Adrian Fenty Supports Scott Walker's Union-Busting

Ah, yes, it's finally good to see one of the union-busting ed deform rats (i.e., Klein, Bloomberg, Rhee, Fenty, Obama, Duncan, Gates, Broad, DFER's, et al.) come out and say how they REALLY feel about Scott Walker's attempt to bust the unions in Wisconsin:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker this morning got some rare Democratic support for his high-profile push to eliminate most state workers' collective barganing rights -- from former D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.

Fenty made his comments as a guest on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," making an in-studio appearance in New York with takeover mogul and ex-"car czar" Steven Rattner and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.

When discussion turned to Walker's anti-union push, Fenty jumped right in.

"This is kind of what I faced in four years as mayor," Fenty told hosts Mike Barnicle and Mika Brzezinski. "He's right on the substance, I think. I tend to agree with him on the need for collective bargaining reform. But he's also right on the politics. I just don't understand why the legislature has been given this pass to go to another state and not do what they were sworn to do, and that's to take a vote. Unfortunately for Gov. Walker, he hasn't been able to get that out. He needs to point the finger a little bit more at them and say. 'Listen, they should take a vote. All I want is for them to vote up or down, and I will be fine with whatever they decide.'"

Brzezinski asked Fenty if he agreed with what Walker is doing.

"The substance of it, I do," Fenty said. "Most governors and mayors would love to be able to manage their team without the interference of collective bargaining. ... I believe that managers have the ability to set fair wages, and to set fair hours, and to reward people or hold them accountable. I think it's a new day. I think a lot of these collective bargaining agreements are completely outdated."

Fenty was often at odds with city employee unions during his four years as mayor -- not least of which the city's teachers union. Organized labor fought hard to defeat Fenty and elect Vincent C. Gray instead. Today was not the first time Fenty's been critical of unions -- he said in October that teachers unions "are going to have to explain why when every tough decision is made to reform the school system they are at the lead in opposing it" -- but it was by far his most sweeping public indictment of organized labor.

For the record, Fenty's "tough decision" reforms in D.C. weren't the slam dunk Fenty likes to say they were:

Rising standardized test scores, often cited by D.C. officials as evidence of an improving school system, are of limited value in determining whether students are actually learning more, according to the first major independent study of D.C. school reform.

That conclusion, part of a report issued Friday by the National Research Council, is likely to drive new debate about the testing-centered culture of D.C. schools and other systems across the country. While the testing data contain encouraging signs, the widely quoted averages of citywide performance say little about the quality of teaching and learning.

"Looking at test scores should be only a first step - not an endpoint - in considering questions about student achievement, or even more broadly, about student learning," the study said.

The council is the research arm of the National Academies, and its report is the first in a series of evaluations required by the 2007 law that placed the city's long-troubled public schools under mayoral control. Researchers said that while the city has made "a good faith effort" to implement the Public Education Reform Amendment Act, it is premature to draw sweeping conclusions about its effect on student achievement.

The District became a national staging area for urban school reform under then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), who appointed Michelle A. Rhee as the city schools' first chancellor hours after taking control of the system. She resigned in October, after more than three years on the job, and was succeeded on an interim basis by her deputy, Kaya Henderson.

Fenty and Henderson could not be reached for comment. Rhee declined to comment.

Reading and math scores on the District's two main tests, the annual D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (D.C. CAS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), have shown what the report describes as "modest improvement" under Rhee and her predecessor, former superintendent Clifford Janey, although elementary-grade scores fell in 2010.

But researchers said the city must develop a more sophisticated capacity to track individual students who shift from traditional public schools to public charter schools, or in some cases drop out of the system entirely. The city also needs a firmer grasp on rapidly changing neighborhood demographics and their impact on academics. "In the meantime, naive aggregate comparison of test scores among race-ethnic groups in the District should be interpreted critically and cautiously," the study said.

The study received an enthusiastic greeting from critics, who say heavy emphasis on testing has narrowed curricula and warped classroom creativity.

"This report is a shot over the bow of politicians seeking to reform education in this incredibly narrow way," said Mary Lord, a member of the D.C. State Board of Education and mother of a junior at Wilson High School.

But of course the Morning Joe crew never pointed this stuff out to Fenty.

They also never point out to Joel Klein when he's on the program that the achievement gap between white and Asian students and black and Hispanic students in NYC schools was larger when Klein left as chancellor than it was before Klein took over.

Although now that Klein works at Rupert Murdoch's FOX News, I suspect the Morning Joe crew won't have to worry about carrying Klein's water anymore since Rupert won't let him on rival MSNBC.

Maybe that's why Fenty was on to shill for education reform instead.