Ocean's 11 has come to Fairfax County, Virginia. Its school district estimates that during the 2007-2008 school year, $1.2 million of cafeteria food was pilfered from under the watchful eyes of the lunch ladies.
Survivor and The Real World attract millions of viewers, but the reality TV cognoscenti know where to find the most delicious fare: the televised actions of elected political bodies (see here and here).
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland is in the midst of a 12-city "Conversation on Education" that he says will inform his long-awaited education plan, currently expected in early 2009. I attended his invitation-only event in Dayton, and the governor came across as charming, caring, even grandfatherly. He was patient with everyone and showed a real sense of humor.
In 2006, we wailed when the Florida Supreme Court, on which sit perhaps some of the most left-leaning people in Tallahassee, summoned up dubious reasoning to strike down the state's Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provided vouchers to students to escape their failing schools for better educational opportuniti
A Boston Globe op-ed tells us that, long before he was governor of Massachusetts, the young Deval Patrick "earned a scholarship from A Better Chance, an organization that provides educational opportunities to young people of color." That scholarship transported him from Chicago's South Side to Boston's Milton Academy and eventually through the fabled iron gates of Harvard Yard.
The NCLB conversation has gone digital--at NewTalk.Org, a fancy shmancy blog that allows big thinkers to "talk" via posting for a set time period.
I have to admit that I had been hoping for a while someone would do this. A new advocacy group founded this past spring, Strong Schools DC , has fomented a grassroots revolution and the D.C.
The Gadfly briefly addressed this issue a few weeks ago and the editors at Newsday have taken it up in
The Voice of San Diego, ??a local independent paper, examines the ongoing deliberations over a new teachers union contra
