Obama's "Way-to-Go, Brownie!" Moment? 
By Greg Palast (For the Huffington Post)
    
Has Barack Obama forgotten, "Way-to-go, Brownie"?   Michael Brown was that guy
from the Arabian Horse Association appointed by George Bush to run the Federal
Emergency Management Agency.  Brownie, not knowing the south shore of Lake
Pontchartrain from the south end of a horse, let New Orleans drown.   Bush's
response was to give his buddy Brownie a "way to go!" thumbs up.
        
We thought Obama would go a very different way.   You'd think the studious
Senator from Illinois would avoid repeating the Bush regime's horror show of
unqualified appointments, of picking politicos over professionals.
        
But here we go again.  Trial balloons lofted in the Washington Post
suggest President-elect Obama is about to select Joel Klein as
Secretary of Education.  If not Klein, then draft-choice number two is
Arne Duncan, Obama's backyard basketball buddy in Chicago.
        
Say it ain't so, President O.
        
Let's begin with Joel Klein.  Klein is a top notch anti-trust lawyer. 
What he isn't is an educator.

Klein is as qualified to run the Department of Education as Dick Cheney is
to dance in Swan Lake.  While I've never seen Cheney in a tutu, I have seen
Klein fumble about the stage as Chancellor of the New York City school
system.
        
Klein, who lacks even six minutes experience in the field, was handed
management of New York's schools by that political Jack-in-the-Box, Mayor
Michael Bloomberg.  The billionaire mayor is one of those
businessmen-turned-politicians who think lawyers and speculators can make
school districts operate like businesses.
        
Klein has indeed run city schools like a business - if the business is
General Motors.  Klein has flopped.  Half the city's kids don't
graduate.
        
Klein is out of control.  Not knowing a damn thing about education,
rather than rely on those who actually work in the field (only two of
his two dozen deputies have degrees in education), Klein pays
high-priced consultants to tell him what to do.  He's blown a third of
a billion dollars on consultant "accountability" projects plus $80
million for an IBM computer data storage system that doesn't work.

What the heck was the $80 million junk computer software for?  Testing.  Klein
is test crazy.  He has swallowed hook, line and sinker George Bush's idea that
testing students can replace teaching them.  The madly expensive testing
program and consultant-fee spree are paid for by yanking teachers from the
classroom.
        
Ironically, though not surprisingly, test scores under Klein have flat-lined.
Scores would have fallen lower, notes author Jane Hirschmann, but
Klein "moved the cut line," that is, lowered the level required to pass. In
other words, Klein cheats on the tests.

Nevertheless, media poobahs have fallen in love with Klein, especially
Republican pundits.  The New York Times' David Brooks is championing Klein,
hoping that media hype for Klein will push Obama to keep Bush schools policies
in place, trumping the electorate's choice for change.
        
Brooks and other Republicans (hey, didn't those guys lose?) are pushing Klein
as a way for Obama to prove he can reach across the aisle to Republicans like
Bloomberg.  (Oh yes, Bloomberg's no longer in the GOP, having jumped from the
party this year when the brand name went sour.)
        
Choosing Klein, says Brooks, would display Obama's independence from the
teacher's union.  But after years of Bush kicking teachers in the teeth,
appointing a Bush acolyte like Klein would not indicate independence from
teachers but their betrayal.
        
Hoops versus Hope
The anti-union establishment has a second stringer on the bench waiting in
case Klein is nixed:  Arne Duncan.  Duncan, another lawyer playing at
education, was appointed by Chicago's Boss Daley to head that city's
train-wreck of a school system.  Think of Duncan as "Klein Lite."

What's Duncan's connection to the President-elect?  Duncan was once captain
of Harvard's basketball team and still plays backyard round-ball with his
Hyde Park neighbor Obama.

But Michelle has put a limit on their friendship:  Obama was one of the only
state senators from Chicago to refuse to send his children into Duncan's
public schools.  My information is that the Obamas sent their daughters to
the elite Laboratory School where Klein-Duncan teach-to-the-test pedagogy is
dismissed as damaging and nutty.
        
Mr. Obama, if you can't trust your kids to Arne Duncan, why hand him ours?
        
Lawyer Duncan is proud to have raised test scores by firing every teacher in
low-scoring schools.  Which schools?  There's Collins High in the Lawndale
ghetto with children from homeless shelters and drug-poisoned 'hoods. They
don't do well on tests. So Chicago fired all the teachers.  They brought in
new ones - then fired all of them too: the teachers' reward for volunteering
to work in a poor neighborhood.
        
It's no coincidence that the nation's worst school systems are run
by non-experts like Klein and Duncan.
        
Obama certainly knows this.  I know he knows because he's chosen, as head of
his Education Department transition team, one of the most highly respected
educators in the United States:  Professor Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford
University.
        
So here we have the ludicrous scene of the President-elect asking
this recognized authority, Dr. Darling-Hammond, to vet the
qualifications of amateurs Klein and Duncan.  It's as if Obama were
to ask Michael Jordan, "Say, you wouldn't happen to know anyone who
can play basketball, would you?"
        
Classroom Class War
It's not just Klein's and Duncan's empty credentials which scare me:  it's
the ill philosophy behind the Bush-brand education theories they promote. 
"Teach-to-the-test" (which goes under such pre-packaged teaching brands as
"Success for All") forces teachers to limit classroom time to pounding in
rote low-end skills, easily measured on standardized tests.  The transparent
purpose is to create the future class of worker-drones.  Add in some
computer training and - voila! - millions trained on the cheap to function,
not think.  Analytical thinking skills, creative skills, questioning skills
will be left to the privileged at the Laboratory School and Phillips Andover
Academy.
        
We hope for better from the daddy of Sasha and Malia.
        
Educationally, the world is swamping us.  The economic and social
levees are bursting.  We cannot afford another Way-to-go Brownie in
charge of rescuing our children.