Booker Outclasses Winfrey on Education
I was on the cross-trainer at the gym when the Oprah Winfrey Show came on the air Friday afternoon. I’d been unsure whether I wanted to see the follow up to Monday’s show, which my colleague Anthony Cody called“Oprahpaganda”. Winfrey took shots all over the education blogosphere this week, and posts on Facebook and Twitter called her out for a fawning performance with Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, and Davis Guggenheim. But curiosity won out after I saw the opening of today’s show. Within a couple minutes, I had used my iPhone to remote start a recording on my home DVR. Winfrey disappointed, not as much as she might have, but Newark Mayor Corey Booker made the show much more palatable.
This show started off with a montage of people’s reactions to the Monday program, and a couple of statements stood out. First, there was the woman who earnestly opined, “Finally! Someone’s paying attention!” Was the “someone” the speaker herself, or Winfrey? Then there was a teacher whose experience with her union led her
