Mr. Gibbons’ Report Card: Shadow Factions, destroying public schools and self-styled progressives cheering a bigot

The Shadow Faction

Dianne Douglas was elected as Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction largely on an anti-Common Core platform. Last week Douglas, a Republican, decided to start her war against Common Core by firing two State Board of Education employees. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (a fellow Republican who previously endorsed Douglas) stepped in to stop the firing, arguing that the State Superintendent didn’t have the power to terminate Board of Education employees.

Douglas retaliated in a bizarre press release, accusing the governor of supporting “two liberal staff” members of the board and creating “a shadow faction of charter school operators and former state superintendents who support Common Core and moving funds from traditional public schools to charter schools.”

Demonstrating the best way to deal with criticism, Lisa Graham Keegan (the alleged ringleader of the shadow faction) decided to respond with humor. According to the Arizona Republic, Keegan “sat up late ordering coffee mugs emblazoned with #shadowfaction.” For supporters, she’s ordered mugs with the words #shadowfactionfan.

The issue gets more bizarre with Douglas, but that is another story.

Grade: Satisfactory

Destroyers of Public Schools

Speaking of using humor to address criticism, Matthew Ladner (who was snubbed in Diane Douglas’ Shadow Faction press release despite being the senior advisor for policy and research at Gov. Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Education Excellence, co-chair of Gov. Ducey’s education transition team, and the mastermind behind the concept of Education Savings Accounts that is now sweeping the nation) pens a humorous letter to the Arizona Republic, the state’s largest newspaper, which has frequently editorialized against school choice programs.

Ladner points out the obvious: despite the newspapers annual prediction that public schools will be decimated by the school choice movement, public schools in Arizona continue to grow in enrollment. He concludes:

If anyone inside or outside the Arizona Legislature is plotting to destroy Arizona school districts, they must be incredibly frustrated — almost perhaps as much as those trying to have a realistic conversation about methods to improve public-school outcomes.

Zing!

To be sure, the frustration must be even larger here in Florida where we see public schools starting to grow again in student population, and improving in quality as well.

All those years spent at Evil Education Reform School, wasted.

Grade: Satisfactory

Sen. Jerry Tillman 

I wish this one were a joke, but it is not. According Lindsay Wagner of NC Policy Watch, a left-of-center organization opposing vouchers and school choice, Sen. Jerry Tillman (R-Randolph) opposes vouchers because… Muslims. Quoting Tillman from the Progressive Pulse blog:

And do you know who’s the biggest recipient of school vouchers? A Muslim school. The Muslim schools are leading the pack. I’m not in favor of that.

This is not the first time he’s played the Muslim card. Last time he said:

“People say it’s great that vouchers can go to some of these Christian schools,” he said. “But I ask them, do you want to see money go to a Catholic school? Do you want to see it go to a Muslim school, one that teaches Islam? The way the law is written now, it can.”

So if vouchers only went to Protestant schools he would be ok with it? 

Sadly, the North Carolina outfit mentions all of this in passing without any condemnation for the bigotry, nor any apparent interest in the fact that Tillman appears to be promoting the same kind of sectarian bias that religious freedom advocates typically condemn.

In fact, they only seemed to care that a Republican opposed vouchers. Politics sure makes strange bedfellows.

Grade: Needs Improvement