What a difference 2 weeks make

What a change from the bad old days (2 weeks ago) when all the talk at the DOE (and the Gates Foundation) was about closing thousands of schools. Monday, Michelle Obama went to the DOE to rally the troops:

Greeted by thunderous applause after an introduction from Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Obama declared that the country has "a stake in educating every single child" regardless of background or income. She pledged that the administration will push to upgrade more than 10,000 schools as part of a broad-ranging effort to boost educational opportunities for 5 million youngsters. (CBS News)

PPS

I sat on the board of Parents for Public Schools for a couple of years. It’s a great organization that has been through some hard times recently (haven’t we all) and has survived nicely. PPS recently announced the appointment of its new executive director, Anne Foster. Congrats to Anne and best wishes to the staff of PPS. Here’s an opinion piece, (“Abolishing Public Schools Not an Option,”) Anne wrote a while back in Dallas Morning News.

Huber-nomics

Chicago’s new school boss tries to explain why he handed out huge bonuses to CTA execs, even while the system was tanking and hundreds of workers were losing their jobs.

You need to take into account that those bosses had to pay more in taxes and also had to start paying 6 percent into pension and health accounts, Huberman says. (Sun-Times)

Golab-nomics

Sun-Times staff reporter Art Golab (“Teachers got bigger raises on average”) uses some of Huberman’s pretzel logic to justify massive salaries and retirement packages being pulled down by school superintendents—some exceeding $400K. Golab claims teachers’ raises exceeded those of supes because their percentage increase was a point or two higher. What would you rather have, 2.3% of $400,000 or 4% of $40,000?