{"id":6373,"date":"2013-08-09T17:05:14","date_gmt":"2013-08-09T21:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=6373"},"modified":"2013-08-12T08:27:39","modified_gmt":"2013-08-12T12:27:39","slug":"silly-season-in-education-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=6373","title":{"rendered":"Silly season in education politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a Friday in early August, so why not have crazy education news?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>You&#8217;ve already destroyed our district, but could we at least pretend to open our doors this year?<\/em> After months of public disavowal by Pennsylvania politicians of any obligation to fund Philadelphia&#8217;s schools adequately, <a href=\"https:\/\/thenotebook.org\/blog\/136285\/hite-says-50-million-needed-open-all-schools-time\">Philadelphia superintendent William Hite gave notice yesterday<\/a> that if $50 million to help fill a budget gap were not available to the school district within a week, the schools would not be able to open in time on September 9.<\/li>\n<li><em>You know Pope Frances cares deeply about disadvantaged youth, especially law-school students<\/em>.\u00a0Georgetown Law School has\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/higheredwatch.newamerica.net\/blogposts\/2013\/georgetown_law_is_giving_away_a_free_education_and_youre_paying_for_it-89447\">figured a very clever way to get you and me to pay for their expensive law school<\/a>\u00a0through the federal income-based repayment of loans, even loans for professional schools. When asked about this arrangement\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2013\/08\/law-schools-devise-debt-free-path-to-degree-95391.html\">by Politico reporter Libby Nelson<\/a>, an assistant dean said that starting the careers of professionals was within the Jesuit mission of Georgetown to promote social justice.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 16px;\"><em>The first rule about ALEC Club is, don&#8217;t talk about ALEC Club.\u00a0<\/em>Jeb Bush <a href=\"http:\/\/excelined.org\/news\/governor-jeb-bush-delivers-education-reform-address-to-the-american-legislative-exchange-council\/\">gives a major address<\/a> touting all his reforms without once mentioning a recently-exposed, eensy-weensy scandal in Indiana. My favorite part of the speech was where he said everyone who disagreed with him was &#8220;hatch[ing] conspiracy theories about plots to destroy public education.&#8221; His audience: members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the coalition of corporations and right-wing state legislators that privately (and often secretly)\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.alecexposed.org\/wiki\/ALEC_Exposed\">distributes model bills<\/a>\u00a0for its members to push in state capitols.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><em>Don&#8217;t worry about turning out the lights; we have them preset to go out every year this time<\/em>. Last week, Tony Bennett resigned as Florida&#8217;s Education Commissioner. Other resignations have followed from several of Bennett&#8217;s former underlings in both Indiana and Florida. This week, Florida&#8217;s university system chancellor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/news\/education\/college\/frank-brogan-chancellor-of-floridas-university-system-leaving-for\/2135231\">Frank Brogan resigned<\/a> to take a similar job in Pennsylvania. Brogan&#8217;s resignation does not surprise me after the last two years of extraordinary political meddling in the state&#8217;s universities. Yes, we do need some luck on conducting national searches, after our state&#8217;s leaders bollixed up both K-12 and higher ed&#8230;<\/li>\n<li><em>My movies are getting worse, so let me switch to school reform<\/em>. Yes, it&#8217;s coming in September: M. Night Shyamalan&#8217;s\u00a0<em>I Got Schooled: The Unlikely Story of How a Moonlighting Movie Maker Learned the Five Keys to Closing America&#8217;s Education Gap<\/em>. Can&#8217;t wait for the big reveal in the last reel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And that&#8217;s not even touching Andy Rotherham&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/ideas.time.com\/2013\/08\/09\/matt-damon-hypocrite-on-public-school-education\/\">I don&#8217;t care where celebrities enroll their kids but let me write a few more paragraphs about Matt Damon<\/a> column. ((Update: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/arotherham\/status\/366896475038429184\">Rotherham is complaining on Twitter<\/a> this morning [Monday] that no one recognizes he&#8217;s making a pro-public-education argument. I did, but I still think the hook is &#8230; uh &#8230; celebrity slumming.)) I&#8217;ll chalk it up to temporary insanity from fishing withdrawal and general August. Hope you get better soon, buddy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a Friday in early August, so why not have crazy education news? You&#8217;ve already destroyed our district, but could we at least pretend to open our doors this year? After months of public disavowal by Pennsylvania politicians of any obligation to fund Philadelphia&#8217;s schools adequately, Philadelphia superintendent William Hite gave notice yesterday that if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-out-of-left-field-friday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-1EN","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6373"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6424,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6373\/revisions\/6424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}