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In my last post, I ranted about this absurd graph presented by Marguerite Roza to a symposium of the New York Regents on September 13, 2011. Since that presentation (but before my post), that graph was also presented by the New York State Commissioner of Education to Superintendents of NY State School Districts (Sept. 26). The graph and the accompanying materials are now part of a statewide push in New York to promote an apparent policy agenda, though I lack some clarity on the specifics of that agenda at this point in time. Because this graph is now part of an ongoing agenda in New York and because critiques by other credible, leading scholars similar to my own but less ranting in style, which were submitted to state officials following the symposium have seemingly been ignored (shelved, shredded, or whatever) I feel the need to take a little more time to explain my previous rant. Why is this graph so problematic? And who cares? How could such a silly graph really cause any problems anyway? Let's start back in with the graph itself.

The new statewide school district for Michigan's worst K-12 schools is being funded by $2 million in private dollars pledged this year, making it the only district in the nation supported primarily by donations, experts said Tuesday. Start-up money for the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) will be held by the new Michigan Education Excellence Foundation. It was incorporated in August, two days before former Kansas City, Mo., Superintendent John Covington was hired to be the EAA chancellor.

There are many excellent public schools in the United States-schools that receive distinguished awards, produce students with perfect ACT scores, and send their graduates to elite institutions of higher education. Yet within these same schools, you can find students experiencing none of these things firsthand, many of them students of color and from low-income families. I know this because I am the superintendent of just such a school, and my school is working hard to erase these divisions.

Earlier this week, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the membership of the Education Reform Commission he promised in his State of the State address in early January. It will be chaired by Richard Parsons, a retired chair of Citigroup, who was once an assistant counsel to Governor Nelson Rockefeller, among other roles. The members include State Education Commissioner John King, the Chancellors of the State and City University systems, the Chairs of the Assembly and Senate Education Committees, and many accomplished and impressive people from the non-profit and higher education sectors. More than a few leaders in public education have remarked, however, on the absence of anyone currently working in a public school or serving on a school board in the state.

"A recent memo [see in post below this one] from The Broad Center (TBC) proposes a series of strategic shifts in the foundation's education programs designed to "accelerate" the pace of "disruptive" and "transformational" change in big city school districts, and create a "go to group" of "the most promising [Broad] Academy graduates, and other education leaders, who are poised to advance the highest-leverage education reform policies on the national landscape.""

This transformation of the New Orleans educational system may turn out to be the most significant national development in education since desegregation. Desegregation righted the morality of government in schooling. New Orleans may well right the role of government in schooling.

As I travel the country, I am frequently asked to identify an urban district where public education is working. My first impulse is to say that public schools everywhere have been hemmed in and harmed by the mandates of No Child Left Behind; one has to look far and wide for an urban district that has managed to sustain a vision of good education, untainted by the federal law's pressure to produce higher test scores every year.

I have neither the time nor the stomach to take on all the mendacity and stupidity that spewed forth from MSNBC's Morning Joe during their education "town hall" on Friday. But I will point out a few low lights. Let's start with this