OK, the indictment. Where to start? Well, let’s start with the obvious: 2.5% is a really great rate on a jumbo mortgage.
Also, don’t do crime. Don’t do crime if you’re a leader in education. And also don’t do crime while wearing your signature yellow hat. It will feature in the indictment for sure. There will be pictures. From the indictment:
d. Based on my involvement in this investigation, I have learned that the Yellow Hat is essentially ANDREW’s “calling card.” The Yellow Hat signifies a tie to School Network-1 and his leadership of it. Indeed, the Departure Email answered the question “Who, [in light of ANDREW’s departure from School Network-1] will wear the Yellow Hat?” The emailed answered, “we ALL wear the Yellow Hat!” Publicly available photographs of ANDREW often depict him wearing the Yellow Hat.
Democracy Prep statement here. Not exculpatory.
The reactions today – and a lot of emails blowing up – range from, WTF?, to wow!, to yup. Some folks pretty quickly rushing to distance (the RIMA episode was bonkers as I recall). And a lot of frustration in the vein of, ‘in roles like that you have a responsibility not to do certain things.’ If the indictment turns out to be true, then this is certainly one of those things. Right now, though, the plea is not guilty, media outlets are reporting.
Also, context, of course. Every time something like this happens it’s, ‘school superintendents are corrupt’ or ‘teachers union leaders are corrupt,’ or ‘charter leaders are corrupt,’ etc…education is a big sprawling field with a lot of people and a lot of money, this stuff happens.
Elsewhere, Bret Stephens and Gail Collins debating early ed makes you crave percocet. Stephens isn’t wrong that middle schools are sort of a muddle but the idea that we should put emphasis there rather than early-ed (instead of doing both) is the kind of thing you get from undergraduates studying ed policy. Also a lot of framing around how it can help working families (it’s infrastructure now, rube) rather than something that can help kids have an equitable shot at opportunity. To Collins’ credit she gets to some of the research later, but it seems like if you want to get somewhere on early ed framing it as an educational intervention rather than a welfare state issue is a good place to start?
Early ed is great education policy and can help families sounds like a better message than early ed is great for working families and maybe is good ed policy.
