrats, and in the parallel Australian scenario, to the ALP.
The political sludge behind the teacher unions historically paid for the candidates the ideologically-driven teachers wanted, and they ensured their agendas were implemented.
Generations of children were condemned to fifth-rate educations, graduating as illiterates.
But the trust-busting Klein muscled up to the big unions and took the side of the parents, or, more accurately, the children, and had some remarkable successes, remarkable enough, anyway, for Julia to say she was “bowled over” by his views.
Klein oversees more than 1450 schools with more than 1.1 million students, 136,000 employees, and a $US15 billion operating budget.
In NSW, 741,000 students are taught by over 95,767 employees in more than 2200 NSW Government schools run by a department with an $11.8 billion budget.
Klein has more children in fewer schools and is making dramatic changes which are paying off for students and parents.
As for NSW, the less said the better. And the same largely goes for the other states.
The biggest difference in the approach Klein has taken to education and that imposed by the Australian Education Union and the teachers federations in each state, lies in the openness and transparency that he has brought to the New York City system.
He has opened his schools and education system to scrutiny and competition while Australian schools remain locked tight, secretive, and closed to inspection.
Klein has made his children and his parents partners in education. Here, children and parents are treated as idiots to be shut out of the process.
Under Klein’s comprehensive Children First program, a dysfunctional public school system has been turned around. Student performances improving, there are more and better choices for students, schools are safer and educators are receiving additional autonomy, while being held accountable for progress.
In NSW, schools are becoming more dangerous and performances are falling. Last year alone, teachers handed out 67,282 suspensions, including both long and short suspensions - an increase of more than 8000 since 2005.
According to Gillard, what so struck her about Klein and the changes he has wrought in the NYC school system is “the era of transparency that he has brought to schooling”.- I feel that too often poor teachers are exonerated by this cloak of secrecy. So that the lazy and incapable are paid the same as the industrious and clever. So that the teacher who is willing to sacrifice their time to allow kids to do extra curricular activity is also exposing themselves to any number of difficulties with their colleagues who won't.
I support transparency, but I warn that it will show how bad things are, before they get better. -ed.
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Queensland has ways to indoctrinate its children
Andrew Bolt
Thousands of scientists may doubt global warming is heating the world to hell, but not so the Queensland Studies Authority,
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Gillard’s big idea is starting to fizzle
Andrew Bolt
Julia Gillard says it again, and once words finally translate into deeds I’ll applaud wildly:
ACTING Prime Minister Julia Gillard has warned the states the Government will demonstrate “political courage” to introduce greater transparency and controversial performance rankings for the nation’s schools.
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Chauffeur furious at clubbing Meagher
REBA Meagher's driver was so incensed, he threatened a transfer for having to spend the night sleeping in a car while the Health Minister attended a function.
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Tojo wanted to fight on after A-bombs
HIDEKI Tojo, Japan's prime minister for much of World War II, wanted to keep fighting after the atomic bombings because he believed surrender was a disgrace, according to journal entries published today.
Tojo, an army general, ordered the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor that brought the US into World War II but was forced out as premier in 1944 as the tide of the conflict turned. -You mean that Truman's targeting of civilians was all for nothing? That Japan would have been honor bound to surrender had there been a military target chosen instead? Is it too late to dig up Truman and hang him for form's sake?- ed.
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Dear diary, Pilger is a donkey
Andrew Bolt
John Pilger says Japan wanted to surrender, so the bombing of Hiroshima was yet another American war crime. Japan’s war-time Prime Minister begs to differ:
HIDEKI Tojo, Japan’s prime minister for much of World War II, wanted to keep fighting after the atomic bombings because he believed surrender was a disgrace, according to journal entries published today…
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A war over more than Georgia
Andrew Bolt
Russia’s invasion of Georgia is developing into an even more dangerous confrontation:
President Bush and other Western leaders have sharply criticized Russia’s military response as disproportionate and say Russia appears to want the Georgian government overthrown. They have also complained that Russian warplanes - buzzing over Georgia since Friday - have bombed Georgian oil sites and factories far from the conflict zone.
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Spare me reforms like this
Andrew Bolt
They weren’t “reforms” if they’ll end up lifting premiums, hurting taxpayers and swamping public hospitals with extra patients:
A SENIOR public servant has conceded for the first time that Kevin Rudd’s reforms to the Medicare surcharge will result in increased health fund premiums.
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Don’t tell parents the ugly truth
Andrew Bolt
Heaven forbid that parents should learn stuff about their children’s schools that might make them choose one better:
WA Council of State School Organisations president Robert Fry said data about school performance and demographics should be kept secret because it would invite unfair comparisons between schools.
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Those who braved the smears and lies
Andrew Bolt
From the blurb of Lawrence Solomon’s new book, The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud (And those who are too fearful to do so), comes this handy list:
Al Gore says any scientist who disagrees with him on Global Warming is a kook, or a crook.
Guess he never met these guys:
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Noble Savages kill stuff
Andrew Bolt
Two myths punctured in one - climate catastrophism and the Noble Savage, living in Edenic “balance”:
A STUDY looking into the extinction of Australia’s prehistoric animals has dispelled scientific beliefs that climate change drove their disappearance. The first findings of the study suggests overhunting by humans delivered the final blow to Tasmania’s giant prehistoric animals, known as ‘megafauna’.
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The security is not for the terrorists but the public
Andrew Bolt
The Beijing Games are a party held in a prison. Never have the Olympics been held among such security - security ensured to protect a regime from its own people.
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Best sex
Andrew Bolt
John Edwards doesn’t rate. Alice Fishburn nominates the top 10 political sex scandals.
No Australians, of course. And all the Americans named are Democrats.
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Was the audience faked, too?
Andrew Bolt
Faking the whole ceremony might soon be cheaper:
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Adams didn’t read Solzhenitsyn, after all
Andrew Bolt
Phillip Adams, young Communist and older apologist, claims Alexander Solzhenitzyn influenced him profoundly - but proves the opposite
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More of this and one PM may be out of work, too
Andrew Bolt
Are you better off now than you were when Peter Costello ran the economy?
THE Reserve Bank is predicting an economic slowdown so severe that 100,000 people will be thrown out of work in the next 12 months, pushing the unemployment rate to 5 per cent and possibly higher if the financial crisis worsens.
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