John Kuhn at the SOS March

Here's the remarkable John Kuhn, superintendent of Perrin-Whitt School District in Perrin, Texas, just down the road from where I was born. During the course of my career, I spent a lot of time being lectured about data by people from Texas, so it was a pleasure to hear a Texan talk about what's really going on in our nation.

Seriously--- once out in Mesa, Arizona, we had some Texas data guys come out and bray for an entire half day about data-driven instruction. We actually had to stand up and recite a thing they had written called The Beatitudes of Data-Driven Teaching.  It was the perfect storm of religion and fundamentalist faith in poorly gathered and badly misunderstood numbers.

So I'm always skeptical of things that come out of Texas. But John Kuhn reminds us all of the kind of spirit that we all had before we were beaten down by NCLB. Have a listen. I missed the first few seconds-- and I apologize for the shaky camera. I hope someone has a better clip of this magnificent speech.



I'd go teach for this guy. He's what I would call the polar opposite of Arne Duncan. You would expect a guy like John Kuhn to be Secretary of Education in a Democratic administration, and you would expect a guy like Arne Duncan to have a sinecure in a conservative think tank, at best--- although I have said more plainly true things in the past. 

Anyway, an inspirational, painfully truthful message from John Kuhn.