What Did The President Say?

I haven't had time to look into this, but during my recent chat with some Crane kids, toward the end, one of the young men talks about their recent trip to the White House, where they told the President that Crane was being targeted for shutdown.

According to the young man, the President seemed shocked and said he'd send help.



According to the ancient code of journalists (If your mother says she loves you, check it out) I should investigate the details of this young man's account. I'm not a journalist, though.

But it's an interesting story, and if there's a journalist out there, it's an interesting angle. Did these kids eat dinner with the President? Did the President tell these kids he'd send help? Was he "shocked" about the Crane story?  A cursory Google search returns no details about this trip, but then again, these are the kids that will soon be disappeared by the system. Maybe nobody's covering them any more.

I didn't have the heart to tell the young man that the only thing this President is going to send is bus fare and Urban Prep's phone number. The heart of the President's policy is that schools like Crane get shut down based on the test scores, the teachers and staff get scapegoated,  and that the kids get dispersed to other schools where it will be hard to track the fact that they're doing pretty much the same everywhere.  And all of that will amount to "closing the achievement gap."

Update: I have been informed that the kids did indeed meet the President, but it was at a fundraiser, not at the White House, which I just totally made up out of the blue.  If the President left the impression that he was going to help the young people keep their school open, he needs to correct that and make his policies clear.


Update 2: Tonight I realized that it's very possible that actual live human beings who oppose the President's policy might actually have been trotted out as props at a fundraiser for the President. I don't know what went on at the fundraiser; I'm not a millionaire.  But if kids facing dispersal-- over massive community objection-- were in any way used as pro-Race To The Top pawns, then that was immoral. I wish someone with a press pass and a rolodex would look at this.