Can't Stop the Tide: Same Sex Marriages and Gay Vice Squads

The culture wars dictate that there must be losers.

In the battle over same sex marriages, the losers try to dictate what others must do. In this case, those folks who love each other and who want to solidify lives together. We're not talking civil unions here, we are talking equals before and under God.

I, like most of us who grew up in the Black Church, was taught to fear what I really didn't know. For many of my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, growing up in a small town African American community outside of Chicago--Southern Baptist inflected--in the tumultuous 1960s and '70s and being a man in love with another man or a woman who adored another woman was tantamount to existing as a social pariah, or worse. One false move, like a side-long glance at a bar or showing affection for a beloved in the privacy of your own backyard, might mean certain death.

Forty years later what has changed? Not much, really. This past fall the New York City Police Department, posing as gay men, harassed and shut down gay hang-outs.

NOW FOR THE TRIUMPH: On the other hand, Sean Penn, 'a courageous heterosexual American,' brought life and hope to his portrayal of Harvey Milk in "Milk."



So, why all the fuss about same-sex marriage? Back in my youth, the lives of the "losers" could be erased in the blink of an eye because of the people they loved--just like the lives of black people during the early part of the Twentieth Century or Jews in Nazi Germany.

Those of us who moved and escaped the "programming" of those years can claim to be more enlightened, but where are my other heterosexual brothers and sisters who are standing up against the bigotry in our time. The Prop 8s or hate ministers in the Mega-churches?

Humanity dictates that lives are sacred: all lives, all the time. No matter how bleak, no matter how black, no matter...

Today the culture wars rage on Fox News while people are huddling under viaducts with not enough to eat, sleeping in tents year 'round. W-villes. With the race-baiting, gay-hating, loser-rama's on parade, the Anne Coulters, Rush Limbaughs, and anybody that dares to take on the toxic asset that is the Republican Party circa 2009, the flood waters of history are beating against the levees of those who want to deny equality--again. Can you hear me Michael Steele? Even the extreme religious far right is beginning to moderate. They don't want to be on the wrong side of history for eternity. WWJD?

We can no longer tolerate the bigotry of those who wish to stop Humanity's rushing tide. This is not agitprop or an Obamatron talking here. It's hard to respect people who get into office by becoming turtles when the world needs giraffes, especially when all are not considered full members of the human race.

Water's rising. Can't stop, can't stop, can't hold back that rising tide.

ROLAND BURRIS: THE POST-CIVIL RIGHTS BLACK MAN BLUES

Burris is no idiot. In fact, he's crazy like a fox.

Roland Burris is right in line with the other "grabbers" in Chicago and Illinois politics. Burris sees an opportunity and he's going for it. What else would a 71 year old man want from a political career that was the envy of many but also dull, dull, dull.

Roland Burris is acting out a REVENGE OF THE NERDS psychology that will have people talking about him long after this end game has played out. Burris never had that as Illinois Attorney General or as Illinois Comptroller. This is his moment in the national spotlight, his fifteen minutes of fame in DC. It must have burned his hide to see an uppity upstart like Barack Obama become a US Senator and then President-elect of the United States.

Like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights era Black men, Burris sees what was denied him rather than what he effectively laid the groundwork for by being the first African American elected to statewide office.

Burris is through with playing the good Negro and now is going after what is "rightfully" his.

Is he deluded in accepting Blagojevich's offer? Absolutely!

Will he back down now that he has the national spotlight? Hell No!

Get the popcorn ready, Marge. This week is going to be good watching.

BLAGOJEVICH AND BURRIS: WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN?

This past week I tuned into the press conference given by Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois when he named Roland Burris to be his choice to fill President-elect Barack Obama's recently vacated U.S. Senate seat.

The scene played out like a comic opera. Blagojevich looked shifty and like the canary who ate the catbird. Yep, that odd.

Even though it seems like everybody except the Pope has asked Blago to re-sign for trying to sell that very same senate seat in question, the Illinois Governor is within his right to appoint a successor to Obama before next Tuesday when the other U.S. Senators are seated--representative Bobby Rush's feeble race politics comments aside.

I have one word: Unbelievable.

I must admit, I miss watching the drama that is Chicago and Illinois politics. This is proving to be a tremendous boon for bystanders, Republicans, and people who love politics as theater. It shows how broken our political system is.

The long and short of it is: Roland Burris should be seated. Not because he is Black. That would be ridiculous, like seating someone because they are white or male or have a pulse (anybody seen Dick Cheney lately?).

Roland Burris should be allowed to take the seat that Governor Rod Balgojevich is appointing him to because Blagojevich is a sitting governor of the state within the fifty United States of America (that would be Illinois) and it is in his US Constitutional rights to be able to appoint a person of his choice to the vacated seat. He has not been convicted or impeached of anything.

Now, I'm no Blago fan nor do I fault Burris' for accepting the nomination from the disgraced governor; however, the rule of law is the most important part of this scenario.

Therefore, it does not matter what the fifty senators want that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid claims will be against any choice of Governor Blagojevich or even what a popular President-elect wants. Actually, it doesn't actually matter what the people or legislature from the State of Illinois wants. The legislature should have moved to impeach Blagojevich before they left for their Christmas Break. Now they must deal with the consequences of their hesitation.

Governor Rod Blagojevich is in his right to appoint and the Illinois Secretary of State, who is against the appointment, must certify Burris's nomination. Ironically, the Secretary of State is also another well-respected African American politician.

It's a brilliant in your face, F**K YOU to the people of Illinois from their governor, but it is legal and perfectly Illinois. It's Chicago politics at its theatrical best. Happy New Year, Land of Lincoln!

So, what are we teaching our children?

The rule of law and process.

WILL THE REAL SECRETARY OF EDUCATION PLEASE STAND-UP?

So, what will Arne Duncan do as President-elect Barack Obama's Secretary of Education? Like Obama, Duncan has been known to straddle the middle of the road.

George Lucas's Edutopia proclaims::

Arne Duncan has a type of personality that Obama seems to prefer, which is a pragmatist who will bring about change, but he'll do it in a way that will minimize confrontation in conflict," says Jack Jennings, president of the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy. "He's brought about change in Chicago, but it hasn't been a head-on clash with the teachers' union. He's done it in a way that they all walk away from the table congratulating each other."

Even though the Progressives have claimed Obama as their own, Obama's true colors are beginning to slowly seep out. In actuality, Obama is as a hard driving pragmatist. I'm not sure what others will say about him, but the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. said, "He's (Obama) a politician and I'm a minister. He is anaswerable to the people while I am answerable to God." Perhaps the real world needs a realist these days. In fact, it would be great to have access to Obama as he shifts and changes into Bill Clinton--with or without the libido--who needs to stay firmly left of center, rather than far left, to get his policies past.

Why All the Fuss (About the New Secretary of Education)

As the last article that we posted around the selection of the new secretary of education, Barack Obama's choice in a chief of America's educational system will be hotly scrutinized. Obama is playing his true intentions close to the vest largely to see how the media may play out the possible choices.

You can probably rule out all of the front runners, including Linda Darling-Hammond, the Stanford University Professor, Arne Duncan, the City of Chicago's school chief, and Joel I. Klein, who is the Chancellor of New York City public schools. Why would these folks not be considered in the running for this much contested role? Since Barack Obama does not like being second guessed or figured out when it comes to education, he and his team of rivals will pick a relative unknown for the seat.

Picking an unknown for the Secretary of Education would indicate that President-elect Obama wants to break away from the expectations that come with this crucial hire. While Senator Ted Kennedy is still alive, Obama would be unlikely to whole-sale dismantle No Child Left Behind. Kennedy was one of the movers and shakers behind the first NCLB law.

Obama is no idiot. He knows that the law is badly damaged. With all of the talk of accountability, the law is not having the intended effects that people wanted, which was to have all students working at grade level within the next four to five years or else risk having nearly all the nation's schools on the dreaded "watch lists," and eventually taken over by the state governments, which would be worse.

Because lawmakers make laws--rather than educate children--the unintended consequences of having so many of the nation's children in failing schools looms large.

This is why the next education czar will have her hands full. Oops! Did I give it away?

Obama will pick an unknown to lead the nation's K-16 schools because that person can wield her power outside of the glaring eye of the critics in and out of the educational reform movement. The person selected will have a great deal to do with little to no money in which to do it, which makes this position like the Wizard of Oz.

Hey, now that's not a bad idea. Perhaps Rod Blagojevich can pull some strings.

Uncertainty on Obama Education Plans--By Sam Dillion

(from The New York Times, Sunday, December 14, 2008)

As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to announce his choice for education secretary, there is mystery not only about the person he will choose, but also about the approach to overhauling the nation’s schools that his selection will reflect.

Despite an 18-month campaign for president and many debates, there remains uncertainty about what Mr. Obama believes is the best way to improve education.

Will he side with those who want to abolish teacher tenure and otherwise curb the power of teachers’ unions? Or with those who want to rewrite the main federal law on elementary and secondary education, the No Child Left Behind Act, and who say the best strategy is to help teachers become more qualified?

The debate has sometimes been nasty.

“People are saying things now that they may regret saying in a couple of months,” said Jack Jennings, a Democrat who is president and chief executive of the Center on Education Policy in Washington. “Unfortunately, they’re all friends of mine, which makes it awkward.”

Some of the toughest criticism has been aimed at the person Mr. Obama appointed to lead his education policy working group, the most important education post of the transition: Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University.

Dr. Darling-Hammond is liked by the teachers’ unions, and partly for that reason has been portrayed as an enemy of school reform by detractors. These have included people who have urged Mr. Obama to appoint Joel I. Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, or Michelle Rhee, the schools chancellor in Washington, as education secretary. Both of them have clashed with teachers’ unions.

Editorials and opinion articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have described the debate as pitting education reformers against those representing the educational establishment or the status quo. But who the reformers are depends on who is talking.

Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, used different terms in discussing the debate.

Dr. Fuller said it pitted “professionalization advocates such as Darling-Hammond,” who believe the policy emphasis should be on raising student achievement by helping teachers improve their instruction, against “efficiency hawks like Klein and Rhee.” The efficiency hawks, he said, emphasize standardized testing, cracking down on poor school management and purging bad teachers.

“It’s tough love without any love,” he said.

Dr. Darling-Hammond has become a controversial figure partly because of her longtime criticism of Teach for America, the nonprofit group that recruits college graduates to teach for two years in hard-to-staff schools. She says the group loses too many recruits at the end of their two-year commitments, just when they are learning to teach.

Teach for America has no official preference for or opposition to any candidate, said Kevin Huffman, a spokesman for the group.

But an organization called Leadership for Educational Equity, which was founded to help former members of the Teach for America corps become involved in politics, has photographs of Dr. Darling-Hammond, Mr. Obama and Mr. Klein alongside an article on its Web site with the headline, “Education Secretary Fight Could Affect Teach for America’s Mission.”

The article notes that Dr. Darling-Hammond “has long been a vocal critic of Teach For America,” and it urges the group’s alumni to make their views on the candidates known.

Mr. Obama has given no hint of his own leanings.

Arne Duncan, the chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, may have an edge. Mr. Duncan is a longtime friend of the president-elect and has closed failing schools and improved achievement without alienating the teachers’ union. The superintendent of Denver Public Schools, Michael Bennet, who has enacted a plan to reward effective teachers with higher pay, has also attracted the transition team’s interest.

Mr. Klein and Ms. Rhee, as well as former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and several current and former governors, have also been considered, a member of the transition team said. Mr. Powell has said publicly that he is not interested.

One former Teach for America official who has been outspoken is Whitney Tilson, a New York mutual fund manager.

In a recent blog entry, Mr. Tilson said of Dr. Darling-Hammond, “She’s influential, clever and (while she does her best to hide it) an enemy of genuine reform.”

Mr. Tilson is on the board of Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee based in New York.

The group sent the Obama transition team a 43-page memorandum shortly after the election with policy advice and a “wish list” of candidates for secretary that included Mr. Duncan; Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America; and Jon Schnur, who started a nonprofit group, New Leaders for New Schools, that trains principals for urban schools, said Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform.

Mr. Williams said his group also liked Mr. Klein and Ms. Rhee. “We’d be thrilled,” he said, “if either one were named secretary.”

The two national teachers unions have also been active. The National Education Association has not formally endorsed anyone but has discussed candidates with the Obama transition team, indicating some candidates who would have the union’s support, said John Wilson, the executive director.

The American Federation of Teachers presented the Obama team with written evaluations of a string of candidates without endorsing any of them, said Randi Weingarten, the union’s president. “We have no candidate in the race,” Ms. Weingarten said.

But last week she publicly praised Mr. Duncan in an interview with The Associated Press. “Arne Duncan,” she said, “actually reaches out and tries to do things in a collaborative way.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Who Will He Choose?--By DAVID BROOKS

As in many other areas, the biggest education debates are happening within the Democratic Party. On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.

During the presidential race, Barack Obama straddled the two camps. One campaign adviser, John Schnur, represented the reform view in the internal discussions. Another, Linda Darling-Hammond, was more likely to represent the establishment view. Their disagreements were collegial (this is Obamaland after all), but substantive.

In public, Obama shifted nimbly from camp to camp while education experts studied his intonations with the intensity of Kremlinologists. Sometimes, he flirted with the union positions. At other times, he practiced dog-whistle politics, sending out reassuring signals that only the reformers could hear.

Each camp was secretly convinced that at the end of the day, Obama would come down on their side. The reformers were cheered when Obama praised a Denver performance pay initiative. The unions could take succor from the fact that though Obama would occasionally talk about merit pay, none of his actual proposals contradicted their positions.

Obama never had to pick a side. That is, until now. There is only one education secretary, and if you hang around these circles, the air is thick with speculation, anticipation, anxiety, hope and misinformation. Every day, new rumors are circulated and new front-runners declared. It’s kind of like being in a Trollope novel as Lord So-and-So figures out to whom he’s going to propose.

You can measure the anxiety in the reformist camp by the level of nervous phone chatter each morning. Weeks ago, Obama announced that Darling-Hammond would lead his transition team and reformist cellphones around the country lit up. Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford, is a sharp critic of Teach for America and promotes weaker reforms.

Anxieties cooled, but then one morning a few weeks ago, I got a flurry of phone calls from reform leaders nervous that Obama was about to side against them. I interviewed people in the president-elect’s inner circle and was reassured that the reformers had nothing to worry about. Obama had not gone native.

Obama’s aides point to his long record on merit pay, his sympathy for charter schools and his tendency to highlight his commitment to serious education reform.

But the union lobbying efforts are relentless and in the past week prospects for a reforming education secretary are thought to have dimmed. The candidates before Obama apparently include: Joel Klein, the highly successful New York chancellor who has, nonetheless, been blackballed by the unions; Arne Duncan, the reforming Chicago head who is less controversial; Darling-Hammond herself; and some former governor to be named later, with Darling-Hammond as the deputy secretary.

In some sense, the final option would be the biggest setback for reform. Education is one of those areas where implementation and the details are more important than grand pronouncements. If the deputies and assistants in the secretary’s office are not true reformers, nothing will get done.

The stakes are huge. For the first time in decades, there is real momentum for reform. It’s not only Rhee and Klein — the celebrities — but also superintendents in cities across America who are getting better teachers into the classrooms and producing measurable results. There is an unprecedented political coalition building, among liberals as well as conservatives, for radical reform.

No Child Left Behind is about to be reauthorized. Everyone has reservations about that law, but it is the glaring spotlight that reveals and pierces the complacency at mediocre schools. If accountability standards are watered down, as the establishment wants, then real reform will fade.

This will be a tough call for Obama, because it will mean offending people, but he can either galvanize the cause of reform or demoralize it. It’ll be one of the biggest choices of his presidency.

Many of the reformist hopes now hang on Obama’s friend, Arne Duncan. In Chicago, he’s a successful reformer who has produced impressive results in a huge and historically troubled system. He has the political skills necessary to build a coalition on behalf of No Child Left Behind reauthorization. Because he is close to both Obamas, he will ensure that education doesn’t fall, as it usually does, into the ranks of the second-tier issues.

If Obama picks a reformer like Duncan, Klein or one of the others, he will be picking a fight with the status quo. But there’s never been a better time to have that fight than right now.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

The New Secretary of Education: Colin Powell or Linda Darling-Hammond?

How important is the Secretary of Education? Some would say, "Not very."

The last two chiefs of education, Ron Page and Margaret Spellings, were noted more for pissing off the teachers' unions rather than for any policies that they authored or advanced.

Of course, these past eight years will be known for its Everest-like failures and monumental divisiveness in education (and just about everything else) rather than promoting the cause of education as a surefire way to advance through the American caste (err...) class system.

Once upon a time the goal of our educational system meant advancing through the various rungs up the ladder one rickety step at a time. It wasn't always easy, but somehow men and women, boys and girls, and children of all ages were better for their tenacity and perseverance. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." (I'm still not quite sure what the heck this means.)

Although with the election of Barack Obama to the highest Office in the land, the thought is that he'll pick a smart guy like him. (Is there any sarcasm in that last statement?)

As a result, women's groups are banding together like never before to stop the egg-headification of the Obama's male inner circle. (Now, is that anti-intellectual or anti-misogyny? Does one trump the other?)

No matter what, the Secretary of Education will have an uphill battle to reform another national system that is nearing collapse. It's less fingers in a dike and more trying to fill up the Grand Canyon with a baby's spoon.

So, who will President-elect Barack Obama pick for his Secretary of Education? One name that has surfaced and been bandied about quite a bit is Colin Powell. Powell's most notable gig was as Secretary of State, which arguably is the most coveted and complicated cabinet level position there is.

Why would Powell want to take flier on this "no win" of a job? One could argue that he'd like to redeem himself for the dabacle of selling the second Iraq War to a nation of people with bumper-stickers that said things like "These Colors Don't Run" or "United We Stand" or "Bomb Them Back into the Stone Age."

Furthermore, why would Powell want to run this massive and dysfunctional do nothing department, a place with people that have been the scourge of teachers, parents, unions, and school administrators alike?

According to many sources, the Secretary of Education will be known as a reformer because she or he will have to put a considerable amount of thought into making the miserable No Child Left Behind (or No Child Left Untested) law work. This will be a very hard task for any rookie cabinet appointee elevated to Washington's power elite. Therefore, a choice like Linda Darling-Hammond, the noted Stanford University professor and educational advisor to candidate Obama, may get short shrift because she just doesn't have the kind of chops in the bureaucratic nightmare that is big time Washington politics.

What are some of the important decisions that the next Secretary of Education will have to make?

More on that next time.

Savoring the Undertones and Lingering Subtleties of Obama’s Victory Speech ~ By BRENT STAPLES

[from http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/savoring-the-undertones-and-lingering-subtleties-of-obamas-victory-speech/]

Like many great orations, Barack Obama’s victory speech on Tuesday night was deceptively simple. As powerful as it was to hear, the hidden complexities and import of the president-elect’s words surface only after we re-read the text and think back on the moment.

A confirmed fan of Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Obama drew on another flawless speech, the Gettysburg Address (pdf) (“a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from the earth”), while also celebrating both the inherited majesty of the Democratic process and his own achievement — the broad coalition that elected him.

He echoed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ( “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’’) when he praised the electorate for rejecting the rhetoric of fear and for “ put[ting] their hands on the arc of history and bend[ing] it once more toward the hope of a better day.’’

But this remarkable speaker had more on his mind than classical citations. Woven through his address was nothing less than an attempt to broaden the meaning of America’s founding documents - and its living democracy - by expanding the list of the people who come to mind when Americans think of “the Founders.’’

This mission is evident in the opening stanza:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our Founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

By this he meant to include the many men and women — Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King — who have worked and sometimes died in the fight to extend the full rights of citizenship to people (African-American and female) who were initially denied them. He implicitly credited these women’s rights and civil rights giants with working to create a more perfect union.

In other words, he was including the white fathers — but not only them.

The speech recognized Thomas Jefferson and the framers of the Constitution. It leaned heavily on Lincoln, who orchestrated a second founding by reuniting a sundered nation through the Civil War and pointing the country toward the abolition of slavery.

Still, Mr. Obama knows full well that neither Jefferson nor Lincoln ever “dreamed” of an America in which a person of African descent would ascend to the highest office in the land.

Jefferson, like many of his most influential contemporaries, hewed to the idea that black people would be forever set apart from their fellow citizens. Had it been in his power, black slaves would have been trained, set free, and sent to live apart in Africa or the West Indies.

Virginians took this notion seriously. Seven years after Jefferson’s death, for example, the state legislature conducted a special census to determine if free people of color would agree to leave the state and be resettled in Africa. Among the Negroes who declined to go were Jefferson’s long-time slave and lover Sally Hemings and Jefferson’s two Negro sons, Madison and Eston Hemings.

Paradoxically, Sally, Madison and Eston Hemings had more white than black ancestry — and had actually been counted as free white people in a previous census. But like many people of color in that period, they found that membership in the majority was tenuous and easily revoked. Leaving Virginia for Ohio after their mother’s death, Madison and Eston found their rights as citizens increasingly curtailed.

Lincoln, too, believed in colonization. Speaking to a group of black dignitaries in 1862, he argued that blacks and whites could never live together harmoniously and said: “If this be admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.’’ He argued for colonization in a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation, which began circulating that same year. But the passage was dropped from the final version after Lincoln failed to find political support for it.

The proclamation was a tactical military document, forged in heat of the Civil War, that was intended to improve the Union’s chance of winning. It ended slavery in the states that were in rebellion, while preserving it the border states that had sided with the Union and other areas that were under Union control. Even so, the final document (pdf) allowed that emancipation was “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution.’’

Slavery was abolished with the ratification of 13th Amendment in 1865. But it took another 100 years — and more work by a subsequent set of Founders — before black Americans and women could fully claim the rights articulated in the founding documents.

That claim had yet to be fully exercised in the summer of 1963, when Dr. King delivered the “I Have a Dream Speech” at the March On Washington.

As Dr. King said at the time:

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

Some listeners heard hints of grandiosity in Mr. Obama’s assertion that this election proved that “the dream of our Founders is alive in our time.’’ But he was clearly referring to the founding ideals as they were improved upon and transfused through subsequent generations of founders who, like King, worked toward the “more perfect union” that Lincoln himself had talked about.

Mr. Obama’s moment would not have been possible without the interventions of those latter-day founders.

Who Will Obama Pick as Secretary of Education? ~ By Kathleen Kingsbury

[reprinted from http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1857195,00.html]

As Barack Obama begins to assess his potential picks for his cabinet, Secretary of Education is not one of the positions you would necessarily expect him to focus on first. But American parents especially may wish to study up on the possible candidates. After all, if Obama's campaign proposals are to be fulfilled, Margaret Spellings' successor could oversee a dramatic $18 billion overhaul of the nation's public education system over the next few years.

Whoever gets the spot, Obama's new Ed chief should expect to face a huge test right off in the contentious reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind act, considered to be one of the first priorities in Congress come January. Down the road, he or she can also plan to direct the founding of hundreds of new charter schools and the spread of universal pre-K nationwide, as well as a continued focus on increased accountability and a better trained teacher corps.

So whom will President-Elect Obama tap for this enormous task? That announcement isn't expected until at least early next week. But here's a look at some of the presumed contenders.

JOEL KLEIN

Current position: New York City schools chancellor

Why he could be tapped: In New York, the former Clinton appointee has distinguished himself as a keen reformer under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. An attorney by training, Klein has also shown himself adept at working with unlikely partners — union leaders as well as the Rev. Al Sharpton — and is a major proponent of charter schools, a keystone in Obama's education agenda.

Why the job will go to someone else: With Bloomberg recently getting the OK to seek a third term as mayor, Klein may prefer to stay put and finish the job of reforming New York's 1,500 schools.

LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND

Current position: Top Obama education adviser

Why she could be tapped: Her day job is professor of education at Stanford, but for the past year, she has been a key voice defining Obama's positions on issues such as school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity.

Why the job will go to someone else: Darling-Hammond is not popular among education reformers, particularly those to the center-right. That's because her views on issues such as merit pay vs. teacher tenure are more conventional than even Obama's. So if the President-elect really wants to shake things up on the education front, Darling-Hammond won't likely be his choice.

ARNE DUNCAN

Current position: CEO of Chicago Public Schools

Why he could be tapped: Like Klein in New York, Duncan has made a name for himself as a reformer in a big city, accomplishments candidate Obama highlighted several times on the campaign trail. He's also a close friend and basketball buddy of the President-elect. And unlike Darling-Hammond, Duncan could represent a more neutral selection.

Why the job will go to someone else: A Duncan nod could risk upsetting Chicago mayor Richard Daley, a vocal advocate of the Chicago schools' chief.

JAMES HUNT, JR.

Current position: Former governor of North Carolina

Why he could be tapped: As governor, Hunt focused attention on one of Obama's key schools proposals: expanding early childhood education, especially to low-income and minority children. He also worked hard to improve teacher quality, testing innovations in this area of perpetual struggle for American schools. On the federal level, he recently served on Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education.

Why the job will go to someone else: Hunt has not been especially outspoken on how to expand charter schools and other alternatives to traditional public schools, which appears to be a priority for the Obama team.

JANET NAPOLITANO

Current position: Arizona's governor

Why she could be tapped: Once considered a contender for Obama's VP slot, Napolitano has signed legislation boosting elementary education in her state, including an initiative to guarantee full-day kindergarten throughout Arizona. She also co-chaired a panel called Renewing Our Schools, Securing Our Future, which in 2005 recommended a $325 billion increase in federal education spending over 10 years.

Why the job will go to someone else: Term limits prohibit Napolitano from running for governor again in 2010, making her a potential — and popular — candidate to vie for Arizona Sen. John McCain's seat in that year's election. She has also been mentioned as a possible pick for Attorney General in the Obama administration.

COLIN POWELL

Current position: Former Secretary of State in the first Bush Administration

Why he could be tapped: Since leaving the State Dept. in 2004, Gen. Powell and his wife Alma founded America's Promise Alliance, a group dedicated to improving the well-being of the country's young people. The non-profit has been especially strong on finding a means to combat the country's dropout crisis. Plus, Powell made a high-profile endorsement of Obama in the final weeks of the campaign.

Why the job will go to someone else: On the day after Obama's Nov. 4 victory, Powell told reporters that he has not been asked nor does he plan to return to government service, preferring to instead leave the new Cabinet open to a younger generation.

THE TOP THREE: EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES OVER THE NEXT EIGHT YEARS

What an election season this has been. We are faced with major challenges over the next eight years. Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama have made their closing arguments for why they each should be elected. Neither, I believe, has made the case for educational policies that would be any different than George W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

The last two terms of the Bush administrations have been a boon to the textbook and testing companies by promoting an ill-conceived and ill-executed educational policy--No Child Left Behind--which underscores the inherent problems with most of the Bush era policies, foreign and domestic.

The Clinton years were not any more successful in helping school-aged children. Indeed, the school accountability movement got its legs under Bill Clinton's administration. School Choice found voice, teacher and student "competencies" became a mantra, and religious acceptance in schools became issues from 1993 to 2000. Teachers, students, and schools have all suffered under the yoke of failed policies, and no matter who wins on Tuesday, we may be in for more years of grandstanding.

Perhaps George W. Bush needs to be pilloried the most for this failure (let's all pile on) because he ran on a platform of being the "Education Candidate" in the 2000 election. Yet, with 9/11, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the only education the nation received was in war and failed policies, both foreign and domestic. We are in sad, sad shape as a country because of failed ideology, Realpolitik. We are desperate for leadership and vision rather than just rhetoric and cult of personality.

So, what should our top three educational initiatives be in the next eight years with regard to education?

1.) REPEAL NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: Great idea in theory but lousy execution. This law should be buried and schools should be given a pass on what it portends and pretends to be. No equity and justice, no peace.

2.) SCHOOLS AS CENTERS OF STRENGTH: Using K-12 schools as educational Centers of Strength (see the Harwood Institute for descriptions here). Schools should be at the center of our collective thoughts. Current and future leaders who understand the processes of their community should be given more weight during these next four years. It's important to have our working and successful schools become models to follow rather than being broad-brushed and dismissed as not working. Most schools work and work well.

3.) INCREASE SPENDING FOR EDUCATION: More schools need to be created, more teachers must be inducted into the profession, and higher rates of pay should be given for effective teachers and administrators (where testing is only part of what gets rewarded). We should also look at ways of creating consistent professional development opportunities for teachers and other school personnel so that we look at school work as closely as scientific exploration.

Remembrance: What Can I Do To Make This Happen?

On the 40th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death, a friend sent this video to me from the Barack Obama for President website. I know that we have a moral obligation to do better and be better as a people and a nation. Hope is not something that one person possesses. It is shared. In fact, hope is no good unless it is shared. Hope without vision is just a dream.

So, how can a dream become reality.

I would much rather be a nation where the people are filled with hope rather than cynicism. I would much rather be nation that puts more emphasis on the next generation rather than on our current one. Finally, I would much rather be a a nation of believers rather than "can't sayers" or "haters," which begs the question...

What can I do to make this happen?

Hillary on the High Road? By BOB HERBERT

(reprinted from the New York Times February 23, 2008)


A referee would stop the fight. Hillary Clinton is exhausted, and her supporters are becoming increasingly demoralized. The candidate who tried to present herself as inevitable has been out-maneuvered nearly every step of the way by a prodigy with a warm and brilliant smile who still seems as energetic as an athlete doing calisthenics before a big game.

Texas and Ohio and several other states still have to vote. But there was a wistful quality and a strong hint of resignation in Senator Clinton’s voice at the end of the debate Thursday night when, after saying she was “honored to be here with Barack Obama,” she added:

“Whatever happens, we’re going to be fine. We have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we’ll be able to say the same thing about the American people.”

Mrs. Clinton said later that she had not become pessimistic about her chances to win the democratic presidential nomination. But her words were an unmistakable echo of John Edwards’s remarks last month when he ended his campaign in New Orleans.

Just a few months ago, the prevailing wisdom in the world of punditry was that the Obama campaign was in trouble. Senator Clinton was enjoying a huge advantage in fund-raising and big leads in national polls.

A pair of headlines placed side by side on the front page of The New York Observer in October said: “Aaaaugh-bama!” and “Clinton Campaign Gets in Gloat Mode with $27 Million.”

Senator Obama, according to the conventional wisdom, was too soft. His call for a new kind of politics was naïve. And quietly, behind the scenes, the widespread view was that he couldn’t get enough white votes to secure the nomination.

No one outside the Obama campaign was paying much attention to the disaster for the Clintons that was already taking shape in Iowa.

There’s nothing like the terra firma of hindsight. Senator Obama, it turned out, was a far more gifted candidate and strategist than many of us gave him credit for. And Senator Clinton, for all of her command of the issues, was mediocre, at best, on the stump. He was the inspirational leader. She remained the wonk.

And then there was Bill. It was an article of faith that Senator Clinton’s campaign had a built-in advantage: her husband was the smartest Democrat of them all. But when you think about it, Bill Clinton was never much of a benefactor for others in his party.

When he took office in January 1993, Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. Less than two years into his presidency, the Republicans swept to majorities in both houses, putting Newt Gingrich in line to become speaker. A New York Times article at the time described Democrats in the House as “disoriented.”

When Mr. Clinton left office in 2001, the Republicans were still in control of Congress, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment had opened the door to the era of George W. Bush.

The former president’s less-than-magic touch in Senator Clinton’s presidential campaign contributed to her devastating defeat in the South Carolina primary. He’s been kept more or less under control since then.

You can analyze the Clinton campaign every which way from sundown. But I suspect that the senator’s biggest hurdle from the beginning was the unforgiving nature of time. The tides of history change. Some of Barack Obama’s young and most fervent supporters were just three or four years old when Bill and Hillary Clinton were joined by Al and Tipper Gore for a remarkably successful bus tour through eight states to kick off their campaign against George H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle in 1992.

The Clintons and the Gores seemed the embodiment of youthful promise, of change, and that turned the country on. Their campaign theme song was Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop,” with the crucial lyric, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”

Barack Obama, who is 46, the same age that Bill Clinton was on that bus tour, has managed in his campaign to make the Clintons seem the embodiment of yesterday. “Something better awaits us,” he told a cheering crowd after his victory in Iowa, “if we have the courage to reach for it.”

Senator Clinton’s options are not officially closed. But to have any chance at all, she would need a sudden startling string of prodigious victories against a candidate who is better-financed and riding a tremendous wave of momentum.

At the debate on Thursday night, Senator Clinton, who is 60, passed on a number of opportunities to harshly criticize Senator Obama. She refused to say that he was not ready to serve as the nation’s commander in chief. And she suggested that she does not intend to pursue a ruinous fight for superdelegates at the Democratic convention.

She seemed like someone unwilling to sacrifice her dignity or the interests of her party in an attempt to stave off a likely defeat.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Does Cheating Really Matter?: Clinton Campaign Charges Obama with Plagiarism

For most English teachers, like me, plagiarism is tantamount to kidnapping, which is the latinate root that it comes from. Did Barack Obama plagiarize Massachusetts's Governor Deval Patrick's campaign speech?

See for yourself...



YES!

Is it "not that big a deal"? At least that is what Barack is claiming. After all Patrick and Obama are good friends. After all, what's a few lines lifted from your friend's speech without attribution.

It's a HUGE deal. Not just for anal English teachers like me but for all Americans. It's not just about kidnapping other people's words, but it's about being perfect and humble and not believing your own press, or the cult of personality that is building around your campaign. What Black people know is if you want to win in the dominant culture, you have to play an almost flawless game. It's not the pursuit but the attainment of perfection. It's being twice as good. The rules are different. Sad, but true.

This could be a very big deal in the weeks and months to come, especially as we get closer to the Democratic Convention finish line.

Ultimately, it's about character. Damon Bruce is a sports talk radio host here in the Bay Area. He has a saying at the end of his show that is apropos to this campaign season, which is "sports don't teach character, it reveals it." So, does politics.

ORAMA 08' Youth Make Their Case for Sticking with Mitt

Even though he is gone, Mitt Romney is not forgotten. This falls into the category of: "You won't have Mitt Romney to kick around anymore."

The Democratic Process

On Tuesday, February 5th, 24 states will hold primaries, caucuses, and state conventions to determine the number of delegates that will be elected to the national conventions this summer. The two main political parties in this country, Republicans and Democrats, will then choose a nominee at their respective conventions who will in turn square off against each other in a national election in early November that will determine who will be the next President of the United States. After Super Tuesday, the Democrats will elect about 54% of its total delegates and the Republicans will select around 41%.

Okay, that’s Civics 101, but what do you tell your children about the elections and this seemingly endless process, if anything?

Well, please do engage with them in talking about “the process.” It’s a truly an amazing and wonderful way of electing one of the world’s most powerful leaders that often gets lost by talking about the individuals and the acrimony. I resist telling my own children who I intend to support, but I do spend a fair amount of time talking about the country as a whole and educational policies in particular.

I do this for two reasons. First, we as a nation must get away from the winners and losers mentality that makes politics just another sport. Will Hillary put Barack in his place? Has Bill overstepped his bounds? Will McCain and Romney win the ultra-right wing support of the Republican Party if Mike Huckabee drops out? All of these “ripped from the headlines” kinds of questions dilute the real issue of the marvel of this peaceful (and convoluted) process that is the envy and (sometimes) scourge of the world, especially when it is rammed down the throats of other nations and people. Second, we owe our children, many of them who have never experienced the kind of political upheaval that other children in the world have experienced, an explanation about what process truly means.

A few years ago, I was invited to a symposium at the Castanoa Retreat Center in Half Moon Bay by the Harwood Institute to discuss civic engagement. In off election years, particularly in underserved communities, people depend on certain organizations as beacons in the night to get them and their children through the storms that they encounter every day. A contingent of leaders from the Agassi School, including myself, along with other “Centers of Strength” in Las Vegas were invited to discuss issues relating to poverty, education, and social services. Our goal was to just talk about our process. How did we do what we were supposed to be good at? How did we build a school out of thin air and create a (then) $60 million endowment in less than ten years to keep the school running for forever? Finally, how did we get people to feel less silo-ed (i.e., isolated) from the process of civic engagement?

In short, the answer was what Jane Addams at Hull House did so fabulously well. It was to provide her community with highly process-oriented choices. Addams (1860 – 1935) collaborated with a great many people and made Hull House a Center of Strength in the City of Chicago at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Hull House provided young immigrant women in Addams’ “Settlement House” not just a community but a way to advance themselves beyond their present circumstances by engaging deeply in Democratic principles. Hull House had a library, gymnasium, swimming pool, Chautauqua’s (which is like the Berkeley Extension School—or adult education—today), and much, much more. Hull House is the model for Progressive Schools because it explicitly taught Democracy.

So, what does that have to do with you, your children, and the Democratic Process?

Understand that Presidio Hill School is our Hull House, of sorts, allowing children and parents the opportunity to engage in process driven work and ideas that will carry them far beyond their current circumstances. You can discuss the issues that are important to your family because even as early as kindergarten your children are discussing “big ideas” at school related to Democracy. Find ways to engage them in process-oriented work that underscores the democratic principles of vision, collaboration (rather than service), and sacrifice. Again, Progressive Education does teach a specific kind of engagement and is activist in its origins.

One small way that we at PHS give back and are in collaboration in our community is by being a polling place on Election Day. Truly, we are so limited and constrained by space that having one more box in our school is a hardship. However, having PHS as a Polling Place teaches a subtle yet powerful message, which is we at PHS care deeply about the Democratic Process. It also says that we care about our city, State, and country. Patriotism is not always about flag-waving and bumper stickers, but it is about making sure that we are a part of the process in a small but symbolic way.

Ghandi, King, and Mother Teresa were all activist in the Democratic tradition. Yet, their greatest strengths as leaders involved the processes that gave people hope, a sense of wonder, and the ability to transform the lives of others by bearing witness to the work they did in collaboration with others. In the end, that is what we do, that is what distinguishes us as a school, and as a community.

Bill on Obama: Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Stay out of the race.

It seems that Bill Clinton is getting it from all sides. Bill the Clinton has been all over the country stumping for Hillary and setting the record straight. To the point where Barack Obama retorted at the CNN Congressional Black Caucus Institute debate on Monday evening (1.21.08), "Sometimes I don't know who I'm running against."

Senator Obama's query is certainly justified. Rarely does a former president take sides in the primary election, usually letting the events before the party's convention play themselves out. Today's Chicago Tribune's editorial (1.22.08), "President Heckler," makes the case that Bill should keep his mouth shut, indicating that the former President always did have a problem with restraint.

Can you blame, Bill? Before Hillary teared up in New Hampshire and "found" her voice, she needed help--a great deal of it. Out came the big guns. Enter Bill Clinton, stage right, in full Lady MacBeth regalia.

However, now that Hillary has regained her frontrunner status, do we need to hear Bill being oh so un-presidential and slinging the mud.

The Clinton's have been known for their fierce loyalty to each other, even in the face of infidelity and other acrimony. It's all about the power. Just win baby.

The Clinton's have also been known for their equally vociferous destruction of the opposition. For them, politics is a blood sport (think 2007 New England Patriots and Mike Tyson chomping Evander Holyfield's ear).

When Barack Obama talks about wanting a change in business as usual in Washington, DC, he is speaking directly to and about the Clintons.

So, where does this leave us, the voters? Well, we watch and we wait, looking for one of them--Bill or Hillary--to slip up on the slippery rocks of presidential politics, waiting for the O'Reilly's of the world to pounce. That's what David Axelrod, Obama's chief political strategist, is banking on.

As a result, Bill and Hillary Clinton have to play Barack's game. It's the audacity of hope, baby.

The Clintons have been baited into giving up their "win at all cost" and "destroy your opponent" game because, in the end, they will need Barack's support and supporters to have a snowball's chance in hell of beating the Republicans in November. If Barack doesn't win the Democratic nomination outright, he won't be anybody's number two. His ego is way too big to allow that. So, he'll be a power-broker of a different sort.

So, again, where does that leave us?

Unfortunately, as one reader of this blog observed, the Democrats are squandering their best chance of winning the most winnable election they have had in more than a generation.

Thanks, Bill.

Barack Obama at Ebenezer Baptist Church on January 20, 2008

The cadence is not exactly King-like, but Barack Obama, on Dr. King's birthday, captures the essence of King in talking about the substance of hope in a speech that he gave in the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church: Martin Luther King's Church (both senior and junior). Ebenezer was Dr. King's church for most of his career as a Civil Rights leader.

In the end, Obama's speech is more Lincoln-esque than King-like in the theme that it tackles: Unity.

The biggest complaint against Barack Obama is not that he's inexperienced, per se, but that he's short on ideas. I'm not sure if the speech at Ebenezer changes that perception. What he does do for the very first time in the campaign is light a small fire under the core of the national African American electorate, perhaps save the remaining lions of the Civil Rights Movement.

Why such a small fire for people who want to trust and follow him? Why such a small fire for a people who want to be excited and ignited?

Some people would say that Obama has kept Black people at arms length. However, exhorting Black people to take responsibility for themselves, more of a Bill Cosby theme rather than a King one, gives Barack Obama a different dimension than other African American presidential candidates and leaders in the recent past. He tells Black people what they must do rather than what others must do for them.

It's why most African American Civil Rights leaders have been luke-warm to Obama's candidacy. He refuses to strike the same refrains that Civil Rights leaders have struck since King's death. King's "promissory note" and "insufficient funds" are the stuff that Barack avoids on the stump and in the pulpit at Ebenezer. Obama's "fierce urgency of now" is to join him and elect him because there will not be a him without a broader us.

At the very end of his Ebenezer Baptist Church sermon, Obama tells a story of a young white worker in his campaign, Ashley, which explains all you need to know about Barack Obama.

For most of Senator Obama's speech he has had the flights of oratory that hearkens the Kennedy (both JFK and RFK) rather than King, yet when he mentions Ashley, people seem a bit more skeptical about where Barack intends to take them next.

Would King have advanced a trope like Ashley into one of his speeches? Probably not. You could hear a pin drop in Ebenezer because Barack is leading them home to where he wants to go.

Ashley's story is about self-sacrifice. She has gotten Black people mobilized in South Carolina since the start of Obama's campaign. It's not just him, as Barack states, that people want to follow. It's the hope that an Ashley feels from his candidacy, which elevates her out of the degradation of poverty, eating mustard and relish sandwiches while her mother struggled with cancer when she was nine years old.

It's not exactly what Black people want to hear at the end of the speech where Barack has had them in the palm of his hands, but it is, I suspect, why so many white liberals embrace Barack's candidacy. He speaks to them. He certainly speaks to a number of Black folk, too. But has he convinced them yet. Has he convinced all of us.

In this house divided, only time will tell.

---

A Dream Deferred: Dr. King's Mountaintop Speech

The greatest speech that Dr. King delivered happened just two days before his death. King was a pretty defeated man by April 1968, understanding that his time in this world was nigh. He was the prophet predicting his own demise.

The Memphis Sanitation Worker's strike gave King a bit of a bounce in his step, while he was preparing for the Poor People's March on Washington, the site of King's greatest triumph up until that time. Yet, King took a moment in the Memphis march during what would be his last campaign to fire up his peaceful warriors.

Dark days were ahead, and King was beyond worrying. He had given all he could to advance a movement in the South to finally rip the chains from the sharecroppers and children of sharecroppers where he grew up and cut his teeth as a young preacher. Although the North gave King the money he needed, he saw intense opposition to his own opposition to the War in Vietnam. King's fiery furnace phrase, "I don't fear any man" was less a taunt to his would-be killer(s) and more a challenge to the people who would pick up his historical mantle of direct yet radical non-violent movements four decades later: Us.

In my estimation, politicians are not these peaceful warriors--sorry Barack Obama. High-flying and churchy oratory aside, the next people's leader will come from the fields, jungles, or forests of the developing nations rather than the halls of our current version of the House of Lords, also known as the US Senate.

The new Kings are leading their people in second and third world nations where the grassroots movements can halt the scythe of dictators, industrialized nations, multinational corporations, and time.

There will never be another King in our nation, I fear, because we are all too much in and of this world.

Caveat Emptor

I sometimes engage in lengthy discussions on other blogs, especially about Progressive education and politics. This entry came from http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2008/01/07/a-dangerous-distraction/#comment-315177, a site that I am having a great deal of fun at:

I think what Barack Obama represents is a new sense of connectedness to politics that many Americans are experiencing. It’s as if he offers a bit of a reprieve from the learned helplessness we’ve experienced under Bush. (I’m not convinced I’ll vote for him, mind you.) The actual changes he can make are uncertain.

Boy, I couldn't agree with you more. People forget that politics is more about feeling sometimes (JFK) and less about how someone can operate the system (LBJ). It's the beauty of Obama's candidacy and the danger of it. We are all waiting to be inspired and each of last week's Iowa Caucus winning candidates, Obama and Huckabee, are raising people's pulse rates a bit. Of course, we need to put both men through the fire, so to speak. Not even Progressives should be let off the hook. We should also avoid sound-bite politics and try to understand what they are saying and who are behind them. Who is Obama's Karl Rove? David Axelrod. I think that David Axelrod has a very checkered past in Chicago's politics. Caveat Emptor, my friends. Caveat Emptor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Axelrod_(political_consultant)