Checker has an op-ed up at The National Review's "The Corner" blog, in which he compares and contrasts the auto industry's bankruptcies with the education system's.
To be sure, schools are smaller than giant corporations, but they're at least as burdened by employee contracts, long-term obligations, community roots, political entanglements, all manner of vendors and suppliers, and "shareholders" in the form of children and parents that depend on them. And because they are public agencies rather than private firms, there is nothing quite like "Chapter 11" through which they can be stripped of their debts and obligations, reorganized, and given a fresh start.
This fresh start, or "reconstitution," can take the form of school closures, and that's just what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is looking to do with thousands of "dreadful schools," as Checker terms them. More from Checker:
As Education Secretary, Duncan runs no schools and has no direct authority over closing or reconstituting even the worst of them. He can, however, manipulate three levers:
Billions in discretionary spending under the federal "stimulus" package, far more than any of his predecessors had. With that cash, he can try, in effect, to bribe states and districts to get serious about school reconstitution - much as Geithner, Obama et. al are doing with automakers, banks, etc.
The overdue re-authorization of NCLB, which could change the ground-rules and - if lawmakers are really gutsy - remove federal funding from slacker schools, districts or states. (Of course, Duncan and Obama would need to persuade Congress, which heretofore has been loath to take money away from even the worst of public schools.)
Itching to find out what Arne's third lever is? Can you think of five "core problems" with the closing-and-then-reopening model that make it so difficult to pull off? Checker can.
Or, if that's not enough to send you to the source, maybe the fact that Checker makes an athlete's foot-related analogy will do it. Bon voyage.