First, I'm thrilled to be affiliated with TBFI and have the chance to contribute to Flypaper.???? Thanks Checker, Mike, Eric, and team.???? It's been great.
Like many others, I'm waiting for ED to release its guidance on the stimulus.???? It's late already, but that's no surprise.???? One big lesson I learned during my time at ED is that official documents like this take forever to get out.???? There are countless drafts, an internal clearance process, OMB input, White House/DPC input, and on and on and on.???? Add to this that lots of senior positions at ED are still unfilled (and many of the folks in place are new to DC), and you can see that this may take a while???????
Terry Ryan has already written about the charters challenges out in Ohio, but the proposal is even worse than I expected????????less funding, more reporting, messing with facilities, and banning for-profits.???? Take a look if you're interested in charter stuff.???? And incidentally, didn't somebody recently write about being optimistic about the future of charters????? Egad.
Be sure to check out Mike's thorough treatment of the Duncan-voucher news.???? Two quick thoughts: First, I find it interesting that Duncan and Rhee, the federal and city education leaders, both announced measured support for the program this week while their bosses are still conspicuously silent.???? When will the President and Mayor weigh in?????
Second, I'm a huge Ted Kolderie fan, and I was looking through his way-underappreciated book Creating the Capacity for Change recently and happened upon a small section on vouchers that I hadn't noticed before.???? He makes the case that charters have made vouchers less controversial by getting people to see that parental choice is good, diversity within public education makes sense, and that non-district entities can run schools.???? With that established, the only change offered by vouchers is making private schools eligible players in the system. ????Think of it this way:???? Pick any big city in America nowadays and there are countless organizations running public schools????????and some of those groups are brand new and/or largely unknown.???? Does it really make sense to ban, say, the Catholic Church????????a well-known organization with a long track record of operating great schools????????from also running a public school?