So, his staff knows he’s bonkers. Yesterday, we had the quotes from the Woodward book. Now, we have an anonymous op-ed in the Times. Kelly and Mattis are protecting us from war and economic collapse.
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Cory Booker Speaks Out About Newark School Reform.
Earlier this year, after noticing that someone with a Senate email was looking at my LinkedIn page, I received an invitation from Sen. Cory Booker’s press secretary to talk about new research showing enormous progress in Newark schools, which he attributed to reforms implemented when Booker was mayor. I gathered up copies of the studies and drafted a few questions for a short January interview with a busy senator.
Rather than a quick question-and-answer session, the senator talked for nearly 90 minutes about his high-profile efforts to turn around Newark’s failing schools with a $100 million grant from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and its spectacular rollout on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show. He spoke about why he decided to tackle education reform and the difficult politics around reforming urban schools.
Frustrated by the negative coverage of the city that came out of Dale Russakoff’s 2015 book The Prize, he said Newark’s rising English and math test scores in grades 3-8, a shrinking achievement gap, and improved graduation rates — up nearly 20 percentage points since 2010 — prove that Newark’s reform efforts were very much a success.
He said he hoped these studies would help turn around the persistent negative narrative.
More here
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First Day of School
It’s the first day of school out here on the East Coast. Jonah’s first day of sophomore year at college and Ian’s sophomore year at high school.
We finished moving Jonah into his off-campus house over the weekend. It was a month long process with many trips to IKEA and the mattress store. Because it’s a 6 Guys and 1 bathroom college house, I made the pediatrician give him every shot available for 19 year olds. I prepared his immunity system as if he was traveling to a third world nation with open sewer systems.
I think it’s the last time that I will set foot in that house, unless it’s time to collect him at the end of the year. The front shrubs were already decorated with Bud Light cans and cigarette butts. I am so not happy. I can’t remember how he was able to get me to give the okay on this plan.
Ian’s first day is lot less eventful. He’s been at the school quite a bit this month already for marching band. It’s his second year of marching band, which is super tough on him. The music part is easy. Tolerating other kids for a full day and lugging a heavy snare drum around a field in a polyester uniform is very, very hard. But he’s doing it.
We did a lot of different kinds of camps this summer, all of which were good in their own way, but the best was the computer programming camp. It was 9 to 5 computer programming. He did it without an aide. And he hit it out of the ball park. It was super expensive, but so, so worth it. We’ve bought Ian out of autism. I’ll write about that later. 
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Question of The Day: 5 TV Shows
I stole this question from Twitter…
If you had to recommend someone watch 5 TV series to really get a feel for you and your tastes what 5 would you pick?
Here are my choices: Continue reading
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Giving Bannon a Platform
Last night, Twitter exploded with opinions about Bannon being uninvited to talk at a New Yorker festival.
I have mixed feelings about all this.
On the one hand, I do blame the media for giving Trump too much of a platform before the election. He shouldn’t have been able to just call into the Today every morning and chat with Matt Lauer before the election.
On the other hand, I want to know what that Rasputin has to say, because I still can’t believe that Trump is president. Bannon is awful. I don’t want him to have a permanent stage to talk, but I want to know more, in order to hate him more effectively.
Semi-off topic… A disturbing number of teenage boys around here are supportive of Trump. These aren’t the kids of coal miners in West Virginia. They are the children of stock brokers attending fancy private schools. They have command-stripped “Don’t Tread on Me” flags over the dorm room beds. We can’t pretend this isn’t happening.
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SL 734
While Jonah and Steve are out fishing, I’m home on marching band duty today, driving the little guy back and forth to practice and a game. He’s doing so, so well. I’m extremely proud of him for muscling through this hot weather. Hopefully, he won’t pass out tonight in the wool uniform and the heat.
So, what am I reading?
New research about autism is finding that there isn’t one kind of autism, but many, and that neurotypical siblings may share the same autism mutations as their siblings with autism, but for some reasons those genes aren’t turned on in the NT kid.
The discrimination case against Harvard around Asian-American applicants has gotten support from the Justice Department.
Scotland is providing free sanitary products for students.
Would you buy property in Miami? How about the Jersey shore?
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Social Exhaustion
I follow quite a number of academics on twitter for obvious reasons. If I write about higher ed, I should know what professors are talking about that day. I particularly follow political scientists, because they’re family, but I also follow people from other fields.
Recently, a group of female, African American scholars were talking about how exhausting it is to hear middle class, white women talk about dieting and fitness. When these conversations tend to pop up on twitter, I usually tune out, particularly when they start referring to all white women as “Becky’s.” But I read the whole thread about how these academics feel alienated, when small talk turns to topics that are not usual topics in their circles.
Sometimes when I’m walking through the supermarket in town, I’ll run into a neighbor or someone from spin class. I’ll ask her what’s up and she’ll sigh and complain about her busy schedule taking her kids to birthday parties and sports events. And OMG prom dresses are so expensive. And college applications are due soon.
And here’s what I’m thinking (or used to think when things were rougher) … Continue reading
