Two Down, Five to Go

I wasn’t going to read Bob Herbert’s education column today, because Bob Herbert is boring, but then I thought of T.A. Frank’s excellent article on the Herbert boringness phenomenon, and decided to give it a shot. I’m glad I did! Instead of the standard establishment fare I was expecting, Herbert comes strong from the edu-reform CW perspective, saying we need more charter schools like KIPP and endorsing the Kane / Staiger / Gordon teacher-effectiveness-based, fie-upon-certification induction model.

With Nicholas Kristoff’s column from earlier this year, which made the same exact point, that makes two New York Times columnists to jump on the Kane bandwagon. How many more can he bring on board? David Brooks seems like the obvious next choice, this is right up his alley, and he can probably get Friedman to bite if he uses the word “Bangalore” a lot. It’ll be tougher sledding from there, though — if Kane can get Maureen Dowd to write 700 words on teacher quality, I’ll be impressed.