“What Kind of Fool Am I?” Tony Bennett
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It was the other Tony Bennett who sang that song, of course. But former Indiana and Florida state superintendent Tony Bennett probably ought to be asking himself that question. As Tom LoBianco of the Associated Press reported, Mr. Bennett manipulated his own school grading system so that a favorite charter school–run by a major financial supporter of his–got a grade of A instead of the C that it deserved.
“They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work,” Bennett emailed his Chief of Staff (who now is Indiana Governor Mike Pence’s chief lobbyist). All this went down less than a year ago, just before Bennett was voted out of office. He was immediately hired to head Florida’s public schools, a position he just vacated after LoBianco reported his secret manipulations.
The blogosphere has been going wild, and those on the left are positively salivating. Mr. Bennett is the driving force behind Chiefs for Change, the right-leaning group of state superintendents of education. That group’s name has morphed into “Cheats for Change,” “Chiefs for (Grade) Change,” “Cheating Chiefs for Change,” and on and on. They see this as another skirmish in the on-going battle being waged over/against public education and are hoping that this fiasco will help more people see the folly of