But is our children learning?

Philip Kovacs at Education Week. 2011.

You've heard about the situation in the Newark Public Schools, which have been under state control since 1995 and now, under the imperial control of Governor Christie's proconsul/superintendent Cami Anderson, faces the layoffs of about 1000 teachers or a third of the teaching force as well as of other workers, while Teach For America missionaries (no doubt wearing pith helmets and carrying machetes; see shrill Owen Davis) replace them and in spite of the $40-million budget gap Anderson's local minions reap remarkable rewards. I just wanted to post all these extraordinary links, and note in passing that Newark is getting to be like the Stalingrad of education rephorm.

But in the interests of fairness, I'd like to present the following comment in favor of the layoffs, from a story at www.nj.com:

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last month

As a teacher I think it's a great idea to "trim the fat", so to speak. I work hard for my position and I see other teacher's doing the same things year after year. Other professions are merit based, I think Teaching should be too. We are talking about the future of our Country. What types of people would you like to see fix our nation, slackers or go getters?

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Hey, I'd like to see our classrooms staffed by people who know how to use apostrophes and capital letters, but nobody's asking me.

David Brooks goes to Newark

Really. He was seen. And on the basis of his experience, he's written a little campaign piece on behalf of Newark mayoral candidate Shavar Jeffries.

Jeffries, son of an absent father, his mother murdered by an abusive boyfriend when he was only ten years old, raised chiefly by his grandmother and a community of watchful cooperative neighbors in the city's South Ward, with a big assist from scholarships to Seton Hall [jump]

Superheroes

I'm so opposed to political personality cults that it's almost as crazy as belonging to one; I really want my politicians to have feet of clay—give me Danton over Robespierre and over your precious Marquis de Lafayette too, any time.

So when I first started hearing about Cory Booker, the perfect candidate, coming out of Oxford and Yale as a documentary-film hero to get rid of Sharpe James, the wicked old scoundrel mayor of Newark, New Jersey, I was skeptical: there's no way, I told myself, that anybody this precisely configured is not a corporate tool.

But what the hell? When there's a blizzard he's there in person to clear away the snow, when there's a hurricane he  tours the flood-soaked streets, and now he rescues girls from blazing buildings! So I give up.

And then there's the tortured Batman to Booker's sunny Superman, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, a Dark Knight of the noblest aspirations and the most suspect methods; I expect him to be up to no good and he keeps doing things I approve of, absolutely behind my back. Now, unable to persuade the state legislature to set up the health insurance exchange required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, he's just gone and taken care of it himself. I'll take it!

Ethnic superheroes. From Light-Skinned-ed Girl.