It’s not a conspiracy to conclude that the local school councils were a bad venue for change. The successor organization has worked more on principal and teacher development and leadership which is largely where the consensus of the literature has said to focus.

The idea of local councils was to empower parents–something you might be sympathetic too given your ideology. The problem is that in the worst off schools, the parents are largely not able to effectively participate and it turned out to be an ineffective model.

In theory giving parents control was a worthy goal. Empirically it was a failure. Trying to make it sound like some grand failure of the challenge is rather silly since it was efforts like Annenberg where we changed our view on what worked.

Experimentation is how you figure out what is the better solution and the entirety of the Annenberg effort in and out of Chicago helped us reach a general consensus that democratic boards at the level of the school were not a strong method of improvement.

From Newsweek a while back
Although she has been in office less than a year, Palin, too, earns high marks from lawmakers on the other side of the aisle. During a debate earlier this year over a natural-gas bill, State Senate Minority Leader Beth Kerttula was astounded when she and another Democrat went to see the new governor to lay out their objections. “Not only did we get right in to see her,” says Kerttula, “but she asked us back twice—we saw her three times in 10 hours, until we came up with a solution.”

Hard to imagine Rod doing that.

Also it’s one thing to help steelworkers, it’s another to be married to one

Other members of the Board of Directors included:
Susan Crown of the General Dynamics Corp. family
Patricia Graham, former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education
Arnold Weber, past president of Northwestern University and of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago.

The current project that grew out of Annenberg includes Ed Rust–the head of State Farm Insurance. Crazy radical man.

How does she blow away anyone? She was supporting Stevens with a 527 formed to back him–was verbally supportive of him during the month he was indicted.

As someone said to me today, she’s Rod Blagojevich with a skirt–she cannot get along with the same party members in the Alaskan lege, she’s under ethics investigations, and she’s lying about earmarks.

You won’t find me arguing experience is all about the amount of time served–I can imagine a Mayor being President or certainly the Governor of Alaska. I’m far more worried about how they have prepared themselves, their temperament, and do they listen. And that’s where I don’t see much evidence she’s ready or in any way planned to be ready this soon.

Can I talk about the other board members? (I have beaten that one to death so that is mostly a joke)

However considering all of the BS that Obama kept his mouth shut about using running against Bobby Rush is a bit of a reach.

– Where was he when Lipinski stepped down so his son could run without having to face a primary?

– Where has he been as the Democratic Party has completely screwed up Springfield (our last governor may be in jail, but stuff did get done)?

– Obama endorses Tom Weisner for mayor of Aurora, Weisner wins election, Aurora hires guy who worked for Obama.
http://www.ilcampaign.org/press/news/illinois/2008/4-22-08AuroraLobbyist.html
Still waiting to Obama to comment about that lobbyist.

– The whole Todd Stroger thing

Sorry but when it comes to standing up to what may be ‘wrong’ within your party Governor Palin blows him away.

Also I would argue a small town mayor has to make more hard choices than a back-bench state senator in Illinois does.

You make a valid point about her ‘not showing an interest’ in Vice Presidential things, however I still don’t get how three years (he has been a little busy in the last year) makes him fully qualified to be president.