Governor Dannel Malloy, it would appear from recent news
accounts, is frantically attempting to put himself right with unionized
teachers.
The Malloy-teacher romance hit a rough spot when a few months
ago Mr. Malloy said of teachers who were resisting his pedagogical reforms,
“All they have to do is show up.”
Mr. Malloy meant that teacher tenure tended to protect
failing teachers from any and all attempts to displace them. The Malloy
pedagogical reforms were designed to overleap tenure and displace poor teachers
by setting standards against which the effectiveness of teachers in the
classroom could be objectively measured. Teachers falling below the set standards
would be given the opportunity of taking remedial courses. After a certain
point, if the inadequate teachers failed to measure up, they would be
dismissed. Whole school systems were put on notice that similar standards would
be employed to measure the performance of principals and superintendents.
The usual objection to standardized testing of teachers is
that teaching itself is an art, not a science. As an art, its effects on the
consumer of the pedagogical product are subtle, too evanescent to be measured
with precision. The proposed tests and standards, so the objection goes, are insufficient
to gauge quality teaching or, for that matter, quality education.
Mr. Malloy was having none of this. His counter argument was
that the educational product can be measured; indeed, teachers measure student
performance daily by means of objective tests. The inevitable effects of inadequate
teaching -- thousands of uneducated students, many of them locked by
circumstances into poor performing urban schools – would no longer be tolerated
in a Malloy administration; such was the message Mr. Malloy managed to convey
in not a few “town hall” meetings. Here, at last, was an administration
prepared to put first things first.
Having settled the problem of poor education, at least
theoretically, the fleet-footed Mr. Malloy “moved on,” as politicians sometimes
say, to other pressing issues. Were small businesses in the state, overburdened
by excessive regulations and taxes that diminished their already slim profit
margins, in agony, largely as a result of new taxes imposed on them by Mr.
Malloy and the progressive Democrat dominated General Assembly? Very well, Mr.
Malloy would establish a program – “First Five,” later expanded to “First
Whatever” – that would allow Mr. Malloy to dispense tax money to businesses,
some of which were multi-billion dollar corporations in need of moving their
operations a few towns away. Subtle signals were being sent to Mr. Malloy that,
in the absence of tax handouts, even large businesses might move some
operations to other states more welcoming than Connecticut. To these signals,
Mr. Malloy responded with tax dollars.
In the crony capitalist state, such a naked attempt at polite
bribery is viewed by co-conspiring politicians as a cri de coeur. They are more than happy to oblige multi-million
dollar companies with crony capitalist “investments,” because such measures
will not permanently deprive the politicians of tax receipts, as would
reductions in business taxes. Permanent business tax reductions really would
create a “level playing field,” an expression favored and overused by former
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal whenever he sued a company that he supposed had gained an
unfair advantage by flouting an arcane regulation.
A good part of Mr. Malloy’s strenuous effort to save the
state from the logical consequences of his tax increase, the largest in state
history, falls into the category of political bling.
If the state of Connecticut – and remember, l'état, c'est Malloy plus the Democrat dominated General Assembly –
wanted to rid itself of poor educators and poor education, especially in urban
areas, it could establish a voucher system. Under a voucher regime, money spent
for education would be attached to education consumers in the form of vouchers
that students, in consultation with their parents or parent, might use to purchase
quality schooling anywhere in Connecticut. Over time, good schools would
flourish and expand as students invested their vouchers in them, and poor
schools and inadequate teachers would whither on the vine, a prospect that
would nudge poorer schools towards reform.
The polite bribery of public officials by outsized
corporations – gimme a tax break and I won’t bolt – could be avoided altogether
through reasonable and PERMANENT business tax reductions. And a state that
pruned its briar patch of sometimes pointless regulations would make itself an
attractive business hub for out of state corporations that might consider
moving to Connecticut once our malingering business slow-down ends. The
national recession ended four years ago, but not so much here in progressive
Connecticut. Additionally, such measures would “even the playing field.” Large
corporations awash in lobbyists and small Mom and Pop operations would receive exactly
the same business saving benefits.
These measures, though effective, are bound to be rejected
by tax hungry progressives. A governor poor in tax receipts has little to give
away. Bling is not unimportant for politicians who wish to be perceived as
important, if not self-important. The thoroughgoing progressive would rather
change the world than save it -- inconspicuously. Mr. Malloy feels the pressing
need to reinvent Connecticut, and he wants to be seen reinventing it. So he
slings the bling around. The UConn Health Center, for years a failing enterprise, was wonderfully changed by Mr. Malloy when he attached to it some bling he had
pulled out of his hat, the tax absorbing Jackson Laboratory.
A maintenance governor intent on returning the state to normalcy might have
invested his tax money in bridge repairs rather than a blingy fast speed bus
line from Hartford to New Britain, but there is little political profit in performing
expected and routine gubernatorial chores.
Bling’s the thing that keeps politicians, if not the state,
“moving forward.”
Comments
Public education is the poster child of failed liberalism. It has failed by its own terms as demonstrated by contemporary stats on dropouts, illiteracy, innumeracy, and so on, but its failure is progressive, so to speak; our kids are less educated today than in 1932 or 1964. It is also in no small measure responsible for the economic and racial segregation of our large towns. But, the white liberals who left Hartford and Bridgeport are happy with their government district schools, and any complaints by inner city folks are not expressed with their votes. So, fiddling with the rules the inmates have established for running the asylum becomes "reform," at least until election time when even that becomes untenable for our courageous Governor Mal Loy. And a voucher system, the maximum removal of the government from education of the Nutmeg young, gets no traction.
Pretty shrewd analysis.