Checker talks about his new book, Troublemaker, in a very chic-looking, new media-ish video interview.

Greg Toppo’s story in USA Today about the rift between two segments of left-leaning education types is noteworthy. Education has for some lengthy period been relegated to the outskirts of political conversation, and it’s refreshing to see it command a little spotlight, however briefly. The story, summed up, is this: Al Sharpton (”a political gadfly,” writes Toppo) and Joel Klein have teamed up to do right by poor and minority children, and part of their agenda might run afoul of teachers’ unions, which have traditionally been partners of civil rights organizations and personalities such as Sharpton. What does Randi Weingarten think about it?

“Too often what happens is that when people get into this, they blame all the people who have been toiling in this field without the resources and without the public focus on it,” she said. “It’s like saying that those of us who have been frontierspeople in this fight for equity for the last 50 years are the ones who should be faulted, as opposed to saying, ‘We’ll join you ready for duty—what can we do to help?’”  

The above is called peevish whining. Weingarten is scandalized, it seems, that some are not ready to “join” her and would rather put forth ideas of their own. But what are Weingarten’s ideas other than sound bites and continuation of the failed status quo? And what does Richard Kahlenberg think about it all?

Education historian Richard Kahlenberg said that while unions’ and civil rights groups’ interests “are usually aligned,” this isn’t the first time they’ve clashed. “It’s been an uneasy alliance over the years.”

Kahlenberg, the author of a recent biography on legendary American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker, said a deep rift between the groups “would be disastrous—these are two groups that are essential to the fight for equal opportunity in society, and more narrowly ... both groups have an interest in making sure schools are properly funded. So to declare war on the teacher unions, I think, would be a huge mistake.”

Kahlenberg’s claim that the interests of teachers’ unions and civil right’s groups “are usually aligned” deserves scrutiny. That was true in the 1960s, but what about today? Sure, both entities are left-leaning and want to see Democratic politicians in power, but what about their core interests and missions? Civil rights groups, as they’re generally and basically understood, are organizations that seek to obtain equal opportunities for black people; many of their leaders believe that the education of today’s young blacks is, in fact, the seminal modern civil rights struggle. Those who claim that teachers’ unions support this goal, that they work on behalf of equal opportunities for black students, are, I think, misguided—at best, a mountain of evidence lies between their claim and the truth.

The education alliance between our friends on the left is uneasy: one faction believes educational progress can come only from the type of innovation that the teachers’ unions stymie, and another faction supports the unions and ascribes k-12’s failures to broken homes, broken hospitals, broken neighborhoods, and broken societies. If the quotes Toppo garnered from Weingarten and Kahlenberg are representative of the level of thought that the latter group is proffering, if this is indicative of the quality of the latter group’s goals, then in this disagreement—I can’t believe I’m writing this—Al Sharpton’s is truly the side of ideas.

The latest issue of Commentary contains a review of Checker’s newest book, Troublemaker. It’s available here for subscribers.

Amid all the news of doom and gloom, here’s one reason for optimism: America’s best spellers appear to be getting better and better. According to the Washington Post, these are some of the words which clinched the National Spelling Bee over the years:

1925: gladiolus
1932: knack
1938: sanitarium
1940: therapy
1956: condominium
1960: eudaemonic
1973: vouchsafe
1980: elucubrate
1991: antipyretic
2001: succedaneum
2004: autochthonous
2006: Ursprache
2007: serrefine
2008: guerdon

“Knack,” really? Maybe the “Greatest Generation” (whose members would have been right around 12 years old in 1932) weren’t our greatest spellers ever. Or maybe, what with the Great Depression and all, they had other concerns on their mind. Regardless, it’s pretty cool that American students (or at least .000001 percent of them) have gotten better at something.

The Heritage Foundation’s Ed Feulner is a heckuva smart guy and he’s usually right (as well as Right). His take on A Nation at Risk, and the country’s response to it, however, is only half right.

Yes, we’re spending pots more money on public education today—close to twice as much per kid in constant dollars—than in 1983 when ANAR was issued. But that kind of spending increase was happening for decades and decades before ANAR, too. Indeed, public education spending has risen for as long as we’ve had public education. (See page 200 of my book.) No, spending more doesn’t solve any problems or boost achievement, but neither was it America’s main response to ANAR.

Rather, the main responses were in fact to do a lot more of the two things that Ed praises: lots more school choice (though not enough, and not good enough choices) and lots more accountability (though not enough and it’s not working as well as it should). He decries NCLB as overzealous federal intervention, and I don’t disagree, but it’s not as if repealing it (which only residents of cloud cuckoo land imagine happening) would lead to tons more school choice or accountability. Ed and his Heritage colleagues have a slight tendency to see Uncle Sam as the root of all evil. There’s plenty to criticize in American public education—but the federal government is among the lesser culprits.

Checker writes about the twenty-fifth anniversary of A Nation at Risk in the Wall Street Journal and the Gadfly. He also talked about it last week on “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick,” a radio show associated with the National Association of Manufacturers:

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Checker wishes A Nation at Risk a happy twenty-fifth.

This Saturday A Nation at Risk turns twenty-five.

As with most birthdays after one’s twenty-first, the occasion is bittersweet. As Fordham president Checker Finn reflects in today’s Education Gadfly, the lessons of A Nation at Risk, despite the report’s landmark status for sounding “an overdue and much-needed alarum,” still struggle to be heard over the din of misguided deniers. That’s a shame, he says, for the “biggest single reason, I believe, that America’s education reform efforts of the past quarter century have yielded such meager returns is that we haven’t given them our all.”

Indeed, the country’s general failure to absorb A Nation at Risk has been the source of many a frustration for Checker:

You can find a different take on George Will’s column over at The Quick and the Ed. The author, Kevin Carey, is a very detail-oriented guy, but one wonders if today he hasn’t missed the forest for the trees.

It’s no secret that George Will’s writing is less than confident (realistic, perhaps?) about the future of public education, but is Carey’s assertion that Will “believes that public education is irredeemable, that efforts to improve it are basically useless” correct? One can’t know what George Will thinks, but one can know what he writes, and his article today is simply a clear evaluation of the “reforms” that have predominated in the k-12 sphere. Like it or not, they’ve largely failed. Whether or not Will thinks the whole operation is “useless” and “irredeemable” is never stated, and it isn’t all that important, anyway.

Carey nitpicks about some of the least important parts of Will’s piece, and he doesn’t like Will’s harsh tone. Yet, Moynihan (who is mentioned in the column) did not soften his tone when deriding the more-foolish strategies that run amok in America’s schools, and neither does Checker. But beyond all that, can Carey truly argue with Will’s larger point: that dumb ideas have taken public education in the wrong direction?

George Will has a nice column today on A Nation At Risk. He mentions Checker’s book, too.

Update: Mike says the column doesn’t just mention Checker’s book; it “summarizes it!” Let’s compromise on “highlights.”

Talk about bizarre piggybacking and ahistoricism.

Ronald Reagan didn’t make many missteps, but one blunder that’s widely acknowledged by just about everyone who follows education was the White House’s bungled initial reception of A Nation at Risk in 1983. The “vision” that the President laid out on that occasion had just about nothing to do with what the Excellence Commission said or recommended. It was ships passing in the night.

After dawn broke, Reagan and his team (including Ed Meese) realized that the Commission’s report had struck a nerve—even though it had absolutely nothing to do with school choice or with reducing the federal role in education. Whereupon the President began gallivanting around the land with Education Secretary Ted Bell—18 joint events in 11 weeks, it says on page 99 of my book.

But as he traveled he sang from the Commission’s hymnal (higher standards, tougher courses, better teachers, etc.), not the one that our good friends at Heritage (and Senator DeMint) are trying posthumously to place in his hands.