The "Facebook Comes to Newark" story deeply involves Oprah Winfrey.
Ms. Winfrey has very carefully planned her syndicated television program's final year. She has, for better or worse, embraced the notion of "education reform" and given it plenty of air time. Keep in mind she was one of President Obama's principal media and financial backers during his election campaign. O and O share an educational agenda whose unmistakable, unrelenting goal has been the reduction of existing public school and teacher bureaucracies, and their replacement with corporate-style managements and enterprise-style employer-employee structures. (Yes, I understand there are other goals.) Ironically, the right-wing has shared the Obamians' program and, in fact, has advocated longer and harder for it than the Obamians have. O and O's best political move in 44's two years in office was co-opting the school issue from conservative politicians and their think-tank cohorts.
7. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan comes from the same Chicago world as O and O. He's the point person for 44's education offensive, much the way former New Jersey Commissioner of Education Bret Schundler was envisioned by Governor Chris Christie. (Schundler would have been a very inconvenient person in the Zuckerberg scenario.) Duncan has pushed "reform" at every possible opportunity, while throwing money at the funding crisis engulfing most school district across the country. Guess what? The money runs out next year, and let's see who will pay for these ideas.
8. One report suggests the Harlem Children's Zone, which is being lionized this fall on NBC, The New York Times, and the heavily hyped documentary Waiting for Superman, will be used as the paradigm for Newark school "reform." In case you're keeping score at home, there are already a host of charter schools in Newark. One of them has a teaching staff that would be the envy of a New England private school. Another, connected to the Adubato political/media family, has won deserved plaudits for its achievements. The Zuckerberg contribution, as I understand the initial reports of it, will not reach these schools. The plot thickens here.
9. Enter Newark mayor Cory Booker. Here we have media darling #2, an African-American graduate of Stanford who "returned home" to "make a difference." Booker's political ambitions venture well beyond Newark's poor, tired streets. He's made it a point to make the right media connections, groom himself for appropriate positions that carry statewide appeal and national clout, gather political IOUs, and financial backing for his next step. Where would that be? There had been rumors of a gubernatorial run in the Garden State. However, Chris Christie's blitz of former governor Jon Corzine, combined with the implied threat of Christie's prosecutorial allies, made Booker pause. Booker and Adubato made a very public peace with Christie the day after Christie won the governor's seat. Booker, who has rocky relations with a considerable portion of Newark's politicos, probably has his eyes on Frank Lautenberg's US Senate seat. Lautenberg is 94 years old, and is unlikely to follow the late South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond in the Senate's version of the Century Club.
10. Christie and Booker have shaken hands on the Zuckerberg deal. Forget about the ridiculous leaking of the "secret" story for a moment, and the unsavory motives behind the leak. What's far more incredible is New Jersey's equivalent of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. Booker's move is simple: he'll run on school reform in a Senate race (as will Obama in 2012). To accomplish that act, he needs more than Zuckerberg's money. He needs what Christie thought he had with Bret Schundler. That's where The New York Times, pushing "reform," enters the picture again. In the original Times story about the Zuckerberg pledge, Michelle Rhee's name was floated as a possibility to be Newark's next school superintendent. (The local Newark newspaper, the Star-Ledger, ran a story on the Zuckerberg splash and speculated in detail on who the next superintendent might be. The Star-Ledger story characterized Rhee's candidacy as a "longshot.")
To be continued....
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