Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, well why not?

Only someone who knows how dysfunctional the DC government is would have the wherewithal to try to pull this one off.

Allegedly, convicted (but now released) "drug kingpin" Cornell Jones landed a sweet deal -- via a non-profit he started called Miracle Hands -- with the city to renovate a warehouse into a job training center. The WaPo has the details. Sort of. The salient points are as follows:

According to the suit, Miracle Hands submitted false invoices to “wrongfully obtain” $329,653 in grant funds in its agreement to renovate a 14,000-square-foot warehouse at 2127 Queens Chapel Road NE into a job training facility.

The claim is that Mr. Jones received HIV/AIDS funding to build the training center, but instead it became a strip club. Let's leave aside the status of the property and try to figure out what the hell the DC government is doing giving grant money to convicted drug dealers. This guy was sent away for 27 years...he served 9 years of his sentence, then promptly started a non-profit because there are so few worthy non-profits out there that the District was falling over itself to distribute buckets of cash to a convicted drug dealer.

But it gets better. Miracle Hands obtained the grant money most likely because Mr. Jones was a close chum of a D.C. official:

The series also exposed the unopened job training site and the conflict of interest between Jones and Debra Rowe, interim housing chief of the city’s HIV/AIDS program from 2004 through 2008. Three of Rowe’s relatives worked at D.C. Tunnel, a nightclub operated at that time by Jones.

Four years as "interim" housing chief of the HIV/AIDS program? Was the job so crappy that no one would take it? I suppose it has its benefits if you can steer several hundred thousands of dollars to cronies who in turn employ your relatives.

And by the way, this didn't happen under Vincent Gray's watch (corrupt though he may be) or our former Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry. This cavalier attitude toward oversight occurred under notorious bean counter Anthony Williams and his successor, Adrian Fenty, who billed himself as a modernizer who would bring new transparency to District government.

Of course, Fenty was too busy bringing in new untested idiots like Michelle Rhee to worry about corrupt officials already working for the District.

Closed Borders (a follow up)

Yesterday, I wrote about the demise of the Borders Books and Music chain, but I mainly concentrated on my first encounter with what became, for a brief time, a behemoth of books.

As amazed as I was by that first encounter and the idea that it was possible to go into a huge bookstore, sit down in the philosophy section, and browse around for hours without anyone bothering you, I actually tried my best to support local booksellers.

So many of those booksellers are gone. Chapters, which had been on K Street before moving to 11th Street, had tried appealing to its customers for donations of a sort and clung to life for a few years before it had to close up. They had a tremendous selection of poetry, and every April you could I believe buy two poetry collections and get one free. Plus, I saw Brock Clarke read from his first novel, The Ordinary White Boy, one winter night in Chapters.

I mentioned Vertigo Books yesterday. They were in Dupont Circle, just south of the Circle on Connecticut Avenue before relocating to College Park, MD, in 2001. In 2009, they closed for good. Great cultural studies section and interesting authors coming to speak.

How many others? Sisterspace and Books as well as Prometheus Books on U Street. Sidney Kramer Books on I Street (Sidney's son opened up Kramerbooks and Afterwards in Dupont -- still a vibrant place...mainly because of the food and hooking up opportunities).

It's true that DC hasn't been all loss; Busboys and Poets is an addition, but I don't think anyone would argue that the bookstore component could stand on its own...the wait time for a table alone provides an impetus to purchase a book or magazine so you have something to do for the next hour.

Run for the Borders.

What a short, strange trip it's been.

When I was a young lad, oh let's say 19 or 20, I had never heard of this bookstore called Borders. I was from a little town in Pennsylvania, went to a not so little school in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, and was pretty happy with the little bookshop that had recently expanded in the downtown area.

However, visiting friends in Washington, DC, one year in either the late 1980's or early 1990's, sometime between 1989 and 1991 let's say, my one friend told me I had to visit this place called Borders.

There was only one in the area, I think. If I recall correctly it was out in Bethesda or Friendship Heights. Back then, my knowledge of DC geography was very spotty.

I was amazed that a supermarket of books existed.

I think the largest bookstore I'd ever been in to that date was the Ollsson's on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, one of the first casualties in that ill-fated local chain's demise.

Fast forward a few years, and I've moved to DC. I was a graduate student at a school in Foggy Bottom and a Borders opened up on 19th and L. It was a great place to go to kill time before or after class, and of course to buy books, although once I discovered the great local bookstores, I spent less and less time buying books at Borders.

Many of those local bookstores were done in not so much by Borders -- although they played a part -- as by Barnes and Noble, which aggressively moved into DC, and the pressures everyone faced from online retailers like Amazon. Vertigo Books in Dupont Circle was one of my favorites.

I'm pleased that Bridge Street Books in Georgetown -- my personal favorite -- continues.

So now all the Borders will be shuttered. What do we do with these hulking beasts on the periphery of our cities and towns?

I've been out of the life for a while now...

I've been married for something like fourteen years now (and when I say something like 14, what I mean is 14 years and nearly one month), and I've had kids for 11 years, so I don't live the glamorous life of the single on the dating circuit. In fact, when I was single, I still didn't live the glamorous life of the single on the dating circuit.

However, a lot of people do live those lives -- at least the dating part of it -- and they like to blog about it. I mean, why not? It's a central part of being human.

I don't habitually read these blogs, but I do read them on occasion, at least the more well-written ones. I do read DC Blogs, which is a tremendous resource. And on DC Blogs I found a link to Date Me, DC! and a really, I think, important topic: Figuring out just what the hell "No" means. Apparently for some it's a difficult lesson.

To read some relatively popular blogs that have been around a while, "No" is more or less the start of negotiations. Not their preferred start, but still a start and not an ending. Those who disagree either "don't have game" or are "betas." Perhaps.

However, to read Date Me, DC!, it seems like some people might not find it much of a fun game.

Meanwhile, in a serious crackdown on violent crime....

The DC Metro Police have made sure we're all safe from thin men in wheelchairs. Thank God for that. Here's the story from the Post:

In a statement issued Sunday, Metro said the man was spotted Thursday by Metro officers patrolling at the U Street NW Metro station. The statement said the man declined to leave the area and refused to have a citation issued to him, whereupon he was told that he would be arrested.

In that statement Metro said the man resisted arrest, resulting in a fall from his wheelchair. The man was charged with assault on a police officer and drinking in public, Metro said.

Well, that's one perspective. I don't know...I might decline to leave an area if I hang out there often. You see people hanging out around the Dupont Circle Metro all the time. What turns this from everyday police harassment to police brutality is what happens next, despite Metro's obnoxious and ridiculous claim that the man "fell from his wheelchair."

Here's the video from You Tube. The man "fell" from his wheelchair if Metro defines "fell" as "forcibly picked up then shoved to the ground," which isn't exactly the standard definition:



I've talked before about how poisonous the comments sections of most internet media outlets are. This article's comments are no different, with many people -- notably those who self-identify as Virginians (although I have trouble taking seriously the moniker "VATrailerTrash" as an honest self-description) -- acting as though the guy in the wheelchair deserved this treatment or was a symptom of the District's rule by Democrats (apparently because assault on a wheelchair-bound intoxicated man would be a badge of honor if Republicans were in charge?? No, it doesn't make sense to me, either).

The Post of course tiptoes around the evidence in describing the video this way:

At one point in the video, the officers appear to be lifting the man from the wheelchair, and shortly afterward, the officers and the man are prone on the sidewalk. The video shows blood near the man’s head.

Um, it's a continuous motion...there's no "shortly afterward." There's also no "appear," unless you think the whole thing was a staged Pro-Wrestling Affair, with the Metro Police and the man in a wheelchair acting out some street drama. Let's at least report what the video says, and if you are so chickenshit scared of the cops ticketing your double-parked cars on 15th Street, then preface the entire thing with "the video appears to show" -- don't sprinkle the weasel words throughout the description.

It remains to be seen if anyone will give a rat's ass about this thuggery. If nothing else, advocates for the handicapped ought to be putting the heat on the scumbags from Metro. Maybe Jim Graham should take note.

Question to Ponder.

Is the USA still largely racist, or is it more likely that a predominant number of racists post comments on the Washington Post website?

Lost in the City.

I have recently read Edward P. Jones's Lost in the City. It's an amazing book, and it makes me miss DC in so many ways. The funny thing, though, is that the text itself misses DC -- the neighborhoods and communities it invokes are largely gone, done in by either riots or urban renewal.

The opening story is a good example. "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons" tracks a girl and her father in a neighborhood that has been completely razed to make way for various DC and Federal agencies, including DCPS. The story takes place in the final years of the neighborhood, as family after family abandon their homes for someplace else -- either the suburbs or another neighborhood safe from the rumors that the railroad (an industry also in decline whether it knew it then or not) will be taking over their property soon.

So there's great loss in terms of communities, and the characters are lost to themselves in a city that for many of them remains safe only on the neighborhood level.

Lack of recognition.

Washington, DC, is many different towns, which sounds trite, but the most important aspect of that concept is that people outside of the District metropolitan area do not recognize DC as anything more than a symbol of the federal government.

In this world view, homes and neighborhoods don't really exist in DC. The District government is a joke, side show acts, like The Players in Hamlet, or maybe like the mock government some people played at in high school. People in DC work for the government, lobby the government, contract with the government, or don't work at all.

In part, it's not a terribly wrong impression, since DC so often becomes the plaything of itinerant powergrubbers who are completely unanswerable to the subjects on whom they conduct their experiments. However, it certainly passes over the lives of most residents of DC, who don't spend much of their time thinking about the federal government, or politics for that matter, except in the sense that everyone else in the US thinks about those things. Sure, it rankles to have no representation in Congress when you have a complaint or an issue, but it's not the sort of thing that creeps into your daily conscious state as you're trying to catch the L2 so you can hit the Safeway for groceries before it gets too late.

I should be thinking more about this bifurcated urban identity. The city as lived experience and the city as imagined space, in particular as tourist destination. London, New York, and Paris may be tourist destinations as well, but people talk about the experience of the cities. I don't know if people visiting DC think about it as a city so much as they think of it as a collection of monuments and museums.

"The time has come to set aside childish things..."

At that point in the speech, G.W. Bush put down his Nintendo DS and looked sheepishly about...

So long, it's been good to know ya.

You know, in the rush of the national elections I forgot to thank the DC Republican Party for ensuring that Republicans would be completely unrepresented on the DC Council. In their urge for ideological purity (actually idiot-illogical purity), they kicked long-time Councilmember Carol Schwartz off her own party's ticket because -- for all her faults -- she seemed to understand that working people deserve benefits like health care.

Schwartz was the only Republican to be able to mount a credible challenge to the winner of the Democratic mayoral primary, which after all is when DC's mayor actually gets chosen. Of course, it was because she wasn't a knee-jerk reactionary that her party know-it-alls soured on her and elevated Patrick Mara in her place...except he couldn't get enough votes to make council. And running as a write-in, neither did Schwartz.

Talk about self-immolation.

It's good to be Queen.

When will DC Council get it through their heads that when you are Queen, you don't answer summons from the commoners?

I seriously don't understand where DC Council gets off trying to have Chancellor Rhee or Victor Reinoso appear in front of them. They ceded authority when they handed over control of the schools to the mayor, despite all evidence that the mayor and his team (chiefly Victor Reinoso) couldn't even put together their own plan for running a school system. If there's one thing I make sure my freshmen composition students know how to do, it's cite sources, because plagiarism is simply wrong.

This is the same city council that approved the hire of an individual with three years of classroom experience and no education degree to run one of the more high-profile and disfunctional school systems in the country.

Here's Rhee, in her own words, talking to Fast Company, a magazine that was born and should have died extolling the "rule-changing" tech boom:

Rhee has been outspoken about the low value she places on appearing before the council. In the September issue of Fast Company magazine, she described watching council hearings on television: "There's this crazy dynamic where every agency head is kowtowing. They sit there and get beat down. I'm not going to sit on public TV and take a beating I don't deserve. I don't take that crap."

The arrogance is astonishing, but Rhee has taken a calculated gamble that this city council will roll over for her, and so far she's been correct. Her most intense opposition comes from Councilmember Barry, and she correctly dismisses that as non-threatening, since his own credibility is severely compromised in this town. Who will step up and put his or her political capital on the line to stop her?

Vincent Gray? Hmm...does it advance his political aspirations to appear annoyed but in the end not seriously challenge Rhee's lunacy? A: Yes.
Jim Graham? Please...
Kwame Brown? Mr. Brown likes to talk, but that's about it.
Jack Evans? Sure...The Developer's Best Friend has two reasons to let Rhee run amok: her failure reflects poorly on Fenty, therefore increasing his own influence AND his developer backers are dying to get their hands on public property that DCPS controls.
David Catania? No. DCPS and DC's children can all die quietly in the name of fiscal responsibility.
Carol Schwartz? (because she will beat that right-wing Republican as an independent) Possibly, but doubtful.

OK, I'll stop. It's too ludicrous to go into the remaining members (Mendelson, Bowser, Cheh, Alexander, Thomas, Wells). OK, maybe Mendelson, because he has a habit of putting obstacles in the way of steamrollers, but like Barry, he would have trouble garnering support or public interest in his opposition.

Crossroads.

If you're interested in witnessing the beginning of the end of public education in the District, follow closely Michelle "Wrecking Ball" Rhee's so-called "Plan B" as detailed in the Post today. Frustrated that union leadership hasn't rolled over and played dead (for a change), Rhee has made plans to make the union irrelevant through some sort of murky process she's afraid to discuss publicly, or as the Post says,

What she calls "Plan B" involves a more aggressive use of powers she already has and that are not subject to contract negotiations with the union. These could include strengthening the existing system of annual personnel evaluations that spell out procedures for terminating teachers.

Uh huh. Well, I have news for the Post and Rhee: unless this union is entirely brain-dead, personnel evaluations are covered in some way under the contract (read: not necessarily named as such but certainly connected to some procedure that will tie up her machinations in knots). The Post also notes that the state board could gift-wrap Rhee a package including a maneuver that would create an extra licensing procedure based on classroom performance, effectively telling teachers that their current credentials are good enough to teach in all 50 states of America, but not in the colony known as the District of Columbia.

Rhee doesn't need extra-special powers to get rid of bad teachers; she needs good managers. Unfortunately, she doesn't have them and isn't likely to get too many more of them given the fact that not too many of the stellar national candidates whom she claims to be recruiting for principalships bothered to apply to DC, where they're promised one year contracts and the ability to be fired without cause.

I just about laughed out loud when I read this choice tidbit from the article:

Rhee's ultimate goal is clear: to weed the District's instructional corps of underperformers and remake it, at least in part, with younger, highly energized graduates of such alternative training programs as Teach for America, where she began her career. Unlike many tenured Washington teachers, those emerging from such programs are unlikely to invest their entire working lives in education. But they will, in Rhee's estimation, be more inclined to embrace her core message: that children can learn no matter what economic and social conditions they face beyond the classroom, and that teachers should be held directly accountable for their progress through test scores and other measurements.

Laughing to keep from crying as they say. Let me proceed in bullet-point style on the ludicrous arguments and presuppositions put forth here:

• Rhee's ultimate goal is not to staff the District with Teach for America products; that's called a means to an end. The ultimate goal is to break the teachers' union.
• Teach for America grads are no more likely than traditional education majors to be highly energized and motivated fresh out of school. The fact is that most of them burn out -- that's why they're "unlikely to invest their entire working lives in education" (which for Rhee apparently is a bad thing: to think that dedication to craft would be a negative...)
• Most insultingly, Rhee behaves as if veteran teachers and teachers who don't follow her program of "at-will, no cause" majesterial dictation somehow don't believe that all children can learn. In fact, this point is too important for mere bulleting, so I'll elaborate below.

On that third bullet: Rhee has used from her midnight appointment the rhetoric of "all children can learn." Well, no shit. However, in deploying that rhetoric, she is of course implying that her critics don't believe that. Sort of like the Bushism that if you were against the Iraq Boondoggle you were somehow a supporter of Saddam Hussein. It gets even more insidious when she uses it to gloss over the fact that research has held for decades -- decades I tell you -- that social conditions impact learning, or to put it a bit more bluntly: if Johnny spends his afternoons hanging out, his evenings dodging bullets, and his nights watching the late late show, he's less likely to be prepared for Tuesday's spelling quiz. Doesn't mean he can't learn. Doesn't mean he won't learn. However, it does mean he will have more obstacles put in his way than little Jimmy, whose parents work with him on his homework, get him to bed well fed and early, and check up with his teachers (none of which by the way will guarantee little Jimmy is a genius, but odds are he'll do better in school).

Oh, and kids who think Rhee's two-tier system is a good idea...please understand that once the union's gone, you can kiss all those merit bonuses good-bye, because the foundations won't be interested in funding them...Rhee's job will be done...you will have a chance to get reacquainted with Mr. Ramen and have home meals prepared by Chef Boyardee.

Random image.

Couldn't even stay away a month...

I was down at the NGA last weekend mainly trying to find a place to read where I wouldn't be bothered before I headed over to some friends on Capitol Hill who were putting me up for the night, since, after all, this was my first trip back to DC as a visitor rather than a resident in 15 years.

After a bit of reading and a little consternation that the movie that day, Antonioni's Deserta rossa, didn't start until 4:30 and would last until 6:30, therefore ruling out my being able to watch it, I decided I should really try to see something while at the gallery. For the past eight years it's been an incredibly rare opportunity that I've been at any museum without at least one child dragging me off long before I wanted to go, and you have to take advantage when you can. So I wandered into the West Wing to take a look at the Martin Puryear exhibition.

Puryear is from D.C., although his artistic materials seem more suited to some rural farm -- lots of rough wood and mesh enclosures that reminded me of chicken pens -- although highly stylized chicken pens. Some of the pieces are remarkable. I enjoyed the scale of the Desire (pictured at top of page, and hopefully you see what I mean about there being something rustic about the whole contraption. It almost seems like one of those old style threshing set ups but broken down to minimal form and shifted components. Very beautiful in my opinion.

I got my gallery fix in, but I couldn't help wishing I had a little more time to see the Antonioni film and maybe even the concert they generally have on Sunday evenings in one of the west wing atriums, staples of our pre-children days. Afterwards it was off to Capitol Hill and a delicious dinner with a little wine and lots of conversation -- after all, DC schools opened the next day and my hosts have a third grader -- and oh yes a little more reading.

Dropping the veil.

My my my it's been a busy few weeks.


Let me let you in on a little secret.


I'm leaving the District of Columbia. Lighting out from the territories, if you will. To a bona fide state, or at least a commonwealth, and I'm not talking about that nasty place across the river.


When I first moved here in 1993, to the lush semi-suburbs of Woodley Park, I had no intention of staying a decade, let alone 15 years. Last year I had no intention (or at least prospects) of leaving. But chance rolls the dice.


I was a young lad then, not exactly strapping, but young nevertheless. I worked a night job at a university and trudged home winter nights after the Metro had closed and before I understood -- or cared to understand -- the bus system, stopping briefly at KramerBooks to browse the literature and philosophy sections as I warmed up for the big walk up the hill and over the Taft Bridge.


Then it was Logan Circle, where my roommate and I would watch the prostitutes chatting up the line of johns in their cars stretching down N Street by the all night gas station. That's when the Circle itself was nearly deserted except for the homeless and dealers and 14th Street's main features were the Black Cat and Barrel House Liquors.

Finally, I settled in Adams Morgan when I tell you -- and I kid you not -- a spacious two-bedroom with a beautiful westward view could be had for $850/mo utils incl... The Diner was an auto supply store, those red brick Adams Lofts, whose architecture I think was inspired by the Holocaust Museum, were nothing more than a surface parking lot, and Club Heaven was still playing some of the shittiest music ever recorded.

Let's give thanks for the good things...El Tamarindo, Astor Mediterranean, the recently departed San Marco (which beat the pants off Pasta Mia), The Common Share, Idle Times, DCCD, Crooked Beat, walking to the Zoo, biking anywhere else...

I suppose I could post a more general lamentation about the death of the District's independent and used bookstores...Kultura, Neil's, Vertigo, a basement place on U Street between 15th and 16th whose name escapes me now, Chapters (though they claim they're not closed...). Fortunately, we've still got Bridge Street Books, Idle Times, and Second Story.

Movie theatres, record stores...you know the run down. Hats off to the Biograph, the Key, the Janus, and the savior of all tight graduate student budgets, the Foundry.

OK.

Well, I'm not shutting down shop quite yet, but I'm not sure what the future brings.

Until next time...

Somewhere in Newark, Clifford Janey is smiling.

DCPS has released test scores indicating marked improvement on standardized tests this year. It's great news for a system so maligned that the citizens of DC have given up any sort of representative oversight over it. As expected, Chancellor Rhee and Fenty are trying to take credit for the gains, despite the fact that system-wide education reforms rarely take hold in less than ten months, which is roughly the time between Rhee's taking office and the students' taking the standardized tests. It didn't even bother Rhee that she'd hedged her bets on taking office, claiming that gains wouldn't be seen for three to five years:

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said the initial results demonstrate that the approach she used in her first year in office is working. Rhee said previously that she did not think test scores would receive a bump from her initiatives for a few years. [WP]

Well, it could be that scores are receiving a bump because she has introduced no academic initiatives: the curriculum in place -- and to a large extent the methodology -- is a product of Clifford Janey's reign as superintendent, which coincidentally just happens to have begun...umm, September 2004...oh, about 3.5 years before those standardized tests.

As superintendent, Clifford Janey ditched the old curricular standards and adopted some of the toughest in the nation (including the Massachusett's standards...and unlike Victor Reinoso, Janey openly admitted he was using those models); he replaced the old Stanford-9 test with the DC-CAS; and he laid it all out in a "Master Education Plan." That plan is still in place, and Reinoso hasn't had the chance yet to scribble out Janey's name and put his own on it. You can actually still get Janey's plan off the DCPS website.

As the Post article also notes, one possible cause for a jump in scores is that students are getting used to the new test:

In 2006, the number of schools achieving proficiency dropped, which officials and outside experts said then was an expected byproduct of administering the new, more difficult D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS). It replaced the Stanford 9, which used multiple-choice questions and tested students on national standards.

Then-Superintendent Clifford B. Janey introduced the DC-CAS exam, which requires students to give short responses. It was part of an effort to upgrade instruction by aligning testing with new learning standards.

School system officials said yesterday that this year's gains resulted in part from programs that accustom students to the DC-CAS format.

As with most of life, test gains and losses are never cut and dry...you can't standardize life. So it's really distressing to see Chancellor Rhee pretending that her reforms -- which only a month ago she and Fenty were claiming were largely facilities related and had little to do with academics -- are the cause:

"We made every one of those decisions because we felt that this is what was needed to happen . . . so achievement can be maximized. I fully believe we will see the upward trajectory as long as we're making the hard decisions," Rhee said at a news conference at Plummer Elementary School in Southeast Washington, where reading scores jumped 17 percentage points and math by 15. In the 2007 academic year, the reading scores rose by two percentage points and math by six.

"I wasn't expecting to see such large gains early on," Rhee said. "It's a testament to what kids can do. I believe the children in the District of Columbia can achieve at high levels."

I don't know what's worse...the idea that she's trying to equate her "hard decisions" of closing schools and firing high-achieving principals with increased test scores, or her empty platitude about what kids can achieve. I challenge anyone out there to show me a school chief who doesn't throw out some bone about "believing the children can achieve at high levels."

OK, I do know what's worse: it's trying to take credit for results that surprised the hell out of you because you spent the entire length of your tenure so far trying to distance yourself from the test results...in other words, you truly believed scores would be stagnant or just plain lousy.

However, if your goal is simply to improve standardized test scores as opposed to improve the education of children, then you can get a boost from full-time test prep...

The best news of course is that scores have gone up; unfortunately, many of those responsible for such improvements have been fired by Fenty or Rhee.

Sad.

I ride my bike every day in the District, and much of the time I've got one kid on a child's seat behind me and one kid pedaling in front of me. That's why when I read about bicyclists struck by automobiles, I get a creepy feeling.

This morning, Alice Swanson was hit and killed by a garbage truck at 20th and R Streets NW. That's only a few blocks from my daughter's daycare, a few more blocks from my son's school. Most days I ride through the 19th and R intersection, just one block away.

I've been hit on my bike a few times, although never seriously (except for a bike-to-bike head on collision when I was in 8th grade that required surgery...) and with one exception, never in the District. You always have to be aware of traffic, because you know most drivers don't pay enough attention to bicyclists, motorcyclists, or pedestrians; however, you're always trusting that they're paying enough attention to avoid flattening you. Sometimes, being aware of traffic isn't enough.

And while it's always in the back of your head, it's moments of extreme violence that force you to understand again how fragile the frame and wheels are, how exposed you are sitting on top of them.

The death of any cyclist brings our own vulnerabilities into focus. Although I didn't know her at all, I am deeply saddened by Alice Swanson's death.

Another popped seam, another look at the Chancellor's New Clothes

A little while ago, I mentioned the fraud that was the Rhee Regime's slogan of "aggressive national search" for principals for the DC schools. Well, the Post has finally gotten around to looking into the actual data from the recent round of principal pools and has come up with some unsurprising numbers:

About two-thirds of the more than 700 applicants were from the surrounding suburbs or already working for the school system, according to figures provided
by the chancellor's office. It's not a surprising result. The city offers no relocation assistance to principals, according to application information on the D.C. schools Web site. And as "at will" employees, there is no guarantee that a job would last for more than a year.

So the principals class of 2008-09, which officially began work last week, looks decidedly local. Along with Taylor and Jordon, new hires include Terry Dade, a former Fairfax County teacher taking over at Tyler Elementary in Southeast, and Maurice Kennard, an assistant principal at Walker-Jones Elementary in Northwest hired to head the new Francis-Stevens Educational Center in Foggy Bottom, which will offer pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.

Of course, if you were a high-performing principal in a good situation in your own district, would you really want to come to a system where the chancellor appears to be offering no job security even for employees who do good jobs? Would you trade a system of checks and balances for an imperial chancellory, where courtiers curry favor and your employment prospects hinge on who you know rather than how you perform? Probably not.

And it's not as if Rhee doesn't know better. Her old organization, the New Teacher Project, actually put out a policy paper on principal hiring. Apparently, Rhee didn't bother to read it.

If you really want a laugh (or a cry) you should check out the chart on page four of the report...the "model principal hiring process." Apparently, principals shouldn't be hired in rush jobs, where you announce a vacancy on a Friday and scoop together a panel to interview candidates on a Saturday eight days later.

Only if they're smoking Rhee-fer...

Borrowing another classic move from conquerors everywhere, Chancellor Rhee has proposed a contract that would essentially split the Washington Teachers Union into two opposing camps. She proposes a "red" track that would maintain a traditional contract based on tenure and seniority with modest pay increases and a "green" track that would end seniority and tenure and offer far greater financial incentives in return. In other words, those green tier employees would trade their collective bargaining rights and long-term stability for the possibility of a big payday. Here's how the Post describes it:

Under the proposal, the school system would establish two pay tiers, red and green, said the union members, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential. Teachers in the red tier would receive traditional raises and would maintain tenure. Those who voluntarily go into the green tier would receive thousands of dollars in bonuses and raises, funded with foundation grants, for relinquishing tenure.

Wait...how will those bonuses and raises for the greenies be paid for? Oh, foundation grants...well that's interesting. So the money's not actually budgeted for Rhee's promises, but is rather tied to the whims of outside foundations. The three foundations that the Post names are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, and the Broad Foundation; none of the foundations cared to confirm that story.

The Broad Foundation is a big player in the public schools these days, having bankrolled the New Leaders for New Schools among other para-educational organizations, and according to Susan Ohanian, their education initiatives skew heavily toward business-oriented concerns and involve a good bit of log-rolling:

According to the Broad Foundation website ( http://www.broadfoundation.org ), its plan is to "redefine the traditional roles, practices, and policies of school board members, superintendents, principals, and labor union leaders to better address contemporary challenges in education." Broad's deep pockets mean it gets to define those challenges. Follow Broad money: A pattern emerges of business and foundation money moving in on local elections. Founder Eli Broad was influential in getting the Los Angeles superintendency for former Colorado governor Roy Romer, and it's no coincidence that the Broad Foundation gave its first urban ed prize to Houston -- with Rod Paige at the helm. A tight circle of backslapping and influence peddling reigns.

Nice. But let's assume nothing but good intentions from these foundations (Dell? OK, it's a long shot, but let's suspend disbelief...). Are these grants given in perpetuity? Or until DC can come up with its own funds to pay for the bonuses, which according to the Post could potentially raise a "mid-range" teacher's salary from 62K to over 100K?

Or maybe these grants will last long enough to bust the teachers union.

At any rate, the Washington Teachers Union will have to be smoking plenty of Rhee-fer to go along with this plan, for the following reasons:

1. The union will essentially cease to function as a union once differentiated salary tiers go into place -- the groups will be divided against one another and will no longer have mutual interests and goals, which is precisely Rhee's intention.
2. The "green" tier teachers will no longer have job security. While Rhee pays lip service to things like rewarding excellent performance, her track record with the employees she now has power over (for instance, the principals) indicates that excellent performance reviews are no guarantee that you will keep your job.
3. Her plan to pay for bonuses through grants means there's no guaranteed source of funding for these promises...which of course makes it of a piece with most of her other promises, or as they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle.

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No accountability.

I'm leaving aside for now the completely disgusting tactic used by the Catholic Church to offload their education mission on the DC taxpaying public, all the while reaping a nice little tax free rental income, thank you very much.

Let's start with the "Education Mayor" and his flunkies. Fenty and his flunkies have known since last fall that the Catholic Church was looking to do what other private foundations have been doing for several years now: dip into the public coffers in the name of charter schools. In fact, as the Washington Post reports -- in a surprisingly critical piece -- it was yet another example of empty promises from the education wing of Fenty's regime:

Victor Reinoso, deputy mayor for education, indicated at the time that the city clearly understood the implications of the archdiocese's announcement: "We will take it into consideration as we plan future budgets," he said.

That never happened.

District officials disclosed last week that they are still looking for the money to finance the schools, a sum that could come to as much as $16 million this year. They have told the nonprofit operator, Center City Public Charter Schools, that its first quarterly payment from the city -- due by July 15 under District law -- will be delayed.

Brilliant. Loyal readers should know Victor Reinoso's name: he's Fenty's "Deputy Mayor for Plagiarism," or as he's colloquially known, the deputy mayor for education. Still, a toothless DC Council approved his nomination last summer...

Reinoso and Rhee are cut from the same cloth: say what's expedient at the moment and forget about the follow-through. As with Rhee's empty promises to Benning Elementary, Reinoso's assurances are merely meant to placate and defer the inevitable moment of truth.

Not exactly a wise way to run a school system.

And maybe the D.C. Council is finally starting to take notice that it's not necessarily a good thing to offload your authority and oversight and hope for the best:

The Center City application touched political nerves on the council, which has grown increasingly concerned about its lack of control over a charter school sector that now costs the city more than $360 million a year. Earlier this month, Gray and D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) introduced legislation tightening the regulation of charter schools, including a mandated 15-month planning period before newly approved schools open.

Really? You think maybe $360 million a year of public money going to private organizations is something you should be concerned about, Councilmembers Gray and Wells? Well, thanks for the brilliant insight. Maybe you should perk up before Rhee finishes the job.