Michael Klonsky

If you want to see the depths to which Florida's Dept. of Ed. testing freaks can sink, see Valerie Strauss' story in today's WaPo about a Florida mom Andrea Rediske’s fight to help families of children with severe disabilities. Warning -- it's not a story for the faint of heart.

There's 3 good letters and one crappy one in this morning's Trib. Julie Woestehoff writes re. the ISAT test boycott calling on Rahm, BBB, the Board and ISBE to "respect parents' rights to direct our children's education, to treat students who opt out respectfully and ethically, and, most important, to change the fundamental values in this district and this state that continue to prioritize test scores above high-quality education for all our children."

"The Common Core has become a rallying cry for fringe groups that claim it is a scheme for the federal government to usurp state and local control of what students learn. An op-ed in the New York Times called the Common Core "a radical curriculum." It is neither radical nor a curriculum." -- Arne Duncan Well, Arne Duncan got it half-right. It's certainly not radical.

The loss of manufacturing combined with corrupt mis-leadership in Springfield and City Hall, is rapidly turning Chicago into a second-rate, parasitic city that produces little but where public space is reduced and insatiable corporate interests suck up more than their share of the resources.