- No offence to the great Michelle Pfeiffer or Morgan Freeman, but it seems like the last thing the world needs is another account of a crusading educator helping gang members turn their lives around. (The scenario isn’t improbable, exactly, just overexposed; things might seem fresher if studios ever made movies about social workers ministering to white collar crooks or county clerks counseling unwed mothers.) But there’s a great story this week about John King, tied to the announcement of his appointment as acting secretary of education, that may restore your faith in the subgenre. While serving the department in a lesser role this August, he met with a group of former convicts at Homeboy Industries, a Los Angeles organization that provides resources to ex-offenders. King was probably the ideal man for the setting. Orphaned by the age of twelve and later expelled from high school, he could have very easily fallen into delinquency himself; plus, he had to face down throngs of screaming Common Core opponents in his former job as the New York State education commissioner, so he’s definitely not daunted by tough rooms. But if King can share space with hardened felons and irate Common Core opponents, why does he need to be sheltered from the horrors of a Senate confirmation hearing?
- At last, the curtain has been pulled back, the fog lifted, the stone rolled away from the tomb. For months, education observers have wracked their brains wondering just whom the powerful National Education Association would endorse in the 2016 presidential race. Now the news is out, and you’ll never believe which candidate they chose: (taut drumroll) Hillary Clinton! The nod may have come after the American Federation of Teachers already gave Clinton their blessing, but who could have foreseen the country’s biggest union lining up behind the presumptive Democratic frontrunner? Okay, maybe the endorsement isn’t actually a shocking revelation. In fact, it probably tells us more about organized labor than about Hillary. In spite of her slipping poll numbers and excruciatingly boring (if still consequential) email scandal, the NEA and friends still believe that the race is hers to lose. In 2008 and 2004, when the primary picture was considerably more muddled than it is today, the major unions declined to endorse. Now that Arne Duncan has bowed to NEA pressure and resigned (fifteen months after they called for him to step down, but still!), we’ll see if they can keep their incredible win streak rolling.
- There’s been a good deal of speculation on John Boehner’s agenda in his final month as overwhelmed House babysitt…uh, Speaker. The bipartisanship whisperers have fantasized about a lame-duck leader working across the aisle to avert government shutdowns, lift the sequestration spending caps, and rechristen every post office in the land as a Simpson-Bowles Cooperation Center. But Boehner turns out to have far more modest—if still very worthy—plans: On Monday, he introduced legislation to reauthorize Washington, D.C.’s voucher system for another five years. The move represents a homecoming for Boehner, who sponsored the original legislation creating the program in 2003 and rescued it in 2011. It’s also an important affirmation of something in the capital that actually does what it’s supposed to do, as a recent Washington Post retrospective illustrated. He’s not known for high-flown rhetoric, but Boehner probably put it better than we could: “There is only one program in America where the federal government allows parents to choose the best schools for their kids, it is right here in Washington, DC, and it is working. This program gets the kinds of results parents dream of for their kids.”
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