Dear Colleagues,

David Brooks, the neoconservative columnist for the NY Times, has an interesting piece in today’s paper on President Obama’s national education policies.  Essentially he congratulates President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, for the manner in which they have administered the Race to the Top program.  Payments (as much as $700 million) will only be forthcoming to those states that enact education reform and change policies.   He refers to several examples and studies by right of center, corporate funded think tanks such as the Thomas Fordham Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute to support his position.   In New York State, for instance, over the past two months we saw the media wars over charter schools.  In reading this, while Brooks makes sense as he develops his position, I also kept thinking about Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy of “speak softly and carry a big stick”.

Tony

David Brooks’ article is available at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/opinion/04brooks.html?th&emc=th