I'm not covering any new ground here, but I can't neglect Arne Duncan's remarkable quote--"Hurricane Katrina was the "best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans."
I first saw it mentioned in Fred Klonsky's blog, and it provoked a comment from Jose Vilson that I found entirely apt:
It’s OK because enough poor people died through this that the average scores for the district will naturally go up.
Asshole.
There you have it, pretty much.
And Mr. Accountable Talk had another angle on it:
Good thing Duncan wasn't education secretary during 9/11, or he might have said that Osama Bin Laden didn't do enough to really wake up the NYC school system. Good ole Arne probably sees the earthquake in Haiti as an opportunity to improve the schools there as well.
Perhaps what we really need is a nuclear holocaust. That would level the playing field entirely, and allow Arne's corporate buddies to completely take over public education, assuming they, along with the cockroaches, managed to survive the mushroom cloud.
Fortunately for Arne, even the GOP goes along with his union-busting, teacher bashing, corporate agenda. So you won't be seeing demands for his resignation on the evening news, and you won't hear outraged cries from Hannity or Rush.
If he were a city teacher he'd have landed in the rubber room. As US Secretary of Education, of course, there are no consequences whatsoever. Apparently it's perfectly acceptable for our number one educational authority to possess less sensitivity that a number two pencil.
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