Warning: Do Not Be Beguiled by David Brooks
I do not pretend fully to understand Newark, New Jersey’s mayoral politics. I’m a Clevelander and David Brooks is a New Yorker, and we are both outsiders. But this morning, as a Clevelander, I need to correct what I’ll be generous and call an oversimplification in Brooks’ article in the NY Times. The too frequent problem with David Brooks is that while his observations about our society are often interesting, when it comes right down to any particular issue, he doesn’t get the implications on the ground.
Today David Brooks writes about the mayoral race in Newark, New Jersey. Brooks clearly prefers Shavar Jeffries over Ras Baraka for mayor of Newark. He portrays Jeffries as a change agent—a reformer, while he portrays Baraka as “regular,” the status quo. (This sounds a little like Arne Duncan who frequently criticizes those who might be in favor of supporting the “weak, status quo” of traditional public schooling.) Brooks titles his column, “How Cities Change,” implying that the person who opposes change is just in the way. I am not going to take sides in Newark’s mayors race. I don’t know Shavar Jeffries; I know a little bit more about Ras Baraka. What I do know something about is the drama currently playing in Newark.
There are three urban stages today in America where the battle of the imposition of so-called “corporate school reform” is being most distinctly and unambiguously dramatized: Chicago, Philadelphia, and most bitterly Newark, New Jersey. To call Newark’s raging battle about
Yesterday on the website of the Washington Post Valerie Strauss posted this column by New York’s award winning public high school principal Carol Burris to correct misinformation being spread by U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Speaking at a Boston charter school last week, Duncan said, according to news reports: “Forty percent of your high-school graduates are taking remedial classes whe