Yes, there are "terror babies" among us. But most of them were planted here many years ago by Russian Communist spymasters, not recently by demented Muslims.

One notorious Soviet-planted goon is Sarah Palinsky. Her parents and her husband's parents were secretly transported across the Bering Strait from The Motherland in the 1950s.

Note that Todd Palinsky has agitated for Alaska to secede from the United States, no doubt so that it can rejoin Russia, and Sarah Palinsky has noted, wistfully, that she can see The Motherland from her home in Alaska.

This song -- http://tinyurl.com/Sweet-Ala -- could easily be rewritten as "Sweet Home Mother Russia" and used to help Americans realize that Red states are going to become Red for real.

You see, the nefarious commie plot is subtle. Right now, in Phase One, the main objective is to impoverish the American working class while further enriching the richies. Phase Two, of course, will be the violent workers' uprising. In Phase Three, a resurgent Soviet Union will send troops "to restore order."
Newt Gingrovich, Ron Paulowsky, Rush Limbauvich, and Glenn Beckovits are also leading members of this evil conspiracy.

So, too, is GOP Chairman Michael Stalin (Stalin is "Steele" in Russian).

Please, fellow Americans. Go to the rifle range and hone your shooting skills. Make note of the tea party people, Republicans, and other traitors who live near you, and be ready to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights on them when the day comes, which won't be long now.

And remember, no matter how evil the Richies and their Republican stooges become, We are the country, we will survive!

Face it: we're going to have at least two or three more years of economic decline, and Obama is a DINO who worries more about his image on Fox News than about doing anything that might actually help working Americans, so we might as well have a Congress that agrees with him.

Here's what we'll get if we vote in a Republican Congressional Majority:

• More local and state government layoffs as federal aid to local jurisdication stops
• "Obamacare" gets repealed despite presidential veto; Blue Double Cross and other health care insurers raise rates 50% to celebrate; Columbia/HCA and other Medicare-defrauding pain profiteers rejoice
• Less Medicaid funding; reductions in other medical care for poor people; many deaths due to lack of medical care
• No taxes at all on Paris Hilton, the Walton heirs, and other useless rich parasites, lower income taxes on speculators' proceeds than American Workers pay on their salaries (if you include FICA, which *I* do)
• National parks and other government amenities we take for granted closed or their operations drastically curtailed
• More homeless people as more of the long-term unemployed stop getting any government aid at all
• More crime as more of the long-term unemployed stop getting any government aid at all
• More BS from Republicans about "the free market" and how "fiduciary reponsibilities" are the reason their asshole profiteer buddies keep laying off American workers and sending jobs overseas even as more long-term American unemployed stop getting any government aid
• This George Carlin routine becomes the most popular video on YouTube
• Formation of local Coffee Party groups that hold mass firearm training and target practice sessions at local shooting ranges
• Massive long-term unemployment leads to wave of assassinations of Republican politicians, thieving richies, and Fox News anti-American commentators by laid-off blue-collar workers who have nothing left to lose
• Assassination fear leads to mass resignations by Republican politicians, corporate thieves, lobbyists, and other traitors
• 2012: Election of a strong Democratic majority in Congress and a "for real" Democratic President with balls, possibly Hillary Clinton -- who appoints Barrack Obama to the Supreme Court the next time there's an opening.

Yeah. Let the Republicons do their worst for the next two years. We're Americans. We're resilient. We will survive. And once we totally discredit them, we can get on with the business of moving America into the 21st Century.

 

A Reagan-appointed Republican Federal Judge who owns a bunch of oil company stock has said the government can't stop drilling in the gulf because, you know, just because one rig went blooie doesn't mean others will.

Yeah. And when I was learning to ride a motorcycle about 200 years ago, the old Calif. Motorcycle Highway Patrol guy who taught my cycling class told us that even if the last 1000 blind curves you took didn't hide oil slicks that would lay you out flat, you should still act like there might be a slick or a gravel patch around the next blind curve until you saw otherwise.

This is sort of like the flight instructor's saying, "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there no old, bold pilots."

This thought pattern used to be called "conservatism." What is currently passing for conservatism in political circles, specifically when it comes to regulating the oil industry, not to mention bankers, investment houses, health insurance companies, and other white-collar thieves, could more accurately be called "moronism."

Judge Feldman and a whole lot of Republicans and loonietarians need to learn about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, assuming they're smart enough to understand it -- which is unlikely.

The codemonkeys of Slashdot have obviously been pounding randomly on their keyboards recently. Here's a thought, if you are going to hire monkeys to maintain your code, you should at least test it before deploying it to your live servers. This hasn't been Rob Malda's personal blog for years, it's a fricken' business. Do you Slashdot employees like your jobs? Do you want them to continue to exist? If so, perhaps you should start treating this like a business and not like a hobby. Quit breaking things.

They made me do it! It was the peer pressure! I... I'm on... Facebook now.

People constantly say "Python is fast enough! If it's too slow, just throw hardware at the problem! GUI applications spend all their time waiting for user input anyway! And you can rewrite performance-critical sections in C!"

So why is it that, running Fedora on my netbook, I can tell -- with 99% accuracy -- which programs are written in C/C++ and which are written in Python?

There's a simple test. If, when I launch the program, nothing happens for up to a minute, then it's probably written in Python. If, when I click on a button in the program, it becomes completely unresponsive for up to five minutes before anything happens, then it's definitely written in Python.

Today's culprit is the SELinux Administration program. Unbelievably, mind-blowingly slow and unresponsive. This is not a good user experience. I don't care how much programmer time was saved by writing it in Python, or how beautiful the code is, or even how well it performed on the developer's high-end desktop monster -- what I care about is how much of my time is being wasted by twiddling my thumbs while this under-performing, over-rated slug of a language chugs away doing simple things inefficiently.

It's 2010. The future of computing is small, low-powered devices, optimised for portability and endurance rather than raw execution speed. I can't throw hardware at this problem. If Fedora wants to be widespread, it simply can't afford to go on like this, getting slower and slower as more and more core functionality is replaced with fundamentally slow code. It's time to start thinking about execution efficiency again, and -- in the absence of a high-performance Python interpreter -- that means Python is simply not an appropriate language for implementing core OS functionality like system configuration tools. If rewriting bottlenecks in C is good enough, then someone needs to start doing that, because right now they clearly aren't.

I just had an interesting revelation regarding freedom. My mom came down with pancreatic cancer about a year ago, and I felt my personal sense of freedom curtailed. Sure, it was only curtailed by my own sense morality and obligation. but it was limited nonetheless. And I noticed, there is only so much freedom I am willing to give up. I was suddenly much more aware of, and resistant to, all the other limitations on my freedom like my marriage and my job and living in a society where I have to wear pants. Then my mom died, and I inherited a house and quite a bit of money. Now that my freedom is far less constrained by finances, or by dying single mother, only child dynamics, the minor impositions of job and marriage and pants obsessed society don't even register.

I've read that the sense of certainty is simply an emotion, a specific analog circuit that engages and drives our logical mind to come up with explanations. Now, through experience, I believe our sense of freedom is another emotional circuit. While in a strictly deterministic world individual freedom does not exist as such, the sense of personal freedom is a very real part of the chain of cause and effect.

(And thus, a personal conundrum is resolved, cognitive dissonance is decreased, and pants are worn.)

Guess I should...

After nearly a decade with the same sig, I've decided to get rid of the Python quote and replace it with something even more combative. I saw it in an Empire: Total War loading screen, heh heh.

"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton.

Liberty is a social contract, it requires active participation to achieve it. License is "I get to do what I want."

A now-former writer for scholastic, Marc Millot, wrote an article accusing wide-ranging corruption in Obama administration awards of Race to the Top grants, implicating Andrew Rotham of EdSector. Rotham complained that the report was hearsay, which is not true but Scholastic pulled the report and fired Marc Millot anyway. As an advocate for clean government, I've got my fingers crossed hoping for a Streisand effect. Also, some of those need mirrors, ANDREW ROTHAM is trying to take down his own blog entry.

http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/hogwarts-on-the-hudson.html/comment-page-1

  More to come later.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

<title>Eduwonk &raquo; Blog Archive &raquo; Hogwarts On The Hudson?</title>

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 2.8.2" /> <!-- leave this for stats -->

<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.eduwonk.com/wp-content/themes/nouveau-clean-12/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Eduwonk RSS Feed" href="http://www.eduwonk.com/feed" />
<link rel="pingback" href="http://www.eduwonk.com/xmlrpc.php" />

<style type="text/css" media="screen"> /* To accomodate differing install paths of WordPress, images are referred only here, and not in the style.css file. If you prefer to use only CSS for colors then delete the following lines, and the image files. */

        #page { background: url("http://www.eduwonk.com/wp-content/themes/nouveau-clean-12/images/background-wide.jpg") repeat-y top; border: none; }
        #header { background: url("http://www.eduwonk.com/wp-content/themes/nouveau-clean-12/images/header.jpg") no-repeat bottom center; }
        #footer { background: url("http://www.eduwonk.com/wp-content/themes/nouveau-clean-12/images/footer.jpg") no-repeat bottom; border: none;} /* If you don't want to use the template's images, you can also delete the following two lines. */

        #header { height: 140px; width: 760px; }
        #header-image { height: 140px; width: 760px; } /* To ease the insertion of a personal header image, just simply drop in an image called 'header.jpg' into your /images/ directory. Dimensions should be at least 760px x 200px. Anything above that will be cropped off. */

</style>

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Eduwonk &raquo; Hogwarts On The Hudson? Comments Feed" href="http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/hogwarts-on-the-hudson.html/feed" />
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.eduwonk.com/xmlrpc.php?rsd" />
<link rel="wlwmanifest" type="application/wlwmanifest+xml" href="http://www.eduwonk.com/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xml" />
<link rel='index' title='Eduwonk' href='http://www.eduwonk.com' />
<link rel='start' title='About Eduwonk' href='http://www.eduwonk.com/2004/04/about-eduwonk.html' />
<link rel='prev' title='As Goes Montgomery County?' href='http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/as-goes-montgomery-county.html' />
<link rel='next' title='Giving Too Many Points' href='http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/take-the-points.html' />
<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 2.8.2" />
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#publisher=0b910d09-b928-4dd2-ac3b-a71fe1c5202e&amp;type=wordpress&amp;buttonText=Share%20This%20Post&amp;wp=2.8.2"></script> <style type="text/css">.recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;}</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="page">

<div id="header">
        <div id="header-image">
        <a id="home" href="http://www.eduwonk.com" alt="Eduwonk_home"></a>
        <a id="edsector" href="http://www.educationsector.org" alt="Education_Sector"></a>
</div>
</div>
<hr />

        <div id="content" class="layout">

                <div class="navigation">
                        <div class="alignleft">&laquo; <a href="http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/as-goes-montgomery-county.html">As Goes Montgomery County?</a></div>

                        <div class="alignright"><a href="http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/take-the-points.html">Giving Too Many Points</a> &raquo;</div>
                </div>

                <div class="post" id="post-5434">
                        <h2><a href="http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/hogwarts-on-the-hudson.html" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Hogwarts On The Hudson?">Hogwarts On The Hudson?</a></h2>

                        <div class="entrytext">
                                <p>Wow. Jaw meet floor. <a href="http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/home.jsp">Scholastic</a>, a serious publisher in the education space (that produces some good products, for instance Read 180) <a href="http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2010/02/millot-three-data-points-unconected-dots-or-a-warning.html">is now allowing its bloggers to call out senior government officials as corrupt on the basis of <em>anonymous third party hearsay and no evidence</em>.</a> We&#8217;ve crossed into a strange new - and unfortunate - world if this is the new norm or somehow even remotely acceptable.</p>

<p><strong>Update:</strong> As you can tell from the now broken link it&#8217;s to Scholastic&#8217;s credit that they&#8217;ve removed the post.</p>

                                <p class="postmetadata alt">
                                        <small>
                                                This entry was posted

                                                on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 4:00 pm.
                                                You can follow any responses to this entry through the <a href='http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/hogwarts-on-the-hudson.html/feed'>RSS 2.0</a> feed.

                                                                                                        You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

                                        </small>
                                </p>

                        </div>
                </div>

<!-- You can start editing here. -->

        <h3 id="comments">13 Responses to &#8220;Hogwarts On The Hudson?&#8221;</h3>

        <ol class="commentlist">

                <li class="alt" id="comment-151201">
                        <cite>steve f.</cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-151201" title="">February 5th, 2010 at 4:38 pm</a> </small>

                        <p>seems like a reasonable blog post to me &#8211; he&#8217;s just asking for a bit more transparency to clear up any perception of favoritism. </p>
<p>as he said, it&#8217;s not like it hasn&#8217;t happened before <img src='http://www.eduwonk.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>

                </li>

                <li class="" id="comment-151218">
                        <cite>Ed Pol</cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-151218" title="">February 5th, 2010 at 5:00 pm</a> </small>

                        <p>Steve F.-</p>
<p>The first sentence is:</p>
<p>&#8220;I have now heard the same thing from three independent credible sources &#8211; the fix is in on the U.S. Department of Education&#8217;s competitive grants, in particular Race to the Top (RTTT) and Investing in Innovation (I3). &#8221;</p>
<p>Not implying anything but just asking?</p>

                </li>

                <li class="alt" id="comment-151225">

                        <cite>steve f.</cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-151225" title="">February 5th, 2010 at 5:04 pm</a> </small>

                        <p>it&#8217;s a blog, i&#8217;m not sure of the ethics of blog publishing.</p>
<p>but the post is asking whether there is favoritism at the dept of ed? that&#8217;s reasonable in my book and could be cleared up easily through a transparent process.</p>

<p>the ny times uses anonymous sources all the time.</p>

                </li>

                <li class="" id="comment-151233">
                        <cite>Ed Pol</cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-151233" title="">February 5th, 2010 at 5:15 pm</a> </small>

                        <p>&#8220;Over the last several months a national education reporter, a senior manager at a national education research organization, and the head of a national nonprofit working in the field all volunteered that the Department&#8217;s senior officials know exactly who they want to get RTTT and I3 money &#8211; in brief, the new philanthropies&#8217; grantees and the jurisdictions where they work. &#8221;</p>
<p>That is a reasonable question but the blog post is not asking whether there is favortism, it is *saying* there is favortism. The first line is &#8220;the fix is in&#8221; not &#8220;is the fix in?&#8221;</p>

                </li>

                <li class="alt" id="comment-151236">
                        <cite>JSP</cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-151236" title="">February 5th, 2010 at 5:24 pm</a> </small>

                        <p>Pleeeez! Favoritism at the Dept of Ed? Who&#8217;s the secretary? While he may be a nice man and a class warrior, his position derives from the favoritism we now find problematic.</p>

                </li>

                <li class="" id="comment-151303">
                        <cite><a href='http://ljohnson562@charter.net' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>Linda/Retired Teacher</a></cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-151303" title="">February 5th, 2010 at 8:56 pm</a> </small>

                        <p>I feel certain that the taxpayers are about to be fleeced in the name of educational &#8220;reform.&#8221; Let&#8217;s hope someone with the right skills can find out what&#8217;s coming down the pike before it&#8217;s too late.</p>
<p>The Reading First fiasco hurt a lot of children and lined a lot of pockets before the fraud was exposed. I don&#8217;t want to see this happen again.</p>

                </li>

                <li class="alt" id="comment-151305">

                        <cite>Edharris</cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-151305" title="">February 5th, 2010 at 9:02 pm</a> </small>

                        <p>Some of the article is here:<br />
<a href="http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/02/millot-asks-about-conflict-of-interest.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/02/millot-asks-about-conflict-of-interest.html</a></p>

                </li>

                <li class="" id="comment-151569">
                        <cite>KL</cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-151569" title="">February 6th, 2010 at 1:04 pm</a> </small>

                        <p>Entire article available here:</p>

<p><a href="http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2010/02/millot-three-data-points-unconected-dots-or-a-warning.html" rel="nofollow">http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2010/02/millot-three-data-points-unconected-dots-or-a-warning.html</a></p>

                </li>

                <li class="alt" id="comment-151798">
                        <cite>Mary Porter</cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-151798" title="">February 7th, 2010 at 6:41 am</a> </small>

                        <p>Clearly, we must applaud Scholastic&#8217;s journalistic integrity for not allowing its bloggers to call out senior public officials. Especially when, as you point out it sells &#8220;a lot of good products&#8221; and the senior official in question is capable of serious payback if the serious publisher were to allow such a breach in respect for senior government officials.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s what journalistic standards are for: to protect our vulnerable senior government officials from unwarrented intrusion into their power to dispense payouts.</p>

                </li>

                <li class="" id="comment-151866">

                        <cite>Edharris</cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-151866" title="">February 7th, 2010 at 1:02 pm</a> </small>

                        <p>Two classic moments from film and TV come to mind.<br />
&#8220;I&#8217;m shocked, shocked, to find gambling going on in this establishment.&#8221;<br />

Casablanca</p>
<p>&#8220;Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, grin, grin.&#8221;<br />
Monty Python&#8217;s Flying Circus.</p>

                </li>

                <li class="alt" id="comment-153620">
                        <cite>Marc Dean Millot</cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-153620" title="">February 12th, 2010 at 11:27 am</a> </small>

                        <p>I&#8217;ve responded to Rotherham&#8217;s charge starting here at the blog &#8220;Schools Matter.&#8221;</p>

                </li>

                <li class="" id="comment-153652">

                        <cite><a href='http://www.thefrustratedteacher.com/' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>TFT</a></cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-153652" title="">February 12th, 2010 at 12:48 pm</a> </small>

                        <p>The saga is being followed by me as well as others. Several bloggers, including me, have given Millot space to respond. Check my blog for updates if you are interested.</p>

                </li>

                <li class="alt" id="comment-154163">
                        <cite><a href='http://ljohnson562@charter.net' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>Linda/Retired Teacher</a></cite> Says:
                                                <br />

                        <small class="commentmetadata"><a href="#comment-154163" title="">February 13th, 2010 at 7:54 pm</a> </small>

                        <p>Mr. Millot:</p>

<p>You sound like a very wise man. You were one of the first writers to predict that Michelle Rhee couldn&#8217;t possibly succeed given her disdain for teachers.</p>
<p>I hope you can continue to expose &#8220;reformers&#8221; who are poised to line their pockets with tax money meant for schoolchildren. Your skills as a lawyer should prove very helpful. Our country cannot afford another Reading First scam. Thank you.</p>

                </li>

        </ol>

<h3 id="respond">Leave a Reply</h3>

<form action="http://www.eduwonk.com/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform">

<p><input type="text" name="author" id="author" value="" size="22" tabindex="1" />
<label for="author"><small>Name (required)</small></label></p>

<p><input type="text" name="email" id="email" value="" size="22" tabindex="2" />
<label for="email"><small>Mail (will not be published) (required)</small></label></p>

<p><input type="text" name="url" id="url" value="" size="22" tabindex="3" />
<label for="url"><small>Website</small></label></p>

<!--<p><small><strong>XHTML:</strong> You can use these tags: &lt;a href=&quot;&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt; &lt;abbr title=&quot;&quot;&gt; &lt;acronym title=&quot;&quot;&gt; &lt;b&gt; &lt;blockquote cite=&quot;&quot;&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;del datetime=&quot;&quot;&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;i&gt; &lt;q cite=&quot;&quot;&gt; &lt;strike&gt; &lt;strong&gt; </small></p>-->

<p><textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="100%" rows="10" tabindex="4"></textarea></p>

<p><input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" tabindex="5" value="Submit Comment" />
<input type="hidden" name="comment_post_ID" value="5434" />
</p>

</form>

        </div>

        <div id="sidebar">

                <ul>
<li id="text-127677441" class="widget widget_text"><h2 class="widgettitle">About Eduwonk &amp; ES Media</h2>
                        <div class="textwidget"><P>
<a href="http://www.eduwonk.com/2004/04/about-eduwonk.html" target="_parent">About

Eduwonk</a><br>

<a href="http://www.educationsector.org/index_show.htm?doc_id=340310#blog" target="_blank">ES Blog

Editorial Policy</a><br>
<a href="http://www.educationsector.org" target="_blank">Education Sector</a><br>
<a href="http://www.educationsector.org/signup/" target="_blank">The Education Sector Digest</a><br>

<a href="http://www.quickanded.com/" target="_window2">The Quick and the Ed</a></div>
                </li>
<li id="text-127677442" class="widget widget_text"><h2 class="widgettitle">RSS &amp; More</h2>
                        <div class="textwidget"><P>
<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Eduwonk" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a>&nbsp;<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Eduwonk" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to RSS feed</a></p>
<P><a href="http://www.twitter.com/arotherham"><img src="http://www.eduwonk.com/graphics/twitter-button.jpg" border="0"></a>
</P>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eduwonkcom/14597313691?ref=share"><img

src="http://www.eduwonk.com/uploaded_images/n10381469571_770783_5105-701350.jpg" border="0"></a> </div>
                </li>

<li id="search-2" class="widget widget_search"><form method="get" id="searchform" action="http://www.eduwonk.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="" name="s" id="s" />
<input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="Search" />
</div>
</form>
</li>
<li id="archives-2" class="widget widget_archive"><h2 class="widgettitle">Archives</h2>
                <select name="archive-dropdown" onchange='document.location.href=this.options[this.selectedIndex].value;'> <option value="">Select Month</option> <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02'> February 2010 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/01'> January 2010 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/12'> December 2009 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/11'> November 2009 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/10'> October 2009 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/09'> September 2009 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/08'> August 2009 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/07'> July 2009 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/06'> June 2009 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/05'> May 2009 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/04'> April 2009 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/03'> March 2009 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/02'> February 2009 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/01'> January 2009 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/12'> December 2008 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/11'> November 2008 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/10'> October 2008 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/09'> September 2008 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/08'> August 2008 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/07'> July 2008 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/06'> June 2008 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/05'> May 2008 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/04'> April 2008 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/03'> March 2008 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/02'> February 2008 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/01'> January 2008 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/12'> December 2007 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/11'> November 2007 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/10'> October 2007 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/09'> September 2007 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/08'> August 2007 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/07'> July 2007 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/06'> June 2007 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/05'> May 2007 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/04'> April 2007 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/03'> March 2007 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/02'> February 2007 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/01'> January 2007 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/12'> December 2006 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/11'> November 2006 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/10'> October 2006 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/09'> September 2006 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/08'> August 2006 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/07'> July 2006 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/06'> June 2006 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/05'> May 2006 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/04'> April 2006 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/03'> March 2006 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/02'> February 2006 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2006/01'> January 2006 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/12'> December 2005 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/11'> November 2005 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/10'> October 2005 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/09'> September 2005 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/08'> August 2005 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/07'> July 2005 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/06'> June 2005 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/05'> May 2005 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/04'> April 2005 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/03'> March 2005 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/02'> February 2005 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2005/01'> January 2005 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2004/12'> December 2004 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2004/11'> November 2004 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2004/10'> October 2004 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2004/09'> September 2004 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2004/08'> August 2004 </option>

        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2004/07'> July 2004 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2004/06'> June 2004 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2004/05'> May 2004 </option>
        <option value='http://www.eduwonk.com/2004/04'> April 2004 </option>
  </select>

</li>
<li id="text-127689353" class="widget widget_text"><h2 class="widgettitle">Reviews of Eduwonk.com</h2>
                        <div class="textwidget"><P>
2007 Winner, Editor's Choice Best Education Blog
<br>-- <em>Performancing.com</em>
<P>
2006 Winner, Best K-12 Administration Blog -- "Best of the Education Blog Awards"
<br>-- <em>eSchool News and Discovery Education</em>
<P>
2006 Finalist, Best Education Blog
<br>-- <em>Weblog Awards</em>

<P>
<i>Least</i> influential of education's <i>most</i> influential information sources. <br>-- <em>Education

Week Research Center</em>
<P>
"unexpectedly entertaining"..."tackle[s] a potentially mindfogging subject with cutting clarity...

they're reading those mushy, brain-numbing education stories so you don't have to!"
<br>-- <em>Slate's Mickey Kaus</em>
<P>
"a very smart blog... [if] you're trying to separate the demagogic attacks on NCLB from the serious

criticism, this is the site to read"

<br> -- <em>The New Republic's Ryan Lizza</em>
<P>
"everyone who's anyone reads Eduwonk"
<br> -- <em>Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media's Richard Colvin</em>
<P>
"full of very lively short items and is always on top of the news...He gets extra points for skewering my

high school rating system"
<br> -- <em>Jay Mathews, The Washington Post</em>
<P>

"a daily dose of information from the education policy world, blended with a shot of attitude and a dash

of humor"
<br> -- <em>Education Week</em>
<P>
"designed to cut through the fog and direct specialists and non-specialists alike to the center of the

liveliest and most politically relevant debates on the future of our schools"
<br> -- <em>The New Dem Daily</em>
<P>
"peppered with smart and witty comments on the education news of the day"
<br> -- <em>Education Gadfly</em>

<P>
"don't hate Eduwonk cuz it's so good"
<br> -- <em>Alexander Russo, This Week In Education</em>
<p>
"the morning's first stop for education bomb-throwers everywhere"
<br> -- <em>Mike Antonucci, Intercepts</em>
<p>
"...the big dog on the ed policy blog-ck..."
<br> -- <em>Michele McLaughlin, AFT Blog</em>

<P>
"I check Eduwonk several times a day, especially since I cut back on caffeine"
<br> -- <em>Joe Williams, fallen journalist, Executive Director, Democrats for Education Reform</em>
<P>
"...one of the few bloggers who isn't completely nuts"
<br> -- <em>Mike Petrilli, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation</em>
<P>
"I have just three 'go to' websites: The Texas Legislature, Texas Longhorn sports, and Eduwonk"
<br> -- <em>Sandy Kress, former education advisor to President Bush and former chairman, Dallas Board of

Education</em>

<P>
"penetrating analysis in a lively style on a wide range of issues"
<br> -- <em>Walt Gardner, champion letter-to-the-editor writer and retired teacher</em>
<P>
"thugs"
<br> -- <em>Susan Ohanian</em></div>
                </li>
                <li id="recent-comments-3" class="widget widget_recent_comments"> <h2 class="widgettitle">Recent Reader Comments</h2>

                        <ul id="recentcomments"><li class="recentcomments"><a href='http://www.billigtflygtilllondon.com' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>Jason Jagow</a> on <a href="http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/12/eliza-krigman-ringmaster.html/comment-page-1#comment-154202">Eliza Krigman: Ringmaster</a></li><li class="recentcomments">ateacher on <a href="http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/01/five-strikes-and-youre-out-plus-houston-we-have-a-problem.html/comment-page-1#comment-154181">Five Strikes And You&#8217;re Out! Plus, Houston We Have A Problem&#8230;</a></li><li class="recentcomments">ateacher on <a href="http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/01/five-strikes-and-youre-out-plus-houston-we-have-a-problem.html/comment-page-1#comment-154178">Five Strikes And You&#8217;re Out! Plus, Houston We Have A Problem&#8230;</a></li><li class="recentcomments"><a href='http://ljohnson562@charter.net' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>Linda/Retired Teacher</a> on <a href="http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/hogwarts-on-the-hudson.html/comment-page-1#comment-154163">Hogwarts On The Hudson?</a></li><li class="recentcomments"><a href='http://www.churchcoaching.org/' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>Coach for Awakened</a> on <a href="http://www.eduwonk.com/2009/08/reinventing-ed-school-2-coaching-dosagestyle.html/comment-page-1#comment-154107">Reinventing Ed School 2: Coaching dosage/style</a></li></ul>

                </li>
                <li id="execphp-156478711" class="widget widget_execphp"> <div class="execphpwidget"><ul><li id="linkcat-3" class="linkcat"><h2>Education News and Analysis</h2>
        <ul class='xoxo blogroll'>
<li><a href="http://www.aft.org/american_educator/index.html" target="_blank">American Educator</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.smartbrief.com/news/ascd/index.jsp" target="_blank">ASCD SmartBrief</a></li>
<li><a href="http://chronicle.com/" target="_blank">Chronicle of Higher Education</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.educationnext.org/" target="_blank">Education Next</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.edweek.org/" target="_blank">Education Week</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.ednews.org/" target="_blank">EducationNews.org</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/current.cfm" target="_blank">eSchoolNews</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/" target="_blank">Inside Higher Ed</a></li>
<li><a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/" target="_blank">Jay Mathews&#8217; Class Struggle</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/education/index.html" target="_blank">New York Times Education</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kappan.htm" target="_blank">Phi Delta Kappan</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.schoolwisepress.com/" target="_blank">School Wise Pres</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.stateline.org/stateline/" target="_blank">Stateline.org</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.teachermagazine.org/" target="_blank">Teacher Magazine</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/education">Washington Post Education</a></li>

        </ul>
</li>
<li id="linkcat-4" class="linkcat"><h2>Policy and Political Blogs</h2>
        <ul class='xoxo blogroll'>
<li><a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/" target="_blank">Andrew Sullivan.com</a></li>
<li><a href="http://bloggingheads.tv/" target="_blank">Bloggingheads TV</a></li>
<li><a href="http://bookerrising.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Booker Rising</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.danieldrezner.com/blog/" target="_blank">Daniel Drezner</a></li>
<li><a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/">Ezra Klein</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.newvisioninstitute.org/foresight/" target="_blank">Foresight</a></li>
<li><a href="http://geniusblog.davidshenk.com">Genius Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.instapundit.com/" target="_blank">Instapundit.com</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.kausfiles.com/" target="_blank">Kausfiles.com</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/" target="_blank">Matthew Yglesias</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/" target="_blank">Mojo</a></li>

<li><a href="http://oxblog.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Oxblog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/" target="_blank">Political Animal (Washington Monthly)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.politico.com/" target="_blank">Politico</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.politicsdaily.com/">Politics Daily</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/" target="_blank">Real Clear Politics</a></li>
<li><a href="http://redbrownandblue.com/">Red, Brown, and Blue</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/" target="_blank">Scotusblog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://washingtonindependent.com/author/spencer_ackerman">Spencer Ackerman</a></li>
<li><a href="http://takingnote.tcf.org/" target="_blank">Taking Note</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/" target="_blank">Talkingpointsmemo.com</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.prospect.org/weblog/" target="_blank">Tapped</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.theamericanscene.com/" target="_blank">The American Scene</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp" target="_blank">The Corner</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/" target="_blank">The Democratic Strategist</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.slate.com/?id=3944&#38;cp=2120447" target="_blank">The Has Been</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.tnr.com/blogs/the-plank" target="_blank">The Plank (TNR)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2006/04/03/LI2006040301493.html" target="_blank">Think Tank Town</a></li>
<li><a href="http://volokh.com/" target="_blank">Volokh Conspiracy</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/whispers/whisphome.htm" target="_blank">Washington Whispers</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/" target="_blank">WSJ&#8217;s Blog Federation</a></li>

        </ul>
</li>
</ul>

<P><h2>EduReading</h2>
<br>
<!-- Publications Section -->

<table width="290" border="0">

<tr>

<!-- Publication Spot 1 -->
<td class="publications" valign="top"><a href="http://www.hepg.org/hep/Book/5"><img

src="http://www.eduwonk.com/graphics/Collect_Barg_120x147.gif" width="120" height="147"

border="1"><br>Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today's Schools</a><br>
<font color="#000000" size="-2">Edited by Jane Hannaway and Andrew J. Rotherham</font>
<P>

<!-- Publication Spot 2 -->
<td class="publications" valign="top"><a

href="http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=358299"><img

src="http://www.eduwonk.com/graphics/challenged_index_120x147.gif" width="120" height="147"

border="1"><br>Why Newsweek's List of America's 100 Best High Schools Doesn't Make the Grade
</a><br>
<font color="#000000" size="-2">By Andrew J. Rotherham<br> and Sara Mead</font>
</td>

</tr>
<tr>

<!-- Publication Spot 3 -->
<td class="publications" valign="top"><a href="http://www.hepg.org/hep/Book/39"><img

src="http://www.eduwonk.com/graphics/teacher_quality_120x147.jpg" width="120" height="147"

border="1"><br>A Qualified Teacher<br> in Every Classroom</a><br>
<font color="#000000" size="-2">Edited by Frederick M. Hess, Andrew J. Rotherham, and Kate Walsh</font>
</td>

<!-- Publication Spot 4 -->
<td class="publications" valign="top"><a href="http://www.democracyjournal.com/article.php?ID=6535"><img

src="http://www.eduwonk.com/graphics/DemocracyJournal.gif" width="120" height="147"

border="0"><br>America's Teaching Crisis</a><br>
<font color="#000000" size="-2">By Jason Kamras and Andrew J. Rotherham</font>

</td>
</tr>
<tr>

<!-- Publication Spot 5 -->
<td class="publications" valign="top"><a

href="http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=110&subsecID=900030&contentID=3344"><img

src="http://www.eduwonk.com/graphics/SpecialEd_120x147.jpg" width="120" height="147"

border="0"><br>Rethinking Special Education For A New Century</a><br>
<font color="#000000" size="-2">Edited by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Andrew J. Rotherham & Charles R. Hokanson, Jr.</font></td>

<!-- Publication Spot 6 -->
<td class="publications" valign="top"><a

href="http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=385844"><img

src="http://www.eduwonk.com/graphics/EXPCutScoresCover.gif" width="120" height="147" border="0"><br>Making The Cut: How States Set Passing Scores on Standardized Tests</a><br>
<font color="#000000" size="-2">By Andrew J. Rotherham</font></td></tr>
<tr>

<!-- Publication Spot 7 -->
<td class="publications" valign="top"><a

href="http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/1016_education_mead_rotherham.aspx "><img

src="http://www.eduwonk.com/graphics/MeadRotherhamCover.gif" width="120" height="147" border="0"><br>Changing the Game: The Federal Role in Supporting 21st Century Educational Innovation </a><br>
<font color="#000000" size="-2">By Andrew J. Rotherham and Sara Mead</font></td>

<!-- Publication Spot 8 -->
<td class="publications" valign="top"><a

href=" http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/store_product.asp?prodid=210"><img
src="http://www.eduwonk.com/graphics/TeacherExcellenceCover.gif" width="120" height="180" border="0"><br>Achieving Teacher and Principal Excellence: A Guidebook for Donors
</a><br>
<font color="#000000" size="-2">By Andrew J. Rotherham</font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<P>
<ul><li id="linkcat-5" class="linkcat"><h2>Education Blogs</h2>

        <ul class='xoxo blogroll'>
<li><a href="http://americanedreview.blogspot.com/2010/01/teaching-as-leadership-live.html">American Ed Review</a></li>
<li><a href="http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/" target="_blank">ASCD</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.assortedstuff.com/" target="_blank">Assorted Stuff</a></li>
<li><a href="http://teachingquality.typepad.com/building_the_profession/" title="Secondhand NEA smoke?" target="_blank">Barnett Berry</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/" title="And lemme tell you another thing about those punk reform kids today&#8230;" target="_blank">Bridging Differences (Meier and Ravitch)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.publiccharters.org/media/blog" title="But do they like charter schools?" target="_blank">Charter Blog (NAPCS)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://charterschoolpolicy.org/yes/" target="_blank">Charter School Policy Inst. Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://dormont.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Chez Dormont</a></li>

<li><a href="http://thecite.blogspot.com/" title="A blog on Course materials, Innovation, and Technology in Education">CITE Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://athenslearning.org/blog/" target="_blank">College Ready Blog (Athens Learning Group)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.burkescarbrough.com/" target="_blank">Conversation Starters</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.coreknowledge.org/blog/" title="Bring on the classics! Panic At The Pondiscio holds forth!" target="_blank">Core Knowledge Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.erinoconnor.org/" target="_blank">Critical Mass</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/CurrikiBlog/">Curriki</a></li>
<li><a href="http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/" title="You&#8217;d better bring evidence " target="_blank">D-EDreckoning</a></li>
<li><a href="http://dcteacherchic.blogspot.com/">D.C. Teacher Chic</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/" target="_blank">Dangerously Irrelevant</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.cobranchi.com/" title="Homie Central" target="_blank">Daryl Cobranchi</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.abcte.org/blog/" target="_blank">Dave Saba (ABCTE)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://daveshearon.typepad.com/" target="_blank">Dave Shearon</a></li>
<li><a href="http://dcedublog.blogspot.com/" title="Education dysfunction central" target="_blank">DC Education Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.dfer.org/posts/blog/" title="Should be as redundant as &#8216;Republicans for lower taxes&#8217;, but isn&#8217;t yet" target="_blank">Dems for Education Reform</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.newamerica.net/blog/early_ed_watch" title="Sara Mead tells you what it all means for little kids" target="_blank">Early Ed Watch</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.earlyedcoverage.org/" title="Colvin saves education journalism" target="_blank">Early Stories</a></li>
<li><a href="http://learningmatters.tv/blog/news-desk/" title="Daily education news summaries and links" target="_blank">Ed Beat</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.ediswatching.org/" title="He&#8217;s five and he likes school choice" target="_blank">Ed is Watching</a></li>

<li><a href="http://ed-policy.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Ed Policy Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/edbizbuzz/" target="_blank">Edbizbuzz</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.centerforpubliceducation.org/?paged=2" title="The Center for Public Education Blog">EDifier</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.varpartners.net/%3fpage_id=101" target="_blank">EdReformer Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.edspresso.com/" title="Vouchers yes! Dems no!" target="_blank">Edspresso</a></li>
<li><a href="http://educatedguess.org/blog/" title="The Educated Guess is a forum on education policies in California and Silicon Valley.">Educated Guess</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.educatednation.com/" target="_blank">Educated Nation</a></li>
<li><a href="http://educationnext.org/blog/" title="The Ed Next empire expands to the blogosphere">Education Next Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blog.eduflack.com" title="He wants you to look good!" target="_blank">EduFlack</a></li>

<li><a href="http://eduoptimists.blogspot.com/" title="The blogging Goldricks!" target="_blank">Eduoptimists</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.edwize.org/" title="Teacher union voice!" target="_blank">Edwize (UFT)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://eponymouseducator.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Eponymous Educator</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.essentialblog.org/" title="Authentically good!" target="_blank">Essential Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://extracredit.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Extra Credit</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.edexcellence.net/flypaper/" title="Petrilli &amp; Friends" target="_blank">Flypaper (Fordham)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.edexcellence.net/fordhamfellows/blog/" title="Young, brash, and prolific!" target="_blank">Fordham Fellows</a></li>
<li><a href="http://thetrenches.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">From The Trenches</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/custom/blogs/education/index.html" target="_blank">Get Schooled (AJC)</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/education/index.html" target="_blank">Get On The Bus (Dayton Daily News)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gothamschools.org/" title="24 hour-a-day coverage of the vipers&#8217; nest that is education policy in NYC" target="_blank">Gotham Schools</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blogs.greatschools.net/" target="_blank">GreatSchools Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.grumpyprofessor.com" target="_blank">Grumpy Professor</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.newamerica.net/programs/education_policy/higher_ed_watch/blog/" target="_blank">Higher Ed Watch</a></li>
<li><a href="http://hipteacher.typepad.com/schoolblog/" target="_blank">Hip Teacher</a></li>
<li><a href="http://ithoughtathink.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">I Thought A Think</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.learningalternatives.net/" target="_blank">IALA</a></li>
<li><a href="http://mspappas.preknow.org/" target="_blank">Inside Pre-K</a></li>

<li><a href="http://insideschools.org/blog/">Inside Schools Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/" title="Education&#8217;s union man" target="_blank">Intercepts</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.ivygateblog.com/" target="_blank">IvyGate</a></li>
<li><a href="http://jaypgreene.com/" title="TV reviews, education commentary, and vouchers for everyone!" target="_blank">Jay Greene</a></li>
<li><a href="http://drcookie.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Jenny D.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.joannejacobs.com/" title="Come for the excerpts, stay for the comments!" target="_blank">Joannejacobs.com</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gwu-kindlingflames.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Kindling Flames</a></li>
<li><a href="http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Kitchen Table Math</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/learning.now/" target="_blank">Learning Now (PBS)</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/" title="The Blob Blogs! But guaranteed at least 75 percent tendentious - or your money back!">LFA &#8211; Public School Insights</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.linkeducation.org/blog" title="Education social networking" target="_blank">LinkEd</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.matthewktabor.com/" title="He&#8217;s pissed and pointed" target="_blank">Mathew K. Tabor</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.pbs.org/teachers/mediainfusion/" target="_blank">Media Infusion</a></li>
<li><a href="http://stsg.wordpress.com/" title="Good luck with that!">Meeting the Turnaround Challenge Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://mikerosebooks.blogspot.com/">Mike Rose&#8217;s Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.speedofcreativity.org/" target="_blank">Moving At The Speed Of Creativity</a></li>

<li><a href="http://bgenglish.blogspot.com/index.html" target="_blank">Mr. B-G&#8217;s English Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://msfrizzle.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Ms. Frizzle</a></li>
<li><a href="http://education.nationaljournal.com/" title="Eliza Krigman plays ringmaster for a three ring educircus!">National Journal&#039;s Education Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/NCLB-ActII/" target="_blank">NCLB Act II (Ed Week)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.letsgetitright.org/blog/" title="Now seen mostly on milk cartons" target="_blank">NCLBlog (AFT)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://schoolnerdblog.blogspot.com/" title="She&#8217;s smart, snarky, and teaching! (And she&#8217;s missed!)" target="_blank">Newoldschoolteacher</a></li>
<li><a href="http://boardbuzz.nsba.org/" title="In the first place, NSBA made this blog" target="_blank">NSBA&#8217;s BoardBuzz</a></li>

<li><a href="http://nyceducator.blogspot.com/" title="He fiddles, and burns" target="_blank">NYC Educator</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.usnews.com/papertrail/" target="_blank">Paper Trail (USN)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://parentalcation.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Parentalcation</a></li>

Unions not only destroyed many once-proud American businesses, but also promulgated such evils as a 40 hour workweek (remember that?), health and safety regulations on the job that have saved many workersâ(TM) lives, paid vacations, and the now-discredited idea of defined-benefit pensions, plus a particular horror this country used to value called âoejob security.â

And letâ(TM)s not forget that pesky minimum wage.

We need to finish rolling back all the damage unions have done to the U.S. so we can compete with China and India. American workers have been spoiled by having things like indoor plumbing, electricity, telephones, and cable TV. Once we get them to roll back their living standards to the dirt-floor hut level common in the countries that are now eating our economic lunch, we will return America to its former state of greatness, where millionaires had hordes of servants (which we need because of the stress our fortunes cause) and children started working at age 8 instead of lollygagging around in schools all day.

Another institution we may want to consider bringing back is slavery â" except that weâ(TM)re more racially enlightened now that we were in the 18th and 19th centuries, so we wonâ(TM)t deny this opportunity for lifetime employment to non-black people but will extend it to all.

Never forget: America is a Christian nation, and slavery is mentioned in the Bible but unions are not.

God bless America!

by Lazlo Toth, American

(at least, I *think* that's what the scrawled signature said.)

So I served a guy a restraining order today. He'd beat up my friend a couple times, gave him a concussion the last time. So my friend got a restraining order, but he's a waiter and this is the dead time of year for that in Santa Fe, and he doesn't have the money to pay the sheriff to serve the papers. So I volunteered. This guy is a punk ass gangster wannabe who hangs out with a crowd of (snicker) Santa Fe toughs. But they kicked the shit out of my friend in public a couple times, and they are cracked out of their heads a lot of the time, so yeah, I was a little scared. But it was the right thing to do, and the fact that you have to pay someone to serve a restraining order sucks balls, so I had to do it. I had to track the fucker down, too, because he didn't show up for work tonight. He was off at some bar with his friends. I walked right up to him, made sure it was him (I've never met the guy), handed him the papers and walked out, calm as you please.

My hands are shaking a little bit now, though.

We seem to have collectively decided that at least 15% of our working-age population is no longer necessary to keep our country's businesses running, and every year we have a larger number of surplus people as we shift more jobs overseas or automate them out of existence. We basically have two choices: we can either remove some of the connection between work and income or we can build tariff barriers that eliminate at least some competition for American workers from people in other, lower-cost countries. Or we can come up with some combination of these two solutions.

Let's assume we don't want citizens' armies of former workers who have nothing to lose roaming our countryside, looking for food and shelter and killing anyone who gets in their way. If you are a prosperous or rich American, this would not be good for you, because you and your family would become possible kidnap, carjacking or home invasion victims. You can hide behind the walls of gated communities, but then you will need to worry about your hired guards, especially if you pay them the same low wages most security personnel receive today. And what if some of the redress-righters who want to kidnap you or steal from you are relatives of your guards? When this situation arises, your guards are more likely to help loot your house than protect it from looters.

It is, therefore, a good idea for America's more prosperous citizens to help those who have little. Forget morality for a moment and think of enlightened self-interest. Almost every communist revolution and pre-communist revolt against an imperial or dictatorial government was preceded by period during which the rich got richer at the expense of everyone else. In other words, maybe pre-communist Cuba was a paradise for the wealthy families whose offspring fled to Florida to get away from Castro's revolutionaries, but before the revolution life was miserable for most Cubans; no decent medical care, barely enough food to eat, high illiteracy rate due to a lack of public schools, low pay at best, no work at worst. In other words, a dog-eat-dog state, with no protection of the poor from the depredations of the rich, and no social safety net.

Class warfare? You bet! And it typically ends with bodies of the formerly rich or prosperous hanging from lamp posts or their heads piling up next to guillotines while rampaging mobs loot the stores and ransack mansions. Smart American rich people (think Warren Buffett) realize that too much greed by too many people will inevitably cause society to break down, so the rich and prosperous need to allow a certain amount of wealth-sharing through taxation, and must support at least some level of "entitlements" in order to save their own skins. Dumb American rich people (think of the Olin, Walton, and Hilton heirs) seem to believe they can get away with living on the backs of working people because they chose the right parentage and have no obligation to share any of their unearned wealth with anyone else.

If we want more employment, let's hire a lot of people

The two biggest federal depression-era employment programs were the WPA and the CCC. I know the current anti-government people love to say no government handout program ever ends, but both the WPA and the CCC went away as soon as they were no longer needed. It took WWII -- and a level of government spending that eclipsed the WPA, CCC, and all other government entitlement programs before or since, to end the need for these two agencies. Hopefully we won't need a similar war to pull our country out of our current depression, but to make sure of that we need to start figuring out how to help our surplus people before the unemployment problem becomes as acute as it was in 1934 or 1935.

Remember that the WPA and CCC were both "workfare," not "welfare" programs. They included construction projects and public art projects, folklore research (John and Alan Lomax were partially funded by the WPA), and many other useful projects both blue-collar and white-collar.

Were the WPA and CCC "successful?" Not from the standpoint of the 30s far right wing, but a large majority of Americans both rich and poor supported these programs because they staved off misery for an awful lot of Americans, and removed much of the very real threat of a socialist or communist revolt supported by the Soviet Union, which at the time openly talked about spreading communism to the whole world.

There was plenty of right-wing squawking in the 1930s about the government getting too large and not following the Constitution, but that noise was tempered by knowledge that millions of angry workers out of work permanently or even for more than a few years represented a far greater danger to the Republic than a liberal interpretation of the Constitution's Commerce Clause.

The Player Piano Alternative

Kurt Vonnegut's 1952 novel, Player Piano, takes place in a future where most American workers have been displaced by machines, live on scant welfare payments, and want to be useful rather than live on the dole -- except that there is hardly any demand for physical workers in an automated world. Replace automation with "Chinese workers" and include many white-collar workers whose jobs have moved to India, and you still have Vonnegut's Player Piano, along with its original automation component. You not only have massive and growing unemployment, but structural unemployment that is unlikely to abate even if the economy "recovers" from its current malaise.

What do we do about this problem? Warehouse our surplus workers and feed them just enough dole money and free TV to keep most of them sitting on their couches drinking beer instead of plotting home invasions? Do we decide to put strong tariffs in place that make imports artificially more expensive than American-produced goods and services -- and deal with the inevitable smuggling and other problems this solution would create as by-products?

I'll admit that I am personally attracted to the idea of protectionist-level tariffs for a large "basket" of items that we should make here in the U.S. instead of obtaining overseas if only because we are so dependent on them. Food? Yup. Energy? Why not? Support American oil, nuclear power, solar and wind generation, etc., by levying a large per-Joule tax on all imported energy sources. Computers and electronic components? If, as so many companies in this industry claim, "intellectual property" is what matters, producing the physical products here would not lead to huge price increases. Ditto with pharmaceuticals. One day I bought a popular over-the-counter cold remedy and noticed that it was manufactured and packaged in Costa Rica. This is a product where the actual production cost is only a small fraction of the retail price. Making it here in the U.S. would not drive its maker into bankruptcy, especially if all that company's competitors also manufactured here because of tariffs or because of laws prohibiting the manufacture of FDA-controlled products outside our borders.

An aside: we pay the world's highest prices for pharmaceuticals, and have many laws prohibiting individual citizens from buying pharmaceuticals in other countries and bringing them home for their own use. And yet, a growing percentage of the price-supported drugs we buy are made elsewhere. This makes no sense whatsoever. If "safety" is the reason not to allow individual Americans to import drugs on their own, why should pharmaceutical manufacturers or wholesalers be allowed to do it? This is a ripoff. And I'm scared that we won't get rid of it anytime soon because the pharmaceutical industry has always been a prolific source of political donations and the Supreme Court recently decided to make it even easier for pharma companies and their trade associations to influence elections. Grrr....

Where Will We Put the Welfare Trailer Parks and Tent Cities?

Another way to make American workers competitive is to house them in circumstances similar to those "enjoyed" by Indian and Chinese workers. In other words, get away from the idea that Americans inherently deserve luxuries such as separate bedrooms for children, indoor plumbing, and broadband Internet service, let alone government-paid education or decent medical care. Under this scenario, we dump the concept of a minimum wage and let the market determine the value of each human's contribution to our increasingly corporate-dominated society. If supply and demand in a world of free trade dictates that the value of an American blue-collar worker is $5/day and that a knowledge worker is worth $10/day, so be it. Of course, this means most American workers won't be able to afford any market-rate housing we currently have, let alone allow their children to attend school instead of working for their daily bread (or possibly nutritious soy mush). TV? We'd better make sure they still have that, along with low-cost beer (and possibly pot) to keep them happy in their new ghettos, where they will live out their lives in the equivalent of FEMA trailers. Or tents. Or yurts. Or shanty towns and slums like the ones common in third-world cities.

Provide a Minimum -- but Low -- Income to All

I am starting to believe we need to provide a minimum income "floor" for all Americans, along with basic education and health care services. This is not an ideological belief. It is purely practical. Perhaps you want to live somewhere people are falling off the edge of civilization and you need to carry a gun whenever you go out because many of your fellow citizens have no way besides crime to eat, clothe, and shelter themselves. I do not want to live in that kind of country. At the same time, I don't want to live in one where the government dictates my every move, including where I live and how I earn a living.

This is why, when I say "minimum income floor," I mean truly minimal, not in suburban houses people work hard to afford. And I don't believe everyone has a right to the most expensive medical treatment available, either. And education? I have nothing against you (or anyone else) sending your children to a private school at your own expense, any more than I have a problem with you wanting (and paying for) medical care from a private physician and private hospital rooms while people with less money deal with clinic-style medicine and open hospital wards.

Housing? This is what I wrote about housing the homeless in 2007. I haven't changed my mind since then.

As far as food, I am not in favor of the current program that lets poor people spend government food subsidies on things like soft drinks and cheese doodles. Sorry, but if you're going to eat on the taxpayers' tab, you had better get used to cooking from scratch or at least from low-cost mixes. Want more than four to six ounces of meat per person per day? You are going to have to find a way to make some money. Ditto if you want white meat chicken instead of thighs and legs or butter instead of (generic) margarine.

Opportunity is Important

What keeps people from going wild when things aren't going well is hope. For many, religion furnishes it, in the sense that there will be pie in the sky bye and bye. But for even more it is important to have a belief, even a false one, in our ability to make our lives better through our own efforts. This is the oft-cited "American Dream.

If you're broke and facing bankruptcy or you've already lost a home you sweated hard to buy, that dream seems more like a nightmare. We have millions of citizens who are living that nightmare, and even when we read "hopeful" employment numbers, they are "hopeful" only because fewer people lost jobs this month than in previous months, not because more people are suddenly getting hired than are getting fired.

So what are we going to do?

I'm afraid that lowering taxes, especially on our richest and greediest citizens, isn't going to help put a lot of unemployed Americans back to work. An awful lot of people seem to have forgotten that some of the years when this country experienced its greatest economic growth, and saw the greatest rise in the percentage of citizens who owned their own houses, and the greatest rise in standard of living for working people, and some of our greatest scientific advances, along with major strides in civil rights and other social aspects of our lives, happened in the 1950 - 1970 period when we had some of the most progressive income tax schedules ever. Banks and other financial institutions were highly regulated. Unions were far stronger than they are today. And in most married households, one income paid all the bills.

Sure, our houses were smaller then, and we didn't have Medicare for old people. But, in general, every year was a little better than the year before. Every day, in every way, we really were getting better and better.

Can we say the same thing today? I don't think so. If anything, life is getting worse for a majority of Americans.

Are we really willing to see our fellow citizens living in tents, especially in winter? Are we willing to risk that kind of life, ourselves, if we lose our jobs and health insurance and face medical bills we can't pay? Are we so determined to hold on to the illusion of liberty it's easy to enjoy when we have substantial incomes, but not so easy to hold onto when we run out of money before the end of the month, that we want to keep saying, "The free market will save us," in the face of evidence that it will not? And increasing evidence that our most vocal "free market" proponents aren't even interested in trying?

At the same time, we can't run government deficits forever. I'm okay with the Keynesian ideas that led to the Golden Age of Capitalism after WWII, but sooner or later we need to pay back the money we have borrowed -- and that means true government austerity, not the little bits of savings (starting next year) Obama has proposed, plus it would mean tax increases larger than any American politician at the national level has enough guts to propose.

No matter what, the current "rich get richer while the poor get poorer" economic reality will not go on forever.

The only question is whether we'll end it by purely political means (more transfer payments), by government stepping in and helping capitalism work (creating jobs during bad economic times; increasing import tariffs; tax incentives to help persuade businesses to hire more Americans) or by civil breakdown and insurrection.

So which alternative do you prefer?

• 
         
• The ultra-leftist ideal of giving money to everyone in need, no strings attached

•        

• 
  The ultra-rightist ideal of low taxes on rich people, regardless of their neighbors' misery, until society breaks down

•        

• The Keynesian course of helping people get back to work with government help

I prefer the third alternative, myself. But I don't hold an elective office and don't plan to run for one (and don't have the level of corporate support it's going to take win future elections, anyway), so you might as well disregard my opinion since it can't possibly translate into action in today's sad political climate.

This post sponsored by Millers Art & Video -- the company that makes professional video for people on tight budgets.

In a fantasy libertarian paradise, each citizen works hard out of enlightened self-interest. No one uses force on anyone else, since my rights stop where your nose begins. If you accumulate a whole bunch of property, bully for you! If I fail in business or some other endeavor and suddenly have no money for food, clothing or medical care, too bad for me. Maybe some of my enlightened neighbors, out of self-interest, will help me out with voluntary donations. And maybe they won't. Under communism, the opposite is true. Each citizen works to his or her maximum capacity in order to benefit society as a whole, and society as a whole owns the major means of production, including farms, factories, and mines. No one goes without the basics of life, and the idea of any one person owning a yacht disappears, because no citizen needs a private yacht when he or she can freely use state-owned boats for anything from fishing to partying. Under either system, everyone is happy and fair and treats other members of society with respect.

But both philosophies suffer from a problem. That problem is human nature. I'm sorry, but there are hardly any instances in human history (or pre-history) where applying an essentially utopian political or economic philosophy has resulted in a utopia. In the modern world, we have Somalia as an example of extreme libertarianism in practice, and North Korea as an example of extreme communism in practice.

"But...but...but," the libertarians stammer, "we don't want anarchy like Somalia. We believe in having enough government to serve as referee in disputes, and we don't believe violence is a valid basis of society." I hear you, folks. Unfortunately, plenty of people do not hear you, and in a situation where government is weak, will inevitably exert their will through force. It doesn't take a high percentage of the population to believe that power comes from the barrel of a gun to destroy even the rosiest libertarian paradise. And, as we have witnessed in the U.S. over the past few decades, many of the people who talk loudest about deregulation and freeing themselves from burdensome laws essentially want to be able to steal from their fellow citizens without risking prison sentences when they do.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, the communists are apoplectic with rage at the very idea that any sane person could conflate their inevitable workers' paradise with North Korea's brutocracy. Or Cuba's repressive regime. Why, those countries don't represent communism any more than Somalia represents libertarianism! True. But in real life, communist revolutions have almost always led to dictatorships of one sort or another. And, as a little-noted side effect, endless, mind-numbing speeches by the dictators. Even mild communists like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (who calls himself a Bolivarian and denies being a doctrinaire communist) can go on TV and spout drivel for hours on end, and has enough control over the airwaves that you can't necessarily change the channel and catch a soccer game or telenovela instead.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's the other way around.

Under a truly libertarian capitalist system, if some people become so wealthy that they can afford personal airliners while a few miles away, others live in
grinding poverty, that's fine. Under the Soviet Russian (communist) regime, party leaders have always had sumptuous dachas where they lived in luxury, far from the prying eyes of ordinary citizens who typically lived in crowded communal housing.

In other words, neither system serves most people very well, although adherents of both philosophies will spend as many hours as you let them (and then some) telling you why theirs is better for you than the other one.

As an American, what I really want is the best parts of both systems. I want the income security of communism, or at least of its milder cousin, socialism, while at the same time I want libertarian-style personal freedoms. I realize that taxes are the price we pay for civilization, so I am happy to have you pay taxes to support our government. (I also believe I should be exempt from most of them, just as I'm fine with laws that restrict any of your behavior I may not like, but none that restrict my behavior.)

Do I sound spoiled, hypocritical, cynical, or all three?

Or do I just sound like a normal American?

The reality is that no system will work perfectly as long as it is run by human beings. Private industry screws up all the time, and big companies often turn into impenetrable, inefficient bureaucracies -- as do government agencies that don't get constant oversight from concerned citizens. Even science-fictional computers running a large society are likely to screw up, since they would be built and programmed by fallible humans.

So what is the solution?

I' m a mild believer in what some call the Third Way. Neither leftists or rightists (in old-fashioned politics-speak) like or respect moderation. I do. Nobody goes away happy, but we manage to generally keep everyone's unhappiness level low enough that we transfer power after elections without blood in the streets, and tend to have excesses of socialist-leaning presidents and Congresses muted by the libertarian-leaning ones that almost inevitably follow them -- and vice versa.

This kind of compromise is the American way. Our founding fathers didn't agree on everything. They compromised, and our Constitution was the result of that compromise. Let's carry on that tradition!

(Now we will all rise and sing the national anthem together.)

More drivel at Roblimo.com