So these people in Los Angeles, Richard and Melanie Lundquist, want to give $50 million to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's efforts to turn around some long-failing high schools. And Mrs. Lundquist says she wants to help raise even more private money to help save these public schools.
But there's a catch.
It seems the Lundquists don't want to just throw their money down the drain. They want to make sure the students in those schools actually benefit from the significant private boost.
According to the L.A. Times story on the gift: "The schools must show progress on several fronts, including test scores, graduation rates, dropout rates, safety, parent satisfaction and other measures still to be determined."
Oh boy. Didn't they get the memo that children are much more than a test? That they carry with them the baggage of a cruel society and that schools alone can't be expected to teach kids?
How dare these people attach inflexible, one-size-fits-all conditions to their $50 million donation. If they really cared they'd just hand over the larger-than-life-sized check and walk away!
Can you imagine what would happen if the federal government tried to make sure that kids were actually better off because of billions of dollars worth of investments sent to local schools around the country? Oh wait, we tried that… and now its under fire from the education cartel.
Note to A.J. Duffy: You need to stop this thing in its tracks before it spreads!
Hypothetical thought of the day: Who would make a better Secretary of Education, Mrs. Lundquist or Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor turned NEA lobbyist?