“Who Knew?” you ask.
The answer is: Melanie Lundquist, the enabler-philanthropist who gave Tony $50 million and Patrick Sinclair, Senior Director, Communications and External Affairs of (Mayor Tony’s) Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS).
Together they wrote a fawning puff piece masquerading as an Op-Ed about Tony that concludes: “As Eisenhower said,’Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it’.”
I love that quote! When I was in college I postulated Folsom’s First Law of Communications: “You can always find a snappy quotation from some famous bozo to justify any preposterous proposition you care to defend.”
Apropos of Ike’s aphorism: Mayor Tony got Melanie and Patrick to write about how visionary he is, and then got the Huffington Post to publish it …using Melanie's money to pay Patrick to do so. You have to admire the chutzpah!
If you choose to read the article – do so with a grain of salt.
According to the article (and Tony): The California Superior, Appeals and Supreme Courts’ rulings that Tony’s attempted takeover of LAUSD (“Other big city mayors do it!”) was illegal somehow evidences a conspiracy by the forces of the status quo rather than an unconstitutional act. And the article goes on to describe a level of collective-bargaining harmony in the District no one else has observed. Teacher Evaluation + RIF’s + Academic Growth Over Time + Race to the Top, Kumbaya? I don’t think so.
PLAS efforts to prove that educational giftedness knows no territorial or demographic boundaries is one we all knew from anecdotal observation …but I thank them for proving the truth to the data driven. No mention is made of PLAS decision to abandon dual immersion language instruction or health education. -smf
Huff Po: Like Everything About LA, Being Education Mayor Is Different
11/05/2012 9:26 am
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