Give AIG the Broad Prize

Tell me with the rapture and the
reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright
light, feeling pretty psyched.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

--REM

What happened to the Ownership Society?

Isn’t it amazing how fast the free-market Ownership Society rhetoric turns to corporate “socialism” once the economy heads south? Suddenly banking and insurance failures bred of greediness and corruption, become “all of our problem.” I wonder if they'll blame this one on the public education system?

Today it looks like the end of the world for AIG, the world’s largest insurance company and for thousands of teachers’ pension and retirement funds. But why are current and former AIG execs like Martin Sullivan laughing all the way to the bank?

Sullivan was the guy who cut the deal with Bush/McCain regulators (yes, McCain chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, opposing every form of government regulation) that got AIG through the difficult process of reaching a settlement with regulators, paying $1.64 billion to settle charges of fraud, bid rigging and improper accounting, one of the largest regulatory settlements in U.S. history.

He knows that Bush/McCain (and you and me) will come up with another $75 billion bailout while he walks away with his $68-million severance package, singing:

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

******

Broad's merit pay

That works out to about $300,000 a week (but who’s counting?) for every week during Sullivan’s miserable career at AIG. Something for teachers to think about as they have merit pay pushed down their throats.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another AIG director, Eli Broad, who’s been pushing his business model on public education. Maybe AIG could win the Broad Prize for management.

******

Sid's laughing too...

My friend Sid, ‘60s leftist turned Republican, TMs me this morning, words dancing off my Iphone with glee: Hey Mike. Where’s Obama?

His words sting. McCain was all over the morning shows today talking about the financial crisis being caused by the “greed of Wall Street,” as if he isn’t Mr. Wall Street and wasn’t part of the Keating 5 scandal. Where was Obama? Out in Hollywood raising more dough. In his place, making a rare TV appearance, the sleep-inducing Joe Biden.

Not a word about the War of course (is there still a war?) which has bankrupted the country, leaving poor folks in flood-ravaged communities on the Gulf Coast or on the short end of the banking and housing collapse to fend for themselves.

It’s the Ownership Society folks. Or as Obama put it:

"In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own.”

Special thanks...

...to Charles, Anne & Bill, and all those who organized and packed the house for last night's Chicago book release party for Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society. Great discussion and debate plus good food, made up for the bad weather.

******

Vallas’ legacy in Philly

Philadelphia, which struggled through years of “market-driven” reform and privatization under former schools CEO Paul Vallas, is now reaping the results and they aren’t pretty.

Philadelphia School District officials have known they had an achievement gap on their hands for years. Today, they saw the raw data, and were collectively horrified.

KGIA pushed to the brink

Alex Kane, writing in The Indypendent, tells how N.Y.’s city leaders have pushed the Khalil Gibran International Academy to the brink.

Named after Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran, the school was quickly attacked after plans were publicly announced Feb. 12, 2007. Soon after, blogs and other media outlets, led by neoconservative author Daniel Pipes, started to attack the Brooklyn-based program. Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, a think-tank that fights “radical Islam, whether terroristic or lawful,” also joined the advisory board of the “Stop the Madrassa Coalition,” which attempted to paint the school as a breeding ground for radical Islam.

Quotables

Invade Mars?

Best quote of the day comes from conservative Peggy Noonan, who launched off-camera profanities and said, "it's over," when she first heard that Palin was slated. This latest is from her WSJ column:

The media could get videotape of Mrs. Palin saying, "We should invade Mars and it will be easy because Mars is hidden inside my hair!" and people would say, "Stop sliming Sarah!"

Lipstick fascism

Frank Schaeffer is a former Republican and a New York Times best selling author. He writes on Huff (“Sarah Palin: America’s Lipstick Fascist”):

Sarah Palin summed up the Republican Party's turn to Fascism perfectly when she mocked Senator Obama as someone who would want to read enemies we capture "their rights".

McCain on his "divorce"

"It's easy for me to go to Washington and frankly, be somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have."

Finally!

AFT's reform initiative

Tired of conceding the mantle of school reform to top-down “market-based education reformers” the AFT is launching a teacher-led reform initiative of its own. The union's new Innovation Fund will likely support projects like:

…community schools, which take a holistic approach to students’ academic, personal and social development; union-partnered charter schools, such as the UFT’s charter schools in New York and other charter schools across the country where teachers have chosen to join the AFT; differentiated pay, such as the plans in Douglas County, Colo., New York City and elsewhere, where union involvement established fair measures and incentivized cooperation; and school-based teacher contracts, in which teachers have flexibility to meet their students’ needs, and professionalism is enhanced through fair pay, respectful treatment and workplace voice.

One of the initiatives propelling the union’s reform plan is the newly-opened Green Dot Charter School in N.Y., by, in Edwize's words, a “labor-friendly charter school operator and educational reform organization.”

On the other hand...

Andy Rotherham, is at odds with Berkeley prof, Bruce Fuller who, on his NYT blog, correctly tied McCain’s pro-voucher ed policies to those of George Bush.

Republicrat Rotherham, who turned his Eduwonk blog over to the Republican campaign a few weeks ago, now envisions a bright future for education in a McCain victory.

For all the bellyaching you hear today, an Education Department focused on using federal authority in education may look pretty good in hindsight a few years into a McCain Administration…

Rudy Crew toast OF IN Miami

He keynoted our Small Schools Conference two years ago and was leading a move to restructure all of Miami-Dade’s high schools. But Supt. Crew was constantly under fire from ultra-racist factions in Little Havana and repeatedly called the N-word by one state senator.

From Edweek:

“I didn’t pay homage to what they call ‘the community,’ meaning the Cuban community,” he said. “I was too busy trying to pay attention to the children of the larger community. ...In my book, it’s the Haitian community, the African-American community, the Jamaican community, and it is in fact the Hispanic community, but not just Cubans; there are Nicaraguans, Puerto Ricans, and lots of other people here. “There is a racial tension that exists here in Miami that they defined me as being against the Cuban community.”

Does this mean Miami-Dade doesn't get the Broad Prize?

Democracy Now!

We made it over to UIC yesterday afternoon, early enough to grab some seats, to hear Democracy Now's Amy Goodman deliver a powerful and inspiring talk against the 9/11 backdrop, about the role of the media in a democratic society. Amy, a heroic model for budding journalists, was one of 40 media people arrested in St. Paul while covering the Republican Convention. Many were the targets of preemptive raids on local houses. Some 800 anti-war protesters were also arrested without so much as a blip on mainstream media coverage.

******

Keeping my fingers crossed

My embedded friend Sid, ‘60s radical-turned-Republican inner-circle honcho, (I call him “the prince of all sell-outs”) emails to tell me how much he hates Steve Schmidt (McCain’s Operations Chief).

Sid says that Schmidt (not McCain) is the guy who engineered Tuesday’s release of a vile, campaign ad , filled with lies, depicting Barack Obama as an advocate for “sex education for kindergarteners.” He says Schmidt has used this “sex trick” in past campaigns and it has always worked.

“The reason it works,” says Sid, “is that your opponent is always afraid to respond. Schmidt knows what Karl Rove taught him. If you keep throwing shit out there, a lot of it will stick. Plus you’re always controlling the agenda.”

I tell Sid, “Schmidt or no-Schmidt, the ad had to have McCain’s stamp of approval before it went out. And McCain claims to be the reformer in that filthy sewer you call a party.” I point out that McCain and Palin want to ban ALL sex education except abstinence-only. In this case, they didn’t even want kids to learn about the dangers of child predators and proper and improper touching. It’s all a cynical attempt to consolidate the party’s ultra-conservative base and among evangelicals.

I also warn him that Obama, unlike previous swift-boated Democrats, will not just sit there and take it. He will come out swinging.

It’s hard to type with your fingers crossed.

Pay-for-grades in Chicago's school "Renaissance"

"Up to 5,000 freshmen at 20 Chicago public high schools will get cash for good--and even average--grades as part of a new, Harvard-designed test program that city education leaders are rolling out Thursday," the Tribune reports.

I always thought report cards were there to inform the student and parents how the student is progressing in different subject areas. For me, letter grades have never been an authentic way to assess students and their work. But now it's even worse. If a Chicago teacher gives a lower report card grade to a student, it amounts to taking money out of the kid’s pocket. Not much of a relationship builder, is it?

Remember the Gates Foundation's 3 R's jingle of two years ago--Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships? Now we see what it means as Chicago's Gates-funded Renaissance 2010 initiative gives up on real school change, opting instead for this cynical pay-for-grades scheme.

Ownership Society values being pushed in Chicago by the Daley/Duncan crew, replace social relationships with those of the factory. Chicago teachers are being put in the position of boss. Students are their workers. Grades and test scores are the commodity being produced by these child laborers on the basis of piecework. Not the kind of relationships we called for when we began the small schools movement some 20 years ago.

Even more lipstick…

Torie Clarke wrote the book, Lipstick on a Pig.

She was "Maverick" McCain’s press secretary who helped spin the narrative of McCain’s involvement in the Keating 5 savings & loan scandal, in such a way as to keep him from being indicted or going to prison. Instead, he was only criticized by the Senate Ethics Committee for using "poor judgement" and given a slap on the wrist.

BTW, Clarke was also the genius who first came up with the idea of embedding journalists with the troops in Iraq. Her account begins this way:

For weeks, [Charles] Keating had harangued his contacts in the Senate, of which McCain was one, to get federal regulators who were looking into Keating's company, Lincoln Savings & Loan, off his back. Keating was a political supporter and a personal friend of the family as well. The request put McCain in a tough spot: Keating was also Arizona's largest employer; it was reasonable for a senator to look into the matter on behalf of his constituents...

More lipstick...

I’m always surprised to find out who reads SmallTalk.

Yesterday, I received a sharp, but friendly response to my Lipstick On A Pig post from none other than Ben Boychuck, the National Review writer who actually tried to PLOAP around then-Mayor Palin’s attempt to ban library books in Wasilla and to fire a librarian who "didn't fully support her agenda."

Ben says I missed the key point of his defense of Palin, that point being, “Palin banned nothing” and “she didn't seem particularly passionate about banning anything.”

Some defense! I responded:

I get it that Palin didn't actually succeed in forcing the librarian to ban books after threatening her on behalf of unnamed "constituents." But I hope you got my point as well. In my world, an unsuccessful attempt at book banning is just the sign of an incompetent fascist. It says little about her passion for the job and more about her skill sets.

You can read the whole exchange between me and Ben here.

Habeas corpus—a radical idea in times like these

Obama spoke in Michigan Tuesday, a state devastated by 8 years of Republican Ownership Society policies. The very thought of Michigan voters willing to vote for McCain and continue the Bush economic disaster is mind boggling.

In his speech, Obama went into teaching mode and held a class on the Constitution:

‘‘Habeas corpus ... is the foundation of Anglo-American law, which says very simply, if the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, ‘Why was I grabbed?’ and say, ‘Maybe, you’ve got the wrong person.’ ‘‘The reason we have that safeguard is we don’t always have the right person. We don’t always catch the right person.‘‘We may think this is Muhammad the terrorist. It might be Muhammad the cab driver. You may think it’s Barack the bomb-thrower. But it might be Barack, the guy running for president.’’

He’s only teaching what every 8th-grader should have gotten in Civics class. Yet, how revolutionary it sounds in times like these after 8 years of the Bush/Cheney assault on the Bill of Rights.

Putting lipstick on a pig

John McCain has his undies all in a twist over this expression, which he used himself to describe the Clinton health proposal. Why all the fuss? I can only guess. Putting Lipstick on a Pig is the title of a book written by McCain's former press secretary Torie Clarke. It should be required reading for all PR students. In the book's introduction, Clarke reveals how she helped clean up McCain's own mess in the Keating 5 savings & loan scandal.

*******

Here’s another great example of PLOAP

The other day I ran a post about then-Mayor Palin’s attempt to ban books in Wasilla, Alaska’s library. I pointed out that after librarian Mary Ellen (Baker) Emmons responded negatively to Palin’s book-banning efforts, Palin pushed to fire her. I can’t take credit for the stories about Palin’s fascist tendencies. They’ve been all over the local papers in Alaska, the Daily Kos and Time Magazine.

Well, here’s where the lipstick comes in. Wing-nuts at National Review have been scrambling since the story broke, trying to give Palin a political makeover. Ben Boychuk who writes the RedBlue America column for NR Online launches a counter-attack against those of us “far-left bloggers and interest groups, abetted by Palin’s political rivals in Alaska and the press” (wow, this sounds like a potentially great coalition) who, he claims, have conspired to manufacture the book-banning story.

“What could possibly inspire such vitriol?” asks Boychuk, feigning naivete. He claims that librarian Emmons made the whole story up.

But then, the wing-nut shoots holes in his own cover-up. He writes:

A twelve-year-old controversy, in which Palin, the newly elected mayor of Wasilla, asked city librarian Mary Ellen Emmons at least three times how she would feel if asked to remove objectionable books from library shelves. Naturally, Emmons said she would refuse. A few months later, Palin asked for Emmons’ resignation. The new mayor said she felt Emmons, who had been appointed by Palin’s predecessor and political rival, didn’t fully support her agenda and should step aside.

So Palin only wants librarians who “support her agenda.” Is that right, Boychuk? Hmmm, what agenda might that be, over there in the library, I wonder?

“But Palin made no mention of book banning in her demand for the librarian’s resignation,” he says. Well duh! Did she really have to?

Boychuk concludes:

“The worst one could infer is that Palin raised the censorship issue in an ill-advised effort to appease some constituents, met resistance and let the matter drop to pursue more mundane city business.”

Aha! The wing-nut confesses. He admits Palin “raised the censorship issue” on behalf of her “constituents” (who could they be?) and then “let the matter drop.”

But that doesn’t sound like the Sarah Palin we’ve all come to know and love. She’s a pit bull. Remember, Ben? She doesn’t just let matters drop.

"THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A HOCKEY MOM

AND A PIT BULL IS LIPSTICK.”

So, Boychuck must admit, he was only trying to put lipstick on a pig. And hell, if you can gloss up a vicious, child-biting pit bull, why not a pig?

"Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend most of the year preparing him to fill in a few bubbles on a standardized test"

Obama in Ohio

In Ohio, Obama’s speech on education was a little fuzzy. In his appeal to the middle, he’s obviously trying to blur differences with Republicans. But he’s clearly anti-voucher and sharply critical of NCLB, testing madness and the past 8 years neo-con leadership. He's head and shoulders above McCain/Palin.

But I'll tell you what's wrong with No Child Left Behind: forcing our teachers, our principals and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong. (Cheers, applause.) Promising high-quality teachers in every classroom and then leaving the support and the pay for those teachers behind is wrong. (Applause.) Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next is wrong. (Applause.)

And don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend most of the year preparing him to fill in a few bubbles on a standardized test. (Cheers, applause.) I don't want teachers to the -- teaching to the test. I don't want them uninspired and I don't want our students uninspired. (Applause.) So what I've said is we will measure and hold accountable performance, but let's help our teachers and our principals develop a curriculum and assessments that teach our kids to become not just good test-takers. We need assessments that can improve achievement by including the kinds of research and scientific investigation and problem-solving that our children will need to compete in a 21st century knowledge economy. And we have to make sure that subjects like art and music are not being crowded out of the curriculum. And that's what we will do when I'm president of the United States. (Cheers, applause.)

At the same time, he supports new small and charter schools and promotes innovation, not as something done TO TEACHERS, but BY THEM. He seems to be making an attempt to dislodge the conservatives who’ve grabbed the mantle of education “revolutionaries” and push progressives away from just circling the wagons and defending the status quo.

We need a new vision for a 21st century education -- one where we aren't just supporting existing schools, but spurring innovation; where we're not just investing more money, but demanding more reform; where parents take responsibility for their children's success -- (applause) -- where our schools and our government are accountable for results; where we're recruiting, retaining and rewarding an army of new teachers; and where students are excited to learn because they're attending schools of the future; where we expect all our children not only to graduate from high school, but to graduate college and get a good-paying job.

All in all, a good speech.

Hey Sid, what happened to "Free Sarah!"

When Sid told me, he wanted to “Free Sarah” and let her speak to the media, I told him, “be careful what you wish for.” Hey Sid, who’s your daddy?

Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." The companies, as McClatchy reported, "aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization."

Edweek's CMO critic -- Me

Edweek’s Eric Robelen, writing about charter school management companies (CMOs), finds a critical voice. It’s me.

…critics say that CMOs are a far cry from the original idea of charter schools, and that the networks have attracted oversize support from foundations. Michael Klonsky, the director of the Small Schools Workshop in Chicago and a longtime adviser to small-school startups across the country, including some charters, says CMOs go against the idea that grassroots communities should play an integral role in creating charter schools. “Somebody with a big idea about schools and a million dollars from Mr. Gates or Mr. Broad comes into a community and plops it down,” he says.

Nothing I haven’t said a million times, including in our latest book.

P.S.--I still have a problem with specific Edweek articles like this one being underwritten directly by powerful and self-interested philanthropic organizations. In this case, the Wallace Foundation pays for Robelen's piece which touches gingerly on the CMOs reliance on foundation dollars for their very existence.

Bribe 'em, jail 'em or teach 'em...

Three views on learning

D.C. Supt. Michelle Rhee wants to cut a check to kids who do their homework and attend school regularly. Like her backers, Bill Gates and Eli Broad, Rhee believes that everyone has their price and that student motivation can be driven primarily by money.

Then there’s those who think that the stick is more effective than the carrot.

“If we have to jail them, we’ll jail them,” says a Prince George’s County board member, threatening truant students and their parents.

Fordham's Liam Julian is also in the learning-through-discipline mode. He abhors Rhee’s pay-for-scores approach, opting instead for the stick strategy.

Even the best schools struggle with the recalcitrant youngster seemingly bent on doing anything but study, of course. But this rogue requires strict discipline, not bribes.

Thankfully there are still some progressive souls around who still believe, “school districts and foundations should invest instead in programs that tap into and build on kids' intrinsic motivation,” write Kathy Seal and Wendy Grolnick, in the LA Times (“Pay to learn shortchanges kids.”)

Oh yes, did anyone mention--McCain's a maverick?

'Equal access to education has been gained'--McCain

“Education has become the civil rights issue of this century,” says John McCain, proving once again that even the finest of words can be turned into meaningless clichés in the mouths of demagogues.

"The bunch who brought us 'No Child Left Behind' now claims that education is 'the civil rights issue of this century,'" says Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington.

McCain says that the battle for educational equity is over. He wants to put it behind us and replace it with vouchers, privately-managed charters, watering down of teacher quality and certification standards, imposition of merit pay, as well as an end to collective-bargaining rights and union contracts.

Here's all that in McCainspeak:

“Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.”

What demagogue McCain won’t do is mention NCLB, which he voted for but now hides from. While most Republican leaders, like McCain’s top ed advisor Lisa Graham Keegan, still back NCLB testing madness, McCain won’t mention it during the campaign as he tries to distance himself from Bush. I can’t really blame him.

But Sec. Spellings assures us that McCain is not one of the old-line libertarian conservatives who used to rail against the DOE and big government. No matter than many Republicans oppose NCLB-driven federal involvement in local schools, they still appreciate the billions in ed dollars that were funneled to like-minded education contractors over the past eight years.

“I think he’s more a different kind of Republican than he is the federalist, abolish-the-Department-of-Education kind of Republican,” the secretary said in an interview in Minneapolis. “He voted for No Child Left Behind. He’s been supportive since.

Oh yes, and did anyone mention that McCain is a maverick? Remember, he "reached across party lines" when he signed on to Education Equality Project (EEP), the Democrats’ version of the Ownership Society.

Book burner

Former Wasilla Mayor John Stein in Time Magazine:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

Mary Ellen Baker resigned from her library director job in 1999.

Boston Herald writes about it here.

Free Sarah!

My friend Sid, the former ‘60s radical who’s now a honcho in Republican inner circles, admits that Sarah Palin is being gagged by Steve Schmidt. “It’s weird,” says Sid. “She's our hottest ticket and Schmidt wouldn’t let her go on any of the Sunday talk shows." Sid says, he wants to start a “Free Sarah" campaign. I told him to be careful what he wishes for.

Sid’s comments were confirmed--everything Sid tells me needs to be confirmed-- by Time Magazine’s, Jay Carney.

“…and they broke me.”

Remember Bush's attack on the "angry Left" at the convention?

"Fellow citizens, if the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain's resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry Left never will."

So why aren't reporters asking John McCain what he meant by “broke me” in his convention speech? What really happened when he “broke?” Did he roll over on his comrades? Reveal military secrets? What? In his book, McCain claims that the information he “gave up” under interrogation was “of no real use to the Vietnamese.”

You mean, that's it? End of story?

Toppo drinks Williams' Kool-Aid

USA Today’s Greg Toppo has his head up his ass.

A funny thing happened to the Democratic Party on the way to an education platform: The party has visibly split with teachers unions, its longtime allies, on key issues.

It’s true that teachers and their unions are somewhat divided over the issue of merit pay. But to call this a “split” between the NEA and the Party is silly.

Toppo’s been sucking down Joe Williams’ kool-aid. Williams is paid to push the split story in the media and Toppo is one of the few dumb enough to run with it. Remember, Williams was the one who got the Sun’s Elizabeth Green to go with the phony story about Obama supporting school vouchers. Turned out to be wishful thinking at best.

Toppo mistakes DFER’s meeting of 500 union-bashers, which was frozen out of the DNC, for a union/Dem split.

USA Today’s headline should have read: “Phony Democrats booted from DNC while Weingarten takes the podium.”

Gulp, gulp Toppo.

When you’re right, you’re right, Russo

And he's is right on for taking a poke at Fordham’s horse flies for supporting, “do-nothing scolds like Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on the Chicago-New Trier school funding protest.”

Truants—the new criminal class

In San Antonio they are making kids wear GPS ankle bracelets if they miss school. But in Prince George’s County, where 6,000 students regularly miss school, they just lock ‘em up.

"If we have to jail them, I want them jailed,” says Board Member Rosalind Johnson.

Did Noonan say "it's over?" -- She meant, "Rover"

Report from my friend Sid at the RNC:

While Palin was speaking, the entire crowd was chanting, “DRILL BABY, DRILL!”

Scary. In fact, anytime you have thousands of white conservatives chanting anything in unison, it’s pretty scary.

“They went for this political bullshit…”

Sid says that his two friends, Peggy Noonan and consultant Mike Murphy, being caught off camera dumping on the Palin pick, should confirm what he’s been telling me about widening splits in the campaign and the fact that Alaskan separatist Palin was a last-minute, poorly-vetted desperation pick. “It’s over,” carped Noonan.

Conservative WSJ columnist Noonan sits on the board of the Manhattan Institute, as in Sol Stern and the racist Bell Curve theorists. She was one of the main attack dogs used against Hillary Clinton. She’s also Dick Cheney’s biggest fan and is buddies with Karl Rove (even sent him an email once, suggesting strategies for Bush butt-covering around the Pat Tillman killing).

Sid confirms that Rove hated the Palin pick and Noonan seconds that emotion even though in her WSJ column, the two-faced Noonan writes that Palin , "could become a transformative political presence."

Noonan off camera:

"The most qualified? No. I think they went for this — excuse me — political bullshit about narratives," she said. "Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it."

She tries to recover here, stumbling and bumbling. Did I say "over?" I meant, "Rover." You see, I was calling my dog, Rover.

How resolute was my desk?

I think that each and every teacher should have a resolute desk, just like the President. It should be written into the union contract. In his speech to the RNC the other night, Bush said:

“I know what it takes to be president. In these past eight years, I’ve sat at the Resolute Desk and reviewed the daily intelligence briefings, the threat assessments, and the reports from our commanders on the front lines.

To which Politics, Baseball and Cant responds:

I say: go for the gusto. Live in the Resolute House and take orders from Unbending Dick. Send them down to the aides in the Unwavering Wing. Fly on Staunch One and go to bed with the Unyielding Missus. Renaming only your desk makes you seem like you’re weak on home decoration. What a wussy.

Meeks-- "Chicago school boycott over..."

The boycott’s over—for now

Day-one at at CPS

The first day of school at Robeson, in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, went something like this:

Robeson High School’s first floor was full of parents trying to find out why their children weren’t already enrolled. Incoming freshman Tyler Wade registered last week. But when he showed up for class, he was told he was at the wrong school.

Wade and his fellow students should have joined the school boycott on Tuesday. They might have learned something on day-one.

Daley’s big lie

Daley tells the Trib the BIG LIE that Tuesday’s school boycott by 1,000 CPS students cost the district $100,000 in state reimbursements. If that were true, the state would be providing between $18-$20K/per student. If that were true, there wouldn’t have been the need for a student boycott to begin with.

"Civics lesson"

When the Mayor pulled 30,000 students out of school on June 10^th for a Soldier Field political rally, he called it “the largest civics class in history.” Now he’s accusing Meeks and the boycotting parents of “using children as pawns.”

Eden Martin’s worse

Daley golf partner, Eden Martin is president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. He’s also a lawyer for the giant utilities and corporate polluters and a big gun behind Mayor Daley’s so-called Renaissance 2010 Initiative. Like Daley, Martin blasts Rev. Meeks for leading Tuesday’s school boycott. Gee! What a surprise.

But Martin goes even farther than Daley in defending the two-tier system of public education, calling CPS a “monopoly” (you know how much Martin and the Civic Committee hate monopolies), bashing the teachers union, and opposing more funding for Chicago Public Schools.

Photos:

1. (Boycotting students at New Trier (M.Klonsky pic)

2. Eden Martin

No differences to bridge on phony Dems

Summer’s over. The leaves are turning. School is back in session and Bridging Differences is back on line to help us sort things out.

I don’t think Deb and Diane will have many differences to bridge over Ravitch’s latest post. Diane sticks it to both the phony Democrats at DFER and the D.C. media reform darlings, Mayor Fenty and Supt. Rhee.

Some formula for success. Some business model. So this is the strange new era we are embarked upon, in which the mantle of “reformer” has passed to those who would dismantle public education, piece by piece.

DFER’s voucher/union-bashing ship ran aground in Denver, despite big bucks from hedge-fund operator Whitney Tilson and lots of Gates/Broad $$$. All that money couldn’t buy them love inside the convention, says brother Fred at PREAPrez.

Also see, “Democrats (?) For Education Reform” on the Educational Justice blog.

******

Speaking of smooth-operator Tilson, is he really in bed with the guy from Crazy Eddie’s and involved in a short-selling stock scandal involving CNBC business reporters? Hmmm.

******

Wow! My recent post on my good buddy Bill Gates made it all the way on to Gates Keepers. That’s the second time. The first was when I tried to free Vicki Phillips.

******

Next up—the annual Broad Prize, doubled this year to $2 million. But the dollars are small compared with the feather it puts in the cap of the winning superintendent who’s usually on his/her way to another district in a year or so. Here’s Edweek’s puffy description of the award:

The award is given annually to a city school district that has made notable strides in improving achievement, especially in closing gaps among students of different racial and ethnic groups.

Note: Last year’s winner was New York’s Chancellor Joel Klein. The result? NY’s gap widened even further, says Eduwonkette.

Piling on

My friend Sid, the '60s N.Y. radical who went straight--to the Republican Party's inner circles, that is-- misled me on the VP choice. I don't think it was intentional. He told me Thursday night that it was going to be Tom Ridge. Instead it was Sarah Palin. I was pissed at Sid until today, for making me look like a jerk. But it turns out that Sid may have been right all along and that Ridge backed out at the last minute, leaving the campaign with Palin as their last and only resort. Sid tells me now that the Palin choice is ripping the party leadership apart and has broadened a rift between Karl Rove and his protege, Steve Schmidt, who pushed for Palin.

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I was going to hold my thoughts about Palin, first because I don’t like piling on like the “angry leftists” Bush talked about yesterday (do I sound angry?) and second, because her shit is coming out so fast, I’m hardly able to keep up-- and it’s only day 4.

I loved the headline on Huff the other day--"DRIP, DRIP, DRIP..." I mean, Alaskan secessionists? Jews for Jesus? Gimme a break.

VET PEOPLE! VET!

All I keep thinking is that the deeply religious Obama must be down on bended knee right now, saying, “thank you Lord for sending me this gift.”

But this story is irresistible, I can't hold it in. Last December, AP reported:

Gov. Sarah Palin got a break from answering questions about federal corruption probes and natural gas pipeline applications this week to take on the heady subject of fashion. Palin struck a pose for Vogue, a fashion magazine that spent Wednesday morning at her Wasilla home. But don't let her black or red power suits fool you; the fashion photographer quickly learned this week that Palin is an Alaska girl at heart.

“At first they had me in a bunch of furs,” she said. “Yeah, I have furs on my wall, but I don't wear furs. I had to show them my bunny boots and my North Face clothing.”

Yes, yes, prays Obama. Please send us more like her.

What a scene yesterday!

Imagine bus loads of black folks from the South Side pulling up in front of New Trier High in a wealthy, white, North Shore suburb. Some 3,000 students, parents and volunteer teachers (including me) come pouring out of the buses and line up to try and register kids at local, heavily-resourced schools while white neighborhood residents wave welcomes and applaud. As we get off the bus, the media chase Rev. Meeks across the street like paparazzi.

Meeks, along with 50 other black ministers, organized the school boycott is an attempt to draw attention to the fact that Illinois, one of the wealthiest states, is next to last in the state’s share of school funding. The Chicago Tribune called it "a civics lesson" for the hundreds of students who skipped school to ride the buses. They learned first-hand, that with an over-reliance on county-based property taxes, schools with the most expensive housing stock, lots of corporate headquarters and fancy malls get two to three times the resources as do their schools in the inner city.

This has become one of the major civil rights stories of our time and has evoked similar responses as did the struggles of the ‘60s, including lots of liberal politicians, bureaucrats and even school reformers claiming to support the goals, "but not the tactics" of the movement.

Whatever the hand-wringing politicians and bureaucrats may think of his boycott tactics, Meeks has clearly already won this battle. The issue of fair and adequate funding for state public schools and for Chicago in particular, is now squarely on the table. He has emerged as the leader of the movement while Democratic leaders, from the Mayor to the Governor continue to do nothing.

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I will never complain about my classroom environment again. Not after teaching an hour-long class on the political economics of Chicago school funding to 32 students, grades 5-12, on a school bus with no air-conditioning, windows wide open to catch a breeze in the 95-degree heat, as it raced up I-94 to New Trier H.S. But somehow, it all seemed to work. The kids seemed interested. They responded with lots of questions and volunteered facts they already knew ranging from the great divide—our two-tiered system of education, to the history of the civil-rights protests.

The kids learned a lot more, as several told me on the way back home, from the whole experience of visiting a school where the rich kids go and then attending a rally of 3,000 in the Forest Preserve, where they were fed lunch and listened to speeches and felt the real power of the Save Our Schools movement.

Not bad for the first day of school.

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Mayor Daley’s attack on the thousand black parents who took their kids to the yesterday’s protest, didn’t go over well on the buses. Daley has been all over the media charging that students shouldn’t be involved in the protests. But as one member of Meeks congregation reminded me: “Where would we be today if whole families hadn’t marched together for freedom?” Meeks himself, evoked the memory of the heroic Little Rock 9 students who integrated Central High School back in 1957.

As for yesterday’s absences costing the district money, Daley/Duncan, if they truly supported the movement for funding equity, as they claim, should have made this an official field trip,
provided teachers and buses and fed the kids. Duncan could have taken a lesson from New Trier’s principal, educators and parents who provided cold water, snacks and opened up the school for the visitors. A large group of New Trier students, including student government leaders, came to the afternoon rally in a show of solidarity.

(Mike Klonsky Photos)
1. Getting off the buses
2. Meeks and the media
3. Net Trier parents greet us