Obama's "Way-to-Go, Brownie!" Moment?

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 relies on 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. They don't dip only because Klein has "moved the cut score" that is, lowered the level required to pass. In other words, Klein is cheating on the tests.

But media poobahs have fallen in love with Klein, especially the 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. Surprisingly, they don't test so well. 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.

Greg Palast is the father of school-aged twins and the author of, "No Child's Behind Left," included in his New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse. Palast is a Nation Institute Puffin Foundation Fellow for investigative reporting.

Get a signed copy of Armed Madhouse for the holidays for a tax-deductible contribution to the Palast Investigative Fund at www.PalastInvestigativeFund.org

Subscribe to Palast's reports at www.GregPalast.com

Comments

[Gary Stager - Huffpost Blogger]

Very nice piece of work!

[Gary Stager - Huffpost Blogger]

Read my related article here on the Huffington Post - "Obama Practices Social Promotion"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-stager/obama-practices-social-pr_b_151620.html

[mebbi]

Some inaccuracies in Palast's assessment of Arne Duncan:

First, he's not a lawyer; he's been in education since he left professional basketball, first with the Ariel Foundation and then as the Chief Education Officer of Chicago Public Schools. His connection to Obama runs far deeper than college basketball; they are both long-time residents of Hyde Park and have had many dealings over the years that they have both been in public service. Finally, I doubt there's much strain between them based on the Obamas' choice of schools for their children; Sasha and Malia are being educated at the N-12 school that Duncan attended throughout his childhood. It's the natural choice for any parent employed by the University of Chicago, as Michelle was until recently.

When one considers the factual inaccuracies, it's hard to give credence to the speculations and opinions of the rest of the post.

[KQuarksSuperKollider]

It does not matter if it was someone else someone would complain for a different reason.

The changed people did not care about experience when Obama was picking his foreign policy and economic team. Now they are complaining when Obama brings in new blood with a bright young guy who only has 7 years experience with the 3rd largest school district in the country and increased high school graduation rates from 47 - 55 percent in 7 years. When every other top 5 school district has graduation results far below 50%.

[jayburd]

It was, “Heckuva job, Brownie.” Not, "way to go." Who could forget that? It’s also a wildly unfair to compare Brown to anyone Obama might pick.

[KQuarksSuperKollider]

Brownie was head of the show horse circuit comparing the head of the 3rd largest school CEO in the country to Brownie is disingenuous at best.

[gurukalehuru]

Alarmism. Your looking for negative points, not just before someone has taken office and started work, but before they have even been appointed to the position.

[vjoseph]

Right on

[dwillisno1]

When I voted for Obama, I believed he would do things as I believed they should be done in "most of my top 20 priorities", not all. I still believe that. My first disagreement won't lead me to believe he has gone "all Bush and Cheney" on me. He obviously can't please every one's to 20. He may make a few "atta boy Brownies' in the next 4 years. That a far cry from the army of Brownies we now have including Brownie in Chief.

[Tom Joad]

Bill Ayers is a professor of education :) that would give folks something to talk about...

[SEQUOIABISON]

A preemptive strike against a decision that has not been made yet, while it is important for we liberal democrats to inform Obama of the cabinet choices we would like him to make, I think we must show patience and faith in the progressive thinking man we worked so hard to get elected. I believe that no matter who Obama selects, that person will be fully accountable to the president and will follow his policy agenda or look for new job.

[vjoseph]

Hear, hear

[Nonamnesiac]

As bad as Klein would be as Secretary of Education (admittedly awful), Clinton, Gates and Obama's whole economic team all of whom assisted immensely in causing both the financial collapse and the hugest transfer of resources from the poor and middle class to the wealthy (including themselves) by embracing the policies of deregulation, privatization, unbridled free trade and borrow and spend (voodoo economics/­Reaganomic­s/Rubinomi­cs) are even worse.

[Shashi0224]

Okay Nonamnesia­c.......wh­ere have you lived the last 8 years? Have you not seen the destruction of the bush years....you are blaming it on those you list in your post?? Are you kidding?

[Nonamnesiac]

I'm watching the fighting Dems refuse to force the Repubs to fiilibuster bailout reform because the Repubs want to negotiate down the UAW pact. I'm watching the Dems in both Houses join with Repubs to pass the Patriot Acts, the Military Commissions Act, the Bankruptcy Act, the Protect America Act and vigorously support deregulation, Free Trade Agreements, privatization, etc. I've been here watching objectively, not simply blaming the Repubs for actions that could have been stopped with active filibustering. Look at how the Repubs stopped the bailout. The Dems didn't even make them fight.

[waitforme]

I have heard of Klein's shenanigans in New York.
After reading this article, I do hope sincerely that these two are not appointed Secretary of Education. Let's do have the best educator in the U.S. Education is the MOST important job -- next to medical care for everyone.

[45245]

medical care is not a right

[Shashi0224]

It should be.

[pir anha]

this would be a much better article if it were not to blast obama based on speculation in the media, but were to just point out why klein and duncan are suboptimal choices. that information is important.

then i'd point other people at it. as it is, no thanks. too tabloidy.

[Buddy McCue]

I agree. Also, there was no legitimate reason at all to make me picture Cheney wearing a tutu.

[serena1313]

While I admire Palast's investigative journalism work, but considering Obama's critical assessment of NCLB it is difficult to imagine either Duncan or Klein being first in line. Furthermore recent media narratives based on speculation, more-often­-than-not, proved wrong.

Republicans don't want Obama to reach across the aisle. Instead they want to portray him as partisan and uncooperative. Republicans, with the help of their media allies, are trying to intimidate Obama into preserving Bush's business-model education policies. I do not see that happening.

Obama does have the right to consider whomever he wants notwithstanding. Whether Duncan and/or Klein are serious contenders it remains to be seen despite the speculation. So before jumping to conclusions it might be a good idea to wait and see.

After all Obama is not as easily intimidated as the republicans would like, but they will keep trying.

[wonder6789]

"Klein is as qualified to run the Department of Education as Dick Cheney is to dance in Swan Lake."

L -- O -- L ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

[clevelandchick]

Did you contact the WaPo and ask where they got their information? I think it's a bit early to assume that's what he's going to do from one article in the WaPo.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Klein represents the ANTITHESIS of accountability, and the apotheosis of arrogance.

One ongoing example, but telling for its block-headedness and stubbornity:

Klein (an antitrust expert), and his lieutenant, one Jim Liebman (a death penalty expert who knows not from numerical analysis), have pumped and dumped MILLION$ into a "School Progress Report" system that generates grades for schools -- and upon which principals' bonuses are based.

It has been easily proven --repeatedly -- to be... a random number generator.

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2008/09/absurd-nyc-school-grade-system.html