Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Looking back to '09: Boy was I wrong!

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Looking back to '09: Boy was I wrong!:

Looking back to '09: Boy was I wrong!

by Mike Klonsky

Three years ago today, opponents of Renaissance 2010 protest Chicago school board decision to close or "turnaround" 16 schools.

It was three years ago yesterday, still joyful from the great election victory three months earlier, that I took a swipe at Diane Ravitch for her comment: "It looks like Obama's education policy will be a third term for President George W. Bush. This is not change I can believe in." (Politico)

My response back then: "What a joke! Obama has done more to save public education in one month than the entire Bush regime did in 12 years."

Well it turned out, the joke was on me. Obama's early positives -- including his rejection of school vouchers (pushed on him by DFER hedge-fund reformers, his 2009 stimulus package which looked then like a new deal for