Tonight's guests are Aubrey Plaza on The Daily Show and Campbell Brown on the Colbert Report.
Aubrey Plaza is an actress and comedian. She is April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation, the voice of Eska in The Legend of Korra but tonight she will be talking about her role as Sarah in About Alex.
'About Alex' is the story of seven college friends who reunite over a three-day weekend, after one of them attempts suicide. When the friends get together to keep an eye on Alex, the weekend that ensues will renew old crushes and resentments, shine light on bad decisions, and ultimately push friendships and relationships to the brink as the group tries to speculate when the simple life of their college years turned so muddy and complex. Sometimes irreverent, sometimes poetic, and always moving, About Alex is a searingly honest look at the changing nature of adult friendship in the Facebook/Twitter generation.
I recognize a good chunk of the cast, I can't say I have ever seen Aubrey Plaza before but I recognize Jane Levy from the too-soon cancelled Suburgatory, Jason Ritter from The Event and Joan of Arcadia, Maggie Grace from Lost, and Max Greenfield from Veronica Mars and New Girl.
Campbell Brown is a television news reporter and anchorwoman and is a school reform advocate (i.e. she is against teachers unions and is for more charter schools.)
Campbell Brown doesn’t hide her disdain for teachers unions. She has frequently railed against them, and formed an anti-union advocacy group that filed a lawsuit in New York this week seeking to eliminate job protections for teachers in the state.
That’s why it is somewhat amusing that her group, the Partnership for Educational Justice, describes itself on its Web site with the very same language of the slogan branding the current educational campaign of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union.
Campbell Brown’s anti-union group uses union slogan
Choking back tears, Campbell Brown announced Monday that her education reform group had formally filed a legal complaint in Albany seeking to invalidate New York's teacher tenure laws.
"This is not going to be easy and they are so incredibly brave to be taking this on," she said at a press conference on the steps of City Hall, with parents and children gathered around her.
Brown demurred on her role in bringing the lawsuit, saying she was "just proud to be holding the coats" of the plaintiffs on the lawsuit, which she organized.
Brown, the former CNN anchor, told reporters that her group, the Partnership for Educational Justice (P.E.J.), may file more lawsuits against teacher tenure in other states. She has also recently indicated that she views legal action against teacher tenure as a potential opening to challenge an array of other union-backed teacher protections.
Campbell Brown tearfully files tenure suit
Tenure haters’ big delusion: Why Campbell Brown and co. are wrong about teaching
The notion that all troubled kids need is an amazing teacher — and its corollary: that students fail because they have bad teachers — has become the animating force behind the school-reform movement. It’s also the idea behind a forthcoming lawsuit brought by former television anchor Campbell Brown on behalf of six New York City students and their parents. With newly launched advocacy group Partnership for Educational Justice and a coordinated media campaign behind her, Brown is taking aim at teacher tenure in New York.
In a New York Daily News Op-Ed announcing the suit, Brown argues that New York’s teacher tenure laws violate students’ “right to a sound education” by making bad teachers difficult to fire. Brown notes that it takes an average of 520 days to get a tenured teacher fired in New York — 830 if they are charged with incompetence — and that teachers are eligible for tenure after “just three years.” In addition, Brown says, the state’s “first in, last out” policy when it comes to layoffs prioritizes seniority over performance.
But academics who study education say Campbell’s effort stems from a quixotic view of how education works. Audrey Beardsley, an associate professor at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, started her career as a teacher. “I fell into such a utopian ideology, believing that schools and teachers can change and inspire everything,” Beardsley says. “But current research suggests, unfortunately, that teachers only truly impact about 10-20 percent of student achievement.” Other factors with a larger impact include parental income and education, which account for about 60 percent of the variation in student outcomes.
Colbert often hits back pretty hard, hopefully he will again tonight. It looks like there will be new episodes next week, but the guest list is not out yet.