Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

“The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood” -- Otto von Bismarck Governor Dannel Malloy’s original education reform bill limited “the influence of unions and collective bargaining in a network of low-performing schools, to allow for more flexibility in turning them around,” according to one news report . The version of the amended bill extruded by the General Assembly’s education committee leaves intact union decision making power in those schools targeted for improvement. Executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents Joseph Cirasuolo characterized the legislative revision of the Malloy bill as removing from Mr. Malloy’s education commissioner the authority needed “if we are going to make a difference in these schools." The revised bill, Mr. Cirasuolo said, mandates such extensive negotiation with teacher unions in schools needing reform that the bill “could, block ...

“After Governor Dannel Malloy is put through the political grinder by status quo opposition forces that tend to resist his educational reform, he just might begin to feel, perhaps for the first time in his political life, what some Republican governors before him may have felt when faced with an intractable opposition” – Connecticut Commentary , March 8 It was a bit like watching a baby seal being clubbed to death by hunters. When the leaders of the Education Committee had finished stripping from Governor Dannel Malloy’s education proposals the principle elements of reform, the remaining limp carcass looked very much like a clubbed and skinned Harp Seal. All the important legislative decisions that shaped the final product concerning the governor’s reforms were made, according to one news report , behind closed doors in a “marathon meeting [that] included the Education Committee co-chairs — Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, and Sen. Andrea Stillman, D-Waterf...