The Democratic canidates for president largely embarrassed themselves at Pander-Palooza a few weeks ago (save for a very weak merit pay proposal from Obama) but they have a chance to save face later this morning when several of them will speak at the Urban League’s national convention.
The bar was raised pretty high the other day when Independent NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg hit the stage there and actually seemed to talk about the nature of the problem and offered some common-sense, yet seldom discussed proposals to bring meaningful change to our struggling systems of education. Whether Bloomberg’s speech serves as an embarrassing reminder of the Democratic Party’s intellectual bankruptcy on education issues will be determined by the candidates themselves later today, but there is an obvious hole that Bloomberg left that could be very easily filled.