Life Imitates Art

I thought I was writing parody when I did that GBN piece reporting that Klein was looking to the Haiti earthquake as a model for destroying the NY city schools. But now a serious news story reports that Arne Duncan is saying that Katrina was the "best thing" for the New Orleans schools.

I figured I've either got to stop writing stuff that they not only take seriously but copy, or I've got to set my sights higher than the NYC DOE and see if Arne will hire me to work for the Feds.

In that vein, I asked Diane Ravitch on the NYC education news listserv: "If you ever meet with the guy [Duncan] again, maybe you could mention it? On the other hand, it doesn't sound like he listened to you, so as Gilda Radner used to say, "Never mind!"

Her response: "You have to stop circulating your stuff to the US DOE. Keep it close to the vest. Everyone is looking for new ideas, and you are consistently out there on the cutting edge. Maybe you could suggest to Joel and Arne that the latest and best idea, the one that catapults you to the head of the civil rights movement, is to save public education, not destroy it. And you are right: He didn't listen to me!"

Joel and Arne: Are you listening?