I notice that Kenneth Feinberg has decided
to go easy on 17 banks that made "ill-advised" payments to their executivesFor all his tough talk about excessive pay for bankers, the Obama administration's pay czar let the executives go without a fight.
Kenneth Feinberg announced Friday that he would not try to recoup $1.6 billion in compensation given to top executives at bailed-out banks because he thought shaming them was punishment enough.
His decision to go easy on 17 banks that made ''ill-advised'' payments to their executives will probably fuel concerns about how he will oversee the $20 billion oil-spill compensation fund created by BP.
''I'm not suggesting we should blink or turn the other cheek,'' Feinberg said in an interview with the Associated Press. ''These 17 companies were singled out for obviously bad behavior. The question is: At what point are you piling on and going beyond what is warranted?'
When I read this my mind at once went back to January of this year when AFT union leader, Randi Weingarten, announced that she had enlisted Obama's pay czar to help her figure out how best to evaluate and fire teachers. It seemed like a very unusual thing to do, since even tenured teachers can be fired for cause. It seemed like overkill...something that made it seem like getting rid of teachers would be an insurmountable obstacle.
Weingarten hires Ken Feinberg to help overhaul the teacher evaluation system.Facing criticism that her union makes it too hard to get rid of bad teachers, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, on Tuesday announced a union-backed effort to develop a new model for how public school teachers should be evaluated, promoted and removed.
The effort will be run by Kenneth R. Feinberg, the federal government’s special master for executive compensation.
In a speech at the National Press Club, Ms. Weingarten sought to present a more flexible, cooperative face for her union as she announced Mr. Feinberg’s new role and called for sweeping changes in how school districts evaluate teachers and work with teachers’ unions.
The article presents the usual rhetoric about how hard it is to fire bad teachers. Do you realize how much we have been hearing about bad teachers the last year and a half?
Here is more on Feinberg and Randi from the Schools Matter Blog.
Weingarten to hire Fed pay czarEveryone who has followed Weingarten's ascendancy to her position as AFT President knew that she had been the pick of the Oligarchs. Her earlier sweet talk about gutting the teaching profession with pay per score plans had earned her the Business Roundtable's seal of approval, and now she is returning the favor by shifting her tepid endorsement of weakening ethical teaching into a full-blown advocacy for busting her own union. Randi Weingarten should be recalled by the AFT membership, and she should be put out to pasture with the other nags.
At a time when the greed merchants and uncharged felons of Wall Street burrow into the system once more to plan another financial catastrophe a few years hence, Obama's man in charge of deciding how many millions the CEO criminals should get has just been subcontracted out by Weingarten to create a plan to fire teachers for their "misconduct." The scourge of the nation--teacher misconduct!! Misconduct will surely include refusing to go along with educational genocide that is occurring in urban schools, where cognitive decapitation in segregated environments is the order of the day for the poor and the brown.
The blog quotes from Bob Herbert's article praising Weingarten's choice of Feinberg. I am stunned at this paragraph that is so untrue and so dismissive of teachers. I would have thought better of Herbert.
It is not uncommon for teachers to be observed in the classroom just a couple of times a year for only a few minutes each time and then get a satisfactory rating. Under those circumstances, hardly anything is learned about the quality or effectiveness of the teachers. Most teachers are routinely rated as satisfactory, and many are never evaluated at all.
He really fell for the whole bad teachers who are not evaluated propaganda that has been going around the last year or so.
Then Herbert points out that Feinberg is not going to "go into the tank for teachers' unions." Spare me the condescension, Mr. Herbert.
The union has asked Kenneth Feinberg, the federal government’s so-called pay czar, to develop a more efficient protocol for disciplining — and when necessary, removing — teachers accused of misconduct.
This would be a big deal. Mr. Feinberg is highly respected and widely viewed as independent. He administered the government fund that compensated those who were injured and the families of those who were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. He also administered a fund set up in the wake of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007.
He is not the kind of guy to go into the tank for the teachers’ union. (John Ashcroft chose him to lead the 9/11 fund.).
So afraid that she would be criticized for harboring "bad" teachers? So fearful of criticism of her union? Or more.
It seemed odd that the president of the AFT considered herself and her union incapable of dealing with "bad" teachers. She called in Kenneth Feinberg, the federal government’s so-called pay czar, to develop a more efficient protocol for disciplining — and when necessary, removing — teachers accused of misconduct.
Really? Suddenly there are so many bad teachers that the federal "Special Master for Compensation" must be brought in to help the American Federation of Teachers sort out the bad guys faster?
Another hat for Feinberg to wear? How in the world does his title as "Special Master for Compensation" fit into the context of evaluating teachers?
He is going to let all the wealthy bankers off easily. I wonder if he is still working on all those "tough" standards for Randi and her teachers?
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