Education reformers like Michelle Rhee like to claim that if we only toss out "ineffective teachers" and evaluate all students on an even metric, we will discover the magic key to educating all of our children, even those who live in poverty and those challenged by language and/or cultural barriers. They argue that reform will mean giving parents choices about where their children are educated, too, which will somehow magically create performance where none existed in the past. These conclusions are based on a near-cultlike belief in the power of metrics and objective measurement of students' success. They also believe that removing children from their communities is the most effective way to improve their educational success.

All of that is code for privatizing public education, and the reasons for privatization are legion, but none are particularly related to giving America's children a quality education. There's a long discussion to be had about for-profit education and other issues, but I was given an opportunity to consider another paradigm last week, one that has a great deal of promise for America's students and teachers.

The Backstory

In West Virginia, McDowell County's children have many challenges in front of them. After financial irregularities were discovered ten years ago, their public schools were taken over by the state. Ten years later, the financial issues are resolved, but face ongoing challenges with regard to the education of their children (see video at the top).

Gayle Manchin, wife of US Senator Joe Manchin, former First Lady of West Virginia, and Vice Chair of the State Board of Education was troubled by the consistent problems plaguing students in McDowell County, and wanted to come up with a new solution to the issues they face up there. She reached out to the very dynamic Randi Weingarten, president of AFT and all-around amazing person, and a new approach was born.

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TBogg: Decision-making and why it fails.

The Non Sequitur: That's icky, your argument is invalid.

The Progressive Puppy: West Virginia gay man assaulted by police.

skippy: RIP Robert Byrd.

Annals of Journalism: The 119 words you can't use on the radio... Embrace the wonk... Political analysis and BS... Thanks for protecting us from relevant information... Clowns to the left of me, jokers on the right... Conservative exclusion is a right-wing delusion... The Atlantic has found its perfect idiot... Debunking a "Christian nationalist pseudo-historian”... BP "reporters" give flowery account of disaster... Unknown parties kill jobless aid in Senate... A message to Jeffrey Goldberg's anonymous sources... Mencken would get the boot, too.

Last guest post by Batocchio. Thanks! Next up is Blue Gal. Temporarily e-mail tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail.

MSNBC anchor Robach implied Bush protesters unpatriotic

Media Matters came up with this video: As noted on the weblog Daily Kos, MSNBC Live anchor Amy Robach suggested that protesting President Bush's policies was unpatriotic. Following a live broadcast of President Bush's Independence Day address at West Virginia University, Robach told viewers, "There were a couple of protesters we heard with a few signs, but for the most part, looks like a very patriotic crowd."

Howard Dean is Doing What Dems Need: Shaking Things Up

via Atrios via TPM: ..."The Republican Party took weeks to finally admit that it was responsible for some of the most outrageous campaign flyers in the last election. The Washington Note was the first to post these -- and Howard Dean, on his blog, was one of the few politicians (then withdrawn from the race) to roundly attack these flyers that said Democrats would BAN the Bible and turn that respective state (Arkansas, West Virginia, Ohio, and several others) into bastions of homosexuality. And now Dean is being clobbered by his own party for asserting that the Republican Party is mostly Christian, mostly white, and mostly male?! ..read on"

Only in politics can you tell the truth and get hammered. Do I think he needs to be a bit more precise. Yes. Also, the more they attack what Dean says the less effect it will have. 24/7 is devoting segment after segment on Howard Dean. After awhile the producers will grow tired of it as well the people they are trying to influence, and the only entertained members will be the rabid fundamentalists.

There was a guest piece in the Times business section years ago, and it was about the ethical problem presented by a CEO or manager who set unreasonable goals and said, "Don't bother me with the details, just get it done." The author said that was an inherently immoral position, because it forced employees to either quit - or cut ethical corners in order to meet their numbers. I also remember the piece concluded that the real ethical violation was that of the management who set the goals in the first place, without taking responsibility for the consequences that inevitably follow.

I've never forgotten that. It's a handy rule of thumb, and I've actually used that story to argue with managers about their decisions. (Sometimes it even worked.)

What happened at the Massey mine in West Virginia is a textbook example of that kind of warped managerial thinking. (Although they made noises about it after the mine explosion, the board of Massey Energy still has no problem with Don Blankenship.) The NY Times today takes a look at two non-union mines (I suppose to prove that you can be non-union, yet still observe safety standards). It's a good read, and I recommend that you check out the rest. But this is the part that made my heart ache for those men:

Like so many other workers across the country, the day-shift miners at Upper Big Branch had an early-morning commute. Every workday, a dozen or so piled into a covered vehicle called a mantrip and caught a half-hour doze as the car followed a track three to four miles into the side of a central Appalachian mountain.

The car would come to a stop in a world where the ceiling was less than seven feet high, the floor puddled with water, and the air cool, breezy and faintly musty. As loud fans helped to move the air, the mining machine would grind back and forth about 1,000 feet across the wall, slicing coal to be carried away by conveyor belt.

Down there, fresh air could not be taken for granted.

Well before this month’s fatal explosion at Upper Big Branch, the country’s worst mine disaster in 40 years, the lack of proper ventilation had been a continuing concern among its miners. The fear of methane building while oxygen dropped preyed on their minds.

“I have had guys come to me and cry,” said the veteran foreman. “Grown men cried — because they are scared.”

But workers in the mine said they did not dare question the company’s safety practices, even when asked to perform a dubious task.

“It was all about production,” said Andrew Tyler, 22, an electrician who two years ago worked as a subcontractor on the wiring for the coal conveyer belt and other equipment at Upper Big Branch. “If you worked for them, you didn’t ask questions about whether some step like running a cable around the breaker was a smart idea. You just did it.”

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Thanks to Shea Gunther over at Mother Nature Network for putting attention on this. It's always so nice to see the good guys win. The Westboro Baptist Church thrives on spreading a nice helping of hate around. They sent their minions to West Virginia to let the families of the 29 dead miners know their loved ones died because we're too tolerant of alternative lifestyles. Their website says there are too many Catholics in West Virginia, another reason for the protest.

Anyway, watch this video. Seriously, watch the whole thing. I especially love the part where the guy from West Virginia starts quoting Bible verses back at them and tells them to "get out". As it rolls on, it's clear the good people of West Virginia have no intention of letting the haters get even a little bit of traction in their state.

But the WBC are an unstable bunch of busy haters. Not only did they head to West Virginia for a harassment fix, but they also deployed to Iowa, where their 6 protesters were met by a group of 500, letting them know that Iowa is a spacious state, but there is no room for haters.

It's so nice to see free speech at work on both sides. While the Phelps family cult depends on indoctrinating children and using them for their evil ends, the good people of Iowa and West Virginia gave their kids an object lesson in meeting evil with good.

A virtual fist bump to Iowa and West Virginia, and true prayers for the families of the mine victims goes to them, from me. Long live the first amendment.

Some analysis from Counterpunch

excerpt:

Edwards added absolutely nothing to the ticket. At least Dan Quayle held Indiana back in 1988 and 2002. No one state in the south went into Kerry's column. Gore did better in Florida and West Virginia. Dick Gephardt would certainly have brought the Democratic ticket Missouri and probably Iowa and hence the White House.

And by the way, praise the lord Mike Huckabee has edged out Condoleeza Rice for Vice in the Congressional Quarterly VP Madness game! Don't forget we have a West Virginia Primary Open Thread going as well here.

Open thread below...

A six year old West Virginia jury award now worth $70 million against the country's fourth largest coal company was overturned last week by the West Virginia Supreme Court. Now a look back at what happened in between is raising eyebrows, not to mention Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship's hackles. This one seems eerily similar to John Grisham's latest, only this is for real. ABC's Brian Ross explains.

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After Massey Energy appealed the case, its CEO Don Blankenship, a Richmond Virginia resident, helped bankroll a $3.5 million ad campaign to successfully unseat W.V. Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw and replace him with Justice Brent Benjamin, or as fellow Justice Larry Starcher put it, "the election was bought, a seat was purchased on our Supreme Court, and I'm highly offended by it." Then pictures surfaced of Blankenship and W.V. Supreme Court Chief Justice Spike Maynard vacationing with their girlfriends on the Riviera. "It was a trip the Chief Justice never disclosed to the court, even when he voted with the majority to overturn the huge Massey verdict, according to Justice Starcher, who is now being interviewed by the FBI."

After the pictures became public, Justice Maynard did recuse himself, but so did fellow Justice Starcher because (gasp), he had dared to have been critical of Blankenship's relationship with the Court. So the three remaining W.V. Justices, including Blankenship's 3.5 million dollar Justice Benjamin, reheard the case last week and again overturned it.

When approached for a comment by ABC News, Blankenship threatened that the reporter was "liable to get shot" and attacked his camera.

W.V. Chief Justice Maynard insists he's been the victim of "the mother of all political smears," even after it came out that Blankenship's chief political consultant is now helping Maynard's re-election bid. Let's hope that goes about as well as Blankenship's $3 million attempt to finance a GOP takeover of the W.V. House in 2006.

Denver Post:

White House staffers directed two men serving as bouncers at a 2005 Denver appearance by President Bush to eject three activists from the public event, the bouncers said under oath today.

It was the first time in the long-running controversy over the barring of the so-called "Denver Three" from the Bush event that specific White House officials have been named as having been involved in the ejection.

The paid White House staff members were identified in sworn depositions as Jamie O'Keefe, who was lead advance staffer for the appearance, and Steve Atkiss, White House trip director, attorneys said after the depositions today in federal court in Denver.

The bouncers were being questioned in a lawsuit claiming three activists were kicked out of the public event for political reasons.
[..]The suit, filed with help from the American Civil Liberties Union, claims Bush volunteers violated their free-speech constitutional rights.
[..][The Bush administration has run into similar trouble elsewhere after critics were ejected from Bush appearances.

People in North Dakota complained they'd been put on a list of guests who should not be allowed to enter an event in 2005. And the ACLU filed a case on behalf of two West Virginia residents arrested in 2004 after refusing to remove anti-Bush T-shirts at a Bush campaign event.

The ACLU has looked into whether there was a pattern of illegally preventing critics from speaking at Bush public forums.

The Denver Three case could set a precedent for how exclusive a White House event can be. During the administration of the elder President Bush in the early 1990s, a federal court of appeals in Missouri held that White House staffers can exclude people from presidential events if those running the event believe the people are likely to be disruptive.