Liam Julian at Fordham’s Flypaper blog considers Gov. Christie’s comment during his State of the State speech that “teaching can no longer be the only profession where you have no rewards for excellence and no consequences for failure to perform.” Says Julian,

I get it. Christie is a politician, and making broad, charged statements is what politicians do (when they aren’t making narrow, vapid ones). But obviously teaching isn’t the only profession in which workers are promoted and receive salary raises based on time served rather than excellence demonstrated, in which laggards are perennially tolerated. Are the bureaucrats at the New Jersey Department of Education judged by their performance?

The Rhee Coterie, of which Christie is a seminal part, is unsettling—education reform zealots on parade. One wishes this crew would be less abrasive, less Manichean. They are currently the best public-relations tool the teachers’ unions have.