This is right interesting. This is from C-SPAN, the call in segment where they were taking opinions on this paying students for grades thing. It's like 50 minutes because it gets everyone that called in on the topic.
Side note: It's hosted at archive,org, and uploading it truly tried my patience. But they flipped it to an embeddable format about as fast as YouTube would, and I like the player because it has no ads. I have to fiddle with the embed code to fit it on the page and shut off that damnable autoplay, but it's better than last time I messed with it. I can see using it for longish stuff. I need to check out blip.tv too.
Anyway, if you have the patience there's a lot to work with in here.
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The road seldom traveled...
(...Hey, thanks for taking the time for putting this one up P6!)
I think I've gone on record at least a few times about my fascination with the state of the D.C. School System.
Right now, I'm anxiously watching to see if D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and Chancellor Michelle Rhee can just get all of the schools up to code so that they can open on time.
(...Reports are that workers have been at it around the clock!)
So, I'm watching with baited breath to see how this all goes down.
I think at the end of the day, especially with how he unsurreptitiously wrestled control of the schools away from the bureaucratically entrenched and historically inept school board and put Rhee in place to answer solely to him, that the legacy of Fenty's administration will be judged by how the direction of the schools end up going.
To be honest, I felt the whole 'pay for grades' thing was the first major misstep of the Fenty / Rhee regime.
(...Up until now, I've had the impression Rhee genuinely undertands The 'Marva Collins' approach to teaching!)
I was really feeling like my opinion was in line with the guy at 14:54 in the clip, because that was pretty much how I always understood education was supposed to be.
But I'm really starting to appreciate the rationale from callers like those at 34:33 and 37:00.
(...I can't say that I'm honestly sold yet, but I do feel a little better that people are buying into the logic for conceivably sound enough reasoning to make me a little more open-minded!)
Just the same, I'm really pulling for Fenty and Rhee, because for the school system in of all places, the nations capital, to be such a major joke for so long, if they can turn it around, it could very well be a blueprint for success elsewhere.