Comments on: Contest update: Brat Pack is not the answer, but we’re close!

By: Mary

Mary — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:33:20 +0000

I’m confused. Is GothamSchools an education news blog? I respect Elizabeth Green, as she is seasoned journalist, but I do wonder if it’s going to degenerate into a sophomoric blog with this type of naming contest. I thought that was reserved for all the parent advocates from the group “Ego Size Matters” oops, I mean “Class Size Matters.” There, see I can also be sophomoric. It’s easy to poke fun of groups or organizations or people. I’d hate to see this blog with someone like Green, who I wished worked at the New York Times, become another forum for parents sparring. There are plenty of those.

By: Stewart Sterling

Stewart Sterling — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 04:20:31 +0000

I’m sure you are familar with the layman’s parlance, “hater?”

Nuff said. Fascinating that you spend time and energy doing what it is you “do” here, bashing those who are attempting whatever they can to find a solution to a large scale problem. You may or may not agree. But your mockery serves to be as much a contributor tob the problem as the widespready apathy that helped to breed it.

By: bhr

bhr — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:55:25 +0000

Neo-Stalinists works for me. And please stop buying into this “data-driven” business. They don’t know a good number from a bad one, solid research from sleight of hand. Nor are they interested. Data are considered either friends or enemies, rather than a means for the pursuit of knowledge or as an invitation to thought. After all, if you already know you’re right, why let inconvenient facts, let alone democracy, get in the way?The parallels to Lysenko are uncanny. But instead of bringing about mass starvation, these “we’re all about the kids” neo-Stalinists will “merely” produce an educational catastrophe whose brunt is mostly borne by the poor kids in whose name they purport to speak.

By: Philissa Cramer

Philissa Cramer — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:18:29 +0000

I didn’t see anything saying that GothamSchools employees are not eligible, so here are my contributions:
1. Axis of Eval.
2. Clay Risen’s description of “a technocratic elite” brings to my mind the progressive notion of “experts” that drove “reform” in the early 20th century. With PDAs, perhaps these folks are 21st-century Progressive Educators?

By: Ms. Miller

Ms. Miller — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:08:47 +0000

I’m partial to “hormonal wonkocrats,” which New York Observer political reporter Jason Horowitz once used to describe young center-right Washington journalists endorsed by David Brooks.

By: Sherman Dorn

Sherman Dorn — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:20:45 +0000

I grin at but am not sure I agree with Alexander Russo’s term “reforminess” to describe a group of self-described (but unidentified) reformers. Maybe something that refers to Rosalind Wiseman instead: Reformer Bees and Wannabes. Or akin to Dilbert: 1) Reforming with Vacuous Objectives; 2) Reform Is Just Another Word for People Finding Out You’re Useless; 3) (I’m still looking for something to riff off “The Seven Habits of Highly Defective People”).