Day: Saturday, November 29, 2008

Is Julia Gillard on the New York City cool aid?

Posted by Chief Blogger – 29 November, 2008

A Ministerial release from Julia Gillard:

The Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, will welcome the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, Mr Joel Klein, to Australia on Sunday 23 November.

Mr Klein has overseen reforms in New York City’s public schools that have turned around student achievement and engagement in learning and is coming to Australia to share his experiences.

Mr Klein is sure to bring energy and a new perspective to the current debate about how to improve schooling in Australia.

Can’t wait for those reforms, should be interesting based New York’s education track record. According to America’s Promise Alliance, an education body set up by Colin Powell, New York City has one of the worst high school graduation rates in the USA, at 45 per cent. From the New York Daily News:

The group, which is planning to hold summits on the nation’s dropout crisis in all 50 states and in all major cities over the next two years, took a sweeping look at graduation rates across the country, ranking New York 43rd among 50 large cities.

Recession, deficit and Rudd

Posted by Chief Blogger – 29 November, 2008

Couldn’t help notice that Rudd is sending a strong message that Australia will be going into deficit because of a recession in 2009, even though both the OECD and IMF have said that Australia will more than likely not go into a recession, as agreed by the RBA and Treasury. So where is the justification for putting the Federal budget into the red? It seems that Rudd is just using the global financial crisis to justify an old fashioned Labor massive spending spree on states and just about anyone else that pays no income tax. Instead, the spending spree will just crowd out private sector investment in critical areas such as infrastructure and therefore increase the risk of a recession. The risk will also be compounded by the Labor’s back to the future workplace laws and emissions trading scheme. If the budget deficit and the economy goes into recession it will be purely of Rudd’s making.