Sunday, September 16, 2007

George Schmidt on Eli Broad

I know y'all New Yorkers are impressed with how briefly Bloomklein have been around to wreak all this havoc, but let's not forget that the national model (until you guys took center stage) was Chicago, which is still the pioneer in totalitarian urban school systems. That thing about B-school grads and lawyers fits into what's been Chicago's "business model" for more than a decade. The last thing they want is experienced veteran teachers or principals running a school system.

One of the most interesting ways to track this havoc is to go back through the central administrative budgets and see how they've added titles like "Chief of Staff" and "Deputy Chief of Staff" (all requiring no education credentials) since deregulation. They are also -- here at least -- refusing to provide any information about the qualifications of the people they put into these jobs. We're being forced to go to court under FOIA to get the resumes and other information on the supposed qualifications of all these lawyers and MBAs to run the educational system.

Final note.

I had dinner three weeks ago with people from the Oakland area the last night I was out in Berkeley taking Danny (some of you remember him; he's now studying math and engineering at UofC) to school. The people in California have the most direct and ongoing experience with the Broads and Broad himself. We just need to coordinate more somehow.

Broad's gunning to get right up there with Gates as the leading fascist training camp for this crowd.

And in many ways he's worse than Gates and more insidious, because his "progressive" supporters include union people (like Andy Stern of SEIU, who teacher bashed in Chicago a year ago using Broad data) and "Democrats".

George Schmidt
Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

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