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Thursday, October 6, 2016

Order in the Court – EduShyster

Order in the Court – EduShyster:

Order in the Court

gavel

A lawsuit challenging Massachusetts’ charter school cap on civil rights grounds gets tossed. And that’s not a nothingburger…
No sooner had we been instructed to drain the words *drain* and *siphon* from our collective vocabularies than an order came down on from on high, ordering us to re-instate them. I speak, of course, about this week’s Superior Court decision tossing a lawsuit challenging the Bay State’s charter cap on civil rights grounds. It’s time to head to court, reader. And must I remind you that as it t’is now after Labor Day, no white shoes allowed? That is unless you happen to be clad in white bucks on behalf of, well, white bucks.
Where were we?
A veritable aeon has passed since we last plumbed the depths of what Commonwealth Mag. once termed a *provocative challenge* to the state’s limit on charter schools. Quick studies will recall that the case was always somewhat, ahem, unusual, starting with the fact that it wasn’t actually about the charter nothingburgercap at all but judiciability, meaning the question of which branch of gov gets to rule the schools. Then there was the even unusualer detail that the defendants tasked with defending the charter cap were none other than the Brothers Nothingburger: Secretary of Education James Peyser, the very architect of the three-pronged assault on the charter cap (Look Ma, three branches!) and Board of Ed chief Paul Sagan, whose personal donation of $100K to the cap-lifting cause sent more than a few eyebrows rocketing skyward. 
Big issues
On the surface it sounded like the pilot for Law and Order: Conflicts of Interest Unit. But lurking ‘neath were big issues. Like was it time for Massachusetts to junk that 
Order in the Court – EduShyster: