CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
November 09, 2010 10:12 PM UTC
59 Comments
Ugh. Why not a nice sane BoE member? Sorry Pols, but I can’t swallow any angle on this as an opportunity for Hick. Bob Schaffer is a wingnut loser and he should stick to margaritas.
And change the name of his tasty margaritas to something other than a joke about dog piss.
Or Marilyn Musgrave?
Or James Dobson?
If a paleoconservative hack and bigot like Bob Schaffer gets a seat at the table in the Hickenlooper administration, it’s going to be a long four years of pious faux-moderation.
This must be a really bad pick if this is what got you to come back after nearly a year of being completely dormant.
So sez the guy who went 6 months being nearly completely dormant. 🙂
Campaigns are a bitch. Many of us disappear when the shit hits the fan.
That being said, Hick picking Bob Schaffer for anything other than deportation back to Ohio is pretty damned offensive.
She’s still waiting on some absentee ballots before she concedes the ’08 election.
Just take a look at Schaffer’s profile on the BoE site. What is the purpose of including this:
Especially when you’ve previously noted this:
How is this relevant? Or even interesting?
This is the type of person Hickenlooper is reaching out to? Has he mentioned this to McNulty?
” if you want to eat I need 1000 more Benemerentis by midnight !”
SB191 let me know last year that teachers were going to be the enemy in any Colorado government, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans.
The teacher’s UNIONS are the enemy of education reform.
The teacher’s UNIONS are the enemy of education success.
Let us hope that Hick crushes them.
Based on what evidence?
I believe in Hulk. Really I do.
I was actually asking davebarnes for evidence.
IMO – the biggest enemy of education reform is simplistic slogan slinging. See the Daily Howler for plenty of documentation.
Haven’t missed you much, er, make that at all.
I’ll bet the fact that you don’t know how to use apostrophes is also the fault of the UNIONS.
Rule by Animal Farm Sloganeering is exactly what I had in mind when I voted for Democrats this year.
You are correct.
Teachers’ unions.
May they rot in Hell.
When Democrats passed that bill saying programmers could be fired at will.
Oh wait, we’ve always been employed at will…
Jesus Fuck you’re intentionally obtuse sometimes. Clearly it gives you some sick thrill to act like an idiot.
I assume your objection to SB-191 is it makes it will make it possible to fire some teachers. I was just pointing out that the rest of us have always had jobs where we could be fired – and for any reason.
Leonard Pitts was much more eloquent on the subject
I understand your dislike of SB-191. If I had ironclad job security I might very well fight to keep it too. But I, and quite a few others in the Democratic party, put educating children first.
At the whim of a publicly elected board, subject to all the politics that goes into electing such a board?
Note that I would not have it any other way. But with working in such a position (and with issues of academic freedom) I personally don’t begrudge teachers some amount of job security as long as they are not truly incompetent or criminal.
Also, do you get paid as much as a teacher with equivalent schooling does? I bet you get paid a lot more than 33% more.
It tires me that people trot out the same old tropes year after year. And what it means is that nobody is terribly serious about real education reform.
I do want teachers to have security from both political actions and incompetent administrators. What I and many others want is a system that can also force the poor teachers to improve or move on.
As to the pay level vs education, there are wide disparities in pay based on what someone gets an education in. People with a BS in Math are hired out of college for a lot more than people with a BS in English. But teachers are paid well and have some superb benefits including better retirement plans than almost anyone in the private sector and 3 months vacation/year.
I think the key part of all of this is to continue the research on what makes for effective teaching, bring those practices to all of our teachers, measure the teachers to provide feedback on where they’re getting it and where they need to improve, and go on from there.
I also think we should work to try and get parents more involved in their child’s education. Yes it’s hard for a poor family where both parents work 3 part time jobs to get that, but we should look for avenues where we can because the #1 influence of a child’s success is the mom consistently involved.
for teachers in Colorado. Even though it is a nice sound bite. It’s always fun to demonize others that have a different flavor of pie.
All that teachers in Colorado have is a guarantee of due process before they are fired.
Write a damn program already, DavidThi, that will put all teachers out of work. And don’t tell me it can’t be done. Just do it.
In BVSD over the last 20+ years, they have never fired a tenured teacher. Occasionally a district puts in tremendous effort and fires 1 or 2 – but it’s very very rare. So the contracts may say “due process” but the way it plays out is “ironclad.”
Seriously, complain about the state of ed, and of reactionary teachers’ unions… but really, calling “eloquent” an ode to “employment at will,” and a complaint that if employees aren’t at will there’s no impetus for doing good… well, geez, you’re starting to sound like Roger Paul, Ron’s other kid.
Like I really needed to know that there’s more where Rand came from. Thanks alot Raymond.
I would phrase it differently.
1. The possibility of truly being fired will make most people focus more on feedback about how they can improve. Most people want to do a good job, but some improvement is hard and the incentive helps.
2. I think most teachers want to do good, and work at it. And most of them do a good to superb job. All this talk around “firing” is about a very very small number of teachers.
I agree with you on most things, including school reform, but teachers are not spoiled brats. You have 191, so why keep bashing teachers? Any principal, and I mean any principal, can tell stories of having an irate parent come in and demand that a teacher be fired. That the teacher is highly rated, highly effective, and highly regarded by all but this parent makes no difference. Unfortunately, sometimes enough parents can make demands that alter that teacher’s career, even if those reasons are very poor. The quote from Pitts is not logical in its conclusions. A teacher has as boss every single taxpayer in the district. So really, should the teacher be fired at the whim of one boss? No, of course not. That quote is an oversimplification of a teachers position. If Pitts doesn’t know better, I think you do.
I was just trying to make a point about SXP’s decision to withhold all support from the Democratic party.
I agree with you about Pitts’ statement (see my replies above). I think this is something we have to structure very carefully. And the biggie will be providing teachers with guidance on how to teach better and give them constant feedback on where they need to improve.
Firing the few that can’t or won’t improve receives disproportionate attention from everyone compared to all of what we need to do.
But I often forget just how stupid you are about things that don’t personally affect you.
1. Working for the government is different from working for the private sector. People need protection from arbitrary firing for political reasons and they don’t get that unless they have the explicit protections you hate.
2. It doesn’t matter if you never had protection from arbitrary firing. It wasn’t there and then taken away with no compensation or amelioration.
I realized last year that local Democrats have a lot of contempt for teachers and that it therefore doesn’t much affect teachers whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge at the state level.
1. People get fired for political reasons in the private sector all the time. By politics I mean office politics, but the impact and result is the same. It sucks, it’s inefficient, but we all face it.
2. I think you have a fair point on this issue. I would like to see additional merit raises added in return for facing the possibility of firing.
I think you’re totally wrong on saying there is contempt for teachers. Almost (not all) everyone I know on this has a lot of respect for most teachers. I can still name off the superb teachers my kids have had, some going back 15 years.
What we don’t like is a system that leaves even the best teachers struggling and has not improved for decades.
Finally, this is an issue that does personally effect me. I had three girls go through public school. In another 10 years I’ll have grandkids going through. My company depends on a system that graduates highly educated kids. The K-12 system personally effects me big-time.
They have coworkers and direct supervisors and the big boss etc. But teachers can face trouble for giving homework that’s too challenging or takes too much time, or they can get complaints for discussing things that aren’t coming up on the next standardized test. In short they can face political trouble for doing their jobs too well. And that’s on top of general complaints from people like yourself who just want some number of them fired so we can feel like we’re doing something about education. These things will get worse, and maybe years later when they do you’ll say, “Oh look at those politicians, they passed a bill without thinking about the consequences.”
And there is plenty of contempt for teachers, some of it expressed openly, some more subtly (many people think it’s just fine to talk about the “greedy teachers’ union” as though that’s somehow made up of something other than teachers). Respecting teachers means your base assumption is that they work hard because they love the job, and that’s not how your conversations have ever started. Your base assumption is that they are lazy and need a bit o’ the whip.
You say you would have liked to see additional raises, but that wasn’t the option in the bill you supported. You supported giving the teachers nothing, and that’s what they’re going to get. Thanks Democrats!
Do you think Democrats lost the House because teachers were unmotivated to work for them? I wonder.
I assume most (not all) work hard. And I respect them. However I do believe that teachers, like every other profession, will do better if they are measured and held accountable.
DavidThi has applied for. What could go wrong?!
(I kid, David)
. . . Ah, fuck! . . . Who am I kidding?
Even Bluecat isn’t going to fall for this one.
I deserved that.
Mike Merrifield one of the classiest and brightest guys around lost his race for El Paso County Commissioner. I hope that the Governor elect realizes that no one knows more about education than Mike Merrifield and offers him a job.
Mr. “special circle of hell” didn’t lose his chairmanship of the Education Committee because he was classy.
Bob Schaffer is an epic classless moron. I keep wondering why these loonies keep coming back like zombies who can’t be killed, then I realize it’s because Democrats are more than happy to resuscitate them.
Bill Owens is not Bob Schaffer. Bob Schaffer has nothing constructive to offer Hickenlooper on education.
I think it’s sort of clever, myself.
n/t
It must be true.
Thank you. Hopefully Hick puts him on the team and promptly ignores him. Re: education, the gov has Matt G. on board to represent the sane viewpoint.
Wouldn’t it be better to have two sane view points, rather than one sane viewpoint and one that should not be involved at all? There are plenty of “R” education experts out there…
for co-opting Caldera?
of the committee on hair restoration (Joe Garcia also has a dog in that fight.)
Bob Schaffer’s not exactly a rising star in the Republican party. Until Hick decided to give him an opportunity to publicly moderate himself, he was going nowhere but off the school board. How was he going to be any sort of threat–or even thorn in the side–to Hickenlooper?
He continues to pump out conservative GOP foot soldiers through the Leadership Program of the Rockies. Dozens of state politicians, candidates and operatives are program alums.
I have no idea what Hick has in mind naming the self-appointed Public Enemy #1 of Public Education to his transition committee. Raphie’s “Vito Coreleone” hypothesis is as good as any, I suppose.
But I can tell you I’m growing quite weary of centrist politicians playing 11-dimensional chess with our lives. Ask Obama about trying to outsmart the extremist GOP wing, of which Schaffer was a charter member.
I’m growing quite weary of centrist politicians playing 11-dimensional chess with our lives.”
I think for Wade’s benefit and mine the disclaimer must remain.
… this is a worrisome early sign that Hick actually buys into his hype that he’s going to run an apolitical/nonpartisan/whatever-he-calls-it administration. Hopefully this suck-up to the right is limited to toothless transition teams, but I’m worried.
I like the co-opt idea, too. I’d rather have the enemy pissing out of the tent than into the tent.
That said, I don’t like emboldening the enemy and letting them sit at my table.
Now THAT’S a sig line!
so who gave a shit where he was pissing–until Hick brought him in.
that could afford bathrooms and plumbing.
While Hickenlooper, Owens and Schaffer are acting like responsible grown-ups in trying to bridge their major policy differences to deal with Colorado’s severe problems, that bloviating, hypocritical, dishonest oaf Tom Tancredo is on air with his fellow oaf Peter Boyles talking about how they’re all in cahoots to raise taxes…
It should be remembered that Schaffer was an honorable person who HONORED his own term-limits pledge to the voters even though he had come to realize that term limits was flawed. Tancredo, meanwhile, was a dishonest hypocrite.
By keeping his term limit pledge he went on to make tons of profit off the war he voted for, and when he wasn’t making enough money he used his connections to undermine the war effort to steer oil money to his employer.