Valerie Strauss at The Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet” has just published a guest post by me titled The importance of being unprincipled.
It’s a commentary on the self-righteous zeal of some school reformers, most recently exemplified Rhee & Fenty’s appalling “Manifesto” yesterday in The Wall Street Journal.
In many ways, today’s Washington Post column is a companion piece to the one I wrote earlier this month in The Huffington Post, Let’s Do Less ‘Fire, Ready, Aim.’
Great post. So little is written on organizing. A lot of activists think it means getting people to show up at their event, but forget that building relationships first is what gets people to want to show up in the first place.
Our former superintendent was quoted “Sometimes you just have to shoot first and aim later,” when asked how he was going to fund the implementation of a seven period day in our district. He ultimately drove the budget into the ground and fled with his tail between his legs (thanks to good organizing by our local).